07: Community - From Ideal Community to Real Community

Hear now the words of the true and living God, Galatians 2, 11 through 14.

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party, and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

So, welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Raspberry.

I'm the pastor here.

Thanks for joining us.

Uh, there are two main ways to get connected at Redemption Church.

We gather large, which we do on Sunday afternoons here, and we gather small, which we do in each other's homes throughout the week.

We call that Redemption Groups.

Uh, if you'd like to be a part of a Redemption Groups, they are happening now.

Uh, and you can sign up by going to the Redemption Church Denver app and tap groups and tap join a group, and you'll be able to get connected there.

It's the best way to get connected with Redemption Church.

Um, today is actually kind of about that.

We are in the midst of a series called Redemption Applied.

And the purpose of this series is to lay out our uh kind of top 10 of our vision for Redemption Church Denver.

So, what is our vision for our church moving forward?

We're a church in a transitional moment.

Uh, did any of you get a chance to read the Elder newsletter?

Nice, nice.

That was a that was even better than last time that I asked that.

Um that thing's really picking up traction.

The uh so in our Elder newsletter, we talked about how one of the main things we're praying for is a new location for our church to meet at uh on hopefully Sunday mornings.

Uh we've done some surveys nationally, and that tends to be when people like to go to church.

So we are looking for a new meeting location for Sunday mornings, um, and that's something that we want to be really intentionally praying about as a congregation.

So for 15 minutes after this service, uh, if you'd like to stick around with us, I'll set a timer and it really will just be 15 minutes, and we'll pray for 15 minutes regarding that location search.

Um, so that's kind of an announcement mixed in with a series introduction.

So, this series, as we're in this type of transition, is laying out uh the vision for Redemption Church Denver.

And we've just covered uh two uh uh two sermons on community.

And as we've looked at community, we've seen these incredible pictures of what uh the Bible describes community as.

Um and today we're going to really bring those glorious pictures down kind of into the real world of our lives.

How is it that we actually interact and build one another up as the church?

So that's what we're gonna be looking at today.

Um so before we get into our text, would you please pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you that it never returns to you void.

I pray that you would use it to build us up today, that you would apply it directly to our hearts, and that what you have shown us in your word, that you might make that real in our hearts and in the life of our church.

Father, we praise you for your constant care.

We lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, so um I I've got like a miserable cold right now.

Uh, so everything kind of feels like it's happening on TV.

So I apologize for that.

Uh uh if if I uh stumble like that a bit more than usual.

So we've covered two weeks of Christian community, in which we've seen these glorious pictures of what community looks like in Scripture.

Two weeks ago we saw this description where the church is demonstrating the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

So that means that there's literally angels that are looking at what happens here and saying, wow, that's amazing.

I've never seen that angle on God's glory, that angle on God's goodness.

And last week we saw how the gathering of the church, the worship of God together is what God uses to cultivate and prepare our hearts and actually transform us more into the image of Jesus, that our lives are actually changed by the process of coming together.

And that's the means and the mechanism that God uses to build us up as a community of people.

So the hard thing to receive in both of those descriptions is that those are not just descriptions of what the church will be.

I think it's easy for us to imagine, yes, the church at the end of the age, when Jesus returns, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, of course, will be demonstrating this manifold wisdom.

Of course, it will make us these perfect people that are able to be bound together in this incredible unity.

We expect to see those glorious pictures off in the future, but that couldn't possibly be a description of what the church is now.

I know it too well.

I'm too deep involved with the church now to think that it could possibly fit that glorious of a picture.

And yet, that's exactly what scripture is describing.

It's describing that that's actually the way the church is now.

And so part of what we need to be able to do in order to experience the church as the Bible describes it is learn to receive by faith the true descriptions of the church in the reality of how we experience it, which means the actual people and relationships that we are in church with, that we are in community with.

So the New Testament, when you look at New Testament community, if I say the term like New Testament church or early church, what comes to mind?

What type of pictures come to mind?

Multiplication, yeah, incredible multiplication.

What was that community like?

Yeah, they had everything in common.

They gathered small.

Yeah, they were like house churches.

What was the uh what was the community like?

I mean, they were they were, it says they were constantly devoted to the apostles' teachings and to prayer.

It's this picture of community that we read when the early church is developing, and it's like, that's amazing.

That's so glorious.

I don't think I've ever seen that.

I don't think I've ever been a part of a community like that.

