Authentic Community - Northland's Mission

Well, my wife, Abby, and I got married a little over 10 years ago, but 10 and a half years ago, I came to her as a single young man. I went to her, and I professed my love, right? And I told her, I wanted to be in a relationship with her until the end of our day. for the rest of our lives. And having heard the good news of my love for her, she believed in that and she put her faith in those words. And, uh, we smiled, we laughed. We got a great time, and then we went off to make preparations for the wedding. But before that, having professed her agreement, in my words, that she wanted to be in a relationship with me until the end of our days. She was marked with a seal, a promise of things to come, that engagement ring, right? That ladies look forward to. And then we got ready for the wedding, she got ready to be a bride. I got ready to be a groom. And finally, in December 2015, all of our friends gathered in the church. And I remember standing up front as the doors flew open, and there she was at the back, and I've got a picture. I think I've got a couple of pictures of us. Yep. Abby looks great, and I look like I'm 12. Um, But it was a wonderful day. I think we got another picture in there of the church all decorated and such. Uh, but she looked stunning. She was walking down the aisle, and we were praising God. I was praising God for this woman that was coming towards me. And there in front of God, and 250 of our closest family and friends, and all the people that had been influential in our lives, in that moment, before God, we committed murder. The, the old single Tyler that used to do whatever he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do, with any of the money that I had, and spend it, however I wanted to spend it, I killed that guy that day. And the single abbey that got to do, whatever she wanted to do, however she wanted to do it, that old abbey was gone. That day, we killed off the old single selves. Our old single lives passed away and something new was brought into existence, a new creation, one flesh. We were made one. And it was amazing. We had cake and we cheered and it was awesome. But when the moment was over, I didn't like, at the end of the night, the end of the wedding, I didn't high-five Abby and say, hey, great job in there. see you in a few weeks. And then we get in a car, separate cars and ride off separate weights. right? That's not how a wedding ends. We got in a car together. We drove off into our new life together. Our life is one. Why? Because marriage isn't ultimately about the wedding. The wedding's really important, but the wedding is just the start of this new relationship, this new life together, where we make all of our decisions together, every decision emotionally, financially, physically, spiritually, we're now bound together. No longer, was I meant to make decisions independently from this other person. We're something new. And thank God for it. Now why am I telling you this? Because this is a great connection, a great image, a picture of where we're dropping in today into the book of Ephesians. So we've been going through this four-part series through our mission statement, and we're in the 3rd week. We're talking about how we can have an authentic community with others. First week, we talked about having a transforming encounter with God. Second week was a growing relationship with Jesus, and now we get to the community aspect. What does it look like to live in community? So this week, we're looking at Ephesians 4, Dalton read it for us earlier to help us understand what does it look like to have authentic community with others. And through the first 3 chapters of Ephesians, Paul hasn't told us to do anything. I don't know if you've read Ephesians before, 6 chapters, 1st 3 chapters. There's only one command. It's in the 2nd chapter, and it's to remember. to just look back fondly on what God has done in your lives to transform you into Christ-likeness, to make you a new creation. And what God has done is to move toward us in love. And 38 times throughout the book of Ephesians, Paul says of Christians. you are in him, in him, in Christ, in him, 38 times, that Jesus came to get us, to draw us to himself, to make us one with him. And chapter one, he says, hey, God chose you before the foundations of the world to be holy and blameless, he adopted you as a child. It says he redeemed you. He bought you with his blood, he purchased you, and he didn't just purchase you. He forgave you. He reconciled you. Uh, and then he sealed you with his Holy Spirit, this engagement ring, a guarantee of things to come, that there's this new life coming into existence. And then chapter 2, he says, and you are dead, and your trespasses is in sin. You were once aliens of God, you were once enemies of God, but God, because of his great love with which he loved us. He extends mercy. He made us alive together with him. And not only that, he took the people that were formally disparate parties hostile towards one another, Jews and Gentiles. And he says, I'm knitting you together. I'm bringing together this new humanity, this new community, and he's building us into a temple where the Holy Spirit lives. That's chapter 2. And then chapter 3, Paul prays that we'd have the strength, imagine that, the strength to begin to comprehend the love that he has for us. The strength to begin, to comprehend the love, the breadth, and length, and depth