Outside Looking In | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

Became a.

Welcome to Venture Church. We're glad you're here. If you're new,

we want to let you know what you can expect.

Our gathering this morning will be just over an hour.

We'll start with a time of worship and then have

a message from one of our pastors. If you need

anything throughout the service, find one of our ushers wearing

an usher vest. We're happy to help you.

At Venture, we have an amazing kids ministry where your

kids are going to have a safe and fun time

learning about Jesus. Our kids staff would be happy to

help you check your kids in. We also have a

mother's lounge right off of the kid's lobby, where you

can care for your child without missing what's happening in

the service.

We have an app.

If you'd like to be connected with what we do

here at Venture, download the Church Center app and select

the Venture as your church, or scan this QR.

Code on our app.

You can give find the next steps from today's message,

learn about upcoming events, and more.

While you're waiting for the service to start, we'd love

for you to take a minute to fill out a

connection card. You can do this right here in the

app or by using a paper connection card right in

front of you.

Did you know that we have an online campus. You

can experience our service online. We stream our services on

Facebook and YouTube every Sunday. Feel free to listen again

or catch any message you missed.

We want to meet you.

Swing by one of our guest stops in the lobby

after service to meet some of our Venture staff.

We're about to begin our service and we want to

thank you again for joining us. We hope you feel

welcomed and that you feel like Venture is home.

Well, hey, good morning everyone. How is everybody doing this morning?

Come on, it's a good day to be at church.

If I haven't had the chance to beat you, my

name is Connor. I get the honor of being the

Young Adults pastor here ad Venture Church. Before we move

forward to service, I want to bring your attention.

To just a few things.

I got a three or four announcements to share with

you guys. Before I get to those, I want to

invite you to pull out your phones and scan that

QR code on the back of your seat. If you

have not already, that's going to take you.

To our app. Everything that we have to share, everything that's.

Going on in the life of the church right now

can be found on that app. If you're looking for details,

if you're looking for info, anything like that, you can

find that on the app. First thing I want to

share with you, if you have not already noticed, this

morning is a very special sunday we could to celebrate

twenty one years of ministry as a church. Happy birthday,

twenty one years. It's a major day. If you haven't

already seen it. We have a table out in the

lobby with some merch. I want to invite you to

check that out after service, and we're also gonna be

offering some tours through our building, so you'll be seeing

that out in the lobby. We got a great morning

plan tonight. The celebration does not stop this morning, but

it goes into tonight at five pm. Everybody hold up

at five, so I see everybody hold up fives fives.

Five pm.

We are gonna be having dinner here at the church.

We got some food truck showing up and we have

complimentary dessert for everybody that comes tonight at five pm.

Who doesn't love some dessert. Dessert's amazing. We got a

dinner at Desert at five and then followed shortly after

that at six pm, we're gonna be having a worship

nighting here. We're gonna be recording live some new songs

that are amazing worship team has put together for our church,

and so that's going to be tonight. Five pm is dinner.

Six pm is our live recording night. I want to

invite you to join us. Five pm, five pm amazing. Hey,

we got a couple other things going on that I

want you to know about.

The first thing. The next thing is this.

We got baptisms happening on November twenty third. Makes the

noise for baptisms everybody. We love baptisms. We love getting

to celebrate people making the decision to give their lives

to the Lord. We got that happening on November twenty third.

If you are interested in getting baptized, if you've never been,

want to get baptized, you can find more information there.

On the app.

The second thing is November twenty first, we have a

Venture Men's Night the church, Amazing Men's Ministry. We love

getting together, celebrating community with one another. That's happening on

November twenty first, and then on November twenty fourth, we

have a Thanksgiving outreach, some donations, some dinner that's gonna

be happening. All of that information can be found on

the app. That's all see. I hope to see y'

all tonight as we celebrate twenty one years.

Great day to be in the House of God, a

great day of worship. Let's get worship together.

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house of God?

Hey, so glad you joined us here this morning at

Venture Church. Want to go ahead and invite our team

for our fairy team would love to pray with you.

If you don't have a need, if you have anything.

You desire a prayer for, we want to invite you forward.

We also want to let you know that we have

communion available in the back of the room if you'd

like to make that a part of your time in worship.

As I've been thinking and processing spending time with the Lord,

I've been encouraging with this thought, worship is just as

much of a choice as it is in action. You know,

so many times we come together, we show up to

church and life is happening, and time is flying by.

This year has flown by.

