Creative Minority: An Alternative Compelling Story

As we just prepare ourselves and our hearts to just open up the word this morning.

So, Lord, thank you so much. Thank you for being present with us, Lord.

Thank you for just going about, just putting us into the world,

Lord, and being so faithful, being present with us, watching over us, Lord.

Lord, thank you that we can constantly, no matter where we're at,

we can say that there's nowhere we can go from your spirit, from your presence, Lord.

Wherever we go, you're right there with us. And so, Lord, we step into the world,

and we step into a new season as a church, and we're anticipating good things,

and we're wanting you to lead us. And so, Lord, we just say welcome.

Holy Spirit, welcome. Lord, would you speak to us?

Lord, would you establish us?

Would you build us up by your Spirit and by your Word now in Jesus' name?

Amen. All right, well, we are continuing in a series called Creative Minority,

and I don't think that title helps you figure out what it's about very much,

but I'm calling it Being the Church in the Modern World.

And the purpose of this series is to help us as a church gain a clearer vision

for what we're called to be as a body of believers who are, you know,

existing in the world and in a world where we're sort of apart a little bit,

like called to be in the world but not of the world.

And because of that, the fact is that we live in an age of like lots of change

change and lots of invention, right?

And so I think we could all recognize, I've even seen this in my lifetime,

I'm in my early 40s, but over the last 50 years, the church has changed a lot, okay?

And some of that change has been very positive, I'm sure, like I'm not going

to list the things that I think are positive, the things that are negative,

right? But some of that change has been positive.

But in the midst of all this change, I think it is worth pausing and asking

ourselves, well, what is like the true calling, the true nature,

the true purpose of the church?

Like, what is it really supposed to be? What is its true character?

What is the character of the church in a highly fast-changing world?

We're trying to adapt and we're trying to bring the gospel forward,

but of course we're sent out, we're proclaiming the gospel as a body of believers, as a church.

So what is the character of the church? That's the question we're asking and

thinking about in this series.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is said to have said, character is destiny.

It's probably a phrase you've heard. And the idea of that is that our inward

nature, you know, who we are, what we are in our being, it's going to eat all

of our activity for breakfast, right?

All of our intentions and all of our doing, like character matters the most

of all because it plays out in the day-to-day stuff of life.

And in our day and age, we talk about the mission of the church.

We talk about reaching people with the gospel.

And when we do that, we tend to think about strategy or programs or activities

or maybe a certain type of preaching, right?

We think about the outward stuff.

And I'm not saying that doesn't matter, but I think before we think about those

things, we ought to think about what is the character of the church?

What is the vehicle in which this message of the gospel is going forward?

And it is the church. So as we get ready to replant ourselves in downtown Snoqualmie,

I want us to do as best we can about thinking about what the church should be,

what it is at its best in the modern world.

And I think this idea of a creative minority is helpful for us to just kind

of paint a picture of what that would look like.

Like I explained last week, this is not an original phrase. I borrowed it from

a pastor in New York named John Tyson. And he defines a creative minority this way.

And I think this is his definition of what the church is.

He says, A creative minority is a Christian community in a web of stubbornly

loyal relationships knotted together in a living network of persons who are

committed to practicing the way of Jesus together for the renewal of the world.

And last week, we talked about one aspect of this vision, the thing that comes

first and before everything else, before the church is anything,

before the church is doing anything.

It is a community, a covenant community is the way we talked about it last year.

So it's not primarily an organization. It's not a political organization.

It's not even an evangelistic organization. it is first and foremost a community

of people who are called to love one another and to love others.

People who are called to a kind of stubborn loyalty where we hold as sacred

and covenantal the bonds of love between us because we have a shared calling and a shared purpose.

Before anything, we need to be a covenant community. And I think this is worth

saying, and it's something that I'm actually not great at doing.

But before we're anything else, we need to understand that we need to be covenant

community, but we can't trade that for anything else.

And I will say this, if you want the church's mission without the covenant community,

I don't think you want the church's mission.

Because they're one and the same. You can't just extract the message from the

vehicle, which is the community.

They can't be separated. So we talked about that last week, this covenant community.

Again, something I think we need to grow into, to lean into,

that I need to grow into, that we all need to grow into. But we need to have

this fixed as we're making this change.