of the love of Christ that he says, just surpasses understanding. It surpasses knowledge. That's the 1st 3 chapters. Really, there's no command to do anything but to remember all of those things. Look back fondly on what Christ has done. It's this powerful building to the hinge point, at the end of chapter 3, where we get into chapter 4. And if you're a Christian, it means that your story doesn't begin with what you've done. It begins with what he did. He came for us. And he says, hey, you are lost. I came to find you. You were broken, and I came to heal you. You are in the depths of your sin, and I came to rescue you to save you out of that. You were broken. I want to draw you in and make you mine, and I want to fuse our lives together. That's the 1st 3 chapters. And before we step into chapter 4, I want us to feel the weight. Not only of the 1st 3 chapters, but the weight of the world that we're living in. So I want us to pray, and then we'll jump into some of the statistics of this day. Let's pray together, and then we'll jump into that. Lord, we thank you that you've gathered us to this time and this place to worship you, to be reminded of the good news that we have in Christ, that we just went over in the 1st 3 chapters. And Lord, for some of us, it feels so distant. It feels so unreal to us right now. We're not sitting in the love of God. We're not resting in the love of God. Maybe for some of us, this is new. It's news. We haven't heard this good news before. And for many of us, Lord, it's just something we need to be reminded of daily, that we don't work in this world for your love, we've already received it, and then we work out of that love because of everything that Christ has done. And so if you would, where you're sitting, just take a moment and pray and ask that God would speak to you this morning and that it would be clear and helpful to you. Take a moment to pray and do that. And then next, take a moment to pray for someone around you, a friend or family member, to your left or right, pray that God would speak to them this morning, and that it would be encouraging. And lastly, pray for me, that God would speak through me with clarity and accuracy. Well, Father, we love you, and we trust you. We ask that you would use this time for your glory and for our good, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we're living in a time with what most researchers call increasingly is the loneliest era in human history, the loneliest time in human history. And I don't think that's hyperbole. Dr. Twangi is a professor who specializes in generational research. And her recent book, Generations, draws on 24 data sets, and almost 40 million people. It's the largest generational study of its kind ever done. And what she traces is this steady drift over the last 80 years. And it's adrift away from community values and toward what she calls hyper individualism. And every generation becomes more self centered, more individualistic than the generation before. And her thesis on why that's happening is really interesting. You can check out her book, but she says it's primarily due to technology, that there are six major generations alive today, and that in any other point in history, you wouldn't have had six generations. Generations are primarily defined by changes in society, and the biggest changes in society over the last 100 years have been due to technology. And so 6 generations alive today, mostly because childhood adolescence has been based on significant technological changes. So, in the 1800s, if you decided that you were, like, heading out on the Oregon Trail, that was probably the last decision you would ever make, because you're not gonna make it by yourself. If you're like, hey, I'm a young adult, I got my whole life ahead of us, ahead of me. I'm gonna head out on the Oregon Trail. That's the last thing you're doing. Because if you're doing that alone, you're not gonna make it. You could not survive. Even in the early 1900s, like, basic things, like cooking and cleaning and doing laundry could just, it could take a whole day. Uh, some of y'all, if you've got several kids, moms, you're like, it's still taking a whole day, right? But life was communal because life had to be. That's the only way you survived. You didn't have dishwashers and ovens and laundry machines that you could just press start and walk away for an hour and come back to it. But as technology has given us, come into society, it has given us more time, it also gave us the option to be disconnected. And we've leaned into that. Boomers, got the TV. Gen X got the computer, millennials got the internet. Gen Z grew up with a smartphone in their pocket. And now we carry individualism around with us everywhere we go. We carry it with us, every single one of us. Every generation does that. And the sad thing is that the more individualistic we've become, the more individual we've become, the more disconnected, disconnected we've felt. And the more disconnected we are, the more discouraged and depressed we've become. Dr. Turkle at MIT has a haunting line about life with a smartphone. She says, quote, we are forever elsewhere. Forever, elsewhere. For some of us, it can feel almost like physically painful to stay in a embodied conversation with someone else without having to like look at your phone and like, what's going on, email, text message, whose what notification just popped up? It can feel painful at times, halfway through a meal. You feel like you've got to escape. There's nothing going on, but you've got to just look at it, right? That's a unique challenge of our time. You're just trying to escape into something. And I'm guilty of it too. There are things that at the end of the day, you're like, I had a really busy day, and I'm not introverted, but I just, like, got a scroll Facebook or Twitter, or I got to watch my favorite Netflix show. You have to escape into something. And the statistics are sobering. I've got some of them up on the screen. I spent a whole week researching and we just don't have, we could, we could spend hours going over the generational research. But in 2019. This is pre-COVID. This is this is not a pandemic effect. This is pre-pandemic. 