Dream Church – We Are Devoted

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Super excited you're with us.

Today we're kicking off a brand new series of messages that will lead us all the way up to Easter weekend.

The series is called Dream Church.

And here's what I need you to understand.

The church was God's idea.

God knew that what we would need is we would need some place, some people to gather with to change the world for him.

And so he established it.

And if it was his idea, for the next few weeks I want to ask the question what do you think God dreams about when he imagined the church?

Now, when you see this word, what comes to mind?

When you see the word church, what picture floods your hearts?

Maybe for you it's a building, maybe for you it's a building with a steeple, maybe it's stained glass windows.

Maybe for you there's a feeling you felt when you were a child and your parents dragged you to Sunday school and you had the mean Sunday school teacher, but at least she'd give you a cup of goldfish crackers.

Like maybe that's your thought.

Maybe in your mind you imagine a building or a place like this that's a little bit more modern.

Maybe, maybe you imagine something.

For some of us, we have positive feelings.

For others of us, when we think of church, we we have a lot of pain.

Because somewhere along the way, someone hurt us.

And I just want to say this to you.

If you're a person with some church hurt, let me say this to you.

Churches don't hurt people, people hurt people.

So so many years of pastoring, I've had hundreds of people say to me, I just have a lot of church hurt.

And I'm always like, okay, cool.

What was his or her name?

Like, what do you mean?

I said, Well, churches don't hurt people, people hurt people.

And what's fascinating is the same tool that was used to hurt you is the instrument God chooses to use to heal you.

The only way to be healed is to find a healthy church community and to live and breathe and invest your life in that place.

What picture comes to mind when you think of church?

The book of Matthew, chapter 16, Jesus is with his disciples.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

And he leads them to this place called Caesarea Philippi, a place called the Valley of the Gods.

And in Jesus' day, no good Jewish boy would go to Caesarea Philippi.

If Bible cities had slogans, theirs would be what happens in Caesarea Philippi.

Stays in Caesarea Philippi.

It was known for all kinds of weird, mystical, sexual, evil practices.

And there Jesus leads his disciples to this place called the Valley of the Gods, and he stands on a place that was called the Gates of Hate.

It was this place where there was a crack in the earth where natural gases would flow.

And the ancient people in Caesarea Philippi believed that that's where demons entered and left the earth.

It was the gates of hell.

And Jesus stands up on that place and he says, I will build my church.

And that verse has always been so comforting to me.

And first of all, Jesus says, He's going to be the one who builds it.

So we partner with him to do what he wants.

And then he says, It's my church.

It's his church.

And so there's this part of me that's always been able to release ownership of access because it's not mine.

This is Jesus' church, and we all get to be a part of it.

Now, when Jesus stands on that place and he says, I will build my church, the word in Greek for church that he used was an interesting word that may define church differently than what you think.

It's this word, ecclesia.

And ecclesia in Greek literally doesn't mean a building, it doesn't mean stained glass, it doesn't mean music, it means an assembly or a gathering.

Both of these words are about movement, not about stagnation.

Both of these words are about people coming together in a common mission to make a difference, to change the world together.

So today, as we talk about what God dreams about when he dreams of church, I want you to understand that his picture of church was always that we'd be gathered together on purpose for a mission.

And that mission is to leverage everything we have to go out and to change the world together.

Out of curiosity, you ever been on a blind date?

Anyone in the room ever been on a blind date before?

Lots of people have.

When I was in college, I just kind of ended a kind of a long-term relationship with a girl and had these friends that were like, Burns, we gotta help you.

Like we gotta get, we gotta get you out there again.

You know, lots of fish in the sea, we gotta get you back out there again.

So they set me up on a blind date, and this is what they told me.

They said, She's great, she loves the Lord, she's got a great family, and she actually wants to be a pastor's wife.

Now that is a weird, rare breed of people.

So I was like, maybe, maybe they're right.

And so they set it up for us.

We were gonna go to the Olive Garden, the OG on a Tuesday night.

And I went to a school where there was a chapel service on Tuesday mornings, and so um, you know, I had to do my due diligence.

We didn't have social media back then.

I couldn't like spy on her and look at all of her pictures.

So I had to do it the old school way, which is to spy.

And so I made the decision to get to chapel early.

I had a hoodie on so you couldn't really see who I was, and I sat in the back of the room and I waited, and someone pointed her out and I found her.

I was like, I'm gonna watch.

I'm gonna just watch this girl the whole time.

I'm gonna watch the girl.

Some of you are looking at me like a total pervert.

I was just spying, okay?

And anyway, so we all stand up and we were gonna sing some worship songs like we do.

