The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20)

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The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20)

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Thank you. Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. It's the last time you're going to see that bumper, you guys. This is the last sermon in the Matthew series.

We're at the end, the final verses of the Gospel of Matthew. We have been in this book for 58 weeks over the last year and a half. Now, I know some of you were like, I want 80 weeks. No. No. No, most of you guys are tired.

The reason why we teach through books of the Bible is the Bible has a ton of depth. When you search the Scriptures, you can read a lot and you will miss a lot. And you can sit in a passage and go deeper and deeper. And the well goes deeper and deeper. And we like to sit in passages of the Bible, slowly work through books. We think it is good for our souls to patiently journey through a Gospel like this.

So thank you for being patient. Thank you for riding the journey with us. We will be starting the book of Proverbs next week. Over the next few months, we'll be walking through the Proverbs. But today is the final sermon for the Gospel of Matthew.

These are the final words of Jesus to His disciples in the Gospel of Matthew. He's getting ready to ascend into heaven. These final words have importance. What He's about to say is heightened because it is the last few words that He's going to say. If someone is on their deathbed, some of the things they have to say towards the end, it heightens the importance. It elevates the importance of what they're going to say.

When the coach goes into halftime on the title game and he has his team, the speech that he gives, the final words before they go out to play one last time together, it matters. It heightens how important the message of what He's about to say. And the church has called these final few words the Great Commission. For hundreds of years, we refer to this as the Great Commission. What I want us to see this morning is two things. I want us to see why.

By looking at the authority that is in Christ as He's commissioning out the church. And then I want us to sit in the details of the Great Commission and be molded and shaped by this. So let me pray for us. And then we will jump into this final passage in Matthew. Lord, we love You. We thank You for Your Word.

We thank You that we get to open it and read it. That we get to sing songs about it. That we get to read Scripture. And that we get to sit under the authority of Your Word and be molded and shaped into Your image. Because Your Word is powerful. It is like a sword that pierces the heart.

It is like a hammer that breaks the rocks to pieces. God, I pray that right now that You would instruct us. You would teach us. That You would train us. And You would send us out as a church that is obedient to Your Great Commission. We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Alright, let me read through it and then we'll walk through it. Verse 16. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.

Now here comes the commissioning. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Alright, so. Like I said, we're going to look at this in two parts. Really the set up to the Great Commission itself.

And then we're going to walk through the Great Commission piece by piece. Alright, so. Those first two verses. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped, but some doubted. Alright, so let's give some context for where we are.

Just a few days before this, the disciples abandoned Jesus. When He was arrested, they fled. And Peter, who stuck around, well, he denied Jesus three times. So, their head's spinning a little bit. Then all of a sudden, on Sunday morning, Mary bursts into the room and says, He's risen!

He's alive! And we've got to go to Galilee, because He's going to be just there. Now, from Jerusalem to Galilee is a few days' journey. Alright? And on that walk back to Galilee, I can assume that a lot of doubts are starting to creep in. There's some shame and some guilt, because they abandoned Jesus.

What is He going to say to them? Right? Maybe some doubts on it. Is He really risen? Is He really alive? Their faith is being questioned.

Their doubts are arising. And they finally get to Galilee. Verse 18, Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Jesus answers their doubt by displaying His power. His fully resurrected, glorified body. And He tells them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

So I want us to look at this from two different ways. The first part that I want us to see what is bound up in this statement is that this is the ultimate flex of His power on Satan. This shows dominance over the powers of evil. Because of what happened at the cross and the empty tomb, He is flexing His power. If you go back to Matthew 4, when Satan was tempting Jesus in the wilderness, there was a final temptation that He gave. And He said in verse 8, Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

And He said to them, All these I will give to you if you will fall down and worship Me. He understood what Jesus was doing in part. He understood His arrival meant. And He's trying to keep the mission from happening. He says, If you will just bow down and worship Me now, I'll give you some of My power. You want some kingdoms here on earth?

I'll give it to you. And Jesus says, No. He's obedient to the will of the Father because He wants to save sinners like you and me. But it's not just that. He didn't just come for the earth. Look what He says.

He says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. He is the sovereign king and ruler over all existence. From the heavens, that is this galaxy, in all galaxies, that is the invisible heaven where God rules and reigns from all the way down to earth and in the earth and everything on the earth and under the earth. Everything is under the authority of Jesus. He has won the war against sin and death. He has disarmed the rulers and authorities.

I think even the geography is a flex on Satan. I mean, think about it. Satan takes Him to a very high mountain to show Him the kingdoms. And Jesus goes to a very high mountain and says, No, no, no. I didn't just come for the earth. I came for everything.

I'm the king over all of it. Now, the text doesn't say this. Alright? And this may have never happened. But I like to imagine a little bit that Jesus is almost just kind of winking at Satan and the rulers of evil.

I think he's just saying, Oh, the same setting? Alright? All of this is mine. This is important for you to know as a Christian. Because the reality is is that as you are sent out, you will face forces of evil. As you are obedient to the will of God in your life, you will face evil.

You will face demonic activity. We believe this. And the reality is is you don't have to be scared. You don't have to be fearful. You get to remember who is in control over all things. It is Christ.

And that power over all things is a comfort when we face evil. The second thing that's being demonstrated here is he's answering the doubt of the disciples. Jesus and his supremacy and his rule and his reign over all things is the authority for mission. It's the authority for how we are sent out. For how we obey his marching orders. I finally, last year, it was my bucket list to watch Band of Brothers.

I've been wanting to watch it for a very long time. And I finally got to watch it. It's an HBO series that follows the Easy Company. It's a famous company from a battalion paratroopers in World War II. And it follows them from when they're training and getting ready for D-Day in France. And they drop over France all the way to the end of the war.

I finally got to watch it. And just seeing them get ready for this jump in a D-Day. I mean, there had to have been a lot of nerves. A lot of nervousness. Because this was before the days of halo jumps. So halo jumps is how everyone jumps now in the military.

It's a high altitude, low opening jump. It's when you jump out of a plane, you don't pull your chute to the very last second and then you pull your chute. I mean, if you want to get shot out of the sky, if you want to be detected, that's how you do it. They didn't have that in World War II. So, as they're flying into D-Day, into the darkness of the night, there are bullets flying, shooting planes down. They're having to jump out as bullets are flying by.

And they jump out immediately and their chutes are opened. And they're slowly descending into the darkness as bullets are flying by. Some of them are getting shot out of the air. And then below, the German army is waiting for them. Some of them are being arrested, some of them are being shot on sight. And you look at that and the bravery it took and it's like, why?

What motivated them to be so courageous and to do this? And it's because it was the calling. It was World War II. They had to defeat the Nazis, the axis of evil, all of it. They had to do this. It was the only way.

And I think about this as Christians. How much more boldly do we get to go into the darkness? Because the reality is is that the paratroopers are jumping into enemy territory that is controlled by the German army. That's not us. That ain't us. Wherever we are called to go, Jesus is sovereign over every aspect of where we go.

He is the one who is in control. As bullets are flying, as opposition, as we're facing it, He is the one who is in control. There's a 19th century Dutch prime minister. He's the father of the Reformed Church in the Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper. I love what he says. He says, There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine.

I love that. Every single place you could go to declare the Gospel, whether it's the most hostile places to the Gospel in the world, or it's the most hostile work environment that does not love Jesus. Jesus says, Mine. He is sovereign over all of it. And that is so incredibly important for us to remember. It's incredibly important for us to remember that the end is written.

Flip to the end of Revelation. Jesus wins. And we get to celebrate with Him for all of eternity. Jesus and His authority. That is the God who sends us out. You have to remember that the disciples needed to hear that because He's about to give this commission and it's going to say, Go therefore.

That therefore is linked to the authority of Christ, the God who's sovereign over all things. So that is the God who sends you. That is the setup of the Great Commission. Then He gets into the commissioning itself. Verse 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Now, over the last decade plus, I've spent a lot of time on this passage. In college, I had a thesis. My college thesis was on this passage.

In seminary, I studied the Gospel of Matthew in Greek syntax. I've spent a lot of time in this passage and I want to make something very clear. There's one main verb, one main command, one main instruction in this passage and it is make disciples. That's it. That's the main command. Make.

It says go therefore. Make disciples. You've got to see that. And then, there's some participles in the Greek. There's some further explaining. Think of it as make disciples as the hub and there's some spokes that come out of it.

And you've got go, you've got baptizing, and you've got teaching. Those three aspects help explain the command to make disciples. And that's where we spend the majority of our time today. Is walking through what it means to make disciples by looking at go, baptizing, teaching. So first, let's look at that first part.

Go. Now, some of you may have heard that you can look at this and translate this as you go. That it means as you go, make disciples. And I just want to say, no. Absolutely not. That was my college thesis.

I got really excited about it. I just started studying Greek and I was like, oh, look at this. It means as you go. And I got some claps, I got some pats on my back, and I said, good Job. And then, I got to seminary and it took five minutes for my Greek professor to absolutely just dismantle it. There's a reason why every translation says, go.

Go. That's why the disciples went. So the force is, I know there's part of us that wants to water this down and say, well, it's just kind of, as you're going in life, you can kind of make disciples. No. It is go, therefore, make disciples. Now, you put this against some of the other commissionings in the New Testament.

Look at the book of Acts. And there is the idea that some are called to go to Jerusalem, some are called to go to Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. That's why we use the language. Go across the street and make disciples with your neighbors. Or go across the world. But I actually want to give a caveat to that statement.

I want to say, go into the workplace. Go across the street and make disciples. And be involved in going across the world. Do all of it. Be involved in all of it. John Piper has a quote.

He says, go, send, or disobey. Real simple. He says, go, I would actually mean that go, slash, send, or disobey. That's it. That's the calling. And that is why we want you to be everyday missionaries where you are.

So that you'll go and make disciples. Then some of you are going to receive the call and you need to go further. It is the reason why we got excited. We rallied around the Rockies this last fall. Chris and Daniel Rockies, we sent them to Honduras. They sold everything.

And they left to make disciples in Honduras. It is the reason why a few years ago a team of us went to Egypt and we did some training and equipping with some churches and ministries in Egypt. Because we want to be a part of sending and making disciples across the earth. We want to see every, the word is all nations, every ethnos, which is every people group. Every tribe, every tongue is what's built into that. We want to do it all.

It's the reason why there's three of our members that are going to Lebanon in just a few weeks. We partnered with 1040 Hope. We actually give 1040 Hope office space here to be able to work out of here as they are raising money for church plants all across the Middle East. And three of them are going to Lebanon in just a few weeks. So we want to be a part of all of it.

We want to go and make disciples in our neighborhoods. We want to send. We want to do it all. And if we don't, we are being disobedient. We are not obeying the command to go. So we want to embody this as a church to do it all.

Go. Alright, next one. Baptizing. The next aspect is baptizing. Built into this is not just the literal act of baptizing, but it is conversion. That's what's being taught here.

Now as good Baptists, we believe, converting them to faith in Jesus and then baptizing them. But the force of what's built in here is converting them. And I want to be very explicit about that. It is converting them. A couple of years ago, something clicked for me and I found this so incredibly helpful for my soul. I was watching a movie that came out a few years ago.

It's called 1970. It's a World War I movie and it's incredible. It became one of my favorite movies. It's just, it's awesome. And it's artistically done. It's shot all in one take.

It's a good war movie. I loved it. I mean, it's just, if you haven't seen it, you're not bothered by war violence. It's incredible. And I got really excited about it. And I was like, man, this is obviously the best picture of the year.

This is definitely going to win best picture. And there was a lot of excitement because of how well it was done. And then all of a sudden there was some major criticisms that came. And the main criticisms that came were people were saying, well, you know what? This movie actually isn't doing anything. It's not trying to say anything.

It's just about, it's just a story. And guess what? It didn't win best picture that year. Because the main criticism that was against it was, is it wasn't actually, they wouldn't use this word, it wasn't preaching. And that's why you see every Oscar movie is just super sad or has some cause that arrives behind. They're preaching.

And it clicked for me. I listened to this late night comedian who was talking about culture wars. And he's like, politicians, they've got to stay out of the culture wars. He's like, because we're the ones that win them. He's like, let Hollywood take care of that. We are the ones who will win people over.

And it finally just clicked for me. Everyone is preaching. Everyone has an angle. Everyone has a message. Go on Facebook. Everyone wants you to join their political movement, to buy their product.

Everyone is preaching. And the reason that was so good for me to just finally, for it to sink in fully in my soul is because when I became a Christian, I was very wary of being the kind of Christian that, you know, a big critique from skeptics is, oh, Christians are always trying to convert you. They always have, they always have got an angle. They're always trying to convert you. And I was always sensitive to that. I was like, I don't want to seem like I'm just trying to convert you.

I'm done with that. Yes, I am trying to convert you. Absolutely. Unapologetically. I am trying to convert you. Everyone's preaching and I'm getting on this.

You know why? Because worldviews have consequences. Eternal consequences. I'm absolutely, unapologetically, I want to convert you to the worship of the one true God. I want you to know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I want you to know the triune God.

John Piper also says that missions exist because worship doesn't. There are people that do not worship Christ. They don't know Him. They don't love Him. They don't know the perfection of beauty, the author of goodness, and love, and joy. They don't know the glory of Christ.

They are dead in sin. Absolutely, I'm trying to convert you. I want you to know the one true God. I don't want you to miss out on who this God is. There's an atheist comedian named Penn Jillette. We've mentioned this quote before.

It's just really helpful to hear his perspective. He's talking about how Christians try to convert him sometimes and how much he appreciates it because he's like, if you believe in heaven and hell, I mean, why aren't you trying to convert me? He says, how much do you have to hate someone not to proselytize? That's evangelize. How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? And it's just, to hear an atheist say that, I mean, it's refreshing and it's so convicting.

How much do you have to hate somebody? How much do you have to not love somebody to say, I don't want to make it weird? Like, I don't want to make our workplace weird. I don't want to make them uncomfortable. You know, faith is a personal matter. I don't, you know, I don't really want to push it too far.

If we love Christ and we trust His word and if you love other people, your heart will say, absolutely, I want you to know Christ and you will look for every opportunity that God presents for you to demonstrate the gospel, share the gospel and help them believe. Now listen, we fail. Alright? I look at this in my own selfishness, my own fears sometimes. I feel that. Alright?

Here's good news. Jesus' grace covers your lack of obedience to this great commission. He covers it. Our failures, our fears, it's been paid for at the cross. So know that.

Yes, you fail in this area. But His grace covers it. And then once you realize that, in repentance, see that Jesus is holding the door open and He's saying, get in. Join me in mission. You don't know what you're missing. There's so much joy found in partnering with our God to see sinners taste and see that the Lord is good.

There's a quote by a famous missionary, C.T. Stubb. He says, I cannot tell you what joy it gave me to bring the first soul to the Lord Jesus Christ. I have tasted almost all the pleasures that this world can give. I do not suppose that there is one I have not experienced, but I can tell you that those pleasures were as nothing compared to the joy that saving of that one soul gave me. no hobby, nothing in this world compares to the joy of joining our God and mission to see people believe in Jesus. It's beautiful and it is good.