I don't know about you, but for me and my family,

it's flown by.

You know, the world just doesn't stop going, and the

noise doesn't stop, it doesn't get quieter.

But the one thing that supersedes all of that is

the presence of the Lord.

It's Jesus, the one who is the same yesterday, today

and he will be forever.

It's something we're promised in the Word of God, and

in that we have a choice to make.

And we show up to church in the midst of

the loudness, in the midst of.

Everything going on, and are we here to just go

through the charade of church, or we here because we

genuinely want to come before the Lord to give him

the praise that he deserves, and hope that we would

come and do an encounter with the presence of God,

that we may leave here changed, and we may leave

here filled with the spirits falling afresh on us.

And so this morning I want to encourage us to

make that choice.

Are we here to just experience church? Are we here

to just receive?

Or are we here to give God the glory that

he deserves, the praise that he deserves, that he's so

worthy of. Are we here just to go through the

charade of church? Are we here to make a choice

that says, Jesus, I don't have much to give, and

I give you my heart. Jesus, I don't have much

the gift and to give you my phrase, Jesus, I

don't have much to give, but I give you my focus.

My attention.

So cross this room if you want to make the

choice to make Jesus the center of your life, the

center of your heart. To make the choice to worship,

not just to go through the motions of church, not

just to say I'm here and I'm checking a box,

but to come into an encounter in the presence of God,

that gift that's freely given to us by seeking him

because he draws near to those who draw near to him.

He delights in those who delighted him.

So across the room, raise your hands if that's you,

if you're just saying, Jesus, I'm here for you and

you alone.

Jesus, You're worthy of all praise. Jesus. We desire your

presence and your spirit.

We desire an awareness to you and who you are,

what you're doing in our midst, and so we yield

to you today.

Jesus, we pray that we yield to you in your presence.

Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see you, give us

ears to hear your heart sends you. We're not here

for the charade of church, Lord, but we're here to

come to an encounter with you. We're here to give

you the glory that you soul rightfully deserve. So, Jesus,

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I love this song because what it helps me reflect

on is this reality. It helps me to go back

to eighteen year old Morgan Butcher in that moment in

that little church in Shoreline where I gave my life

to Jesus and I experienced his love. And you know

what the reality is. Friends, I can stand here twenty

years later and say, God, if you never provided another

thing for me, if you never healed another thing in

my life, if you never provided the thing that I

if you never gave me the thing that I needed, Father,

you would still be enough because of the love that You've.

Poured out over my life.

And if you believe that.

Here this morning, can we just give a shot of

praise to a God who is everything for our lives.

God, Look, would you pray with me this morning?

Father?

God, we love you. We look to you this morning.

God.

We say with our hearts and our souls and our

minds who have truth in us, who know who you are,

that you are our everything God, and so we look

to you today. We pray that you would speak to

our hearts. God, that you would change our lives. God,

that you would send us out of your different people

than we walked in.

God.

We love you, we praise you, and we worship you.

This morning.

Can we give one more shout of praise in this

house this morning. Come on out, Amen, Would you do

me a favorite? Would you turn around and welcome somebody here?

Let him know it's good to see him.

I bet your church today.

Welcome to Venture Church. Thank you so much for joining

us today.

My name is Eileen and I'm one of the pastors

on staff here Adventure. If it's your first time, we

want to give us special welcome to you.

We would love to meet you.

Swing by one of our guest stops after service to

meet some of our Venture staff. One of the best

ways to get connected here is to download our app.

You can find it on our app store by typing

in Church Center. You will then select Venture Church Mill

Creek as your home church, or you can scan the

QR code and it will take you straight there. In

the app, you will be able to give find next

steps for today's message, check out our upcoming events, and

submit prayer requests. Wondering what the best first step is

to get connected around here, be our guests at our

monthly Discover one oh one lunch and get to know

us better. You can register for this under the events

tab in the app. Another way you can get connected

here is by filling out our connection card. You'll find

that button at the top of the app, or you

can use a paper connection card right in front of you.

If you have any questions while you're with us today,

we invite you to stop by our info booth in

the lobby. Thank you again for joining us today. We

hope you enjoy the rest of the service.

It's great to have you here with us. Welcome everyone

joining us online. It's so good to have you here

at a Venture Church. If this is your first time

joining us today, we want to invite you to swing

by our guest stop located just out in the lobby.

Would love to just shake your hand, get to know

you before you leave this place. It's just a great day.

