Meeting, Loving and Following Jesus | Pastor Josh McPherson | Vision Sunday

Welcome to Grace City Church Online.

This is our podcast channel for all sermon content from Grace City Church in Wenatchee, Washington.

We exist to help more people meet, love, and follow Jesus.

We're praying this message encourages you today, wherever you may be listening from.

Very cool.

Well, well, if you're new, welcome.

My name is Josh.

I'm new here too.

Haven't been here for a few weeks.

It's good to be back.

Glad you're here.

If you've got a Bible, you could open to the book of Ephesians.

We're not going to start it this morning, but we're going to kind of uh cut and paste some things out of there this morning.

As you turn there, I'm going to pray for us and we're going to jump in.

Father in heaven, as we open your word, would you open our hearts to receive from you that which you would impart to your church for the sake of mission?

We're asking for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, if you're new to Great City, we do this thing called Vision Sunday everyone in a while.

Sometimes in January, sometimes in September.

And for us, it's it's for the sake of just kind of ringing the bell so we don't forget what we're supposed to be doing.

Because a large part of the Christian life is not always learning new things, it's remembering old things and then doing them.

Amen?

And so sometimes I find myself stuck in my walk with Jesus or in life, and I'm like, do I need to learn something new here or do I need to go back to what I already know and believe that and obey it?

And more often than not, it's a little bit of both.

I'm learning new things out of old truth and applying them to my current circumstances.

And so this morning we want to just take a Sunday to stop, pause, and ring the bell on uh where we're going as a church.

And so Vision of Sunday is always about where we're going.

But in order to answer the where are we going question, if you were looking at a map, trying to get somewhere, what's the first thing you have to do when looking at a map?

You have to locate what?

Where you're at.

And so you got to figure out like where am I currently at so I can know how then to chart a course to where I'm going.

But before you figure out where you're at, you really want to ask, where have I been?

Like, how did I get here?

And and these are really some of the most foundational questions facing humanity.

How did I get here?

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

And where am I going to go?

And and so, in order to talk about where we're going, I want to just quickly reflect on where we've been.

And for those of you who've been here uh since the beginning, there's gonna be, we're gonna skip a lot, you're gonna be like, you left out a ton.

I know, I can't cover 18 years in four minutes here.

But for those of you who are new, it might help give you kind of an idea of how we got to where we're currently at.

We opened the doors of this church uh in the middle of COVID.

Yay! And uh we had no idea that our first Sunday would be an act of quote-unquote defiance in violating made-up laws by the governor pretending that he can make up laws at press conferences.

And so while people were like, was that an act of civil disobedience?

We were like, no, that was an act of we were just being Christians.

And so it was the largest gathering in the state of Washington, and we broke the law singing Amazing Grace, because at the time the governor said you can't sing even though you can cheer on the hawks of the stadium.

And we're like, yeah, if you can cheer on Russell, that guy, wouldn't say his name, you know, the name that should not be mentioned.

I actually forget his last name.

Russell Woods, what's it?

Russell Wilson.

See, that's how that's good.

God replacing bad memories with good thoughts.

If you can cheer for Russell, we can sing to Jesus.

And so I'm gonna walk through what we've experienced just here in this room since we've been here in 2020-21.

We started preaching, the first sermon series was on Daniel.

And if you don't remember it, that's okay because you weren't here.

I was here in an empty room, and you were home watching online because the building wasn't finished, and we didn't have occupancy, and they went let contractors on site to finish it, and so we were stuck.

And so we started filming the sermons from Daniel that we were in the middle of from this stage, and I preached the first sermons in this room to an empty room.

Talk about discouraging and disheartening.

You know, it's like it's me and Jesus in empty seats.

And that experience of preaching to an empty room became a very powerful marker for me in that what the Lord taught me was, hey, hey Josh, if this thing is about you, then you just preach the empty seats.

If it's about me, what has been built will then get filled.

And if you stay faithful, I'm gonna bring the people to fill the seats.

And God's been doing that for the last six years.

Now the room is full of spirit-filled people and new people coming by the week.

So we started in Daniel and then went to the book of Luke.

And there was like, I think like 89 or 90 sermons to the book of Luke, the Gospel of Luke telling the story of the God man incarnate in Jesus Christ through the lens of that physician historian Luke, incredible series.

Then we went from Luke into Acts, the story of the Spirit of Christ filling the church and the works that the Spirit of Christ did through his people and the burdening and launching of the mission of God as expressed through the church.

That was like, I think, 47 or 48 sermons and weeks through that.

Then we do a little series called Liftoff.

Anybody remember liftoff?

It was that crazy fun series where you gave a crazy amount of money to finish phase three and that whole thing with a ton of fun.

We got in the book of Titus, we preached through the book of Philippians.

Pastor Adam wrote a booklet for a prayer guide, uh, walking through the Lord's Prayer called Kingdom Come.

Then we did this down the middle, non-controversial series called Jesus in Politics.

And let me just pause here real quickly and say this.

The Church of Jesus Christ in America today, and this isn't like meant to be like broad sweeping criticism, but rather observation, is diseased.

And the disease is an allergy, and the allergy comes in the form of allergic to anything that might sound, look, or potentially be controversial.

And and the and the missional math that's off goes like this.

We want to help people meet Jesus.

If we offend them, they won't like him.

Therefore, let's dumb the message down to be as palatable as possible to get as many people to hear and accept it so we don't push any people away.