And I don't I don't know how to explain this to you without sounding like a complete jerk, but there's um, there's lots of ways to clap.

You know, this is your kind of your standard, this is the standard way to clap, right?

Some people are a little bit more demonstrative than others.

This girl clapped in a way that when I saw it, I was like, that might be a deal breaker for me.

She she kind of swung her hips and then she swung her arms like this, and I thought, I know this is very Seinfeldian of me, but I don't know if I could be married to someone that claps like this.

You know what I mean?

I thought it was weird.

Strike one.

Anyways, Tuesday night rolls around.

I pick her up, I drive her to the Olive Garden, and um, have you ever had a conversation with someone that after like five minutes you are fully exhausted and you were out of questions?

Have you ever had this happen to you?

That's how this conversation went.

I kept asking questions and and she had the weirdest answers every single time.

The weirdest part wasn't her answers.

The weirdest part was every time she would answer me, before she would give the answer, she would start by going, um, and then she would answer every question.

Now I understand some questions you might need to think, but um, when I ask questions like, How many siblings do you have?

That should take one nanosecond.

And she went, um two, what are you majoring in?

Um religion.

Where are you from?

Um, like every question was um, uh, I was so done.

A few minutes into the meal, I was done with questions, I was done with um, literally, I remember what I ate.

I had chicken parmesan and fettuccine alfredo because it was the best part of the whole experience.

Couldn't wait to get out of there, couldn't wait to take her home, and by take her home, I mean like drive her to her house and push out on the way out.

That's what I meant.

And so I'm done.

I'm done with all the um, I'm done with the meal, I'm done with everything.

In fact, at one point, like I think she was still finishing her food, and the waitress came by and I handed her my credit card, and she says, Together are separate.

And I was like, Together, honestly, pay for everybody.

I just want to go.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, she goes, Together are separate.

And I said, Together, because side note men, you should always pay.

If you take a girl on a date, you should always pay.

It's called a menu.

That means menu pay.

That's what it is.

And so I'm like, gotta pay.

So I paid, and I'm gonna be honest, my intentions were not the best.

I just wanted to get out of there, so I paid.

The lady brings back my credit card slip.

I signed it so fast, and I started doing that thing that you do.

Like we were in a booth, so I started the like the shuffle of getting myself out of the booth, and I'm like two scoots in to my shuffle to get out, and this long, lanky arm reaches across the table and grabs my hand and she goes, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Before we go, what are we?

And I said, um, I don't know.

We are done with dinner, is what we are.

We're done, right?

What are we?

You understand in every relationship there's a moment when you have to define the relationship.

In every relationship, there's a moment where you have to say, if we're ever gonna get past a surface level relationship and if we're ever going to pursue intimacy, we can't just keep it casual.

We have to make the decision to pursue each other.

When I think about church and when I think about American Christianity, one of the problems I see as I look out is that we as Americans have made Christianity into our personal thing.

It's our personal relationship with Jesus.

And there's an element of that that is wonderful and true.

You need a personal relationship with Jesus.

But I also believe that we need what I would call a community relationship, a group relationship, a family relationship, a corporate relationship with Jesus.

We were never intended to do all of this on our own.

The question I want to ask is if we're gonna move from casual to passionate, the question I want to wrestle with today as a church is this: how do we do that?

Like, how do we follow Jesus?

How do we become a church that when people talk about access church, they say, I don't know what it is about them, but those are the most loving, kind, gracious, generous people.

They serve relentlessly, they give without abandon.

They're just the best people.

How do we become that?

The kind of church God dreams of.

How do we become followers of Jesus?

Well, I think it starts with us adopting a word.

That we need to become what I would call devoted.

Devoted to whatever he wants, devoted to his calling, devoted to following, devoted to laying down our rights and picking up the responsibility of following him.

This is what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus is that we become the most devoted people imaginable.

But let's be honest.

We live in a selfish world.

As you look through the life of Jesus, it's fascinating.

Only five times in the four gospels does Jesus say, believe in me.

Twenty different times he uses a different word.

It's not just believe in, it's not intellectual.

He says, I want you to follow me.

In fact, as Jesus was starting his public ministry around the age of 30, look what he says to people.

It says this, Matthew 4.18, as Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew.

They were casting a net into the lake, and this is so funny, for they were fishermen.

It's like the school of redundancy school.

It's like they're fishing because they're fishermen.

That's what they do.

And then Jesus drops these three words on them: life-changing, forever-shattering kinds of words.

He says, Come, follow me.

I want you to leave this place of security, and I want you to follow me.

