God’s renewal plan

My name is Ephraim Smith.

I'm the co-senior, co-lead pastor here at Midtown.

So glad that you're here in the house.

Those of you that are joining online, so glad that you could be with us.

We are in a sermon series called Why Church.

Why Church?

We thought we were going to be in this series just for a couple of weeks.

And co-senior, co-lead pastor Susie Gomez, my sister in the ministry, said, I think we're supposed to sit in this a little longer.

And I believe she's right.

I asked her, I said, how long you think we should be in this series?

And she said, till God tells us to do something else.

So this is where we are in this series.

Why church?

Why church?

Why does the church exist?

And who are we to be within it?

My wife Danisha in her Denver Broncos jersey on.

You know, you know, we we can't agree on everything.

I mean, we we married, but you know.

Um she said, you know, this this series makes me think about our our church verse for the year.

And what I realized when she said that is that every series we've been in this year, our verse of the year has been a thread all through it.

So I just want to, before I get into the sermon, I just want to remind us our verse of the year is John 15.5.

John 15.5.

I hope that you would join us in praying over this verse, uh, resting in this verse in some way, you know, looking at it maybe on a weekly basis, just so that it can collectively be rooted in who we are.

John 15, 5 says, Jesus is speaking.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

So, whatever we're preaching about here, it still comes down to being rooted, abiding in, deeply connected to Jesus.

Because without him, we can't produce nothing.

Um with that in mind, we are in this series, Why Church?

Why church?

I don't know if you've um ever used this line.

It's just like new.

Or if somebody said it to you, it's just like new.

When you're trying to convince yourself, or somebody's trying to convince you, that something that's old, something that's somewhat worn out, something that's been around for a while, it can look brand new again.

You take that car to the detail car wash, not just quick quack, but like, you know, the old school.

Okay, some of y'all don't even know what I just did.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

So uh so the young people are like they're just this is mysterious.

But uh if you go to the old school car wash and you get it detailed, sometimes you can look at it and say it's just like new.

Or if in your own driveway you give it a wax job, you can look at that car and say it's just like new.

But sometimes unforeseen accidents happen, and scratches and dents and scars get on our car, and without insurance, without a specialist, there is nothing you can do to make that car look like new.

You can wax it all you want, you can wash it all you want, but it doesn't wash away the dents, it doesn't wash away the scars, it doesn't wash away the scratches.

And the dents and the scratches are reminders that you were in an accident.

They're reminders that something went wrong.

They're reminders that somebody ran a red light on you, they're reminders of the damage that was done.

And no matter what you do, you can't make that car look like new without a specialist.

But what about people?

When people are dented, when people are scarred, when people are damaged, is there any place you can go?

Is there anyone you can go to to be made new again?

This is what the church is supposed to be.

Why church?

Because church is God's renewal plan.

The church is supposed to be a place where dented, scratched, neglected, thrown away, flawed, imperfect people can come and experience the Holy Spirit in such a way.

Experience Christ in such a deep, transformative way that dented, scratched, neglected, traumatized people can be made new.

Go with me.

Oh, y'all clapping like y'all believe me.

I ain't even preached nothing to you yet.

I gave you no scripture reference or nothing, but okay.

Maybe there's some seasoned saints in the room.

Go with me to Ephesians chapter 2, beginning with verse 1.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

The apostle Paul is writing, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved.

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.

From this text, I want to preach to you on the title, Why Church?

God's Renewal Plan.

Why church?

God's renewal plan.

God, let this be your message.

God, please preach to us.

Let me only be the vessel that you are using to say what you want to say.

I want to be obedient to your word, so please let it be done.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Why church?

God's renewal plan.

You know, there are some things that are so broken that I don't even know if you can make them new again.

They just need to be replaced.

Uh yeah, I mean, I mean, when I was a kid, uh, sometimes me and my younger brother Tremaine, we would break something.

I don't know if that's just a thing about have having boys, raising boys in the house.

Things are gonna break.

And so, you know, what was tough is if something broke and we were trying to see if we could fix it before our mom and dad got home.

You know, so I remember one time I think we we cracked a lamp, and so we were thinking, can we tape it?

No, they would notice that.

Uh, can we use some crazy glue?

Uh that might so I I came up with the idea.

What if we just turn the lamp around so that the part that's cracked is is against the wall.

