The Incarnate Word

John 1.14, verse 14 of John 1, my favorite verse in the gospel of John and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And we have seen His glory, glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Let's hear it again And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Father, this morning, the reality of the incarnation, may it dawn on us that what we hold true is different than any religion that's ever existed.

That God, the Almighty God, who created heaven and earth, became a man.

Wow.

Help us not to treat that contemptibly or cheaply, but to treasure the truth of that, father.

We thank you now for the Word of the gospel which we're about to receive in Jesus' name, and everyone said amen.

Several years ago, i was invited to a Bible college to do a course on church history.

I think I had 24 hours of teaching in like four days, and it was with a sister network that I know and love called Grace Churches International.

We were in Raleigh, Durham, north Carolina area, and they asked me to cover the whole period from the apostolic age, the first century, the age when the books of Scripture were written, to the Reformation, and I started studying the second, third, fourth, fifth centuries of Christian history and I got a headache.

I began to get a headache because I was studying all the debates that went on in the early church in the first five centuries, especially All the debates between the church fathers and the heretics over the person of Jesus.

If you don't know this and I'll spare you the headaches of all the intensity of the debate Actually it shouldn't cause us a headache.

There's good reason that it was done.

But the debates were intense because there were people floating around the early churches in the first four or five centuries distorting the nature of the Son of God, and the debates were trying to get a handle.

They were over this mystery of Jesus.

How do you get a handle?

Is He fully man?

Was He fully God?

How can God and man coexist?

And I got a headache because some of the church fathers seem to be splitting hairs over the minutest details regarding the nature of the Lord Jesus And at times the debate got so intense that it causes cause shisms and schisms in the body of Christ.

But then I realized while I was recovering from my migraines and it is this that the very quarrels and debates that existed in the first few centuries of Christian history over the nature of the person of Jesus Christ only prove the authenticity of Jesus Christ, because, as far as I know, no one's debated about Muhammad.

They might have debated what his teachings mean, and they still do, but the debate has never been over the person of Muhammad.

Is he God, is he man?

Or, for that reason, there's not been any debates over Buddha or Moses, even, which is my favorite religious hero as a Jew None of these men have ever been debated about as far as their persons or as far as the nature of their persons.

There may have been vigorous debates over their teachings, and they're still not essentially over their identity.

But in Christianity, while there have been and still are debates over the teachings of Jesus, the debates in the first few centuries were not over his teaching, essentially, but over this person.

Who in the world is he?

How do we understand the man Christ Jesus?

And then it hit me why Jesus Christ defies description.

So the very debates that caused me a headache as I tried to grasp them began to bless me because they gave clear evidence of the uniqueness of Christianity, because, according to the New Testament, the person of Jesus is shrouded in mystery.

And here's why, last week, i opened up a series and, if you're new to Trinity, i'm teaching through a series over the next two months on the person and nature of Jesus.

This month we're talking about the person of Jesus from John's Gospel, chapter one.

Next month we'll look at the events of his birth.

Last week we began in John 1.1, with John's incredible declaration that in the beginning was the Word.

And we saw that to know Jesus properly and to answer the question, who is this man?

You have to start not with his birth as a babe in Bethlehem, but back in eternity past.

He is the Logos, the wisdom of God, the Word who has always been with the Father and always was God alongside the Father.

And John tells us he's Word because he alone reveals the Father, not just beginning from Bethlehem onward, but always.

He is the one who has revealed the Father.

And now John takes that which we studied last week and makes this massive statement.

Thank you, aaron, for reminding us of it in the middle of worship this morning.

It's an incredible statement, it's massive.

It changes the whole landscape regarding religion.

Time itself is divided around this statement.

It is this may it dawn on us afresh the eternal Logos, the Word, the eternal wisdom of God, he who was always with the Father and was one with the Father and is himself deity, became flesh and blood.

If you don't get my drift, let me say it without any holds barred God became a baby.

He who was God became a real flesh and blood human being.

And get this, it's so critical.

He was not God masquerading as a man for 33 years, but a real man, subject to all the things that real men and women are subject to, who himself was very God of God.

This was the point, by the way, that was being vigorously debated in the first five centuries and actually beyond.

It has been debated for 2,000 years.

There have been two errors going around Christian churches for 2,000 years about Jesus, and they are this either people think Jesus is fully God but only pretended to be a man.

He was man like, but he wasn't a fully, a full, a orbed man.