We get to join with our God and mission to seek and save the lost. There are times where my son wants to help around the house. We're doing yesterday and he's helping me and he's three and he's not the most helpful at times. He's just little and he doesn't have a lot of attention. But he loves it.

He gets really excited. He'll go grab his toy tool kit. He's got a little plastic camera and plastic screwdriver. Every now and then he's nearby and I'll actually give him something to do. Hey, can you hold this? And his face just lights up because he gets to help his dad out.

And I love that it's a picture that we get to partner with our father. Our God is inviting us into mission. Listen, hear this clearly. When someone is saved, by the blood of Jesus, that is God at work. It is not us. Right?

God is the one that brings about redemption. He's the one that brings dead people to life in Christ. It's his work. But we get to be a part of that. We're invited into that. How joyful it is that we get to partner with our God.

That he gets to use us to bring about his kingdom. There's a lot of joy filled in that and I don't want us to miss out on bringing people to Jesus. The third aspect. Is to teach them. Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. If you want to make disciples, and hear this, if you want to make disciples that last, you need to teach them.

You need to help them know the Bible. You need to help them know God. That's why we say all the time, read your Bible. We're fighting against, there's a big swing on the pendulum to this, it's over simplicity just to help people to read their Bibles. Yes, it can be. But also, read your Bibles.

Like, absolutely know God through His Word. It will shape you and mold you into His image. Read your Bible. We absolutely want to know God by observing His teachings, by observing His commands, and this is why I love Matthew's Gospel. It's just, he's brilliant. Because what He does right here, is honestly, He's also tagging back a lot of Jesus' former teachings, a lot of His former commands.

Observe all that I've commanded. That goes back, I mean, just think about where we've been in the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 4, He talked about making fishers of men. Come, I will make you fishers of men. That's the kind of kingdom that He calls us into. In Matthew 5-7, we get to see this kingdom of a higher ethical teaching, a higher ethical living, that ultimately we want to live out, but have no shot of fulfilling ourselves, which is why Christ came to fulfill it Himself.

In Matthew 8-10, we get to see how our Lord is a missionary, that He cares, that He heals people, that He mends the broken, and that He sends us out as missionaries to go and proclaim the good news of His kingdom, even in the midst of persecution. In Matthew 11-12, we get to see a kingdom where the King offers true less against the backdrop of horrible, bad religion. In Matthew 13-17, we get to see parable after parable, teaching after teaching, that has so much wisdom that for thousands of years the church has come together to study and mind for its wisdom. In Matthew 18-20, we get to see the church and how He calls us to care for one another, to hold one another accountable, and how to pursue good together.

In Matthew 21-25, we get to see all these teachings where He's in the final week, He's instructing us, He's teaching the disciples, He's giving some prophecy of what is to come, He's showing down with the religious leaders, again, showing us how bad religion is not what we're called to, and then in Matthew 26-28, the King goes to the cross, and He conquers death and the resurrection, and then He comes to this mountain in Galilee, and He says, observe all that I've taught you. All of it. And listen, the good news is, is we don't just have the Gospel of Matthew, we've got the whole Bible, and the whole Bible is filled with teaching, and filled with commands, and filled with so much goodness that we get to search and discover. So absolutely, teach others to know God.

Not just to read the Word, and to know facts. Not just to be hearers of the Word, but be doers also. We want to know the Scriptures. So He walks through these three, go, baptize, teaching. These are the three main aspects of what it looks like to make disciples. The whole universe is Christ.

And He calls us to make disciples. To go out and get them, to lead them to faith, and to teach them the message of Christ. Those are the marching orders. Out of all the marching orders, out of all the commands, in all of human history, there's none more important and none more profound. And it is given by our God. Now, it is also a command that, let's be honest, can be difficult.

And at times, can be scary. And it's so sure and guaranteed to bring us pain at times. From the foreign missionary on the mission field that faces intense persecution for sharing their faith, to the everyday missionary who is in her office when she's sharing the gospel and her co-workers are mocking her and making fun of her and her faith, it's hard. It invites pain and discomfort. When you obey this, it absolutely invites hardship. And that's why I love how Jesus ends all of it.

He says, And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Our King promises. Hear this. He promises to be with us all the way to the finish line. All the way to the end. If you obey the call to make disciples, it will take you to places you never expected.

If you obey the call of God, it may call you to do things you never thought you would do. And you're going to face opposition. You're going to enter spiritual warfare. You might lose friends. It is difficult. But God is with us.

He gets to be a comfort with us along the way wherever He sends us. There are times where I'm downstairs with my kids and I have time. Hey, go upstairs. Go grab that toy. Go grab something. I tell them to go upstairs.

And I hear them kind of walk to the bottom of the stairs and then I don't hear the pitter-patter of feet going upstairs. And I'm going to corner them. I'm like, Hey, what are y'all doing? And they're like, We're scared. It's dark. And I try to reason with them because reasoning with a three or five-year-old is usually effective.

And they're just like, Guys, I don't want to know. I'm like, okay. So I come up behind them and we walk up the stairs. Together. And we turn on the lights. And they're not scared anymore because their dad is with them.

And there's nothing to be scared of when their dad is with them. And that's us, guys. God calls us to go into the darkness. He calls us to go and make disciples. He calls us to do some pretty extreme and radical things. But He's not going to abandon us.

He's with us every step of the way. It is the sovereign King who declares, Mine over every inch of existence who's behind us and who's with us and is never going to let us go. If you surrendered your life to this calling, He'll be with you even in the midst of great loss. The famous missionary Hudson Taylor was married to his wife for 12 years and she died on the mission field. And I will celebrate my 10th anniversary next month. I cannot imagine losing my wife right now.

And in the midst of all of it, He writes this letter. He says, At times He, God, He allows me to realize all that I had in her but have no longer. And then He who will soon come and wipe away every tear comes and takes all bitterness from my tears and fills my heart with deep, true, unutterable gladness. How good is that? In the midst of unbelievable, unbelievable loss. He feels the comfort of God.

Our God does not abandon us in the midst of suffering, in the midst of the calling to make disciples. The reality is that many of you have entrusted your life to Jesus. And some of you are seeking to obey the Great Commission. And in your obedience of Jesus, you face some pain and hardship. Some of you all have lost friends. Right?

I felt this when I became a Christian. And Jesus started to change me. And all of a sudden, your friends are like, I don't know if I want to be a part of this anymore. And they just kind of abandoned you. That hurts. You feel that.

Some of you have multiplied community groups. We're going to get to celebrate that in a moment. That we're multiplying a new group. And that's hard. To journey with someone for two or three years, and all of a sudden, the reason we multiply groups is we want to make room for mission. Our groups are how we make disciples.

And we want people to experience Jesus. And groups, when they get big enough, it's time for them to multiply so that we can create more room for others to know Christ. But that's hard. When you've journeyed with someone for two or three years, and you go and you multiply a new group, sure, you're going to see them on Sunday. The gathering of the saints right now, every Sunday is good. And you might hang out with them a little bit outside of the group.

But be honest. The reality is, is you won't see them as much as you used to. You won't see them that one time a week that was guaranteed every week. You won't hear the words of comfort that you've got to hear on a regular basis. That's hard. That is loss.

It is loss for the sake of gain. We experience all kinds of hurt on the mission. The Rockies, who right now, are you either listening to this right now or I know you're going to listen to it later because you listen to all our sermons online. You gave up everything. You left everything behind. It wasn't just the stuff.

It was the people. It was your friends. It was your family. It was this church family. And that's hard when you give up that kind of loss. We experience loss in so many ways in the mission.

Some of you, in obedience to the gospel, in obedience to the teachings of Christ, you've had to have really difficult conversations with other Christians. You've had to call them out in sin. And it has not gone well. And it's blown up in your face. That hurts. This can be incredibly difficult.

There's a lot of risk in obeying the Great Commission. There's a lot of risk in following Jesus. I love this quote that comes out of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia. Or whatever you, people who nerd out about it might be the first book. There's a debate on that. It's not important.

Still want to speak untruthfully. For the three of you that care about that. There's a part where Susan, who's one of the main characters, is about to meet Aslan, the Lion. And she's nervous. She starts talking to one of the other characters, Mr. Beaver.

She's nervous when she finds out he's a Lion. Mr. Beaver says, Aslan is a Lion. The Lion. The Great Lion. Oh, said Susan.

I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a Lion. Safe, said Mr. Beaver. Who said anything about safe?

Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you. I love that. That's a picture of our God. Of course he isn't safe.

Read the Gospels. We've already walked through. You follow Jesus, persecution will come. Family might turn on you. You will face opposition. You will face the powers of evil.

You absolutely will. There's no safety in following Jesus. That's not guaranteed at all. But he's good. He's the king. He's sovereign over every inch of existence.

And he promises to be with you every step of the way. If you go where the Lord is calling you, if you're obedient and you go, I want you to know something. Some of you, that might be across the world. And some of you, that might be more missional in your neighborhood and your workplace. But if you go, there are people, hear this, there are people right now that do not know Jesus, that currently walk, as the Bible says, as enemies of the cross, of Christ.

They don't know Him. They are journeying towards hell. But if you go and you proclaim the gospel, some of them are going to believe. And some of them right now who are destined to destruction will have their eternity diverted. And a thousand years from now, when you're worshiping God and we have perfect fellowship with one another, they're going to be in the kingdom with you. How good is that?

That's worth the risk to hear the call and go. Some of you need to leverage your life to make disciples. There's so much joy in converting people to help them see that God is good. It's so joyful when you share the gospel and they realize, I don't have to earn God's favor. I can trust the finished work of Jesus. Yes, I want Him.

And then the end of the baptism water is with you. It's beautiful and it's good. Some of you need to teach. Some of you need to commit to discipling and teaching others the scriptures and giving your time and your energy and your wisdom and your experience. Some of you need to lead groups. Some of you, listen, if you obey the calling and you do this, you will lead groups.

And your groups, there's going to be some mess because we're all sinners and we bring our mess in it. And sometimes you're going to come across a marriage that is on the rocks. And because you committed to teach them and to show them the scriptures, you'll get to watch marriages be restored and reconciliation happen. You'll get to spend time with Christians who've been bitter towards family or friends or other Christians for years. And you get to open up the scriptures and watch their hearts be softened. And you'll see families be restored.

Friendships be restored. You'll see God go to work. But you've got to obey the command to do it. We've got to do it. We've got to obey the Great Commission. That we want to see this happen.

My hope is we'd hear these words and we would participate in work that lasts and resounds for eternity. The sovereign King over all things, the resurrecting King that we just joyfully sing about stands and says all authority, it's all mine. Now go out and get them. Go out and make disciples. Teach them to observe my commands. And I will be with you every step of the way all the way to finish.

Let's receive that and let's do it.

Simply Unstoppable

Simply Unstoppable

Chet Philips

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in the fourth week of our Multiply series. We'll finish it up next week. And we began this year talking about how Jesus commissioned his church, sent his disciples out to make more disciples.

And so we've been discussing what it looks like for us to make disciples and how we go about that and how we multiply disciples, how we equip people and send them out, that we share the gospel with them, that we walk with them, train them up into what it looks like to follow Jesus and equip them to do the same with others. Jesus talking in Matthew chapter 13 says this. We're not going to turn this on the screen. We'll be somewhere else this morning, but I want to start here. Jesus talking in Matthew chapter 13. He says he told them another parable.

He says the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened. Now, if you're like me, baking analogies. Am I right? Like as soon as he said the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, you were like, yes, leaven. No, what he's saying is three measures of flour is 36 liters. And unless you're Raz and from Australia, that doesn't help you that much.

It's like two five gallon buckets. It's a lot of flour that you just put a little bit of leaven in and the leaven takes over. What he's saying is that the kingdom of heaven seems simple, seems small, that if you zoom in on it, if you look at it and just kind of investigate it, you go, that's it. And Jesus says, yeah, that's it. Now, wait a minute. And it's going to take over.

When you zoom in on the gospel that the God of the universe would die, that he would come in humility, that he would live simply, that he would die on a cross, and that you would go, really, that's what he came to do? He didn't come to set up this kingdom. He didn't come. He said, no, the kingdom of heaven starts small and then overtakes everything. And so that's what we're talking about, that discipleship works that way, that the kingdom of heaven grows that way, that it's small and simple and it's bit by bit, but eventually it spreads and overtakes everything, that the kingdom of heaven expands.

And so grab your Bibles, go to Acts chapter 2. That's where we'll be today. So Jesus sends out his disciples. He commands them to go make more disciples. And then we pick up in the book of Acts as the church spreads and we see what the disciples did so that we get to learn from them how they went about making disciples. So what happens is in Acts chapter 1, they pray, they replace Judas with another disciple.

They say, we're going to keep the number at 12. Then the Holy Spirit falls in Acts 2. Peter stands up. He opens his mouth. He proclaims the gospel. It's what we talked about last week.

We would share the gospel and people believe the gospel and they say, what do we need to do? And the disciples were like, we're ready for this because Jesus has just told us. Be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's what he said. Go make disciples, baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So they say, repent of your sins and be baptized.

And then we get to see how they began to teach them to observe everything that Jesus commanded, how they began to make disciples. And so our question today as we look at this is, what does discipleship look like? How do we make disciples? How do we grow as disciples? We've been talking about how we share the gospel, how we get people to believe the gospel and be baptized. And now we're saying, okay, what does it look like to help them observe everything that Jesus commanded?

So I'm going to pray. Pray with me and we'll study this this morning. God, we ask that we would be disciples who make disciples for the glory of your name and the growth of your kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen. So today we're going to look at four aspects of discipleship.

That what needs to be in place, what needs to take place in order for us to be making disciples. What is the content of discipleship? What is the context of discipleship? And so that's what we're doing. We're in 42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

So we're going to start there. The first thing that we're going to see is that discipleship is a life of learning. If you're going to be a disciple, you're going to commit to a life of learning. That you're going to consistently be learning and growing. And so it says they devoted themselves. And I want us to see that first.

They devoted themselves. One of the things we've talked about a lot in our church is that we belong to one another. That we're family. That we're members of one another. And so we rightly have taught that we ought to pursue one another. We ought to correct one another.

We ought to, when somebody's running in sin, we ought to go to them and challenge them and point them back to the gospel. But what happens is over time sometimes, especially the good-natured, good-hearted ones of us. Some of us are like, not exactly there, but others of us start really trying to want Jesus on behalf of somebody else. Start trying to want to follow Jesus on behalf of somebody else. And that's not how it works. They have to devote themselves.

We have to devote ourselves. The people who follow Jesus are the people who wanted to. Now, certainly we should correct each other and certainly we should go to one another when we're in sin. But eventually, some people are going to choose not to follow Jesus and we can't want Jesus for them and we can't follow Jesus for them. The encouraging thing is if you want Jesus, you'll get him. If you want more of Jesus, you get more of Jesus.

