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Andy Stanley - Ekklesia Part 1 Whats in a Name · Andy Stanley Sermons

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Living on Earth might make you feel small. You're just one of eight billion
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on this blue cosmic ball, so many characters with their roles to play.
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Perhaps many, if not most, still finding their way, some who are
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given to athletic pursuits, while others find joy on educational routes. Those who
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build and those who farm, those who sell widgets using their charm. But
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aren't we more than what we do? Being one of eight billion should give
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us a clue on our own. It's difficult to make a big depth brokenness
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and need refuse to relent. Perhaps we were designed for a much grander endeavor,
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not toiling alone but pulling together. The planet is large, This much
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is true. But when God calls his people so much we can do solve
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the world's problems. That does sound upset, But maybe we could stop with
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this strange little what So it comes as no surprise that I love church.
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I love the local church, I love like the big c Church, the
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universal church, the worldwide church, and I love our church. I don't
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know what comes to mind when you hear the word church. Maybe the church
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you're sitting in currently one of our churches. Maybe when you think church,
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you think about the church you grew up in. Maybe when you think church,
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unfortunately, maybe you think about the church you left, or hopefully not,
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maybe you think about the church you're thinking about leaving. But regardless of
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what you think about when you hear the word church, you don't think about
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what the first church people thought about. Because our experience with church is extraordinarily
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I mean, there's almost no comparison to what the first church people experience and
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what they and what they thought about. They had an advantage and a disadvantage.
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The advantage was in the first century, the very first church people were
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never ever bored. Ever, they were scared, but they weren't bored.
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So maybe you sat through church and been bored, But I bet you haven't
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sat through a church service where you were scared. Okay. That was kind
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of their experience. And the first century church there were no buildings. There
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are no buildings, bibles or bands or children's environments that look like Disneyland.
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You know, they didn't have any of that stuff. They literally met outside
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at the edge of the woods. They met in gardens, they met in
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homes. They were just small gatherings. They met together early on the first
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day of the week in ancient times, there was no such thing as a
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weekend. The Jewish people celebrated Sabbath, but that was only in the cultures
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of the regions of the world where there were enough Jewish people to influence culture.
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But the first church people didn't meet on the Sabbath. They met on
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the first day of the week because that's the day Jesus rose from the dead.
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But they had a prime pro because the first day of the week was
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like our Monday. So they met before work to celebrate the resurrection, and
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they sang a hymn, and they shared some thoughts, and they prayed together,
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and if they had a portion of scripture or somebody had memorized the Psalm,
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they would share that. Then they would break up and they would go
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back to work or go to school. The slaves had to get back and
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show up to serve their masters. Very very different experience. But all of
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this, all of this well and the other things big difference. There was
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no institution, there was no leadership, there was no hierarchy, there was
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no structure. Literally, the church in the first century was pure movement.
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It was just a movement, and it was a movement fueled by one simple
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conviction, one simple idea. They didn't have systematic theology, they didn't have
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this versus that, they didn't have a bunch of isms. All they had
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was this one central idea that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God and
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then he was sent by God to explain God and to reconcile the world to
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God. That this was amazing, and they were absolutely convinced this was true,
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because the first century Church actually was led by and influenced by the men
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and women who sat at the feet of Jesus. And they were absolutely convinced
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that Jesus was the son of God because of what they'd seen, and he
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came to explain what God was like and to reconcile the world to God,
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and that conviction. Those beliefs were anchored not to the teaching of Jesus.
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They were anchored to an event, a simple, verifiable event, because many
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of them were eyewitnesses of this event, and that event, of course,
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was the resurrection of Jesus. And early on, this is amazing compared to
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us. Early on, that's all, they had no literature, no bibles,
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most of them couldn't read anyway, but it was good news. Jesus
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had come and removed much of the mystery surrounding God. Now people understood,
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unlike the pagan religions weren't even called religion, it's just the pagan cults.
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They understood what God was like, and who God loved, and what God
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liked, and they understood for the first time where they stood with God because
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Jesus came to remove some of that mystery. Now, as you know,
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time went by and expressions of the Christian faith. Expressions of the Christian faith
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changed, right, they changed generation to generation, they changed culture to culture.
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In fact, what we do now, the way we worship now,
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the way we gather now, is obviously very different than the first century.