Or else Some posited that Jesus was a man who is very God like but never deity himself in the flesh.

John is refuting that thought in his gospel, especially in the first 18 verses of the first chapter.

He is saying God was the Word and He became flesh and blood and dwelt among us.

In fact, in his first letter John says it this way, and I'm paraphrasing We rolled in the grass with him, we held him, we heard his voice in our ears.

But truth in John's gospel begins with eyewitnesses not men who heard accounts or men who heard stories, but men who were eyewitnesses, and they said two things.

He was God in the flesh.

We heard him, we listened to him, we talked to him, we rolled in the grass with him and we never saw him sin.

But he was fully man as well.

I think Charles Spurgeon grasped it best and described Jesus this way Listen to this Bask in this.

It's so rich, infinite, yet an infant, eternal and yet born of a woman, almighty, yet hanging on a woman's breast, supporting a universe, yet needing to be carried in a mother's arms, being of angels and yet the reputed son of Joseph, heir of all things, and yet the carpenter's despised son.

I want to focus for a few minutes this morning.

I'm very aware of the time, but please bear with me.

This is too important to rush through.

I want to focus on this aspect of John's prologue that the word became flesh and blood.

From here on, in John's gospel, the eternal Logos of God is now identified with a human being in time and space named Jesus of Nazareth.

And I believe and I say this carefully, i'm going to make this statement, let me preface it.

I hope you know this.

If you weren't here last week maybe you need to hear it again I believe that Jesus Christ is very God of gods.

Everybody clear on that.

He's not God man, very God-like man.

He is God of very gods.

We believe that.

We teach it.

We named our church after it.

He's the second person of the divine trinity, but I believe the church needs to learn what the humanness of Christ is about.

We need to let the full implications of Jesus being a man hit us squarely in the face, and I think there are three reasons.

The first I'll mention.

I'm not going to talk about it, it's my subject next Sunday, lord willing.

It is that this man, this God, had to become a human being, to die.

I want you to think for a moment.

If God became a man just to model that to the human race and then ascend to heaven, it would be enough.

But our gospel goes further than that.

It says our God became a man in order, supremely, not to give the human race an example, though he is certainly that, but he came in order to die.

Hebrews 2.14 says it best, and this is all I'll say about this.

Come back next week for another installment.

Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy.

The one who has the power of death, that is the devil.

He became a human being so that he might die And, in his death, redeem the people of God from the death and destruction which is wrought by the devil.

There was ever a man who ever lived, who didn't need to die.

It was the Lord Jesus.

But he did die in order to redeem us.

And we will look next week how John says the eternal Logos became a human being and he became the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

But there are two other reasons the church desperately needs to come to terms with the incarnation.

That's the technical term for the doctrine that God became human.

And the second reason is Jesus became human because he became the ultimate dwelling place of God in the earth.

The second reason we need to focus on the humanity of Christ is it reveals uniquely that the ultimate dwelling place of God now is not a temple, a tabernacle, a place in the wilderness, a mountain, but God now resides fully and completely in a flesh and blood person.

The text says this the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and the Greek word dwelt.

If you have a better translation or a marginal reading, it will give you another word, which is the better word.

John is actually using a word.

Most of us, if you know your Old Testament, would know It literally, should read the word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and John intends, in using the word tabernacled to make us think of something.

And if you're a Jew, and every Jew who would read this text would think of it.

What is it?

The tabernacle in the wilderness.

Now, there may be some here that you never read the Old Testament because you opened it once and it says old and you said I don't need this And I won't comment on that because I'll really get off track.

It's not old in that.

We don't need to know it, folks.

But you remember when God brought his people out of Egypt, he brought them to a mountain.

Getting delivered from Egypt was not the goal.

It was necessary, but that wasn't the landing place.

God had a different purpose.

He brought them to a mountain.

And here's what he said to two million people or a million, whatever the count was at a mountain.

First he took Moses up, he spoke to the people.

Then he takes Moses to the top of the mountain And God says this let them construct me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst.

You got to get that God wasn't just about taking a people out of bondage.

He was about creating a covenant community of people so that God could move in and actually take up residence in their midst.

And so God said I want you to build something for me.

I'm going to move in your midst, but I must live in a certain house.

In fact, god told Moses here's the specifications.

Nothing was left up to Moses and his own ingenuity.

God gave him the pattern for the house and the tent, and then God came down.