Can I tell you a couple of reasons why it's

a great day. One, you got an hour extra sleep

this morning, Praise God.

Praise God.

But yeah, also a good day because it's our twenty

first birthday Venture Church. Come on, you are now legal

to do all the things that we'd preach and tell

you not to do on a regular basis, and we're

excited about that.

We might get wild, we might take communion later. Who knows,

Maybe it's been fermented.

I don't know.

Wild things could happen on your twenty first birthday. Youd

never know.

It's great to have you here with us. Happy twenty

first birthday to you. We're celebrating all day long. It's

gonna be a fun one. You saw out in the lobby,

we're getting rid of some merch and you can get

some custom swag. As people don't say swag anymore. I

think it's called merch. But you can grab a shirt

on your way out celebrate our birthday with us. I

think they're literally screen printing shirts right there. You can

just decide what you want on a shirt and just

have them printed out. But the party starts this morning,

but it continues on. My friends, we're coming back here

tonight to celebrate our birthday. At five pm, we're gonna

have food trucks here. How many people love a good

food truck. I don't know if you're familiar with the

five love languages, but the six love language food trucks. Amen,

We're gonna have food trucks here. We'll have dessert for everybody,

and then at six pm in this room, we will

have our last revival night of twenty twenty five, and

we're really excited because our Venture Music team has written

and produced some songs that we're going to be recording tonight,

and we want to invite you to come celebrate us

with us at five and then be in the room

at six pm for an amazing worship service tonight. It's

going to be a great time and we would love

to have you here to celebrate our twenty first birthday.

Also coming up, we have our November classes.

This is our way of continuing to grow and disciple

the people here at Venture Church. We have some new

classes coming up that start next Wednesday. This is three

Wednesdays in a row from seven to eight pm. You

can grow in your faith through our Venture Classes and

we encourage you to check those out on the app

and find one that you would like to take. This

month and last, but certainly not least, how many had

fun at Halloween?

I am good? Hell go trick or treating? How many

of you are here for trunk or treat? Come on now?

Thank you to all of you who help with that.

You'll see a little highlight video in a second. But man,

as one holiday ends, I know that many some of

you in here are skipping all the way to Christmas.

But yeah, and I hear you, and I respect the game,

but I'm a holiday peurist.

Okay.

There's a place in the world for Thanksgiving. Okay, I

just want to remind you that, And we have our

annual Thanksgiving outreach coming up. We're going to make sure

that we take care of our community this year, make

sure that everybody has a meal for Thanksgiving, and we

want to encourage you and your family to drop off

some can goods in the lobby to help make sure

that every family in our community has Thanksgiving meal this year.

Can we do that together? Come on now.

You can check out more information about that on the app,

but you can bring your can goods and bring them

into the lobby here all throughout the month as we

get ready for Thanksgiving. With that, I'm actually gonna invite

our ushers to make their way forward to receive this

morning's tithes and offerings. Yeah, we celebrate the opportunity to give,

because an opportunity to give as an opportunity to continue

our active worship.

And so there's a couple of ways you can do

that with us this morning.

You can scan this QR code on the screen there's

a QR code on the seatback chairs in front of you.

There's also an offering envelope maybe tucked into that chair

in front of you. You can use any of those

ways to give this morning. We want to thank you

for your continued generosity as we give of our regular

tithes and offerings and adventure. We always give above and

beyond our tithes and offerings to Kingdom Builders, and we

want to encourage you to be a part of Kingdom Builders.

You yourself can be a Kingdom Builder as we continue

to reach out by spreading the gospel through local impact,

global missions and raising up the next generation of leaders.

When we give to Kingdom Builders, it moves that mission

forward as well. So I want to pray over our offering.

We'll pass the buckets and we'll continue on with the service,

but would you pray with me this morning? Father, God,

We thank you so much. Lord, We just sang the

words just a few minutes ago. God, you are worthy

of our praise. You are everything, and so Father, even

this morning, in this moment, we say you are everything,

even compared to our finances. God, we give to you,

We give to what you want to accomplish.

And do in this place.

We pray that you would go before us in Jesus name,

and everyone said amen.

I want to welcome you to a Venture Church this morning.

If I have never met you before, I'm Brandon, I'm

the lead pastor of the church. If you're new, I'd

love the opportunity to meet you. I'll be hanging out

in the lobby after the service. Please come up, introduce

yourself to me. I'd love the opportunity, shake your hand,

fist bump you say hi. Happy twenty first birthday, Venture

twenty one years. We're now allowed to serve wine with

Communion from this day forward. So except we're ag so

we're not. So I do want to just say real quick,

I thank you for all of your grace with this expansion.