As good intentioned as that may be, the problem with it is it's not Jesus' strategy.

Jesus didn't run that calculus of how can I not offend them so they'll like me.

The problem with that calculus is it puts the determining factor of content in the heart of the sinner and not the savior.

Meaning, what does the sinner broken person, what are they demanding to hear, and what are they refusing to hear?

And then it lets them set the temperature and agenda for the pulpit of Jesus Christ makes no sense.

And it's happening everywhere.

And so Christians are not called to be cantankerous, critical, mean-spirited cranks.

That's the heart of the Pharisee, and Jesus came and rebuked them strongly.

That's yuck, that's garbage, no, not at all.

And Christians, by nature of worshiping and following, and proclaiming the exclusive truth claims of Jesus will by nature be controversial.

You can't not be controversial.

If we're living currently in the realm under the kingdom of darkness and we're coming representing the kingdom of light, there will be clash and conflict.

If you have an allergy to controversy, you will not be able to be faithful as a minister of Jesus.

And for some reason in the church today, there has become this myth that the topics that are that are off limits are things like the government and politics, because that might offend people, and then we can't win them to Christ.

You do realize that in order to be one to Christ, you literally have to be offended.

You literally can't introduce someone to Jesus without offending them.

And again, you get the nuance in my heart, right?

Not like, not like gained some weight recently.

I mean, not like be a jerk offensive, you know what I mean?

It's like, hey, 80s called, they want their outfit back, dude.

No, no, no, no.

It's saying the message of the gospel is offensive because it offends our sinful proclivities to think that we're okay apart from God, and that the gods we worship, little G, are totally fine.

And Jesus comes and offends us by saying, You are an idolater, you are a rebel, you must repent.

And so for some inexplicable reason, there has become this unwritten agreement in many churches today that we won't talk about that which offends the world so that we can try to win more people to Jesus.

It makes no sense.

Jesus doesn't come apologizing, Jesus comes proclaiming.

He doesn't come quietly, apologetically, suggesting he's king.

He comes loudly, he comes confidently declaring he is king.

King over family, king over culture, and yes, even king over government.

Where do you get that, Josh?

It's in his name.

King of say it with me.

Kings.

It's in his name.

So we wouldn't miss it.

And we interpret that as we shouldn't talk about it.

Good heavens.

We're the only ones that have anything remotely helpful to say about how governments should think and citizens should think about government and about politics under the rule and reign of King Jesus.

His expectations for the individual, the family, the church, and yes, governments to obey and to bow to his moral law.

And to the degree that a nation recognizes that, they flourish, and to the degree that they rebel against that, there will be calamity visited upon them.

That's the math.

Take it to the bank.

And so it's incumbent upon the church to be the salt and light in that realm.

And so we did a little non-controversial series called Jesus in politics because we believe that Jesus is over and has something to say about politics.

Amen?

Come on, that was good.

Amen?

Let's go.

Come on.

All right, here we go.

Jesus in politics.

Then we did a funnel series called uh Christmas series called Make Earth Great Again.

That's funny.

I thought it was funny.

It was great.

Uh we had red hats and everything.

Then we did a series uh called Stronger Marriage, talking about the nature of marriage.

Then we did a series in the Psalms, which is awesome.

Then uh we did a series on Colossians, and then we did a little anchored life, uh building a stable life in an unstable world.

Then we did Be Fruitful, remember Be Fruitful?

Three years ago, launched that, which was awesome, and that it launched uh Garden City Academy, and that launched Phase 4, and that launched uh John and Becca Lovell to plant Grace City uh Rome and all sorts of cool stuff that we're still chasing down and following up and living in the aftermath glory of.

Uh then we started a book called 1 Corinthians, and we broke it into four series.

First series was church on fire.

The problem was we're supposed to be on fire, like passionate, and the church in Corinth was on fire like dumpster.

And so Paul writes this, Paul writes this letter to the dumpster fire, hoping to change it to a holy fire.

And so it was church on fire.

Second part of the series was Lies We Believe About Sex, Singless, and Marriage.

This was 1 Corinthians, I want to say 5, 6, and 7.

Crazy stories about this continue to come in.

It's just kind of taken a life of its own.

Well, one of my uh favorites, I met someone in DC this week who got saved watching that sermon series.

Wild.

Um one of my favorite stories of this came from a gal.

Uh she was kind of coming back to a lost faith in her later adult years and single, and started dating a quote-unquote Christian guy, and he's like, hey, let's have sex.

She's like, Aren't we not supposed to do that?

He's like, No, it's totally okay.

That's like old fuddy duddy Christianity.

It's a new day now, we're all good.

And she's like, I do not think so.

And so she googles, like, can uh unmarried Christians have sex?

And boop, this sermon series pops up.

And so she watches it, and she's like, Hey, came under the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

She goes to your boyfriend, she's like, This guy says you can't.

Of course, that may be very popular with this guy.

He's like, Who's that guy?

And she's like, I don't know.

But we're done.

So she breaks up with this clown.

That's like a notch in my belt.

You know what I mean?

Come on, great city.

God raised us up to thwart the ill intentions of a dirtbag fake Christian in Colorado, thanks be to God.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Furthermore, she she watches the next series.

The next series gets saved somewhere in there, flies up here, gets baptized on a Sunday morning, right here, right here, flies home and then emails us and tells us about it.

And we're like, we'd love to have lunch, get together.

She's like, I'm I'm I'm back home in Colorado or wherever it was.

