05: Community - From Independence to Interdependence

Ephesians 3, 4 through 12.

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power.

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery, hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church.

Thanks for joining us.

We are moving through our series called Redemption Applied.

And this is a series that is casting the vision for what Redemption Church Denver is and what our hope is for our church in our city.

We are about a third of the way through this series, and today we are moving into a section on community.

So we've moved through three sermons on the heart.

Now we're going to move through through three sermons on community.

But before we start in that, I want to go ahead and give you a couple of announcements.

So first of all, on October 20th, we are having a baby dedication.

So if you have recently had a baby and would like to dedicate that baby, uh go to the Redemption Church Invert app, which you can download and tap calendar, and you'll be able to uh sign up for the October 20th baby dedication.

I think we've got like four or five already signed up, and those usually fill up.

So you're gonna want to get in there.

Um the uh the uh uh we've also uh um sorry, I just lost track of what I was supposed to oh yeah, I just announced that.

Okay.

So next thing, uh, we are, I don't know if you are aware, but we're meeting at 4:30.

Um it's getting mixed reviews online.

And we are uh we are a church that is in transition.

We are in a moment where we are looking forward to the future of where our church is going to be in a more permanent location.

So we've got a great setup right now with the Heights Church.

We've been able to remain in this building but move to an evening service.

But we are actively looking uh as an elder board for our next permanent location in the city.

So we wanted to make our whole church a part of that search.

And the best way that we can do that is by praying together.

So today, immediately after the service, if you want to stick around, we're just gonna take like 15 minutes and we're just gonna pray.

Um, we're gonna pray that God would open doors for where we're headed next, that He would give us the discernment and wisdom to decide what a next good location would look like.

Uh, we'll share a bit on things that we've discovered in our search so far that can help guide our prayers.

So uh stick around immediately after this service uh and we will pray.

Um okay, so speaking of prayer, let's go ahead and pray, and we'll jump into today's text.

Father, thank you for bringing us together this evening.

I pray that you would attend to us.

Lord, that you would wash us with your word, that you would apply your word to our hearts by the power of your spirit, that you would unite us together in love for one another and in love for you.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So uh we began this series, Redemption Applied, the hope of casting the vision for what our church is.

And that first sermon was about establishing the power and the purpose of our church.

The power and the purpose of our church are the same thing.

It's the gospel of Jesus, that God became a man and died in our place for our sins, that we might be a people that are reconciled to God.

This good news changes everything.

And so what we're moving through is seeing how this good news changes three things at least.

Our hearts, which means our own personal hearts.

It establishes a community amongst us, and that community God uses to bring and express his redemption through all of creation.

So that moves into the world or into our city, which is our hope.

So three things heart, community, and Denver.

So we've moved through how the gospel radically changes our hearts.

We saw that this news is so big that it breaks down any of the previous categories that we would have had.

So if you had a category of God, the gospel explodes that because God became a man.

If you had a category of death, the gospel explodes that because God died and then rose from the dead.

So this isn't something that we can just accept and then integrate into our lives as they are.

When we see that these categories have completely shifted in the gospel, we see that it requires a whole new way of being.

When we accept that Jesus is Lord, it requires a total conversion of our hearts.

And that conversion, we saw, it frees us from these two masters that we typically serve.

It frees us from the master of self-validation, which means that in order for us to feel like we're valid individuals, that our lives matter and they have meaning, then we need to create our own identities.

And it frees us from that master as we see our identity is given to us in Christ by our creator.

And it also frees us from the master of self-salvation.

When we realize that God is not the type of being that we could earn our way to, that our sin has radically corrupted our hearts so that we would never choose for God on our own.

We're freed from the tyranny of self-salvation when we realize that Jesus' righteousness accomplished our salvation for us, and his death took the place of our death.

So these things come together and they equal a radical transformation of our hearts.

But it doesn't just stop there.

Because when our hearts are transformed, they aren't transformed just individually.

We aren't left in isolation.

In our culture, we tend towards the individual, we tend towards a radical individualization.

And so we tend to think that when we think of ourselves as what are we essentially, we only think of that in terms of our own individuality.

Whereas we require each other even to know who we are.

