01: The Power of the Gospel

Colossians one twelve through twenty.

Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And he who is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

Thanks for joining us this afternoon.

The thunder and lightning is very cool.

I'm into that.

It reminds me of a song we sing here called Where Were You?

And it's uh this song that uh captures the these final verses of Job where God is speaking to Job.

And one of the questions that God asked Job is, Does the lightning ask you where it should strike?

To which Job, you know, would respond, uh, no.

Right.

And uh to which God is implying, right, uh, the lightning asks me where it should strike.

We're very different, God and us.

This is the first day of our new series called Redemption Applied.

So as we're moving through this series, what we're going to be doing is taking this doctrine that we've been moving through in the past five or six six weeks, uh, as we looked at the five solas of the Reformation, and we're saying, okay, here's this doctrine that we have, but what does this look like when it's played out in a church?

What does it look like when we put meat on these bones and we put flesh on it, and we say, okay, we're gonna be the church that takes this doctrine and actually lives it and moves it out into the world.

This is redemption applied, right?

Get it?

Here's here's redemption, Christ's redemption, we're applying it in the world.

And our church is called redemption.

So redemption applied is a nice little double meaning there.

So uh we're asking questions like, uh, what are where are we headed?

How are we going to get there?

What are we going to do to get there?

And we're asking all of these together.

We're laying out the vision for our church.

So this is going to take all fall.

So we're going to be moving through this series right up until Thanksgiving.

We're going to be outlining what the vision for Redemption Church Denver is.

Uh we are uh we're we're at this early stage in our church's life.

We're at this kind of interesting place where you notice we're meeting in the afternoon, so this is 4:30 p.m., uh, which is nice you get to meet during thunderstorms.

And it's Sunday evening.

I can tell by how tired you all look.

What did you do this weekend?

I hope you took full advantage of that confession time.

We are uh we are uh at a place where we're looking towards what is the vi what is the future of our church going to look like?

And we're laying that out over the course of these next 11 weeks.

So we ask that you would really stay with us through this time to that way we can capture and share this real shared vision together of what it's going to mean to be a part of Redemption Church Denver.

Uh a couple things this isn't.

One thing this isn't, this is not like a pitch deck for funding.

Right?

This isn't something that we're doing because, okay, we need, we need like uh we've got series A, now we need series B funding, then we can really get started.

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.

We've started.

This is happening.

You're at church now, you're part of a church now, you're part of a body now.

We aren't doing this to give us permission to start.

We're here.

It's happening.

This is more like a game time huddle.

So we're gonna huddle together and we're gonna be really clear about the plays that we're gonna be calling.

Some of the plays that we're gonna call, we've run before.

Other plays that we're going to call through this series, this will be the first time we've heard them.

So it's gonna be a long huddle and we'll describe what we'll do.

Um uh speaking of huddles, how about them buffs?

Yeah, it's called pandering.

We are uh so we're we're coming together to lay out exactly uh w what plays we're gonna be running as a church, how we're going to apply this.

So we're laying out the vision.

So, you know, there's so much writing and blogging, and there's so many great quotes on like how important it is for churches to have a great, clearly articulated vision that we can all rally behind.

So I found my favorite quote on vision.

It's by Dietrich Bonhoeff.

Uh here, here check this out.

Can we go ahead and pull up that quote?

Been practicing that move.

Uh here's the quote: God hates visionary dreaming.

Thanks, Matthew.

It makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.

He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law.

This can't be the right quote.

No, it is.

Sets up his own law and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly.

He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren.

He acts as if he is the creator of Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

So what is Bonhoeffer saying?

God hates visionary dreaming.

It makes the dreamer the center of the universe.

It makes the dreamer the one who says, I can tell you what Christian community will look like.

I'll be the one who determines whether or not Christian community is a success or a failure.

Well, look, we can take this quote with a bit of a grain of salt because he this quote takes place in Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together, which lays out his vision of Christian community.

But it's a really important boundary that we set for ourselves, which is to say we are not our own.

We are not the shepherds of our church.

Christ is the shepherd of our church.

It is Christ who sets our vision, it is Christ who maintains our direction and guides us towards where we want to go, and it is his vision that we're looking to accomplish.

And so we need to capture this real warning that Bonhoeff is giving us to say, look, the church is not the type of thing where you wake up one day and it's like, oh, I got it.

I know how to do church now, I know how to do church.