And I know that every single week there's dust in here.

Last week, I mean it was like a cloud of

dust in this place. And you've been really patient, So

we appreciate your flexibility as we continue to expand the facility.

Our goal Christmas Eve. We want it all done by

Christmas Eve. That's the hope. And one of the things

I've been asked this a lot, especially over the last

few weeks. There are certain things that have been venture

traditions over our twenty one years that we had to

postpone this year due to the facility. For example, we

weren't able to have VBS, we didn't know what where

the building was going to be at, but it was

only postponed for one year. We are not doing our

kids Christmas choir or our adult choir this year because

we did not have the facility available for practices and

different things like that, but those are only postponed for

one year. So again I appreciate your flexibility and patience

during this process. It is great. It's all coming together.

And if you didn't notice, the balcony is now painted

so it looks it looks good. All right, grab your

Bible's turn to Ephesians chapter two. I'm gonna start reading

from verse eight, and then we're gonna pray together. If

you don't have a Bible with you, the words, we'll

be behind me on the screen. Fijians two, verse eight,

Paul wrote, it is by grace that you you have

been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not by works. So

that no one can boast. I want to ask everyone

to buy your heads, close your eyes, repeat this prayer

after me. Everyone say Dear Jesus, speak to my heart,

change my life in Jesus' name. Amen. Ephesians two continues

with Paul addressing one of the challenges that they were

facing at the church in Ephesus. You see, there was

this as the church was growing, there was a growing

disunity within the church. There was a rising tension and

you'd almost say a hostility between two particular groups in

the church in Ephesus. About five years ago, right after

the thing that we don't like to talk about here,

the whole COVID thing, it looked like the church was dead,

especially in the Seattle area. Churches were closing everywhere after

the shutdowns. When people were able to come back to church,

church attendance was it was at statistically an all time

low for our country. And you started questioning, maybe maybe

church is dead. Maybe this is irrelevant, who knows, But

it was at that moment all the pastors that hadn't quit,

and that was the most percentage of ministers quit over

that period in our history. Happened then. But for those

of us that didn't, we all kind of rallied together

and united together around the mission of Jesus. We just hey,

we're here. We didn't move to Texas, we didn't move

to Florida, we didn't move to Idaho. We stayed in

the Seattle area, and so we kind of united together

believing that if this is the least likely place for

God to do something, doesn't that make it a likely

place for God to show up because God loves to

do the unexpected. Well, the last two years, actually not

just in the Seattle area, but around the nation. God

is moving. It is we are seeing things that none

of us who have been in ministry over the last

twenty years have ever seen. There is an interest in

the things of God. There is a hunger in the

Seattle area for the Bible, for interest in spiritual things

like we have never seen before. Churches all over western

Washington are blowing up. Here's some recent stats. Did you

know that Bibles say alone this year are up twenty

percent more than at the highest point in history. This year,

streaming of worship music Christian music is at an all

time high. There are people interested in things of God

that we thought these are people that would never get saved.

God is moving in America right now. But you're gonna

see that whenever God starts moving, the devil is going

to show up again. And I like to say that

the devil is too stupid and uncreative to come up

with anything new, So he tempts us and he uses

the same ploys that he has been using for centuries. Now,

our problem is you and I keep falling for that

same ploy even though we know it's coming, and we

can predict that it's coming, we keep falling for it.

And what does the devil love to do. He loves

to infiltrate the church, stir up dissension and disunity. So

in the middle of everything that God is doing in

America right now, there is this ground swell of disunity

and arguments in the church, like we had not been

focusing on for years, but now all of a sudden,

they're becoming things that are disunifying us again. And by

the way, this is not new. This has been going

on since the beginning of the church. This is the

enemy's ploy to stop the mission of Jesus through the church.

Disunity in the church. Paul talked about it a ton.

I want to read several verses Romans Chapter sixteen, Verse seventeen.

I'm gonna rattle these off quickly. You don't have time

to turn there. But again, the words will always be

behind me. But here's what Paul said to the church

in Rome. He said, I appeal to you, brothers, to

watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles,

contrary to the doctrine which you've been taught. Avoid them,

for such persons do not serve the Lord Christ but

their own appetites, and by their smooth talk and flattery,

they deceive the hearts of the naive. Paul then said

in First Corinthians to the church in corinth chapter one,

verse ten, he said, I plead with you by the

name of Jesus, that you all speak the same thing,

and that they're there be no divisions among you, but

that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind

and in the same judgment. Then he says to the

church in ephesis this Esians four to two, he said,

always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other,

making allowance for each other's faults because of your love.