That's unreal.

And so what we tend to do when we look at uh New Testament community is we get this picture and we start to think, you know, I think I've never really experienced church community.

I think I've never actually been a part of a real community like that, a real church like that.

And what we do with when we assess the community of the New Testament, and then we use that to assess the churches that we're a part of, is I think we make two mistakes.

One is we neglect the developmental stage that the early church was in.

And the second is we idealize the community of the early church.

So, first of all, by neglecting the developmental stage, what do I mean?

Well, if you look at uh like where we get those descriptions, like in Acts 3, early on in the church's formation, where they have everything in common, they all are living in the same place and sharing everything together, and they're constantly devoting themselves to the apostles' teachings and to prayer.

Well, we have to understand that this is at a developmental stage in the church where it was in one city with one ethnic group that already had an entire culture in common.

At this point in the church's history, they don't even know that Gentiles, non-Jewish people, can receive the gospel yet.

And so we tend to neglect that there are real developmental stages that are happening there.

It's well, yeah, we tend to neglect those real developmental stages that are happening there.

And so when we neglect that developmental stage, we tend to idealize these early moments of what the church looked like.

But then when you really look at what the development of the early church was like, you start to realize they basically had the same problems that we do now.

There was no magic moment where community was easily really experienced.

There was no such time in church's history.

We can start to consider when we idealize that second mistake.

Well, look, and it's like, look, they're such passionate Christians, the persecution really wedded them together, uh, and they had all things in common, they were constantly devoted to prayer and teaching.

They uh uh we see those types of ideals, but then you look at Paul's letter to Corinth, and what are they doing?

They're saying, Well, I follow Apollos, I follow Paul.

And what do we do?

We pick celebrity Christians and then we argue over them.

Well, I follow Tim Keller, well, I follow anyone else, you know.

Go to another church.

They at Corinth is con is plagued by this terrible sexual sin that is just running rampant in the congregation.

So people would look around and think, like, gosh, is there any value of marriage or family here?

Is that are these the type of people that have our same values at all?

Or you look at the uh you look at the church now and it's like, gosh, it seems like there's constantly just these figureheads arguing at the top.

It seems like there's always, if you if you start to look into it, it's like, well, this person says this one thing about the end times, and this person says this other thing about the end times.

Who do I believe?

Who, who do I agree with?

Is there any real church?

And we neglect that back then, yeah, all of the all of the main leaders of the church had to gather together in one city to argue and debate and figure out are Gentiles really a part of this?

Those same sorts of arguments and debates were still happening then.

Or we could look and see, well, what about the unity of the church?

I mean, it seemed like they were able to just be on mission and they were all so committed to what they were doing that there weren't these petty little arguments, except for between Paul and Barnabas, who Barnabas, who receives Paul in, and Paul, who's this giant of the faith, they are they they split and they are no longer able to work together over this one guy, Mark, who abandoned them once, and Paul didn't trust him anymore, and Barnabas still trusted him.

And so now, over these petty arguments, these two giants of the faith are no longer even able to work together.

Or you could consider uh Paul talking in Philippians, where he's saying, People, or in Timothy, uh, actually, I don't remember which one right now, where he's saying, uh, people are preaching against me just for their own selfish gain.

If you were to look at Christianity now, I think it would be so common to say, like, gosh, it just seems like Christianity is covered with just these terrible, power-hungry, selfish preachers.

I wish we could just get back to the New Testament times where we didn't, the church wasn't facing struggles like that.

I think we'd get back there and be like, seriously, you guys got televangelists?

Didn't you have television?

See, this idea that there was some ideal golden age of church community that we just need to get back to or become a part of or replicate some way with house churches or something.

We we we are just refusing to realize that the church has always been made up of people that are about like us.

Of people that had arguments with each other, people that struggled over doctrinal issues, people that had hard things going on in their family lives, people who found it hard to connect over particular issues and issues that were challenging in the culture or whatever it may be.

What was the church always been made up of?

People about like us.

So it's so important for us to see the reality of what the church is like, so that we're able to stop chasing this idealization of what church community is, and instead we're able to courageously move into the community that God has made us a part of.

Because amidst all this mess, there's something way better than the ideal.

There's something way more there's something that really demonstrates the glory of the gospel in the real.

That if we're always striving for the ideal, we're just gonna miss.

So we've only got two points in today's sermon, and that is we're moving from ideal community to real community.