Quick, hand me a pin.

I gotta tell everybody because the past 2,000 years have been a sham.

That's not the way the church works.

Here's another place that this gets articulated in scripture.

In James 4, 13 to 15, he says, Come now, you who say, come now.

That's a that was a slur.

Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

Yet, you don't know what tomorrow will bring.

What's your life?

You're a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

Here's the thing: there are two ways to lay out a vision.

And I want to be very clear of which one we're doing.

There's one way that lays out a vision that says, if I don't get this clearly articulated, I'm gonna be in constant fear that we're missing something.

There's one way that lays out a vision to avoid moving in faith.

There's a way that lays out a vision that is not humble towards the Lord, but is arrogant towards the Lord.

It says, God, here is the way you need to show up and you need to get on board with whatever it is that we're doing here.

But there's another way that lays out a vision.

There's a way that lays out a vision that says, God has promised faithfulness to his church.

And because he's promised faithfulness to his church, we're going to plan and act as though he will be faithful.

Because he calls us to be living out these aspects of what he describes his life in the body of Christ to be, we're going to set things up as though he'll show up and attend them.

There's a vision that acts out of fear, and there's another vision that is an act of obedience and faith.

That is the type of vision that we want to set out today.

It is one that says, God is trustworthy, God is faithful, so we're going to plan accordingly.

We're going to plan as though God really does care for his church.

This is a vision that we want to lay out in faith.

So, in order to do that, we're turning to uh to begin with, this kind of intro sermon, we're turning to uh this letter that Paul wrote to the church at Colossae.

And the church at Colossae is a young church that was not planted by Paul.

It was planted by a man named Epaphras.

And it's in like a small to medium-sized city.

A city kind of like the 19th largest city in Asia Minor.

Right?

Denver is the 19th largest city in the United States.

It's exactly like Denver.

Not really.

Come on, you guys know better than that.

How could that possibly be true?

This is in the first century.

I'm not gonna stop harping on this joke until I get a laugh.

Denver and Colossae are different.

So here's the way this letter starts.

Paul starts the letter to the church at Colossae, and he he prays this incredible prayer for the people at that church.

People that he'd never met, but that he's in support of.

And he prays for them, uh, a prayer that has just become uh like one of the most important prayers in my life.

Uh he prays for the church at Colossae.

I pray it all the time.

I pray it for my son.

If I pray for you in here, I'm probably praying this prayer for you.

And uh he just spins three verses, and uh he says that I uh he asks that they may be filled with the knowledge of God's will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, that they might walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, be fully pleasing to God, that they might bear fruit in every good work, and they might increase in the knowledge of God, that they might be strengthened according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.

That is my prayer for our church.

So he prays that for three verses.

And then he says, and you need to be constantly giving thanks to the Lord.

And then for 11 verses, he gives thanks to the Lord.

He just overflows.

And that's the verses that we heard read this morning.

Paul just overflows, giving thanks to God for what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

NT Wright in his commentary on this, he says, the main reasons why the Colossians should give thanks to God is because of Jesus Christ.

If they do this with full knowledge and understanding about who he is and what he has achieved, everything else will fall into place.

This is our calling.

Grasp fully, as completely as we can, all that Christ has achieved on our behalf.

When we grasp that and we give thanks to God for what Jesus has done, everything else will fall into place.

This is the center of everything.

The center of our church, the focus and the focal point of our church is that Christ is redeeming all of creation.

And Christ, in what he accomplished on the cross, the gospel, the good news of who Jesus is, is the power and the purpose of everything that we will do as a church.

There's nothing else that will drive us.

This is complete.

And that's because of God's purpose to reconcile all things in Jesus.

And that is our purpose as well.

And so God does this in at least three ways.

And for our sake and for the sake of the series, we're gonna break it down in three ways.

God is reconciling our own hearts to himself in Christ.

God is reconciling our community to himself in Christ, which is the community of the church, the community that Jesus made.

And God is reconciling the world to himself.

What is that for us?

It's Denver.

It's where you live, where you work, the people that you're around.

God has intentions of reconciliation in all of these places.

So we are seeing God reconcile our hearts, our community, and our city.

So that's going to be the format for the series that we're moving through.

We're going to do three weeks on how God is reconciling our hearts and what practices and events and structures we were putting in place to ensure that we see more hearts reconciled to God.

