The Kingdom Way | Luke 6:46–49 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

I want to welcome you in wherever you're joining us from.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

If you're here at one of our physical locations here in Helotus or Petrenko, I'm so glad that you came out.

If you're with us online, I'm thankful for our online ministry.

Uh so many people behind the scenes that make that ministry happen.

I'm thankful for every one of them.

If you are new with us, we are going through the Gospel of Luke.

This is one of the four historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

We have broken Luke down into seven sections so we can follow the narrative.

Uh right now, we are in a section called the Kingdom Way.

I just want to ask those of you who have been in this series with us uh has the kingdom way been helpful to you in your own life?

I hope it has been.

I I don't know if I've ever preached through a series that has challenged me like this section of Luke.

It has just been uh tremendous in my own life.

And I tell you guys this all the time.

I don't come up here to preach at you.

My hope is that I can get across to you a fraction of what the word has been doing to me in the months that I'm having to sit in this and prepare for these sermons.

Now, today is our last day in the kingdom way.

And it is our last day in Jesus' most famous sermon, a sermon that we have now spent 10 weeks on.

This is our 11th week just in this sermon.

Luke calls it the sermon on the plain, Matthew calls it the sermon on the mount.

And what we believe, along with most scholars, is that this was the sermon that Jesus took everywhere he went.

This is what he would preach, because Jesus came to give us a relationship with our Heavenly Father that doesn't come through our own works, that's religion, that comes through faith in the work that Jesus did on our behalf.

Amen?

Jesus didn't come offering you a new, updated, fancy 2.0 religion.

Jesus came offering something brand new, a relationship with your Heavenly Father who loves you through faith in the work that Jesus did by coming to earth, living the perfect life that we could not live, dying the death that we deserve, and walking out of his own grave to prove to you that there is, in fact, life after death.

Jesus wanted you to know that because of that work, we all have the opportunity to be a part of the kingdom of God.

And Jesus wants you to know that you do not simply wait around until you die to get to go and be a part of that kingdom.

You don't just simply wait around until Jesus cracks the sky and comes and gets his church to be a part of that kingdom, that you're invited into that kingdom right here and right now.

You can live as a part of that kingdom, knowing that you are a pilgrim passing through this world, that your citizenship is in heaven.

You can build that kingdom right now with how you invest, who you are, and what you have.

You can invest in that kingdom by trying to invite as many people as possible into it.

Amen?

Is that what we're about?

We're trying to do that here at Metachurch.

And so Jesus goes into this sermon and he lays out the values of the kingdom of God.

He's like, if you want to do this, here's how you live, here's how you think.

Now I've told you ever since week one of this sermon from Jesus, 10 weeks ago, that Jesus is not doing behavioral modification.

Now you have some behaviors that probably need some modifying.

I have some behaviors that need some modifying.

You have some attitudes and some reactions and some habits and some worldviews and some false narratives.

You got some work to do.

But religion tries to do this from the outside in.

I've been at uh youth camp in East Texas last week.

I'm heading back there today.

Uh, this last week, I spent uh every day, morning and night, preaching to about 900 students, just trying to tell them, uh I'm not here for you to change a few habits while you're here at camp and then go home right back to the life that you had.

The work that Jesus wants to do in you is inside out.

He wants those behaviors to change, but first he wants your heart.

First, he wants your mind.

First, he wants you to surrender your will to him, your desires to him, your dreams to him.

Jesus told us, you want to follow me, you have to deny yourself every day.

It's tough work.

You want to follow me, you have to carry your cross, you have to be willing to suffer.

For 10 weeks, we have seen a couple of things.

Number one, Jesus just made very clear the kingdom of God is upside down from the kingdoms of this world.

Which means we don't know how reality works.

We don't know how life works.

We don't know how to measure success.

And so throughout these 10 weeks, Jesus has said, Man, look, the people that you really think should be pitied are actually blessed.

Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated.

He said, You think you know how to deal with your enemies.

Enemies require revenge.

People who have wronged you require revenge that's wired into us because we've been formed and informed by the kingdoms of this world, and the kingdom of God is upside down from the kingdoms of this world.

And so we love revenge.

You killed John Wick's dog, and John Wick's gonna kill 45,000 people.