They don't surely my mom and dad are never gonna do see that, but I didn't realize that my mom and dad had side hustles investigator, private investigator, detective.

So eventually we were found out.

And I don't want to tell what my mom and dad did because I don't want you to think of them different.

I think I told this story, but my wife Donisha bought these six glasses, real nice, they all match.

And uh one day I was she wasn't home, I was pulling one out of the dishwasher, and I and I dropped it, and I looked at it and I could tell this this I can't put this back together.

So um I thought to myself, one I could tell her, but why do that?

So I said, I'm gonna take the five glasses that are left and rearrange them in such a way that if she don't count them, she's not even gonna know one of them missing.

You think that works?

So, anyway, some things are so broken that they can't be replaced.

That is what is so radical about the Bible and the gospel message of Jesus and this message that the church is supposed to carry.

We're supposed to believe according to the Bible, we're supposed to believe according to the gospel message of Jesus Christ that no human being is too broken.

If you only read the Old Testament, and if you just left off at Noah and the Ark, you would think that God's ultimate plan for broken people is replacement.

Y'all won't act right?

That's all right.

What was that old aside?

You know, you know, you know, you ain't gonna act right, we just make another one of you.

Yeah, how about that?

Mom and dad just make another one.

No, no, no, no.

I mean, that was like a joke, but but you understand what I'm saying.

If you just read the Old Testament, you would think there's this angry, violent God who is fed up with broken, sinful, wicked, evil human beings, and the plan is just replace them.

But if you keep reading and you find yourself to the cross at Calvary, you'll realize that God's ultimate agenda is not our replacement, but our renewal, our redevelopment to make us new again.

God actually never gives up on broken people.

God is so loving and so full of grace that at the core of God's character, nature is our renewal.

This is what Paul is writing about in his letter to the churches at Ephesus.

The church as God's renewal, the church as God's redevelopment plan.

Paul actually wrote this letter while incarcerated.

Interesting.

I'm gonna get back to this point a little later in the message, but I just want you to understand for context where Paul is in his life when he's writing this letter about renewal, redevelopment, being changed and made new in Christ Jesus.

Uh he's he's incarcerated, and he's incarcerated because the religious powers and the political powers have worked in concert to incarcerate and to murder people that are following Jesus Christ and telling everybody about it.

The interesting thing, though, is that one time Paul himself was a part of the religious and political powers that were incarcerating and persecuting and murdering Christians.

I mean, you can read in the book of Acts when when Stephen, a Christian voice, is stoned to death.

Paul applauded and he used that martyrdom to get uh the power from the government and from the religious authorities to go out and murder, incarcerate more Christians.

But on the way, he meets the the resurrected Christ, and and his life is renewed.

He is made new, and now instead of using the powers to incarcerate Christians, the religious and political powers have now incarcerated him.

But yet, this is the most powerful time of his life.

He's like full of joy and hope and possibility.

He's writing to the church with passion, even though the powers and the institutions and the structures of the world, both political and religious, are against him.

And from this posture, he's writing this letter.

Dr.

Tony Evans in his Bible commentary says central to the message of Ephesians is the recreation of the human family.

And this recreation is being done according to God's original kingdom intention for humankind.

Dr.

Evans is saying that if you want to sum up the entire letter of Ephesians, which we're preaching through all of it over the next few weeks, he's saying the main theme is God is recreating human beings.

God is renewing human beings.

This is at the core of the identity of the church.

The church should be a community.

The church should be a place where renewal happens.

People become new.

If people are in the church over a period of time, and over that period of time, they are the exact same people intellectually, emotionally, and all of their behaviors and decisions as they were when they first came to church.

That's not church.

That might be a religious country club, that might be some kind of ritualistic institution, could be a cult, but it's not church.

The church is supposed to be about renewal, the ongoing journey of being made new.

Now, I want to pause from this for just a second because what I want to do for a moment is I want to remind us while we're in this series how we define being a part of this church.

What does it mean to be a member of Midtown Church?

So we're going to put this up so you can see this.

And the reason this is important is because we're going to look at this during this series because we have to look at how we define membership.

We have to look at what the Bible says about the church and see if it lines up.

And if it doesn't line up, we need to rewrite our definition of membership.

The Bible doesn't need to be rewritten.

If there's any contradictions, we need to make corrections on our side, okay?

And so that's why we're in this series.

