Pastor David Kalamen | Our Homecoming Journey | February 21st,2021

I want to welcome you this morning to Kelowna's Church at Home uh online services.

We're very glad that you've taken the moment to just uh connect with us today, um bring your family in, and if you know of other people that uh would be interested, please give them a call and notify them.

Uh we're blessed to know that not only our local Kelowna Christian Center family is is joining, as well as Lake Country, but we also have many who are around the world in our in our global Christian center family that are that are tuning in.

And so we're very, very grateful.

We're in this series on on the homecoming journey, and certainly that talks about not only coming back to the Father and also our ultimate uh destination, heaven, but it also I'm I'm also looking at this homeward journey as coming back to the house of God and being able to greet and see all of you together again.

That will be a wonderful joy.

Um in the meantime, you have been so very faithful in your giving uh towards Christian Center and the church uh leadership and team, and we just want to express our gratitude for uh your continued faithfulness in regards to this matter.

Um before I get into what I want to share with you today, I want to extend our pastoral team's condolences to the Matfieshin and Kuchma families.

Umstanding members of KCC, Robert and Tanya, were killed in a fatal car accident this week, and we're gonna miss them deeply.

Uh, they were very much a part of the DNA of what makes KCC KCC.

Uh both Darwin and Joanne Kuchma as well were in this uh accident and survived the crash with injuries, and uh they too are in our hearts today.

We've had a very eventful week.

Um, Robert Wickenheiser, whom many of you have met uh as you came into Christian Center on a Sunday morning, uh, ushered and welcomed people.

He was shoveling snow this week and had a massive heart attack and is in critical condition, even as I speak right now.

Uh, these families are our extended family, and we feel their pain and and grief alongside of them.

Uh, on a personal note, our family was able to lay to rest.

My mom this week also almost reached 99 years of age.

Uh, there's a lot going on, and we really encourage that you pray for the pastoral staff as they navigate pastoring families through these very uh challenging circumstances.

Um, as some of you who have been listening to us know, uh the KCC Church family has been on a journey to understand the heart of the father, to grasp what spiritual family actually looks like, and um talks about uh the development of spiritual sons and daughters, where we are committed to fully flushing this concept out until there's a revelation that comes from God, not a religious experience, but a revelation that occurs, and we get what it means to be a child of God and actually be part of the family of God.

Today I want to I want to speak to you from a text uh from Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

I'm gonna read for a bit uh from the message translation, but it will be a premise and a and a context for what I want to share with you today on the development of a spiritual family.

Here's what Paul writes to the church at Ephesus.

He says, It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old, stagnant life of sin.

You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.

You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief and then exhaled disobedience.

We all did it.

All of us doing what we felt like doing when we felt like doing it, all of us were in the same boat.

It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us, but instead of that, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, God, and we're talking about the Father, embraced us.

He took our sin dead lives and made us alive in Christ, and he did all of this on his own with no help from us.

Then he picked us up and set us down in heavenly places in company with Jesus, his son.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next, to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.

Saving is all his idea and all his work.

All we do is trust him enough to let him do it.

It's God's gift from start to finish.

We don't play the major role.

If we did, we'd probably go around bragging about what we we'd done the whole thing.

No, we neither made nor save ourselves.

God does both the making and the saving, and he creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work that he does, the good work he's gotten ready for us to do, work we really better get at doing.

But don't take any of this for granted.

It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways had no idea of any of this.

You didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ.

He's speaking of those who had had not encountered the Lord or understood Christianity.

He says, But because of Christ, dying his death, shedding his blood, you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything now.

The Messiah has made things up between us so that we're now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders.

He tore down the wall we use to keep each other at a distance, and instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everyone.

Christ brought us together through his death on the cross.

The cross got us to embrace.

I'm going to repeat that again.

And if you're at home, why don't you say it, excuse me, say it alongside with me.

The cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility.

Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders, and he treated us as equals and so made us equals.

Through him we both share the same spirit, and we have equal access to the Father.

That's a powerful portion of Scripture.

There are two key stories in Scripture that relate to what I want to talk to you about today.

They're both familiar with you, and they share a similar theme.

The first comes from Genesis chapter 3, and it's the Old Testament story of the fall when Adam and Eve sinned.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

But just what was their sin?

I believe it had to do with a rejection of the Father's will for their lives and their desire to do their own thing, free from the rules and the constraints of the Heavenly Father.