And we're like, I love John Wick.

Kill another guy.

He shouldn't have shot his dog.

I don't know what to what to tell you.

We love that.

We love a good revenge story.

We love it when he cheats on your friend, and then he gets married and they cheat on him.

Ooh, karma, karma, we're Christians, we don't believe in karma, but we're like karma had it coming.

Rejoicing in someone's downfall.

Jesus goes, No, love your enemies.

It's like, well, I don't want to do that.

And of course I don't.

That's not how I've been formed.

And so Jesus is like, okay, uh, you can live for the kingdoms of this world, and then everything that you build will just fade away.

Or you can surrender your heart, mind, and will to Jesus Christ, and you can build something for the kingdom of God that will last forever and ever.

Amen.

And so it's just all upside down.

And if you've missed these sermons, they're all on YouTube, youtube.com slash metachurch.

I'd love for you to get caught up.

Uh, this week is the end of the sermon.

And so this is like the mic drop.

Here's how he's going to land the plane on this sermon, and he just brings us to the bottom line of the bottom line of the bottom line.

Here's what Jesus says in Luke chapter 6, verse 46.

Luke 6:46

Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do the things that I say?

Here's the mic drop.

Everything else, the metaphors that we read in the rest of this passage, they're all linked to this one idea.

God came to our earth, put on human flesh, stood in front of thousands of people, and preached a sermon to let you know here's how you can start building the kingdom of God right here and right now.

Here's how you can take the life that God has graciously given you and live it on purpose and with purpose, build something that will go beyond this life, beyond this world, beyond this reality, and show up in the kingdom of God, being welcomed by an amount of reward from the God of the universe that you can't possibly imagine.

But Jesus says, talk is cheap.

Why do you call me Lord?

Lord, the Greek word curios.

Now, Lord has a supernatural connotation.

If you look in the Old Testament, the name Yahweh, that is the one true God, is always in the Greek translated curios, capital L Lord.

It was also a term that was used by everyday people 2,000 years ago during Jesus' time here on earth.

Lowercase L Lord means master, ruler, sovereign, king.

It is someone who is to be obeyed.

And Jesus is like, look, I've given you the keys to living out the kingdom.

So are you going to do it or not?

He gets to the very end of the sermon, he just goes bottom line.

He's like, look, this was a great sermon.

It's the greatest sermon that's ever been written, it's the greatest sermon that's ever been spoken.

It means nothing if you go, I got it, Jesus.

Great message, love it, and do nothing about it.

He says it twice.

Lord, Lord, curios, curious.

This is a term of like affection.

It shows endearment, like someone you love, you know.

And yet, talk is cheap, and so part of why Christianity has been just suffocating in the West is because we have a superficial version of Christianity who gives lip service to God while we go out and we don't look anything like Jesus to the rest of the world.

We pick and choose the parts we like.

Like we really like the parts where Jesus is just like hammering on truth and like really speaking against sin.

And so we just go out into the world or we log on to our social media and we just hammer people.

Man, all the sins that make us uncomfortable, we just go after those sins.

Now we ignore our sins that we're struggling with.

I'm gonna point at your sins and I'm gonna holler about them and yell about them, I'm gonna beat you into the ground, I'm gonna take the Bible and just slap you around with God's word.

And everyone's like, No, thank you.

What about in his sermon where he says, Do not judge, do not condemn, forgive even if they don't deserve it.

Be radically generous.

Before you're going to go and point out the splinter in someone else's eye, you better make sure that you have dealt with the beam in your own.

He goes, Look, you you can claim my lordship, you can claim that I am master, that I am God, that I am your ruler.

But if you don't do the things that I say, it's just talk.

And we hate this, you know.

Uh it it's it's like a boyfriend who uses pet names with the girlfriend that he won't stop cheating on.

And he shows up and he goes, No, baby, baby, I love you, baby, baby.

And it's like, hey, stop calling her that.

It's meaningless.

As soon as you walk away from her, you're not considering her at all.

You're not living in an alignment with the relationship that you claim to have.

So don't say it.

We have this wonderful thing in scripture where scripture speaks to scripture all of the time, and we have these letters in the Christian scriptures of the New Testament.

And one of the coolest letters is called the letter of James.