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But with all of that change, there are some things, and there were
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some things that should never ever change, even though some things change from generation
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to generation in terms of expression and style. The original content of Jesus teaching,
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the original emphasis, the original tone, and the posture and the approach
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of our faith, jesus original intent for that first group of people that he
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commissioned to go out and change the world. Those are the things we can
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never afford to lose sight of, to veer away from. And you know,
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enough about church history to know this. When the church veered, things
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got weird. When the church veered historically away from the teaching of Jesus,
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things got really weird. When the church or a church loses its way,
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you know what happens. People get hurt. In fact, there's a phrase
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now that you know people use church hurt. Church hurt. I mean,
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I imagine explaining to Jesus one day in the future, there's going to be
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such thing as people hurt by your movement, Jesus who came to say,
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Hey, my one command is you're to love each other the way I've loved
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you. How in the world could anyone ever be hurt by a church who's
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only been given one simple instruction, love as I have loved you. But
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it's happened, And when the church veers from the original intent of Jesus,
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people ultimately get hurt. They get hurt in Jesus' name, abuse with a
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divine excuse, God's name. You've seen this, you've heard this, maybe
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you've been the victim of this. God's name gets stamped on behavior that he
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finds despicable. And when the church, when the church loses its way,
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the church loses its influence. And we're going to talk a little bit about
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this. We talk about it every once in a while. This is so
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dangerous, This is so dangerous. Even if you're not a church person,
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even if you're not a Christian, you don't want the church to lose influence
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because, believe it or not, the foundation for human dignity, the foundation
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of human rights, the foundation of women's rights, are anchored to the belief
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that everyone is made in the image of God. It's not anchored to the
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materialistic world we live in. The whole idea that you have dignity and people
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who don't look like you or live like you have dignity simply because they're human.
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That is anchored in the teaching of Jesus. It's anchored to an ethic
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that Jesus expanded to the whole world. And if that ever goes away,
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you don't want to live in that world. You don't want to live in
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that culture. Fortunately, even though the church oftentimes veers and oftentimes there's church
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heret Fortunately in every generation there are we're just gonna use an old term,
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reformers, or some people would say a remnant, But there are reformers who
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rise up and say no, no more, not on our watch. And
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they call the church back. And do you know what they call the church
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back to. They don't simply call the church back to something in the past.
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They call the church back to the teaching of Jesus, the original version
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of our faith, his mandated mission. And here's why this is important for
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you, and here's why it's important for me, and here's why it's important
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for all of us. And we don't think in these terms. I know
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you're busy, you're raising kids, and you're making a living, and you've
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got stuff going on. It's hard to even pay attention today because there's so
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much going on this afternoon. I get all that. But here's the reality,
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whether you know it or not, or accept it or not, we
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are stewards, that is, managers of responsible for We are stewards of the
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church in our generation. And when I say we, I don't simply mean
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the people gathered with me in this room or the people gathered with you in
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that room, or in your living room or in your card as you listen.
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I mean anyone who claims to be a Christian, anyone who claims to
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be a Christian, anyone who claims to be a Christian. We collectively are
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the stewards or the managers, or are responsible for the faith of our generation.
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Whether you actually attend a church or not, say in a different way,
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we determine you determined, I determined. We determine what Christianity looks like.
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We determine what Christianity acts like. Most importantly, we determine what Christianity
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reacts like and people outside of our faith tradition. In fact, you may
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be watching, or you may be in one of the rooms with us today
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and you're not a Christian. Somebody said, if you're gonna have lunch with
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us, you got to come to church with me today. Or this is
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what we on Sunday. We sit down and watch this guy talk for thirty
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minutes. You know, whatever the deal is, and this isn't really your
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thing, and you don't even really want to pay attention. Here's what I
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know about you. Okay, you may not be a Bible scholar, you
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may not know everything the Bible teaches, you may not be familiar with the
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entire Bible. But here's what I know about you. You are familiar with
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Jesus, and you expect me and you expect us to act and react like
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Jesus, and you should. So the point is simply this, Our collective
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actions and reactions authenticate or deauthenticate the authenticity of our faith. In other words,
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how we live our lives is a picture of, or a message of,
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what is the church really about, not just individual Christian expressions the Church
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of the Lord Jesus Christ that he launched two thousand years ago. Your actions
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and reactions communicate whether you actually believe what you are asking other people to believe
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to which if again, if you're not a Christian, that might be the
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only thing you've ever heard a preacher say that you agree with, because you're
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like exactly Andy. The reason I'm not interested in being one of you,
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as I've met so many of you that believe a bunch of stuff, but
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you don't act anything like I think Jesus would act. Or Andy. The
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reason I'm not one of you anymore. The reason I left the faith is
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I kept going to churches, and everybody sang the songs, everybody smiled,
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But in terms of how I was treated and how they treated each other and
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the things that were important to them, I just didn't see the authenticity.