And so we aren't saved and left in isolation.

Instead, God saves us and he brings us into a new type of community.

When God saves our hearts, he always brings us into the community of the church.

Do you believe me?

Are you coming up with counterexamples in your mind?

There's a man on an island and a Bible washes up.

He reads it, becomes saved.

What then?

What about your church then?

You know, if he meets someone else, he's gonna try and convert them.

If he really understands what he's read, we're always, our hearts are always transformed to be brought into this new type of transformative community.

And part of understanding this is just understanding the God who has saved us and the explanation of our salvation in that God.

So there's only one God who saves, and the God who saves is the blessed Trinity.

That means he's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God is also completely one.

In fact, the term that's used to describe God is he is simple.

That means he has no parts, he has no component pieces, he's not made up of a bunch of little things.

He's completely one.

And he is in three persons.

If you have any questions on that, please email Zach.

This is a very, this is the height of our doctrine, this understanding of the triune God, because it is the triune God who saves.

If God were just in three persons, and he didn't also reveal himself to be completely one, then we would have no need for the doctrine of the Trinity.

We have the doctrine of the Trinity because God reveals himself to be completely one, and then he says, In my name is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And so he's doing something in that type of revelation where he's wanting to show this communal aspect of his simple being.

God himself in his oneness is always functioning relationally.

And we are made in the image of this completely relational God who is made up.

We can't even use that, because that looks like component parts, but who is himself relationship.

See how our language starts to break down around this concept.

We couldn't say of any one of us, you are in yourself relationship, but we can say that you need, you must be in real relationship.

We can walk through the persons of the Trinity to see how our salvation plays out.

So the gospel means that the Father has become our father.

God the Father, the first person of the Trinity, has adopted us so that He is now really our Father.

We are in the family of God.

That means we are a family.

We have the same Father.

Look around.

These are your brothers and sisters, because you share the same Father in God.

So in the Father, we see that we are a family.

In Christ, in the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus says we are united to Him.

He even describes the church as the body of Christ.

Which, by the way, why are you adopted by the Father?

It's because you're in Christ when you're a Christian.

Christ is the Son.

When we're in the Son, then the Father is our Father in the same way that He's Jesus' Father.

We are also, we are also, sorry, I stick to the second person.

We are the body of Christ.

So that means we are so united to each other that we're like component parts of the same body.

We're like an eye and a hand and an ear and a foot.

Those are all part of one body.

Yes, you're all very unique.

You're all special snowflakes.

But you are part of this one body in Christ.

And as this body, we have a spirit.

And we're animated by this same spirit, which is the Holy Spirit.

So that all of us together are animated.

What gives us life and energy, what we live through and move in and have our being in, is the same Holy Spirit.

So you see that when we understand how we've been saved through this glorious God who is three and who is one, in each aspect of that, we're saved as a community.

We must be brought together.

So we are essentially, listen to this, we are essentially a community.

We are essentially communal beings.

So that means if you were to take someone and study them in complete isolation, you wouldn't actually be able to know what a human is.

Because in order to understand a human, they have to be studied in context.

And our context is our relationships with each other.

That's the context in which we exist.

And so when we're saved, God doesn't just save us in isolation.

It's not just our hearts that are transformed.

But our hearts are personally transformed, and we're brought into a real community.

And that community is, drum roll please, the church.

It's the church.

That's the community.

This is it.

In case you're wondering, like what would a community of people whose hearts have been transformed by the Holy Spirit, and then those people were brought together after they've been adopted as sons of God.

What would that look like?

Well, look.

It would look exactly like this.

It'd be not even a little bit different.

You are exactly looking at it right now.

Now, so let's talk about that.

Seems insane.

So here's what we might say.

Um, church, yeah, that's great.

You know, I I'm a part of the universal church.

And so I don't I don't really need to be a part of like, I don't need to be able to see the people I'm at church with.

I don't need to be able to touch them or shake their hands or know their names.

I'm not the type of person that really needs community.

Because, you know, the the mountains are my church.

And if I the place that I feel closest to God is when I'm skiing or biking or, you know, whatever, whatever else that we do, fly fishing.

Um that's the place that I feel closest to God.