And the reason that it's such a cool letter is because James is the half-brother of Jesus.

They share the same mom, Mary, but they don't share the same dad because Jesus' dad's the Holy Spirit.

Okay?

James didn't get that lucky.

James's parents, biological parents, are Mary and Joseph.

So they grew up in the same house.

Jesus was his older brother, and James thought Jesus was crazy.

Literally.

He did not believe in him, he thought he was crazy.

James thought Jesus would end up getting himself killed, and he was right.

All of that changes after the resurrection because when Jesus calls his own shot and says, Hey, I'm going to Jerusalem, they will arrest me, they will kill me, and three days later I will walk out of my own grave.

And presumably James saw his brother executed on a Roman cross.

A few days later, James hung out with his brother and thought, maybe there's something to the claims that he's been making.

James not only puts his faith in his older brother as the God of the universe, he becomes one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem.

And he writes a letter to the church as they are undergoing persecution.

The storms of persecution has come.

The flood of outrage towards the movement of Jesus has come.

And all of a sudden, when everything was good and they were feeling good and they were in Christian community all the time, and money was coming in, and their jobs were good and their families were good.

Man, they were good, bro.

Lord, whatever you want, I will obey you.

When persecution came, all of a sudden they're going right back to their old habits.

James in this passage is without a doubt preaching on the very concept that his brother taught.

You can't just call me Lord, Lord, and then not do what I say.

Here's what James says but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Put a pin in that idea, deceiving yourselves.

Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror.

For he looks at himself, he goes away and immediately forgets what kind of person he was.

But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer who works.

This person will be blessed in what he does.

Who's he talking to?

He's writing this letter to people who are now poor, hungry, weeping, and hated.

And what's the promise?

You can be the blessed Macarios.

He says that if we hear the word, Jesus says, Look, I just preached the world's greatest sermon.

You can hear it, you can call me Lord, but if you don't do it, then what value is it?

James is picking up this exact theme.

If you hear the word but you don't do the word, he says you deceive yourselves.

You think that you've done something for the kingdom and you haven't.

You think you're investing into eternity, but you're not.

He says you're like someone who goes and looks in the mirror and you go, That's who I am.

That's who I was created to be.

I see it.

That's my purpose.

I get it, that's my role in the kingdom.

I'm on it.

You walk away from the mirror and you forget everything.

It's superficial Christianity.

What does this look like for us?

Maybe it looks like coming to a worship service, and you come in and you've got a world-class band, and man, they're leading you in worship, and you're like, that's who I am, man.

I am a worshiper, I am a child of God, I want the Holy Spirit to permeate my life.

I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna live for the kingdom, I'm gonna die to myself.

But you get outside of that mirror of worship, and you don't look anything like the person that you see yourself in when you're worshiping.

You get under a really good sermon, and you're like, that's that's who I am, man.

That's who I wanna be.

I want to build the kingdom, I don't wanna wait till I die to go to the kingdom, I wanna live in the kingdom right now, I want to invest in the kingdom, I want to build the kingdom right now.

But by Tuesday morning, man, you're just back in it.

You're living for the world, you're measuring success by the world, you're angry all the time, you're back in the same patterns.

Maybe, you know, when I was just really in rebellion, I would hit these little rock bottoms.

I had a good friend, uh, he sponsors a lot of people in AA, and he was saying, rock bottom is really just almost like a staircase where you just hit a bunch all the way down, you know.

And I was living like that, so I was hitting all these different little rock bottoms on my way down, and I would get there all drunk or high or whatever, about to be arrested, and now I'm praying.

I'm like, God, you have called me your child.

You wouldn't want your child to go to jail tonight, right?

That'd be crazy.

If you get me out of this, have you ever prayed those prayers?

If you will get me out of this, if you will keep her from filing for divorce, if they will not repo my car, I will be back in church.

I will start giving to the church.

I will.

It's like even consequence sometimes is a mirror to remind us who God actually is and who we actually are, and in that brief moment we can see it.

We're like, I'm not freaking supposed to be living like this, dude.

I gotta get right.

We walk away from that mirror, and it's like it never happened.

And the world that we want so desperately to reach before Christ, they're not buying it.