Imagine that, like if we actually made an allowance to

each other for the things that we disagree about. Imagine

if we made an allowance for each other whenever we

have areas of our life we're not perfect. Like this

is understanding grace. It's understanding that, hey, just as I

am given grace, I should be more willing to give

grace to other people. And Paul is saying, hey, we

want to fight for unity in the church. And he's

not just talking about unit venture with the Venture family.

It's talking about unity with church big c around the world.

Instead of focus on the small things that divide us,

let's focus on the things that unite us and be

patient with each other on those things where we disagree.

And he says, make every effort to keep yourselves united

in the spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. It's amazing

today because we argue over such minor things, and they're

minor things that, for whatever reason, we decide to make

major things. So entire churches will fight and argue over

doctrinal issues. We'll argue and we'll fight over where someone

stands politically, will argue and will fight over what social

justice should look like in the church. The irony is

in the church, we don't really argue over racial issues anymore.

Like the church by its nature now is very multiracial,

but instead we argue over all of these ideologies that happen.

And this was the same issue that the Church in

Ephesus was dealing with. They had two major factions.

They had.

Jewish Christians and they had Gentile Christians. Now the Jewish

Christians were people that they were raised in Judaism. They

were Jews. They grew up understanding the feasts and the festivals.

They grew up understanding the fasts and the Sabbath, and

they grew up understanding the levitical law. They heard the

stories they had been taught about Abraham and Moses and

Joshua and David. They knew all of this, and then

they later on discovered that Jesus was the Messiah. So

they became basically people that were observant Jews who also

believed in Jesus. And this was a huge faction of

the early Church because in addition to them, you had

this other group that were Gentile Christians. In other words,

they were people from other countries that grew up with

other belief systems, and they grew up differently. They didn't

grow up hearing all the Bible stories, they didn't grow

up observing the feasts in the fasts, they didn't grow

up observing the Sabbath. They weren't circumcised, and circumcision to

a Jew was a a significant act because circumcision was

an outward symbol of what God had done for you internally,

and circumcision was the sign. And these gentiles not only

do they not follow the feasts and the traditions, but

they were uncircumcised. And this was causing an incredible divide

in the Early Church. This was such a big deal

that they were facing with that in Acts chapter fifteen,

the leaders of the Early Church, the apostles, met together

in Jerusalem and they debated this issue. They were like,

what expectations should we have for gentiles for them to

be welcomed into the church. Jewish Christians believed that, well,

they should practice all of the things of Judaism like

we do and follow Jesus. That literally, they should be

Jewish practicing Christians. That's where they were starting. And Paul's

argument in Acts fifteen was, if we put those same

expectations on them that we have, we are making it

very difficult for people that we're not raised the way

that we were to actually be saved. We are putting

too many obstacles in front of them for finding faith

in Jesus, so they literally determine what do these people

need to do to be saved. So that debate has

been going on since the church was established, this disunity

in this faction. I always tell you, I say this

so much you don't even listen when I say it anymore.

But I say it for the two or three of

you that actually listen when I say it. And it's

that I was not raised in church. So I got

saved in high school. I didn't grow up in Sunday school.

I didn't learn the song where you learn all the

books of the Bible in order. I have a doctorate,

and I still have trouble quoting the minor prophets in order. Okay,

I didn't grow up with this. I was very much

an outsider when I started coming to church, and I

felt it because I always tell people that people that

are raised in the church don't realize what a strange

subculture of society the church is. We have a language,

we have songs that we're familiar with, but if you're

an outsider, seem really strange. The music, cool words, whoa

Then the guys talking about things, assuming everybody understands what

they're talking about, and you don't have a clue, so

you very much feel like an outsider. And I felt

like the first few years I was at church that

I did not live up to all the expectations of

all the people that would get to know me in

the church. And it all boiled down to at a

different background than they had. And that same issue is

what the early Church was dealing with. There was this

growing discord between these two different factions in Ephesus, the

Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. So here's the story.

Hey guys with me.

Verse eleven of chapter two. Therefore, remember that you that

formerly you were you who are gentiles by birth and

called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, which

is done in the body by human hands, says, Remember

that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded

from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of

the Promise, that you were without hope and without God

in the world. So Paul is trying to help them

with this disunity by first reminding them who they were before.