And then the second aspect that I want to talk about is just that we are people

with a compelling alternative story.

With a compelling alternative story. This is really at the core of who we are.

See, the church is a community.

And as a community, we share a commitment to an alternative story.

And traditionally, we've just called this the gospel. Gospel is,

it's a Greek word, it comes from, it's actually a Latin version of a Greek word.

Really wonderful, not confusing at all. Because Jesus went around proclaiming

the gospel, which is just the good news.

He went around preaching good news. And the gospel is more than just a message.

This is, I think, the clarifying point. The gospel is more than just a message

about what you do in your heart with Jesus, which is to believe and trust.

There's certainly a response expected in the gospel.

Jesus proclaims a message and he says, and you need to respond in faith and

repentance to this message.

But the gospel is more than only that.

The gospel is actually like an alternative story of the whole world.

It informs you and me about what life is for and what your purpose is.

Scott Sundquist, a theologian, says this about Scripture and about the story.

He says, the whole message of the

Bible is the story of God's love for and relationship with his creation.

The Bible is God's story told through different authors, speaking different

languages, in different times, using a variety of literary forms.

But it is the single story of God, a public story or open secret that is the

story of God for all of his creation. See, the Bible is...

Presents the world and it presents a particular take on what the world means,

on what history means, on what your life and your purpose is.

So when we come to trust in Jesus and have faith in Jesus, we're accepting story.

We're accepting a representation of the world. And it is a story.

I love baby sounds. So don't worry. Don't worry, Brooks. It's fine.

Just proclaim. Just scream it out. Thank you, Jesus.

We need more of that charismatic spirit in this church, guys.

Just be more like Brooks.

It is a story that orients us.

And I think a great way of illustrating this is by looking at the very beginning

of the creation story, the origin of the story of Scripture.

Because looking at the beginnings of the world as it's represented in Scripture,

this alternative origin helps me understand where I am right now in a way that

I think we don't oftentimes think about.

So a lot of scholars have compared the biblical presentation of where the world

came from to the contemporary accounts of what the world was like.

So in the ancient Near East, each culture had its kind of own story of creation.

The Babylonian one in particular is interesting, right?

So this is what John Tyson says about the Babylonian creation myth.

He says, according to the Babylonian myth, creation was a war between gods and

the fruit of that war were tears of human life.

At the bottom of that food chain were human beings who were created to serve

the elites, and the only people in the Babylonian story who were made in the

image of God were the kings and the ruling class, and everyone else was commoners

designed to serve those elites.

That is an orienting story. It's the orienting story of Babylon.

And in the midst of those types of story, we have an alternative story told

in the scriptures, in the book of Genesis, about what the world is really like.

And I mean, if you're familiar with this, if you even have just a basic familiar

with scripture, you've probably opened to the first page and you've read these words.

This is the alternative story that's told about what the world is like.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty,

darkness and covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God

was hovering over the surface of the waters, and God said, let there be light,

and there was light, and God saw that the light was good.

And if you read the rest of this chapter, you see that that series of events,

God speaking, creating, and then

saying, it's good, is just the theme that comes out over and over again.

And we can compare this story to the story of the Babylonian myth.

And I mean, there's two very clear and obvious things that stand out.

Number one is that God has created this world on purpose.

He didn't do it. It's not the cause of a war in heaven.

God is a creative God who built things, who calls things to exist out of nothing.

He creates light and he says, and he looks at his creation. He says, it's good.

He created the world with intention and he created it well.

It is not chaotic. It is not meaningless, but it is significant and it's valuable

and it's precious to him.

The world that we live in with all of its brokenness, which we'll get to later,

is a world that God loves and cares about and is working in.

And then as we go on to the story, We see not only is the world good,

but we see God's creation of people.

We read about that in Genesis 127 towards the end of the chapter.

So God created man in his own image, and he created him in the image of God.

He created them male and female.

So we see right at the beginning that the Bible is this alternative story.

It explains God's intention for creation, that he loves it, that it's good.

And it explains and represents his creation of people. And people are not...

Meant to be enslaved or just serve the elites, but they are men and women endowed

with value and dignity right from the beginning that comes from their being

made in the image of their creator.