We want to look at how we define membership at Midtown Church, look at what the Bible says about the church, and make sure that there's alignment.

So this is how we define membership at Midtown.

A member of Midtown Church is a lover and follower of Christ who has chosen to covenant with this local body by committing to spiritual growth, serving, generosity, and accountability.

What that means is membership at Midtown starts with your relationship with Jesus.

Before it gets to what's your role here, where are you serving, what do you do, what are your gifts.

It starts with, do you know Jesus?

Is Jesus your Lord and Savior?

If you don't know Jesus, we want to introduce you to him.

We want you to claim him as your Lord and Savior.

We want you to know him personally.

We want you to know the significance of Calvary's cross and the resurrection.

We want you to be baptized.

If you're already a Christian, we want this place to be a continuation of the developing of your understanding of being in relationship with Jesus, a lover and follower of Christ.

Pastor Susie said it best last week in her sermon: who you are matters more than what you do.

And and because there'll be confusion around what you do if you aren't clear on who you are.

And the church can become a place where there's a renewal of understanding of identity.

So it's about being a lover and follower of Christ who's chosen to covenant.

That means come into relationship with this local body, this church.

There are all kinds of churches out here all throughout the Sacramento region.

You could join any of them, you could be a part of so many of them.

There's so many great churches.

But but it but what does it mean to be in relationship with this one?

It means that together we're committing to grow spiritually.

Which means that whether you just became a Christian or you've been in church for 30 years, you've been a Christian for 25 years, all of us have one thing in common.

We have not arrived.

Spiritually, we are still growing.

We are still growing.

We are still growing.

If I have two doctorate degrees and I'm ordained and I'm still growing, we all still growing.

Everybody, I haven't arrived.

I'm still being deconstructed and broken and re-engineered and renewed by God.

Me.

We're also committed to serving.

That's why we have a ministry fair today outside.

We hope you'll check it out.

So you can see all the opportunities where you can grow spiritually, but all of the ministries here, children's ministry, youth ministry, outreach ministry initiatives, men's ministry, women's ministry, places where you can serve and get involved and out of the overflow be strengthened in how you bring God's love to the world.

Generosity.

And so it takes resources to do that kind of righteous, justice-oriented disciple-making work.

And we're inviting you to be consistent givers, to tithe, to give to these efforts, and also accountability, which means we get to know each other well enough that we can speak into each other's lives.

We can correct one another.

You need people in your life that will say, Your fly is down, your your slip is showing, your wig is crooked.

You need people like this in your life.

Yeah, there you go.

There you go.

You're good now.

You need people in your life that will keep it real with you like that.

But this doesn't happen.

The church can't operate like this unless we declare first and foremost, before we declare what membership looks like at Midtown Church, we first have to declare who does Midtown belong to?

Who is the owner of Midtown Church?

Who is ultimately in charge of Midtown Church?

And I declare to you biblically, it's God.

The church is the bride of Christ.

Christ is the head of the church.

And so this kind of spiritual renewal can only happen.

This definition of membership can only be realized if we declare first and foremost that this church belongs to God.

Yes, we're part of the evangelical covenant church denomination, but but ultimately this church belongs, matter of fact, the entirety of the church on the whole planet is supposed to be under the governance of God.

So now that we got that out the way, does this definition of membership align with God?

With what God says in the Bible?

That's what we're gonna find out.

Because the question that I want to wrestle with here over the next few moments is this how renewal operates in the church and how we participate.

How does this renewal that I'm talking about, that the Bible is talking about, how does renewal operate in the church, and how do you and I participate in it as members of the church?

So glad you want to know this.

One renewal operates in the church through one new life.

How you know that godly, spiritual, transformative renewal is happening in the church is you need to have evidence that new life is happening.

People are being born again.

People are coming to know Jesus Christ, and their life is becoming new.

Let's go back to Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1.

Ephesians 2:1

Paul says, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit, who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.

What Paul is saying here is simply this.

This is the way to understand this, sisters and brothers.

You have to start with the idea that you believe that we live in a broken, sinful, wicked, divided world.

And I don't have time in this sermon to prove this to you.

Go watch TV when you leave here.

Matter of fact, walk around.

Just walk five blocks that way, go to your car.

If you need proof that in this world it's violence and war and poverty and disease and discrimination and prejudice and bias, sustained anger, unforgiveness, abuse, human trafficking in this world, on this planet, in this nation, in this state, in this region, these things exist.