And the second three weeks, we'll be moving through community, which is what structures we're putting in place to see to it that God unites and supports the community of the church, which is us.

And the third set of weeks, set of three weeks, we will be looking at what structures and practices we want to put in place as a church to see to it that we are moving out into the city, seeking Christ's reconciliation of Denver.

So, our heart, community, our city.

So let's begin in this passage with our heart.

How do we see Christ's reconciliation of our hearts?

In Colossians 1, 12 through 14, says, giving thanks to the Father, this is the thanksgiving, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

How does Christ transform our hearts?

Well, there's so many ways to say it.

But here, Paul uses this language of the Exodus.

You see, the Israelites were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.

But then God, by his mighty hand and his outstretched arm, he reached into Egypt and he rescued his people out of it.

So they were no longer living under the oppressive dominion of the Pharaoh, but they were free to be God's people.

He does the same thing with our hearts in Christ.

We live under the oppressive dominion of sin.

And because sin reigns in our hearts like that, we need a rescuer who can come in and transfer us out of this domain of darkness and into a new kingdom.

And it's this new kingdom that our hearts find the place that can actually soften and grow.

Where we can actually be the type of people that Jesus has called us to be, no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness in Christ.

Paul bookends this same idea of this heart transformation.

He circles back after this long prayer, uh, and it's bookended by this heart transformation.

He says this in verses 21 to 23.

He says, And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.

He continues on, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

So, what is our purpose as a church?

How do we remain in this kingdom?

How do we pursue the heart transformation of the gospel?

It's we ensure that we remain committed to this news that Jesus has transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into his kingdom.

He has qualified us to be with his saints in light.

Jesus is the one who transforms our hearts.

We were once alienated from God.

We were once his enemies, but because of Jesus, we have been reconciled to him.

This is the amazing news of the cross.

That Jesus Himself did not come just to be an example to us, but he came to actually accomplish our salvation.

That in Christ our hearts are changed because he is the one who saved us.

Jesus came and he said that Jesus is the one who offered himself.

Sorry, I got I just got so distracted by the rain.

This is why I would be a terrible outdoor preacher.

In Jesus, we find the only hope that our hearts could actually change.

And so here are the three ways that we're going to be seeking this transformation as a church.

And this will be our next three sermons on heart transformation.

And the way that we want to see this happen is we're going to be moving from one place to another place.

That's transformation, right?

We want to be, we are one way, and we think that many of us in Denver, if we're just left to our default devices, we'll be this one way.

We want to move to the way that the gospel changes us.

So here are those three ways.

So we want to see that our hearts move from assent to conversion.

So what does that mean?

It means that we often think of the gospel as just a set of bullet points, and commitment to it means just walking up to those bullet points and saying, yeah, I believe that.

Yeah, I believe that.

Yeah, I believe that.

We assent to the truth of these certain facts of history, and that's somehow sufficient for faith in Christ.

But we want to transform that from not just assent, but to a total conversion.

That when we understand fully what Christ has accomplished on the cross, that it changes the whole of our lives.

This is not something we can piecemeal integrate into an aspect of ourselves, but this is a totally new person.

Jesus uses this term.

He says, you'll be born again, made into a new creation.

And so as a church, we want to put structures in place, which we'll talk about in that sermon, how we move from ascent to conversion.

Next is we want to move from self-expression, this is really nice, from self-expression to freedom of obedience.

What is the tendency, what do we think ultimate fulfillment is, ultimate freedom is?

We think it's the ability to express ourselves.

There's a real me inside, and it's my duty to express that real me in the world.

That's the tendency of our hearts.

And we want to put structures in place to move us to see that real freedom does not mean just looking inside and making that manifest out in the world.

Real freedom is seeing who did God make me to be.

True freedom is saying, I'm not the one who defines me, Jesus is the one who defines me.

And so true freedom doesn't mean me drawing my own boundaries.

It means living within the boundaries that he has drawn from me.

So we want to move from self-expression to freedom of obedience.

And finally, we want to move in our hearts from tools and tactics to being saved.

So Christianity is not just a helpful psychological framework that allows you to get through the day.

If you need one of those, you can find one on a blog.

Uh, and then you can find another one and be confused.

And they will keep sending them to you.

We are so quick to reduce our faith from something that requires a total heart change to just some tips and tools and tactics that we try and integrate as part of this complete breakfast.