He says, for you, gentile Christians. You've always been called uncircumcised,

and you've been looked down upon because you're uncircumcised. Now

I want you to just a totally practical think of this.

If you were born into a gentile family that doesn't

practice circumcision, you become a follower of Jesus at forty

years old, how many of you want to get circumcised

at that point in your life. I mean, this was

complicated for them, but they were looked down upon because

they weren't circumcised, and they made fun of because of it.

I always wonder like, how did people know, Like how

do you know if the dude was circumcised or not.

I don't think people are wearing a badge, nor are

they showing each other, So I don't know how, but

they just knew. So this was a label that was

placed on them. But because the Jews were God's chosen people,

the Jewish nation was chosen by God, the gentiles felt

like they were foreigners. They felt like they were outsiders.

So Paul is saying, this is who you were. You

were separate from Christ, alloted from Israel. You were strangers

to the promise that God had for the Jewish people

that you were literally a person without hope and you

were living in this world without God. That is a

huge contrast for someone who is a Jewish Christian. But

if you were a gentile Christian, you spent your whole

life viewing the world and the Church from the outside,

inn like you were an outsider, and you felt like

you were an outsider. And Paul is trying to say,

instead of focusing on your differences, focus on what unites you.

He said, what unites you is grace. That that is

the thing that every single one of you had in common.

He said, For you Jews, and he talked about this

at the beginning. He said, because of your sin, and

you were dead to Christ. Because of your sin, you

were a slave to your flesh and a slave to

the world, and a slave to the enemy. Because of

all of that, you earned wrath. That's who you were.

And he said, and then you Gentiles, you weren't included

in the promise. You were separate from God. You were

far from God. But grace, he said, there is unity

begins with grace. And he's trying to help us realize

that what we agree upon far exceeds the things that

we don't agree on that what really matters is this

unity in Christ because of the grace of Christ versus

all the disputable matters that divide churches and divide friends over.

The Christian life begins with grace, and Paul does this

great job. He's saying, remember that time before grace, you know,

instead of focus on this person circumcised, this person isn't.

This person follows these traditions and festivals and this person doesn't.

Instead of focusing on that, remember remember before grace. Remember

who you were, Remember where you were heading you, Remember

what life had for you before grace. And then he

says this verse thirteen. The fun thing about uh Ephesians

is that Paul hammers the before almost to the point

where it's a bit depressing. And then right when you

just feel like church was a bummer today, he adds in,

but Christ, and then you start realizing, oh yeah, Jesus, grace, forgiveness, mercy, redemption.

I am forgiven. And he realized this is who I was,

but I am not that person anymore. So Paul is

using that same literary method again. In verse thirteen, he says,

but now in Christ, you who were once far away

are brought near by the blood of Christ. He says,

you gentiles, You're right. You were out, you were outsiders.

But Jesus, but Grace, you are now on the inside.

You're in because of Christ. You are no longer outsiders.

You're included in the promises of God. What unites us

together is far greater than our differences. It is way

more important than what divides us. I say this one

all the time. I love venture twenty one years. I say,

you're my chosen family. And we don't have hardly anything

in common. We have different likes, we have different backgrounds.

We've all moved here from different areas of the country

or different areas of the world. A lot of things

are different about us. But there's one thing we have

in common. And it is huge because at just the

right moment, Jesus crossed our path and he changed everything,

and he united us together and he made us family.

And I would argue what we have in common is

far greater than what we don't. And that is what

Paul is trying to hammer on. That we are both

saved by grace through faith, that we are united by

God's grace, that all sinners are saved by grace, not

by works so that no one can boast. And when

he made that statement, that was like poke in the

Jewish Christians because they grew up following all of the

levitical law. They grew up believing I do this, do this,

do this to be accepted by God. And Paul is saying,

you can't good yourself into heaven. There is not enough

good or works that you could accomplish that would make

up for the fact that you were deserving of wrath.

It is only by the grace of Jesus and the

Cross that you are saved, every single one of us.

And why is that so you can't boast about it?

So you can't say, Man, I'm such a perfect person.

I've lived such a sinless, perfect life. Look at me. Instead,

we understand we deserve wrath. But Jesus not changed everything

verse fourteen, for he himself is our peace. This is

really cool. Look at what Paul is trying to say.