And if these things exist, you have to have an explanation for it.

How is it that violence and poverty and disease and human trafficking exist?

How war?

How is it that innocent babies are dying in the Middle East and they're found in rubble in the midst of war?

How can you explain all of this?

How can you explain tragedies such as this?

We live in a sinful, broken world.

And no matter how good your family was growing up, you and I, on some level, have been shaped and developed and conditioned by this violent, chaotic, crazy, broken, evil, wicked world.

There's trauma in you that you can't even explain.

But really, what is at the core of this trauma is you bumping up against, walking through, navigating, sensing, smelling, digesting this broken world in which we live.

And so we're shaped by it, as Bain said in Batman, molded by it.

This is who we are.

And this is not just natural.

It is not just natural systems and structures of entertainment and economics and militarism that are doing this to us.

It is not just ethnicity and nationalism that is doing this to us.

It is not just the social construction of race that is doing this to us.

What is doing this to us is also spiritual.

There is an enemy, Satan.

There's a spiritual realm that you and I can't see, but it's real.

And so the prince of the air, Satan, the devil, the spiritual realm, along with the brokenness of the natural realm, is shaping how we think, shaping how we feel, shaping how we make decisions.

And we are so broken by this, we need renewal.

That's what Paul is saying.

This is not a shaming text.

This is not saying you are just a sinful, dirty person, you should go to hell.

That's not what this is really saying.

It is saying that you and I are so damaged and so broken that we can't live like this.

We will die if something doesn't change.

We we we need something else.

And Paul gets to what the something else is.

He says, like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

That's the replacement theology.

Oh, let's just build an ark and start over again.

Oh, let's, oh Lord, what are we gonna do?

But no, because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.

It is by grace you have been saved.

It is not about replacement, it's about renewal.

God has not given up on you, God has not given up on me, and the church should be a movement that says we don't give up on broken people, we don't give up on addicted people, we don't give up on incarcerated people, we don't give up on undocumented people, unhoused people, whatever.

However, the world is stigmatizing and dehumanizing people, we continue to see the Imago Day, the image of God on people because God is so full of love, so rich in mercy that God offers renewal.

The church ought to be a place of new life.

I'm so glad, I'm so humbled that God would choose this to be a place where hundreds of people a year come to Christ and are baptized.

I'm not boasting, but I'm so glad.

It's not because of me, but I'm so glad that God's grace would be so rich that He would say, at Midtown Church, this could be one place where hundreds of people would say yes to Jesus, where hundreds of young people would say yes to Jesus at camp.

The people would say yes, new life.

Christ took on death to pull you and I out of death.

The church is operating in renewal when we care deeply about evangelism.

When we care deeply, this cannot just be a place that recycles people that are already Christian.

If you came here already Christian, I am mad at you.

Glad you're here.

We need some people with experience.

But real church growth comes from new people finding Jesus, people that didn't know him before.

If you're already a Christian, this is gonna sound harsher than I want it to sound.

But sometimes when people are already Christian and they go to a new church, they're looking for how they can start their thing at that church, especially if you couldn't get your thing at the last church you were at.

So you couldn't get it started at that one.

So now you're gonna get it started with this one.

And you know what?

That I don't have a problem with this.

Like if you've got experience in teaching and children's ministry and youth ministry and leading small groups and outreach and discipleship, man, and this is your church home and you feel like God has called you here, we'd love to talk to you about getting involved.

But don't take up so much space at Midtown that you don't make room for somebody who's new to Jesus.

Somebody who, for the first time, needs to discover their calling.

They need to discover sometimes people that are already Christian can take up so much space in a church that we suffocate somebody else's renewal.

Is that okay?

Take up space, but not too much.

Like being in space, but don't be like point two.

How renewal operates in the church, and how do we participate?

Renewal operates in the church through new life, and it operates through new community.

New community.

Says in verse 11 of Ephesians 2, therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, I'm not gonna talk a lot about that today, which is done in the body by human hands.

Remember that at the time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigner to the covenant of the promise without hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

This is saying in at that time, in Roman society, there was division between Jews and non-Jews or Gentiles.

And spiritually, the Jewish people felt like they were privileged, even though they were suffering, even though they were marginalized to a degree, they still said, We are the descendants of Abraham, the one true God.

We are the descendants of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

There is a promise that we are awaiting.