And we're like, what?

Long story short, she moved out here to be part.

She's like, if I want to find a guy, I might as well go to the family capital of the world.

And we said, sweetheart, it's one anchor.

I mean, I'm I mean, I we appreciate the sentiment.

We're trying, but you know, the dude raised her out here or Slim Pickens in the 40s.

She's like, I'm coming anyway.

She's been an active part of this church family since that sermon series, thanks be to God.

Isn't that awesome?

The crazy story.

And she's awesome too.

I mean, she is awesome.

Uh, then we went to the body.

Paul talked, teaches on the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians, and they ended with Jesus and Culture.

So that was our series in 1 Corinthians.

Then we did more series on the Psalms over the summer, and then coming to the fall of last year in September, if you recall, we had kind of a plan mapped out, and all of us woke up on September 10th, and the world had changed.

The world had changed.

Charlie Kirk had been um brutally murdered and assassination, assassinated on on live TV and instant.

I mean, I I saw the video within minutes and thought that's AI.

And then as texts and comments, and I'm talking with TP USA people and who are there, and we're texting, and it's like, no, no, this happened.

And so we did a four-part sermon series called Turning Point USA.

We talked about how to think about assassination in the land of the free and home of the brave.

And what does this mean for us?

And it was a four-week series, and it was a poignant time, and not only our church history, but our nation's history.

We held a prayer vigil that night.

Many of you were there.

And it it it's just it's been a divide.

Uh, this very weekend is he talking about the divides that still exist as a result of a single assassin's bullet.

And then uh we went into, we just sensed the need to unpack how does this happen?

Why is this going on?

So we did a four-part series on the unseen realm.

The premise of it being there's one reality, two realms.

One reality under the reign of God, two realms, the seen and the unseen.

And we have to understand that that is the biblical worldview, that everything going on in the seen realm is being driven and steered and controlled by that which is in the unseen realm.

That's the biblical worldview, that's what we teach.

And so when things aren't making sense in the physical realm, you know that it's spiritual.

And then that moved us into a series we called The Art of War, it was four or five weeks on spiritual warfare.

Turning point in a nation, reality of the unseen realm, the calling of engaging in spiritual war.

That was our series in the fall, and then we went into an unplanned series that we called the consecrated life.

It was supposed to be one sermon, and and it, and then it wasn't, you know?

Uh, and and it was just kind of new for us and different for us, and we like to plan things way out and be prepared and or whatever.

And it's like the Lord was like, nope, take your plans, burn them.

I want to do something fresh, I want to do something new.

And we started Revelation, return to your first love.

And I literally said the words from this stage on the first Sunday of this year.

Anyone else tired?

Me too.

I think we should rest our legs, enjoy the view, reset our compass.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Yeah, sucker.

Won't say that again.

And that led into the wildest eight months of my life, our life as a church family.

Church camp, wow.

The contract create series, wow.

Adam's campaign, wow.

The launch of Filibrian Justice, wow.

The the attempting to purchase property, wow.

The the pulling off of FreedomCon, y'all.

Wow.

Wow.

I I was in DC this week.

I'm gonna tell more stories later.

Man after man after man after man after man coming up.

This state, that state, that state, that state.

Thank you so much.

Incredible, changed our life, came with my son, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The ripple of that event still rolling out.

Um, and so consecrate life.

The premise of it was this there's lots of talking bobblehead quote unquote influencers who are not submitted to spiritual authority, nor are they in a good church, nor are they submitted to any uh sort of uh uh spiritual covering, talking a lot these days about Christianity.

And it's dangerous and it's deadly, and as a shepherd, you start realizing like it's my our job to guard the sheep from wolves, and now the wolves have access to the sheep 24-7 through these things called podcasts.

And I remember very distinctly hearing a young man talked about a podcaster he was listening to, and I my my my my heart just leaped in my throat, like, my gosh, that guy's a wolf.

He's he he's he's a false teacher, he's smooth-tongued, and he gets this kid three hours a day.

And so we got to talk about the Christian life.

It's not believing a set of things or adhering to an ideology, it's about a consecrated life given to a person, namely Jesus Christ.

We have to understand Christianity in these terms.

It is a life that has been set apart and separated and dedicated to and prepared and purified for worship and service and allegiance to a king, full stop.

That's Christianity.

It's not a crutch, it's not an ideology, it's not a political party, it is a life on fire, a life consecrated to and given to the glory of a king that you are unwilling to compromise even in the face of persecution, even in the face of slander, even in the face of relatives telling you to pipe it down.

You're like, no, no, no, no, you don't get it.

My life has been purchased, my life has been set apart, my life has been given to someone else.

It is not my own to follow Christ is to consecrate your past, your present, and your future to a purpose, to a person, and to a glory that is not your own.

And that's the good news of the gospel that we will preach in this church until Jesus comes back or we run out of breath.

But that's the message of the gospel.

So it took like 20 weeks to say all that.

And then out of the consecrated life, I I love the I love the brandy, by the way.

Carrie said that.

The altar, right?

There's power in that image.

Your life, your dreams, your ambition, your mission, your wants, your desires.

If you come to Christ, you take all those things and you put them there on the altar.

You say, My very life is yours.

Meaning, I am dead to that which I formerly thought was mine, so I can be made alive to that which I had no clue existed before you found me.

That's Christianity.

If you want to follow Jesus, you must take up your cross, die to yourself and follow me, Jesus said.