Paul's fighting for unity, not division. Paul's fighting for what

we agree on, not what we disagree on. He said

he has made the two groups one. He has destroyed

the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside

in his flesh, the law, with its commands and regulations

back for generations. The presence of God, the manifest presence

of God, was supposedly in the Temple, So the Jews

would regularly go to the Temple to seek God into worship,

and the Gentiles would come too, But the Gentiles were

allowed no further than the Court of Gentiles. They were

literally outsiders looking in, and there would be a wall

that would divide them that they could go no further.

So they would often look over that wall, and they

would see the Jews entering into the temple and even

further into the temple to be as near as they

could to God. But this is as close as the

Gentiles could be. And in fact, if the Gentiles were

trying to sneak over that wall or sneak around it

and get into areas where they are forbidden from being,

it was punishable by death. So there was a dividing wall.

And Paul is saying, the Cross changed all of that,

Grace changed all of that. I have destroyed the wall.

There is no barrier. Every single one of you has

equal access to the presence of God. There are no

Jewish Christians, there are no Gentile Christians. There are Christians,

one church. Paul goes on verse fifteen. He says his

purpose was to create in himself, notice this word one

over and over again, to create in himself one new

humanity out of two, thus making peace and in one body,

to reconcile both of them to God through the cross,

by which he put to death their hostility. He came

and he preached peace to you who were far away,

and peace to you who are near, For through him

we both have access to the Father by one and

the same spirit. Paul is saying, you're right, you were divided.

But Jesus, but grace the Cross, he said, Because of

the Cross, there is now one humanity, one body, that

we are all reconciled together under one spirit. Christ makes

us one people, one body. You are no longer foreigners,

you're fellow citizens. You're no longer strangers. You're part of

God's family. You're no longer hopeless. You're all allowed the

same grace from the Cross. You are no longer an

outsider looking in. Paul is trying to hammer, don't focus

on what divides you, focus on what unites you. Don't

focus on what you disagree on. Focus on what you

agree on, and the enemy only wants you to focus

on those disputable issues. He wants you to argue about

whether not a woman should be a pastor or not.

Jesus says the cross focus on that he wants you

to argue about. The enemy wants you to argue about

Once saved. Always say, there's people that believe that you

get saved one time, regardless of how you live your life,

you go to heaven. And then there's another group that says, well,

you pray to prayer and meant it then, but you

lived a life that was totally contrary to everything the

Gospel stands for. You fell away from God. So there's people,

There's churches divided over those types of issues. There's people

divided over whether or not there's a rapture, or whether

or not you know what the way end times were,

all these things that we disagree about. We're doing a

building expansion. Twenty thirty years ago, a building an expansion

would have split the church, and it had nothing to

do with having to raise the money to do it.

Churches would split over the color of carpet. That's why

we have no carpet.

Now.

Churches would split and debate over some of the craziest issues,

because that is the ploy of the enemy. All the

enemy wants to do is stir up dissension and get

you disunified, and get your eyes off of the thing

that unites you, which is what matters, and that is

we are here by grace. We didn't deserve it, we

didn't earn it. There's there's no reason we got it

other than someone loved us. We're here because Jesus went

to the cross, because he died, and three days later

he rose again, and we believe that that's true, and

that's what unites us. No longer does anyone here have

to feel like an outsider looking in, because we are

all sinners, saved by grace, not by work, so that

no one gets to boast about it. In the last century,

as they start studying the human body more, just as

we make telescopes that allow us to look further and

further and further out into the universe, we have made

microscopes that have allowed us to look further and further

and further into the human body. And within the last

century they discovered deep down in our human body what

is called the laminin protein molecule. It's known as the

cell adhesion mod molecule for is uniquely different. And we

know that our bodies are made up of millions and

millions of cells that are held together. This is the

protein molecule that holds all the uniquenesses of our body

together and makes us one body. The interesting thing. And

I challenge you to google this after I'm done, Not

right now, wait till you're on your way home. But

if you google the lama laminin molecule, here's what it

looks like. That's it. Every time you google it, any

picture that you have of it, it looks like a cross.

Everything leads to the cross. Everything's back to the cross.

Earlier this year, I took you way out into outer

space as far as you could possibly go, and you

saw a cross. Now I'm taking you as far as

you can possibly go inside of your body, and there

is a cross. It is not an accident that the

stuff that holds the body together looks like a cross,

because it is the cross that holds this body together.