You remember when they built the tabernacle and in Exodus 40, the shecha'ina glory of God, the visible cloud of God's presence which had been leading Israel through the wilderness, came and hovered over the holy of holies in the tabernacle.

As God said, he moved in to his dwelling place.

Now this is the theme of the whole Bible.

Let me take a moment and just go back a little bit because some of you might think God moving into a pup tent called the tabernacle was the first time God decided to move into a house.

But it's really the story of the Bible, even up to Exodus.

I mean, if you go back to Genesis, the Garden of Eden is believed to be a sanctuary.

I don't know if you know that There was actually a land called Eden and the Garden of Eden was a sanctuary, the place where God dwelt in the land of Eden and had fellowship with Adam and Eve.

That's what the Garden was.

It wasn't about this beautiful, luscious garden.

You stroll around and you pick daisies and sing songs.

I mean, the Garden was that.

But the thing about the Garden that made it a sanctuary is God's presence was there, it was tangible.

But then suddenly you have what is called the great dislocation, the fall of Adam and Eve and the entrance of sin, and get this the removal of the presence of God in the earth, or we should say the removal of our first parents, who are now barred, banished, kept away from the presence of God.

God is omnipresent, he was still there on the planet, but the place of sanctuary where God dwelt, where Adam and Eve were invited to have fellowship in their presence.

Now Adam and Eve and their descendants are barred from the presence of God.

And the rest of the?

This is a two-minute review of the Old Testament.

The rest of the Old Testament from that point in Genesis 3, when the presence of God moved off the planet, or I should say men and women were barred from the presence of God, the, as one theologian, gordon Fee, says so aptly the rest of the Old Testament is the story of the restoration of the presence of God in the earth.

Jacob puts a stone under his head, sleeps at night, has a dream of an open ladder between heaven and earth, wakes up in the morning and shudders and says surely the Lord was in this place and I didn't know it.

He was encountering the presence of God Here.

In Exodus 25, the verse we just read, god says I want to move into a tent, and Israel carried the tent of tabernacle the tabernacle of witness, as it was called and the presence of God was invaded, the Holy of Holies.

Later, the tabernacle gave rise to a temple that David's son built according to David's specifications, and you will remember in 2 Kings I'm sorry, in 1 Kings when Solomon dedicates the temple, the presence of God, the shechina again, the glory in dwells, the Holy of Holies of the temple.

But all of this Jacob's experience tabernacle, temple were temporary, shadowy structures intended to foreshadow something else.

All of these were not reality.

If you would, we might read them and say, wow, i wish I could have seen a cloud leading Israel through the wilderness.

But the reality of God's presence was not the temple and tabernacle and Jacob in the wilderness.

These were only shadows of something else.

And John now tells us it's occurred.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Jesus is the restoration of the presence of God in the earth.

The Old Testament tabernacle was a picture of what John says now happened.

The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

By the way, does anybody know why the Old Testament tabernacle was a type of Jesus Christ?

One of the reasons is, when you looked at the tabernacle, it was not that impressive.

It was pretty ordinary.

It was a tent and probably it was made of badger's skin, whatever that is, and it wasn't really impressive and the sun probably marred it and it didn't look that impressive.

I mean, when you compared the tabernacle to the pagan temples in the Old Testament, it paled in significance.

But looks are deceiving and the tabernacle may have looked ordinary, but once you entered beyond the veil, you were struck with the riches.

Colors on earth scarlet, purple, bronze, everything was gold.

You were struck by the richness.

How many know There's a perfect picture of the Lord Jesus.

From the outside, people missed him.

He's just a carpenter from Galilee, not that impressive, just from a little Galilee in Despised Town.

But how many have discovered?

once you entered into Christ you meet the riches of God.

Now, if you still don't get it, jesus himself understood that he was the restoration of the presence of God in the earth.

Remember in the next chapter of John, when he cleanses the temple and the Jews come up to him.

They say by what authority do you do these things?

And Jesus made this statement John, chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

Don't turn there now.

But it's there, i believe it's there.

He said what authority do I do this?

by?

Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.

And the Jewish leaders went what?

It took 46 years.

They're talking about Herod's temple, the second temple.

It took 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up in three days.

I'm paraphrasing.

And then John gives us a little footnote, john's inserting this, but this he spoke of the temple of his body.

They didn't get it When he said, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up, he wasn't talking about the temple he was speaking in.

He was talking about the temple of his body.