And we're looking at this famous example from early church history in which Peter, excuse me, in which uh Paul uh recounts the story of where he's in Antioch and he sees the gospel start to break down as people start to chase an ideal community instead of embracing the real community that they had been a part of.

And Paul sees that as a direct threat to this truth that we are sinners saved by grace alone, saved by what Jesus did alone.

And that threat comes under assault through this really petty thing that we'll look at.

Um, so we're gonna look at that example and see this example of ideal community, how it breaks down, and then real community, how to move into it and how to protect it.

So here's the beginning of our story in Galatians 2, 11 through 12.

Paul recounts where he says, But when Cephas, and that's Greek for Peter, came to Antioch, I opposed him to his faith, because he stood condemned.

For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.

But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

Okay, so let me give a bit of context where this takes place in the letter to the Galatians.

So Paul is writing a letter to the uh Galatian church, and he's writing because they've started to drift from this really simple understanding of the gospel, which is the gospel that Paul teaches, which is that you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.

And that it's your faith alone in Christ's sacrifice that amounts to your justification.

And justification just means you've been made right with God.

The sins that you had committed, God no longer counts against you.

And so uh what had happened is there some false teachers started to come into the Galatian church and say that uh in order to be brought into the Christian covenant, if you were a Gentile, then you had to affirm these other aspects of God's covenant with the Jewish people, one of which was circumcision, male circumcision.

That was the covenant marker that said, I'm a part, I'm a member of this covenant people.

So they had said, yes, it's faith alone in Jesus, but also if you really want to be inheriting these covenants, you're gonna need this other covenant marker, which is your circumcision.

So uh these people come in, and Paul is writing this letter, and he starts off with, You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

Which is a great hook when you're writing a letter.

And the point, the point that he's making is look, this is so dead simple.

It's faith in Jesus that saves us.

And you you're believing these people who are saying, Yeah, but isn't it all these other things too?

So here's the story of what happened.

So Cephas comes in and it's at the church in Antioch, and Paul opposes him to his faith.

And the reason is because certain men had come to the church in Antioch, and they came from one of the other apostles, his name was James.

James was in charge of the church at Jerusalem.

Now, the Jerusalem church was like the epicenter of Christianity at this point.

When decisions had to be made for all of the other churches, they would gather together at the church in Jerusalem and they'd make those decisions.

So this is kind of where culture, where Christian culture flowed from, was Jerusalem.

So these so Peter is in Antioch, and these other leaders come from uh the church at Jerusalem, from James.

And what happens is Peter, when they arrive, he stops eating with Gentile Christians and he only eats with Jewish Christians.

And everyone starts to see it because it's Peter doing it.

And they say, Oh, I guess you know, we had thought that under Christ, Jew and Gentile, that separation didn't exist anymore.

That the Jews were now able to eat with who were previously thought to be the unclean Gentiles.

But we can tell Peter didn't say anything, but just by his actions, he stops eating with the Gentiles, and he only eats with the Jews.

Saying, with his actions, the separation that we said was removed in Jesus.

Oh, that separation we're putting right back up.

So there's this split of people, and everybody else starts to follow him.

In Galatians 2.13, it says, and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

So Paul is exactly right in what he labels it.

He calls it hypocrisy.

Because what are they doing?

With their mouth, they're saying that it is Christ alone that saves us.

But with their actions, they're saying, yes, but we still need to be with our pure race.

And we still can't really commune with those unclean Gentiles.

With their actions, they're saying there is a real distinction in the gospel, which is if you don't account for uh your circumcision, if you don't obey these cleanliness laws, then you aren't really a part of our group.

So here's the interesting thing that I that I want us to catch of where this breakdown in understanding of the gospel takes place.

It doesn't take place in a doctrinal statement that the church was working on.

Today it would be uh what book you wrote your endorsement for.

You know, it doesn't take place in some classroom of academia where they're hashing out the details of what this mission statement is gonna say.

It takes place in seating arrangements.

The gospel breaks down in who I'm willing to be friends with, who I'm willing to call my brother, and who I'm not.

That's where the breakdown of the gospel is.

It's incredibly serious, and it's incredibly petty.

The seriousness is if we don't get that we really are united by Christ alone, then we've lost the whole message of our faith, the whole power of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

And then it's petty because, like, what was the problem?

Where did the gospel break down?

We became clicky.

Like, what is the what is the threat to the gospel in a church?

It's clickiness.