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So I'm out. I was raised in it, but I'm out. It's
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a reminder that if you claim to be a Christian, if I claim to
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be a Christian, we represent we are stewards of the church in our generation.
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So consequently we have to get this right. And the things I love
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about our church is that you are in fact getting it right. It's why,
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and again one of our best kept secrets. It's why church leaders all
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over our country and all over the world actually look to you and look to
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us for leadership. Every other year and again, we never talked about this,
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but I thought this would be a good time to talk about. Every
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other year, we actually host a conference for church leaders from all over the
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world and all over the country to come learn what we do. We call
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it the Drive Conference. Do a little ad here Drive Conference, and already
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so it's coming up May first and second. In this conference, we already
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have people registered from the UK, South America, Latin America, Australia,
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South Africa. Church leaders who come to the United States spend a couple of
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days with us where we say here's what we're doing now, here's what we've
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changed, here's how we're talking about it now, and Our goal is to
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help raise up outward facing churches that understand that we are the stewards at the
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church and our generation and we have to get it right. So, if
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you're watching today and you attend a different church, I want to invite your
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church leaders to our conference May first and second. Fact, this is what
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you might want to think about. Why don't you tell your pastor, hey,
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I'd love for you to go to this conference. I'll pay your way.
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Just sponsor somebody on your church staff, or if you're a volunteer at
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your church. We would love to have you on May first and second.
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It's an extraordinary, extraordinary opportunity now back to us. So for us to
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continue to stay on track, so we don't veer and get weird. Right,
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for us to stay on track, and this series, here's what we're
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gonna do. We're gonna take a look back at the actions and the reactions
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of the first century Christians, the first Church again, the men and women.
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Imagine this, the men and women who sat at the feet of Jesus.
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If anybody got it right, they got it right. If anybody knew
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how to model for us how to live and how to react, they're the
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ones we are to look to. But first before we jump into the history
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of all that and the narrative of all that, we're going to jump in
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a lot next week. Don't miss part two of this series. First,
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a word about the word, specifically, a word about the word church.
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Now, as you hopefully know or probably know, when the New Testament not
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the Old Testament. When the New Testament was first written, it was written
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in Greek, and the Greek word that's translated church in our English New Testaments
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is a dynamic, defining word. The Greek term is actually ecclecia. This
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title of this entire series ecclesia. Ecclesia in the first century. In fact,
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eclesa in every century was not a religious term. It was just a
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common urn that simply meant assembly. You could have an eccleca of men.
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You could have an eccleca of women, You could have an eccleca of soldiers,
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you could have an ecclesia of citizens. Anytime a group came together for
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a specific purpose, they would refer to it as an assembly or you know,
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a gathering people, and ecclecia. In fact, there's an interesting situation
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this term eclesia in the Greek New Testament is always translated Church. And I'll
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tell you why in just a minute, except for a couple of occasions,
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and I want to tell you about one because it illustrates the point and why
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this is important. In the Book of Acts, Acts, not Axe or
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ax. In the Book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostle, I
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say that when I was a kid, I'm like, that sounds like a
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great book. It's about an axe. Anyway, So sorry, preacher's kid,
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you should know better. But anyway, so in the Book of Acts,
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Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, records the journeys of the
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Apostle Paul when he took the Gospel out to the Mediterranean base in the Mediterranean
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Rim, to all these port cities. And if Paul visits Ephesus, and
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Paul begins to preach that God has done something unique in the world and everybody's
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invited to participate in it. But there was a guild there that the silver
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guild and a metal guild where they made idols for the people in Ephesus.
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And suddenly they were afraid if everybody becomes a Christian, that are going to
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quit buying our idols. They caused a riot in order to chase the apostle
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Paul out of town. And so Luke records what happens in this riot,
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and in describing the riot, he uses the word ecclesia, but of course
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it's not translated church. He actually translates the word. Here's what Luke writes.