But if you don't, you won't. And so the first thing we have to see is that they specifically, intentionally devoted themselves to the things we're about to talk about. So it says they devoted themselves first to the apostles' teaching. So the apostles were the twelve disciples that Jesus had sent out, proclaimed the gospel, and then people said, what do we do? We need to repent and be baptized. And then the apostles began to teach them everything that Jesus had taught.

And so they devoted themselves. They were hungry for it and they ate it up. So how do we do the same thing? We devote ourselves to the Bible. That's the apostles' teaching. That they were taking the Old Testament, explaining how Jesus showed up in it, and teaching the new things that Jesus had explained.

That within about 15, 20 years, we started having the letters that we have being passed around the churches. In about 30 to 40 years, we started having the gospels written down, bound together, that we have. By about 90 years, we had all of the New Testament that was being shared and spread around. And so we study the New Testament and we study the Old Testament in light of Jesus. And that's us devoting ourselves to the apostles' teaching. So that if you're going to be a disciple, you're going to be hungry for the word.

You're going to study the Bible. That's one of the reasons we gather on Sundays. That's why we read biblical texts. That's why we say them out loud together. That's why we study them together. That's why we study them in our groups, is that we would be devoted to the scriptures.

And as Americans, we have the least excuse whatsoever to not be devoted to the scriptures. Your phone will read the Bible to you. If you pay a little money, James Earl Jones will read the Bible to you. We have podcasts and websites. We have ways to access the Bible in multiple translations. Not just in English, but in multiple translations that we might pursue the word together.

And so what I would say is that the content of discipleship is a life of learning. That we are learning and studying the Bible. Studying the scriptures together. That we might grow together. I would encourage you to do a couple of things. If you're new to trying to read the Bible, I would encourage you to find somebody who's not new to trying to read the Bible.

And y'all read it together. Or just say, hey, I'm going to read these three. We're going to read the first three chapters of Matthew over the course of this week. And then we'll talk about it. And you just write down things that you have questions about. You know you can read your Bible and text somebody and say, hey, what is this doing?

I still do this. I'll open my, I'll be reading my Bible. I'll open up the Bible app. I'll copy the verse. I'll send it to a group of guys. And I'll say, what on earth is that talking about?

Is it this or this? And we discuss it. And I grow. It's edifying. I would also encourage you to get a study Bible. They're very helpful.

If you want more, if you want to listen to podcasts or know some websites, we'd love to talk to you and point you in the right direction. I would not encourage you to just Google your questions. I would encourage you to go to resources that have already been tested for faithfulness. So it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. We're going to skip over the fellowship because that's what we're going to talk about next more in depth. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching to the breaking of bread.

This means two things. It means that they shared meals together. That they got together. They shared meals together. But specifically as we see this play out in the New Testament, these are intentional gospel meals.

Intentional church family meals. That ultimately this is communion as we have it now. That they would get together and specifically intentionally say, we are reminding ourselves over a meal of who Jesus is and what he's done for us. One of the ways we've done this in our community groups is when we've taken communion in our community groups, we've actually gone in a circle, person by person, and said, how do you need the gospel right now? What is it that you're fearful over? What is it that you're in doubt?

Where are you sinning and not believing that the gospel is better than the thing you're chasing? Where is it that you need the good news? And somebody would just confess or they'd say, here's where I'm struggling. And the rest of the table would just say, well, here's how Jesus is better than that. Here's how this is good news for you. Here's what you're celebrating when you take communion tonight.

And we would ask at the end of that, do you understand when we take communion what you're celebrating? How Jesus is good and how the gospel is for you? And they say, yes. And we go to the next person. And that's what they were doing. They were actively, intentionally applying the gospel to life.

They were sharing gospel meals. They were reminding each other of what Jesus had accomplished for them. And they were spending time together. So they devoted themselves, not only to just learning what the apostles were teaching, but to applying that in repentance and applying it to their lives as they celebrated communion. And the prayers. That they were intentionally, collectively praying together and praying separately.

That they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, to the breaking of bread, to applying the gospel to life, to practicing the gospel in life through repentance and through celebrating what Jesus has done and praying. That is the content of discipleship. That if you're like, I'd love to try to walk with somebody, but I don't know what to do. Okay. Get together. Get your Bibles out.

Talk about how the gospel applies to life. Repent of sin. Celebrate that Jesus is good. Pray. Boom. That's the content of discipleship.

That's what they were doing when they gathered together. This is how they were practicing this. And the other thing they were devoted to is the fellowship. That's the context. That this happens in relationships. And so discipleship is a life of learning, but it's also life on life.

That you would actually be around each other. This is what it says if we keep reading. So it says they devoted themselves to the fellowship and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to any to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts. That they were around each other day by day.

They were gathering in big groups. They were gathering in homes. They were sharing their possessions. They were with each other in life. I want to read Deuteronomy 6. When the law was given to the nation of Israel, God gives this command.

It's called the Shema. Shema just means here. This is the command that Jesus says, if you'll go to Deuteronomy 6. This is the command that Jesus says is the most important command. Hear, O Israel. Yeah, cool.

All right. This is what Jesus tells them. This is the greatest commandment. It says, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today should be on your heart.

So the first command is that you would love God and that you would have his words in your heart. And then he says, and you shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. He's teaching them how to train others, how to equip others. First step, love the Lord. Have his word in your heart. Second step, live your life.

With others, that's what he's saying, that you would love the Lord so much that when you're just typaling your children, that it's what you talk about when you rise up. That's what you talk about when you sit. It's what you talk about when you walk. It's what you talk about when you lay down, that it's part of life, that your love for Jesus is so part of your life. Now, this was a command specifically to parents for their specific children. So for me, it'd be my two boys.

But it was also a command to the nation of Israel for the next generation, that they would teach their children. And it is how discipleship works, that you are around people in life. So I want to pause for just a second and talk about discipling children. And then we'll go back to talking about exactly how we do this in application to each other. Parents, you're supposed to disciple your children. The church is supposed to join in that and help that the collective call to disciple and raise up children is something that takes place in community groups that we try to help with in Kid City.

But primarily, you are around your children way more. And here's the thing. Sometimes parents go, all right, I don't know what to do. Like, am I supposed to read a Bible story? Or am I supposed to, are we supposed to do like family worship and every night or just once a week? And how's that supposed to look?

And they get real stressed out about it. And I understand taking it seriously. And it does help to read Bible stories. And it does help to do family worship. I mean, that's as easy as playing something on a podcast, singing with them. Or if you're with my son singing Joy to the World, 365 days a year.

This is his favorite song ever. And sometimes I'm just like, no, bro, we're not singing that tonight. Like, I just, I don't like Christmas that much. We've got to sing something else. There are other songs. But like, walking with them, training them in specific moments.

But really, your kids pick up way more who you are and what you love all the other times during the day than just some specific moments when you say, okay, now we're going to teach. Now we're going to learn. Because that's what he's saying. Teach them diligently, meaning be intentional. But also, when you wake up, when you walk, when you sit, when you lay down.

By the time your children are in middle school, they've got a real good handle on what you actually care about. By the time they're in high school, by the time they're graduating, they've got a good, good handle on if you really love the Lord and his word is in your heart. Or if what you really appreciate is the praise of men. And you were always worried about how your family appeared to others. If what you really cared about was your own personal comfort. They've got a good handle on that.

You actually make, you reproduce who you are way more than reproducing what you teach. This is just true for any amount of discipleship. You reproduce who you are way more than what you teach. We can see this very simply in some of our community groups. We've seen it as we started out. Matt and I were the first two group leaders.

Matt's groups tended to be very encouraging towards one another. Very loving. There's like a lot of hugs in their groups. My groups tended to be easily distracted and sarcastic. It wasn't uncommon for us to quit studying the Bible to make fun of one another. Lose our train of thought.

And it just had to do with I was trying to teach the Bible but unintentionally just sharing a lot of what I'm like. Easily distracted and sarcastic. I didn't promote encouragement. We promoted saying mean things to one another. And that's what happens and that's what he's saying is that that life on life discipleship is how you raise your children. I want to tag one more thing with raising children.

Your children matter and if you are new to parenting, which a lot of people in this room are, they're like little cannonballs into your life. You had a nice little life and then you had a child and they're terrorists. They are. They're. I'm going to scream until you feed me. That's how they enter the world.

And then I'm going to scream because I went to the bathroom. I'm going to scream because I'm sleepy or I'm going to scream. And you know that I just slept, that I just ate and I have a clean diaper. I'm just going to scream. They're terrorists that you're deeply in love with. It's super weird.

And what happens is it's pretty easy early on with your children to start bending your life to them. You have to. But at some point, you've got to help them bend their life to Jesus. And you've got to help them see that life, that he, it's a long-term value play, that he matters more. And so what happens is at some point, we're like, I've got to work around my kid's schedule. And at some point, you've got to say, no, my kid's schedule has got to work around how we follow Jesus.

And this will happen when they're young with nap schedules and with bedtimes. And it will happen when they're older with sports and school. Now, it's a life of loving Jesus, which means that for some of you, you need to say no to travel sports because it affects how you follow Jesus. And for some of you, you need to say yes to travel sports because it's one of the best places to teach your children how to be on mission and how to love people and how to serve people and how to connect people and how to share the gospel. But over the course of a life, your children will pick up, did they matter more than Jesus?

Did their schedule matter more than Jesus? Did sports matter more than Jesus? And whether or not the value play was at right in your home or was he in your heart and his word in your heart and your life was, how do we rise? How do we walk? How do we sit? How do we sleep in a way that we love Jesus?

And that is how discipleship works. It happens life on life. So Jesus gets disciples and the first thing he says to them is just come follow me. You, come follow me. Leave your tax booth. Let's go.

You, drop your nets. Follow me. Let's go. And he just starts going. And then they start picking up what he's like as he goes. That's how it happens, that they're around him in life.

Teaching my son Bible stories. He's two and three, so we would just act him out so that he'd help remember him. I remember one time I was laying on the floor. My wife comes in. He's throwing all his Nerf balls at me. She's like, what are y'all doing?

He's supposed to be getting ready for bed. I'm like, well, we're doing the story of the stoning of Stephen. And she said, are there not appropriate children's stories you can do? I was like, he's loving it. In a second, he'll get to declare that Jesus is great and I'll throw balls at him. It'll be wonderful.

But I was doing one where, sorry, I was doing one where we were trying to help him see, you know, Jesus just trained his disciples in life. And so what we said was, you're the little kids. Your mom's going to be Jesus. I'm going to be the disciples. I want you to come over and ask me, can I come see Jesus? Y'all know this story?

The disciples tell the children no. And so he would come over and say, can I see Jesus? And I'll go, no, you can't see Jesus. And I'll just push him to the ground, which is a little more than what the Bible says it was, but I was trying to help him pay attention. And then finally his mom would say, no, let the children come to me. And he would go over there and she'd hug him and tell him he was wonderful and we'd do it again.

And I thought this was great, but what I ended up teaching was the disciples were bad guys because at one point I was like, we're disciples. He's like, no, we're not disciples. We're the worst. But the disciples on that day learned something because they were with Jesus in life and they began to see how he valued the world and how he loved children. And what happens is that's how discipleship takes place, that it isn't just sufficient to get with someone for one hour and teach a thing, but we're actually meant to be around each other in life so that we might share who we are. That is why you will disciple your children, whether you want to or not.

You will train them. You will teach them what is valuable, what is good. It will happen. That's why he says be diligent. And at first you got to love the Lord and you got to have his word in your heart. And the truth is anybody that walks with you in life will be slowly discipled by you.

And so what we need to do is love Jesus and then intentionally be around one another that we might help grow one another towards Jesus. That's what we see throughout the New Testament. First Thessalonians 2.8 says, Paul's specifically writing to Timothy there and he's saying, you know me, you've been around me, you know my life. Not just you've read all my letters. No, no, you know me. You know what matters.

And that's what he says in 1 Corinthians 11.1, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. And that is a lot of how discipleship works. As you say, no, walk with me as I walk with Christ. Follow me as I follow Christ. Let's walk together.

Let's imitate one another as we imitate Christ. As we picture this out for one another and display this to one another. That we're meant to walk in life together. So the content of discipleship is scriptures, actively, intentionally applying the gospel to life through sharing meals and through sharing communion and through applying the gospel to each other and walking in repentance and praying. But the context for all of that is normal, everyday life.

Life, not some extra bonus time, not once a month at Starbucks. Everyday, normal life. And it's life on life, but it's not just life on life. It's life in community. It's not just you and one other person walking together. It's not just you and two other people walking together.

But it's a communal picture. So let me show this. We showed this a couple of times. This was kind of Spencer's. It used to have little names in there or whatever. But Spencer's line of this person shared the gospel with these people, helped disciple them.

They shared the gospel with these people, helped disciple them. And the truth is, if that's just evangelism, just sharing the gospel, that is how it looks. This person shares the gospel. They share the gospel. And it does spread and grow and multiply. If it keeps going, it gets beautifully ridiculous.

You know, kind of like leaven. All right, so, but what happens when we see that in the discipleship mindset is, okay, you immediately start picturing this next picture, which is this, which one am I? Who am I ready to be? Am I a discipler? Or do I need to be a disciplee? Like some people looked at that and saw and said, I'm not ready to have two or three people that I'm helping coach and equip.

That's overwhelming. And some of you saw it and thought, okay, I'll do it. Yeah. White knuckle. And this is your little chart here. This is how you follow Jesus sometimes or how you decide it.

I'm going to try harder. I'm going to do it this time for real. And you get fatigued. You're tired. So you quit.

Then eventually you feel bad again and you try harder again. That's the wheel of religion. Some of you are like, yes, that's me. I'm in like a hamster wheel of that. Okay, that's not the gospel. Try harder.

Get exhausted. Quit. Feel bad. Try harder. Get exhausted. Quit.

And there are churches that are just running through with like, all right, we're going to work with the 20% that are in the guilt zone right now. Y'all in the guilt zone? You ready to work? Y'all are fatigued? You quit? We'll get back to you when you feel guilty again.

We don't want to do that. And we don't want discipleship to look like that. And we also don't want you to be fearful and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't. I just need to be coached up. Because the truth is that's not the best picture of discipleship.

That's not a good picture of the gospel, but it's also not a picture of how we go about discipleship. So the next slide is how we intend to go about discipleship. We want to be in community groups. Now, community groups aren't in the Bible. We are trying to actively apply what we see in the Bible, which was they were around each other day by day. And they gathered in homes.

And they gathered together, large groups in the temple. They gathered in homes. They shared life together. And here's what we know about Americans. You don't have to share life with anybody. We say this all the time, but you can watch friends instead of having them.

You can be very independent. You're taught that you're supposed to be. Like the ultimate hero of America is like the marble man out by himself smoking on a hilltop or whatever. And doesn't need anybody and doesn't want anybody. And he's going to get cancer and die. It's going to be awesome.