They are not interested in superficial Christianity.

If it is not embodied, if it's not down in our bones, if it's not real, not interested.

Jesus is gonna tell us why this keeps happening because it isn't due to a lack of good intention.

It isn't that you don't actually truly, genuinely desire this.

I I lived there forever, dude.

I really desired, like, I want to do this.

And for some reason I couldn't get it, I couldn't apply it.

Sunday I'm on fire, Monday I'm back in it.

Deceived, thinking I'm gonna build the kingdom, die to self, carry my cross.

By Monday afternoon, I'm just not, I'm not doing it, I'm not gonna do it, I haven't ever done it.

Jesus is gonna tell us why.

He's gonna use a metaphor in Luke chapter 6, we're now in verse 47.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Jesus says, I'll show you.

It's hard to understand why why you call him Lord, but don't do what he says.

He says, I'm gonna show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my word, and acts on those words.

Verse 48, he is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.

Jesus is using the metaphor of constructing a house.

The analogy is to you building your life.

What are you going to build with your life?

What are you going to do with who you are and what you have that God has given you?

This is the metaphor.

And he says, the person who hears me and acts on what he's heard is like someone who's going to lay a foundation, but first they dug deeply.

Now, our English translations of the Bible, uh, all, let me first say, every major there's some bad translations, but every major translation, it has everything you need to hear from the Spirit of God Himself and to apply it to your life.

And so I don't want you to think, because sometimes we dig a little deeper into the original languages, that you can't pick up one of the major translations and hear from God right here in an English translation of the word.

You absolutely can, and it's a gift that we have this, because I don't think you speak Koine Greek, and I don't think you speak ancient lost Hebrew, right?

If you do, stand up.

That would have been so cool.

Okay.

So you need English.

And what you have to do when you're translating is you have to translate in the way that English actually works and is read and is spoken.

And sometimes if you literally translate the Greek, it's very clunky and it's not our natural language.

But dug deeply, these are two Greek words, and they both mean to dig.

And so if you literally translated this, it would translate something like this is like a man who was going to build a house, and he dug, and then he kept digging, and then he dug even deeper, and he kept digging and digging and digging until he found rock.

And let me tell you why that matters.

It matters because Jesus is not hiding the ball.

To have Christ truly as the foundation of your life is going to take intentionality and it is going to take effort.

Whenever you came to Christ, maybe you were 13 years old, maybe you were 33 years old, maybe you were 73 years old.

For all of those years, you've been formed and informed by the world.

And because you've been formed and informed by the world, your world is full of lies and bad foundation.

And so you just have to dig.

And it takes work and it's painful, so most people won't do it.

But you have to dig out the lies that have permeated your life.

So many of us, the way we see the world is filtered through layers and layers of lies.

For some of us, the way that we act and react and make decisions, everybody has false narratives.

And so you have these scripts in your mind, and they're just always there.

And like every time you're right on the edge of doing something great, they're there to remind you, bro, you can't do this.

Who are you?

Who are you to step into this?

You're not educated enough, you're not talented enough, you're not spiritual enough, you haven't been saved long enough, you didn't come from the right home, you're not athletic enough, you're not pretty enough, you didn't have the grades, you didn't come from the right side of town, man.

Your parents couldn't even stay together, nobody ever really loved you.

Who's gonna love you now?

Man, you can't sustain a marriage, you can't be a good dad, you can't be a good mom, you didn't have a dad.

How are you gonna be a good dad?

False narratives, lies, lies, lies that you have to dig out.

And then ancient Near East, where Jesus was preaching, they had very loose soil, and sometimes it was very deep.

And that's a problem.

Not only do they have loose soil, but they're notorious, they're known for having flash floods that are devastating.

It shouldn't be surprising to me, but it continues to just make me like in awe of how God organizes his movement because we've just been going through Luke at the rate that we feel like the Holy Spirit tells us to, and then we get to this, and the whole metaphor is about foundations and flash floods.

Right after South Texas is ravaged once again by flash floods.

It's like we know what this looks like and feels like and how it can sweep a house away in a matter of minutes.

They dealt with this all of the time.

And so to build a great foundation, you had to dig and dig and dig and dig until you found something solid.