We are spiritually privileged, we are spiritually set apart.

And there's a physical thing that the men did that was a sign that they were set apart.

So something that a human being could do themselves to say, I'm a part of the set apart people.

I'm so glad the religion don't go that way now.

And anyway, that has nothing to do with the sermon.

Uh so that the for the Gentiles, they thought they had social privilege.

Social privilege, which means I'm a Roman citizen.

And as a Roman citizen, as someone who's naturally born Roman, I have privileges.

So what Paul is doing is he's first dealing with the spiritual privilege that the Jewish people believe they have.

He's talking to the Gentiles and he says, Yes, formally, because you're not of the circumcision, because you're not the descendants of Abraham, you would not have been included in this family.

You would not have been included in this community.

But the renewal of Jesus is so radical, so revolutionary, that not only does it transform the soul, it transforms society.

It transforms how people gather in public, how people build community, how they build relationship, that the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross of Calvary, brings new life and it brings new community.

This is what Paul is trying to tell them.

This is God's renewal plan.

Because there is what Paul calls a dividing wall of hostility.

In verse 14, he says, For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.

Sisters and brothers, amongst human beings in this world, in this nation, in this state, there are still dividing walls of hostility.

Aren't there?

Even in the state of California, I heard there's a whole group of people that want to secede from the state of California, don't even really want to know if they want to be a part of the rest of California, and they got their own flag and their own constitution.

There's a dividing wall of hostility in the state of California.

There's a dividing wall of hostility in the United States of America by race, by politics, by economic class status.

Some people can't even go to their own family members' house for Thanksgiving because you start talking about politics, you start talking about a social issue, and you experience the dividing wall of hostility.

And the church is supposed to be a place of such renewal that we figure out how to navigate social issues biblically in such a way that the dividing walls come down among us.

New community.

Let me go a little deeper.

In our world, there is so much chaos, so much crazy, so much crisis, that our natural human response is fight or flight.

I'm either ready, like, oh, you want okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

What we doing?

What we what we doing?

What we doing?

What we doing?

What we doing?

What are we doing?

What we doing.

Or it's you too big.

Or it's I just don't want to deal with you anymore.

I don't have patience for this anymore.

I don't have tolerance for this anymore.

I'm tired of going back and forth.

I ain't going back and forth.

I'm tired.

I ain't doing this.

Fight or flight.

The church has the possibility to be a new response to crisis and chaos.

Instead of fight and flight, it could be faith and fruit.

The church could be a place where crisis, where chaos strengthens, further develops your faith that you might produce better fruit.

Because this is what I've realized.

I'm talking about Ephraim Smith.

I ain't talking about none of y'all.

What I found out is every time I'm in a crisis, it's an opportunity to find Christ.

I actually got to give that one to Pastor Otis.

He gave that to me in the green room.

But he write, when you're in a crisis, it's an opportunity to find Christ or continue the chaos.

This is what I'm saying.

When I'm in crisis, there's an opportunity for me to discover anew how God wants to bring the fruits of the Spirit through my life.

Ephraim, you're going through this because I'm trying to make you more kind.

I'm trying to teach you forgiveness.

I'm trying to teach you hospitality.

I'm trying to teach you endurance.

I'm trying to teach you perseverance.

I'm trying to mature you if you let me, Ephraim.

I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to renew something in you.

You got a decision tomorrow.

You can be kind or you can cuss.

Now, you y'all quiet like this ain't a real thing.

I'm saying like some of y'all, you ain't saying nothing because you're in church, you can't admit it, because you don't want us to diminish your spiritual persona.

But some of you tomorrow, you're gonna be in a situation where you gotta decide I can be kind or I can.

As we say here, we can you can be righteous or ratchet.

You gotta chaos and crisis is an opportunity to find Christ.

It doesn't have to be fight or flight, it can be faith and fruit.

Are y'all with me?

And three, new citizenship.

Verse 19 says, Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.

In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.

And in him, you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

Yes, sisters and brothers, the church is a building, but the building is Jesus.

Jesus is the cornerstone, Jesus is the foundation, Jesus is the pillars, and when you live into that, then you become a living temple.

You, where you work, where you live, where you play, where you shop, you become a living building of the Lord.

And then when we gather together collectively, we are the church, we are the temple.

The church building is not limited to the physical building in which we reside right now, it is who we are together, and we are citizens of the kingdom of God.