22% of millennials. my generation reporting reported having no friends. Zero friends. That's one in five. One in 5 people my age have 0 friends. And then among uh, 30% said that they often or always feel alone. 30%. That's twice the rate of their parents. They were at 15%. Then among Gen Z, which is probably the most of the people in the room, the number of teens with clinical depression doubled between 2011 and 2021. It doubled. One of our former surgeon generals said this, loneliness is a public health epidemic. He said, loneliness is literally killing us. But here's the strange part. Secular researchers, people with no spiritual horse in the race, they keep stumbling onto the same findings, and they found that the people who are least affected by loneliness, the people who are least affected by these staffs, the stats, are those who are deeply embedded in the church. That's you guys. The people that are least affected by loneliness or discouragement or depression, and that doesn't mean it doesn't exist among you, but it means you have the best answer to solving it. It's deeply embedding themselves in the church. So the secular researchers, they're identifying all these problems that every, not just Gen Z or millennials have like every generation has their own problems, uh, but they're finding all these problems, but they don't offer the solution that actually works. The only thing that's a secular researchers have are like these therapies, these meditative, you know, count to 10, uh, list your gratefulness, uh, here's a pill that can help you, right? And I'm not saying all those things are bad. Those can actually be some helpful and good things, but they're not the greatest. The research says that the greatest help to loneliness is involvement, deep involvement in church communities. And the secular researchers can't offer that. Most of them don't know what it's like. They're just like, oh, that, that's the reason why people are being healed from loneliness. And they haven't experienced it themselves. So remember that the 1st 3 chapters of Ephesians are about being loved, right? Because right now we're kind of feeling a little bit down about ourselves, like, oh no, everything is awful. But remember the 1st 3 chapters of Ephesians are about being loved. loved before the foundation of the world, loved while you were still dead in your sin, loved into a new family, the body of Christ, loved by love that surpasses knowledge, and our culture is dying for the lack of that kind of love. And then now listen how Paul opens chapter 4. He says I, verse one. I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. He says, therefore, which means in light of all that I've written, in light of all the 1st 3 chapters, in light of the fact that he chose you, that he brought you alive when you were dead, that he brought you near when you were far away, that he's poured out a love to you, that's inexpressible, in light of all of that. Therefore, I, Paul, a prisoner of the Lord. That's someone who's totally bought into everything that Jesus has done. He says, I urge you, beg you, exhort you. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. That word worthy in Greek carries this idea of like a scale, like a balance, of the left and the right side, that kind of scale, that there are 2 sides being held in balance. That your life and the gospel would hold the proper weight. That you wouldn't have these, like, deep words of God or thoughts about God, and then live a very shallow life. That if somebody who knew you came here this morning, and then they heard the message of Jesus, they'd be like, oh, her? And that? Totally makes sense. Yeah, I see that now. The way that she works, the way that she responds to people, oh, that totally makes sense. Now, I get why you live the way you do. A life that's lived out of balance is when people hear the message of Jesus, and then they hear that you're a Christian, they go, him? Really? Like, that's that's surprising to me. Paul says in light of everything that Jesus has done, live a life that's worthy. So our 1st point is this. Authentic community means we seek to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. What does that mean? Let's unpack that. Because that feels enormous. Right? Like, what would a life worthy of Jesus look like? And it's interesting as I've taught this in different settings, different locations before, over the years. I've asked people that question, and I get all kinds of answers. Like, what would it look like to live a life worthy of Jesus, everything that he's done for you? And some say, a life worthy of all that Jesus has done means I dig deep into the scriptures. I seek to understand God to understand theology and