But we want to see to it that the truth of Christianity, it is not a description of how to attain a life that somehow allows you to get to God.

But it is a story of a God who sought us to completely change our hearts.

So that is what we what we will be looking through for our series on the heart.

Next, community.

In Colossians 1, 15 to 18, it says, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

If you want more on that, you should check out last week's sermon.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Now check this out.

And he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

Look at this language that Paul uses to describe Jesus.

The one who transferred you from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

He is God.

Why was he able to do something like that?

Because all things are for him.

And in his goodness, the way that he made things work out for him is to rescue you, to make your rescue a part of his glory.

And Jesus does that.

And he establishes himself.

He is ahead of all of creation.

And then he establishes himself as the head over his new creation.

And when he recreates our hearts, he does not leave us as these atomized people.

He creates us into a family.

Something so united that he calls it his body.

So united to him that he calls himself the head of the body.

And that body that he creates is the church.

The church is not incidental to your salvation.

It's intrinsic.

Being a part of the church is not a bonus feature because we like to just get together.

It is the ordinary means that God uses to preserve us, to maintain us in Him.

It's this.

Right now, gatherings like these.

This feels so epic, are little centers of the universe.

Little parts, sparks of new creation just flashing through into existence right now.

And you look around, go ahead.

Yeah, look, I know, they look ordinary.

This is Christ's body.

His hands, his fingers.

This is how he loves, this is how he brings about his redemption in the world.

You're sitting next to it.

Christ establishes his body and he makes us one in him.

When we can grasp in our minds the transcendent reality of what the church is.

Well, we'll return to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He's had a change of heart since the last time we heard from him.

He says Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize.

He says it is rather a reality created by God in Christ, in which we may participate.

The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

You know, we need to learn to gain the eyes to see what this really is.

To see that, look, this is not a plan so that we can become Christ's body.

We're Christ's body right now.

That's what it is to be a church.

Paul writes and he talks like this, even when he's writing to, in the at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, he uses this same type of language.

I'm so thankful for you that we're joined together as brothers in Christ.

The church at Corinth, you should read through the letter, they were terrible.

They were like the worst church.

And what did Paul see?

This is the very body of Christ.

This is his hands and feet in the world.

How amazing that I could be brothers with these people.

They'll be so glorious one day, they'll shine like the sun.

We have to get eyes to see each other like that.

Look, seeing our seeing the church like that, seeing that in each other, our body like that, that isn't being naive.

That's being accurate.

Wow, this is helpful.

Here's three ways we want to pursue this in our community.

We want to pursue receiving the community that God has given to us.

We want to move from independence to interdependence.

So, how do we cultivate that as a body?

We expect to have weaknesses and we expect others to have strengths.

And therefore, we don't cultivate being a well-rounded, independent Christian.

We cultivate our interdependence so that we are a strong body that moves together.

And we're going to get very practical with that first one.

How do we do that?

Well, there are structures that God has ordained in order to help us as a body cultivate our interdependence.

There are offices like elders and deacons.

There are ways that we can establish real commitment to one another.

Okay.

Next, we want to move from attendance to participation.

So you can see that in even things that we're rolling out, like the confession.

I know it feels weird, but we're getting there.

We're getting better at it.

This is called practice.

We're practicing how to move from a church culture that we're surrounded by, which treats churches like production companies.

We are not a production company, we are a church.

Production companies can't sit and look around at each other and say, this is the body of Christ, the king of the universe, his body is here.

That's not something like, uh, I don't know, NBC Universal can say.

Especially now that they don't make the office anymore.

We are not a production company, and that means we are here to participate with each other.

So that means when we confess, we confess.

When we sing, we sing.

When we're here, we're not just here to absorb information that's purely cognitive.

We're here to sit next to people, and when I hear something that really resonates with me from the scripture being expounded, I nudge my neighbor and I say, Oh man, can we talk about that afterwards?

And then we become a body.

From attendance to participation.

And finally, we move from ideal community to real community.

Our main mechanism for doing that is redemption groups.

That's how the community of the church moves from something you can imagine and whiteboard out and say, this is really nice, and it becomes, I can't believe I gotta have this person in my home.

The punctuation is just amazing.

I get why when God was talking from Sinai, he's like, let's use some thunder.

Because if I could request it, I'd request it.

Real community means the people that are next to you.

The people that are in front of you.