In fact, in Greek, jesus used the word naos for temple there, which was the specific word used by Jews.

Not of all the buildings of the temple, because the temple had outer court and all kinds of Roman architecture.

It was the word in Greek for the sanctuary where the presence actually dwelt.

And so Jesus is saying guys, get with it.

This second Herodian temple is not the dwelling place of God.

I am the dwelling place of God.

The temple won't mean anything anymore.

By the way, tell the church because everybody's excited about the temple being rebuilt.

I don't get it.

We have Jesus Christ and now God living in a flesh and blood temple called the church, and everybody's really excited about a temple standing in Jerusalem at the end Yuck.

I don't have a problem with believing it might happen what Israel might do in unbelief, but please, please, i beg of you, do not posit the notion that God can't wait to rebuild the temple in the Middle East.

God would never do that because that would be an abomination and an apostasy, because the blood of Jesus has finished the work the temple was a shadow of.

I'm going to get a lot of people texting me saying you've destroyed my eschatology.

I'm sorry, i didn't mean to.

Here's what we have, but let me bring it to its conclusion.

There were three reasons we need to understand the humanity of Christ.

Number one he needed to die next week.

Number two Jesus is the restoration of the presence of God.

He's the dwelling place of God in the earth.

Number three, and this is an inference The incarnation means that God is now living in his permanent temple.

It's not Trinity Chapel, the building Thank God for the building.

He doesn't live here.

He's moved into his real temple, the church.

He dwelt in shadow language in the Tabernacle and Temple.

He then dwelt historically in the person of Jesus, and now he dwells permanently and in reality in the church, which is why Paul in 1 Corinthians 3 could say things like this We apostles are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, god's building.

And he's speaking to a church that didn't own buildings yet For the first three centuries.

This blows people's minds.

The church never thought we need a building called the church.

The church understood by apostolic teaching that the church was the building of God, the place where he dwelt.

Later, in this chapter, 1 Corinthians 3, paul says it this way to the Corinthians Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?

If anyone destroys God's temple, god will destroy him, for God's temple is holy and you are that temple, please.

He's not talking about cigarette smoking.

I've heard this quoted.

There may be other verses that would be against smoking, but he's not talking about that.

He's talking about the divisions that the Corinthians were dividing around and destroying the unity of the house of God.

But he says you are God's temple.

Everybody, look up here.

God does not live in brick and mortar buildings.

He lives in a house of living stones, each one indwelt by Jesus Christ and by the spirit and brought together in relationship, and that is God's permanent building.

The church is not a building.

It may use buildings as we do, but there's a hindrance and the answer is not to get rid of buildings, but there's an inference that we got to get rid of because there's so many of us who could never think of church life apart from buildings.

But that's not the biblical, apostolic mandate.

The church is a community indwelt by God.

I heard a prophet once say it this way God may bless your plans, but he definitely inhabits your relationships.

God may bless your plans, but he definitely inhabits your relationships.

We must be very careful to remember that our experience of the church listen, it must be informed by the incarnation.

It has to be informed by the incarnation.

And I'm going to do a plug here for house churches, because if all you know of church life is going to a building looking at the back of someone's head, no relationships.

And I understand that everybody can get to house churches.

I understand that, i get that.

But what I'm passionately pleading for is not to think that church life is just a compendium of Sundays where I sit and listen and participate and then run out and never involve myself with the body of Christ.

This is why our vision at Trinity is house churches.

They're not secondary meetings, sub meetings, plan B.

The church meets once a week, corporately, but we gather together and we experience community, because that's what God indwells community.

Now, having said that, there's something very important about a corporate gathering I don't minimize it What we do once a week and exploding in worship and hearing the gospel is very important.

It is biblical, it is apostolic, but church life is entering community, entering relationships, experiencing the body of Christ And, by the way, when you try this, you'll know why you need the presence of God.

Mean God get along great, but he has some weird kids And we have to.

Now I'm going to say something controversial, because but I listen to people and I don't get it, because the incarnation says God's dwelling in the church, but we keep acting like we have to bring him down.

Here's some good news We don't have to bring him down.

He's in us, he came down.

I get the feeling that we think he goes back to heaven and if we worship loud enough and scream loud enough and do stuff, he'll come back.

But you know what?

He's here And when you begin to realize you're indwelt by God if you're a Christian, the whole ballgame changes And finally the incarnation informs us of the way we are to do mission.