how he's made us. I want to understand him. Others say, man, a life worthy of Jesus is a life of social justice, that he came for the weak and the poor, so I want to help those that are weak and poor, the orphan and the widow. Others answer with moral purity that I don't drink that. I don't smoke that. I don't sleep with that, and I just make great decisions with my life. That's what it means to live a life worthy of all that Jesus has done. Others say a life worthy of being on fire, a life worthy is being on fire for Jesus, that when the band starts, I just start worshiping, I start praying, that's when I feel closest to the Lord. And all those are good things. All those the Bible are going to come in, but none of them are what Paul says here. He doesn't mention any of it. Listen to what Paul says in verse two. What is it mean to walk in a manner worthy of our calling? Verse 2, with all humility, and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit, in the bond of peace. Now, that sounds like he's talking to more than one person. That's because he is. And here's a little Greek nerd moment for you guys. In English, if I'm talking to one person, I say you. If I'm talking to a group of people, I say, you, right? English is kind of weird like that, but Greek is way more obvious. If Paul is talking to a single person, he uses this little word, 2 letters, sue. But if Paul is addressing a group of people, he uses a bigger word, who mace, all right? So if he's talking to a group of people, he uses that word, it's you all or y'all. So Greek has a y'all, which I'm from Texas, so I appreciate that. But all of Paul's commands, what do you think they're aimed at? A bunch of individual sues. Or do you think they're aimed at who mace? Who mace? Y'all. Every single time. It's y'all. Now, I don't know how you tend to measure uh, your walk, your personal walk with the Lord, your individual walk with the Lord. I think for some of us, it might be something like, well, my individual walk is dependent on how much Bible I'm reading on any given day or any given week. Maybe it's about how many theology books that you've worked through this semester. Maybe it's about how much scripture you're seeking to memorize. Did I get my verse of the week? Did I get my 2 verses of the week, whatever it is? And based on that performance, based on how much Bible you're getting, you feel closer to God. So for some of us, for others of us, it might be something like, well, my closeness to God depends, like I said earlier, on my moral decisions that I make from day to day or week to week. And if I feel like I'm making good moral decisions, I've lived wisely. Well, I think God is pleased with that, and I feel closer to the Lord. For others, it's my relationship with God is dependent on how much I pray, that if I can get time every day, throughout the day, and maybe some dedicated time to pray. Man, I go throughout the day and I feel closer to God. Or for others of us. When I'm productive. I'm getting things done. I'm the type A guy. I got my list of tasks. I got to be productive, I got to do with excellence. Then if I'm doing the work of the Lord, I feel close. But what Paul says is, hey, you want to know what a life worthy is actually reaching for? You want to know a life that's actually reaching for what God has called you to do? It's a life lived in the context of a loving church community. Where we're building each other up. Our walk with the Lord is always meant to be in the context of community. And I think we struggle with that because of our generational time. Our Western outlook, our American individual outlook. And that's not all bad. Some of it's good. But he says, hey, walk in a manner worthy. What's worthy, Paul? Bear with one another. That's literally his 1st command in chapter 4. Bear with one another. It just doesn't sound that big, does it? Like live a life that's worthy of everything that Jesus has done. And you expect him to say, like, what does that look like? Well, just take over the world for Jesus, but he doesn't do that. He's like, hey, just put up with each other. Like, hey, guys, get along. Be friends. Don't get angry with each other so often. It sounds small until you actually pick up a history book or you check the news and you see that we're terrible at this. I was thinking about this week, and I don't think we even need to go into a history book or to look at Twitter to find this out. We can just look in the mirror. Like if I came up to some of us on a Wednesday morning, while you were at work and I said, hey, how's your day been? What do you think the chances are, the 1st thing out of your mouth is something positive versus something negative? Like if I said, hey, name 3 bad things that happen to you, uh, at the end of a work day. You could probably just like rattle them off. Well, there's too much rain in April. I've got too many finals to study for. I don't have enough time to sleep. I can't believe that that person, what that person said about me, you know? We can just like easily rank or list bad things that happen to us throughout the day. Three negative things would actually be way too easy for us. If I said, hey, name 3 awesome things that happened to you this week. You'd be like, Can you start at the other end of the circle and then come back to me? I think I think eventually I'll have a few things. Like, that would be hard for most of us to name 3 good things. Why is that? Well, I think because