That was consecrate.

Out of consecrate, we jumped into the book of Nehemiah, rebuilding the walls, walked through the book of Nehemiah, one of my favorite books.

And then out of Nehemiah, uh, Pastor Kyle, Pastor Adam, Pastor Carrie took us through the book of 2 Peter, which, by the way, was an incredible series that blessed me deeply and filled me fully to overflowing.

I'm very, very grateful for those men.

If you're grateful for that series, can you tell them thanks?

It was really so good.

It was so good.

It was incredible.

So that's just kind of a fun sketch.

And there was lots of other kind of one-off sermon sprinkled in there, but it's kind of fun to see, right?

Daniel, Luke, Acts, Titus, Philippians, Lord's Prayer, Jesus and Government, liftoff, living a life of being catapulted into greater things.

Uh, the prophecies of Christ for Christmas, the the institution of marriage, Psalms, Colossians, the anchored life, being fruitful, and what that means to.

We a 10 week study on the first commission of God, the first command of God on Genesis, 1 Corinthians, Psalms, turning point, unseen realm, art of war, Nehemiah, 2 Peter, and now we're here.

And now we're here.

So that that that's that's where we've been, and now I want to talk about where we're going.

And there

The reason I want you to see that in the context of where we're currently at and where we're going is I want you to hear what I'm gonna say next, not as something new, but as something we're always gonna be doing.

So I want to walk through our quote-unquote mission statement.

And I have mixed feelings about mission statements.

You know, I'm like, eh.

But but the purpose of them is to keep you on what?

We can do better, class.

The purpose of a mission statement is to keep all of us focused on there it is, there it is.

Because your propensity in mind is to drift, is to forget, is to lose perspective, is to become distracted.

I say that from observing Sharon's life.

No, I'm kidding.

I say that from personal experience.

That was funny because my wife's one of the most driven focused people I know.

I'm the squirrel, I'm that guy.

You know what I mean?

So it's like Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, come back, come back, come back.

So maybe I just do this for me.

And if that's all it is for, that's fine.

But but I hope it helps some of you.

Just remind and every church should figure out how they say it.

And again, God gives a mission.

We're we're our jobs to obey it.

And we should find a way to say it that captures our heart in a catalytic way.

And we may change it in the future or find other ways to say it, but but if you want to boil down what we're doing, pop the hood, this is what's under there, okay?

And we say it like this, and I want you to hear it in the context of where we're going next.

We say like this: we exist.

We exist.

And when we say we exist, the first two words of our misstatement, that's that's pointing to the first foundational identity of us as a church, and that is that we are saying, what are we?

We're not first an organization or institution or a club.

We are family.

Where do I get that?

From Ephesians chapter one.

Now, I was gonna do this as a big surprise, but apparently you already found out in house news and announced this morning that we're going to Ephesians next.

So dang! There's my punchline, surprise.

I want to I want to salt the oats and whet your appetite for the book of Ephesians by showing how all of Ephesians undergirds everything we're trying to do here.

It's the magnum opus of the church.

It's it's that that one letter that Paul writes that encapsulates everything about who we are in Christ, what he's done for us, and how we are called to live.

It's the book that we preach through that none of you heard unless you were part of that original church plant team, because this is the book that we preached before we went public and launched Gray City Church.

The book of Ephesians was in the bones of the church plant team and has carried us for 18 years.

And so it seemed good and right to hearken back to that book that launched us and to go, hey, just to make sure that we don't start, you know, veering off that the rocket stays on point true north.

Let's go back to that book.

So I could not be more excited to preach to this book with the guys here on the team and just unpack the fresh insights of this timeless book.

And so I'm using that book to salt the oats this morning to show how all the elements of who we are, what we do, are there in that book.

So we exist as a family.

Number one, Ephesians 1.

God predestined us for what?

Adoption to himself as what?

Sons through Christ.

So then you are no longer strangers or aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints.

No, that's that's government language, that that that citizens, implying a new nation and saints, and what's the word?

Members of the what?

Household of God.

This is family language.

It's not institutional language, organizational language, club language.

It's family language.

The mystery of the gospel is that those who were strangers and aliens and hostile enemies of God have been invited to the table as family.

That's the fundamental orientation that we view this house as.

That shapes how we act, that shapes how we think, that shapes how we love each other and long suffer with each other and believe the best about each other.

We're a family.

We exist as a family to help, and this is the servant identity.

To help, to help is to posture oneself in a posture of serving.

We get this from Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers to equip his people, which is who?

Us for what?

Works of service so that the body of Christ can be built up.

How many families are healthy when everyone comes into that family dynamic to take?

How healthy is a family?

It'll be sick and dysfunctional and fractured.

Because where selfishness exists, relationships die.

How healthy is the family, conversely, whose members come to the institute of that family looking for ways to encourage, build up, and serve the other.

That family's strong.

Think about how tired you are in your family right now.

Your kids are whining, they're disobedient, your spouse is whatever.

Stronger marriage, watch the series, it'll help.

Think how quickly it would change if something could fill everyone in your family with a new kind of power and perspective so that when they came, they came in the posture of serving.

All of a sudden, kids were praying for their parents.

All of a sudden, kids were writing notes of encouragement to their parents and honoring their parents and respecting their parents and the wife as honoring and respecting her husband and the husband is sacrificially loving and serving his wife, and everyone shows up to outserve the other.