God did not create us lowly and pass us off, but he said, I'm actually going

to elevate people and I'm going to create them in such a way that they reflect

my beauty and they'd be sent out into the world with a kind of purpose and a vocation.

As we read the rest of Genesis, us, we see that.

God sends out man, he says, rule and reign over all of this creation.

You've been set apart for this purpose.

It is a very distinct story.

It is a story that by virtue of what it is, excludes so many other competing

stories, not only the ancient Near Eastern ones, more the religious ones,

but also I think we have to understand this today.

It's still relevant to today in the modern world, because it also excludes so

many of the secular stories, the things that we believe about what the world means.

Usually secular stories, because they don't actually feature a creator,

because the world has come just kind of from happenstance and from nothing,

from some kind of a big bang.

Those stories tend to focus on a struggle, on a struggle of people to overcome something, right?

Because there's not a purpose in the world, But the significance of history

in a secular story is that there's a struggle to overcome.

So some kind of adversity, some kind of oppression, some kind of ignorance to overcome.

And usually along with that, those stories present an enemy,

somebody who's the problem, a group or class of people who are the problem.

And so in our secular stories, we talk about that as well.

But of course, the Bible also tells us what the real conflict in the world is, right?

It's not just some class struggle or a struggle against ignorance or a struggle

towards first progress, getting to Mars, you know, that's not the significance of the world.

There is a conflict in the world.

The story that unfolds in Scripture actually tells us what the real conflict is in the world.

History is not defined by those things, class warfare, progress, a will to power.

The fundamental conflict that has consumed the world and is still consuming

the world is from sin coming into the world.

From sin coming into the world. That is the alternative conflict presented in the Bible.

It's not some struggle between people, but there is a spiritual struggle going on in the world.

Sin has come into the world through Satan's work. We read about that right in

the beginning of the story in Genesis 3. We're not going to have time to go into there.

If you've never read it, check it out. It's very interesting.

It's very interesting. Because from this moment, as sin comes into the world,

as temptation comes into the world, creation falls.

Its created goodness is, Scripture says, it has come to futility.

Creation is futile because of sin.

God's purpose and His intention for the world, His calling upon man,

it falls flat because of sin.

Sin is my problem.

Sin is your problem. Sin is the problem that is consuming the world.

And it is manifesting in conflict and despair and hopelessness and war and death

and all of these things that are not part of God's original created good order,

but have come as a result of sin. And boy, is that a.

I think sometimes we're afraid to talk about sin, but this is like a much,

it's a compelling story to say that the real problem is sin in the world.

It's not some bad person. It's not a political party that you don't like.

It's not some group of people who are too dumb for their own good. The real problem is sin.

For all the things that the world tells me you're on, the scriptures look past

all of that and they point to the real issue, to the point where Paul can say

in Ephesians 6.12, our struggle is not against flesh and blood.

It's not against the things that we can see.

It's not against the people, but it is against the rulers, against the authorities,

against the cosmic powers of darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens.

Paul says there is a greater struggle and conflict going on.

It's playing out in sin and it comes from Satan.

See, Paul realizes that people themselves are not the problem.

You yourself are actually not the problem. It's that something has attacked

you and something is destroying God's work in you. Sin is the problem.

Satan is the problem, both in the world and Paul would say, and in himself.

Paul understands the effects of sin on his own life.

This is really important for us to understand, right?

Because so many of the world's stories about what is the real conflict point to things outside of me.

I'm not the problem. The world is a problem. These things are the problem.

Paul says, there is a problem. It's sin.

And sin is infecting me and it's affecting you and it's affecting everything.

Paul understood the scriptures present clearly that the world...

Is in a conflict with sin, and it is consumed by idolatry and false things,

that the world tells us stories about what is significant and right and good,

and that the Bible tells us something else.

The world tells us that what matters is our power, it's our wealth,

it's our comfort, and we can so easily get drawn into these stories.

And scripture tells us, no, those are not the things that will satisfy.

Those are not the things that are good.

Those are not your created purpose. There's an alternative story told where

we're able to turn from sin, turn from things of the world.