But we're actually meant to be in life together. And so what we do is we say, no, no, no, no. We're going to be intentional, diligent about making this happen. So here's you. And don't tell anybody I told you this, but you are the shining star in your group. You're the best group member.

Here's how this works. You're connected to everybody. And everybody's connected to you. Once you're in a community group, you get to know everybody. You're connected to everybody. Everybody's connected to you.

And I didn't tell Miss Bebe I was going to say this. And she's here. So hopefully she'll forgive me. But Miss Bebe told me one time that one of the things that she began to enjoy and appreciate about community groups was that she could no longer read her Bible the way she used to. She used to read her Bible and she could only think from her perspective. She read it like Bebe.

And she said, I now read my Bible and I see everybody else. I hear everybody else. I know people who have small children. I know people who are in this season of life and this difficulty. And she said, I read my Bible now with our group in mind. And it's changed the way I read the scriptures.

And what we're seeing is that we're supposed to be connected to other people. And we're supposed to be connected to other people where the thing that we have in common is Jesus and nothing else. There are supposed to be people in your group that you have an extremely hard time talking to. That's how it's supposed to work. And it's possible that you have a hard time talking to them because they have a hard time talking with everyone. And it's possible you have a hard time talking with them because you have a hard time talking with everyone.

And it's possible you just aren't on the same page. But that's how it's supposed to work. that we're supposed to be around people that we don't naturally connect with because they help us grow and they help us see things that we don't see otherwise. But you're connected to everybody. Everybody else is connected to everybody. So this is what groups look like.

Because they're supposed to be connected to everybody. But it's life on life and life in community, so there's also this. You're more connected to a few people. Just how it works. You get along a little easier. You're in similar stages of life.

You live near one another. Maybe you're not in similar stages of life. Maybe they're empty nesters and you have small kids, but they love small kids, so they just hang out with you all the time because they have more open schedule. I don't know, but you've got some people that you connect with a little better. And the truth is, that's the case for everybody in your group. That everybody's got somebody they connect with.

There we go. That's what it looks like. Now, for some of you, seeing this web and thinking about a community group, you're like, yes, I'm an extrovert, and that's a trampoline of awesomeness. And some of you who are introverted is like, that looks like a spider web of despair. I would get trapped in that. It would suck the life out of me.

This would be terrible. So I just want to talk for just a second about what this looks like and how this plays out and talk to a few different people. So some of you think, no, no, no, no, no. I have the thick lines with everyone. What I'm willing to bet is you make a certain depth of relationship and never go past that. So everybody feels like they're on the same level.

Everybody's your thickest line. And what you ought to do is get to know people a little more deeply. You ought to walk a little more closely with some people. We want to have people that can speak into your life. You want people who love Jesus, who are not you, who see the world a little differently, be able to speak into your life. One of the things that frustrates me to no end that happens all the time in churches is someone just announces some big life change, some big we're doing this, we're doing that, and everybody just goes, oh, congratulations.

We're in a community group, but we end up being like Facebook friends. We just all press the like button. And somebody needs to know you well enough to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I got some questions. Not saying this is a terrible idea. Just saying I got some questions because I know you.

I've walked with you long enough to know that one of the things that you have as an idolatrous nature in your heart is this wonderlust, that you have to be in some other city in order to be happy, and you get bored with places, and you don't know how to build deep relationships. And so when you said, I've got a job. I'm moving to Tulsa. And everybody said, yay, congratulations. I immediately thought, that might be terrible for you. Let's talk.

Someone when you say, I've met the man of my dreams. I've met the girl. She's the one. Someone who knows you well enough to go, isn't this your fourth one? In like four years, like don't you do this every time you meet somebody? I'm sure they're nice, but let's just tone it down a step.

People who know you well enough to not just cosign everything, but love you. Now, for the introverted person, keep the spider web up there, please. For the introverted person, there's a lot of slides. Thanks, Nick. You're doing a great job. Way more than normal.

Usually it's like, here's a Bible verse, and then we just go for it. For the introverted person, some of y'all looked at that and thought, some of you looked at it and thought, I've been in the group for a while. I don't have a deep connection with anybody. And that may be true. I'm sorry if it's true. Don't be okay with that and don't think that's how that has to work.

You may need to insert yourself a little more. If you only build relationships one-on-one, you may need to invite people one-on-one. There are some people in your group who feel perfectly, beautifully connected with you because their level of relationship only goes to a three. I feel super close to everybody in my group. But that's because I have to work real hard to get closer with people.

My wife, it takes her like 15 years to develop a friendship. Now, once you're there, she'll help you bury a body. She'll stab people for you. She is on your team. I feel sorry for any teacher or anybody that ever messes with one of our children. People think I'm intense.

I'm going to be the person just holding her and she's going to be like, I'm going to get on my back. No, no, hold on, hold on. So some of you, it takes a while to build relationships. Keep doing the hard work of relationship building. Some of y'all see that and think everybody's already full. They already have all the relationships they can handle.

That's not true. That you're meant to be welcomed. So here's what I want. If you're that person who just says, I don't feel like I've connected with anybody, announce that to your group in a non-condescending, non-condemning way. Just say, hey guys, I'm having a hard time and I really would like to hang out with someone one-on-one. Community groups.

Make that happen. I have a hard time making friends in groups. So I end up just sitting next to this conversation and sitting next to that conversation and sitting next to that conversation. And I feel like I'd be intruding to press into that any and I need some people to just, can somebody just hang out with me? Can we just get a cup of coffee? Can we get, I just need to.

That's why one of the reasons why our groups try to do fun things periodically is because it helps change the dynamic. We believe fun makes family. Okay. Content. First aspects of life of learning. And the content is the word.

Applying the gospel to life. Praying. The context is a life on life, life in community. And we actually have to see each other in real life and we have to be around people who we would not normally choose to just be around. And that's what makes the church beautiful. That's where all the one another's come in.

That we love one another. That we serve one another. Then he starts saying things like bear with one another. Forgive one another. Be patient with one another. Do you know you have to bear with, forgive, and be patient with?

People who frustrate you. People who you're around more than just a little bit. A lot of us have been in a group and we've gotten super frustrated with people. And it's the moment, the moment where we can apply the gospel. And we can confront and we can confess and we can forgive and we can bear with and we can be patient. It's that moment where we can really do some Bible things.

And you know what we do? We say this group's messed up. Filled with sinners. I'm going to find a church where they're not like that. We go to our next church. We say my last group was terrible.

And they were so sorry. They wouldn't build friendships with me. We're so sorry. They were the worst. We're so sorry. Come.

We're not like that. We love Jesus. We love you. Come. And you're like, this place is great. And it is like a year, year and a half, two years until you start trying to build some real relationships.

Until your friend Karen does the same crap she's done 1,500 times. And you're like, you know what? They're all the same. It's like, no, you have a moment to grow, to repent, to be gracious, to forgive, to be patient, to bear with. And when you do that, it becomes beautiful and glorious and we grow. So that's discipleship.

Life of learning. Life on life. Life in community. Now, immediately you might ask, okay, cool chart, bro. How on earth do I have time to do that? I'm glad you brought it up.

Here's February. How on earth do I have time to be in life on life, life in community? I'm super busy. Okay, well, your group meets every Tuesday. Every Tuesday. Did you know that?

Some of you are like, it's Wednesday. Okay, whatever. Once a week. And for two hours, hour and a half, if y'all are quick and got a bunch of people with little kids and you want to go home. Three hours if you're super chatty. Two hours studying the Bible.

Praying together. Sharing a meal. Applying the gospel. Confessing sin. Every single week. We get together every Sunday.

Every Sunday. We're here. Unlock the bill and we pay for it. Every Sunday. We gather together to devote ourselves to the word. To be around one another.

Some of you, a community group isn't enough for the amount of relationships you can have. Some of you, it feels too much. It's overwhelming. There's 12 people here. I can only have two real friendships. So it's like, okay, we'll find those two people, corner them and talk to them.

Some of you are like, I need 45 friendships. I will know everything about you. I will remember you. I will know your birthday. You're the people who are super frustrated when anybody forgets anything. Because you're like, how on earth can you not?

If you love people, you know every aspect of their life ever. And you can keep up with everybody ever. Show up on Sundays and get to know people. We want to be a bigger group. We want to have, you can have friendships outside of your group. We want you to be intentional with the ones in your group.

But you can, don't feel like it's wrong to have other friendships. If that's you, do that. We gather on Sundays, but you get to see, there's a handful of guys in our community group that show up early on every Sunday. I get to hang out with them on Sundays. Sometimes we get into really intense conversations about the Bible. Sometimes we get into really intense conversations about SEC football.

It doesn't matter. We're walking in life together. Serving, seeing each other on Sunday. Seeing each other when we get together during the week. Let's say your group decides on a specific Saturday that you're going to do some kind of a mission outreach something.

You're going to try to get around some people to share the gospel. You're going to all go to a park and just try to meet people. You're going to go downtown and hand some food out in some areas where homeless people hang out. You're going to go serve at a school. So all of y'all are going to see each other on Saturday as you're on mission together.

Let's say there's a Friday during February when somebody just says, hey, we're going to a movie. If anybody wants to come, come on. Hey, we're all going to go eat at Cracker Barrel. Hey, we're doing a game night at our house. And so you get to hang out then. Let's say that on Thursdays, some of the guys are able to get together for lunch.

Or some of the ladies get together for an extra Bible study. Or maybe they get together for breakfast. Or you figure out a way to trade off who's watching kids. And you figure something out. The guys in my group used to eat at Denny's every Thursday morning. Now we're trying to get some lunches.

It happens about twice a month. And it's not everybody, but it's whoever can make it. Now it's 2019. I'm not going to tell you which color represents which gender. You can pick that for yourselves. Let's say that with the people that you hang out a little more with, you get to see them more often.

Your life overlaps a little more. It's easier for you to watch kids together or not have kids. Or you both get off of work at 11 p.m. and you play video games or whatever. You get to see some other people. But look at that.

That's a normal schedule in people whose lives are busy, who've set out some intentional time, and then who go out of their way to overlap their lives. It is doable for you to be around people. It does take some effort. It does take us working with our schedules because we're busy people. And if we're not intentional, our schedules will fill up. But it's possible for us to devote ourselves to being around one another, to walking in life together, to pointing each other towards Jesus, and to be around each other in enough circumstances in life that we might be able to grow together as disciples.

Lastly, it's life on mission. That we were meant as Christians to be making more disciples and sharing the gospel. And that when we stop doing that, we become unhealthy. If your group ceases to be on mission, it will start becoming unhealthy. I can tell you the best way to be miserable anywhere in your community group, but you can also import this into your marriage or your roommate situation, whatever, is to show up and think that it is about you. When we cease to be on mission, we forget that we're supposed to be actively sacrificing to see other people grow and to see people meet Jesus.

And when we stop doing that and when we fail to be on mission, that's what the disciples, what it says here is that day by day, attending the temple together, this is verse 46, breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. They were walking in life together, loving one another, serving one another, sharing with one another, and making their city better, proclaiming the gospel, and people were hopping in all the time. The Lord was saving people day by day.

Let me tell you what happens. If you start hanging out with your group and y'all cease to be on mission, you start thinking that the purpose of your group is for your own personal edification and your own personal growth. And you show up and you start asking questions like, what am I getting out of this? Who's talking to me? You see people enjoying, you ever been out to eat and you're having a good time until there's two tables over is having a better time? They're laughing real loud and everything's going super great.

And so suddenly you're like, well, my dinner's not as nice as it used to be because look at them. And so what happens sometimes you start hanging out with your group, you start hanging out and you start going, well, they're better friends than I am. They talk during the week. They just said they got caught. And you start, and we forget that the whole purpose is that we collectively grow together, that you're here to serve other people. You're here to pour into other people.

And we're actively walking in, helping other people meet Jesus, that we would be on mission together. And there's joy in that. Also, mission happens better in community because there are things that you're gifted at that the person next to you isn't, and vice versa. And as we serve and connect and love together, more people meet Jesus. They get to see what the gospel does among a group of people, and more people buy in because more people connect, more people understand, more people see how on earth do y'all hang out with each other, and they get to begin to see what it looks like for people to follow Jesus together.

And then they, maybe you're really good at inviting, but somebody else is really good at getting close to somebody. I've had that happen in my group. I've been friends with somebody for a couple weeks, known them at work, bring them to our group. They finally come, they hang out a little bit, they hang out one time, and afterwards, a week later, one of the people in my group will go, hey, how's that? How's that issue that they've been struggling with? How's that going?

I'm like, what issue? What are you talking about? They were like, well, they told me they were struggling with issues. They were like, well, nobody tells me that stuff. Nobody, my coworkers aren't volunteering that they're struggling with things with me. That's not how conversations go with me.

I've never really just made a conversation go there. I have to have been someone's pastor for two and a half years, and then they're like, maybe I'll tell it. But there was somebody in my group who just went over and said, how are you doing? I don't know, the Holy Spirit works in that. The person looked at them and went, terrible. And they talked, and they worked, and the Holy Spirit works, and people end up getting closer to Jesus, so they meet Jesus, and it's because we collectively are on mission better together.

So that's what happened in the New Testament church, and that's how we walk this out. So I want you to know it is doable as you commit to all the small things, that you're going to love the Bible, you're going to have God's Word in you, and you're going to commit to being around each other. You're going to commit to showing up to your group, to showing up on Sundays, to talking to people, and we're going to commit collectively to try to help other people meet Jesus, and guess what? We'll make disciples. See, that's what Jesus is saying about the leaven. So if you zoom in on it, it doesn't seem that spectacular.

If actually, if you just walk somebody through the February schedule, it's like, yeah, we meet every week, we meet on Sundays, yeah, we're confessing sin, we're walking together, but the truth is, you pull that out over a year for someone who's bought in, committed, devoted themselves to the Word, devoted themselves to the fellowship, devoted to applying the Gospel, and guess what? They're growing. And if we're actively devoted to sharing the Gospel with people, more people are hopping in, more people are growing, and none of it looked that spectacular, and none of that was overwhelming, and none of that was amazing, but it was we just collectively decided, this is who we're going to be, we're going to be around each other, we're going to devote ourselves to the Word, and we'll get to see it happen. That a little bit of leaven is going to take over the whole thing.

And so, if there's any aspect of that, that you have opted out of, don't. Devote yourself to it. Some of you, it needs to be, you need to devote yourself to the Word. Some of you, it's life on life. You hang out with your group, but other than that, you don't really get to know people, you're not really talking to people. Some of you, it's life on life, but you won't hang out with your group, so you only hang out with somebody one-on-one, but you never get in the community aspect.