It's like, this is like junior high.

That's where the threat of the gospel, that's what, that's the main threat to the gospel in a church.

It's how we say with our actions, we aren't really together just because of Jesus.

There are these other qualifications that you're gonna have to account for.

So what's happening is the circumcision party, which is what they're referred to as those who said you also need to be circumcised in order to be saved.

What they're trying to create is an ideal community.

And an ideal community is that thing you imagine of what would it be like to be in real Christian community.

And when you imagine it, you imagine this incredible unity.

And at the center of that unity, you know what's really at the center of that unity?

Everybody thinks like you.

That's what the unity is ultimately based around.

And so when we start to do that, we become two things.

We become prescriptive and we become exclusive.

So the prescriptiveness starts to sound like this in normal Christian language, these things that we start to prescribe to one another over and above Jesus to account for our salvation.

So it depends on what church culture you're from.

But it will sound like: look, if you really want to be a part of this redemption group, we don't want to hear how Jesus is bringing joy in your life.

What we want to hear is how it's constantly a struggle to believe.

And if it's constantly a struggle to believe, then you're signaling to us your authenticity.

And so, what do you need in order to be considered a real Christian among us?

You're going to need the signal of your authenticity and Jesus.

There's other Christian communities where you would never be able to demonstrate any sort of struggle with your faith.

You would never be able to say that you have any legitimate questions, that you have any actual issues with the content of scripture, because even to hint that you had a question would mean you're out and you're no longer able to be a part of this.

The conversation was rolling, we were, you know, on rails, this was working.

Um, and then you brought up a legitimate question.

You know, how can God be sovereign and we have free will?

I don't know if you guys have heard about that question, it's out there.

You have this legitimate tug at your heart, but you're not able to say that here because that's not how we signal the genuineness of our faith.

At a macro level, it starts to sound like, you know, you just can't trust megachurches because a megachurch doesn't really have the opportunity to uh, you know, really care for their people and shepherd them in the way that God calls us to.

And so, you know, those people aren't the real Christians.

You know, the real Christians are the small church people.

Or, you know, you you can't really trust those small church people because I want to be a part of something where the spirit's really working.

Where the spirit works, that's where we see multiplication happening and multiplication of people's lives, and we see growth and development of people.

You see how how we do this all the time?

We're always adding something to Jesus, and we prescribe these things like church size or like how you should be reading your Bible, how frequently you should be reading your Bible, what your prayer life should look like.

We start prescribing all of these things, and what are they?

They're signals that say, I'm really a part of this community.

And those become our threats to the gospel.

Because what makes us really a part of this community is Jesus.

It is that we have been justified by the blood of Christ.

You know, there's this really weird phrase that uh uh it takes place in Exodus 23.

In Exodus 20, you get the whole Mount Sinai moment where Moses comes down with the Ten Commandments and then he starts relaying these rules for Israel.

And uh in Exodus 23, he gets to this section where he describes uh you're gonna have these three festivals every year.

And then after describing these three festivals, Moses writes, don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

And you're when you're reading that, it's just like, okay, yeah, the Bible's weird.

Let's just keep reading.

But here's the that has a meaning.

And the point of it is, is don't use this thing which I'm giving to you for life, and don't use it for death.

See, it comes right after a description of these are the three festivals that you're gonna have a year.

So God gives them these festivals, but he knows what people are like.

You know what festivals are for?

You know what you should be like at a festival?

Festive.

You should be joyful, they should be fun, they should be something to look forward to.

That's why like you hear Christians always complaining when we're about to get into the holiday season.

It's like, oh, the holidays, Christmas, everybody's running around and they're so distracted from what the real point of it is, and they they're all so chaotic, and we're losing ourselves in the materialism of Christmas.

It's like, no, that completely misses the point.

The way that we do Christmas is actually probably about right.

Like, what are we celebrating?

The arrival of a king.

So, what are we doing?

We're running around like crazy making preparations.

That's what a festival looks like.

It's fun, there's music and laughter and stuff.

And so God is saying, look, I've given you these festivals.

Don't use these things to kill yourself.

But he knows, he gives us that warning because he knows what we're like.

You know, we we on our app, we have a Bible reading plan.

And on in that Bible reading plan, that can be used to give you life in your faith, or it can be used for you to heap condemnation upon yourself.

Because if the Bible reading plan means if I'm committed to this and I do this every day, then I know I'm really saved.