Likewise, Paul understands that his own flesh, his own desires,

his own mind that is broken, that is part of the way sin impacts him.

His own flesh is drawing him into believing an alternative story,

and he has to work hard to believe the truth.

So that's happening with me So my pride

and my desires and my selfishness end up just being like ways that I get consumed

by sin and that my life is robbed of its significance and I'm robbed of my purpose

and I'm robbed of my calling because I want things that I want more than I want

things that God wants for me.

And so I lay down my calling and I don't live into this other story where I'm

actually meant to fight against sin and trust in Jesus and let him renew my life.

I start to believe in a false story. So I have to hold onto the true story because

that's going to make the difference.

We do. And so we have the world, we have the flesh and we have Satan.

We have an actual enemy who is trying to oppose us. Who, man,

I don't know, this time of year, I feel like we feel it a lot in the Pacific

Northwest. How many people are just a little depressed?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, honest corner over here. Thank you. Yeah, like this is it.

Like we get into this place where it's like it feels like there's a spiritual

discouragement that comes on us. October, November, like clockwork.

It might be something to do with the clouds. But, you know, it's also spiritual.

And so we get despondent. We get discouraged, right? And there's things going

on. And that's because we have an adversary. We have Satan who is working.

He wants to discourage. He wants to deceive us. he wants us to get caught up

in in our flesh and in all these other things,

And in the midst of that, which I experienced and what you experienced,

my calling as a person of faith is to say, but I believe in a better story.

And I believe that there's something else going on. Because scripture tells

me that my struggle is not against flesh and blood. It's not even against my own attitudes.

It's just sin at work in me. And I have a solution in trusting in Jesus Christ.

So we know that there's an alternative story. And we can go,

that alternative story will help focus me and focus you and make us people who are different.

We can be people who focus on the real problem. We can be people who are fighting

in the right ways against the right things,

which is to say resisting sin and then like praying and coming against Satan

and his devices and his discouragement and his disunity and the things that he has.

We can go about doing things in the right way.

So instead of being dismayed and troubled by my own discouragement,

I can put my hope in Jesus and I can fight for that hope.

Instead of being dismayed and discouraged, when I look at the world and all

of its brokenness and all the violence and all the political craziness that

I feel like we are in the midst of and that we feel so much right now,

we can confidently say, you know what,

because I know what the true conflict is that's going on, this actually totally makes sense.

Even though it doesn't make any real sense, right? Why is the world going crazy?

It's going crazy because I've been told we have an enemy.

We're not battling against flesh and blood. there's spiritual forces,

there's darkness that's coming against us.

And so actually this does make sense. It doesn't make it easy, but it does make sense.

We know we have an enemy and our enemy is not all these people,

right? This is the thing. Our enemy is not these people.

It's not people that God has created and given great dignity and called to a great purpose.

It's not the people he created with love and intention in his own image,

even when they're against him and against us, and even when it feels like people

are against us. It's not those people.

The problem is sin. The problem is that I have an enemy.

And I mean, see, that kind of attitude and really understanding the story that

we live in, it will change us. It will change us.

And I think the big challenge for us is to let this story go so deep within

us that we actually are living it out.

And I think the maximum way in which we can demonstrate that is to live into

what Paul calls us to and what Jesus calls us to.

So what Paul says in Romans 12, 4, which is just an echo of what Jesus calls

us to in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse.

It's only when we're living in an alternative story, when we understand what

the real conflict is, that we could do this stuff.

We could do this like actually living as Christians according to the way of Jesus.

See, we can bless because we know that those who are against us and people who

are causing havoc in the world and doing all kinds of bad things,

those people who hate the things of God, we can bless them because we know that

they're actually just blind and they're stuck in their sin and they cannot by

their own power or by any means of their own strength ever get out of it because,

and we know that because we couldn't either,

before Jesus like showed up in our lives, not because we deserved it,

not because we were so smart, not because we worked so hard,

but because he's kind and he's gracious and he intervenes in the world.

So like, so like we can be people who stay like calm and keep our heads cool

when the world is going crazy because we know the story that we're living in.

And so we can look at people even who seem to be enemies of God,

enemies of us, and we can say, you know, I'm going to bless you and I'm going

to love you even as you are just going crazy and you're falling into the wrong

side of this conflict and you're letting sin overtake your life.