One of the two Greek words is phonetically, it sounds exactly like an excavator.

You just have to get in and get deep.

Here's the issue.

And it's not just a problem for Christians, it's a problem in our culture.

The work of laying a really solid foundation is not sexy.

If you've ever had a house built, nobody ever comes in when they're just clearing, scraping, and compacting like dang, that looks level.

You guys, oh my gosh, look at the rebar that you guys put in it.

Oh my gosh, look, look how level.

When you come, if you're having a house built and you come out and it's just foundation work, no one in the history of history has been like, bro, those footings, how did you even you just drive away like dang it, I thought it'd be framed by now.

I want to walk the floor plan.

I'm gonna see, I wanna see some walls.

Call me when a roof goes on.

I want to see the fixtures and the features, man.

I wanna see the I wanna see the garden tub, you know.

I'm gonna picture myself soaking in a garden tub.

I wanna see the closet that I can put a treadmill in, it's so big.

Like, show me the the stuff that really settles.

I don't care about the foundation.

But every person in here who's in construction, you already know.

If you don't have a great foundation, your house is worthless.

If you're buying a house that's already built, let me tell you how I've bought houses in the past.

I come in, I'm not worried about a leaking faucet, not at all.

Ugly light fixtures, I'm excited.

Beat up baseboards, I'm excited.

Those are bargaining chips for me to get a lower price.

I can fix those.

If you're buying a house though, and you hear faulty foundation, you run.

That's the one house you can't buy.

The foundation is the most important part of your house.

It's not the part you're most excited about, it is the most important part.

And it's the part that we don't care much about.

We don't get excited for.

And so here's what we do: we just start building the parts that everyone gets excited about.

And so we want to put up the walls and we haven't yet dug out the foundation.

We want to put the roof on, but we haven't dug out the foundation.

We want to get the fixtures and features, but we haven't dug a foundation.

We want to skip the digging, skip the foundation, and get right to the part of life that we all want.

I lived like this.

It's not good.

Try to build power and influence and status and all of the things that the world sells you.

You just try to build and build and build, but you have no foundation.

Listen to the man who was willing to dig.

That's the hard work.

It's painful work.

Removing lies, coping mechanisms, self-protective measures, selfishness, impurity, toxic habits.

Like digging those things out of your life is unbelievably painful and unbelievably necessary.

And when you're willing to get all the way down to the rock, here's what it looks like.

He's like a man building a house who dug and dug and dug some more and dug deeper and kept digging and laid the foundation on the rock.

And when the flood came, the river crashed against that house and could not shake it because it was well built.

We want a well-built life.

We want something that will last.

But we also live in a Western Christian culture of superficial Christianity.

We live in a culture where you can build a giant ministry, you can build a giant audience online, bearing the name Christ, without ever having built a foundation into your own life.

There's a real danger.

Part of what Jesus is doing last week and this week, I told you last week, he's just bringing us back to like kindergarten.

He's teaching us the most basic truths because he's like, man, all this incredible wisdom that he just gave us.

If it doesn't make its way into our life, it's not worth anything.

It's not worth anything to the kingdom of God.

It's not worth anything to your life and relationships.

It's not worth anything to the people who have no hope and are living outside of Christ and need someone who isn't just superficially doing faith, but has it down deep in their bones.

Something real that people could hang on to.

If you're taking notes, submission to Jesus is the foundation for your life.

Submission to Jesus.

Surrendering your heart, surrendering your mind, surrendering your will, your dreams, your desires.

Jesus has told us, man, you're gonna suffer for this kingdom.

If you really set out to live the Christian life, a life like Christ, you will suffer.

In other words, the flood is coming.

It's not optional.

The question is whether or not you have a foundation that can withstand it.

I want us to read about the person who is a hearer but not a doer.

Our last verse, verse 49, but the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation.

I want to point something out that is so critical for you to understand.

Jesus does not say, Hey, I offer one foundation, and the world offers a less ideal foundation.

The world offers a faulty foundation.

It's not quite level, it's not quite reinforced.

The concrete isn't of as good a quality.

That's not what Jesus says.

Jesus says, I offer the only foundation.

And if you don't build your life on me, then you build a life that has no foundation.

And I know you know this, but Jesus is going back to elementary, so I'm going back to elementary with you.