All of a sudden, you've boiled a young goat in its mother's milk.

You've taken this thing that could just give you life, and instead you've killed yourself with it.

Because what does the Bible reading plan have to do with you being saved?

It doesn't.

You know what it has to do with your salvation, your right standing before God, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

That's what doesn't.

We could do the same thing with redemption groups, we can do the same thing with church size, you can do the same thing with what celebrity pastor you like to read.

When we become prescriptive, we make ourselves exclusive.

Because we create these signs to let each other and ourselves know, am I really in?

What the sign is, is Jesus.

What the sign is, is faith in Christ.

This isn't the gospel under threat because we somehow want to reduce it to something less than it is.

This is the gospel under threat because we're adding things to it that aren't there in it.

In his book Life Together, which is the first time I read it, I was like, that was pretty good.

And I I by Dietrich Bonhoeffer's this little book called Life Together about Christian community.

And the more that I'm living in that book, it's just like this is really good.

Um he has he has this quote regarding this type of situation.

He says, one who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood.

He is looking for some extraordinary social experience, which he has not found elsewhere.

He is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood.

Consider what do you really want from brotherhood and sisterhood with believers.

What do you really want?

A lot of times we can create like an aesthetic.

You know, you can show me a picture of a band and it's like, I know that they're Christian.

Because what do we want?

We want that aesthetic.

You know, we want it to look like that and feel like that.

And so we've created these boundaries.

War against the gospel.

This ideal community that kills the real community we could be a part of.

So Paul sees this, and not one to bite his tongue.

You know what Paul gets?

Paul gets that gospel issues are about people.

Paul gets that when you misunderstand that you're justified by faith alone in Jesus, you know who that's gonna hurt?

The person who all of a sudden is sitting alone.

Paul gets this rap, I feel like, of like just if you met him, you wouldn't like him.

It's like you maybe, I don't know.

But you know what?

If you were left out, he'd defend you because he cared about the gospel.

In Galatians 2.14, Paul fights for real community, and this is how he does it.

He says, But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, they weren't eating together.

They separated themselves.

What is that not in step with?

The truth of the gospel.

I said to Cephas before them all, hey Peter, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

I think that sucked the air out of the room.

Paul caused their conduct not in step with the truth of the gospel.

He's basically saying to Peter, look, if you realize that you could never be justified by adhering to the law, and so you put all of your weight in Jesus and you live like a Gentile, how can you come to these other people and heap on them the same law which to you only brought condemnation?

If we say, look, we're saved just by Jesus, but if you're not talking about the four things that I like to talk about, then you're probably not gonna be a part of this group.

And we're not gonna really hang around and we're not gonna be together and we're not gonna listen to each other.

If you've got these five types of sins that you're struggling with, that's good.

But if there's like a seventh that's a little weirder, we're out.

Again, let's go to Bonhoeffer to see what it is that really unites us in community.

Bonhoeffer says this he says, it's not what a man is in himself as a Christian.

His spirituality and piety constitutes the basis of our community.

What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ.

So here's what Christian community looks like when it's real.

Christian community is constantly defending and reminding each other of the gospel.

It's constantly defending and reminding each other that we are saved by grace alone, through Jesus alone, that the basis of our brotherhood, the basis of our connection is Jesus.

That's what real Christian community looks like.

It takes guts to do.

It takes guts to be a part of.

Even among people that you know are Christians, it's hard to say, you know what baseline unites us?

It's Jesus.

That's what baseline unites us.

This causes us to all of a sudden relate to each other beyond our preferences.

And we're able to then engage with people that are in totally different life stages, people that have totally different circumstances, different genders, different ethnicities, different socioeconomic backgrounds.

And we say, you know what, we have this incredible thing in common, which is Jesus.

And on the basis of that, we're actually brothers.

We're actually sisters.

So there's this concept that I love lately.

Um sorry, I thought I had the author's name written down.

I'll have to get it later.

But it the he wrote a book titled Anti-Fragile.

Uh what is it?

Uh yeah, Talib Nasem.

Yeah.

So uh the book is called Anti-Fragile, and I love this concept for our for church community.

I think it's so good.

So here's the idea fragility is something that um uh disorder and chaos, if something is fragile, then disorder will break it down.

Sturdiness is where when there's disorder and chaos, something can still really last through it.

It may break down a little bit, but it's sturdy, so it will still last.