How long would it take to shift the broken dynamics of that family?

About a nanosecond.

Because Christ says himself through the Apostle Paul, he did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

Him doing that for strangers and aliens and enemies who didn't even love him, and yet we can't show up at our family with people we know and love and serve them.

This is a profound truth, Gray City.

We're the family capital of the world.

We want to call everyone in the family to show up as servants first there, practicing for how to be better servants in the world.

I'm telling you, you show up at work, you show up wherever God sends you this week in this posture, you will stand out in about three minutes.

Because almost nobody shows up in this posture.

Everyone shows up to take, nobody shows up to give and not get.

Give, period.

Serve, period.

Not serve so that, or give in order to, but no, I'm just here to serve.

Why?

Because the Lord Jesus poured his life out for me and it's changed my life, and it's my great honor to do the same with those around me.

How can I serve you?

We exist as a family to help as servants more people.

And this is the missionary piece.

We get this from Ephesians chapter 3.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

God's intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to his eternal purposes that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God creates the church, pours into them his spirit, that they might make known the manifold wisdom of God.

Think about that.

Your job is to make known the manifold wisdom of God.

How are you doing?

You know, we come to Jesus and what can I get?

And this and that.

No, no, no, no.

You're coming to receive in order to display.

Which when churches and when Christians go down the petty victim road and and and oh, I've been whatever this or that, it's a horrible witness to the world because they're letting their petty, selfish grievances be that which is displayed to the world rather than the manifold wisdom of God that instructs us to take responsibility for our actions, to believe the best, and to forgive where necessary, to cover over our multitude of sins by love, because we've been called to demonstrate the love of Christ to the world.

And when church becomes a consumer place where you come to get and not give, you will not manifest the wisdom of God to the world.

You'll manifest your own selfish manifestations to the world and it lies about the church.

And I guarantee you, Jesus will talk to you about it when he sees you at judgment day.

Let the fear of God be on the church today.

Honestly, let the fear of God cause his people to tremble.

When we think about our job as a church, we've been saved to be sent.

And so we're always going to be praying for one more.

That one more might hear the gospel, that one more might hear the good news, that one more might come into saving relationship with Jesus Christ and the Father through the work of the Spirit.

We exist as family to serve as servants and to help more people as missionaries meet Jesus.

And we say it this way, Ephesians 2, but now in Christ, you who are once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, and he came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near, for through him, Christ, we both have access, Jews and Gentiles, in one spirit to the Father.

You can't be in Christ until you've met Christ.

And Paul is saying, we preach Christ so people can meet him.

Our job is to introduce as many people as possible to Christ.

If you want to go to hell, that's your prerogative.

You're gonna have to crawl over me, around me, or through me.

You're not gonna get to go there for free.

You're not gonna get gonna drift and accidentally fall into hell.

We're gonna make you work for it in this town.

We're gonna make you work for it in our family.

We're gonna make you work for it in this state.

We're gonna trumpet the glory of God, the beauty of Christ, the availability of salvation through the Son, so that if you reject it, that's on you.

But you won't be able to say, I didn't know that Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life.

You see, this is this remarkable reality of the inclusive invitation of Jesus as the exclusive way to the Father.

I'm all about inclusivity.

The invitation goes to all, but the inclusivity stops there.

Because Jesus is the only way.

There's not many ways, there are not a few ways, there are not some ways, there's one way, and his name is Jesus.

We exist, help our people meet and love Jesus.

If you've met him but don't love him, it's not gonna do you any good.

Look at Ephesians 6.

Grace be with all of you, all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and established and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

What's the point?

He's saying here.

The love of Christ is kind of the point.

Jesus Himself said, You could boil the whole law down to this love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

That is the invitation, that is the adventure.

Because there are pockets and portions of our heart and our lives that do not yet love God fully.

And the journey of discipleship is to ever increasingly grow in our love for him, which results in us trusting him, which results in us obeying him.

And the more we obey him, the more he comes through and proves himself faithful.

So the more we trust him, and the more we trust him, the more we love him, the more we love him, the more we trust him, the more we trust him, the more we obey him.

And that love, trust, obey is the life cycle of the believer.

Because God has more steps of obedience for us in the future that none of us are currently ready to take, and so he gives us smaller steps to test us and prepare us for the bigger steps.

Don't think that if I do a big step now, whoo, I'm off the hook for a few months.

Every step of obedience is to demonstrate to you that God can be trusted.

So that then you'll take another step of obedience, and pretty soon you're on a journey of faith as you what?

Follow Jesus.

We want to introduce people to Jesus because to see him we believe is to love him.

And to love him is to follow him.

Jesus defined Christians most consistently as anyone who wants to follow me.

Not those who believe the right things or argue for me on X or check all the boxes or have the perfect liturgy.

No, it's those who actually follow me.

That's who love me.

If you love me, you'll obey me.

Christianity is you were going this way, and then you met Jesus, and you realized you were going the wrong way, and you turned and you started following him on a different path.

Look at the text in Ephesians 4, 1 and 5, 1.

Walk in a manner worthy of the calling which you have been called.

Chapter 5.

Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, and there it is, walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

It's this love is a two-way street.

That we receive the love of God for us through Christ, and that enables us to love him back.

And as we love him more, part of loving God is receiving the love of God so that we feel the love of God.

There's this, there's this is a total tangent.

There's this there's this shirt going around.

I see it a bunch, and you are enough.

And it's being printed by Christians.