The second has to do with Luke 15 that we've alluded to in our series, and that's the New Testament story of the fall, when the younger son in the story of the prodigal son demands his inheritance from his father and goes on a self-centered spending spree.

What was his sin?

I believe similarly, it had to do with the rejection of his father's will for his life and his desire to do his own thing, a decision that cost him dearly.

Now there are many good comparisons between the stories of Genesis 3 and Luke 15, but there's one distinct contrast.

In Genesis 3, God pursues Adam and Eve to hold them accountable and to give them an opportunity to repent so he can restore them.

What we find in that story is that they resist repentance, start blaming each other, and God had no choice but to let them go.

However, in releasing them to their own ways, he was already planning a restorative plan in the sending of his own son, one day, who would pay the price to bring them back into relationship.

However, in Luke 15, we see something totally different.

The Father does not pursue his son, but waits for his son to return on his own.

So our out our text outlined the purpose of the cross, and it was the father's plan to combine these two processes.

One, in Christ, the Father pursues humanity, seeking reconciliation and restoration of relationship.

It was the Father through his son reconciling the world to himself.

And our text says he settled the relationship between us and him and then called on us to settle the relationship that we have with each other.

So that's the power of the cross.

It's not only vertical but horizontal in terms of impact.

God wants to bring peace between ourselves and him, and also peace between ourselves and others.

And the price for that peace was the sending of his son Jesus.

And the price of our rejection of God through Adam and Eve was the shedding of his son's blood, giving us an opportunity to have our sins cleansed and the things that were interfering with our relationship to God removed so that we could be reconnected to the Father and become his children.

And the text says this through Jesus, death on the cross, we both now share the same spirit and we have equal access to the Father.

So in the cross, we see the Father pursuing humanity, just like he did in Genesis 3.

But we also see in Christ at the cross that the Father is awaiting our return, knowing that a way has been paved for us to return without judgment, without resentment, forgiven and accepted because of what Jesus has done, and welcomed back into the family of God, according to his will and our free will.

And that's the critical part here.

In the cross, there is a combination of those two movements, one of the Father reaching out to us and giving us an opportunity to reconnect with him, and on the other, the heart of the Father, waiting for us to be responsive.

And so the text we read says God, immense in mercy and with incredible love, embraced us.

Christ brought us together through the death of the cross.

The cross has gotten us the opportunity to embrace not only God but each other and to end all of the hostility that might exist between ourselves and God and ourselves and one another.

At the very heart of the cross is the Father's desire to recreate a spiritual, eternal family.

Just as your family matters to you, so does the spiritual and eternal family matter to God.

The church experience is not a religious gathering, it is the assembling of his family.

It's gathering the family to the table.

And on a natural level, we can forego connecting with family for a while, but not without consequence.

The family starts to drift and uh and and no longer begins to feel the closeness and intimacy that it had.

But the same is true spiritually.

Our father loves it when his family comes together and promises to show up in his presence when we do gather together as his family.

If two or three of you are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of you.

So that is the power of assembly.

And I have some concerns as a pastor who's never experienced this elongated period of time over a year of people not gathering together as the church.

I have concerns about the family not being able to get together around the table to worship, break bread, love on one another.

That's a concern to me.

The father sees this spiritual family as the hope of the entire world.

It's the divine solution for a rapidly declining and dysfunctional culture.

The cross accomplishes something that no state institution or political force can create.

It makes those who accept Christ part of a spiritual family with Father God sitting at the head of the table.

The church is critically important to the health and the prosperity of this nation.

It's critically important to the wholeness of a community.

The church, when it operates within the parameters of true, genuine Christian faith, is the solution to our country and its ills.

Listen to what Paul says in Ephesians 4, verse 5 and 6.

Ephesians 4:5

He says, There's one body and one spirit, even as you are all called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in you all.

Now that's all that's an awful lot to swallow in one in one statement.

So I'm going to break it down to you and say this.

The church offers something to the culture and to our society that no one else can.

In Christ, we become new creations in Christ.

As a matter of fact, the message talks about it as a new kind of human, a new species of human being, a new creation, spiritually alive, not dead in our sins, but alive in God.

And it talks about this new creation being born again into this family and all of us sharing the same DNA.

And in this new reality, the wall, because of the cross and because of our acceptance of Christ, this wall that separates and divides people, not just from God, but from one another, is broken down and we are given access into one another's hearts.