And we can love them and we can faithfully proclaim the love and mercy of God

and the gospel, the true story of the world, the fact that Jesus has come into

the world to save sinners.

And we can do that even as they're totally against us.

Persecuting us is even, and I'm not suggesting, I don't know what's going on in your life.

I don't know if you're being persecuted, but I'm just saying Paul presents this

maximal level of alternative reality that even as persecution comes along,

we can bless people if we're living in this story, even as they keep treating us as enemies.

And I feel like we're in an age, and this is like a very normal thing,

like when things get hard, is that people say, well, Jesus didn't really mean that.

That's just kind of hippie. That's kind of hippie-dippie. But the thing is,

I don't know how you read the scriptures. I don't know how you read the book of Romans.

I don't know how you read the book of Matthew, as we've been going through,

and not see that Jesus really meant that.

Jesus really meant that we can love our enemies. And he recommended that to us.

Not just recommended, he instructed us that this is his way and that it's a safe thing to do.

We can love our enemies because we know the true story.

We know that they are created in God's image. they're stuck in sin, and so we can love them.

We also, because we know the origin story, but we also know this,

we also know that there's a resolution coming to this story.

So we're only halfway through the story. That's the thing about scripture.

Scripture tells us the past, it clues us into the present, and then it clues us into what's coming.

And the what's coming part is orienting as well. It's super important for us

to understand not only where we're at, but where the world is going.

Because that enables us to be people who can love in the midst of difficulty,

because we know that the story is not going to be unresolved forever.

There is a resolution coming, an ultimate resolution to the problem of sin,

the problem of rebellion, the problem of destruction, the problem of the fact

that this world is broken.

It will not stay broken. That's a hopeful thing.

And it's hopeful in particularly because Jesus will bring it about in his time.

Look at what Paul says in 2 Thessalonians. This is probably the most extreme,

I think, picture that's painted of what's going to happen ultimately.

This is the Christian hope, the resolution of the story that we're looking to.

It says, in his justice, he will pay back those who persecute you.

So Paul says, bless those who persecute you. But also, know this,

in his justice, he will pay back those who persecute you.

And God will provide rest for you who are being persecuted. And also for us,

when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven,

he will come with his mighty angels in flaming fire, bringing judgment on those

who don't know God and those who refuse to obey the good news of our Lord Jesus.

The Bible is not just, oh, it's all going to be fine. It's all going to be worked

out. It's like, no, it's going to be worked out.

And so you stand in the midst of this time where this has not happened.

The judgment has not yet happened, but it will.

And we're called to just kind of occupy and look to Jesus and hope to him,

knowing that the story is not yet resolved, but it will be resolved.

But we have something to say to people in the midst of it. So we can bless instead

of curse, because we know in the end, Jesus is going to judge.

And this is, I think this is such an important part of the gospel,

because if not, then we're just kind of like meant to be people who don't care about justice.

Like if we don't care about justice, like then what do we have to offer the world?

In the end, actually, what we have to offer is true justice,

justice that God will bring about, that he's going to bring about when he comes again.

See, this story, the story of both the origin story, but also the resolution,

it is orienting for me as a person in the world, in a crazy world,

because I know and you know that there is a real conflict.

It's working its way out in the world, but it's not going to be unresolved forever.

And that expectation that God is going to resolve it and that I don't have to, right?

That he's going to be the one who comes and establishes justice.

And I don't have to be my defender because he's going to be my defender.

That I don't have to set every wrong right because he knows how to do that more

competently than I ever could because I am stuck in my sin.

And so how can I rightly weigh what is good and what is right and what is fair?

I'm not able to do that. You're not able to do that. And so our hope is in Jesus

who stands above it all and sees it as it is and competently can pay back what

needs to be paid back and pay the price for what needs to be paid for and have

mercy on those who it is right to have mercy on and to punish those who will not.

See, we are in a world that says we have to punish, we have to defend,

we have to protect ourselves.

And Jesus says, no, I've got you and I am competent.

And so we are in this very difficult time where we have to lean into our alternative

story as the world tells us that we must defend ourselves and punch other people

and hurt other people and hurt our enemies because Jesus says,

no, no, you're to love your enemies.