But Christian community, because of the gospel, fits this category that Talib calls anti-fragile.

Anti-fragile is something that actually benefits from disorder, it benefits from the chaos of real life.

So, how could that be?

How could there be something like that?

Well, what if the news that strengthens us is we are all desperate sinners, but we're saved by the unmerited grace of Jesus?

And what if our growth meant cultivating a deeper and deeper dependence together on Jesus?

Well, that means when we come together in our lives and we share the realities, the disorderedness, the chaos, and then we're able to say to one another, look, the gospel addresses this too.

Well then that means we're anti-fragile.

Something that actually benefits from being in the reality.

Why didn't God create a church that from the very beginning was this picture of an ideal community?

Because God wanted to build a strong church.

And so from the very beginning, he infused it with reality, a reality that forced us towards the gospel.

I want to close with one last Bonhoeffer quote.

He says, Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary.

So the bad time with my brother becomes a good thing.

Because it is it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one word and deed which really binds us together: the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

One of the reasons that we started redemption groups is so that we would consistently be rubbing shoulders with each other, meeting with each other, getting to know one another better, disappointing each other, disagreeing with each other, having our hearts really exposed to real people with real names and real hurts and real heartaches.

And then we're able to, as the church, apply the gospel to one another's hearts.

And in that, we're really built up.

The sermon was meant to answer the question: why do we gather small?

Why we gather small is so that the gospel can really build us up.

Now, look, this isn't like a you have to join a redemption group.

Okay, don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

Redemption groups are given to help.

The whole point of a redemption group is now you don't have to schedule every week because it just happens.

But what your anticipation should be in those is to meet real people.

To share a real life, an experience, maybe for the first time.

The actual redemption of Christ.

The actual redemption that Christ offers.

If we get a church that's really doing that with one another, we're gonna be built up like crazy.

Because the church is designed to be anti-fragile.

So with that, it are there are there any questions beyond that, actually?

Yes, one.

So, how do we reconcile virtue signaling, this is how I know I'm in, with the scripture's commands to examine ourselves and determine if we are in the faith?

Great question.

So the question is, what is the it has to hinge on this dividing line because Paul comes in and he offers a legitimate rebuke, which means that there are things that are actually good and actually bad, but it's a rebuke that's in line with the truth of the gospel.

And what is the truth, excuse me, what is the truth of the gospel?

I could not save myself.

I was an enemy towards God, I was dead in my trespasses and sins.

God became a man, he lived on the earth.

That man's name was Jesus, and he was crucified.

His crucifixion atoned for my sins, his resurrection, I can share in by faith in him, which leads me to new life, so that I'm a new creation in him, and I'm secure based on his blood alone.

Are you repenting to that?

Does your assessment bring you back in line with the truth of the gospel?

Because it's the truth of the gospel that is the threshold.

You won't believe this on your own.

You won't believe that.

My whole job, well, no, not my whole job.

Because I do email and stuff.

Are you guys on email?

My whole job basically is uh, hey, how's it going?

That's what I say when I pick up the phone.

Hey, how's it going?

And it's not good because nobody calls their pastor and it's like, oh, I just had to share this great news.

No, it's like I'm having a horrible morning and things are terrible right now.

And I've got one move.

I've got only one move.

I'm like Derek Zoolander.

Got one move.

And the move every time is like, have you remembered that Jesus' promises are real?

The gospel is real.

Like, I feel so bad because I responded to this situation terribly.

Yeah, no kidding.

Isn't it great news that Jesus is with us even when we respond terribly?

And every time, it's unbelievable.

It works.

It really works.

It really works.

Uh so when we're the dividing line is the gospel.

That's the answer to the question.

And I I I wish I could give you like a test to go through.

One probably could be written out.

Um, but it is uh uh are you repenting towards the gospel?

The virtue signaling is something to work out in your own heart.

Okay.

Oh no more ideal community.

Live in real community together, Father.

Pray that you would create in us a confidence in you that allows us to be real with one another.

And in that reality, that we would expect your gospel to still work, in fact, to especially work.

Lord, you you don't meet us, you don't have grace for the fake lives that we think we might be living, but you have constant, ever-flowing grace for the real issues and challenges that we're actually in.

Lord, would you teach us how to savor that grace with one another?

Would you let us experience that type of real community?

God, life's too short for an ideal community.

Let us have the real one.

That way we might really know you, really know each other, experience your love honestly.

Father, I lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.