Some of it's a mission. But that was how they made disciples, and that was how they began, and the church exploded. with people meeting Jesus, and people growing. And that's what we want to see, and that's what we hope to see. The band's going to come back up. We're going to sing one song together, and as we sing, we're going to take communion, because as we've gathered to fellowship today, we're also taking communion, we're breaking bread together, to remind ourselves that Jesus saves sinners, that He's good, and that it's not on us to just try harder, or to do better, but to trust Him, to work in us, and to be faithful in all the small things, knowing that He ultimately makes them effective.

That He's died, that we might be redeemed, and then if you're sitting here today, and realize I hadn't been doing this stuff, you don't need to feel overwhelmed, or crushed, you need to run to Jesus, and know that He works, and He redeems, and He's good, and you're holy, blameless, and above reproach, and we get to take communion, and walk this out together. So if you are a believer, if you are part of our church, we'd love for you to take communion. If you're not a believer, we would ask that you refrain from taking communion, because we want you to know Jesus, before you practice the remembrance of His death, and His resurrection. Let's pray.

God, we thank you for your grace, and your goodness. We pray that we would be active, in all the small things, as your Holy Spirit works in us, that we might see disciples made, that we would be intentional about it, that we'd be devoted to it, that we'd be diligent in it, daily, in all the small ways, to overlap our lives, and to be around one another, and to study your word, so that we might proclaim your gospel, and see more people come to follow you. We love you, and we praise you in Jesus name. Amen. Y'all stand, sing when you're ready. Take communion.

During the sermon, there were many slides used to visually display the concepts taught. We have included them below with a brief summary to help you better follow along while listening to the sermon online.

Discipleship multiplication as described by Spencer during the first sermon in our Multiply series.

When we start considering discipling others we may begin to think of it as a simple dichotomy: Am I a prepared to be a disciple-er” or do I need to be a “disciple-ee?” But the truth is more easily accessible.

As discipleship plays out within groups you are connected with everyone in your group and everyone is connected with you. Therefore you are both able to pour into others and have them pour into you.

You are not alone in your group. Everyone is intended to disciple everyone; therefore, the weight does not fall entirely on you.

You will naturally have deeper connections with some people than with others and you will spend more time discipling those you have deeper connections with and having them disciple you.

As long as you are invested in your group, you will have deeper connections with some people than with others. Spend your time cultivating those relationships understanding that this is how it works for everyone. In this way discipleship gets to be both Life on Life (deeper relationships) and Life in Community (the full group dynamic).

By committing to your group, you will have opportunities in your schedule to be around people in your group. We gather on Sundays, meet once a week, and have various rhythms throughout the month to ensure the people within our groups are spending time together. It take intentionality in our already busy schedules, but it is doable and it is worth it.

Multiply

Multiply

Spencer Cary

Transcript

This is an exciting time for me. I know that some of you don't get as excited about New Year's. I know that some of you, I've seen the jokes. Some of you don't stay up to watch the ball drop at New Year's Eve. Some of you aren't the biggest fan of New Year's resolutions. I get it.

It's okay. I am. I love New Year's. It is one of my favorite holidays. It's a big deal for our household. Every year we do a New Year's Eve party at our house.

This year our group, which is the Grove group and the Kitty Wake group, got to come together. And we got to watch the ball drop together. It was exciting. The next day I got to go hunting and I got to spend some time in thinking through New Year's resolutions. Because I like them. I value them.

I have personal resolutions. How I want to grow in my faith. How I want to grow as a father. How I want to grow as a husband. I have pastoral resolutions. And how I want to grow in caring for our church.

How to serve here better. How to grow in preaching. I have professional resolutions. Because I also do real estate. So how I want to grow in that.

And I hold on to those. I'm one of the few. I just like it. It's measurable stuff for me that I can look at throughout the year. I get really excited. Which is good.

Because over the last three months, all four of us pastors have been sitting together, praying, have been studying the scriptures, have been reading books, have been thinking through one of the ways that we can grow in 2019. And one of the things that we want to grow in is in multiplying and making disciples. So we spent the last three months preparing for this. And that's why we have a series that we are doing called Multiply. We're going to take the next five weeks to walk through this as a church family. We'll get back to Genesis when we get done with this series.

But we want to grow in this. And today we're going to be in Matthew 28, verses 16 through 20 on page 487. And the blue Bibles around you. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. That's our gift to you. We want you to be able to have a Bible that you can read.

This is called the Great Commission. For centuries, that's what this has been called. This is Jesus commissioning out the church and the start of the church. So we're going to be in this today. And what today is going to look like is just a big picture of what it looks like to make disciples. We want to see the big kind of picture of what Jesus is calling us to.

I want us to see it, get excited about it as we lean into 2019. And then Chet, over the next four weeks, is going to give some more practical handles how we walk this out, how we make disciples. But today we're just going to go big picture. So go ahead and flip there. We'll get to it in a moment. One of the most successful philanthropic movements that I've ever seen was the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Y'all remember that? Remember how big of a deal that was in 2014? For like a month, that's all you saw. It was a big deal and it was so simple. I would have loved to have been in the pitch room when they kicked this idea off. This was designed to raise money for ALS and awareness for ALS research.

I would have loved to have seen it when someone said, Hey, I got an idea. How about we get people to take buckets of ice water and they'll dump it on their friends. And then their friends will challenge other people. It'll be great. Someone at some point said, Okay, sure. Yeah, let's run with it.

What are we going to call it? The Ice Bucket Challenge. Let's hashtag that. It's going to be trendy. And it grew. Something as simple as that.

A few people challenged another. A few people challenged another. All of a sudden it swept across the globe. And it raised over $115 million in a little over a month. There's been no other movement that's happened like that. I mean, it had real effects.

And the year after that, they saw real impact in research and how this impacted ALS research. It was a big deal. And people have looked at this and they've studied this and they've wondered, How did they do it? How did they get something to go so viral? How did they get something to be so widespread? And when you look at it, it was very simple.

If you get people excited about something, that they're going to own it, so much so that they take a bucket of ice water and pour it on their heads, and then you get them to challenge others, what happens is you're not adding people to your cause, you're multiplying. You can go from one and they challenge three other people, and then those three people do it and they challenge three other people, and you've gone from one to three to nine, and then you get those nine to challenge three other people, you've gone from one to three to nine to 27, and then you keep going exponential growth to 81. I don't math much farther than that. But it grew so widespread, and that is because multiplication, exponential growth, is greater than addition, and that is not a new idea.

And we go back to how the early church, this is how it began. It was a multiplication movement that changed the world. A few disciples who owned this and were commissioned out, and it changed the world. So we're going to take the next five weeks looking at through this, and as we walk through the Great Commission today, what we're going to see is that Jesus, he chose a few ordinary people to invest in them that they might impact many and might change the world. So we're going to see it as we walk in.

I want to pray, and then we will dive in. And God, I'm so thankful that we get to start this year by looking at the Great Commission. I'm so thankful that you call us to join you in mission. God, I pray that you would help us see this, the beauty of it, the glory of it, and the simplicity of it, and that we would leave here today encouraged by it. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so let's walk through these first two verses.

It says, Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. Now this is after a bunch of events have happened. So this is after Judas betrays Jesus. That's what's being mentioned here when it says the eleven. That's what's being brought to mind. There was twelve, but Judas betrays Jesus.

Now there's eleven. This is after Jesus goes to the cross, taking on our sins, our punishment. This is after he goes to the tomb, where he conquers death at the resurrection. He appears to the women at the tomb. Then he appears to the disciples in the upper room.

And then he directs them to go. Go to this mountain. We don't know which specific mountain it was in Galilee. There's some scholars that they think it may have been where the Sermon on the Mount was. We don't really know, but it's significant for them for this moment. So they show up, and when they get there, the text tells us that some doubted.

Now we don't really know who was doubting. We don't really know what went into their doubts. But Jesus sees their doubting. And he intentionally addresses this great commission with that in mind. So he sees their doubting, and he says in verse 18, he says, All right, so there's a lot going on in this passage.

Let's walk through it bit by bit. He starts off this great commission addressing some of their doubts. Because when he says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. I want you to picture this. They're on a mountain. And Jesus is saying, Do you see the heavens?

Do you see the earth? I am king over all of it. God the Father has given me authority from the heavens where you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the galaxies, all the way down to all of creation, as far as you can see, from galaxies to atoms. I am king. I am the sovereign ruler over the universe. He makes it clear that he is in control.

And before he delivers this commission, he delivers this special mission that they're going to take part in, he makes that abundantly clear. And that is a great encouragement. That the king of the universe is behind this mission. It's like the game is rigged in our favor. It's kind of like, it's a little bit like, Bama football. I know.

Some of y'all tomorrow, like, no, it's not going to be. Maybe. You might be right. But it's kind of like Bama football. They've got the best coach. They've got the best players.

They just keep winning. It's obnoxious. We're all tired of it. But the game is rigged. It's so much more so than that, man. We have a rigged game.

The king of the universe stands behind us. And that's the beauty of this, is that as he delivers this commission to the disciples, it also affects everyone who believes in Jesus. All of us have this authority that stands behind us, the sovereign ruler of the universe. And this is huge. Because here's the deal, man. When we start talking about making disciples, when we start talking about sharing the gospel, we start talking about multiplication and reaching people, man, I get it.

This brings up doubts for some of us. This brings up doubts for many of us. Doubting our abilities to do this. What am I going to say when it comes to a situation where I'm going to share the gospel? What's going to come out? There's some anxiety that goes into that.

And I love when Jesus teaches in the gospels, he says, specifically when he's talking about persecution, he says, when the time comes, the Holy Spirit will give you the words. This is the king who stands behind us. He is sovereign. He is the ruler. Which means he's also sovereign over salvation. And that frees us up.

Because hear this, we don't change hearts. We don't bring repentance. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. And we're just called to be faithful in this. So all this is brought into this.

That we, our main goal here, the only main way we can mess this up is not being faithful. That we are just called to be faithful in declaring the good news in this commission. So all that authority gets brought into here when he says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. So let me walk through this piece word by word. The word therefore there is important. Because it links all the authority that he just established.

Which is a great comfort for us. He brings all of that in to this command. So it is a comfort, absolutely. But it's also a responsibility. And the same way that a general gives orders. And the same way that a coach calls the play.

There's some responsibility and some weightiness that's brought to it. So it is a comfort, but it's also weighty. So therefore, go. Go. Now, in college, I did a thesis, which is a capstone. I spent a whole semester researching a topic.

And I was going to present this paper and have to defend it before my professors and before my peers. And I chose this passage. And I specifically chose the word go. Go. I wanted to focus in on this. And I felt pretty good about myself.

I was like, you know what? It doesn't mean go. It means as you go. So I did this whole big thesis on it. This whole big explaining how the Greek actually says as you go. And I had professors that were like, yeah, that's really good.

I had peers that were like, good Job. I had pats on the back. I made an A. And I felt like I had some swagger. Because I looked at all the English translations out there. Every one of them that said go and said, no, I've discovered it.

It is different. And I get to seminary. And in one of my first Greek syntax classes, my professor goes, hey, you know, sometimes knowing a little bit of Greek is dangerous. Let me give you an example. Could have chosen any example he wanted. He said, you know how some people translate the Great Commission as as you go?

I got excited. I said, yeah, come on. I know all about this. He said, yeah, well, for the next 15 minutes, he just absolutely dismantled my whole semester's work of thesis. But all the work I had done.

I was like, yep. I guess knowing a little bit. It's not really good for you. If all the English translations say go, it means go. That's the force. It's meant you go.

So if you've ever heard that, no. Trust me, you don't have to go through the pain that I did. It means go. And that doesn't necessarily mean you always have to go across the world. For some of you, if you lean in to the Holy Spirit and he reveals to you that it's not going across the world, it definitely means going across the street. It definitely means going across the office.

It means going and reaching people. But for some of you, obedience to the Lord is going across the world and planting churches amongst unreached people groups. The forces go, but that's not the main point, the main thrust of this passage. When it says make disciples, that's it. That's the meat. That's the main verb of this passage that everything else kind of surrounds it by.

It is the focal point. It is make disciples. Disciple. And what Jesus just did was he took a word, disciple. All right?

And he made it a verb. Because in that language, there's not really a way to do that. He just said, discipleize. And the same way that we take Google, which is a noun, which is just a name, and we made it into a verb by Googling stuff. That's exactly what he just did. He verbalized and said, do this.

Make disciples. Disciple's. So in order for us to understand this, we need to clearly state what a disciple is. A disciple is a learner. It's a student. It's an apprentice.

That's what's being implied here. And it's not just a learner or a student or apprentice in general. It means an apprentice under somebody else. You see, this was common in first century Judaism. When a great rabbi would be raised up and they would come and people would hear them preaching, they would have crowds that would come and hear them. That's what happened with John the Baptist.

And John the Baptist chose disciples. He chose apprentices. And the picture of what it would look like is they would have a rabbi that they would learn from, that they would literally sit at the feet of their teaching, collecting the dust from their sandals, learning, growing in wisdom, and becoming just like them. That's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, he says, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Christ, the picture there is that you're so much learning and growing, you're imitating him as you're imitating all the way back to Jesus. So that's what a disciple is.

It's someone who's learning everything they can, soaking it up. And he says, make those. Make disciples. And he says, of all nations. Now, I don't have a lot of time to spend on this today. We did do a lot of this in our gift series.

But all nations means all people groups. Everywhere. Every tribe. Every tongue. Every nation. That we get to participate.

And we got to do this in our gift project. We got to raise thousands of dollars to help a church plant all the way across the world in Menya, Egypt. Because we want to see disciples be made of all people groups everywhere. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations. And then we get two big phrases. So, make disciples, that's the meat.

These two big phrases that come out of this. This is the seasoning. This is the juices. This is helping us understand what make disciples means. He says, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And he says, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded them.

So let's sit in this first part. Baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Baptism happens because someone placed their faith in Jesus. And they were changed by him. And that only happens when people go and share the gospel. That's what Romans 10 teaches.

That faith comes by hearing the word of God. So what's being implied in this passage, what's being implied in baptism, is that we would go and we would share the good news. That we go to our neighbors, to our friends, to our co-workers, to people that we know, to family, and we would declare that Jesus is Lord. We would tell them that he is better than everything else. And that God willing, they would believe and trust in him. And they would stand in a baptism pool.

And we would say, who is your Lord and Savior? And they would say, Jesus. And we'd say, we baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that we'd celebrate knowing that Jesus changed lives. That that is a big part of making disciples. That we get to go and we get to declare who Jesus is to those who don't know him.

The second big part is teaching them to observe all that I have commanded. Now the word observe there isn't always the most helpful. Because we observe Christopher Columbus Day. I mean, some people do. Like bankers. I don't.

I know most of y'all are working. I guess that doesn't help us complete the picture. What's being lost in the word observe is also keep. It's to keep. It's to obey. That we would keep, obey all that Jesus has commanded.

And when it says, all that I have commanded you. Man, that is where this really gets interesting. Because that encompasses everything. All of the ministry from the last three years that he has done with the disciples. This is the part of the story. We're at the end of it.