As a result, we who were not a family and didn't know one another, and maybe were even enemies of one another and wouldn't even cross the street to say hi to one another, through the cross and through what Christ has done, we actually become a family and we're spoken of as God's children.

And by the way, I know this may sound a little outdated, but it's not for me when I call my spiritual family brothers and sisters.

They are truly my brothers and sisters.

And because of Christ and what he did at the cross, breaking down the walls between us, humanity is no longer judged on the basis of gender.

The Bible says we're neither male or female.

We're not based on, uh we're not judged on the basis of race, we're neither Jew or Greek.

We're not judged on the basis of status, whether you're poor or rich.

Those walls and separators and dividers are broken down because of what Jesus did at the cross.

And and when he creates a spiritual family, those things, those differentials are discarded in Christ.

We all become one family, brothers and sisters together.

And I can go anywhere.

I've been blessed to be in over 38 nations of the world, and I can go to any one of those nations and find my spiritual family.

I have a connector with individuals who have come into the family of God through the cross, by their faith in Jesus and by the grace of God.

It brings a divided world together.

And so when Paul writes this in Ephesians, he says, one father of us all.

In other words, when I give my life to Christ and you give your life to Christ, we're all united in Christ.

We're all sons and daughters now of one father.

Matter of fact, we we one of the critical things when his disciples were asking, uh Jesus, how do we pray and what do we do?

He said, Well, here, this is how you pray.

Say, our Father who is in heaven.

What an incredibly gracious and loving statement that was for Jesus to include his Father as our Father and to lead us in the prayer, our Father.

He said, Not only do we have one Father, we are now born of one blood.

And you've heard this phrase over the years, blood is thicker than water.

Well, I tell you, when you touch my family, you touch me.

And when you touch the family of God, you touch me.

What you do to the body of Christ, you do to Christ.

What you do to the body of Christ, one member suffers, all of us suffer.

We are part of a global family that is intergenerational, it crosses borders, it is in every nation of the world, in every strata, every place of influence, uh, that's my family under Heavenly Father.

One blood together, one spirit that binds us together.

In other words, when you get down to the very core of our being, there's a DNA in us that is common and has been put in us when we were born again.

We became uniquely tied with similar values and priorities and values that run through our veins.

It says we have one hope.

Not many hope, one hope.

Our hope is in Christ, but we're our hope is in heaven.

We're not afraid of death here because in reality we've already faced death.

The Bible's, uh Paul wrote in Galatians, he said, I'm crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I'm living, I live by the faith of the Son of God who gave his life for me.

So this understanding, this revelation of hope is built on not having the spirit of the fear of death ruling and controlling our lives, because to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Uh, our hope goes further than this natural uh world environment that we're involved with.

It it ascends to heaven and ascends to eternity and being a part of an eternal family.

We have one prayer, our Father.

We have one Lord, Jesus Christ, who's led us on this road.

And as we follow Christ, he says, I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life.

If you follow me, you get to the Father.

And we have one faith and belief system.

We're unified by the word of God, by our Magna Carta.

We're baptized together out of one life into another life, out of one family into another family, and the family of God has been has been created in this unity.

Well, Pastor Brody alluded last week in his uh his teaching on the city of Kelowna's official motto, and that motto is to be fruitful in unity.

And I want to say emphatically today the fulfillment of that is impossible, not improbable, but impossible without the unifying factor of the church and God's family.

I love the motto.

I think it's great.

We're a city filled with orchards and we produce all kinds of fruit a year.

But this fruitful in unity goes deeper than what's happening in the orchards.

It has to go into what's happening in the marketplace and the churches and the and the schools and the businesses of our of our community, into the political realm, into the justice realm.

God wants us to be fruitful in unity.

I truly believe that.

But the unifying factor of making that possible is the church and God's family.

If you remove the church from this community, we will see a city nosedive into the expression of the lowest common denominator of human nature.

You bring the city into Christ and into the family of God, and you will see humanity rise to its highest levels of expression of humanity, graced by God's love.

I hope you get that in your heart, and I hope that there may be some government leaders actually listening to what I'm saying right now, or political leaders or municipal leaders, because you cannot remove the church from this city and it's and it's a spiritual family without destroying something of the DNA of what God would like to bring to this city.

And that's why, of course, we pray for revival.