Now, what you need to understand is in Jesus' day, if a person was an adult and they were a fisherman, it means that they had dropped out of the education system.

At some point they realized they weren't going to achieve the educational elite levels of some people.

So they dropped out and they just fell back into the family business.

So for these two boys, they're fishermen, and Jesus shows up and he says, Come follow me.

And then he says, and I will send you out to fish for people.

What Jesus does is he takes what they do, fishing, and he says, I have a redemptive idea that will help you to take what you do and use it in a way that will be felt for all of eternity.

This is what Jesus does.

Now imagine you're at your job tomorrow.

You're doing your thing, you're working as hard as you possibly can.

And someone shows up and they say, Hey, will you follow me?

Will you leave your computer?

Will you leave your desk job?

Will you leave your students?

Will you leave and follow after me?

Would you do it?

Well, that feels weird because you have to push off from your places of security, push off from your salary, off from the places that provide for you.

And Jesus does it to this people, and here's what it says At once they left their nets and followed him.

Like, think about the sacrifice to just leave what they were doing.

It says, going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee.

And if you're looking for a boy name, there's one.

James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John, and they were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets, and again, in parentheses, it's because they were fishermen.

And Jesus called them.

Pause here for a moment.

They're literally in the boat with their dad.

Are you with me on this?

They're fishing with pops, doing their job.

Jesus comes along and he sees the two brothers, that's two out of the three people in the boat.

And he's like, Will you, will you follow me?

Come follow me.

And it says, and immediately they left the boat and their father and they followed him.

Like try to imagine this moment from the dad's perspective.

He's with the boys, they're out doing their job, fishing, and the boys are like, Dad, have a good one, kiss mom for us, tell everyone we love them, see you.

And they literally get out of the boat and they swim up to Jesus to be with him.

Why would they do this?

It's because following Jesus comes with cost, but on the other side of your obedience is a lifetime of adventure that you could never begin to dream of on your own.

Here's the problem for so many of us the problem is Jesus invites us to follow him, and somewhere along the line we settle for a cheap substitute.

Instead of being a follower of Jesus, what we settle for is settling for being a fan.

And I'm a fan of all kinds of stuff.

I'm a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, and it's been 30 years of misery for me, but I'm a fan of them.

I'm a fan of a good meal, I'm a fan of a good concert, I'm a fan of a great movie, I'm a fan of a walk on the beach, I'm a fan of a great sunset, I'm a fan of lots of things.

What is a fan?

A fan is nothing more than enthusiastic admirers.

A couple years ago, when the Cowboys came to Tampa for the season opener, my family, we went to the Cowboys game.

We were decked out in silver and blue, sitting in a sea of red Buccaneers fans, and we were there yelling for our team, celebrating our team.

I yelled all kinds of stuff.

I had pretty good seats.

And my opinion meant nothing to the people on the field.

In fact, they couldn't hear me at all because in that moment all I was was nothing more than an enthusiastic admirer.

Now let me say this to you.

Every relationship with Jesus starts as a fan.

You're intrigued by him, you want to know what he's gonna say, you want to hear how what he can do to change your life, but our relationship was never intended to stay in the realm of fandom.

We were intended to move from being a fan to being a follower.

How do you know if you're a fan?

Well, fans ask one question: What's in it for me?

What do I get out of this relationship?

What do I get from you?

In John chapter 6, Jesus feeds the 5,000 people.

John 6 · chapter mention

I told the story from another one of the gospels a few weeks ago.

And I want you to notice this.

John 6, verse 2 says a great crowd of people, fans, followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick.

John 6:2

They were there for the show.

They wanted to see what he was going to do.

Then Jesus does the miracle, feeds all the people, and what happens?

People then leave.

Their bellies are full, they've seen a miracle, they're excited to go tell their family and friends what's happened.

But instead of following him, here's what happens.

Skip down to verse 66.

From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

They got what they wanted, which was something for themselves.

And then Jesus responds, He says, You do not want to leave too, do you?

He asked the 12.

Like, I don't want you to miss this.

We were called not just to be a spectator from a distance, but we as a church were called to be fully devoted followers.

Not fans, not people who are asking, What's in it for me, but people who say, Jesus, what can I bring?

How can I serve?

How can I be a follower?

It seems to me as I read this story that Jesus is so much more concerned about our level of commitment than he is the size of the crowd.

You say, What do you mean?

Jesus had 12 followers who were with him everywhere, and those 12 people turned the world upside down.

Jesus can do more with a small group of fully devoted, committed followers than he can with thousands and thousands or millions upon millions of people who are a fan from a distance, but who are selfish and ask, What's in it for me?