It's kind of like Pulp Fiction or Titanic. It starts with the end of the story. And you've got to go back to the beginning. And see the rest of the story. Or, if you watch Bird Box. Start at the end.

And then rudely move between the beginning, the middle, and the end. With no grace at all. That was for three of you that watched that movie. I thought it was like 45 million. But y'all didn't get on Netflix.

That's fair. It's good. But this is the part of the story where we've got to go back to the beginning. We've got to run through the middle. We've got to understand what's happening here. We've got to understand the ministry that Jesus does with his disciples.

Because that is going to complete the picture for us. As we understand what make disciples means. So you go back through how Jesus starts his ministry. He starts with preaching in Matthew 4. He starts preaching that the kingdom of God has come. And when he starts preaching that the kingdom has come.

People get excited. He starts having crowds that surround him. And they start wondering more about this. That a great rabbi is being raised up. He's preaching the kingdom. And then they're anticipating at this point he's probably going to choose disciples.

Because this is what rabbis do. So they're waiting for it. And then he chooses his first disciples. He chooses fishermen from Galilee. Now, I know that that gets lost on us a little bit. There's a cultural difference here in understanding this.

But the equivalent of that is choosing chicken farmers from Saluda. That's it. That it's, I mean, blue collar work. My best friend from high school and college, he grew up in a chicken farm. I thought it smelled, he said it smells like money. It's blue collar work.

And Saluda, just like Galilee, is the sticks. It's the middle of nowhere. And I can say that because I went to school in Saluda. Those are my people. But it's, people are anticipating who are you going to choose.

And he chooses fishermen from Galilee. It's like conventional wisdom says you would have chosen the biggest and the brightest and the best. Like, why did he choose? You would have expected this montage of all these different people. Similar like in Ocean's Eleven when Danny Ocean starts choosing all of his, all of the criminals that are going to rob the Bellagio's vault together. He chooses like a guy who can do all kinds of jumping and all around.

Another guy that can disarm stuff. Another guy, all these really gifted criminals. And then Matt Damon. Do you guys really know what his point in the movie is? But I guess he did something.

But he chooses all these gifted people. And that's what this is supposed to look like. That's what culture is expecting here. They're thinking he's going to choose the evangelists and the preachers and the movers and the shakers and all the important people in society. And he chooses fishermen. They're not super educated.

They're not super elite. They are blue collar. And the rest of the society doesn't uphold them. And then he goes on and chooses more fishermen. And then he chooses a tax collector who, I mean, they're like the bottom social rung of society. Like everyone hates them.

They're traitors. They're the worst. Then he chooses to sell it. Think conspiracy theorists who's trying to overthrow the government. It's kind of weird. And then we don't even know who the rest of the disciples were.

I don't know what Bartholomew did. He could have been a fisherman. He could have been doing anything. We don't really know. And that's the point. They were of no notoriety.

The rest of the world didn't uphold them and say, man, they are awesome. And that is good news for us because God chooses ordinary people of no social, no worldly importance to do extraordinary things. That's good news for you. And that's good news for me. That's good news for our church. Because y'all, we're ordinary people.

I know that someone back in the day said, you're extraordinary. Yeah, you're made in God's image. That is extraordinary. Outside of that, we're fairly ordinary. We just are. My whole life, listen, own it.

My whole life is taking an ounce of talent and maximizing that through hard work and a few good breaks. Like I have the most average white guy look possible. Like there's nothing remarkable about me. I'm like, you find the emoticom for a bearded white guy and that is me. Which is cool because if I ever get in a bind, the FBI comes for me. I'll just show up to a Dave Matthews concert, blend in.

You will never find me again. And what I love is that I'm not the only one. And that's why I love our church is that you guys are ordinary too. You guys, we are a bunch of ordinary people that God has chosen to do extraordinary things here in Columbia. That we might see disciples be made here. God chooses the ordinary to do the extraordinary.

And he intentionally chooses these ordinary disciples and he pours into them. For three years, he invests in them. He walks them through the scriptures and teaches them from the scriptures. Showing them the beauty and the wonder and the mystery and the glory of God's word and its importance in their lives. He models what prayer is for them. Teaching them to pray.

He says, don't pray like the Pharisees who pray so that everyone else can see them. Don't pray like the pagans who just say all kinds of words. Pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, who lives in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Holy is your name.

He makes it so simple. There are moments when Jesus has big ministry moments where he heals lots of people. Where he feeds lots of people. And then the next moment you see he gets away with his disciples. And then he even steps away from them. And he gets to be before the Father in prayer and solitude.

He models the importance of prayer. He models the importance of servitude. Focus on serving the least of these. He focuses on how the last will be first. He washes their feet. Their stinky first century sandal wearing, collecting dung and dirt feet.

He models the perfect embodiment of service and love. Over the next three years he invests in them. Showing them how to be a follower of him in everyday life. The focus of Jesus' ministry. Hear this. Is the disciples.

They're the main focus of his ministry. People might push back on that. And they say, wait, wait, wait, wait. He did real public things. He preached. He had big followings.

He healed lots of people. It was all public. And I'd say, yes, absolutely it was. But who is front and center for all of that? If you think that his main part of his ministry was public ministry, you need to go back and you need to read the Gospels. You need to go back to Matthew 4 after he calls the disciples.

In Matthew 5 through 7 is the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount doesn't say he had big crowds and they all came around. And then he started teaching them. It starts with he taught the disciples. They're the main part of his teaching. The main focus of his teaching.

When in Matthew 8 through 9 he starts doing these big miracles, guess who's there? The disciples. In Matthew 10 when he commissions out the first missionaries to go and declare that the kingdom of God is coming, guess who the first ones are? It's the disciples. And the rest of the book of Matthew, the rest of the Gospels is Jesus doing big public things and serving and teaching. But his disciples are there for all of it.

Because they are the main focus of his ministry. That he would pour into this few. And even more so than the 12, he poured into select three. He poured into Peter, James, and John intentionally investing in a few that they may impact many. So why did Jesus invest the majority of his time in these disciples?

It is because they were the ones that were going to start this multiplication movement. They were the ones that were going to start and lead the church. They were the ones that were going to make disciples. This is all what is implied when he says, observe all that I have commanded. It is the pattern of ministry that he did with them for three years. That they might go and do this.

That is discipleship. That's the plan. That is what is implied here. And it shows up all throughout the rest of the New Testament. You see shades of it. You see it in the book of Acts as the church starts to grow.

One of my favorite stories in the book of Acts is in Antioch. When the city of Antioch explodes with the Gospel. It is significant because this is the city that Paul and Barnabas are sent from to take the Gospel all over Europe. But in the city of Antioch it says, in 1421 it says, They preached the Gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples. And the word for won a large number of disciples is the same word that we get in the Great Commission for make disciples. We see this keep showing up.

We see this in a really cool way when Paul in 1 Corinthians 4 starts talking about spiritual family. Paul never had kids. He never had a wife. But he discipled people. And he considered them to be spiritual children. And that he was their spiritual father.

And we see a uniqueness in that in biblical family and the discipleship relationships that he had. We see this in 2 Timothy 2.2 when it says, And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That you would take what you have learned and you would entrust it to others. We see this in the discipleship relationship that Paul had with Timothy, with Titus, with Luke. We see it in the discipleship relationship that Peter had with John Mark. John Mark being the one who wrote the Gospel of Mark.

Y'all, we are called to this kind of discipleship. This intentional process of investing in a few that they may impact many. And y'all, it is a beautiful thing when you get to see this happen. Let me walk through really quickly what this has looked like in my story. Years ago, I became a Christian when I was 17. I was excited about Jesus.

And then I went to college, still excited, but didn't really know a whole lot. Early on in my first semester, I was in an intramural softball game. And we lost. And I was walking off the field and there's another guy there. And he was from the other team. And he started talking to me.

And I was like, oh, cool, this guy's a Christian. So we started talking. His name was Andrew Hawkins. We called him A-Hawk. We'll put this up on the screen. So A-Hawk, we go to dinner.

And his plan was to share the Gospel with me. And then I was like, oh, no, no, I believe this, man. It seems like you know a lot. It'd be great if you would teach me because I don't. I'm excited. But I don't really know some of the things that you're talking about.

And for the next two years, he discipled me. He spent time with me. We'd go out in the woods on some hunting property and he'd show me how to study the Bible. Show me how to read it. Show me the importance and the beauty of God's Word. That he would show me what it looked like to pray.

Because I didn't really have handles for that. He would show me what an intentional prayer life looks like. He would show me how to share the Gospel. Because I didn't know how to share my faith. And we'd go out and I'd see him share the Gospel with other people. And I'd learn.

He showed me how to love others. He spent two years investing in me. And then he graduated. And he said, you need to do the same thing with others. This is what making disciples looks like. So then the next two years of college, there's three specific people that I've got to spend some time with.

The first one was a guy named Brent Thompson. Brent was a guy who came to college and he was lost looking for significance and meaning and everything else. So we spent time with him. We shared the Gospel with him. And then finally Brent believed. And it changed his world.

We started walking with him. I started doing the same thing that I learned from Ahog. Reading the Bible. Showing the importance of prayer. Started walking with him. Ended up transferring.

The next semester he went off to Texas. He still lives there today. Still following Jesus. I got to spend time with another guy named Will Lewis. Will, same kind of story. Came to college.

Didn't believe in Jesus. A few of us shared the Gospel with him. He finally placed his faith in Jesus. And I still catch up with Will from time to time. He lives in Tennessee. He's still following Jesus.

And then there was one other person. His name's Brian Trail. Brian was all over the map. We couldn't peg him. He was in my community group. We shared with him.

I was like, I don't know if he's getting this or not. And then I graduated. And like a year later, I see him. I'm like, dude, what's up, man? He's like, dude, I believe in God now. I'm going to believe in Jesus.

I was like, that's awesome. I didn't know. Because it was hard to tell. He's like, no, man, I believe this. And I'm actually going to be a part of a college ministry now where I'm going to do this. Where I'm going to make disciples.

And he still does today. He's investing in students with the hope that he would invest in a few and impact many. And that's not even the real, that's not even close to the complete story. Because if you work backwards, Ahok had someone who poured into him. And his name was Devin. Devin did the same stuff that Ahok did with me that I got to do with Brian.

He read the Bible with him. He taught him how to study the Word. He taught him how to pray. And Devin is still doing this. He does this in North Carolina. And there was someone else that poured into Devin.

And his name was Ben. And Ben has done this for over a decade. Investing in a few that he might impact many. There's a long line of people that believe in Jesus. Because he invested his life into this. And Ben's not even the full story.

There's a guy named G. Joe that poured into him. And Anna and I, as we've been praying the last few months. As we've been thinking through. Who are some of the best disciple makers we've ever met? Man, G.

Joe Joseph is one of them. He has poured into. I would be willing to bet that at this point, after 20 years of ministry, he has poured into tens. He has poured into hundreds. Who have poured into thousands. He has had an impact.

And G. Joe is a 5'2 Indian guy. I mean, he's not the most relatable person in the world. But he relates to basketball players. He relates to everyone in between. He has invested in so many people.

He has leveraged his life to see a multiplication movement come out of it. One, that he will never see the end of it. Until one day he stands before the presence of Jesus. And there will be thousands of people who are there worshipping the king. Because he was faithful to go and make disciples. This is the vision of what making disciples looks like.

And this is just a small piece of the story. That generations of believers can be impacted by the gospel. When we multiply disciples. I want us to dream. What can this look like in our groups? What can this look like?

Some of the people that you have been building relationships with. Some of the people that you've been getting to know in your work. In your neighborhood. What if this year in 2019. You get to share the gospel with them. And they believe.

And they trust in Jesus. And they start coming to group. And they start learning. And you take some intentional time to walk them through the Bible. Teaching them what the Bible. How to study the Bible.

How to love the Bible. That you get to spend some intentional time with them. Teaching them what it looks like to pray. Teaching them what it looks like to serve. They get plugged in here. And they're serving.

And they're growing. Teaching what it looks like to steward their finances. All of this. And while this is going on. Over the next few years. They do the same thing.

They share the gospel with somebody else. Who believes and trusts in Jesus. And as you're pouring into them. They're pouring in to others. And then we start doing this. And there's a few people.

Let's just say there's three people over the next few years. That we start pouring into. And groups start multiplying all across this city. And then one becomes three. Becomes nine. Becomes 27.

Becomes 81. And we impact thousands. And what if in our church we do this? What if we invest in a few. And we see that many. That we don't even get to see the full effect of it.

That down the line there are people in the presence of God. That we get to worship with for the next thousand years. What could we resolve to do in 2019? This better than this. What has more eternal significance than this? This is exciting.

This is something that stirs our souls. That we get to participate in God on mission. To see him change this city. But I get it. It's also intimidating. It can be a little bit anxious.

It can be a little bit nervous. And that is why I love how Jesus completes this commission. He ends it by saying. And behold. I am with you always. To the end of the age.

I am so encouraged. By how he closes this out. That Jesus never forsakes us. That he's with us to the end. That when we get a little bit anxious about this. A little bit anxious about sharing the gospel.

He is with us. That when we start doing this. And people trust in Jesus. What is inevitably going to happen. What we have seen happen in our church. Is that people get spiritually attacked for it.

That the enemy comes for it. And what he reminds us is. Is that when we are kicking down hell's door. And seeing people be robbed out of the kingdom of darkness. And trust in Jesus. In the midst of those attacks.

He is not going to leave us. He is not going to forsake us. He is forever going to be with us. That when we have our own doubts. And our own frustrations. And our own difficult seasons.

That we are walking through. And we are still trying to do this. Y'all. He is never going to leave us. He is never going to forsake us. He is with us all the way to the end.

That is the beauty of what happened. When the Holy Spirit came upon the church. He sealed us in faith. And he promised. He is never going to let us go. He is with us to the end.

So y'all. Let's do this. In 2019. Let's do this. Let's see Jesus go to work.

In a multiplication movement. That thousands of years from now. We will be worshipping in the presence of Jesus. Meeting people that we have never even met before. That came to Christ. Because we share the gospel of the co-worker this year.

And pour it into them. That we invest in a few. That we might impact many. Matt is going to come up. And as we take communion today.

Repentance and Growth

Repentance and Growth

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

My name is Chet. I'm excited to be here with you all this morning and for us to continue our Anchor Series. What we've been doing in our Anchor Series is looking at what is foundational for us as a church family, what we kind of anchor ourselves in so that what guides us and what leads us. And so that's going to be scripture, but it's going to be specifically how we understand that and how that plays out. And so what we've done so far is we've talked about kind of the gospel-centered portion of who we are. So we're all about Jesus.

We understand that it's about him changing us. It's not about our behavior. And so when we have sin struggles, we know that those are a symptom but not necessarily the root of the problem. And so we consistently apply the gospel to each other, point each other towards Jesus as it's him who changes us through his Holy Spirit. And then what we've moved into over the past two weeks is kind of the community section. So what we mean when we say we're a gospel-centered community on mission, what we mean by community.