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This is just for fun. He writes the assembly. Everywhere else this
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word is translated church in the New Testament, but he actually translates it the
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assembly. Talking about the citizen assembly an ephesis. The assembly was in confusion.
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Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did
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not even know why they were there. Now this does sound like some churches,
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I will acknowledge, or if you've ever been to a church business meeting,
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it can erupt into kind of a riot, right, if you've ever
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been to a church business meeting. My point is simply this. When they
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translated the Bible into English, they saw ecclesia, and they didn't put church.
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They put assembly, because that's what the word actually meant, and it
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should be translated assembly everywhere. Ecclesia shows up in the Greek New Testament translated
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into our English New Testament, which raises another question. Well, then where
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in the world did the word church come from? And I'm going to tell
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you, And this is so important to your story if you're a Christian,
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and this is so important to those of you who aren't Christians, who wonder
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sometimes why does the church continue to veer? And why are their hypocrites in
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the church? So let me just set your mind that He's there will always
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be hypocrites in the church, but there is a through line that always brings
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the church back to where it ought to be. So here's what happened in
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the fourth century. In the fourth century, so Jesus did his thing in
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the first century. So about three hundred and eighty years later, Christianity is
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legalized in the Roman Empire and eventually becomes the religion of the Roman Empire.
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That's an amazing story in and of itself. So Christians began to come out
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of the hiding and were able to worship in public. But where are they
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going to worship? So they rented some buildings, they combined some houses,
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and in some cases eventually they took over pagan temples and turned them in to
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places of worship. But in the fourth century, what do we call these
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places of worship. So they began to call these places of worship another Greek
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word carea korea costs, which literally meant house of the Lord, or sometimes
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it's translated temple. So they would see these religious Christian people worshiping together,
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and they had to refer to the building that they worshiped in, and so
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it was called one of these. But this wasn't a religious term either.
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It could be by lord, it could be a lord of slaves, it
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could be a landlord. None of this is religious terminology. It was just
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the term they began to use to describe, Oh, that's where that group
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of Jesus followers meets, and that rheacos or however they would say it.
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Now, as Christianity spread outside the Greek speaking world, in every culture where
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they were Christians, they had their own word to describe the place where Christians
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worship. In Germany, once the Gospel spread to Germany, this was the
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word they used, which meant house of the Lord. English speakers picked up
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on this word and they pronounced it kirk kirk kirk. That eventually became the
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English word church. So our word that shows up in our New Testaments that
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we use all the time we talk about church is not a translation of a
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word in the New Testament. It's actually a derivative from a German term that
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unfortunately means house of the Lord. So over time the term evolved to include
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the people in the house of the Lord or the people in the building.
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And the rest is history. But it's very unfortunate history because because the Ecclesia
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of Jesus is not a location. The Ecclesia of Jesus is not a building.
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The Ecclesia of Jesus is a movement. It is a gathering of people
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on purpose to accomplish something together that wouldn't be accomplished any other way. But
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once in the fourth century, there were places that were controlled by the leaders.
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If you control the place, you control the people. If you control
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the place, you control what's taught in the place. And nobody had a
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Bible. There were very few bibles. The Bible was still being assembled in
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the fourth century. In fact, when they finally published in bibles, it
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was about this that were extraordinarily expensive, and they in some cases would chain
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them to the altar so no one would steal them or rip pages out of
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them. And soon the church looked and acted nothing like the Ecclesa of Jesus.
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It was tame, it was distorted, it veered, but along came
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reformers, because in every generation there's going to be a group of people that
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says, not on our watch, that's not what Jesus intended, that's not
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what Jesus taught, and that's not what Jesus modeled. And one of those
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reformers I want to tell you a little bit about is a man named William
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Tyndale, who has influenced your life indirectly in ways you can't even begin to
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imagine. William Tyndale lived in the sixteenth century, in the fifteen hundreds,
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and he's often referred to as the father of the English Bible, for which
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you should be so grateful. Now here's why that's a big deal. In
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the fourth century, this is the sixteenth century. In the fourth century,
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the Bible, after it was translated from Greek, it was translated into Latin,
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and the Latin Vulgate was the Bible of the church for several hundred years.