You cannot build a house without a foundation.

Hypothetically, you could, but you know better.

We have a lot of people in the trades here at MetaCurch.

If you got the call to go frame a house, to put electrical in a house, to put plumbing in a house, and you showed up to the lot and there was no foundation, you would call someone immediately and go, This cannot be the house.

I'm not touching this house.

There's no foundation.

This is crazy.

The first storm, this house is gone.

Two years with as much as the ground shifts in San Antonio.

This house is gone.

I'm not touching this.

Because you know, you cannot build a house without a foundation, and yet this is how most of us build our lives.

It's not because we don't want to live for Christ, it's not because we're not thankful for the cross, it's because Jesus is showing us we haven't done the first work.

And the first work isn't getting an audience, the first work isn't becoming a preacher or teacher.

The first work is to dig and dig.

Keep digging.

See what happens is the floods come.

Sometimes they are relational, financial, emotional, floods of anxiety, floods of depression.

Sometimes they are in your career, sometimes they're just in your mind, sometimes they're floods of addiction.

It's like the floods come.

And we hate the floods.

It's like no doubt we hate the floods.

We'll even get mad at God.

Like, why?

Another flood, come on.

Why are you always picking on me?

I don't understand.

The floods stress test your faith.

And more specifically, they find out what kind of foundation you have.

And because Western Christianity is largely superficial Christianity, it doesn't take much.

It doesn't take like a category five storm to tear down what we've built.

Like relationally, it doesn't take them filing for divorce for you to walk out of service where you're like, I'm doing it, I'm living for the kingdom, I'm surrendered.

It doesn't take divorce.

It takes like leaving and getting back on the highway, and you know the exit's coming out, and you have a plan for the exit that's coming up, and your wife goes, Um, the exit's coming up, and you lose your mind.

You're like, you think I don't know how to drive?

You're always doing this.

Here we go.

We have fallen apart.

It doesn't take bankruptcy, it just takes being convinced that you need one more thing that you don't actually need, that you cannot afford to impress the kingdoms of this world, and building a little more debt, having a little less financial freedom.

It's like it doesn't take much because we haven't done the work to get down to a foundation.

Some of you have experienced this.

I've experienced this.

I have like built and built and built, and it was all not rooted in Christ, and I'm building for myself, and I'm trying to make my own little kingdom, and I'm trying to be my own little king, and I'm trying to work as my own little God, and I'm building some power and some influence and some credibility, and I'm trying to do all of the things.

I have no foundation, and the storms come and my life collapses.

And so, man, if you're there, you might be there and you're 14 years old.

You're a student sitting in here right now, sitting in Holotus right now.

This has already happened to you.

Everything you worked for, everything you thought you were, it collapsed under the weight of a storm in this life.

You might be 84 years old, and you feel like everything you've been building your entire life has fallen apart.

And you just need to know like how to hear Jesus.

I bring this up sometimes because I think it's so important.

If you came up in religious cultures, then Jesus likely always sounds mad and always sounds disappointed.

And so when his disciples are on the boat and they don't have faith that he can get them through the storm, and they wake Jesus up, and he comes and he calms the storm and he looks at them and he says, I'm gonna show my cards.

I I came up in King James churches, okay?

He says, Oh, ye of little faith.

My whole life I read that like he's mad.

Like the way I heard his words were like, You idiots.

Y'all have got God in your boat, and you're still scared.

You're worthless, you'll never get it, you'll never amount to anything.

I'm just I'm hearing Jesus through my own false narratives.

So, how does Jesus say, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do what I say?

Because there's a chance you hear it like, you morons.

Talk is cheap.

Do something about it, prove it, be something, show me something.

You call me Lord, you don't really care, you're not gonna do anything.

It's just like not the character of Jesus that we see in scripture.

We do see him get angry.

Typically, at people who are leveraging religion to gain their own power and hurt other people.

The people who are just like struggling through their faith, he just shows up and he loves them.

And maybe he's just like, Man, you come to me, you call me Lord, Lord.

Like we love each other.

I know you want to do this.

You've chosen to be my disciple, but you're not doing it.

And I'm worried about you because I believe you can build something great with your life.