And I get the sentiment, I just I just totally it drives me crazy.

It's not right.

You're you're totally not enough.

There's nothing about you that's enough.

You are empty, broken, hollow.

You have fallen short of the glory of God.

You are dead in your sin.

You're you're not even close to enough.

Jesus is enough.

That's the good news.

The gospel is not you're enough.

The gospel is he is enough.

Amen.

And if we focus on I am enough, we're in this self-help death cycle trying to convince us of something we intuitively know is not true.

We need a counter message.

He is enough.

That's the good news of the gospel, not that you're good enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it, Jesus loves you.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no.

You're broken, you're fallen, you're dead in your sin, and God loves you miraculously, mysteriously, incredulously.

This is wild.

The good news of the gospel, He is enough.

And when we're receiving His love and loving Him back, it just results in the feet just start moving.

You're just like, I gotta I gotta go, I gotta go.

Where are you gonna?

I gotta follow Him.

He's moving, He's moving.

Jesus is not a static king.

He's dynamic, he's moving.

And therefore, we're gonna be a church that's following Jesus.

We're gonna be a church that's on the move.

We exist till more people as a family of servant missionary disciples meet, love, and follow Jesus.

What is a disciple?

It's someone who's met him, it's someone who loves him, and it's someone who's following him.

Not perfectly, but happily.

And the beauty is when you're following Christ, you're gonna trip, stumble, trip over somebody else, take a wrong turn, get lost.

And he comes back, picks us up, finds us, and we get and we get this isn't following Jesus in perfection, but it is following Jesus in power in a way that's growing as we follow him day by day.

So this is how we look at it.

We exist, help our people in me love, follow Jesus, but that's not where it ends.

There's a so that.

So that more people might what?

Know God.

Because we believe the Bible teaches you were made to know God.

And until you know Him, your life will lack the purpose for which it was made, and you'll try to fill it with everything other than God, and you will be desperate and miserable and increasingly unsatisfied until your heart's longing finds what it was made and crafted for, namely finding its rest in God.

And so we want to help more people meet love and follow Jesus because ultimately we want fallen humanity to know the creator who made them.

Look at Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

And I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation.

So wisdom in place of your foolish stupidity and revelation in place of your blindness, that you might grow in the knowledge of him, or that you might know him more.

This is the first sermon I ever preached.

Clyde Ballard was sitting right there, almost 90 years old, I think.

How old is Clyde?

92?

Married Ruth for 66, 67 years, something like that.

I preached that sermon.

I was 22 at the time.

He came forward afterwards and said, Son, if all you do is preach that message the rest of your life, you will have lived a good life.

That puts a lot of gas in the tank coming from the speaker of the house in the heart of a punk, wet behind the ear redneck, who probably at best preached a very mediocre sermon.

I preached that text because that was the text I heard my dad preached to me at our house our entire life.

Boys, God made you to gonosco him.

It's a Greek word for no, son.

Oh, thanks.

Ganosco, Josh.

Ganosco, Carrie.

It's not an intellectual understanding of, it's an intimate and personal knowledge and awareness of.

You know when a get a dad gets in a boy's face with Ephesians 1.17?

It tends to change the trajectory of that boy's life.

That's what God's called you to do, man, with your sons.

God made you to know him, son.

God made you to know him, sweetheart, daughter.

Because in knowing him, you can understand yourself and the world you live in and know how you should live and spend a life in a manner worthy of your calling.

We exist to help more people meet, love, follow Jesus as a family of several missionary disciples, most fundamentally, so that more people can know God.

And so that more people, as a result, can live free.

Now, this is shot through the biblical narrative.

You can do a whole biblical theology on freedom.

But Paul says it like this in Ephesians.

But God, being rich in mercy, this is the big turn in the text, chapter 2, verse 4.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love which He has loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

Many series in Ephesians have made that text made alive.

Made alive, come alive in Christ.

Like that's the whole point of the story.

We've been made alive.

How did you get freedom out of that, Josh?

I'll tell you why.

Because before Christ, you are a prisoner.

And the prison you have self-selected is that prison cell of bondage and death.

And when Christ enters the picture, he breaks into the prison cell and he snatches you from captivity.

And what he saves you from is the bondage and prison cell of death, and what he welcomes you into is a new life of freedom in Christ.

And the freedom that you experience is that my soul has been made eternally alive.

And then we live that new aliveness here in part, preparing for how we will live it in the new heavens and the new earth for eternity in perfection, and that's going to be amazing.

We want more people to know God.

To know him, they must know his son, that they might live free.

Anybody tired of bondage?

Anybody tired of seeing people living shackled to anything other than Christ?

You do realize that slavery and bondage are everywhere you look if you have eyes to see them.

It's the nature of idolatry.

Enslaved to a false God, and the fruits of it are everywhere in our country.

And we want to see more people living free because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

You do realize that this national experiment we're in the middle of called America was built on that foundation by spirit filled, Jesus loving Bible reading and believing founders who had a deep conviction there will be no national freedom if there is not spiritual freedom.

There will be no national morality if there is no submission to the Moral lawgiver.

And we have a burden to see more people walk in freedom because, friends, you are made to live free.

And man oh man, when someone sees that and experiences that, there is nothing like celebrating with heaven the release of a captive.

That's our mission.

And lastly, they might know God and live free so they can what?

So they can actually do something.

You do realize we have a purpose.

You do realize we're called to be busy.

You do call, you know, realize we're called to do things.