A lot of times Christians say things like, I just don't feel like I'm experiencing real community.

No, it that thing that you think is in the way of you experiencing real community, that's real community.

That's what it is.

It's these people.

It's us.

So we move from, we abandon the idol, we kill it, we murder it, we murder the idol of ideal community, and we get to know each other.

And you're messed up.

No offense.

Obviously, I am too, right?

This is that's the point.

We become real community.

That's intimidating and really scary.

Uh but that's our intention.

Now, how does this move out into our city?

Colossians 1, 19 through 20, it says, For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

The cross really is the center of the story.

When we realize that Christ is reconciling to himself all things, because of the peace that he established by the blood of his cross.

That means that the kingdom that Christ was looking to create, he made certain on the cross by his death and resurrection and ascension.

He made peace between us and God so that his kingdom would now move down to the earth to rule over all things.

Over all things.

So that means when you're at work and you see this is an area that is not peaceful, and Jesus' kingdom brings peace.

Now all of a sudden you have an obligation to move in, to seek Christ's peace in the places that he has put you.

Jesus, right now, in an announcement like this, saying that in the cross he is reconciling to himself all things, that his kingdom will move in by the power of the cross, which is by the power of the gospel, uh, that's expanding our horizon of hope beyond anything we would ever allow ourselves to normally get to.

The way that I described it at this Gotham retreat that we just did, which is probably why I'm a little foggy, we just had the Gotham retreat this past weekend.

And we finished this morning, and we were talking about how this picture of the glory of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is bringing, it's like uh it's like the Bible reaches out and hands you this like giant spotlight.

It's like, wow, this is so bright and so glorious.

It's amazing.

I can't believe I'm holding it.

I can't even then you start to shine it around the world, and it shines light on what the world is like now, and it's like, oh gosh, this is terrible.

This glorious picture of the light that we're heading towards exposes this incredible lack of glory in the world now.

And that starts to show us our mission.

It shows us that the things we would have previously avoided now we'll move into because we can see a more clear, a better way.

So that work is meaningful, so that families are reconciled, so that joy is expressed in our worship.

We are citizens of that heavenly kingdom that Christ has established by his cross.

And yet we live here in Denver.

It's not a heavenly kingdom.

So how is it that we operate?

Well, the scriptures are clear.

What do you do when you're the citizen of God's kingdom, and yet here you are, you find yourself living in another kingdom?

The Israelites found themselves in that exact situation during the Babylonian exile.

They were taken from their home, the land that God had promised them, and they were placed in another city.

And here's how God told them to live in that city.

Small excerpt in Jeremiah 29, 7, God commanded, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

This is our hope for our church.

That we are the type of people who will seek the welfare of Denver, seek it so much that we bind up our own personal welfare in the city's welfare.

That will be very challenging.

Because, you know, this is a welfare as defined by God.

This is what's really good for our city, not what our city thinks is good for itself.

And so we'll be put into all sorts of areas that would have been nicer to avoid.

And it would have been nicer to just kind of like hang out together as a church.

And instead, we're gonna be involved.

You know, I don't know when the last time you saw the first Star Wars was.

You know, we all know, like, there's the evil evil empire, and then there's the good rebels.

And there's a force and stuff.

But when you when you I don't when you watch that movie again, like you realize the first movie, I don't know how it became such a thing.

Because that first movie is, it's like it's it's like not good.

They don't explain anything in the movie.

It's just you're just thrown in and it's like there's a galactic empire and they're bad, and it's like, well, why are they bad?

And it's like they're just bad.

And they're in control of everything, and there's these rebels, and it's like, why are they rebelling against the galactic empire?

And it's like, we we just are.

We're just rebelling against the galactic empire.

So you're just thrown into the middle of the story, and I was thinking, like, why does this connect?

Why did this work?

Here's why I think.

I think there's something in the human heart that really understands.

All right, you'll let you finish.

That really understands being a soldier who's fighting just by faith.

You know, we get that look, it seems like the world is under the wrong control of like an evil galactic empire.

And that it should be under control of a real rightful king.

And, you know, when we're here as us rebels gathered together against this evil galactic empire, you know, I can't see the kingdom that we're looking to make.

We're not in it yet.

But by faith, we're moving towards its existence.

And I think when you tell a story that fundamental, it just catches on.

And don't you see that's our story?

The real king of the world is Christ.

But it's been under this terrible, evil dominion.