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Time fewer and fewer people spoke Latin, especially in the areas outside the
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influence of Rome, so you had church being done in a language and mass
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being done in a language nobody understood. And yet at the same time,
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these are Christians, Jesus followers, and they assembled, but oftentimes they don't
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understand what's being said. And nobody had access to the Bible. So our
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guy, William Tindale came up with an idea. He decided, we need
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a Bible in the language of the people. And he lived in England,
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so he decided to translate the Bible for himself. He was a brilliant scholar,
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but he did the unthinkable. Instead of taking the Latin Bible and translating
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from Latin to English, he went behind the Latin and translated from Greek to
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English and from Hebrew Old Testament to English. And in doing so he began
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to rock the religious world because he discovered things in the English text that were
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masked and distorted in the Latin text. And church leaders were furious because here
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what they're thinking, Wait a minute, if the common people have access to
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the whole Bible, where would that lead. It would lead to us.
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It would lead to the world understanding what Jesus did and what Jesus said,
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and what Jesus intended. And so when he was in England. Eventually he's
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arrested. I'll tell you more about that in a minute. He was confronted
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in one of these trials. I don't know if it was final trial or
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a different confrontation with the bishops in England. He is reported to have said
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the following right to their face. I mean, these are the intimidating people
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that in that culture held the power of life and death. Here's what he
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said, if God spare my life ever many years, in other words,
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if I continue to live, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow,
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the lowest of the low, to know more of the scriptures than thou
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dust, he says to the bishops. In other words, my life is
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dedicated to getting the Scripture into the hands of the people. Imagine that he
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was having to go to war with church leaders over getting the scripture into the
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hands of the people. In fifteen twenty four, he leaves England and he
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goes to Germany because his life is at stake. He finds a printer.
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By this time there are a few printing presses, the Gutenberg Press. Interesting
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the Gutenberg Press, you've probably heard. The first book that the Gutenberg Press
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printed was what anybody knows it's the Bible, but it was in Latin.
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Not so helpful if he didn't speak Latin. William Tindaloe goes to Germany.
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He finds a printer and he begins printing little bitty copies of the New Testament
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in English, and he begins to smuggle them back into his country, and
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people begin to read the New Testament, the words of Jesus for the first
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time in their own language. Eventually, he's betrayed by a friend. He's
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on trial. He doesn't recan't, he's not sorry. They know what he's
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done. He has caused a great division within the church of his time.
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They strip him to a post. They put a rope around his neck,
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and from behind they twist and twist and twist until he dies, and then
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they burn his body as a heretic. Christian leaders and the name of Jesus.
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A very different version of our faith than Jesus' version, a very different
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version of our faith than the apostle Paul's version. Now, there were several
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things in William Tyndale's translation of the Bible from Greek to English that drove these
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bishops crazy, and the most infuriating of all was this. The term church
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didn't appear anywhere in his English New Testament. Now, if you're controlling the
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people, because you're the head of the church, and now there's a New
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Testament and everybody's going, what does it say about the church? It's not
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in here. That's disruptive because he didn't take the German derivative and put it
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in the English Bible. He translated the word ecclesia everywhere. It appeared in
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the New Testament as congregation. Congregation shifting to focus from a location that's easy
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to control to a movement of people, an assembly of people who come together
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for a purpose. Years go, by sixteen eleven, they decide in England
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to have an official version of the Bible in English. You know it as
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the King James Version, the sixteen eleven version. There's a debate. The
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debate is what do we do with the word ecclecia. Do we translate it
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congregation like William Tyndale, or do we use the word that is in use
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everywhere in the empire, the word church. And unfortunately assembly congregation lost the
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vote and church was inserted in the King James version and it has been church
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ever since. Is that a big deal. It's a big deal. It
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has influenced the way the world has viewed the Ecclesia, the movement of Jesus.
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In fact interesting the first time the word ecalca shows up in the New
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Testament. It's on the lips of Jesus in a very familiar passage. If
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you grow up in church, you've heard this. If you haven't grown up
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in church, this is so important. Jesus is with his guys and he's
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saying, Hey, what's the word on the street about me? Who do
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people say that I am? Maybe you remember that conversation? And then he
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turns to them and he says, hey, guys, tell me who do
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you say that I am? Now, those you've been with me for a
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while, who do you say that I am? And Simon, Peter,
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remember this. He says, I'll tell you who I think you are.