And so last week Matt talked to us about church being a family, that we relate to one another that way. And so he went Galatians 4 where it talks about that we've been adopted. So Galatians is going to say that. Ephesians is going to say that. Romans is going to say that. Romans says that Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers.

And so we've actually been brought into God's family. John chapter 1 is going to say that we've been, through Jesus, given the opportunity to be children of God. And so then Matt was just talking about what that looks like and how that plays out and how we exist in relationship with each other. We looked at Acts chapter 2, which just talked about the early church and how they existed in relationship with one another. And so that's us. That's what we're shooting for.

That's why we do community groups, because we believe that the Christian faith has to happen in the context of relationships, that growth has to happen in the context of relationships. And so one of the things we say is that the content is always the gospel and the context is always community. So even when you're reading through the New Testament, most of the use in there are actually would be y'alls to us or use guys for like a handful of people that are part of our church family. But but it's y'all. It's written to a group of people. And so what we do as Americans is we immediately turn everything into rugged individualism.

And so we'll read even in the New Testament and we take it as this personal. This is what I have to do. And we do that to the exclusion. So we ought to respond personally, but we do that to the exclusion of relationships. We do that to the exclusion of this have having to happen in the context of real relationships with people. So we even see Jesus came to earth and spent most of his time with 12 guys.

Most of his time was spent with the 12 disciples and even more than that, a handful of three guys that he that he spent significant time pouring into and walking in life with. And so we often think that the spirituality and growth in spirituality is like a solo operation. Like it's like me on top of a mountain. Looking at a flower and weeping like we kind of feel like there's this we got to get away from everybody. And that's where that's where we'll grow the closest to God. So like when you're reading in Scripture, Jesus did that.

He went off by himself to pray. He went away by himself at times. But most of the time he was in relationship so that even when he goes and the transfiguration happens, which is where it's like this absolute mountaintop experience where Elijah and Moses show up and talk to God, which just just so you know, I don't know how legit your your quiet times are by yourself. But Moses and Elijah have never shown up and they don't show up and then talk to you. You may have read about them, but they don't show up. So Jesus does this has this absolute mountaintop experience.

And when he does, he's got three other guys with him. Because things happen and growth happens and life happens and discipleship happens in the context of community. So the next time you're talking to someone and they're like, man, I just need to spend some time, just me and Jesus, just some alone time. Just invite yourself. Be like, that sounds great. I'll come.

I'm just going to go to my cabin in the woods and just spend some time praying. Sweet. I love cabins. That'll be great. When are we going? Just invite yourself.

It's OK. It is OK to have some alone time, to spend some time absolutely fasting, praying, spending time alone. But I think too often we treat Christianity like it is a slow, solo operation and the Bible does not. And so what we're going to be reading here in Ephesians chapter three, as we get into this today, is Paul's going to be talking and he's just going to assume that the church is a family. He's just going to assume that we exist in relationships with each other. So every time it says you, it is it is the plural form of you.

It's it's written to y'all. He's writing to a church and he just assumes they have real relationships. And we'll see that as we go through. I'm going to pray and then we'll be in Ephesians chapter three. God, we just thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for who you are and what you've accomplished on our behalf.

And we ask, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would continually guide us to be church family. Help us walk through all the difficulties that come along with that. And that through that we would grow in a very real understanding of the gospel. In Jesus name. Amen. Before we get into this, I just want to highlight a few of the things I'd like for us to see as we spend time walking through Ephesians chapter four.

I want us to see that that it is understood that we would exist in relationships. I may have said Ephesians chapter three a couple of times, but I mean, I meant Ephesians chapter four. So. There you go. Ephesians three is good, but we're not going to be looking at it today. Ephesians chapter four.

As we walk through, I want us to see that for us as Christians, growth and discipleship happens in the context of community. That it has to we have to be around people and that in that we actually get to understand the gospel to a greater, greater depth. And so that's kind of what I want us to be able to see as we walk through this, as Paul walks through this entire section where he's writing to him. And so we'll see a few different things that he explains and points out to him. And we're going to be kind of moving kind of fast because we're looking at a whole chapter because we're ambitious this morning.

All right. Chapter four, verse one. I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord. So this is Paul writing and he's in jail. So he's like an actual prisoner.

He's not speaking metaphorically. He's in jail. I, prisoner. I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. And so what he's talking about there when he says walk, he just means your life. I urge you to have your life be worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

The calling that they've been called and the calling we've been called is to be Christians. It's a calling into Christ, into salvation. And so he's saying live as if the gospel is true. Walk in a way that makes sense in light of the gospel. Verse two. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Do you see what he automatically assumed as he told us to walk in life as Christians? He automatically assumes that we're in relationships with other people. And he automatically assumes we're in the type of relationships with other Christians that we're familiar with. Which is that we're a big, hot mess of sinners who love Jesus. Because what does he say we need? Humility.

Gentleness. Patience. You only need patience if you're around people for an extended period of time. And if they're annoying qualities, don't stop. Do you all understand that, right? That's what patience is.

So when you pray for more patience, what you are praying for is God, help this problem not stop. I don't pray for patience. I don't want it. I want the problem to stop. But that's what patience is.

It means that the problem continues. The frustration part continues. Here's what he says. With all humility, gentleness, and with patience. And Paul adds this in the list a good bit when he's writing these, and it's my favorite. Bear with one another.

He says put up with each other. That is so beautiful and freeing. Because what Paul doesn't write is, Dear church, as you become Christians, everything will be laughy and happy and rainbows and sunshine. And I don't know why he'd be like a weird English lady, but that's just how I assume if that's what he was saying. But that's not what he says.

What he says is be church family, and here's what you're going to need. Patience. And put up with each other, because it's going to be frustrating. And I can get on board with that. I'm like, oh man, he's been a part of my group. He's hung out with people like me.

I see Paul knows what he's talking about here. That's beautiful. He says humility, which is just if we all pull ourselves down a notch, if we all just assume other people are more important than us, that'll work out well. Gentleness just means graciousness to one another. And then patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Which means that we understand that we've all been called into the same church family, and we fight for unity.

So we don't put up with drama. We don't put up with awkwardness. We don't let situations just be like, ah, yeah, we kind of had a falling out. No, we don't accept that because we're eager to maintain unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Verse 4. There is one body, and as he talks about this, body means church family.

There's one body. We've been made a body in Christ. And so Corinthians is going to say that. Romans is going to say that. Ephesians is going to say that. That means that we exist with one another, the same relationship that your hand has with your foot.

You're on the same team. Something bad happens to your foot. That affects your hand. Something bad happens to your hand. You now have to pick things up with your foot. And it's a problem.

Like we exist in a body with one another. There's one body, church family, one spirit. That's the Holy Spirit that's come into our hearts as we've trusted in Jesus and been saved. Just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, that one hope is an inheritance that we have in Christ. It's an inheritance we have that we know that we've been saved by Jesus to spend eternity with him. That's our hope.

Our hope is an inheritance, in a calling to heaven through Jesus and through Jesus' work, not our own. Just as you were called to the one hope which belongs to your call, one Lord, that's Jesus, one faith, that's faith in Jesus, one baptism. That's baptism. That's pretty straightforward. One God and Father of all. So he's God and he's Father.

We are a church family who is over all and through all and in all. So we exist unified in the faith. Verse 7. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?

He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. Okay, so he quotes an Old Testament passage and then he explains it and his explanation is kind of confusing. But all he's saying is this passage is talking about Jesus. Because it assumes that he ascended. It's talking about him who came to earth for us. And so what it says is that when Jesus left, he led a host of captives.

And as we read in other places in Scripture, those captives are twofold. It's the people he set free and the enemies he's taken captive. And that's the way kings would work. When they went and conquered, when they would return, they would lead a triumphal procession of those that they had freed and those that they had enslaved. And so it's both his enemies and those who've been freed. And he gave gifts to men.

So he gifts his church, says by grace that he gifts his church to serve. And we're going to understand why here in a second. 11. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. Okay, so we're not going to spend much time, any time, in apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher talking about what that is and how that plays out. That's going to be another sermon for another time.

But what we want to see as we look at this is two things. One is Paul says he's gifted us, which means that the church has been gifted. If you are a Christian, you have been gifted by God through the Holy Spirit to serve and that leadership and our giftings. So leadership in the church and our giftings have one purpose. 12. To equip the saints for the work of ministry.

And saints just means believers, those who are made right by God through Jesus. To equip the saints for work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. Leadership in the church and giftings in the church exist for one purpose. That the saints that the church might serve might do the works of ministry and in that the church would be built up. So that's affected how we exist as a church family.

So if you're a part of a church, if there's a church and only the leaders, only the pastors, only the people, the deacons or whoever they set it up, they're the only ones who can make decisions. They're the only ones who can come up with good ideas. They're the only ones who can lead any kind of ministry or service. They're the only ones. They've missed it. Because the role of leadership in the church is to equip saints to do ministry.

So when people talk about the person's a minister and they mean that they're the one who does all the ministry, I actually kind of missed the point. Because the role of leadership in the church is to equip church family to do ministry. And the role of giftings in the church is to serve church family so that everybody grows up. So just so you all know, if here is a part of our church family, if anytime somebody gets sick or has a problem or needs some counseling, and Matt has to be the one that comes and talks, has to be the one that comes and visits, which let's just be honest. If you're sick and having problems, you probably don't want me.

We want Matt. Like we want Matt to come hug us. We want Matt to come be nice to us. Like if I'm sick, I want Matt. I want Matt to come hug me and tell me it's going to be okay. But if that happens, we've actually missed the point.

Now, leadership in the church should do ministry because they are Christians. But the role of leadership in the church is actually to equip others and equip church family to do ministry. To all the things that the church is supposed to do. Serve and give and love and impact the city and pursue people with the gospel and help everybody grow. And actually when that happens, then the body grows. So one of the ways that we respond to this and one of the ways that we seek to apply this is in our community groups.

That that's where primary relationships happen. That's where pastoral care takes place. That's where people grow together and use their gifts to serve one another. It's in our community groups. That's why if somebody says, hey, I want to do this thing or the Lord's really been pressing on my heart that we need to go do a backpack ministry for BC Grammar. Awesome.

How can we help you? Like a lot of times we've we've outsourced ministry to the church and we try to run everything through church leadership so that someone feels called to do something. And they're going to go to church leadership and say, how can we do this? When the church leadership needs to respond with how can we help you do that? So just so you know, if you if you love the children at BC Grammar and you want to do a backpack ministry and you come tell me the Lord's been waking you up at night and calling saying we need to do that.

My response is going to be sweet. How can we help you do that? You say, well, our whole church needs to do that. No, our whole church is going to do a few things, which is community groups. We're going to gather on Sundays. And then our whole church has the freedom to do everything else as we serve and work together.

And if the Lord's been pressing something on your heart, it's because he specifically gifted you and calling you into that. And that's what gets to be beautiful as we all get to serve and work together. Does that make sense? You see how that's good? We'll get to see how that continues to play out. So to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

So as as the saints are equipped, the church grows, the bodies built up until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God. As we all serve, as we all use our gifts, as we've all been specifically gifted to serve in the church, as that happens, we all grow. We all grow in unity and we all grow in our knowledge of the son of God. It's through serving that we better understand who Jesus is and what he's done. And it's through serving one another. You have been gifted by God to serve others.

See, I even think a lot of times in our talk of gifting in the in the American church, we think about it as a personal thing. So like, what are you gifted in? Where do you find your role? And it becomes about you. You're gifted by God for the for the benefit of everyone else. To build up the church.

Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ. Mature manhood in the Greek just means full grown man, which I love that because every once in a while you meet somebody and you're like, that's a full grown man. Like there are men and they're like adult men and then there are full grown men. And so as Christians, we all want to serve and we all want to work so that we can be Christians with like big man hand, like man paws and beards and back hair. You know, spiritually. Like we want to grow to be full grown men in the church is what it what he says to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ that as we all serve, as we all work, as we all toil together, we all grow to be more like Jesus.

And that's beautiful. See, what happens is the more people serve, the more people use their gifts, the less it is about people and the more it gets to be about Jesus. The more it gets to be about all the ways that he blesses and works and gives his grace and his giftings to his church family so that the church builds itself up. And the more that that happens, the more it gets to be about Jesus. So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

You know, it's beautiful about all of the church pulling together and striving together. It's not easily led astray. One person who can say things in a very articulate way can't stand up and lead a large group of the church off into nonsense because the whole church has been serving and working and growing together. It doesn't happen. So it's beautiful about our groups.

I get to show up to my group and say, I was reading this and I was thinking I was thinking it was saying this. And my group gets to say, there's no way it was saying that because Roman says this. And I get to say, you're right. What I thought was stupid. It's very helpful. Thank you.

We don't get easily led astray as we all grow together. 15. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ. We use that speaking the truth in love. A lot of times I think people use it as like, I'm going to say something mean to you. I'm going to speak the truth in love to you, brother.

You ought not sing in front of people. It's like, well, OK, we should say true things to one another and we should say it in a gracious, loving way. But really, the truth is the gospel. And so we speak in love. We speak the gospel to each other. We point each other back to Jesus.

And as that happens, as we all serve and we all work and we all use our gifting, as that happens, we grow up into Jesus. And it gets to be about him, not about us. Verse 16. from whom, from Jesus, from Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow. That's Jesus makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. When all of us pull together, when all of us use our giftings, the whole church grows. We grow into Jesus and Jesus helps us grow and we build each other up.

That's why community groups are important for us because we look at scripture and we don't see how we're going to do some of the things that it calls us to do unless we're in real relationships with each other. And in our community groups, we're designed to serve one another. So you've got somebody in your group that just relationally has way more friends than anybody should ever have. Like there's probably someone in your group that just, they can keep up with everybody. They know everybody. They're constantly introducing you to people they genuinely have friendships with.

Like it annoys you how many friends they have. Like you don't think they should have that many friends. Like no one person should have that many friends, but they're gifted that way. And so we get to grow together. Some of you hadn't made a friend since middle school. Not very gifted there.

God hasn't gifted you in the ability to just make a friend. Like you start a conversation, it gets awkward and you bail. Like you consistently are like, hey, this is a nice conversation. You run it into the ground and then you go, all right, this is good, good talking. You're not designed to do it, but in your group, you have something you're gifted to do. Maybe you are amazing in a kitchen.

Maybe you are amazing when it comes to service. You love not having to talk and having to be at the front of things, but you're going to make sure everything's clean. You're going to make sure everybody has what they need because God's gifted you to serve and to help. And the person who relationally connects to everybody maybe can't have a real deep conversation with anyone. It goes beyond ha ha ha ha and they're over their head. And there's just one person in your group that immediately can turn conversations and handle spiritual things and go towards the gospel.