And church, by the way, I don't know if you've been lately, it's kind of contrived.

Music is too loud, Zach chooses songs that are too dark.

He's yeah.

Uh we uh um there's uh it feels all contrived, like it's not authentic, all the words are on the screen, and you just repeat after me.

Uh even the dress down places still like mandatory that you wear flannels and stuff.

How could this church possibly be these be what God saves us into?

It just doesn't seem like it really fits the criteria.

It seems like it would be more accurate to say, like it would be a better understanding of God to say, like, yeah, but not it doesn't need to be like a local church, like a real gathered body of people.

Because God is cosmically saving everything, right?

So in order to understand this, in order to make these two connect together, we need to grasp the large narrative of scripture.

What is the biblical narrative that we're actually in?

And when we start to grasp this real biblical narrative, then we'll see why it must be a local church full of real people with pulses and insecurities and whatever else you have.

So here's the narrative of scripture.

We can settle in.

Hope you don't have plans for the rest of the evening.

We uh can do this in four parts.

The narrative of scripture, creation, fall, redemption, glory.

That is the story of the Bible.

Creation, fall, redemption, glory.

So creation.

At the beginning, we see that God created everything, and he created everything good.

God is the creator of everyone and everything, and he made it all good.

So this is a big deal because that means that creation is not neutral.

We often think of the material world, this matter, these meat suits that we're stuck in, as these are just kind of neutral things that can be used for good or can be used for evil.

But that's not the way the Bible describes creation.

Creation is good.

Creation is good.

This is a big deal.

And it's rare among world religions.

In most metaphysics of existence that other religions presuppose, matter is neutral and has existed for all eternity.

Or it's the outcome of some violent act that we're trapped in and we need to escape from the material world.

It's not the biblical worldview.

Biblical worldview says creation was created by God, it's not eternal.

God is eternal, creation is finite.

And we have been blessed with this existence in creation, and it and it is itself good.

So that means if something goes wrong in creation, which it will in the next part, God won't say, I'm just gonna throw that away.

Because it was good.

So in God's good creation, in these first two chapters of the Bible, which is the only time that it's good, is uh this odd statement where God steps back from his creation, he says, It's very good, and then he looks at Adam, and Adam is alone.

And God says, It's not good.

It's not good that man should be alone.

Isn't that insane?

God is the only one who's done anything in creation, and Adam is still alone in it, and he steps back and says, It's not good.

If God didn't say that and some theologian were to come along later and say it wasn't good that Adam was alone, we'd be like, no, no, no, you can't say that.

And we'd do a bunch of gymnastics to try and show how it was actually good, but then it wasn't good later, because that's what theologians do.

So that means that the one thing that could possibly not be good in a good creation is being alone.

Humans were designed to be in relationship with each other.

We're designed, even when God is immediately present to us, in order for us to really relate to Him, in order for us to really know God, we need each other.

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

We need each other.

So then we fall into sin.

And when we fall into sin, it's a crumble of relationships.

Our relationship to God is disjointed as we disobey him in the garden.

As we choose ourselves to be God instead of him, we disjoint what that proper relationship would be.

And then our relationship with each other isn't immediately fractured.

God says to Adam, Why did you eat the fruit?

Adam says, It was the woman you gave me that made me eat the fruit.

The woman says, it was the snake, this part of creation, that was in the garden.

And so these relationships between each other are immediately fractured.

And it's this fracture that we live with to this day.

Our relationships between each other tend to fall apart.

They tend to disintegrate as our lives become more and more particular as we go on.

Like, here, I'll give I'm using my son in a lot of examples lately, and they say like that's cheating when you're a preacher, you shouldn't do that.

Anyway, I don't know how many preaching blogs you guys read, probably a lot.

And they uh but here's my son is at this stage where he it this is my wife's fault, he calls everyone friend.

Everyone.

Like if he sees somebody, he's like, Can I go see what that friend is doing?

It's like that's nice default.

And uh today in REI, he these two little boys had cars in, you know, toy cars.

And he's like, Can I go uh see those friends' cars?

Um and he like walks up to them and he's hanging out around them.

But he'll walk up to anybody because he's like, Yeah, like default, we're friends.

