Fulfilled: The Chosen King: Luke 1:34-38 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Wherever you're joining us here at MetaCurch, if you're at one of our physical locations, our Holotus Venue or our Petrenko venue, so glad you're here.

If you're joining us online, I'm so glad that you have tuned in from wherever you are tuning in from.

We're in a very exciting season.

We are in summer.

And uh, if you do live in San Antonio, you know we are like in summer, dude.

It is fully engaged, fully hot.

Uh, and we're gonna start doing some summer celebration.

We let you know last week that this Wednesday, uh June 11th, we are kicking off summer nights.

We wanna make sure you know about this, that you come out.

We are gonna be watching throughout the summer season one of The Chosen.

So we're in Luke's gospel, we're learning about the real Jesus.

We're gonna see a great depiction of Jesus through film in the chosen.

Um, now, this is attached to a really important announcement.

Uh, there is no meta youth on Sunday nights throughout the summer.

So if you're in sixth through twelfth grade and you show up to MetaYouth tonight, you will be alone.

All right.

It's not happening on Sunday nights.

Instead, MetaYouth is hosting summer nights.

They're putting it on, they're kind of leading it.

I'm so thankful to the Meta Youth Ministry for doing that.

Summer nights is for everyone, all ages and stages of life.

I hope you'll come in, watch, reflect, connect.

It's gonna be a really, really great time.

So that starts this Wednesday, 7 p.m.

at the Petrenko Auditorium.

So make sure that you come out for that.

Now, if you're new, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here.

We are walking line by line through the gospel of Luke, and we're trying to learn how to approach scripture, trying to learn how to feed ourselves, to get in the word, to start taking notes, not just to hear from a preacher or a podcaster or a YouTuber, but to actually hear from God.

God is real, God is personal, he's wanting to speak into your life, and so we're really taking our time.

I keep saying, like, Metachurch, we are all becoming biblical scholars in real time.

We're learning how to do this together.

It's been so fruitful so far.

Um, last week we looked at half of the conversation between the angel Gabriel and Mary, the mother of Jesus.

And we learned that Mary was just random.

She was a nobody from nowhere.

She's from Nazareth, which was like the nowhere of all now.

She's a nobody from nowhere, doing nothing significant with her life.

Mary's destiny was to live in Nazareth, to make a family in Nazareth, to die in Nazareth, and to be unknown to history until God had something to say about that.

And so last week we hear this incredible prophecy of the role that she is going to play in God's plan for the history of humanity.

And the question I want to ask and try to answer today is how do I step into my calling?

So we're all note takers now, you can write this down, it's a good question.

How do I step into my calling?

Um, Mary has this giant calling placed on her life.

Today we're gonna see her response, and her response is going to be so instructive for how we think about our own calling, because you know this at MetaCurch, we start with the belief that you were created on purpose and you were created with purpose.

What that means is it's no accident that you're on planet Earth.

You were created on purpose.

And I realize at certain times in your life, and maybe even right now, it feels like you're an accident.

Like you're going nowhere, like your life doesn't really have any meaning.

It's fruitless, it's purposeless, maybe you feel insignificant.

Maybe at times you think, not only do I not really have purpose, I feel like I'm just kind of a burden.

I'm a burden on my friends, I'm a burden on my family.

You feel like an accident.

What I want to suggest, maybe reframe some of those feelings, is the very fact of those feelings points to the fingerprints of God on your life.

You feel frustrated because your life is meaningless, specifically because God has created you to live a meaningful life.

You feel frustrated that your life lacks purpose specifically because God created you on purpose and with a purpose.

Those very deep longings, at like the core of who we are, they point to the fingerprints and the shaping of God on our life.

And part of why we submit our lives and follow Jesus is because Jesus created us, He put our purpose inside of us, and only He alone can uniquely show us what our purpose actually is.

Because you were created on purpose and with purpose, it means there's some sense of calling on your life.

And sometimes that takes a little while to get full clarity on.

But what you do is you take steps of faith as those steps are revealed to you, and those steps are revealed to you as you get closer to God and you learn how to listen to him and talk to him and pay attention.

And so, how do I step into my calling?

We're gonna look at how Mary stepped into hers.