And for time, I can't delay on this.

I just got to name this what it is.

If we, the church, are going to operate in renewal, if we are going to live as renewed revolutionary people of love and righteousness and justice in the world, the main thing we have to do is denounce American Christianity.

See, I don't have time.

I I had to just go straight at it because I'm I don't have time to like break this down.

I don't have time to tell you that American Christianity is more based on Constantine in the Roman Empire in the fourth century, when all of a sudden uh Constantine, who was like Caesar, who wasn't really a Christian, but because he used Christian religion to justify going to war, to justify violence, to justify destruction.

And so Rome didn't become a Christian nation.

They just started doing things saying they were doing it in the name of Jesus.

We can kill in the name of Jesus, we can behead people in the name of Jesus.

We will now take the thing we did to Jesus and do it to other people and say we're doing it in the name of Jesus.

And so, but we have this this Christian religion that we're in the midst of that can justify doing things that aren't really named Christian in the Bible.

And so the best way to to to rise above that is to claim our citizenship in the kingdom of God above any citizenship of any government or nation on earth.

Now, hear me good.

I didn't tell you to denounce the United States of America, I didn't tell you to be unpatriotic, I didn't tell you to be anti-American.

I said the church can't believe in Jesus and believe in American Christianity at the same time.

Because there are parts of national Christianity that are antithetical to biblical Christianity.

And so we have to live as an exiled people, as a foreign people, as strangers in a strange land.

We are citizens of the kingdom of God.

And the reason we can be nonviolent, the reason we can be forgiving, the reason we can be righteous, the reason we can be justice-oriented is because we become from another place.

We claim Jesus as our king, we claim Yeshua as our Messiah, we claim the kingdom of God as our citizenship, and this is how we operate.

We are people otherworldly.

We don't look at social issues the same way nationalistic religion does.

So let me come to my clothes.

I gotta come to my clothes.

I have to close because I'm chocolate.

That's how we were trained to preach.

I've been in Sacramento for nine years.

But there's one thing that I just can't get my head around.

I can't get peace about.

Sacramento.

Freeway construction.

I can't.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm fed up, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm frustrated.

I can't, I can I can't go down the the 50 heading towards Sack State without construction and detour signs, and the lane is closed, and I can't, I can't go home to West Sack and I find out that the Jefferson exit is closed from 10 p.m.

to 5 a.m.

And then you go to the harbor exit and that one's open, but on Friday till Sunday, it's closed every night between 9 p.m.

and 6 a.m.

I can't go on the 80 towards the state fairgrounds without somebody taking up a lane.

It's just construction, construction.

What is going on?

Can there be that much brokenness in Sacramento on highways that we need construction workers continuously?

Is there that much brokenness?

Is there that many cracks?

Is there that many potholes?

Is there that many accidents?

Is there that much upside-downness that every day you need a construction worker?

You need a construction worker.

Well, yesterday, my wife and I were driving on the 80 going east, and there wasn't any construction.

And we realized that the construction work that was being done was leading to a walkway on the freeway.

They built this bridge that people can walk on.

So I said to myself, you've been doing construction all this time just to give people a new way of walking?

You've been disrupting people's lives all these years just to give somebody a new journey.

I came to tell you, I know some of y'all come to Midtown Church and you think we're messy with all kinds of construction signs and all kinds of detours, and it seems like things change and things go this way, and this lane closes, and this lane opens up, and this lane closes, and this happens.

Well, I'm telling you, we will stay under construction as long as people are being baptized, as long as we're reaching the homeless, as long as we're adopting under-resourced schools, as long as marriages come back together, as long as people are getting therapy, as long as kids are going to college, as long as the baptism pool is active, we will stay under construction because we're giving people a new journey, a new way of walking, a new way of talking, a new way of being single, a new way of raising kids, a new way of going to work, a new way of spending money, a new way of saying the devil is a liar, and I'm victorious, and that I'm healed, and then I'm an overcomer.

We will stay under construction as long as it takes.

Detour, detour, detour, detour, detour.

As long as there's deliverance, we'll detour.

When the deliverance stops, that's when you should be concerned.

When people ain't getting saved no more, you should be concerned about Midtown.

When there's no more baptisms at Midtown, you should be concerned.

When there's no more minister to the ministry to the unhoused, you should be concerned.

But don't let a detour distract you from deliverance.