it's easy to break things down. It's hard to build up. If I told you to go, like, smash a room, you could do it in minutes. If I told you to build a room. You'd, there, be there for weeks. Unless you're cow Blaylock. He'd probably be really good at it and get it done in a day, right? But if I told you to go, destroy a movie, criticize a movie, tell me everything that's wrong with a movie, you could do it quickly. If I said, go film a movie. That's gonna take you a while. It's easier to break down. It's hard to build up. And man, when it comes to the church, where does most of your conversation go? When you drive past another church in town that you don't go to, what do you think? I felt convicted about this in college. I felt like, man, I never drive by a place and look over and say, God, I pray that you'd be glorified in that place. I've never been to it. I would always feel just judgmental. I tend to say, oh, yeah, I've heard that church is kind of weird. The worship is weird. So do we tend to tear down and rip each other apart or do we build up? Paul says, bear with one another in love. Bear with literally means endure. Endure with one another. What our culture says is, hey, just tolerate each other. Which isn't that like a beautiful sentiment, like, hey, welcome to Northland Riverside. We just tolerate your existence here. Like, that sounds like a terrible place to be a part of. But what Paul is saying, hey, bear with one another. In love, endure with gentleness and patience. And I think he's saying that because you don't have to go to church for very long to know it's going to be hard. Like, we're gonna get on each other's nerves. So Paul says, hey, put up with one another. Stay at the table. Stay. Don't walk out. Bear with each other, endure in love. And then in verse three, he says, hey, be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Be eager. Have you ever seen someone that's like really eager for something? When I was a youth pastor, I saw this all the time with high school students. I would watch high school students who were eager to see a movie in theaters. That was a lot bigger than I think it is today. I don't see a lot of high school students going to the movie theater, but when I was in high school, and then when I was a youth pastor, they would do this all the time. Hey, what are you doing? They're texting people, they're forming group chats, they're buying tickets ahead of time. They're walking up to people at school and like, hey, what are you doing tonight? Not because they're genuinely interested in what they're doing, but because they want to tell them what they're doing tonight. They're going to see the big movie, right? And so they're eager to do all this. They're fired up about the things that they're eager about. And so Paul says, do you want to know what God is looking for? You want to know someone who's eager to build us up? Someone who's eager to build up the church. And notice the word that Paul uses in verse three. It's not create the unity. He says, it's maintain the unity. Because the Spirit of God is the one who's building the church. We don't build the church. He does. And so he's just inviting us to join in to what he's already doing. He's saying, be eager to maintain the unity. And that's why Paul piles up this word one 7 times. Look at verses 4 through six. He says there is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father, who is overall and through all, and in all. So here's our 2nd point. Authentic community means understanding and believing that we are one. Understanding and believing that we are one. One, one, one, one, one, one, one. And the number 7 is significant in the Bible. There are several numbers that are significant numbers in scripture 12, 3, 7, 7 is a significant number because it represents completion or fullness, 7 days of the week, 7 days of creation. So he's saying, hey, God has made us fully won. The unity's already there. It's complete. He built it. So he says, don't tear it down what he built. Be eager to maintain it. Now, in so many ways, I'm preaching to the choir this morning, right? Because you're all here, you're all part of the church, you're in community, found it at least worthy to come on a Sunday morning. And you might be thinking, okay, I'm Tyler, I'm picking up what you're putting down here. I should be in community, I got it. But my church friends don't have to be my best friends, right? Like, isn't it okay to go to church on Sundays and then to have friends somewhere else? Like, I've already got my community of people that I like, that I trust. So why can't I just come to church and worship and hear a sermon and then go back to my other friend groups that aren't my church friends? Well, let's watch what Paul says next in verse seven. He says, but grace was given to each one of us, according to the measure of Christ's gift. each one of us. So there's not just a community aspect. There's an individual aspect. So Paul isn't, the Bible's not anti-individualism. It still commends it, but in balance within a community. He's making us all one church. He's making us, he's, he isn't making us all uniform. He took different gifts, and he says he spread them across all of us. So we need each other. And here's the thing. When we just gather with our friends. Uh, we tend to gather with people that are similar to us. that are just like us, same age, same season, same interests, same income bracket, same sports teams, and that's