But if it's not rooted in these words, it won't stand.

And maybe Jesus just like loves you enough that he's gonna be honest with you that you gotta start digging some stuff out of your life.

You gotta dig these lies out of your life, out of your identity, out of your worldview.

So that when you walk away from the word and you walk away from your prayer time, and you walk away from life team, and you walk away from Sunday service, you don't forget who you are because who you are is rooted so deeply inside of you, so deeply in Christ.

And so, look, man, if you've built something and it's collapsed on you because you had no foundation, you have to know that Jesus is just like, hey, it's not too late.

Start digging.

Jesus is like, I'll help you.

I'll put you inside of a local expression of my body who will love you and will not judge you, and will come alongside you, and will equip you and will walk you through this and will help you and encourage you.

I'll put you in a life team of people who will do life with you and call you when you've had a bad day and check up on you and hold you accountable and love you through this.

I will help you, I will give you my Holy Spirit, my Holy Spirit will expose things.

Here's how we start seeing it when we really want to build a strong foundation.

When life stress tests us, we don't get mad at God, we thank God.

You know what a stress test does?

It exposes weaknesses in your foundation.

Your marriage will do this.

Some of you are in like your first, second, third year of marriage, and you're finding out how hard it is.

And one of the things that's happening is your marriage is holding up a mirror to you all the time.

You wanna really get all of the things inside of you that are keeping you from being who God called you to be exposed?

Have some children.

And it's so hard, man.

But when life stress tests you, you wanna you wanna get stress tested?

Start being generous towards God with your money.

Do what we teach here and go, here's how much I'm called to give.

I'm giving it first, no matter what, and the rest of my money has to get organized around it.

And you know what's gonna happen?

It's gonna be hard.

Because you haven't organized your money.

Well, if that's true, then your generosity is helping expose a faulty part of your foundation.

And that's a beautiful gift.

Because if you don't know what's broken, it's very hard to fix.

So this matters, and Jesus is gonna emphasize why it matters.

The one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation, and the river crashed against it, and immediately it collapsed.

Listen, and the destruction of that house was great.

Here's what's true.

If your house completely implodes, it will do damage not just to your house.

It will do damage to everything and everyone in your house, it will do damage to the houses and property around you.

Some of you know this, you've lived it, I've lived it.

So start building something else.

Surrender to the kingdom of God and start building for the kingdom.

How do you do that?

Good news.

I have preached 10 sermons on that in the last 10 weeks.

None of those sermons matter if you don't dig deep and set Christ as your foundation.

Here's what's true if you're taking notes.

You cannot build a house without a foundation.

You cannot build your purpose without Jesus.

Who you were created to be requires Jesus as your foundation.

This is not easy.

This is some of the hardest work that you will do, but it is important.

It's important you learn how to dig.

And that's something that you'll probably struggle to do on your own, which is why the local church, the body of Christ, is such an unbelievable gift to Christ followers.

When we started Metachurch, uh, I knew right away we're not just gonna do a thousand different ministries here.

That's not gonna be our missional model.

We're not gonna do a ministry because this person wants one, and this person wants one, and this person wants a ministry.

We'll help them start that ministry in their own life, and we will support them because you are this church.

As far as what we're going to organize together, we're going to decide what needs to happen for us to actually live on purpose and with purpose.

What actually needs to happen for us to join together and build the kingdom of God?

So here's just a couple of things that we do.

We do what's called the Movement Academy.

We all get stuck.

And the Academy, I could tell you all kinds of things that we do in there.

I will make it simple.

We come alongside you with someone who loves you, someone who is trained, someone who is godly, and we help you dig.

And it's hard work, and it's often very painful, and we don't want to do it.

We're like, I don't, the most painful parts of my life, I'm not going back there.

I've spent 30 years suppressing that time in my life.

It's like, yes, my parents left when I was young, and I've always thought it was my fallout, but I just, you know, I'm over it.

It's like you think you're over it, but you're not.

Ask your spouse.

Ask your kids.

Ask your coworkers.

We gotta dig.

In the academy, we just help you dig so that you can set your life on a firm foundation.

Everyone needs community, specifically Christian community.

Let's try to do this together.

Application happens in community, not just being a hearer, being a doer of the word.