Because he's he's got so little that defines him at this point that he just decides.

Assumes, like, yeah, I'm probably more like them than I'm different.

But as we go on, I think as people, we have this kind of entropy about ourselves.

Where as we become more particular and more defined in who we are, then we tend to see more differences between each other than we do similarities.

And so it becomes harder and harder for us to develop real types of friendships.

And before you know it, we've just we've just moved and drifted away.

In C.S.

Lewis's great book, The Great Divorce, uh, it's a it's like this sort of meditation on hell and what hell might be like.

And uh it's basically just like a normal town.

But what happens is somebody moves in and two people move in next to each other.

They're like, oh, you guys, you we're just annoying each other so bad.

And so then they they move like two houses apart.

And and then eventually it's like, man, their music's still too loud, and so they they keep moving further and further apart.

And what it is, is it's this eternity where we drive ourselves towards isolation.

And in that drivenness towards isolation, people become inhuman, just like creatures.

The fall causes that.

The fall is a relational breakdown.

But when God sees creation, his good creation that has fallen, he doesn't say, okay, we're done with it.

Let's just go down there, scoop up some people, and get them out of there.

He says, I'm not gonna let sin have the last word.

I'm going to redeem this good thing that I've made.

And he redeems it by creating for himself this new people.

Not just an individual, but a new community of people that he raises up to be a blessing to the whole world.

So he starts with one person, Abraham, and he makes a promise to Abraham.

And he's like, look at the stars, it's gonna be like that.

You're gonna have that many sons and daughters.

Father Abraham has many sons.

There we go.

Um Abraham becomes a family.

This is where the adventure of the Bible starts.

Just so you know.

So he makes this promise to this person, and then this incredible adventure starts.

Where it's just a I don't know if you guys have seen an action movie, but what makes it an action movie is a bunch of close calls.

That's what makes it an action movie.

And this is just close call after close call.

It's like he, God, you promised to Abraham.

Don't know why you chose Abraham and Sarah, they're really old.

This seems like a close call for this promise to come through.

And then what do you know?

God comes through.

And it's Genesis in this whole first story, it's just like close call after close call.

Oh, you've got you, you were supposed to bring these people through these through this group, and you're really building them up to a big people, but now they're slaves in Egypt.

How are you gonna get them out of there through like a series of close calls?

Is how he's gonna get them out of there.

And over and over again we see God is faithful to this promise.

That's how God shows us his faithfulness.

If it all just went on, we'd be like, oh, well, uh Joseph was such a clever politician that he was able to lead this people group through the Egyptian, Moses was so good at uh judging the tides that he was able to lead people through water like that.

No, we would think that.

But because it's such a close call, that's God's way of saying, I'm the one who's redeeming this people.

I'm the one doing this.

So if your life feels like the margins are thin, this is a side note, that's usually a great place for God to work.

He loves it there.

It's because he loves the glory, which is good news for us.

So Abraham's family becomes a tribe, that tribe becomes a nation, and the purpose of this nation is to be a blessing to the whole world.

That's the structure.

I'm gonna raise up a people, and these people are going to be a blessing to the whole world.

And you know what?

They aren't.

They're really bad at it consistently.

They're really bad at it.

They they're supposed to be this special type of nation that looks really different from all the other nations of the world because they're God's chosen people, and they look pretty much just the same as all the other nations of the world.

It's just a series of bad kings.

And even the faithful kings are not great.

They're like medium good.

And so, what and so God uh God, so now we've got this dilemma.

How is God going to fulfill this promise of redemption through this terrible people?

And it turns out his plan is what his plan had been all along.

It's that through this people, God Himself was going to come.

And in Christ, he would be the perfect Israel.

He would be the one who really did pass through the waters in his baptism, move to be a blessing to the Gentiles.

He would fulfill the law perfectly so that the death that we would have required by the law, Jesus would pay for us.

But the perfect, righteous life that we ought to have lived, Jesus lived for us.

And so there's this great mystery revealed in that in Jesus, this new type of people are created.

People whose hearts are transformed so that we can be like the people that God originally created in the garden.

Our sins would be clean, and we could come to God face to face again.