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You're the Messiah, You're God's final king, You're the son of the living
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God. And Jesus replied, blessed are you Simon's son of Jonah? Because
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this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood. In other words,
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Peter, you're smart. You're not that smart. You had a little help
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with this one. This was revealed to you by my father in heaven.
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In other words, you correctly identified who I am. I am the King,
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I am the Son of the Living God. And then Jesus smiles,
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and I think he puts his hand on Peter's shoulder and he says this,
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And I tell you, I'm changing your name. Your name is stone,
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that's what it means, stone, rocky, your name is rock, your
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name is pebble. I'm changing it. But I tell you this, on
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this rock different Greek word an out the side of a mountain, something that
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will never be moved. He says, on this rock, this statement that
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you made that I'm the christis under the living God. I'm gonna do something
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new. I will build my ecclesia, my assembly, my congregation, my
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movement, who will gather in my name, to announced the arrival of a
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king, to announce the arrival of a kingdom, To announce an invitation that
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every man and every woman made in the image of God is invited to participate
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in this kingdom. To model my kingdom way of life, my other's first
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way of life, to do for others as you have watched me do for
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you, and regardless of how many times it veers, and regardless of how
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many times it's hijacked, and regardless of how many perversions there are, there
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will always be a group that brings it back. It will always self correct
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because at some point somebody is gonna look at what I taught. Jesus would
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say, that's going to be the through line. Here's his way of saying,
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what I just said, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
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In other words, nothing is going to ultimately stop it. And his
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point by using the word hades was this that just represented death. He looked
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at those guys and he smiled, and he said, and this is permanent.
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Even my death won't be the end. In fact, his death,
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his resurrection, as we're going to see next week, is what launched it.
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And he wasn't talking about a building. He wasn't talking about a location.
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In fact, eight chapters later, he predicts the destruction of the holiest
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building in the world, the Temple in Jerusalem, that about forty years later
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was destroyed and has never been rebuilt. Four chapters later, he says,
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I want you to go into all the world, and I want you to
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invite people to join my assembly. My congregation, my movement, because the
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days of sacred spaces have come to an end. You are sacred. You
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are a walking, talking representation of your king. You are ambassadors for your
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king, You are ambassadors for Christ. This isn't about location. This is
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a movement of people who've come together to do something significant in the world.
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Years later, not that many years later, the apostle Paul would come around
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this idea and punctuate it with these words to gentile Christians and corinth who are
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trying to figure all of this out, And these would be words for you
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and words for me, he says. Paul writes, he says, hey,
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don't you know, I mean, we've talked about this before. Don't
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you know that your bodies, your physical bodies, are temples. This means
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nothing to us because we don't really get the whole temple thing. This was
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extraordinary. He's in Corinth, a city full of temples. He's got some
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people there for the worship in a synagogue, some Jewish people who've been to
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the temple in Jerusalem that's still standing at that point, and he's going,
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no, no, no, no, no, those days are over.
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You are the sacred space. You are the representation. You are the holy
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site. You are a temple because you are filled, just like the Temple
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in Jerusalem was once filled. You are filled with the Holy Spirit of God
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who is in you. Which they thought, wait, what temples with temples?
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Wait what like we're we're walking talking temples. He said, yes,
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you're sacred, to which they understood some of the implications of that. Well,
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wait, if I'm a temple and you're a temple. If that's the
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case, then Paul would say, exactly, Therefore, because you're a temple,
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Honor God with your bodies, Honor God with your language, Honor God
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with your activities, Honor God with your actions and your reactions. Everywhere you
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go. You are a representation of Jesus in the assembly of Jesus, that
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Jesus left here to impact the world everywhere you go, everything you say,
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That's why I set up front. We including you, are managers, stewards,
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representatives of the Kingdom of Christ on Earth. Three hundred and eighty years
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after the Apostle, Paul writes this, what's the church doing building new temples,
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big, expensive, extravagant temples. We call them cathedrals. While they
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persecuted and executed the people who resisted. There will always be counterfeit versions of
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the Christian faith. Always. There will always be men and women like you,
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men and women like you, reformers who are willing to look back,
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reach back, and bring back and live out the Jesus version of our faith,
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the good News of great joy for all people version of our faith,
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the version of our faith. And I'm convinced if people truly understood it would
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hope it's true before they believed it's true. So what does that have to
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do with you? What does that have to do with me? Now?