In fact, Jesus uses these strong words.

In the book of Luke, he says this.

He says, Why do you call me Lord, Lord?

And then you don't do what I say.

It's a fan.

In the book of Matthew, he says it like this.

He says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who's in heaven.

It's not enough to say I love you.

It's not enough to even call him Lord if you're not acting as if he's the one who actually gets to call the shots.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to take you today to one of the most confounding, confronting verses in all of Scripture.

This is the kind of verse that when I read it, there will be silence in the room.

I've done this so many times.

I know what's going to happen.

Because this verse is Jesus stepping all up on his disciples' toes, and here we are 2,000 years later, and Jesus steps up all over your toes.

He says this in the book of Luke, chapter 9.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

Then he, being Jesus, said to them all, whoever wants to be my disciple must do something.

Before I tell you what you're required to do if you're going to be a disciple, which means a student of Jesus, a follower of Jesus.

Some of us read this and we write ourselves off.

Jesus says, Whoever wants to be my disciple, and I want you to get this whoever means anyone, and anyone means everyone.

Whoever means you.

So Jesus says, Whoever wants to be my disciple must do some stuff.

Here's the verse again.

Next slide.

They must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.

And you can hear a pin drop.

Why?

Because this isn't comfortable.

And this is kind of the antithesis of the American way.

The American way is do what you want and have a good time and make your life all about you.

And the way of Jesus is literally upside down, counterocultural, backwards.

It's so different and it's confounding to the way we live our lives.

Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple, my follower, my student, you must deny yourself.

Take up your cross daily and follow me.

I don't like this because deny themselves here literally means total surrender.

And I don't like that because I like my way.

And I like doing things my way.

And Jesus comes along and he says, you must totally surrender, deny yourself every single day, kill out any selfishness in your life, take up your cross and die every single day.

I have spent the better part of my life pastoring and working in marketing.

And I love marketing.

I love crafting a message that tells a story really well.

A lot of people don't understand what a brand is.

A brand is not a logo.

A brand is what you think about when you think about a company.

So for example, play along for a moment.

Publics, where shopping is a pleasure.

They never promised that publics where shopping is cheaper.

In fact, it's more expensive, but they promised it's a pleasure to shop there, right?

McDonald's, bada, bop, bop, bop, I'm loving it.

At BK, have it your way.

You understand, right?

These are what you think of when you think of these companies.

If Jesus had a marketing company, this is what his slogan would have been come and die.

And who wants this?

Who sees this and is like, yes, sign me up for that?

Right?

But can I tell you what it looks like when we come and die?

I've had the distinct honor of overseeing many funerals.

And I don't brag about that.

That's not something to be proud of, but funerals are so interesting.

I've done huge funerals with a thousand or more people.

I've done funerals with two or three people in the room.

I've done funerals for people who everyone in the room was sobbing, and I've done funerals where people were celebrating a life well lived.

I've done all kinds of funerals.

Here is one common denominator in every funeral that I've ever done.

The person who is dead and lying in the casket has no opinion on how the service goes.

They don't.

If I say something wrong, if I get a detail of their story wrong, they don't sit up and correct me because dead people no longer have an opinion.

One of the problems in the modern church as I see it is we have a lot of followers of Jesus who have said, Jesus, I want to follow you, but I want to keep my opinions.

Jesus, I want to follow you, but I don't want to die to my sinful, selfish desires.

Jesus, I want to follow you, but like as long as you don't overstep in these certain areas of my life, my money, my sexuality, my thoughts, my opinions, my politics.

As long as you stay out of those things, Jesus, I'm totally good following you.

But if you're gonna be a fully devoted follower of Jesus, you have to make this decision that it is his desires, not yours.

This is hard because I'm like inherently selfish.

I think about me.

So what do we do?

Well, John, who wrote several books in the New Testament, said this in 1 John.

He said, the world and its desires pass away.

But whoever does the will of God lives forever.

This word desires in Greek is a fun word.

It's the word epithumia.

Epithumia means hyper desire.

And all of us have lots of desires.

My wife recently told me one of her favorite times of the day is when she goes to bed because she dreams of the coffee she will drink the next morning.

She loves it.

And I understand that.

I I have desires for great meals.

I love a perfectly cooked steak.

That is a desire in my heart.

I have lots of desires in my life.

And let me say this to you: there's nothing wrong with having desires.

The question is, is following Jesus and allowing him to call the shots, allowing him to be in charge.

Is that your epithumia?

The desire that reigns above all of them.