And that's what we're looking forward to is the fulfillment of that, and that's the final step, which is our glory.

In our glory, God makes us into a complete new people.

And that new people is the church.

It's described at the end of the Bible like uh the like a bride adorned for her husband coming down out of heaven into the world.

And when that beautiful bride, washed clean by the blood of Christ, comes down into the world, it looks like this.

Like a church like this.

So what we are is we're in this strange moment in the redemption part.

It would be a great name for a church.

We're the only church named Redemption, by the way.

I don't know if you've Googled lately.

The uh uh, but we're we're uh we're in the redemption part of our narrative.

And that means that we're looking forward to the future glory that we will be.

One day we won't need to have the confession that we had this morning.

We won't need to remember how we haven't loved each other, because we'll be perfectly loving each other.

But for now, we need to be confessing that we might be held together in love.

So this brings us into our text for today.

When we see this grand narrative, how God has always used a people, we see that in Christ, it's just the same story over again.

In Christ, God has made a new people for himself.

And the purpose of this new people is just like the purpose of that old people.

It's to be a blessing to the whole world.

When our hearts are transformed, that is not the end of the redemptive narrative.

That's the beginning.

This is where the adventure starts.

So Paul is kind of in he's making this shape of a story in his letter to the Ephesians.

And he goes through in Ephesians 2 and he describes our hearts, our hearts being transformed by the gospel.

Then he can't stop and he must describe how we're made into one body.

But in this part, what I want us to see in the text today is this cosmic picture of the purpose of the church so that we might hold together and we might see clearly what we really are.

I do a lot of premarital counseling and a lot of weddings because everyone in our church is like, we're like 15 years old as a church.

So we're just getting married and making children.

So the uh like my goal for premarital counseling is I people come in, it's like you don't you don't even understand how glorious marriage is yet.

You think what you know now is you really love each other.

But marriage is this unthinkably glorious thing.

It's described in scripture as of the very picture of the gospel on earth.

And it what that does, I hope, is it inspires people to see this thing that's right in front of them is far more amazing than they had previously expected.

And I want that to be today for us as a church.

Because right now you're in church, and it's like, okay, this is church, this is what church is like.

But I want us to be able to see with new eyes the way that the Bible describes us as a church and what that means, so that we might be able to savor it more completely.

So Paul comes in to give us this cosmic perspective, and he starts with the description of the mystery that was revealed to him.

He says this in Ephesians 3, 4 through 6.

I've just got five through six on the screen, so just read the first verse.

Says, when you read this, that's what Paul is saying, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

So what's that mystery?

Thank you for asking.

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

So, what is the mystery that we didn't know, but that now has been revealed to the apostles and prophets about what took place in Christ?

The mystery is that God, this whole time, while he was raising up just one people, just one nation out of all the nations of the world, he only chose one.

As it turns out, that whole time, he was raising up this person of Christ who would bring every nation in, so that all people might be redeemed in Christ, so that all who would come to Jesus from any tribe, any tongue, any nation, any any background, any race, might be redeemed in Christ.

Now, to us, this is so inaccessible because it feels so obvious of like this is what Christianity is.

And yet it's talked about here as this great hidden mystery of what the gospel is.

And so we need to regain this imagination, which is that the promises of God applied to one nation now, because of Christ, they are ours.

We are redeemed because of what Christ is.

We're brought into this one body.

The story of Acts is this outward marching of the gospel.

So in uh the in the book of Acts, there's seven Holy Spirit events.

Depending on your denominational background, you might think there's more.

Because of my denominational background, there's seven.

And there are, and at each Holy Spirit event, there's one thing happening.

There's a new type of people being brought into the children of God.

So this is this is so the first Holy Spirit event takes place in Jerusalem.

And there's Jews from all over the world gathered together, the chosen people, right?

They're the ones who we know these promises are for.

They all become filled with the Holy Spirit.

Then it goes out to the Samaritans.

What are Samaritans?

They're half Jew, half Gentile.

That's so we've gotten a half step further out.

And then it goes out to the to a Roman centurion, to like a Roman guard, that like that's like peak Gentile.

And he's brought in.

Then it moves out into uh the disciples of John the Baptist, moves out to an Ethiopian, so it's crossing race boundaries.