Paul says it like this, it's so powerful.

For we are his workmanship.

And this is coming at the end of chapter two, where he's unpacked the glory of the providence of God, the mystery of the work of Christ, and now he's the punchline to which this was aiming.

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for, say the words, what is it?

Good works.

Good works.

And you know what good works done in Jesus' name will do?

Be controversial sometimes.

So what's the solution?

Stop doing them.

You know what good works will do sometimes?

Cost you?

You know what good works will do sometimes?

Require sacrifice from you?

You know what good works will do sometimes require you to change your previously laid plans?

But friends, why would you avoid doing that which you were made to do?

So you could continue doing that which is currently killing you.

You see, one of the things uh reasons I think Christians oftentimes don't experience the power of God is because they're attempting to use the power of God to live their own life.

Heaven will un will not unlock the resources of heaven to empower individuals to live out their own purpose.

The power of heaven is unlocked and poured out and into those individuals and those churches who say, Not our will be done, but your will be done.

That's where the power comes.

That's where the provision of God comes, that's where the miracles come.

They come before the ones who say, Not our will be done, but yours.

We want to live into those good works.

And then watch this, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Are you hearing the theme of the morning?

Christianity is movement.

Christianity is dynamic.

Some people are like, things always change around Great City because we're trying to keep up with Jesus.

The flesh wants static, safe, predictable.

The spirit is moving toward dynamic, unpredictable, even risk.

Moving into the unknown to demonstrate our faith in the one who knows what we don't know.

That's Christianity.

And yes, consistency and stability and communion and word, all these things, yes, for the sake of dynamic movement to keep up with Jesus.

Because friends, the lion's on the move.

And he's not hanging out at base camp, he's roaming through the jungle.

And sometimes following Jesus takes us into the jungle.

Well, here we go.

This should be fun.

Question, do you believe?

Honestly, don't show of hands in your heart.

Answer the question.

Do you believe honestly that God actually prepared in advance good works for you to do?

I don't think most Christians do.

And I'm here to wield every amount of influence God's given me as a yapper to convince you in your inner being that He has good works for you to do.

This isn't self-help, get a mission, you're important.

This is the glory of the manifold wisdom of God in the church that He's pouring out to demonstrate to the world his truth, his goodness, and his beauty through yours and my jacked up lives.

It's amazing.

It's a miracle, it's the plan of God.

I wouldn't have made it up myself, but it's what he did, so let's go with it.

I would have picked people who had their act together a little more than me.

And God's like, no, see, I'm going to use the foolishness of the world to shame the wise.

I'll go with you.

What would your life look like if you honestly believed that God had good work for you to do, that He had prepared in advance before not just you were reborn, but before you were even born.

Now that raises questions.

So what's God's unknown will, friend, brother, sister?

Let me encourage you.

There is much more of God's revealed will that you need to keep working on than his unrevealed will you don't need to worry about.

When you focus on obeying that which God has revealed, it begins unlocking the things that God has for you to do that he has yet to reveal.

Don't focus on one at the expense of the other.

And so I'm encouraging, I'm inviting you.

If you're new here, you're new to Christ, not in Christ, maybe you walk in, you have no reason why you're here, or you're watching online right now.

I want to invite you to give the Lord eight weeks in this opening series in Ephesians to just check out the Christian worldview as explained by one of the most brilliant writers of antiquity, the Apostle Paul.

I want to invite you to consider the manifold wisdom of God that he unpacks in the worldview that we call Christianity, to consider if it might reframe how you see the world and change your life.

So here's how we look at it.

There it is.

We exist as a family for Christ to help as servants serve in the power of Christ so that more people as missionaries might meet Christ, love Christ, follow Christ, that we might know God through Christ, live free in Christ, and do good in the name of Jesus Christ.

There it is.

Lots of different ways to say it.

That's totally fine.

But that's what we're going to give our life to here at Grace City Church.

We're going to ring that bell, beat that drum, do this to the best of our ability so long as God gives us breath.

It'll express itself in different ways and initiatives and campaigns and things we'll focus on in different seasons.

Yes and amen.

But we're always ringing that bell.

That's true, North.

That anchors my heart.

That could be a 40-minute sermon or a 40-week series that unpacks the mission of God as revealed in the Word of God.

That fires me up and we'll find new ways to say it and different ways to say it.

But everyone's got to find some way to say it so that it grips their heart and steers their life.

So the band can come out and here's how we do it.

Grace City Church, we do three things.

We do more sometimes and less, but but but we're we're never.

I restate that.

We do more sometimes, but never less than this.

We do uh grace teams, city groups, and gatherings.

So meaning grace teams are where we we use our gifts to strengthen the body.

City groups are where we bear one another's burdens, live in community, life-giving relationships.

Love Jesus, follow Jesus, learn from older, gaining wisdom.

I'm looking around, I'm seeing city group leaders here who open their homes and invite young folks in and they disciple them and they they they help with their kids.

It's a glorious thing.

It's being the body of Christ, and then we gather as a church.

Do not forsake gathering, the Bible says.

So we don't.

And we come here and we come to hear the word of God and we come to worship the Son of God.

We come to be filled by the Spirit of God for the sake of mission.

Because, friends, here's the deal.

And this is a word that the Lord uh spoke over me through a dear friend in these last few weeks, and I've been soaking on it, and I want to I want to bring it to us soon, and that is our worship must rise to match the war that we are in.