And if it's not, let me kind of put give you through a give you a test to filter whether or not you've made the decision to go all in.

And then I want to ask all of us this question.

This isn't just about you.

This is about us as a church.

If we're going to be a dream church, for God, we have to answer these questions.

Question number one Why are we here?

Why do we do this?

Why does this matter?

This isn't just to fill an hour of your Sundays.

We've you've got plenty of stuff to do, and so do I.

Why are we here and why do we gather?

And why does this group of people even matter?

Well, one of the ways you can know that you haven't fully killed selfishness in your life is the way you answer this question.

Let me give you an example.

If when you get in your car after church on a Sunday morning, put your car into reverse and you back out, and one of the first things you say is, What did you think of church today?

And you say something like, it was pretty good, but like I didn't love the worship and that second song.

That was that was kind of weird to me.

I didn't love that.

Hey, spoiler alert, we weren't worshiping you.

Okay?

If you get in the car and you're like, ah, the sermon, I mean, he's distractingly good looking, but it wasn't as funny as normal.

I understand it's a cross-eyed bear.

But it's easy to miss the point.

If you say, I didn't really get anything out of it, then maybe you need to understand that maybe that's the point.

It's not what we get, it's what we bring.

It's not about what we leave carrying with us, it's about what we have to offer.

Why are we here?

Second question is this it's are we all in?

I read a report this week that something like two-thirds of Americans claim to be a Christian in some capacity or another.

That number is down from where it was a generation before.

64% of Americans claim to be some sort of a follower of Jesus.

But if you were to survey the world and actually do it and ask questions like, well, how's it going in church attendance?

How's it going in giving?

How's it going in serving others?

How's it going in spending time in God's Word?

The number would it would just plummet underneath you.

Free fall.

I think a lot of people think, well, I was born in America, therefore I'm a Christian.

My parents were good, church-going people, therefore I am one, but we're not.

Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, famously had something he did called the Jefferson Bible.

I don't know if you've heard of this before, but you can look it up on your own.

He literally took the Bible and using a marker or a knife, he cut out the parts of the Bible that he disagreed with.

None of us would do that.

We would never dishonor God and take a paper Bible and cut it up.

That's God's word.

It's holy and sacred.

You wouldn't do that.

But we do.

We don't cut it up, but we do it in our own heart.

We say, Oh, I love this part for God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to die for me.

I love that.

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

Stay out of my sexuality.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus, don't overstep into the area of my money.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Jesus, don't overstep into the area of politics.

I know what your word says, but I want to vote this way.

No, no.

Are you all in?

Final question, and this is hard.

Have you made it your own?

And have we made it our own?

This week I heard a story.

Um, and it's heart-wrenching.

150 something years ago, there was a revival that broke out in Wales.

And as a result of that revival, missionaries were sent to the four corners of the earth.

A missionary was in a region of India called Assam.

It's a very rural tribal village area.

And this missionary had great success, and lots of people made the decision to follow Jesus.

And in fact, one person who was a very influential person in the village made a decision to follow Jesus, and as a result of him following Jesus, lots of people had started following Jesus.

Now, what's so interesting to me is the tribal chief didn't want anything to do with this.

And so he took this man from his village who was a new follower of Jesus, excited, passionate about his relationship with Jesus.

And he had him arrested and he stood before a group of people, mercenaries with bows and arrows.

And he stood there next to his wife, next to his children.

And the man said, Is it true what everyone says?

Have you made a decision to follow Jesus?

And he said, I have decided to follow Jesus.

He said, Will you renounce your faith or be put to death?

And he said, I have decided to follow Jesus.

No turning back.

No turning back.

And he said, I'm gonna give you one more chance, and if not, we're gonna arrow down your children.

He says, Though none go with me, still I will follow.

No turning back.

And right in front of him, his children were put to death.

Can you imagine this?

Then they said to the same man, one more chance to spare your wife's life.

Will you turn?

And he said, The cross before me, the world behind me, no turning back.

And right in front of him, his wife is arrowed down.

One more chance to spare your life.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

No turning back.

No turning back.

In the 1950s, this story made its way to an author who penned a song using those words.

Billy Graham, the famous evangelist, made the song famous.

It says, I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.

In a moment, we're gonna sing, and as we sing, I want you to ask yourself this question: Have you made it your own?

If we're gonna be a dream church, the kind of church that God imagined when he imagined the church, we have to answer the question together Are we willing to do this?

Will you stand up with me all over this room?

God, as we sing these words, would you speak to us?

Reveal any places in our heart where selfishness may still reign.

And may we become fully devoted followers of you together.

In your name, Jesus.

Amen.