Now, we're not gonna have these on the screen for you, but I just want to give you a quick reminder of what the angel Gabriel had just prophesied over Mary's life.

He said, Mary, you have found favor with God.

You'll conceive and give birth to a son, you'll name him Jesus.

He'll be great, he'll be called the Son of the Most High.

The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, he'll reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

That's a big calling.

And so, what is Mary's response?

Immediately she asks a question in verse 34.

Mary asked the angel, How can this be?

Since I have not had sexual relations with a man.

That's a good question.

It's like Mary is a young woman, she's a virgin, she has no sexual history, she's not sexually active, she might not be a genius, but she knows virgins do not conceive, and virgins do not give birth, so she asks the question all of us would have had: how can this be?

Now, if we're slowing down, and if you've been here through the last three weeks, this might bring a question to mind.

Because we've already read that not only does the angel not get frustrated with her, she doesn't get punished for asking this question, she actually gets like an answer and some confirmation and affirmation.

Instead of what Zechariah got.

See, Luke doesn't open his gospel with the announcement of Jesus, he opens it with the announcement of John the Baptist.

The same angel Gabriel shows up to John the Baptist's dad, Zechariah.

If you forget this moment, right after the angel says, Zechariah, I know you're really old, and I know your wife is past childbearing years, and I know both of you have been barren your entire life, but you will have a son, and you will name him John.

This is how Zechariah responds back in week one, Luke 1, verse 18.

Luke 1:18

Zechariah asks the angel, How can I know this?

For I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.

Can we just stop and give some props to Zechariah?

Because he's like, Look, I'm old and my wife's also uh well along in years.

That is a tactical answer.

Husbands, take note.

You're old, your wife is well along in years.

That's that's wonderful.

It's like, how could this happen?

Because I'm overweight and my wife is well along in numbers on the scale.

You know, it's like there's a way to give good answers here, you know, Props to Zechariah.

Um this is just like practical for him.

And if you remember what happened in week one, Zechariah asks this, and the angel says, Because of your doubt, your mouth will be shut.

And Zechariah became mute until John was born, and we'll see in a couple of weeks until he was named.

And so, what's the difference?

Mary asked, How can this be?

So we have how can this be versus Zechariah, who said, How can I know this?

And I do think this is important because when God calls you, he is likely going to call you into something that is bigger than you.

When you start exercising God-sized faith, you end up getting a God-sized calling.

And God-sized calling is gonna bring some questions.

And so, why is Zechariah punished for his question and Mary is rewarded for hers?

Well, some of it is contextual.

Zechariah is an old man and he's a priest, which means he studies the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish scriptures.

He studies the law and the prophets.

What we call our Old Testament, Zechariah knows all of it.

Mary is a very young woman.

Because she's a woman in the ancient world, she has no access to education.

Now she knows the major stories from the Torah.

That's important to note because that's gonna come into play here in just a little bit.

But she hasn't studied the law and the prophets.

It's also different because the promise given to Zechariah has precedent.

It is a promise with precedent.

There are multiple times throughout the Jewish scriptures, our Old Testament, that there are couples who are past childbearing years and barren, and God opens their womb and gives them a child.

It happens multiple times.

Zechariah knows that he's a priest who studies the scriptures.

What's happening to Mary has no precedent.

There has never been a virgin conception.

There has never been a virgin birth.

So you have contextual differences.

It's also just worth noting, they ask different questions.

Mary has faith-filled curiosity.

She's not doubting it will happen, she's just asking how.

She's asking a very simple, practical question.

Because I am a virgin, how can this be?

What did Zechariah ask?

How can I know this?

He didn't ask with faith-filled curiosity, he asked with skeptical doubt.

And so when God shows up, and if you start paying attention and following Jesus, which means you deny yourself and you pick up your cross and you follow after him into the life of purpose he created you for, there's gonna be some God-sized callings come your way.

There's gonna be some God-sized promptings come your way, and some of them are gonna be confusing.

And hopefully, this empowers you.

I know so many Jesus followers who are so terrified of ever being accused of doubting God that they won't ask questions that they have.

You need to know this: God is big enough to handle your questions, but you need to approach God in faith.

Doubt is not necessarily the absence of faith.

It's like, I'm a virgin, virgins don't conceive, so how?

How can this be?

It's a good question.

She doesn't doubt that God can do it, she's just curious what the mechanism is.

How's it going to happen?

What is the plan?

God can handle your how, God can handle your why, God can handle your questions as long as you have faith enough to hear the answers and respond.

And she does get very, very robust answer.

As a matter of fact, and you can write this down in the actual text if you want to, she gets an answer, that's verse 35.

Next to 35, you can write down answer.

She gets affirmation in verse 36, and then she gets an appeal from the angel Gabriel in verse 37.

Three verses: an answer, affirmation, an appeal.

I want to go through them and we're gonna actually work our way backwards.

We're gonna go 37, 36, 35.

But let's read them in order first.

The angel replied to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

Verse 36, affirmation, and consider your relative Elizabeth.

Even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who is called childless, and finally, an appeal, verse 37.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

Metachurch say amen.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

An appeal.

I want to start there.

It's an appeal, it's also the answer behind every answer.

Nothing will be impossible with God.

This miracle of a virgin birth, we will see by the end of our time, actually takes us back to the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of our Bibles.

Creation out of what?

Nothing.

Nothing will be impossible for God.

And I know some of you are here today with very heavy hearts.

Some of you are looking at situations in your life and you have no hope, you have no faith, you have no peace, you feel no love, you cannot see a future.

You're looking and going, I have nothing.

And what God showed us in Mary is that God can take nothing and do something so significant.

And maybe in your marriage, you're going, There's just nothing I can give to this.

I've tried everything, there's nothing left to try.

I can't tell you how many couples I have sat with who are in crisis, and they will say, I have no hope.

And that's when it's my job to remind them, as long as there is God, there is hope.

And so you need to know this, because I love, I love giving pastoral counsel.

It's it's one of my gifts, it's the position God's given me.

But if you come and you say, I have nothing, I have to look to scripture and respond, impossible.

If you have nothing, then you might be situated, just like Mary, to see a miracle in your life.

It's like there's nothing left, there's no hope.

Maybe you need it to get to nothing in your marriage, so you'll stop trying to build a marriage out of your own strength and your own skill and your own ideas, and let God be the foundation of your marriage so he can build something up that gives glory to his name.

God can do more with your nothing than you can do with all of your plentiful resources.

God is ready to work.

Sometimes God brings us to nothing so he can finally get us to his purposes.

Nothing will be impossible.

It's like there's nothing I can do.

This financial mess I'm in, there's no hope.

There's nothing I can do to get out of it.

Good.

You're married.

God can do something with nothing.

Nothing will be impossible.

Reframe those words.

Nothing will be impossible.

I don't want to hear about your nothing.

Every one of you, you know this if you go to metachurch.

The church is not the buildings that we meet in, the church is not the Sunday service that we put on.

You are the church.

The Greek word is ekklesia.

It means literally the called out people.

It's the called out people of God following Jesus.

You are the church, which means you don't go to church, you are the church, you serve the church, you live and breathe the church.

It's who you are.

You are this movement.

And so many believers in Jesus come and they sit in a Sunday service and they look around and we're like, get involved, serve, use your gifts.

And you're like, I've got nothing to offer.

I can't play instruments or sing like the bands at our venues.

I don't preach.

I'm not a particularly good leader.

I don't, I'm like an introvert.

I don't want to greet people, I don't want to see people.

You're like lucky I'm here, you know.

It's like, I've got nothing to give.

You've no idea what God wants to do with your nothing.

You have no idea how he can take nothing, and if you will just give it to him, put it in his hands, trust him with it, say yes to him, how God can take your nothing and move you into your purpose.

Nothing will be impossible with God.

She gets an appeal, and it's important.

And if we became Jesus' followers who lived like this is our baseline truth, do the people in your life see this in you?

Like, are you someone who your friends and family and coworkers and neighbors look at and go, Man, it's almost like they don't believe in the impossible.

That was the early church.

That was the apostles, that was the small circle of believers in Rome who they were feeding to the lions who believed that even though they were diminishing and persecuted, nothing was impossible and given a couple hundred years took over the Roman Empire.