That's application.

It happens in community.

Community allows you to come in and be authentic, and community gives you accountability.

People who love you and will help you walk this out.

That's why we offer life teams.

Intentional Christian community.

You know what a life team does?

They get to know you, you trust each other, you learn to love each other, and you help each other dig.

And if you dig and you are a child of God, here's the beautiful thing: there is a foundation.

His name is Jesus Christ.

And if you can start weeding out, digging through these lies and these falsehoods and these habits, then you can center your life, your foundation on Jesus.

And your spiritual experience won't be Sunday to Sunday to Sunday.

You won't just be motivated to live this out when you're in front of your life team.

You won't just be inspired to build the kingdom when you're staring directly at the word.

The word will be in you.

The inspiration won't have to be manufactured by a talented band or a service full of other believers.

Your life will be built into a foundation, and all of the things that knock you off of your spiritual path, you'll be able to finally stand strong.

Now you will not do this perfectly because you are human and you're fallible.

And if you could do it perfectly, Jesus would not had to have gone to the cross.

If you could do it perfectly, Jesus would not have to have gone to the cross.

He knows you won't do it perfectly.

A lot of this is just about direction.

Are you moving in the direction of the kingdom of God?

Are you digging out the things that are holding you back?

Are you setting your foundation in Jesus Christ?

You will stumble, you will fall, you will slip, you will slide, you'll have good days, you'll have bad days, but you're always moving, even imperfectly, towards building the kingdom.

Or is it superficial Christianity?

Are you aimed at the kingdoms of this world?

Are you building a life without a foundation?

Here's what I believe.

If I were the devil, I would find motivated Christians without a foundation, and I would make sure that they build the biggest ministry possible as fast as possible.

Knowing a storm will come and the damage will be great.

You need a foundation.

I want you to build something unbelievable with your life, and I believe that God has that for you.

I want the people of MetaCurch to have influence, influence in your homes, influence in your neighborhood, influence in our city, influence in our country, influence around the world, influence online.

But you can't skip the digging.

But foundation first.

A foundation that can stand up the size and scope of what God wants to build in us.

Some of you haven't taken your first step in this journey.

You don't have a relationship with God.

All of us are separated from God by our sin.

And that's a problem.

Jesus came to address that problem.

Jesus lived the perfect life we could not, he died the death that we deserved, and he walked out of his own grave to prove to you that he can offer you life after death.

Jesus didn't come to start another religion and do this outside in type of control.

Jesus came to offer you a relationship with your heavenly Father, and all he asks for is your faith.

And when you put your faith in Jesus, convinced and convicted that Jesus is your only hope for this life, and your only hope for what comes next, scripture says all of the sin that separates you from God is covered by Jesus.

That you're given the gift of eternal life, something that no one and nothing could ever take away from you.

And what that means is that Jesus is forever in your life.

And you have the opportunity to build your life on him as your foundation.

As we close service across our venues, if you would pray with me, just bow your head and close your eyes, create a little bit of distraction free space.

I just want to ask if you're here and you've never had a moment in your life where you'd have consciously decided to put your faith in Jesus.

If that's you, my guess is the Spirit of God's pressing in on your life right now, drawing you to surrender and put your faith in Jesus.

And I just can't encourage you strongly enough.

Surrender.

Choose Jesus.

Do it today.

Tomorrow's not promised.

If that's you and you're ready for the first time to put your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you to acknowledge that.

With everyone's eyes closed, to acknowledge it by just simply raising your hand.

Raising your hand is a symbolic gesture that just says, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, God.

For those who raised a hand, we can say with confidence, God sees your faith in this moment, forgives all of your sins, and has given you the gift of eternal life.

And all I want to do now is very simply help you acknowledge this decision.

I'm going to ask you to repeat this prayer with me.

I'm going to ask all believers at our venues to pray out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

If you want to help get the word out about this podcast, the first thing you can do is subscribe.

You can also rate and review this on whatever platform you like to listen on, and you can share it with your friends.

If you want to know more about MetaCurch, you can go to our website, metachurch.tv, where you can find out about all things MetaCurch.

And if you feel led, you can contribute to help push this movement forward.

We hope that you'll join us next week on the MetaCurch Podcast.