And each of these events, people who would have said, No, I know where the line is of who can be redeemed, of whose heart can be changed, of what would really make up a church.

I know where the line of that is.

The whole book of Acts is erasing those lines.

It's saying this new community of the church means the redemption of all humanity.

So that these different tribes and tongues and cultures that have been established are all brought in into the one body of Christ.

That's the narrative.

It's this incredible picture.

And so that is the mystery that was revealed to Paul.

He continues on in uh verses eight and nine.

He says, To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

We need to see that the gospel, when Paul describes it, is not just about individual heart change.

The gospel is also about the creation of a new type of people.

So if we're not in that new type of people, how can we say that our hearts have really been changed by the gospel?

See how these are just intrinsically linked together.

The way that our minds think, we're always trying to make like a minimum viable product of the gospel.

It's like, okay, but what's like the what's like what gets me in the door?

Like if I say these words, then I'm saved, right?

It's by faith alone that I'm saved.

We make this like, okay, that you need, it's just this.

If you do this minimally, then you're in.

But Paul like never has that impulse.

He's like, look at this grand story that we're a part of.

And your heart change means the creation of a whole new type of people.

All right, this is the best part.

Paul's been given this grace to preach to the Gentiles, the plan of the mystery hidden for ages, to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, this incredible news that we might be reconciled to God through Jesus.

Why?

What's the purpose of this?

Listen to this verse.

This is like the whole thing I wanted to say today.

This is uh Ephesians 3, verse 10.

Ephesians 3:10

It says, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

So through why is Paul preaching this gospel?

Why did God give him the grace to preach this gospel?

It's so that through the church, this, the church, the multifaceted, multicolored wisdom of God might be shown to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

Okay, pause.

Let's talk about heaven.

So we've got a great picture of what the throne room of God looks like in Isaiah chapter 6.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

It's like, you want a picture of the throne room of God?

Isaiah chapter 6, that's the go-to.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Ezekiel's too weird.

Don't understand what all the wheels and spinning, it's very, it's very like Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

But Isaiah 6, we can grasp this one.

So Isaiah gets called up into heavens the year that King Uzziah died.

The point is he gets called up to see the real king, the king who never dies.

And it says that God's robe uh it fills the whole temple.

And flying around God are the seraphim.

So that word means like flames.

These are burning angels.

These are angels that are just constantly on fire.

And they have six wings, three pairs of wings.

With two of them, they cover their eyes and their face, with two of them, they cover their feet, then with the other two, they fly.

And they're flying around God, and they're shouting back and forth to one another: holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

The whole earth is full of his glory.

So Isaiah sees this, and God's voice, it sounds like thunder is constantly rolling out from his throne, and there's flashes of lightning taking place around God's throne.

It's this incredible, unspeakable glory.

So let's focus in on these seraphim, these flaming angels.

So God, they're God's creatures, like us.

That wasn't a joke.

And think of it like this: like God made fish.

And fish are just perfectly designed for the water, because that was the habitat that God made for them to be in.

And God made seraphim, and they were designed for his throne room.

Perfectly designed to behold the glory of God and to be proclaiming it constantly.

So what do they look like?

They're constantly flaming.

Just this emission of unthinkable glory.

And they're given sets of wings to shield themselves from the glory of God.

While they're beholding it and proclaiming it, God knew you're gonna need to be shielding yourself too.

And you're just gonna need some extra, just throw a couple extra sets of wings on there, they're gonna need to be covering themselves.

All they do all day long is behold the face of God and proclaim God's glory.

That's a picture of heaven.

A picture of a heavenly being.

So why the church?

Because that seraphim can't see it.

There's a glory just looking there that that seraphim would never get to understand, would never even begin to behold.

There's a wisdom of God that that seraphim, whose created purpose is just to behold and proclaim God's glory.

There's a glory, a multifacetedness, a multicoloredness of this wisdom of God that that seraphim would never see, listen to this, would never see if it weren't for this.

This all our freaking baggage.

I'm gonna ruin this great moment.

And said, Well, that's great because we weren't worshiping you.

That's the way we become.

Look at the church.