You're to bless those who curse you. And that is so difficult to do.

It is so difficult to do. And it has been the challenge of Christians forever.

To live in this alternative story and to put their hope firmly on the coming

of an expectation of Jesus's justice and his righteousness.

And how do we work that out with politics? And I don't have an answer for you, right?

But I do know this, that though I'm called to be active in the world,

I'm called to help bring about a good, flourishing society.

I am also to be a person who understands this firmly, that this story will be

resolved, and I don't have to bring it to its final resolution.

Jesus will do it. He will judge. So I don't have to.

And that works its way out in my life and your life in a really surprising way.

I like what Peter tells the church as midst of their persecution.

He says this, he recognizes they're in persecution.

That's very much the context of 1 and 2 Peter. It's a challenged church.

It's a church that's feeling the weight of the conflict between evil things,

working their way out. They're feeling the weight of that.

And what Peter does is he reminds them the judgment is coming.

It's going to come like a thief in the night is what he says just a little bit before this.

All of a sudden, this stuff that weighs upon you, it's going to be resolved.

And he says this, Since all these things will be dissolved in this way,

it is clear what sort of people you should be in holy conduct and godliness

as you wait for the day of the Lord and hasten its coming.

Because on that day, the heavens will be dissolved with fire and the elements will melt with heat.

But based on his promise, we wait for a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells.

I would tell you this. If you are living into the alternative story,

if you're taking up this gospel clarity that really tells me what the world

is going on, where it came from, what it's for,

what the real conflict is, the fact that there's going to be resolution,

the fact that there's going to be a true hope, if you're leaning into all of these things,

then you are going to be a countercultural kind of person because you're doing

the one thing that our world in particular is terrible at, which is waiting.

Like, we are not patient. I am not patient. When things are difficult for me, I want to fix them.

But being a part of this alternative story tells me, know when things are difficult,

we turn to the Lord and we wait on him.

We anticipate that Jesus is going to come one day. He's going to judge.

He's going to do what he says he's going to do.

He's going to bring about a new heavens and a new earth, the renewal of all

things, the renewal of his creation, the reestablishment of his good plan.

And there's going to be righteousness dwelling there.

And so to Peter's advice to the church, it says, so if you're going to be the

person who knows that, who anticipates that, then it means for you right now,

what sort of person you're going to be.

You're going to be a person who's caring about their conduct.

You're going to be caring about their godliness, their devotion to the Lord,

and somebody who's just waiting, waiting with intention and with hope.

That's not something we know how to do. It's not something I know how to do well.

How do we wait with hope? How do we continue to put our hope in Jesus?

To hope in and to stand firm in him, to proclaim the truth to the world.

Because we think, well, just telling people this story of the gospel isn't going to fix things.

And the answer is, that's true. It won't.

But it's our calling in the midst of a time of waiting. Ultimately,

Jesus is going to fix the problem.

He's going to resolve everything. But what we're called to right now in this

interim time is to proclaim his victory and to invite people in to offer them true hope.

Because that's the final thing that we all have from this orienting story.

We have a true hope. We have a true hope.

It's not hope that things are going to work out.

It's not hope that I'll have enough money and that I'll have enough power and

that I won't ever have any problems in my life and I won't ever get sick and

I won't ever have difficulty and my children are just going to be 100% perfect

all the time and they're going to be great.

You know, that's not the hope that we have. Like the hope that we have is ultimately

that Jesus Christ is merciful and we're going to meet him on the day of judgment

and he's going to be merciful to us.

And so we just go in and we proclaim this mercy to the world.

I just want to read, worship team is going to come up here as we kind of wrap

up, but I just want to read Romans 3, 21 to you.

Now, God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements

of the law, without the performance of your own greatness and without being

like, oh man, you're just careful and you're earning your way to heaven.

He's shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements

of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago.

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are,

for everyone has sinned.

We have all fallen short of God's glorious standard.

And yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight.

He did this through Jesus Christ when he freed us from the penalty of our sin.

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.