not always a bad thing. Like have your friends, don't feel guilty about having a friend's night, but God built a church. That's a unity of diversity. Not similarity. And it's the unity of diversity that he says grows us up. So I remember in college, some of y'all have heard this story. This really resonated with me. I was going to this church, and I wanted to be part of the community, and so I attended some Bible studies and some community groups that I knew were mixed generations, that had grandmothers and grandfathers in there that had been walking with the Lord for a long time. And as a college student, I'd been walking with the Lord for about 10 years at that point. And so I was like, I need some wisdom in my life. I've got all my college friends. We're struggling with the same thing. And so I went to this small group, and I met this older woman, and we were all talking together, and she started to say something, and she didn't say with any pride in her voice, but she said, well, you know, I spent the night praying for this other lady. And I was like, wait, time out. hold on. When you said that you were praying the whole night. Do you mean like you stayed up late praying and then you woke up again early praying? And she didn't have any pride in her voice? She wasn't trying to draw attention. She was like, no, I, I stayed up all night praying for this friend of mine. And I remember thinking, I've never done that. Like, I don't have any friends that can pray like that. I've never prayed for like more than 5 minutes without being like, 5 minutes, nailed it. I'm so spiritual right now because I prayed for 5 minutes. And she stayed up all night. She had a depth of love for the Lord and a confidence in his love for her that I didn't even have a category for. And then the meeting moved on, and we started talking about a passage of scripture, and I just remember she said something that, as I was studying the Bible, I knew, um, she had made a comment on the passage that if I had been a referee, I would have just like thrown the flag, right? Like, this is completely out of line. You're exegetically irresponsible, borderline heresy, like, this is bad. Such a misuse of the text. And then the most beautiful thing happened. I realized I needed her. Because I didn't have any friends that could pray like that. I didn't have any friends that had been through what she had been through. And she needed me. She had been to places with the Lord I had never been. She had a depth of intimacy with God. I knew nothing about, but I also had something to offer her, that I could gently come alongside her and show her what the text meant, what it was actually pointing to, how to interpret rightly. We needed each other. And that's how the body works. We need each other. So let's jump down to verse 14, where Paul says, hey, as we gather with the church, In other words, believers, as we gather with believers who aren't like us, he says, we'll no longer be children, tossed around by the waves. and carry her out about by every wind of doctrine. That wind of doctrine, those are like fads. Those are those are trends. Those are the latest tweets that are going around. That's not Christian doctrine. That's every wind of things that are happening in the news. Every new philosophy. Every new thing, every new, playlist on Spotify, every new thing in the culture, that's carrying you off. That's what Paul is talking about. And some of us, man, we've got significant doubts and temptations and discouragement that just sweep our legs out from under us every single time there's a new trend or a new wave or a new doctrine among the society, among culture. And we go to our friends and our friends say, hey, I'll pray for you. And that's amazing, but your friends are the same age as you. And they're probably fighting the same fights as you. They don't always have what you actually need. So if I can encourage you and challenge you, especially some of the younger ones in the room. If you're spiritually 10 years old, hang out with other spiritual 10 year olds. That's great. But find some spiritual grandmas and grandpas. People who have prayed through nights. People who have buried their parents, who've lost jobs, who have attended the funeral for kids, who have watched the Lord's faithfulness for 30, 40, 50 years. That kind of wisdom only exists. in churches in the community, in the body of Christ. And that's why Paul keeps going in verse 15. Speaking the truth in love, we're to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, that's us, the church is joined and held together, when each part is working properly, it makes the whole body grow, so that it builds itself up in love. So our last point is this. Authentic community means that we are to grow up together. We're not meant to grow up separately or individually. We're meant to grow together. We need each other. It's when we speak the truth of God's word to one another in love that we actually grow up. And some people might say, yeah, but I've got friends outside the church. Praise God for them. But are they speaking the truth and love to you? Are they speaking God's word to one another in love so that we all grow up? Some people might say, hey, I listen to amazing podcasts throughout the week. I can listen to so many great preachers and sermons that are better than me at any given time. Well, praise God for that. But how can you serve one another through a podcast? Or through a YouTube sermon. See, we can rightly gain a lot of knowledge about the things of God, but wrongly keep our distance from the people of God. And that's a propensity we all have. It's only an authentic biblical church community that we find true freedom. Speaking the truth in love, together, Paul says we grow. And then take a look, let's rewind a little bit to verse 11. Paul names the gifts God has given. He names all these gifts, and the gifts aren't things. The gifts are people. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers. He says, God gave the church, these people, shepherds and teachers, that's pastors, pastors is just a transliteration of shepherds, it's the same word in Greek. He says, he gives the church these people because we need them. Shepherds and teachers are like good coaches. Some of y'all have been in sports before, right? hopefully had a good coach. Coaches don't actually play the game. Coaches give you the plays, the strategies, the encouragement, the pointers, they equip you, the athlete, so that you can play the game. The church is a team. We're working together. And God says, hey, I'm giving you these people to equip you for the work of ministry. So sometimes we can be like, well, especially at big churches, why aren't the staff doing this or that? Because they're not meant to. You don't hire church staff to do the work. You hire church staff to train the people to do the work. So what do we do? As we close this time together. What do we do? Well, Paul says to remember everything that Jesus has done for us, right? That was chapter 2. You belong to him. You're not just forgiven, and then let go, you're fused to him. And the love and the love that has been poured out on you, he says, by the Father who chose you before the foundation of the world, by the Son who died to bring you home, by the Spirit who lives inside you, as a guarantee, a promise of something to come, that love has not been given to you to keep. It's meant to overflow. And we live in the loneliest era in human history. A generation drowning in followers, but starving for friends. That's never happened before. Where everywhere and nowhere all at once. forever, elsewhere. And here's what's wild. God has already built the answer. He built a body. He built a family. He built a community where formerly hostile, disparate, lonely, strangers are brought together. They're fused together. They're knit together by love that surpasses knowledge. And that the world is dying for what God has already died for. They're missing out on the thing that God has already purchased. So what if we actually leaned into it? What if we stop complaining or giving excuses? What if we leaned into it? What if the loneliest era in history, walked into a Sunday morning service, and found the family they'd been searching for their whole lives? The meaning, the purpose, the community, that we all need. The Father has been moving toward us, in love our entire lives. He has not pulled you near to leave you alone. He has pulled you into himself, and he's pulled you into an us. So walk in a manner worthy of that calling. He says, bear with one another in love. Be eager, eager to maintain what he's already built. Speak the truth in love. Find your spiritual grandmothers, find your spiritual little brothers and sisters, build, don't break, stay, don't leave. And as you do, the love that is poured into you starts to pour out of you. And the loneliest generation in history will look at the church and see something that they've never seen anywhere before. And they'll be changed by it, and we'll be able to celebrate in eternity, that we have new brothers and new sisters in Christ, welcomed in the family of God. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you. For your word. We thank you that you've spoken to us this morning. That you've spoken the truth in love. And, Lord, that your your word, your book, your your scriptures to us. They're not old and dusty. They're eternal. And they speak a better word. They speak to our very bones and challenge us. They convict us, and they walk us from death into life. And so, Lord, I thank you this morning, that you've given each and every one of us this morning something to take away from this time, that we can be encouraged by and challenged by and ultimately that we can be more like Christ because of our time together. And Lord, I pray that this time would not fall on deaf ears and cold hearts, but hearts that are made alive to the gospel and ears that are open to hear what you have for us. That we would no longer be the loneliest era in human history. Because we leaned into what you have already built, what you've already purchased. And that as the world is dying around us, we would know that you've already died for us. You purchase the church. Brothers and sisters in Christ that we're meant to live life with, to grow together. And it'll be hard. We're gonna have conflict to work through. We're gonna be angry and impatient with each other. We're gonna say things that offend each other. We're gonna be on both sides of the political aisle. But Lord, you unite us. You bring us together. Your love binds us and men's broken hearts. And so in the light of all of our conflict and disagreements and disputes, pray that we would know that we are loved and that we can love one another. Not despite our faults, but because of them. We're called to love one another. And we pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen.