Discover Heartland Week 2 - Purpose, Impact, Way

All right.

Good evening.

Sorry we are a couple minutes behind.

I got ready to come up here and realize I had no idea where my kids were.

So I had to check them in and get them to class and then rush back in here.

But glad you guys are here.

If if tonight is your first night, or maybe it's you not your first night, it's your second night, but you didn't get one of these last week, I would encourage you to grab some.

I printed some more today.

I did notice we have some purple lines showing up from the printer.

Um you can still read it, it'll be fine, but we'll have a service call and have some some updated ones next week if they bother, they bother you.

But there's some uh books in the back.

I'd encourage you to grab one if you haven't already done so.

Uh tonight we're focusing primarily, almost entirely on chapter four.

I hesitate to say this on the front end because I may go longer than planned, but we should have some time at the end tonight to ask some questions, either about tonight's content or even last week's content.

Uh but also we may not, because I'm doing like I did last week, I'm going no notes, so we'll see see how it goes.

But we're gonna work through chapter four, and then next week we'll we'll pick up in chapter five.

But the hope is that we'll have some time at the end for questions.

Let me pray for us, and then we're gonna we're gonna dive into the second part of our membership class.

Father, we are grateful uh for who you are.

Um God, even as I've reflected on the last couple weeks in the life of our church, everything from Easter and resurrection to starting a membership class to getting to host some brothers who are faithfully serving around the world this week to uh just the Wednesday night interactions with with one another as we share meals and talk about our days and chase kids around the parking lot and do all the things that that we do as a body of believers.

God, I'm just grateful for your church and how it is specifically expressed here at Heartland.

And God, just the privilege it is to be a part of a faith family that that does life together in so many different ways.

Um so God, we just pause to thank you for that.

And tonight, as we specifically look at how we believe, God, you have called us to live that out here in this particular expression of your church at Heartland.

Uh God, may you be glorified in what we do, and may you be glorified in what we what we say, and uh God, may we be a church that is united, not most primarily around some vision, catchy vision statement or mission statement, um, but may we be a church that's united uh under the banner of the cross.

And may we constantly look to Christ in all things and proclaim Christ crucified as as Paul did and told uh his readers that I make it my aim to proclaim Christ and Christ crucified.

May that be so for us at Heartland Church as well.

We ask all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, so if you have your book, we're in chapter four.

And if you if you've never done this, on our website, there is a video for where Pastor Dylan and I, probably two, it's been longer than that now, uh probably three or four years ago now, we took a Sunday morning and walked through the very thing that we're gonna walk through tonight, our purpose, impact, and way.

Uh, and that was kind of a relaunch for us.

So we we believe, and you hear you here, you'll hear me say this, maybe not from the platform as much, but you'll hear me say it in conversation the the only mission we need is the mission we have in God's word.

Just want to I want to say that, right?

Um I think sometimes churches can get so caught up in vision and mission statements, which they are great.

Don't hear me discount them, but most primarily the only the only mission we need, the calling that we have, it's all laid out for us in his word, in our our prayer and our hope.

And I hope what you'll see tonight, if you've never gotten to walk through this with us, is that you'll see what we have put to paper as it relates to what we call purpose impact way, is just the specifics of how we see the commands that we've already been given in scripture, how they play out here for us at 3580 Getwell Road.

So the summation of all the things within our purpose impact way is how we see the commands that God has already given us in His Word, in Scripture, the commands to go make disciples, all the things that we see, how do they play out specifically here in our context at Heartland Church?

And that is what we are looking at.

We have chosen, you'll see in your book there on page 13, we've chosen the language, purpose, impact way as opposed to mission, vision, and values, which is what you hear often, simply for the for the sake of uh being able to provide for bride clarity.

Uh so we we say all the time scripture gives us all that we need, but these things help us get clarity.

So, with that, let me explain those things to you by reading what we have defined them as in uh on this in this book.

Purpose is what we believe the Lord has called us to be about.

So that's pretty self-explanatory.

It is this is what we believe God has called us to be about.

Impact is the biblical result we believe will occur if we faithfully carry out our purpose.

So if we carry out our purpose, then what the impact is is what we believe will naturally take place, right?

So if we carry this purpose out to glorify God by following Jesus, proclaiming his name and living in his grace, then we are going to make disciples, right?

That's how that plays out.

And then the the way or the values, how some folks refer to it, is how God accomplishes purposes through his church according to scripture.

So those are the specific things that we see expressed within the life of a believer, but also within the life of the church here at Harlan.

So let's begin with the purpose.

I'm gonna kind of walk us through that, and I'm gonna do so by walking through the passages of scripture that we see.

So you see there we exist to glorify God by following Jesus, proclaiming his name and living in his grace.

And then underneath that you'll see some bullet points where we've kind of broken that down into four things.

Glorify God, follow Jesus, proclaim the name of Jesus, and live in his grace.

So I'm gonna work us through, let's work through those together.

If you have your copy of scripture, let me invite you to open it to Isaiah forty-three.

I'm gonna read not just verse seven, but I'm gonna read verses one through seven for us.

So Isaiah forty-three, one through seven says this, but now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you.

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters I will be with you, and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you.

When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Saba in exchange for you, because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.

I give men in return for you, people peoples in exchange for your life.

Fear not, for I am with you.

I will bring your offspring from the east and from the west, I will gather you.

I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold.

Bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the end of the earth.

Everyone who is called by name my name, excuse me, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

There's a couple things I want to point out for us in that passage, in verses one through seven.

Right?

First we see that he puts claim to his children, right?

He he claims his children, and that should be so encouraging for us as followers of Jesus.

We are adopted, and we talked about that a couple weeks ago.

We are adopted into God's family.

We've been adopted by God, the Father, into his family through the work of Christ and Christ crucified, and our response to that, the prompting of the Spirit.

We also see that there's protection for his children.

So there's claim to his children.

We see protection of his children.

We see him speak to those who are who are in Christ have been been called.

And then most primarily, what we see for the purpose of what we're looking at here with glorifying God, we see that people from one end of the globe to the other, and everything in between, to the ends of the earth, right?

They God is glorified in our rescue.

Right?

So when we wretched sinners are rescued by the blood of Jesus, God is glorified in that.

He received glory from our redemption.

And there's he is also glorified when we, the rescued, pursue obedience in Christ.

So those are the two big things I want you to think about when we talk about following Jesus, right?

God is God is glorified in our rescue.

The fact that we, broken, depraved sinners, have been rescued by the blood of Jesus because of not because of anything that we have done, but because of everything that he has done.

He is glorified in that.

And then when we respond that way, we put our faith in him, and there's outwork, outworkings, there's works that come in response to what Christ has done in our life.

He is glorified in our obedience.

So that's what we're talking about when we talk about glorifying God here in Isaiah 43, 7.

Now, same thing.

Let's flip to Matthew 4, 18 through 22.

And there's four things I'm going to pull out of there for us.

Excuse me, I meant to mark all these in my Bible, but I didn't, so it's going to take me a second to flip there.

Matthew 4, 18 through 22.

Flip your copy of scripture there.

All right, let me read this for us.

This is Matthew 4, coming from verses 18 through 22, not just verse 19, and this is what the word of the Lord says.

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

And immediately they left their nets and they followed him.

And going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them.

Immediately they left their boat and their father, and they followed him.

So we talked about how our redemption and then our obedience glorify, it brings glory to God.

And now we're looking at what does it look like to follow Jesus?

What do we mean when we say, hey, we want to glorify God and we want to follow Jesus?

I want you to see four things in this text, right?

It means that we live for his glory regardless of the cost, right?

So if you're taking notes, that's one thing it means.

It means that we are going to live for the glory of Christ regardless of what it cost us.

Right?

Paul says it to live as Christ, to die, is gained.

He understood what it might cost him to follow Jesus.

So part of following Jesus is living for his glory regardless of the cost.

The second, I'm going to be careful here.

I don't want you to hear something I'm not saying.

I don't have time to do a full exposition of this, but hear it, I'm going to give some context so you're not, we don't take it out of context.

Live in his grace regardless of the sin.

And what I mean by that, I'm not saying that his grace gives us a license to do whatever the heck that we want to after we come to faith in Christ.

However, what the word is clear on is there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So what it means to live in his grace regardless of the sins, it means that regardless of what your past, present, and future sin is, you are living under the grace of God through the power of Jesus, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

And we live in that grace.

That doesn't mean we never struggle.

That doesn't mean we never sin.

That doesn't mean we never struggle with shame.

That doesn't mean we never struggle with any of that stuff.

We we may struggle with those things, but at the end of the day, right, we should be in pursuit of living in the grace of God because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So the first one is when we look at following Jesus, live for his glory regardless of the cost.

The second one, live in his grace regardless of the sin.

The third one, live in submission to his sovereignty.

Right, live in submission to his sovereignty.

One of the things that we do as a staff is twice a month we have what we, it's like a full discipleship-focused time that we get together.

One of the things I share with them this morning is the last couple of weeks, for whatever reason, the I have just been given a refreshment of a reminder of God's sovereignty.

And some of you guys who are older than me, uh you like to remind me of that, right?

This is kind of a side, but I've never been in a church where the people are like, oh, I'm way older than you.

Like I hear that more than any here than anywhere, and it's not because you guys are an older congregation.

It's just funny that you guys like to tease me about not being as old as you.

Um but the where was I going?

Sorry.

Uh ADD, uh, oh, living in submission to a sovereignty.

Like the older I I get, so and you guys will understand this, the more that you can look back on your life and see, man, I really prayed for this and desired this, and it didn't work out, and I didn't understand why.

But if that wouldn't have happened that way, then this wouldn't have happened.

Praise God that he was in control.

Praise God that he was sovereign.

Praise God that he was working out my good when I didn't think he was, right?

So we are to live in submission to his sovereignty.

That's the third one.

And then the fourth one, live in obedience to his mission.

Right?

Live in obedience to his mission.

And the mission is clear for all of us is to go and make disciples.

It may look different in each context.

Some of us may be school teachers, some of us may be pastors, some of us may work in finance, some of us may say, hey, I'm gonna move my family overseas, some of us may be doctors, some of us may work in some other field of healthcare, but that doesn't change the mandate that we have to go and to make disciples and live in obedience to the commands that God has given us.

Right?

The environment where we do that may change, but our purpose constantly remains the same according to God's word and according to the Great Commission.

So the four, if you're taking notes as it relates to following Jesus, live for his glory regardless of the cost, live in his grace, regardless of the sin, pointing to there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, live in submission to his sovereignty, live in obedience to his mission, is the fourth one.

And I I came across this statement just reading some stuff today, and it hit me, so I'm gonna share it with you guys, because I think oftentimes uh we or our culture or whoever, I think we we miss this.

There is certainly a cost to follow Jesus.

Right, you guys, if you've been following Jesus for any amount of time, you will understand that.

But sometimes I think we miss the reality, there's also a cost to not follow Jesus.

Right?

There's a cost to follow Jesus, but there's also a cost to not not follow Jesus.

So I would encourage you to follow Jesus.

Again, this isn't this isn't designed to preach.

It's hard for me not to do this.

This is more presenting content, but we are gonna be about glorifying God, we're gonna be about following Jesus.

The third one, uh, we're going to be about proclaiming Jesus or proclaiming his name.

With that, let me invite you to flip over to Romans.

I'm going to read a few verses out of Romans 10, verses 14 through 17.

Romans 10:14–17

This is from the word of the Lord in Romans chapter 10, verses 14 to 17, and this is what it says.

Romans 10:14–17

This is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?

And how are they going to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

And then it goes on to say, as it written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news, but they have not obeyed the gospel.

For Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us.

Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

So you have belief that comes from hearing, which comes from preaching, which comes from sending.

And all four of those are important.

This is why you have to be really, really careful, and we talk about this a lot.

This is why you have to be really, really careful with, man, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna meet this brother's needs, and they're gonna see Jesus in me.

They may see Jesus in you, but Paul says no one is going to believe unless they hear.

So you had to verbally proclaim the gospel too.

And it's so important for us as followers of Jesus to proclaim the name of Jesus, to proclaim the good news of Jesus.

And if you trace back your belief, it, every one of us in here, it could be traced back to you hearing the gospel or reading the gospel at some point, right?

And then someone had to make that available to you, whether that's the person who preached, and again, we talked about this maybe it was six weeks ago, seven weeks ago.

We talked about how preaching isn't just the person standing in the platform proclaiming the gospel on a Sunday morning using the word in a in a format like this.

No, preaching could be you proclaiming the good news of the gospel to someone in the four-year, or your barista at your local coffee shop, or your waiter, or a coworker, or a family member, that is preaching the gospel as well.

It's not simply a pulpit.

And then we use this language all the time, every Sunday, you are sent because as you go, as the saints go out from the body of Christ, from the regular gathering, they are sent armed with what?

The message of the gospel.

To do what with it?

To proclaim it, with the hope that people will hear it, that the Spirit will prompt, and they will have belief.

Right?

So we see all that in this passage.

Belief comes from hearing, hearing comes from preaching, preaching comes from sending, as the saints are sent out with a worthy message from the body of Christ.

So that's what it means to proclaim the name of Jesus, and that's why we believe it to be a very important pillar of what we are to be about as a church, because we see Paul speak to the importance of it in the life of a believer, but not just in the life of a believer, but also in the act of evangelism.

The gospel must be proclaimed for the spirit to be able to work in a person's life.

Following Jesus, proclaiming Jesus, and let's now look at Ephesians 2, 8, and 8 through 10, and we're gonna look at living in his grace.

So Ephesians 2, 8 through 10.

Let me flip back a couple of books.

Ephesians 2, this is what the word of the Lord says, verse 8 through 10, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast.

For you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

I want to point out three things in this passage.

The first one is, and you got this is not going to be a surprise to any of any of you, salvation is an undeserved gift.

It is an undeserved gift.

I know I didn't deserve it, right?

I know I didn't deserve it.

And I think if you do a just think about your life, even think about your day today, the last 24 hours, you're like, man, I don't deserve it.

We we don't deserve salvation.

It is an undeserved gift.

And it's because of salvation, it's because of that undeserved gift that that we can proclaim we're gonna live in his grace because of what I alluded to earlier.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, which means we are free from, we're not free from sin as long as we are in our this body on this earth, we are impacted by sin, right?

We're not slaves to sin, but we're impacted by sin.

We're never free from sin here.

We will be in in glory, but we're not here, but we're free from the effects of sin.

We're free from the effects of shame, we're free from the effects of all those things, not because of our works, but because of the work of Christ, right?

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And then the outpouring of that we see in this that leads to the works, that leads to us being obedient, that leads to us proclaiming the name of Jesus, that leads to us pointing other people to God's grace.

Man, this is what God has done in my life.

He can do that in your life through Jesus too, or through a brother or sister who's struggling with a specific sin, and they come and they confess that to you.

Have you taken that to the feet of Jesus?

And brother, be reminded, if you have, right, you are free, right?

You do not have to live in the condemnation of that sin.

I want to be careful there as well.

Like it's not that when we sin, if we don't immediately confess it, that we are condemned for that sin.

When you have experienced salvation, you are saved from past, present, and future sins.

I want to be crystal clear there.

But there is an act of Humility when we have sin that have been brought before us in our minds or by a brother or sister, or when we weekly gather and we participate in communion and we we reflect, Am I approaching the table in a worthy manner?

We think about specific sins and we bring those to the Lord.

That is an act of humility.

We were living in submission to Him.

Those aren't salvific acts to ask for forgiveness for this sin that I've done for the thousandth time, but it is a submission, it's a humility, it's a reminder of what Christ has done for us to give us freedom from sin and shame.

So we live in grace, and we do that by recognizing that salvation is an undeserved gift.

We recognize as well, because of that free salvation that we didn't deserve, that we are free from the effects of sin and shame, and that also that that salvation leads to work.

So that is kind of a deep dive into our purpose.

And the summation of that is we want to glorify God, we want to proclaim or follow Jesus, we want to proclaim the name of Jesus, and we want to live in his grace.

Why?

The answer to that is because we feel like the Bible commands us to do that as followers of Christ.

That's what we are commanded to do.

So that's the purpose, impact, to fulfill the Great Commission in DeSota County and beyond.

This is the one I could probably spend the most time on, but it's also the one that uh I feel like we cover the most.

So I'm not gonna spend as much time here as I have in the last one or I will in the next one, but most foundationally, this comes from the Great Commission.

It comes from go make disciples.

And that we a couple things for that.

One, some folks look at that as an option.

That's something that we are given the opportunity we're given the option to do.

That is a command, right?

We're not uh say, hey, if you feel like it, go make disciples.

No, it's go make disciples.

It's not an op.

If you are a follower of Jesus, that's not an option for you.

It is a command for you is to do that, to go and make disciples.

So I want to make that clear.

The other thing about that as well, and this is where you can pull in other passages of scripture as well.

Acts 1.8 specifically talks about uh you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, right?

So we are to go and make disciples, and we're to do that from DeSota County and beyond.

So we want to do that here in DeSa County.

We also want to be intentional as a church to do that all around the globe.

Why?

Not just because Robert said that'd be the right thing to do, but because Scripture tells us that's what we are to do, right?

And for some of you that may mean supporting and praying.

For some of you, that's maybe I'm gonna go on a week-long trip.

For some of you, that's, man, I recognize there's a lot of people moving to DeSota County that aren't from DeSota County.

I'm gonna be really intentional to make them feel welcome so I can share the gospel with someone from the other side of the world who now calls DeSota County home or Melanie Cove home, that's where I live, or whatever your address is home.

That is making disciples of all nations, right?

Just because they don't live in that nation anymore doesn't mean that they aren't from that area and have that culture.

You can make disciples here.

And for others of you, and this is my prayer, that I I pray for the day we're sending people all over the world to plant churches, right?

To go to the darkest places on the globe.

I'll touch on that more in a minute, how we're about to really step into something that we've been uh highlighting for you guys in the Middle East.

Right?

We want to make disciples of all nations, and that is what we are about, to make disciples in DeSota County and beyond.

And that plays out in all different types of ways.

Right.

One of the things I believe about that, and uh I think I have time to get here.

One of the things I believe about that is that's so many times people are like, man, well, uh let me share this story.

I had somebody when I got here come up to me, and I think I shared this before with you guys, but I'm gonna share it again, come up to me and say, Man, I want to make disciples.

And I was like, okay, just tell me what you're doing now.

Well, I meet with this person on Thursdays, and we're opening God's word together, and we're confessing sin to each other, and we're praying together, and I meet with these two people on Saturdays, and I don't remember all the days, and they did the same thing.

We're reading the word together, we're reading through this passage, we're pointing each other to God's truth, we're pointing each other to when we confess sin, we're pointing each other to the forgiveness we have in Christ, but we're also helping each other kill that sin.

And I had to look at that person, I said, hey man, you're making disciples, right?

Just because it's not in some specific program and it's not a uh community group or it's not a women's group or it's not a men's group or it's not this, that, or the other, doesn't mean that it's not making disciples, right?

That's why you have seen us kind of expand that.

Dylan has done a really good job of helping people see, hey, if you're meeting together with one or two brothers and sisters and you are doing these very things, you are making disciples.

Right?

If you are meeting together as a community group in your home, you are making disciples.

If you're meeting here with a group of ladies on Thursday or Tuesday night or whatever it is, you are making disciples.

When you are intentionally discipling your kids, you are making disciples.

So we have to be careful not to put it in a box too much.

There should be some parameters on it, and that's why we're doing some new things to make sure that we're replicating the right things and all of that.

There should be some of those just to ensure the sanctity of the gospel.

However, don't beat yourself up if you're like, man, I don't know if I'm making disciples, but I'm meeting with someone every week and we're reading the word together and praying for each other and confessing sin.

Give yourself some grace and be reminded that you are making disciples, right?

So we want to be about making disciples here in DeSota County and beyond.

All right, now the way, this is where we'll spend most of our time as it relates to this stuff, and I hope to knock this out in about 10 or 15 minutes so we have time for questions at the end.

And I'm gonna work through these fairly quickly.

You'll see these on, they begin on page 14, and you'll see discipleship, sound teaching, prayer, sending, selfless living, and grace.

Right?

I'm gonna work through each of these and I'm gonna speak to them, speak to them very, very quickly.

So discipleship, uh, and this this is one where um when we first started doing this, we was like, well, isn't discipleship a part of all these?

And then what you'll see in a moment when I show you a different graphic later on in the book is all of these are a part of all of these, right?

All of these are a part of all of these.

Grace is a part of discipleship, discipleship is a part of grace.

Sending is a part of discipleship, discipleship is a part of sending.

Sound teaching is a part of discipleship, discipleship is a part of sound teaching.

So all these work together in synergy with one another, not in opposition to one another.

I do want to read you, we we defined what we believe discipleship to be here.

I'm gonna read that for you.

At Heartland, we define discipleship as obeying the call to follow Jesus and helping others do the same.

As we do life together, discipleship happens by teaching one another to obey the commands of Christ through instruction, example, encouragement, and accountability.

This is accomplished at Heartland in multiple ways: community groups, men's groups, and women's groups, discipleship groups, and in day-to-day interactions as people live life together.

And we could have listed a dozen other things in the way that this plays out.

But that is what discipleship is.

And then there's some bullet points under each one of them.

I'm not going to read all of them, but I would encourage you, those are some good like evaluation tools for yourself.

Man, am I helping anyone follow Jesus?

Keep that question in front of you at the same time.

Is anyone helping me follow Jesus?

Keep that in in front of you and ask yourself that question on a regular basis to ensure that you are doing the things that we see in Scripture.

The second one is sound teaching.

We submit to God's word in all things.

One of the things in our membership covenant is I submit to Scripture as the finer arbitrator of all things.

That means practically what that means is when we face something, when we deal with something, whether that be sin, whether that be uh even joyful stuff, whatever it is, we view everything through the lens of scripture instead of doing the opposite of that.

Let's say feelings.

We view our feelings through the lens of scripture.

We don't view scripture through the lens of our feelings.

Right?

We view the gathering through the lens of scripture, not through the lens of what we necessarily and inherently desire.

We are looking at scripture, and we're going to filter everything through the lens of Scripture and let Scripture inform all the other aspects.

Right?

That's how we approach God's Word.

And the diagnostic question there I'd point to you is this Is God's Word the authority of all you do and all that we do as a church?

That's something I have to ask myself all this, even as a parent, man, am I responding to my kids based on my submission to the word and how the word informs me to raise my kids and teach them in the ways of the Lord?

Or am I responding to my kids based on what I think I deserve to do and say to them because they didn't have a right to do that to me, right?

That's a selfish view.

But when you look at it through scripture, man, I have to talk with my kids about this all the time.

About man, we we exude grace to one another because we have received a grace that we did not deserve.

Right?

So we have to look at everything through the lens of scripture instead of allowing the opposite to take place.

Prayer.

Right?

Prayer is a worshipful response to a holy God.

We say, use language like we want.

Prayer is about us aligning our will to the will of the fathers.

Prayer is not about us begging God to submit to our will.

It's about us submitting to his will.

So prayer should be an aspect of all that we're doing.

It should be a regular rhythm of our life as believers, but also for us as a church as well.

I would encourage you if you've never studied the prayer life of Jesus, I did a seminary class on preaching and it was a five-day seminar, and three of the five days, we studied the prayer life of Jesus.

Sit on that for a second.

We didn't study preaching, we studied the prayer life of Jesus.

We studied preaching at the end of it.

I don't want to discredit the accreditation of the seminary I went to, but we studied the prayer life of Jesus for three days.

I would encourage you, if you've never done that, it is life-giving to look at how God in the flesh approached prayer in his day-to-day life here when he was here on earth.

So I would encourage you to do that.

The passages are there for you.

We don't have time to go through all of them, but I would encourage you to check it out.

Sending, right?

We believe the church is God's plan A to get the gospel to the nations.

We say that all the time, right?

It's a responsibility of the local church to send out workers to the harvest.

Again, whether that's harvest is in DeSota County or beyond, but we are responsible to send out workers to the harvest.

Somewhere along the way, and I'm not a church historian, but somewhere along the way, there there was a shift for the mindset of people, and we hit on this some last week, for the mindset of people to be about, man, I'm gonna go get my cup filled up on Sunday, and then I'm gonna bounce and live my life the rest of the week, however I want to live my life.

And there is an aspect of we are ministered to by the word, we are ministered to by one another.

Don't hear me discount that.

But we also, when we leave here, we are sent out not just to impatiently or uh maybe impatiently wait for the next gathering.

Yes, we want to look forward to the next gathering, but we are sent out with the message of the gospel.

Right?

There's no other message, there's no other organization, there's no other politician that can provide any hope for the world.

The gospel can.

And that's how we have to approach when we leave this place.

We are sent out with the only hope that this world has.

Have you ever thought about it that way?

The only hope that this world has is the gospel.

It's the only hope.

And we're sent out with it every Sunday when we leave here.

You're sent out with it when you step foot out of your front door.

Candidly, you're sent out with it from the moment your eyes open, because there very well may be people in your home that need to hear the gospel, right?

We are sent out with a worthy message that is the gospel.

I would encourage you to read through some of those questions as well.

Selfless living, uh, we I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this because we just hit this on Sunday.

We hit the giving aspect of it.

Uh, I'm gonna speak more to that's not just we we think about this is the reason we didn't call this uh giving, selfless giving, is because we believe that radical generosity according to God's word is more than financial giving.

It's the giving of our resources, which includes our gifts, which goes back to what we studied in 1 Corinthians 13 and 14 when it talks about your your gifts is for the benefit of the body of Christ, for the benefit of one another.

They're not your gifts to begin with, they are his that he has given to you.

So we should be living selflessly with all those things.

I said selflessly, not selfishly, selflessly with all those things, right?

We should be giving of our resources, we should be giving of our talents and our abilities for the sake of God's kingdom.

That's what selfless living is all about.

And then lastly, God's grace, right?

God's grace.

I I want to read this, I like this statement.

There's in here those who experience God's truth and grace will exude God's truth and grace.

That in itself could be something that you use to process and say, man, am I living out to God's grace?

I don't know about you.

There's times where somebody, whether it's my kids or whatever, somebody will do something, and I'm like, I get so aggravated, right?

I get so aggravated, and it's so easy to approach.

Man, that that person's sin is against me.

Well, we have to understand most foundation and I there are the effects of sin impact us and they can be against us in certain ways.

So don't hear me say that's not the truth.

But most foundationally in scripture, what we see is sin most foundationally is against a holy God.

And that holy God is the same God that exuded upon us the sinner grace.

So if that has happened in our life, then we should be exuding grace to others as well.

That's why we always say our unity here is in nothing other than Christ alone.

The only way a collective group of people that is the local church can have unity is through the gospel.

It can't be in our language, it can't be in our color of our skin, it can't be in our location, it's in the gospel.

Period.

It is in the gospel.

I said this in a sermon a couple weeks ago.

We had that meeting here on Tuesday about partnering with Syria, and those brothers said it as well.

You you can have someone across the globe that is your brother in Christ, and you will have more in common with them than your biological brother who is not a follower of Jesus.

We miss that.

But that is the truth.

That is the truth according to God's word.

So we should be exuding gross grace to other people because we've been recipients of grace.

The gathering, I'm gonna go through this one fairly quickly as well, because we've spent some time on this recently, but I'm gonna point to just some high-level uh things about the gathering.

We just if you most of you here have been attending here for a while, so this would come of no surprise to you, but we believe, according to the New Testament, that the saints or the baptized believers or the followers of Jesus, however you want to phrase that, they gathered regular regularly.

They did that regularly, weekly.

We believe in the importance of that in the life of a believer.

So one of the things that's an expectation of someone who joins Heartland is for to regularly attend the gathering.

Why?

Not because we want to see our numbers grow.

I hope you guys know that's not what we're about here.

Not because it makes me feel better when there's more people here than when there's less people here.

No, we we want that for your soul.

We want that for your soul, and because the New Testament speaks to it.

So when we say the gathering, okay, if if there is a weekly gathering, we also believe that God cares about what we do when we gather.

We talked about one of those Sunday with giving, right?

He said, each one of you when you gather, give, right?

So we believe he cares about the gatherings.

I want to highlight some things that we see in the New Testament as it relates to the gathering.

Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the church and of the gathering.

A statement I put in there, at least I think I put in there, is we do not celebrate man, we celebrate Christ.

Right?

How that expresses itself here when we talk about Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of his church is we don't celebrate man when we're here.

We celebrate Christ.

That's what we're about.

We should be celebrating Christ, not man.

We talked about that even with when Dylan was sending him out on the sabbatical, right?

May even the sabbatical be something that helps us be reminded of, man, we're not building this thing on a person.

We are building this thing on a savior.

And his name is Jesus.

So that's that's the first one.

Second one, the gathering points to the gospel, right?

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ should be the primary focus of what we do when we gather.

The songs should point to that.

The word, obviously, one of the things I think about every time I preach is does this point to the redemptive story of Jesus?

Well, it does, but am I doing a good job helping you guys see that it points to the redemptive story of Jesus?

Right?

The Bible, all of it points to the cross.

I just taught at Hermann Newt's class and I reminded those brothers, whether you're reading the Old Testament or the New Testament, all of it points to the cross.

So when we gather, all that we do should point to the cross.

The singing, the Lord's Supper, the preaching, all of it should point to the gospel.

The gathering is word saturated.

That's one of the things that has blessed my soul so much since Michael has come here is the amount of scripture we have on the screen.

Right?

If you are one, I'm a guy that closes my eyes when I'm singing, and there's I don't really know why I do that, but I have started opening them because I want to read the truth that is on the screen between the lyrics.

Right?

All that we do within the gathering should be word saturated.

We should be focused on the word.

Why?

What I say can be wrong, right?

What you say can be wrong, God's word is inerrant.

It's without error.

So we want to saturate the gathering with word.

This is another one that I think is often not understood in totality is the gathering is primarily for the believer.

Yes, there are certainly evangelistic aspects of that.

You guys probably can tell me what verse I use every almost every Sunday to point someone who's not a believer to how to respond to the gospel.

It's Romans 10, 9, right?

The gathering should have evangelistic aspects of it.

But the gathering, according to the New Testament, is primarily for the believer.

The gathering is both vertical and horizontal.

That's the next one.

This is the one where we well, I'll I'll push a lot of times when someone says, I don't have to go, I don't have to go to church.

I can just I can do church in the tree stand, or I can do church here, I can do church on in my lawn chair while I'm watching my kids play baseball, enjoying the gift that my kid is, and this.

No, you you can't.

And there's multiple reasons for that.

One of those is the gathering is horizontal and it's vertical.

Yes, it's vertical.

That one's self-explanatory, right?

It's also horizontal.

And we talk we talk about this all the time, but man, we encourage one another when we gather.

Some of you guys have come come in here, me included, on Sundays, and man, I can't have hardly verbalize things.

I've come in some Sundays when I didn't want to talk to anyone because I'm hurting.

And you guys have been in that same chair as well.

But guess what?

When we come and our brother and sister, even if it's just a couple of words and a hug and it's a greeting, and then we sing God's word over one another, and someone proclaims the word over us, that is a horizontal aspect of the gathering where we are encouraging each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

So it's horizontal and it's vertical.

It involves prayer.

That's why there's a prayer aspect in everything that we do on Sunday.

We want to be intentional for prayer and not to simply be a transition piece.

Prayer is something that we should be about.

It involves giving.

We just talked about that on Sunday and I hit on it a moment ago.

Like we should be giving out of response, out of humility.

It's a worshipful act.

It involves the ordinances.

The ordinances is baptism in the Lord's Supper.

Those are ordinances of the church, right?

Baptized into the body.

When you gather, as often as you do, do this in remembrance of me.

These are things that we are doing together, or together when we gather.

It's a tongue twister for me.

I'm sorry.

Together when we gather, we are doing those things, the ordinances.

It involves preaching, the proclamation of the word, the reading of the word.

We try as best as we can.

That's why, not long after I got here, we started standing for the reading of the word and sitting for the preaching.

We want you guys to understand, this goes back to its word centric.

We want you guys to understand there is more power in the three minutes of someone reading God's Word than there is in any man's words, in any man's preaching, right?

So it involves the preaching.

Of God's word.

And that's where partly why we preach the way that we preach is we want to submit to his word.

We want to work through it in a systematic way.

And we believe that God's word points us to the gospel.

And then lastly, it involves sending.

Right?

And I already hit on this.

We gather and we're sent out with a purpose for the sake of the gospel.

All right, disciples' path, and this is kind of just more of a graphic representation.

And I want to point you guys to that because this gets at what I was talking about earlier.

One of the things that we noticed probably a year ago is it seemed like when we would communicate or we would talk to you guys that everybody and us including, we were communicating in a way and we were people receiving it in a way where all these things were in competition with each other.

Like sending was in competition with discipleship.

And but we want you guys to understand to abide in Christ as an individual follower of Jesus: grace, discipleship, sound teaching, sending, prayer, selfless living, all those things work together.

Those are all things that all of us have been called to do.

We should have fruit of all of those things in all of our lives.

We should have fruit in that corporately, certainly, but in the individual followers of Jesus, to abide in Christ means to be actively involved in all of those things.

Not saying you have to be involved in a program, but your life should be exuding those things.

So when we look at that, we want you guys to see, man, for me to abide in Christ means I'm about praying, I'm about the word, I'm about discipleship, I'm about sharing the gospel and sending, I'm about selfless living, I'm about living out God's grace and exuding God's grace.

That's what it means for me to be a follower of Jesus.

And that's for us, that's why we have outlined that as our way, like what we want you guys to do and what we want to do as a church because we believe that is what it looks like to abide in Christ most foundationally.

We we want our people to abide in Christ.

So there we go.

I have 12 minutes.

It took me a little longer than I expected, but not as long as it could have.

So let me open the floor for questions.

You can ask questions about this, and then also I've had probably five or six kind of one-off conversations with people about last week who had questions about last week.

So that's part of why I wanted to leave room at the end for questions tonight about last week as well.

So any questions from last week or this week.

We can be done early if we need to as well.

No questions?

But I want to share with you guys about we had a meeting here on Tuesday.

You guys have heard me, I guess since 2022, speak to.

We are working towards partnering with believers in Syria.

We had a meeting here on Tuesday.

There's churches all across the county.

There's a guy, well, are we posting this?

Are we not posting this?

Okay, well, I'm gonna keep my mouth closed.

Um, but yeah, so we met with those brothers this week.

Um, Lord willing, that will be off the ground and running in the beginning of of next year.

Have some travel to do later this year to really get that rolling.

But that will be one one thing that stuck out, and I know Michael's gonna include some of this in his sermon, so I don't want to steal all that he's using.

I'm a we're gonna have guided prayer for it as well.

But there are multiple, uh, what do you say, 15, I think you said 15 Baptist churches right now actively ministering in the country of Syria.

And we got to Zoom call with some of those brothers on Tuesday that are there serving faithfully for the sake of the gospel.

Uh so I just want to encourage you guys, one, with that's one way that we are living out to DeSota County and beyond.

But two, like when you see all the stuff that's going on in the in the around the world, whether it's there because they they're doing work there, you you name a Middle Eastern country, there's work going on by national partners and by our missionaries.

When I say our missionaries, Southern Baptist missionaries, there is tremendous work going on.

They need support and care and love, but there is tremendous work.

So don't be discouraged by this stuff that you see, like, man, there's no way the gospel can advance there.

I just uh want to share all that with you and just also remind you over the course of history, the times of greatest gospel advance are the times of greatest persecution.

So that when you see something like that going on around the world, man, just pray that the Lord would use that as he has since the inception of the church some 2,000 years ago to advance the gospel because he will and he is.

So I I can't wait to share more about that with you guys, but um, there's several national partners that we'll be working with.

I'll be on the ground there later this year, and then uh we're gonna start out by just intentionally caring for those brothers who are there and they have been there serving faithfully.

Some of them, there's one brother that's been there for over 30 years serving faithfully in the same local evangelical church in the heart of one of the most difficult places in the world to be an evangelical, and he is doing it faithfully and proclaiming doing all the things that we just laid out, he is doing, and he's doing it so so very faithfully.

So be encouraged by that and also look be on the lookout in the days ahead for for other um more information about that and how you can how you can participate.

But it's exciting, exciting stuff.

So I want to share that with you.

Any questions?

And then I'll close this if we don't have any.

As always, if you have questions, feel free to catch me um afterwards or anytime we grab coffee or whatever.

I'd love to chat with you.

Uh we our heart with doing this is to be as transparent as possible about the way that we do church here so that we're all on the same page, so that God is glorified, so that you guys can, if you're not a member and you're processing it, we want you to be able to make a decision that's informed.

Like, is this the place that the Lord is leading us?

And we want to give you everything we can to help you in that effort.

Same with that.

If if you get to the end of this and you're like, man, heartland's not for me, that's okay.

Like, don't be the person that never talks to me again because you ended up going to another church.

Like, we can still hang out, you can still come to our house, we can do what we I still love to get coffee with you, whatever it is.

So just we want to inform you so you can make a decision for your family.

Our heart is that you be plugged into a local church that preaches the word and that challenges you to live on mission the way that the New Testament challenges you as a believer to live on mission.

And if that's heartland, great.

If that's not, that's okay too.

And if you've been here for a long time, you're a charter member, and you're like, man, I never knew that was part of the church.

Don't beat yourself up.

Like that's that's okay.

Uh, we're on this journey together, and we are going to allow the Lord to sharpen us as we go, and we will do that collectively as a corporate body.

And if you have questions again, feel free to come.

Don't don't think, well, man, Robert thinks less than me because I don't I may not know the answer to that.

I don't care.

Like we we try to model the best we can, Dylan and I and the elders, and you guys have seen this when we do the ask the pastor.

There have been times where we have said we don't know because we don't know.

And that's okay.

You don't have to have the answer to every question, so don't beat yourself up if you don't have the answer to every question and you didn't understand all this before this class, or if you don't understand it after it, we can have more conversations.

But grateful for you guys, thankful for the chance to gather.

I'm gonna pray for us and then we're gonna get out a little early.

I just ask, I sometimes the students gather in the foyer for small group.

I would just encourage you if they're gathering, have your conversations out there, but try not to do it like right next to those students.

You guys know how difficult it is to keep the attention of one student, much less six or seven.

So let me pray for you and we'll be done.

Father, we're grateful for who you are.

We're grateful for your word.

Um God, I'm I'm thankful.

Just uh the more I think about your word, the more we do things like this, um, whether that's me individually studying this stuff or us as a body working through it, frankly, the more that we, the more that I that I preach, the more that I personally study your word, I'm just thankful for the reality that it is the final arbitrator of all things, that it is an inerrant uh word from the Lord.

And um, God, I don't know where I would be or where we would be without it.

Um so God, we we just pause now to thank you for the life-giving word that we have at our fingertips at all times.

Um God, we also pause to thank you for the access that we have to it.

Hearing from those brothers from the Middle East yesterday and hearing them talk about all the things that they have endured for the sake of the gospel over the last however many years, everything from hanging sheets in the streets to avoid being spotted by someone with a weapon who's trying to harm them, to um God not knowing if the person who's going to get food and water during the war was going to come back with food and water or come back at all.

Um to not having access to the materials that we have to uh serve as tools in our discipleship efforts with one another and to our kids.

Um God, I pray that that would spark something in us, a passion in us to to go, first of all, but I also pray that there would be a greater level of appreciation for the access that we have to the gospel.

And God, that that that wouldn't be so that we can praise um man or praise the person who printed it or praised even be careful here, even the freedom that we have, we are we praise God for that freedom and are thankful for it, God.

But most foundationally, may that drive us to our knees in greater uh hunger for the word more than anything else.

May it drive us to our need in greater hunger for your word because we realize, man, we have been given this precious gift from God.

May we fall in love with it more every day.

May it continue to inform the way that we walk as individual followers of Jesus, but may it also inform the way that we interact with one another, may it inform the way that we do church, may we uh come to even more of a lifestyle of where we're submitting to it.

We're not just reading it for the sake of a quote-unquote devotion, but God, we are submitting to it because we see in it that it is profitable for teaching and rebuking.

We see in it that it's uh and it gives us instructions on nearly not nearly everything that we face.

It's it speaks to how we are to to go about handling it as followers of Jesus.

And God, I just pray that we would submit to it, we would dive into it, we would hunger for it, we would thirst for it, we would wake up uh with not with uh an excitement to, man, I have my Bible in my hand today, and I can read it, and I'm gonna read it, and may that be who we are as a as a church, and may your spirit, as as we see in your word, as we we are promised, may it uh teach us through the inspired word.

It your spirit was at work in the inspiration of it, and your spirit is at work in the illumination of it as we read it, and we ask that it may be so for us as a church and as individual followers of Jesus.

We love you.

We thank you.

It's in Christ's name, amen.