You know, you you know a couple of people, a couple of people you know well, a couple of people you don't.

You've got some weird things relationally.

With each other.

You're trying to get to know each other better.

There's some things that are unsaid right now, need to be said.

You've got, it's fitting some preferences, it's not fitting some other preferences.

Redemption groups just started, and there's some awkward things going on in them.

The first couple are really awkward.

Even still, if you were to share what was what you really thought, it would be too awkward, so you just don't.

That's the church.

This is the church.

Why does it exist?

So that this incredible wisdom of God might be proclaimed in the heavens.

I love that word, the manifold.

It could be translated multicolored.

The church is like a prism that God's glory shines through.

And then the angels in heaven are able to say, wow, what a glorious God.

Peter elsewhere says that this gospel is something that the angels long to look into.

You know that holy God we're flying around all the time?

This is them on a break, cigarette break.

They have lighters on them all the time.

They are the lighters.

Have you seen what he's doing with his church?

We knew he was holy and glorious.

Have you seen his mercy?

I thought I got it, but then I saw what he did with this person.

I'd never seen that shade of his mercy before.

This, did you see, you know, there's the have you seen what he's done in this revival on this continent?

Yeah, that's amazing.

Did you see what he did with this tiny little church in Denver that doesn't even have their own building?

Yeah, I've never seen anything like that before.

It's multicolored, you see.

Manifold, detailed work that God does through the church to show his glory.

Now, this whole conversation takes place in a context where people all uh people always think Paul isn't a real apostle, a real apostle, because he wasn't with Jesus during Jesus' earthly ministry.

He did see Jesus, and it blinded him, because Jesus was glorified at the time.

And uh so he is a real apostle, but uh at this point he's writing and he's in prison.

And so the Ephesians who are receiving this letter, they're thinking, look, Paul's ministry is on the fritz.

Like, that's not the apostle you want to hit your wagon to.

And so this whole story of what God is doing with the church, this whole passage that we're looking at today, is in the context of Paul answering the question: look, I know this doesn't look glorious to you right now, but we're famous in heaven.

I know that it looks like this is on the decline, but you should hear the angels talk about this.

Those are the eyes we need to get for each other, for our church, for what church is.

Paul says in Ephesians 3.13, he says, So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

It's teaching us to see the bride of Christ for what she is.

So let's get practical.

This is not my strong suit.

So let's ask the question, okay, I get that, the church glorious.

But but this church, like like the small local church, all of us, with you know, all of us, are you sure?

Yeah, I am.

So Ephesians 4, 1 through 3, here's what this looks like culturally and governmentally.

So, culturally and governmentally.

There's a this there are real practicalities.

This is right where Paul goes after describing the heights of the glory of what the church really is.

It's like, okay, what will this look like?

What do you do to be participating in that type of a church?

Ephesians 4, 1 through 3 says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

So we'll pause.

So, what's the calling to which you've been called?

Well, it's that glorious, that cosmically glorious church, the purpose of which is to proclaim God's glory to angels who would never get to see something like his grace manifested in our lives.

So understand that calling.

That becomes what we fix our eyes on as a church, that God is calling us to live this unthinkably glorious thing.

So, how do we do that?

We do it with humility.

This is what it looks like in our culture.

Those were humble people.

They asked a lot of questions about me.

They seemed to really get to know each other and really be themselves, and they weren't nervous about being found out.

They were gentle.

They weren't trying to, you know, muscle up to me.

I wasn't trying to muscle up to them.

They seemed like they were accessible and it was welcoming.

They were patient.

Whenever you see patience or endurance, endurance is about situations, patience is about people.

It's just helpful categories.

You endure through trials that life is giving you, you're patient with each other.

Right now, Paul's talking about how we act with each other.

He's talking about the culture of a church.

And we're patient with each other.

What does patience look like?

We bear with one another.

You know, some of us just need to be born.

Just need to bear with each other.

We bear with one another in love.

We have an eagerness about us to maintain the unity of the spirit that we all share in a bond of peace.

That means we seek to have real peace with each other.

Not surface level, we're not going to talk about it type of peace, but we seek to really get to where we're really known by each other and we have real peace.

That's the culture of the church.