Give me five more minutes.

Give me your undivided attention.

You need to listen to this.

This isn't for message only.

This is where we're going as a church.

I like Eugene Peterson's translation of John 1.14.

It's actually a paraphrase.

I read it occasionally as a paraphrase.

Don't read it If that's the only Bible you use.

You're going to be in trouble because he takes great liberties.

But I love John 1.14.

In the message he says it this way the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.

Isn't that neat?

It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood.

But that paraphrase catches and captures what lies at the core of the call of the church to be a missional people.

The word became flesh and blood and he didn't haul up in a building once a week invite people to come and hear him.

He went intentionally to seek and to save that which is lost.

The mission for Jesus, unlike the modern church, wasn't an event.

Mission wasn't Tuesday night 7 to 9.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Missional events definitely have their place.

But when God decided to invade this planet, he did it by wrapping himself in flesh and blood and coming to this planet And get this.

When he came he didn't come as some unappreciable religious figure, you know, far removed from the things that normal human beings have to deal with.

He was a real man living with real problems in a real world.

There is a term that theologians and misciologists use for this approach to ministry.

It's called incarnational missionality Incarnational, if you don't get it.

It's this simple.

Jesus, in order to accomplish his mission, had to enter the lives of people.

He moved into the neighbor.

Where did he get his apostles?

How did he touch a woman in Samaria?

He moved into their lives.

He touched people, he entered people's space.

It happened to me again, even this week.

I'm leaving my house for the 14th Christian meeting I do this week.

Now I'm looking at my neighbors outside getting in their cars and I said to myself I wish I could spend time reaching my neighbors but I can't.

I'm too busy serving God.

But for Jesus, entering the lives of his neighbors was serving God.

This has incredible implications for how we do church.

Now I'm not going to go to extremes, but there's two models of missionality.

One is rapidly decreasing in effectiveness in the Western church.

It's called the attractional model.

It's the Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams philosophy of missionality.

If you build it, they will come And we will bust them across town and they'll pass 300 churches.

but that's okay if we can get them in our house.

And in order to do that, pastors are living under tremendous pressure to have all the bells and whistles and the best programs.

Man, we got to have better youth programs over here than over there.

If we want to get them Now, i'm not suggesting that there isn't a place for dynamic corporate meetings where people are drawn, i think, to X.

That out is stupid.

Only God brings people in that way.

But if we want to reach Knoxville, i do not have faith.

I'm sorry that next Sunday all of Knoxville will come out to hear me.

It isn't going to happen, folks, i'm just worried that you'll come back and hear me.

But the incarnation informs us that Jesus never said go into the world, set up buildings and bid them to come in.

He gave two commands.

If you're a Christian, number one, come unto me.

How many have done that?

Okay, and now look up.

His second was go.

Friend of mine, jim McCracken, preached from that text and his sermon title was if you're a disciple, you're out of here.

He lost half his church.

That's not.

You see, when we talk about being a missional church, we can't think of that, apart from an event and a program and doing something evangelistic.

And again, there's a place for that.

But most of us are not gifted to do that.

Most of us are probably not going to open air, preach or knock on doors.

Some of us can do that.

Some of us have divine chutzpah.

That's a Jewish word.

I did not curse, but you know what missionality is.

It's about normal human lifestyle being the perfect conduit for reaching people.

Think about this The Word came to this planet in John's gospel and what did He do?

First thing He did invited some guys to hang out with Him.

John 1, rabbi, where do you hang?

Come and see Profound Word.

Come and see Enter.

Hang out with me.

Then He went to a wedding, normal, ordinary wedding.

Okay, they ran out of wine and He turned water into grape juice.

Get that right.

He went to the temple.

Next chapter, he talked to a woman.

Next chapter, he went to a portico and touched a person, crippled for 38 years.

Jesus' life demonstrates that God is perfectly comfortable in human skin and that human skin is the perfect conduit for God.

Because I had somebody ask me well, how do I do this?

I don't know what to say.

I said don't say anything.

Become friends with sinners, hang out with them, love on them And you gotta get out of this pressure.

You know, it's like some of us think I gotta get my neighbor over for dinner And when I'm pouring the salad so nice to have you.

Would you like Thousand Island?

you're going to hell.

I mean, we become so unnatural and weird and like, and I learned that I learned evangelism was disregard.

The person don't show an interest.

Get the message out and move on if they're not interested.