Nothing is impossible.

Do you believe that?

And do you show evidence of that in your life?

This is the answer behind every answer.

How will I get out of this?

What are we going to do?

How does God make a way?

Where does the miracle come?

How do I find healing?

Nothing is impossible with God.

If you believe it, it will change your life.

If you don't believe it, then we will stay stagnant.

This is the baseline belief that leads to revival, the baseline belief that opens up your calling, the baseline belief that changes lives and families and communities and cities.

Nothing will be impossible with God.

Metachurch, say amen if you believe that.

Amen.

He gives an appeal, he gives affirmation in verse 36.

Consider your relative Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was Mary's much older cousin, possibly a mentor to Mary.

She was a righteous woman in God's eyes.

Mary looked up to her.

She had no idea.

It's not like Elizabeth was like on the gram, like six months, baby bump, you know, like she didn't know.

She didn't know.

She couldn't call and find out.

They lived in different parts of Israel.

Elizabeth is used as affirmation, and God does this.

God uses the body of believers to bring affirmation into your life.

This is why people who are like, I don't need an organized church, you know.

I just, I go to the woods, you know, I just I go out.

That's my church.

It's just me and the birds, you know.

I just like smoke a little weed, and then I just, it's just me and God, you know.

It's like, fine, all right.

But the church is the body of believers.

And it matters that we come together.

It's why scripture commands us to do that.

Do not neglect gathering together as some are in the habit of doing.

We're meant to be together.

And Sunday service matters.

The body of Christ is supernatural.

You need to know that.

It doesn't feel that way because, like in our venues, we're just in these buildings and we have four walls and a roof and a stage and some speakers.

Nothing feels supernatural about it.

The body of Christ is supernatural.

God moves supernaturally.

You need to be in real community, which doesn't happen in a big service, it happens in life teams.

If you don't have Christian community where you're applying the word together consistently, if you don't have Christian community holding you accountable to the purpose God has placed on your life, you need to join a life team.

If you can't find a life team that fits your schedule or your preferences, you need to start a life team.

We can teach you how to lead one.

You need to be in Christian community because affirmation comes through Christian community.

There's something I've been struggling with in my personal life and just trying to get clarity, trying to hear from God.

One of my close friends, one of those friends who's like an older brother to me, uh hit me up randomly, invited me to run some errands, eat some lunch.

Didn't think anything of it.

We're on our way to Austin, and all I can, the only way I can describe it is it's like God turned him off and just started speaking through him to me.

Affirmation, instruction that I needed.

God does that.

He uses the body of believers.

Let me tell you something about the church.

Uh, I hear increasingly people who, especially post-COVID, they got disconnected from a local body of believers and they're mad at the church, and they're like, I'm mad at the church.

Okay, so here's my advice.

Be careful.

Probably you're mad at a local church.

Probably you're mad at a leader, you're mad at a person, you're mad at a group of people.

Scripture says the church is the bride of Christ.

Scripture says the church is Jesus' wife.

You can do almost anything to me, I won't fight you.

Except come at my wife.

You will never see me more serious than if you offend my wife.

So be careful.

I'm out of the church.

I hate the church.

You're talking about the bride of Jesus, a supernatural body of believers that all Believers are called to be a part of.

We need it, we need each other.

God brings affirmation to the very woman who will bring God to the earth, and he does it through community, and he'll do it in your life as well.

I gotta get moving.

We have an appeal, nothing is impossible with God.

We have affirmation through Elizabeth, but first we have an answer.

So Mary's just given this unbelievable prophecy, and she asks a great question.

How can this be?

How can a virgin give birth?

And here's the answer that she's given Luke 135.

The angel replied to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore, the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

That's the answer.

And Mary gets that answer.

She asks a very confusing question.

She's like, So I'm a virgin, so you know, virgins don't conceive, so I just need to know, just curious, faith-filled curiosity, how exactly is that gonna happen?

And the angel says, Well, here's what will happen: the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you.

And Mary's like, I'm in.

Like it's some great spiritual language, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will official.

What does that actually mean, though?

How does that explain the impossible?

How is Mary just ready to be like, sign me up?