Bring the city into Christ and into the family of God, and you will see humanity rise to its greatest levels of expression because the walls have been broken down between us, and there's no longer this uh separation and division from one another.

We are now unified under one Father, one Lord, one faith, one blood, one spirit.

Within the core of the DNA of the church, you will find the love and the forgiveness and the mercy and the grace and the hope that pulls people who are divided against one another together again as a family.

When Christianity on Christ's terms is functioning, racism is defeated.

We are now one race.

Racism, I agree, is systemic, not to a culture or to a nation, but to human nature.

And only when human nature is changed can racism be defeated.

And the closer a nation comes to this nature change and getting to know Christ and having that nature changed from the inside out, the closer our nation will come to being totally free from racism.

So in Christ and through the family of God, racism is defeated because there's no longer Jew or Gentile.

We don't see each other through those eyes.

The walls of prejudice and prejudgment will come down.

We all stand before God equally, before God equally, and in his family, loved alike and equally.

And so the walls of prejudice come down when a city surrenders, when a people surrender to the life-giving force of Christ inside and become part of his family.

Judgment is replaced by justice for all.

And it's no longer a matter of right or left, but it's a matter of right and wrong.

And the Father, he confirms to us that he will judge righteously.

And so we move ourselves into a culture that is deprived of racism and prejudice and divisions that are generationally based and based upon age or or or material status, etc., we see judgment is gone, justice comes, swords are beaten into plowshares to plant and build for the common good, and we no longer fight each other, but alongside each other.

This is the utopia of what it means to be the ecclesia, the church of Jesus Christ, the family of God, that family that God had an intention to create years ago and has a plan for eternity for that family to walk side by side.

We see in the book of Acts that when the family of God was actually in operation, it impacted uh the way we treated our physical resources and material um assets, they were shared with those people in need.

And if you go back in history and find the impact of true Christianity on the culture of that day, every single aspect from prison reform and divorce and remarriage and uh dealing with the issues of uh suicide and and the the killing of children in their infancy, all of those things were impacted by the church as it began to uh positively affect and change and shift culture because the DNA of God's heart was uh superimposed upon a culture that was decaying.

I'm confident that the government either does not understand the role Christianity in the church plays in society or doesn't want to.

But my experience with the church in society is that it is an incredible healer, a comforter, a unifier, um and and and and the the society around us has got to see the church in its true nature.

Shutting down the church, isolating family, whether it be natural or spiritual family, is cutting off a key restorative force in keeping a family and thus a community healthy and strong.

To be punitive towards the church family in its attempt to assemble, to worship, to fellowship, to learn together, is to create more chaos and remove from society one of the most powerful redemptive and restorative forces that it has.

Yes, I'm concerned.

I'm concerned.

And my concern is for the health of the body of Christ, the family of God, and it's the force that it can be in bringing healing and restoration to a culture all around.

The world is yet to see what a benefit God's family can have healing and restoring a community or a nation.

And I pray that it may manifest itself through us here at Christian Center within our city.

I'm not talking about violating the government's laws.

What I'm talking about is that there's another law of God operating, and there will be consequences when that law is rejected.

God wants to see his family healthy.

If you're not part of God's family, know that at this very moment you can become an integral part of his family and thus our family.

If you're not on talking terms with Heavenly Father, it's not because God hasn't reached out to you or doesn't want to talk to you, or is not even now speaking into your heart.

And it's not that he hasn't provided a way to recover the relationship that has been lost.

I'm convinced that heaven is just God's way of having family grow old together for eternity.

And you can have a relationship restored to Heavenly Father right now, in a moment of time, no longer an orphan, no longer a prodigal, no longer a rebellious child, but a son and a daughter.

And so I ask that you take a moment, just open your heart, and if God is speaking to you to become part of His His heavenly family, his earthly family, that you just say, Father, I thank you for Jesus, for him breaking down the wall that separates us, and getting us, giving us the opportunity to embrace again.

And I I thank you for the cross and that opportunity.

And today I want my relationship restored to you, Heavenly Father.

And I want to be part of the family of God.

If you prayed something like that from your heart, God knows your heart.

There's ways to communicate that on the on the uh through the technology, but also get a hold of our pastoral team and let them know.

If you've said that prayer, we want to be in contact with you.

Uh, we would love to pray with you and introduce you more to the family of God.

The Lord bless you today.

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you and come into your home.