Because worship is warfare.

And God has assigned, for reasons beyond my knowledge, understanding, or ability to grasp, God has assigned Grace City Church.

He's given us an assignment, He's given us marching orders.

And what I'm sensing in these days that started with consecration and got launched through church camp is that we must learn to grow in the size of and passion of and outpouring of our worship to match the assignment of war we've been given.

And I think they're currently a little out of balance, which is why the Lord set us up with church camp in preparing our hearts for this.

We come here, friends, not because we're bored on Sundays or the game got bumped late, so we have time.

We come here because if you're in Christ, you have a sense I might not make it this week unless I get into the corporate presence of the Spirit of God with his people.

That's why we come to be filled with power to go out with life to do our assigned job.

You're like, are you boiling Christianity down to an assignment?

I thought it's all about relationship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm all about relationship.

And I'm all about doing something.

Why, Josh?

Because the Bible says it.

You were saved for warm tea and long walks on the beach with Jesus.

Is that what Paul said?

No.

You were saved what?

For good works.

Let's go.

I'm 47 getting older by the minute.

I'm running out of time.

I've never had something more urgency, like, ah, I want to make sure I get this right.

I only get one shot at being 47.

And then I only get one shot at being 48 if God even lets me get to 48.

And as God is my witness, if there's breath in my lungs, I will be found trying to identify, live out, and pursue those good works that God had prepared in advance for me to do.

And then I'll rest in eternity with Him.

But while we're here, the rest is for the purpose of work, dear friends.

Of work, dear friends.

So my encouragement, jump in a team, get in a group, commit baseline to gathering with the saints.

You can't go two or three weeks without gathering the saints and have your soul not dry up.

And I'm gonna say it's gotta be here.

Somewhere.

Gather somewhere with the saints, under godly leadership, under a spiritual authority, worshiping with the saints.

It's gotta happen.

You can't just drift and think I'll get stronger.

You gotta come and be and be filled in order to be sent.

How do you get in a grace team?

Sign up for GrowTrack, you piece of cake, groups, on-site groups, you can go out and sign up at the Connect Center today.

You're in a group.

Dive in, jump in, everyone in the field, no one in the stands.

So where to next?

Well, I wanted you to see this, this, and see this so you can connect the dots.

Okay?

Every one of those series was aimed at strengthening one of the elements there.

And I want you to get this.

We've got to be sophisticated enough to understand this.

Not every sermon series will hit every piece there.

Sometimes we need to focus on family.

Sometimes we need to focus on being missionaries or disciples.

Sometimes we need to focus on just knowing God and growing in our knowledge of Him.

Sometimes we need to grow in freedom and breaking bonds of sin and knowing how to do spiritual warfare and battle.

And sometimes we need to focus on doing good, like starting schools and sending good men and women into the public square.

And so the point is, all of these sermons are always feeding this mission.

I want you to see that.

I want you to get that.

I want you to be able to connect the dots by what we're saying up here, to how that fits in there.

We want a balanced diet, strengthening the body of Christ for this work, which is why it's my excitement to announce to you for the first time, even though nobody knows, we're going to study the book of Ephesians.

So I'm very excited for.

Yeah.

Now, here's why I'm so excited.

Ephesians is broken up into two parts.

Chapters 1 through 3 is all theology and doctrine of the church.

It's just, it's just steep, sledding, heavy lifting stuff.

I mean, the thing is like three Greek sentences.

It's just one long run-on sentence, Paul just glorying in the Godhead and all he's done.

It's it's heavy lifting theology.

If you're into doctrine and theology and the nature of the church, man, this is your series.

Made alive will be starting October 1st.

And I'm not kidding.

Give your life, give yourself eight weeks to this series.

Invite a friend.

Hey, you want to know about the nature of God and the nature of the church?

Like, come, like this is the foundation of everything, the magnum opus of the church as described by Dr.

Martin Lowe Jones.

Get to Christmas, we're gonna do an awesome, awesome uh Christmas series, and then start the year, Ephesians chapter 4 through 6, the new humanity.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

And that walks through not theology but praxology.

If the first three chapters are doctrine, the second three chapters are living.

It's built into the tenses that Paul uses in the Greek.

The first three chapters are all indicatives.

These are things that are true of God, of you, of the world.

The second half of the book, all imperatives.

Therefore, therefore, therefore, therefore.

That's the flow of the text, that's the flow of our life.

Because God, therefore we.

Because Christ, therefore we.

Because the Holy Spirit, therefore, because these things are true, we now live this way.

Doxology, Praxology, doctrine, worship.

It's gonna be an awesome series.

Why I'm so excited.

We preached this series before we planted Grace City Church.

And coming up on our 20th anniversary here soon, we wanted this book that was in the bones of the church plant team to go into the bones of the new church plant team, which is you.

For this next season, God will take us into.

Amen.

So, Father in heaven, as we look to you, we say thank you for all you've done, all you are doing, and in faith, we thank you for all you are going to do.

And Father, we ask that in your name, you would do a work in this church, a purifying work, a strengthening work, a filling work that would prepare us for the assignment you have for us to come.

And that we would be found faithful, joyfully responding to your initiative, we ask.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for listening.

If you want to learn more about Grace City, check out our website listed below and check out the Stronger Man Nation podcast with Pastor Josh McPherson for regular podcasts tackling issues on marriage, fatherhood, growing as a stronger man, and how to be a faithful Christian in a world of depravity.