That answers all the questions that I have, bro.

I'd be like, I have a thousand more questions.

And so this is what we're learning as we approach scripture and we find something, and you ask a question.

It's like, how did Mary know what that meant?

It's a good question.

And if you chase that question down, you get an unbelievable answer.

Mary was a young Jewish woman, and as a Jewish child, she would have been brought up on the key stories throughout the Torah.

The Torah has become the first five books of our Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

It tells the story from Adam all the way through to Joshua.

So you get the whole scope of God's creation, God resetting creation, God calling Abraham unto himself, God creating a nation out of Abraham that would be his people for a specific purpose and a specific time.

Abraham was promised from the beginning, I will use someone from your lineage to come and bless the entire world.

And God did that when he came to earth as Jesus.

And so you have all of this set up.

And one of the things that happens is you get Moses in the wilderness.

He's rescued all of Israel from Egyptian slavery, and God is guiding them.

And the Spirit of God is showing up as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

And God says something that Moses simply cannot understand.

There's chapters and chapters and chapters in Exodus of God describing in every tiny detail how to build a tent.

This tent will be called the tabernacle.

And God tells Moses, If you build me this tent, then I will come and I will live in it.

Now, these ancient people knew of God.

What we also know of God, God is omnipresent, He's everywhere all of the time, He is omnipotent, He is all powerful, He is infinite, He cannot be contained, and so Moses has a great question, and it's something like How can God live in a tent?

And it turns out it is a similar question to how can God live in the womb of a virgin?

During Mary's life in the first century, the Jewish people had taken the Hebrew Old Testament and they had translated it into Greek.

It's called the Septuagint, it's the Greek Old Testament.

This is how she would have known the key stories.

And one of the most significant moments in Israel's history is when God came to live among his people in the tabernacle.

I want to read that in Exodus chapter 40.

Exodus 40 · chapter mention

These are some of the last verses in the book of Exodus.

It says this the cloud, which was the Spirit of God, covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Verse 35, Moses was unable to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud rested on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Now our Bibles are translated from the Hebrew.

They're not translated from the Greek Septuagint.

But in the Greek Septuagint, how this reads the cloud covered the tent, the Spirit of God came upon it, the cloud rested on it.

In the Greek is the exact identical verb in Luke that says the Most High overshadowed it.

Mary would not have been able to miss this.

When she asks, how can this be?

How can God be contained on the earth?

How could God be contained in my womb?

The angel takes her back to the tabernacle.

The Spirit of God will come upon it, and the power of the Most High will overshadow it.

And Mary knows that once that took place, the Spirit of God lived in the tent.

Gabriel, in essence, is answering her question by saying, Mary, remember the tabernacle in the wilderness?

That's you now.

You, Mary, are now the walking, talking, living, breathing tabernacle that will contain the very Spirit of God.

It's incredible.

It's incredible to see the symmetry, to see the connection, but it's deeper.

You see, the tabernacle played a very specific role.

The Spirit of God actually lived in the very center of the tabernacle, which was called the Holy of Holies.

And the Holy of Holies was designed and decorated very precisely to mimic the Garden of Eden.

See, what people picked up when the tabernacle was put together is that even the language of the tabernacle was referencing back even further to the very first verses of the very first chapter of the very first book of Torah, the book of Genesis, which just means beginnings.

Genesis 1 says this in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty.

Darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

The story of creation is the Spirit of God coming upon the world and causing chaos to turn into the order of our universe.

And God created out of his nature, and his nature is love, and in his loving nature, he created us in his image, and he created us for relationship with himself.

And so he made a walled garden called Eden, and Eden was perfection, and God walked and talked in communion, fellowship, and relationship with his people until his people rebelled and walked out of relationship with him.

You want to know why people could not fathom God living in a tent?

Because they knew that all the way back in the garden we had rebelled and lost our direct access to God.

And so God says, I want to make a tent, and in the inside, we're going to simulate Eden.

And there is a distinct purpose for the creation of this.

You see, when he gave his instructions back in Exodus 25, here's God's heart.

God told them, They are to make a sanctuary for me so that I may dwell among them.

The tabernacle was God reclaiming a piece of what we lost in Eden.