But the church is not just an organism with a culture.

The church is also an organization.

This is the real practical part, where we're like, come on, that cosmic, glorious thing that must just work itself out organically in the world.

No, God actually gave real structures to uphold what the church is.

And this is where Paul goes later on in the same passage.

He says, and he gave, this is Ephesians 4, 11 through 12, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

Means there are real roles and structures that the church will have.

When we do something as inorganic as schedule when we're gonna meet, that's us living in accord with what God says the church really is.

When we designate, there's some people that are gonna preach and there's some people that aren't gonna preach.

That's not us being like taking this glorious church concept and like shoving it down into creation.

No, that's that's us actually upholding what God has called the church to be.

It's an organism and an organization, and in both of those ways it connects to that amazing glory that God has described.

So there are these offices, the apostles and prophets.

How do we relate to those?

Through the scriptures.

The prophets write the Old Testament, the apostles established the New Testament, and it's on that foundation that we are established as a church.

So all that we do as a church needs to be connected to the scriptures.

Then there are evangelists.

What do evangelists do?

They bring you in.

Then there's shepherds.

What do shepherds do?

They keep you in.

And there's teachers.

What do teachers do?

They build you up.

So that the saints, which is us, might be equipped for the work of the ministry, which is that the church might be declaring the manifold wisdom of God.

We'll get more how to that relates to outside the church walls later.

Might be equipped for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

The glory of what the church is.

And learn to look around and when we see each other to see that glory.

When we start to see that and live in line with that culture, and see that that glory is demonstrated in our humility, in our patience with one another, it's demonstrated even in the structures that we put in place as a church, then we're starting to get what's really happening here.

That's an amazing thing to see.

What's happening right now, this little thing.

It's famous in heaven.

So with that, let's see, are there any questions?

Is there a question?

Yeah.

So as we see God bring more and more kinds of people into the church, how can we, should we, as a local church, do the same?

Yeah, so we'll be getting to this more as the series goes on.

But one of the ways that we can do the same is we can expect our community to be messy and have boundaries that are difficult to discern.

When we have that expectation, then instead of uh uh then we won't be constantly turning people away at the door.

But instead we'll be saying, all right, come on in, get a taste of this culture, and you we'll probably be able to tell if this is a real fit or not.

What we have a tendency to do is to draw distinctions.

And I don't think they're typically over race as they are with Jew and Gentile, although sometimes they are.

What's the most segregated time in uh the United States?

Sunday mornings.

You know.

So part of part of doing that, I think, is uncovering our own prejudices and realizing where those lie.

I think a lot of times they're doctrinally, we're doctrinally prejudiced, even when we don't really understand our own doctrines.

And we need to oftentimes, I think, reel back a lot of lines that we've drawn just too far.

One of the best ways to describe theology and the way that it's practiced in the American Church is what Freud calls the narcissism of minor differences.

That's when the differences become smaller, the camps become more entrenched.

We need to keep our eyes out for those things.

How we can repent of that.

But there's more to come on that as the series goes on, so to quote Ira Glass, stay with us.

Let's take communion together.

Part of what coming to the table means is we're all equals at the table.

We all come completely dependent on what Christ has done.

And it is Christ working in our hearts that makes us a people.

And what shows that we're a people, this is what next week's sermon is on.

We feast together.

How do you become a people?

How do you know you're a family?

Because you eat dinner together.

And here we feast together every week.

That's what next week's about.

Next week we talk about why we gather large.

The week after that, we talk about why we'll gather small in each other's homes.

So today, consider that when you're coming to the table, you're coming together.

It's a part of a church of people and the glory that's demonstrated as each of you come up.

So with that, let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would teach us to behold the glory of your church, that we would see before our eyes no longer something mundane or everyday or ordinary, but something that is declaring the manifold wisdom of you.

God, we praise you that you've written a story that might allow us to come together and enjoy you together, and that in doing that you are glorified.

Father, give us humility, give us patience with each other, give us hearts of forgiveness that your forgiveness towards us might act like a glue for our church body so that we might be able to quickly forgive each other.

And God, we pray that in all of this your wisdom might be declared.

Praise you, Lord.

Amen.