See, in the midst of a great start, a beautiful origin story,

a major conflict, a lot of futility,

sin coming into the world, brokenness coming into the world,

and the expectation that God is going to make things right, Jesus,

the message of the gospel is, okay, how are you not going to be caught up on

the wrong side of this thing?

And the true hope that we have in the gospel is that the facts of what's going

to happen to the world, that God will renew it, that he will judge it.

He says, but that us people can be found and be made right with God by simply

placing our faith in what Jesus has done.

We can be the sorts of people who will stand before God on the day of judgment

when he's setting everything right.

And we can say, Lord, I know I have not lived a sinless life,

but I put my hope in your mercy and in your forgiveness.

And so it's that that I'm standing here before you. And Jesus assures us that

that is a safe place to be when things are finally resolved.

Because his work in the world right now is the offer of salvation to sinful people.

So like, not me on my best day, but me on my worst day, Jesus says.

There is a way for you right now to be made right with God.

There's a way for you right now to, when I do come and I reestablish righteousness

and I bring this whole world to its great and glorious resolution where things

are going to be remade and recreated, where you can be there too.

You can be adopted into the family, into this future, into this hope.

Have your sins washed away. And it is simply through turning and placing your faith in Jesus Christ.

And I just have to be honest with you. This is the core of the message.

This is what we go along proclaiming in the midst of this messy middle time

where things are yet unresolved.

We have to go around telling people that this is what we were sent out.

We are proclaiming the good news that people can be made right with God by placing

their faith in Jesus Christ,

not by overcoming whatever struggle the world has for you, not by being the

smartest, the best, or all the things that we think are of great value,

what we're called to is to trust in Jesus,

to be the sorts of people who let him give us a new life in a new story, in a new story.

And do not get caught up in the other things.

And you know, I think the problem with the gospel, right?

And Paul says in Corinthians that it's like scandalous to the Jews who are really into law keeping.

And it's foolishness to the Greeks because, I mean, they like what doesn't make sense.

This message doesn't make sense because it totally comes against the other stories of the world.

The people who are on the right side of history who end up coming into the new

heavens and the new earth and being a part of things, like you'd think they would be the smartest.

You think they would be the richest. You think they would be the most accomplished.

You would think they would be the people who had any right whatsoever being there.

But the whole point of the gospel is that God takes people who have no business

being a part of his life, who could never measure up, right?

But who have given up even the task of trying to measure up and who've thrown

themselves on the mercy of God.

And Jesus says, and those people who've laid down the pride,

who've laid down their own performance, who've laid down their own desire to

earn everything, those people are the people who I can just gather up into my

arms and I can adopt into my family.

Those people who come to me on the basis simply of faith. Those people I'm able

to work with. Those people I'm able to shape.

Those people I'm able to make truly godly because they're putting down these

fake things, these performance-oriented standards of godliness and they're learning

what it means to truly conduct themselves in this age as people of hope,

people who are turning to the Lord.

It doesn't make sense because you think that— I think about this a lot.

Like, in our world today—.

Oh, I'm trying to not say something super offensive.

Everything in our world today screams out that some people deserve good things

and some people deserve bad things.

And Jesus says, this whole world is broken by sin and nobody deserves good things.

I don't deserve good things. You don't deserve good things.

Certainly the people who are going crazy on the internet and in real life aren't

deserving of good things.

And Jesus says, and if they would just come to me in all their undeserving and

just say, Lord, I am in desperate need of something.

I'm desperate in need of help and resolution and to get out of this conflict

because I can't earn my way or work my way or fight my way out anymore.

Jesus says, if you just come to me empty handed, like I will meet you.

So that's the gospel we proclaim, the mercy and kindness and forgiveness of Jesus.

Not because you've earned it, not because you're good, not because you've done

anything, but simply because he is a faithful and good and kind God who is going

to bring things about in his own time and in his own way. we are made right

with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

So if you've never heard that before, yeah, I don't do like the whole altar

calls. And then there's this pad, you know, you might, that pad sounds really nice.

Maybe that's going to make you weepy a little bit or something like that.

You know, I don't do that a lot because I really just think this thing is,

this reality is that if Jesus is showing up in your life and he's just screaming

out that he loves you and he's paid the price and he's merciful,

like what else are you going to do? You're going to respond to that.

I don't need to like lead you into this process, but I can just tell you this message.