Even though we rebelled and we rejected God, God is still in his intention trying to come and live among us.

And how is God contained in a tent?

The Holy Spirit comes upon it, and the power of God overshadows it.

Later in Israel's history, uh David becomes king.

And he's a great king, and he lives in a massive, splendid palace.

One day, David is in his palace, and he looks over and he sees the tabernacle, and his heart is convicted.

How can I live in this incredible palace and the Spirit of God dwells in a tent?

So he draws up plans for a temple.

Something stable and significant.

His son Solomon becomes king, and Solomon actually builds that temple.

You won't be surprised at all to hear how God indwelled the temple.

In 1 Kings 8, starting in verse 10, when the priest came out of the holy place, the cloud filled the Lord's temple.

And because of the cloud, the priests were not able to continue ministering, for the glory of the Lord had filled the temple.

Mary asked a very good question.

How could God be contained inside a virgin womb?

Moses asked a very good question.

How can the omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite God be contained in a tent?

And the answers were the same.

The Holy Spirit will come upon it, and the power of God will overshadow it.

And God will come and dwell among his people.

This matters.

If you're not a believer in Jesus, you don't have a relationship with God, you should be paying attention to how desperately God tries to get in relationship with his people.

You should be paying attention to the great lengths that God will go to to pursue us.

If you are a believer in Jesus, this gets even deeper.

Let's look again at what the angel said to Mary.

The angel replied to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you.

The power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Mary, you are the new tabernacle, you are the new temple, you will bear the spirit and presence of God.

Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

Remember what John says in the opening of his gospel?

He says, The Logos, the organizing principle of all creation, became flesh.

Why?

So it could dwell among us.

Jesus came, God in human flesh, and he walked among us.

He walked this earth.

God set foot back on earth for the first time since Eden.

God comes after his people.

We lost it in Eden.

He came back in a tabernacle.

He came back and a temple.

And now Gabriel is coming to Mary and saying, Look, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the one you will give birth to is the Son of God.

He is the Lord.

The one born to you will be Yahweh.

It's unbelievable if you don't know the story of Jesus.

Jesus lives basically in obscurity until about 30 years old.

He starts his ministry, his ministry lasts three years.

He proves his deity.

He speaks with authority, no one has ever heard before.

He heals, he casts out demons, he raises the dead, he forgives sins, something only God can do.

Eventually he threatened the power structures, the people turned on him, he was crucified, which seemed like this massive detour, but was always the destination.

Scripture tells us that the price of our sin, our rebellion against God, is death.

And Jesus came into the world, God stepped foot in the world, he dwelt among us to pay the price of our sin so that death could no longer touch us.

And after he had died, and all of our sins and debt and obligation was nailed to his cross, he was laid in a tomb, where he rose again three days later, proving that death could not hold him, certifying that he could offer you life after death.

After that, Jesus spent about 40 days on earth, and then it was time to ascend back to heaven.

Now, if you're a follower of Jesus, and Jesus has come saying, We are going to build the kingdom of God.

I am the chosen king, we are going to build this kingdom, and then Jesus said, and by the way, I've got a throne with my name on it, so I'm gonna head out for a little while.

You would react, how everyone reacted, Jesus, that sounds like a terrible idea.

God has been trying to dwell among his people ever since Eden, and now you're here, you're God, so just stay here.

But God had other plans.

And so, if that's you, if you're on the mountain with Jesus that day and he's getting ready to ascend back to heaven, it's a daunting task ahead of you.

Jesus says, I'm leaving this movement in your hands, this thing we call church, the called-out people of God who will change the world.

I'm leaving it in your hands.

Jesus said crazy things.

He said in John's gospel, Y'all will do even greater things than I have done because I am sending the Holy Spirit to be in your lives.

It's incredible.

And so you have this daunting task ahead of you.

You have Jesus who is about to ascend back to heaven with a promise to return someday.

What's his final words to you?

These words ended up being the verse that animates our vision at Metachurch.

It's found in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, and I want you to pay very careful attention to what Jesus says.

Acts 1:8

In Acts 1.8, Jesus says, You will receive power, and we're gonna need power if we're gonna uphold the role that Jesus has given us.