Some of you, when someone's hurting, the best you've got is like, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there. Like that's what you got. But you can, you can show up and help them work. You can show up and help serve. You're going to take care of logistic things for them while they're dealing with problems. You're going to make sure that people bring food to their house, but someone else is going to be the person sitting on the couch crying with them.

You've been gifted by the Holy Spirit for your church family. And if we are not consistently figuring out how we've been designed to, to, to serve each other, we actually hurt the body because we're designed to use our gifts so that the body builds itself up. So we actually get to begin to pray about and ask God, how am I supposed to serve my community group? How am I supposed to serve my church family? What have you gifted me to do? And we're going to get to see how this helps us grow.

We already see how it helps the rest of our church family grow, but we'll get to see as we look through the rest of this, how it helps us grow. So, um, Paul in this next section, we're going to kind of read through it pretty quickly. What he's going to say basically is this, you used to not be a Christian. Now you are, you have a new identity in Christ, not you did these things and it made you a Christian. He's going to say, no, Jesus made you a Christian through what he's done. Now live like it.

So we, we can't get that backwards. You can't get it as you do stuff and get to become a Christian. And then you get to live that way to keep it together. No, it's Jesus did stuff. He saved us through his work, not ours. That's the gospel.

We became Christians and then we get to live like it as we have a new identity. Okay. And then he's going to explain kind of how that looks as we read through the rest of this chapter. So now this, I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles. And in this particular situation, it just means those who don't know Jesus in the futility of their minds. And they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.

They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But this is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. And so Jesus makes us new. He creates us in righteousness and holiness. And then we get to walk in that.

And so here's how he explains how we get to do that. And again, we'll see that it's all relational. It has to do with being in real relationships. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

Let the thief work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come from out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Okay.

So here's what Paul says. Walk in the new life you've been given. And then he tells us what that looks like. And it's all relational. Don't lie to each other. Don't be fake.

That's an invitation. That's not a command. It is kind of a command, but it's an invitation. Just so you know, if you're in a community group, you have a couple of options. You can be a fake version of yourself, a pretend version of yourself, and people can like the pretend version of you, but that is tiring and very difficult to keep up. And it's not real.

What he says is be honest, be open, be real. And then you actually get to find that you get to be a messed up sinner that a bunch of people love anyway. You get to be the real, uh, non-fake, non-cleaned up version of yourself and get to see how freeing that is as a group of people rally around. I always, I always think it's funny when something happens in our groups and somebody like something comes out and it turns out that they're worse than everybody thought. Um, and they're usually like, I just don't want people to think, um, you know, and it's like, what a sinner? Braswell brought us together.

We knew you were a sinner. You've been having it together for too long. We all assumed you were faking. We're glad this came out. Now we get to actually begin to grow.

We get to actually walk this out like it's good and healthy. Our goodness didn't bring us together. Our sin did. So when we find out that we're broken, all it does is point to how good Jesus is. So he says, be honest, be real with each other.

Then he says this, be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. You know what he assumes as you exist in relationships with each other? You're going to get mad. Isn't that nice? And he says, be angry, just work it out.

Like don't, don't linger on that. Don't let that hang out. Don't, don't go, don't let the sun go down on that. So he says, work out problems, relational problems quickly. Don't hold onto them. He says, uh, change the former man of your life.

So if you used to steal, don't steal anymore. Like he goes through this whole list and then he ends it with this, forgive each other. So he says, do this, do this, do this, do this, live like this. And then he gets to the end and he goes, okay, guys. All right, team, you're going to mess that up.

So forgive each other. Let me tell you something that is true about our church family. If you hang out long enough, one of two things will happen. And if you keep hanging out, both will. If you hang out long enough, one of two things will happen. If you keep hanging out, both will either someone in our church family will hurt you, will offend you, will fail you, will sin against you, or you will hurt somebody, offend them, fail them, or sin against them.

Either you will be sinned against or you will sin against someone if you hang out long enough in real relationships. And here's what's beautiful. We get to forgive each other. Through the cross, we've been forgiven. So we actually get to forgive as we live in real relationships.

And here's the thing. If you don't live in real relationships, you won't have to have patience. You won't have to bear with anyone. You won't have to forgive anyone. And you'll actually have a shallow understanding of God's grace towards you. Because it's only when I have to forgive someone that I realize how costly forgiveness is.

And I appreciate all the more the cross. And it's only the people that we exist in real relationships with that we have to have patience for. My wife, Anna, has to have the most patience for me than anyone else in the world. Because she's around me all the time. She has to bear with me than more than anyone else in the world. And the truth is, is we walk in real relationships in our community groups.

We get to have patience with each other. We get to bear with one another. And we get to repent. And we get to forgive. Hang out long enough and you'll be on both ends of that. You'll have to go to someone and say, I failed.

I sinned against you. I've been angry with you. And I hadn't talked to you about it. I allowed this awkward situation to get in between us. And we never worked it out. And I was wrong.

And I'm sinful. And I need you to forgive me. And then they actually get to apply the gospel, which is that Jesus forgave them. So they get to forgive you. And it's a process. And if you hang out long enough, you'll be on both ends of it.

And the truth is, in both sides of that, we get to remember the gospel and we get to grow in it. I want us to see one thing as we look in, as how he moves into this next section. Of course, the chapters and verses were added later. So I feel like this is the same kind of thought process. But therefore, this is chapter five.

Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. So remember, we're a family. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God. So here's what he says. Be imitators of God as children of God. Love one another.

Walk in love and realize that that Jesus gave himself up as an offering and a sacrifice for us as he loved us that much. Tim Keller, who's really smart. He's a pastor in New York, and he writes really smart things. He's kind of like C.S. Lewis, but he's alive. He says this when it talks about loving people.

And I just thought this was helpful. It's this whole section on how loving people is difficult, but he starts it off this way. He says, think about it. If you love a person whose life is all put together and has no major needs, it costs you nothing. It's delightful. There are probably four or five people like that where you live.

You ought to love. You ought to find them and become their friend. That's nice. He says, think about it. If you love someone who's got their life all put together, it costs you nothing. And it's nice.

It's delightful. Find those people and be their friend. And then he says, but the rest of love doesn't look like that. And he goes to this whole section and explains that all of love is sacrifice. And that's what we see in this chapter, this verse where it says, walk in love, just as Jesus loved us and was a sacrifice for us. Here's how this works.

My wife and I are about to have a baby in a couple of weeks. It's supposed to be like 30 days from now, but Anna's hoping that he comes early because she's getting really tired of him kicking her. I'm hoping he doesn't come super early because I'm enjoying like being able to sleep at night and stuff because he doesn't kick me. He doesn't keep me up. But here's what I understand.

We don't have any kids, but here's what I understand about children. Uh, cause I've been doing some research online and talking to people. Um, here's what I understand about children. Uh, they don't really pull their own weight for like some years. Like they're pretty useless when it comes to like chores and accomplishing things and like making money. I think it's like upwards of like seven years before you can like get them in the workforce and they start really, really pulling their weight around the house.

Uh, here's what we understand when it comes to love. It takes sacrifice to love somebody. It just does. Real love is going to involve sacrifice. It's going to involve sacrificing time. It's going to involve.

So as we raise our son, we're going to have to sacrifice. He's going to take up our time. He's going to, he's going to monopolize our time in a lot of ways. He's going to, I'm going to be involved in less than interesting conversations. Like he's going to be, I'm going to be like, bro, you're babbling nonsense. I don't even understand half of what you're saying.

And that show is dumb. I don't want to talk about it. Like, wait till you get something interesting to say, we'll talk. No, I can't do that. I have to be like, really? Wow.

You did what? Even if I can't understand what he's saying, like, I've got to do that. So he'll grow. I have to sacrifice so that he'll grow. I have to sacrifice time and energy and money and effort. And that's what love looks like.

And if I didn't do that, I wouldn't love him. Like if you saw parents that weren't willing to sacrifice for their children, you'd be like, there's something wrong in this situation because all love involves sacrifice. And we know that. Let's say you're in high school and there's a girl that's considered a geeky. And some people don't really hang out with her, but you notice this. And so you, you want to be your friend.

Like you want to go out of your way to be nice to her because life seems rough. So you do, you start hanging out with her, you start talking to her and I don't know, maybe a week into this, your friends come over and say, why are you talking to her? Why are you hanging out with her? What's happened? Her geekiness has rubbed off on you. You, you can't love her without taking on some of her qualities, without taking on some of what makes her unlovable by other people.

You have to pour out some of your coolness and take on some of her geekiness. But that's how love works. If you're in a community group and there's someone in your group that's just needy, they're hurting, life hasn't been good for them right now, they're just emotionally down, they're depressed. If you spend time with them, the only way for them to be undepressed, for them to be, come out of being down is for you to pour out your joy, for you to actually let them drain you. It's the only way to love them. It's through sacrifice.

It's through taking your time and your energy and your joy and pouring it out on their behalf to be a substitutionary sacrifice for them, which is what Jesus was for us. All love is sacrifice. We can't bear each other's burdens unless we carry some of the weight. The problem with the Christian church in America so often is that I'm going to bear your burden unless some of the burden gets on me, which doesn't make any sense. Like that's my favorite way to move things. Like in my community group, we have to move people all the time because they never stop moving for some reason.

The best is when they're moving far away because then you don't have to do it once. You just pack them up and you're like, peace. Just kidding, guys. These crosstown moves are killing me though. So I was talking to Logan the other day.

He's moving and he was explaining who was helping him. He goes, yeah, and we've got your truck. And I was like, bro, I haven't even told you how to help you yet. Like, I don't know why you're just assuming my truck. I'm like, are you going to drive it? I didn't say that.

I thought it. That's why he was laughing hard back there because I didn't. This is just things I think, guys. Here's the thing. If somebody's moving something and I'm going to help, I actually have to shoulder some of the weight. I can't just stick my hands under.

That's my favorite. It's like, just follow somebody and be like, I'm spotting you. You pull your back. I'll catch you. Like, no, you actually have to carry some of the weight. And as we walk in life together, we actually have to give up some of our energy, some of our joy, some of our, we have to bear some of our burdens.

We have to actually, to be generous, have to open our wallets to help someone else out. That's how that works. And if we don't do that, we miss out on the opportunity to grow because we miss out on an opportunity to align ourselves with Jesus and understand the depth of his generosity, the depth of his love and the depth of his sacrifice and how difficult it is to forgive. If we never walk in relationships, we miss all of that. Not only does our church family not get served as we pour ourselves out for them, but we actually miss out on understanding the reality and the weight of the gospel. See, too often we approach our groups and we approach churches by, what am I getting out of this?

And we miss the point. If you show up to your group and think, oh, you know, people talk to you and say, yeah, I just wasn't getting fed there. I just wasn't getting anything out of that. Or it just wasn't, it wasn't meeting my needs. They've missed the point because they were gifted specifically to pour themselves out. And real love is going to involve sacrifice.

And so when everybody in your community group starts showing up and saying, how can I serve? I exist for these other people. My gifts are here for these other people. I'm going to pour out for these other people. That actually gets to be a beautiful group. Everybody gets to grow and it gets to be about Jesus.

And it's beautiful. When we were about to plant a church, I was up in Lynchburg. I was going to school and I was talking to a pastor who's solid guy, has done a lot of stuff, was a pastor of a big church and his dad's like a brain genius. And, um, he was talking to me and he said, his dad had been a professor forever, actually like started a school. And he said to me, he said, um, he said, okay, you're going to do groups and that's cool to help people grow as disciples and stuff. Cause I was, you know, I had my plan for what we were going to do.

And, uh, he said, uh, but my dad's 80. He's been in the church forever. He knows the Bible backward and forward. He doesn't need to be in one of your groups. What does he need to do? Like, what would you have for him?

And so I, that was a legitimate, like I was thinking about it. I was like, okay. Um, and I was like, I don't know. So I spent more time praying about it. And then I realized that the whole understanding, the approach to that was just off. First of all, he's gifted for the benefit of others.

So actually he might think he doesn't need a group, but the group needs him to share wisdom, to point them out to where they're off in the gospel, where they're not understanding the Bible clearly. It needs him to teach and to lead and shepherd. And here's the other thing. He doesn't get to grow. If he's not in relationships, he won't get to forgive unless I get to take him off. He won't get to bear with someone unless he consistently is around me so that I can annoy him.

Like that's how that works. He actually gets to grow, even though we would look at him in our, in our culture and say, Oh, he knows everything. Yeah. But he doesn't get to apply it unless he's having to forgive, unless he's having to bear with people, unless he's having to have patience, unless he consistently has me sit down across from him and completely misunderstand what he taught me the week before. Then he needs patience.

Then he needs to bear with somebody. You see, we all get to grow as we have real relationships. And when Paul's walking through this and saying, we're gifted to serve one another, he's saying that you were designed to be in relationships with each other. This is just how it works. So don't miss that.

If you're not in a community group and you say, I'm a Christian, get in a group because it's how we grow. It's how we get to be around each other in normal life so that we can see how we ought to apply the gospel to one another, how we ought to walk through life together. If you're in a group, pour yourself out. Realize that all love is sacrifice and that we're empowered by the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross to actually love one another, to actually forgive. And that as we have to do that, we'll grow. We'll all grow as we pour ourselves out, as we go beyond how far we thought we could bear, as we deal with people that are frustrating, as we have to repent and as we have to forgive.

We'll come to love the gospel in a way that we never thought we could. And we'll become a part of a real family. And there's a lot of joy there. So we'll be messy. Yes, we'll be difficult. We'll be hard.

We'll be frustrating. Will you be absolutely worn out at times? Yes. But will it be beautiful and good? And will it make much of Jesus? Yes.

And as we do it, we'll all get to grow. So don't miss out. Josh and Bianca and Raz are going to come back up and we're going to sing as a church family together. And that's all I would say is to realize that you've been gifted by God to serve others, that you exist for the benefit of your group, not the other way around, that we're designed to pull together, to serve together, to grow together in all the ways that God's gifted us to do that. And if you're not, you're missing out. You're missing out on the beauty that comes from being in real relationships with real sinners who have a real savior.

So don't miss out. Let's pray. God, we thank you that through your sacrifice and through your forgiveness and through your love that we can have real relationships, that you have made us into a family and that it's our brokenness and our messiness that brings us together because it's your righteousness and holiness that saves us. So God, I pray that we wouldn't settle for surface level, that we wouldn't settle for fake, but that we'd be real because none of us through our good behavior saved ourselves. And as we're real, God, and as we're open and as we're broken and as we're frustrating to one another, I pray that you would empower us through the gospel to forgive and to sacrifice and to love in a real way.

We ask God that your Holy Spirit would move, begin to show us how we ought to serve, where you have gifted us, for those of us who don't know. That you'd help us to point out in each other where there's growth and where there's gifting. God, we just ask that as we all serve and as we all pull together and as we all do ministry, that you would build your church and that it would get to be all about you and that you would get all the glory from it as your entire family serves and works and uses the gifts that you gave them. We ask you to work in and among us and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Y'all stand, let's sing.