It is the cross that holds your family together. It

is a cross that holds your friends together. It is

the cross that unites us with all of these other

churches where we disagree on this practice or this little

idiosyncrasy of theology. But together we are united around Jesus

that at just the right moment, he crossed our path

and changed everything. Don't let the devil steal all the

good that God is doing right now in the church

around the world by allowing him to stir up dissension

in your heart. Give other people the same grace that

Jesus gave you. Remember who you were before grace. You

just you can't. You can't forget that one. Remember before grace.

Paul ends chapter two by saying, consequently, you're no longer

foreigners or strangers, but you're citizens with God's people. You're

also members of his household.

Listen to this.

This is to you. You are not on the outside

looking in. If you've heard the gospel, believed the gospel,

accepted the gospel, you are no longer an outsider looking in.

You are a part of God's family. And listen to

this verse twenty. It's so amazing. Built on the foundation

of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus as

the chief cornerstone. He's basically saying, you and I we

are in the same family, a family that is built

on the people talked about in this book, and Jesus

is the cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined

together and it rises to become a holy temple. In

the Lord and in him, you two are being built

together to become a dwelling in which God lives by

his spirit. Tonight, we are gonna come together for worship night.

You're gonna You're gonna record the Seahawks game, and we're

gonna come and our worship team that has led us

in worship all these years, has taken time away. They've prayed,

and they've wrote, and they've written songs that are very

near and dear to their heart in their expression of

worship to Jesus. And we get to record this together tonight.

Now.

I don't have a musical bone in my body, not one.

My wife always whenever I clap, she always says, you're

clapping off beat, and I'm like, I can just clap.

I don't know the beat, I have no rhythm, I

can't play an instrument. I'm terrible at singing. But when

our worship team does this, that's us, that's me doing this,

And so I get to celebrate with them. They're part

of our family. We get to do this to get

this is an expression of what the Holy Spirit is

doing in our church family that we get to share

afterwards with the big Sea church family at large. Isn't

that amazing? We get to do this together, united together

because of the Cross by our heads. Close your eyes.

I'm done. If you're here and you don't know Jesus,

you feel like an outsider because you know you are

an outsider. I want you to leave feeling like you're

an insider. And that happens because you hurt the gospel.

You believe the gospel, and you responded to the gospel.

If you do that, you leave this place knowing you

are a part of God's family. You are a part

of God's promises. So if you are here today you

do not know Jesus, but you want to. I'm gonna

count to three, and if that is you. When I

say three, I want you to raise your hand. Here

I go one, two, raise your hands, now three hands up.

Keep your hands up. Our ushers are gonna run around

and they're gonna stick something in the palm of your hand.

And this is just a card that explains what you

do next. I'm gonna ask everybody if you would stand

up on your feet. For those of you that raised

your hands, I'm gonna have all of us pray a

prayer that in itself doesn't mean anything, but if you

mean this. When you pray this, you leave knowing you

are no longer an outsider. Like your sins are forgiven.

You're a part of God's family. And whenever we do this,

I ask every person in our church to pray this together.

And we do this because we're family and this is

their opportunity to pray with you, just like that someone

else had an opportunity to pray with them when they

prayed this the first time and meant it. So I

want to ask everybody about your heads, close your eyes,

pray this. Pray after me. Everyone say, Dear Jesus, I

stand before you today. I admit I've made mistakes. I'm

messed up. But today I ask you to forgive me.

I invite you to come into my life and to

change me. I choose from this day forward to serve.

You with my life.

Thank you for forgiving me and for saving me. In

Jesus' name. Amen, Hey, can we do something?

Can we celebrate those who made the greatest decision in

their life. This morning, before you leave this place, it

is our birthday, and I want to mention one more

time that God is doing amazing things in this place. Amen,

every single week, I'm so encouraged about not just like

the building, but like what God's doing in hearts. And

we're celebrating our birthday all day today. Again, we want

to invite you back tonight, but before you leave, we

want to make tours of what God is doing in

this house available to you right outside at the info table.

We'll have some staff and pastors.

You can meet out in front of the church, or

you can meet in the back area and somebody will

meet with you to tour you through.

All the work that we've been doing on this building.

And since it's our birthday, we're continuing to raise funds

to reach completion on this building campaign. All around the

building you'll see these little cards and it's an opportunity

for us to buy a birthday present for the future

of Venture as we continue this project. We would to

encourage you to take time to do that before you

guys head out of here. But with that, we love you.

We will see you back here at five pm for

some party time. Come on now, see you guys have

a good one. S