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

If you want to get over the conflict, if you want to get past the sin,

if you want to be assured that when you show up before the judgment seat of

Jesus Christ, along with all of creation, living and dead.

And he's going to judge you, if you want to make sure that you are on the right

side of things, then you come to him and you just cry out, Jesus,

I have nothing to bring, and I only need your mercy. This is how we do it.

And so we're not going to go out around talking to our friends and neighbors

and talking about, you've got to change your life. You've got to get better.

You've got to perform better for Jesus.

We just proclaim, oh, isn't it amazing that God has paid the price,

that he's done all the work, and that we can just come empty-handed and he wraps

us in his arms and he forgives us of our sin.

That is such a better message than some alternative story.

And we're sent out as people who bear that message in our lives.

The thing about the alternative story, the message of the gospel,

and it's, again, this is the distinction between, this is why it seems foolish

to us, I think, in a lot of ways.

The thing that's so different than the stories of the world is that you aren't supposed to be the hero.

We're like standing on the sidelines as

observers of something crazy that god

created all things that sin has come into the world it's broken we we we feel

that we we bear the weight of it um but the one who has uh is restoring all

things and judging all things and renewing all things it's Jesus. He's the hero.

And so like he just calls us to be people who just turn to him and put our hope

in him and cheer him on from the sidelines. He's the one.

He's the one who's rescued. He's the one who is saving, who has saved us. He's the one.

He's the one who's doing things in our lives. And so like I think so oftentimes

the reason that the gospel falls flat is because we try to work ourselves again

into the position of being the hero of the story.

We try to bring about the resolution that only He can bring about.

We try to bring about the joy and the peace and the salvation that only He can bring about.

We can try to earn what is given as a gift, as forgiveness, as mercy.

And so, look, I'm just going to confess that myself.

Now, it's so oftentimes, and if you guys want to just take time to just talk

to Jesus and to just say, okay, Lord, like I live too much in another story,

because that's true of me.

Lord, I live in a story where I'm the hero, where my performance is the main

thing, Lord. But I want...

I want to live in trust. I want to live in faith.

I want to live in with a greater confidence of what you say is true and that

you're bringing about the resolution.

Lord Jesus, would you, would you do the work?

We pray that, Lord. Would you build this up, Lord?

Would you make us a community who see you clearly, who turn to you?

Holy Spirit, would you be reminding us of all the truth that you have revealed to us, Lord?

Lord, would you be at work among us, Lord? Lord, would you teach us to be the

sorts of people who are speaking to one another the truth?

Lord, who are praying for one another and then taking what you're showing us,

Holy Spirit, and then like ministering it to one another.

But would you be people who are like, who are just reading your word,

who are being washed in it, who are being drawn into the truth of the story.

And we're people who are just like, that becomes like a gravitational force

in our life where people come near us and they think, oh, this person is living

according to a different script, according to a different understanding of reality.

Would we be people who are just doing that, simply being people who are in the

story, Lord, because that is enough of a missional thing.

Or to be people who believe the gospel and live by it, that is the greatest

force that we could ever have. But it's better than our own eloquence.

Or it's better than our own abilities.

Or to just be people who are trusting you more and more, day by day.

That is a message being lived out in our lives.

So God, Lord, if repentance is what we need, Lord,

repentance is having a new mind, understanding the ways in which we've done

the wrong thing and just coming to you and expecting your forgiveness and your

mercy, your love, Lord, because you are kind and merciful and gracious, God.

So Lord, we repent. We repent of the ways that we've put our hope in ourselves

and our things in this world, that we've been fighting against flesh and blood

and we've not been fighting for the truth and letting you be the victor, Lord.

So if we've done those things, Lord, we repent of those things.

And God, we ask you to teach us how to live in a new way, to live in the way

of Jesus, to live with this confidence and hope that you demonstrate that Paul

and Peter and the church were filled with.

Lord, would you fill us with your spirit, with your confidence,

with hope? We're not good at it.

We are not in our own strength gonna get any better, but we turn to you,

Jesus, and we ask you to build us up.

Teach us to be people who lean into hope. we pray.

Amen. All right, I think we've got one more worship song. All right, let's do it.