Do you want Jesus?

Goodbye.

Now that's valid when you're in a restaurant you're never going to see a waitress again or you're in a store.

But when you.

Missionality is not about just touching people you won't see again.

That's valid.

But it's about entering the lives of people and becoming aware that every man and woman in this room has been given a sphere of missionality.

There are people in your orbit, through work, through school, through your neighborhood.

We went to a homeowner's association in my subdivision, first one.

We went to man, oh man.

That was almost like a doctrinal fight.

I mean it was, but we were there going man.

How do we enter these people's lives?

And then we went to an event this week and I saw someone from my subdivision, got to know him a little bit.

I'm always asking God, god, let me enter lives, let me experience people in a way that I can just love on them and touch them.

Someone once said that the real need of the church is not to come to terms with Christ's divinity but with his humanity.

In a word and I end here it's not so much that we need to invite people into our churches as we need to invite people into our lives.

But here's the gist, and this is amazing What is the church?

If you're a part of the church, would you raise your hand?

So if I invite people into my life, i am inviting them into the church.

It's not just about getting them to a Sunday meeting, and I think there's a place for that.

I'm not saying don't do that, some of you.

I need to say that I give you permission to invite people.

I won't be weird, but how many have discovered that?

for example, the one time you get the guy there, the meeting is weird.

Have you noticed that?

Remember that, sandy?

remember in Alabama we tried to get that church of Christ minister and we finally got him to come And Steve and I had this group.

It was.

We had our heads down the whole time just praying oh God, shut his ears.

Look at our three values as a church and look how they're informed by the incarnation Community discipleship and mission Community.

God doesn't live in a building and I meet with him.

He inhabits my relationships.

When I go to Gary's house church, if I'm part of that house church, i'm being built together as a living stone with other people in that house church.

Discipleship we need to move away from the notion that people learn the Christian life only by coming to meetings.

Meetings have a place, but listen to me, people don't learn Christianity by sitting in chairs and listening to me the rest of your life.

Christianity is caught, not merely taught.

It is imparted person to person.

It is personal.

It is discipleship which allows a person to transfer the life of God to another.

And finally, mission Mission is not only about inviting people to meetings.

Again, that has its place, but that's not the heart and soul of it.

It is asking God to allow you to enter the lives of our neighbors and coworkers.

I wanna do something here at Trinity in the future.

I mean this.

I mean we laid hands on Kevin and sent him to Columbia.

I'd like to lay hands on men in this church and send you to become Little League coaches.

And I have a friend who's a pastor who joined not Kiwanis, what's the other club Rotary he became a part of the Rotary Club and he said man, it's amazing the relationships I'm forming just by being part of the Rotary.

Shelly and I are gonna join Benay Brith, that's a Jewish organization.

Intended to be a very sick joke, but I asked you this question this morning.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

I was talking to a guy.

I said how you doing right now?

And he hung his head and literally said well, just working in a factory right now.

And then he said but I'm looking for the will of God.

I said what are you on hold?

And he said well, i've shared Jesus at work.

Nobody wants Jesus.

I've been sharing him for 20 years.

No one's interested.

And I said this question to him.

I really did.

I said do you ever have anybody from work over for dinner?

You should have seen his look like I had cursed and blasphemed.

It was that look of.

Of course I'd never invited any other people.

They smoke and they drink beer And I am not called to be defiled And I didn't say it, but I remember someone once saying Jesus always catches his fish before he cleans them.

So, in the name of Jesus, be incarnational, be missional, start praying.

Now.

You know what.

Sometimes it's not a method.

It's being so excited about the gospel and so aware that you are indwelt by God that you begin to form relationships.

That is how the kingdom of God advances through a local church.

Yes, its meetings are important.

Yes, gospel preaching is central to church life.

but gospel preaching should excite men and women to say I wanna be a carrier of the gospel, i wanna build relationships.

Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we thank you that we are the dwelling place of God, because Jesus Christ is the permanent dwelling of God in the earth.

I pray this morning that the reality of that would hit this church and that, lord, we would become aware of what that means, not only in the way we do church, but the way we reach out, the way we live our lives and grant us the gift of intentionality.

We don't have to wait for you to come down that.

You came and now you're telling us to go into all the world.

I pray for a release of missional DNA in this house that would absolutely transform Knox County and the surrounding counties.

Father, our prayer is simple Bless us, break us and distribute us to hungry multitudes.