When will we receive power?

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you.

And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

This is our call.

This is why, as Metachurch, we have decided that we are not content to just have one location, to build it really big, to push out the metachurch brand.

We don't care about any of that.

What we care about is being obedient to the commands of Jesus, and Jesus has told us that we now are the new temple.

We now are the new tabernacle, and it isn't constrained by buildings, it is inside of us.

Here's what Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6 19.

Paul said, Don't you know, church?

Don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God.

You are not your own.

They understood this.

It started with Mary, it came on to Jesus, and then Jesus gave his spirit to us, and now we are the temple, but we have no boundaries.

We're not bound by brick and mortar, we are not bound by buildings.

And so the question is: God who desires to dwell among his people, God who desires to go into the darkness and illuminate, God who desires to go to those who are on the margins and rescue and redeem.

God who is pursuing those who are furthest from him, maddest at him.

How does he get to them?

The answer is his church, which is why his church cannot be content to sit still.

I just I want this to sit on you like it sat on me a couple of weeks ago.

I want to bring back up Acts 1.8.

Jesus, we think, was 33 years old in this moment.

33 years earlier, the angel Gabriel came to his mother.

Said, you are going to give birth as a virgin to God's chosen king.

And she said, How could that happen?

How could the Spirit of God, the person of God, be contained in a womb, much less a virgin womb?

The angel Gabriel said to Jesus' mother, The Holy Spirit will come on you.

Jesus stood on a hillside, the last words he said to us, You will receive power, you will be the new tabernacle, you will allow God to dwell on the earth, and you'll have the power that you need.

He echoed the words of the angel Gabriel to his own mother because the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

You need to know this in the New Testament.

This will help you.

Um, there's no you's, it's all y'all, all of them.

In the Greek, all the you are actually second person plurals, and there's really not a good word for second person plurals in most of English except Texas, because a second person plural is y'all.

If you're from the Northeast, you say use guys, you know, we'll pray for you.

That's terrible.

We say y'all.

Here's what he actually said: Jesus said, Y'all, my church, will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon all of y'all.

We're promised this.

We're given the Holy Spirit when we put our faith in Jesus.

So, what is the church?

The church is God's vehicle for making space for God to dwell on the earth.

Let me say that again.

The church is God's vehicle to make space for God to dwell on the earth.

The body of Christ, the church, is supernatural in its very being.

What we're doing here at our venues is supernatural.

And we're making space, which is why last October we opened the Holodas venue.

It wasn't because we had hit some certain metrics that trigger you to then have to have a second location.

It isn't because we're trying to get the metachurch brand out or build some influence or be on some platforms.

We don't care about that.

Life is short, and however many years God gives us to live on this earth, we should seek to expand his kingdom as far and wide as possible.

And to do that, you don't just pray about it, you don't just sing about it, you don't just preach about it, you go and you take ground even at cost to yourself.

And so you need to hear this.

You may not be clapping for long.

Unless you have a really compelling reason, you should not drive past the Holodus venue to go somewhere else.

Now you might have a compelling reason.

You might have someone that you're ministering to, and they live right by the Petrenko location, and so you come here to meet them, so they'll come.

That's a compelling reason.

But here's what I hear, and I know it happens.

Here's what I hear.

Well, you know, Petrenko, the sermon's on a screen.

And I want to be there, bro.

I want to I wanna sit in the splash zone, you know, or pastor is like sweating and spitting and stuff.

You know, it's like uh the building's a little smaller in Helotus.

Maybe you serve at MetaCurch and you realize a mobile venue where you have to set up and tear down is is harder.

It is harder, it's less convenient.

So let me tell you if you are not a believer, you do literally whatever you want.

You have my blessing.

Go wherever you want, do whatever you want.

If you are a follower of Jesus and you're serious about your faith, I want to tell you this with a lot of love.

Those are called preferences.

And I don't care about your preferences, I care about your purpose, and we need help expanding the kingdom of God.

We're not stopping at two venues, it's hard work.

But if you want to follow Jesus, you deny yourself and you take up your cross and you choose suffering, and you don't stop suffer for stupid reasons.

All of us are good at that.

You suffer for the kingdom.

Maybe we're What's stopping you from really diving in is you go, I just have nothing to offer.

Good.

You're Mary.

God can do miracles with your nothing if you'll just trust him.

You know, we come all the way back to the question that we asked at the beginning.

How do I step into my calling?

We're gonna go to our last verse in Luke 1.

Here's what Mary says.

Mary says, I am the Lord's servant.

So may it happen to me as you have said.

Sometimes the answers we're looking for are so obvious it's actually painful.

How do you step into your calling?

You say yes.

It's not magic.

It's like you spend time with the Lord and you hear from the Lord and you pay careful attention, and you're probably not gonna get the whole picture up front.

So you get a tiny piece of the picture, and whatever it is, you just say yes.

One opportunity, one conversation, one prompting from the Holy Spirit, one service opportunity, one team to join, one life team that you visit, one life team that you start, one conversation that you have, one verse that you read.

You just start saying yes to the Holy Spirit.

And as you say yes, your calling will become more clear.

And that's a good thing, but it's also a problem.

Because the clearer your calling gets, the bigger you will realize that it is.

And the bigger it is, the more faith it will require.

So you ask your questions with spiritual, faith-filled curiosity, and you pay very close attention to the answers that God gives you, and then you walk in faith.

And if we believe nothing is impossible with God, then nothing will stop us from saying yes to Him, even at cost to ourselves.

And if we will become self-sacrificial followers of Christ who believe nothing is impossible, we will see miracles and revival in our lifetime.

How do I step into my calling?

You say yes.

You say yes in hard seasons, you say yes when you're ill-equipped, you say yes when you're unqualified, you say yes when you're scared, when you're nervous, you say yes when it doesn't make sense when God calls, you say yes.

And how it works is when you say yes and you steward well the small things, God trusts you with things that are bigger and bigger.

And here's my guess.

We don't know, this isn't scripture, we're now into Clayton making guesses.

Just want to be clear.

My guess is that Mary had said yes to a lot of small things.

And God showed up with confidence that she would say yes to the biggest thing of them all.

We said it last week.

Mary is not some mythical figure, she's not a deity, she's not altogether different than you.

She is you.

She's me.

She's a nobody from nowhere, doing nothing significant with her life.

But when God called, she said yes.

And Mary played a role, a massive role, a starring role in changing the world forever.

What would happen if you just said yes?

Would you pray with me as we close across our venues?

You can bow your head, close your eyes.

Nothing magic about that.

Just create a little bit of space.

For believers, I wonder if there have been some promptings and you've been ignoring them.

You have like your set of excuses.

I don't know enough, I don't, I'm not qualified enough, I don't know enough scripture, I've made too many mistakes, I've been married too many times, I was incarcerated for too long.

It's like all the excuses.

What if you just said yes?

Mary could have thought of a thousand and one excuses.

You know what?

She asked one question, she got her answer, she said yes.

You have no idea what is on the other side of a scared, nervous, unqualified yes.

I also want to speak to anyone who doesn't have a relationship with God.

What you haven't done is you haven't given your first yes that leads to all the other ones.

And I hope you have seen, as we've gone literally from Genesis all the way to Jesus, that God has never stopped pursuing relationship with his people.

God loves you, he has called you, you are separated from God because of your sin, but Jesus came and paid the price of those sins.

And all he asks is for your faith.

A moment where you are convinced and convicted that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has done what he says he has done, and all of your sins will be forgiven.

We can say that confidently because of Scripture.

Which means you will be adopted back into God's family and live eternally with him.

With everyone's eyes closed, across our venues.

If you've never had a moment in time where you've put your faith in Jesus, my guess is the Holy Spirit has gripped your heart.

That is the kindness of God leading you into relationship.

What I want you to do, if you're ready, is just to raise your hand right where you're sitting, across our venues.

It's this moment of courage to raise your hand, it's a symbolic gesture saying, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees and accepts your faith.

Your sins are forgiven, and you've been given eternal life with God.

And all I want to do is very simply help you acknowledge this moment with a prayer.

I'm gonna ask you to repeat this with me.

I'm gonna ask all the believers at our venues to pray this out loud with us 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.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast, you can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.