And Christ comes and says, My kingdom is certain to move over every square inch of creation.

So I'll change your hearts.

I'll make you a community, and in that community, I'll give a taste of what the culture of this glorious future kingdom is gonna be like.

And when you taste in this community what that culture is gonna be like, you have to move out into the culture that you're surrounded by, and you've got to bring that flavor.

You've got to say, see, this is the type of kingdom that's coming.

This is the goodness where God dwells with us, and there's no more tears, and there's no more crying, there's no more pain.

So, where are there tears and pain?

That's where the Christian is called to move into.

So we return back to this first point, which is that Christ is reconciling all things to himself.

And the gospel is the purpose of all that we do as a church, and it is the whole power for what we seek to do as a church.

And it's by uniting all things into this story of the gospel, the announcement of Christ as our Savior and Lord, that we actually accomplish our goal.

I uh, you know, I I grew up Christian, right?

So I went on overseas mission trips because it was like the law.

I don't know what good we did, okay?

But I met this really amazing guy uh who had dedicated his life to contacting people who would just never otherwise be contacted with the gospel.

He used to say this thing over and over again.

He used to say, if you have the story, you can't fail.

I believe that more than ever.

If you have the story of the gospel, you can't fail.

Here's how Paul describes the gospel's effectiveness.

This is what he describes just before he starts praying in this very same letter.

He says, Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world, it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.

When we get the gospel, when we understand the grace of God towards us in truth, it will bear fruit and it will multiply, as indeed it is doing in the whole world.

So, how will we reach Denver?

Well, there's three ways.

These will be our final three sermons.

We want to move ourselves from having a private faith to a public faith.

This is probably one of the most countercultural things that we will do.

Which means that you can no longer hide your faith and uh you can no longer sequester it into just the private sector of your life.

But this is a public truth to be enjoyed and understood by all.

So we'll be doing a lot of work together to move our faith from a private faith to a public faith.

We want to switch our paradigm from a paradigm of us versus them to a paradigm of grace versus sin.

Because it's easy for us to find ourselves sequestering ourselves off and saying, look, there's us Christians, and then there's those, you know, bad people over there.

Christians and bad people, that's the world.

Instead of the more appropriate paradigm of there's grace and there's sin.

And here in the church, you know what's in the church?

There's some grace and there's some sin.

And so we want in the church to be conquering sin.

Sin by the blood of Christ, by grace shown to each other.

And then outside of the church, you know what there is.

There's grace and there's sin.

And so we want to be a part of the project of seeing sin conquered by grace.

So we want to, as a church, be putting rhythms and practices in our lives to help us switch that paradigm.

And finally, we want to move from a conversation that revolves around power to a conversation that revolves around service.

Power is the only thing left that our culture has to try and define its morality.

All conversations take place in terms of power.

Christians have a very unique approach to power.

One that's completely inverted.

One that says, whatever power we have, if we lay it down, we lose none of it.

We need not fear the power structures that exist in our city.

And we need not covet them.

Instead, we can approach them knowing that the real power comes from Christ.

So I'm really looking forward to moving through these things in particular.

And I hope that these transitions, I hope that it resonated with your own heart as far as like that's something that I would love to take place in my own heart.

And so let's see if we have a question.

Are there any questions?

No questions today.

And uh let's just join together in prayer before we take communion.

And let's pray that God would help establish this vision as a move of faith in our hearts.

Out of this will flow all sorts of practical conversations.

What type of location will we look for?

What type of community group or Bible structure study will we have?

What will our church polity establish itself to be?

There will be a lot of practical, you know, details that we're going to be working through.

But let's pray together that God will establish his vision for his church.

Father, you are Lord over all.

You are reconciling all things to yourself.

Lord, that's the best news.

Father, would you transform our hearts, that we might be truly born again, made new creations in you, and that we might become a body that is knit together in love for one another, that we might begin to taste together the flavor of the kingdom.

And that we might take that and that might become in us like it's our home culture, that we might move out into the world to share this flavor of the glory of the gospel, that that might be transformative in our city, that your light might shine.

God, you say a city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Lord, would you make us a city?

You say that nobody lights a lamp and then they put it under a bushel, hide it under a bushel?

No.

Lord, would you light us that our light might shine and that by the shining of the light of your church that the whole city might be blessed and that your name might be glorified?

Would you work this into our hearts?

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.