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So? What three things? Quickly? Three big implications for all of us
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as we launched this series. Number One, you are part of something big,
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not just a big church. You're part of something so big. The
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church is a big deal. Don't take it for granted. Our church friends
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in Canada, our church friends in Europe, they say to us church leaders,
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don't take it for granted. We don't know that we'll ever get back
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what we gave up. Don't take it for granted. In other words,
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we dare not lose our wonder. It's not about a building, it's not
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about a preacher, it's not about the songs, the ones you like,
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the ones you don't like. It's so much bigger than that. It's a
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miracle. So participate. Participate. You may not be an official member of
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a church, that's okay, But you are a member of the Assembly of
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Jesus. So somehow you got to participate somewhere with some someone, this assembol
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like version one point zero. In a house or in a garden, or
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on the back porch, somewhere, gather some people, open God's word,
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pray together, talk about life together, and then go out and live it
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out one another, one another in such a way that people see your good
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works and glorify your Father and Heaven. And the goal come on. The
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goal isn't to get something out of it, but you will. I guarantee
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you you will if you give something to it by participating in it. Implication
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number two. This is huge. It starts today. You are a walking,
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talking temple. You need to remind yourself every day. Wait wait,
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wait, I don't just work for such and such. I don't just teach
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such and such. I'm not just a parent. I wait wait wait,
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I'm a walking, talking representative of the Church of Jesus Christ. When you
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drive by a church building. You need to look in the rear view mirror
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and say, here's the church. Look in the rear view mirror. In
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the back seat, there's a couple of churches. Back there, there's the
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temple. There's the temples. Every day of our lives, we should be
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good news of great joy for somebody. Every day of our lives. We
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should look for opportunities to be good news and to bring joy to someone's life.
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To pour out, then gather, back, fill, back up,
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and go back out. Last implication is this the tone approach and posture of
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Jesus should characterize the tone posture, the tone approach and posture of his followers.
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This is how you know if it's real or not. This is how
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you know if you have the you an article or a counterfeit or a perversion.
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The tone approach and the posture of Jesus. Just read the gospels should
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be and should characterize the tone, approach and posture of me. And if
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you beware of versions that decentralize or minimize the life and teaching of Jesus,
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beware of any version of our faith that decentralizes or minimizes the life and the
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teaching of Jesus. Come on. Every perversion of the Christian faith claims to
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be biblical. Everybody's got a verse for everything they do, everything they say,
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and everything they teach. In fact, this sounds a little arrogant,
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but I'll just say anyway, give me five minutes, or give mister Google
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five seconds, okay, and we will find you a verse in the Bible
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to justify anything you want to do. It'll be out of context, it
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will not line up with the teaching of Jesus. But if you just need
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a verse as excuse, it's in there somewhere, including an excuse for executing
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someone for publishing and distributing the Bible. But here's what the reformers knew.
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Here's what I hope you know. The through line, the true north for
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the assembly of Jesus are the words and the works of our Savior. That's
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what the reformers always bring the church back to, not simply what the Bible
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teaches, what Jesus taught, and how Jesus lived his life, the author
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and the perfector of our faith, as the author of Hebrews says, his
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words and his works are the template for your actions and your reactions. My
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actions and my reactions. His words are the template for my approach to life,
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my posture. Now I live my life the life of Jesus. Think
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of it this way serves as context and commentary for understanding the Bible. It's
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Jesus first. You always begin with Jesus, and anybody that wants to minimize
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or equalize Jesus with everything else red flag. That's always a sign that somebody
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is veering off the original course. So wrapping this up, I want us
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to continue not to be the church or a church. I want us to
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continue to be the Ecclesia of Jesus, the congregation, the assembly, the
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movement that joins hands and joins arms with believers all over the world who want
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to get this right. Remember, you determine. It's a big responsibility.
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You determine what Christians look like because you're a Christian. You determine what Christians
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sound like because you claim to be a Christian. And you determine what Christians
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react like in the eyes of the world. If you claim to be a
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Christian, you determine what the Christians look like, act like, and react
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like. For our generation and us adults talk about a big responsibility, we
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determine what the church looks like and acts like and reacts like for the generation
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coming along behind us. So let's get this right. Let's continue to get
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this right, and we will pick it up right there next time in part
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two of Actually See Ya,