SPEAKER_00: Hello and thank you for joining us on the Sierra Bible Church Sermon of the Week.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you enjoy this message by Pastor Nate Levering.
SPEAKER_01: A week ago on Thursday afternoon, I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and with a team, and we entered what they call in Brazil uh a favela.
SPEAKER_01: And uh it's a place that starts as a slum and it kind of gets built up around that.
SPEAKER_01: Uh like something I'd never seen except for on TV.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I just yeah, we hadn't felt anything like that either.
SPEAKER_01: Um and so we would spend time partnering with the ministry that we support as a part of Sear Bible Church.
SPEAKER_01: And so part of what they do is they work in these favelas, and as I've described these places and sort of the spiritual sense there, uh it was kind of an aggressive darkness, uh, unlike I think I felt before.
SPEAKER_01: And we've served in the tenderloin and I did high school ministry for years, you know, we've been in some dark places.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, that sense that maybe some of us had during that second song where where we consider our lives, we consider the stuff, we consider the story, we consider what's in front of us, who we are.
SPEAKER_01: And there's this sort of this place, right, at times where we say, I don't really know what to say or to sing.
SPEAKER_01: But there seems to be a power in this name.
SPEAKER_01: There seems to be an anchor, a place we can be found in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And we walk through this favellos, you know, you walk across this bridge, and it's clear that the sewer runs through the little river, and it's just dark in a thousand ways.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we made our way into this little church, and it was about 10 feet wide by about 30 feet, and we crammed in there on a Thursday afternoon, and you have not heard people sing and claim the power and the presence of Jesus like these Brazilians in the middle of that place.
SPEAKER_01: And to just feel like his presence is busting out that door and has a chance to, in ways we could only dream, make a difference in what felt like an aggressively evil, hopeless kind of place.
SPEAKER_01: As we sang, uh, knowing there's nothing we could do to change this place, there was uh a girl in our group, one of the ones that we support as a part of Sierra Bible Church, her name's Bruna, and she came from that neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01: She was a kid that grew up in that darkness with more kind of uh lure to pursue a lifestyle of just their lifestyle in so many ways.
SPEAKER_01: We would call it evil, brokenness, um, satanic in many ways.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and she now is a leader in restoration ministries.
SPEAKER_01: She's leading us, she's loving kids in and amongst that place and to hear those people sing.
SPEAKER_01: I wish I could bottle it up, right?
SPEAKER_01: And what's cool when you get to go, and I'll say this on behalf of a few of us that are here that form part of that group of 20, you do get to bottle it up.
SPEAKER_01: I brought a bucket to church this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I noticed I was the only one bringing a bucket to church this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I heard a number of years ago a talk that said the reality is that all of us sort of carry this kind of spiritual bucket around.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like our faith bucket.
SPEAKER_01: And he said something that caught my attention.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Hey, here I want to tell you something about your faith bucket.
SPEAKER_01: It's holy.
SPEAKER_01: And what he said is, I don't mean like it's sanctified, I don't mean that your bucket is special or set apart, I mean that it's got holes drilled in it and it leaks.
SPEAKER_01: And that's true, right?
SPEAKER_01: In all of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have these seasons, right, where we see, oh, it just feels so full.
SPEAKER_01: It's like God's grace is just dumping on us.
SPEAKER_01: We have these other seasons where we're like, hello, it's all leaked.
SPEAKER_01: And for me, uh, to be able to be in Brazil with friends and partners from our church, to partner with them down there just felt like an unbelievable blessing of God, just kind of filling up my faith bucket and just learning to see and worship and trust God in a thousand new ways.
SPEAKER_01: So, on behalf of me and our family, thank you for allowing us to be gone.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was a brilliant time.
SPEAKER_01: I want to show you a couple pictures uh of some of the ministry that happened down there uh as I described this other ministries.
SPEAKER_01: We go into the favels.
SPEAKER_01: This was our little team that just went black for some reason.
SPEAKER_01: Um, that's us.
SPEAKER_01: So you can flip through these quickly this morning.
SPEAKER_01: You here's how you know if you're uh an American in Brazil or if you're a Brazilian in Brazil.
SPEAKER_01: We're all wearing the same, you know, yellow and blue and green, but ours is spelt differently.
SPEAKER_01: So Brazilians spell Brazil with an S.
SPEAKER_01: The rest of us use a not S.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, here's some of our families just loving on kids.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, every little Brazilian baby I saw for the first couple of days caused me to almost weep incessantly, which was a very odd thing, in part because in a few weeks I'm gonna have a half Brazilian grandson, God willing, in Austin.
SPEAKER_01: And so I would see these little Brazilian kids, and I'm like, oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_01: And I would just kind of cry.
SPEAKER_01: This was that favela uh where we would do these uh kids' ministries.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things we loved as a team partnering with this ministry, we would ask them, you know, what is it that you do?
SPEAKER_01: Or they would say, Hey, when it all is said and done, when all the banners are put away and the music's gone and the balls are done bouncing.
SPEAKER_01: What we do is we tell people about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That's the name.
SPEAKER_01: We invite people to repentance and faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We do a lot of great stuff, but that is the thing that will change our communities.
SPEAKER_01: Just some fun pictures of us goofing off.
SPEAKER_01: This is the co-grandmother to our grandson.
SPEAKER_01: When I say co, I mean, you know, slightly under Kathy as the queen grandmother, of course.
SPEAKER_01: We need to make sure that's but she leads the ministry that we partner with down in Brazil.
SPEAKER_01: They have about 15 or so full-time staff.
SPEAKER_01: Anna, one of our students, she's actually with our high school students up at Hume.
SPEAKER_01: Just some of the stuff we got to do hanging out with these amazing kids.
SPEAKER_01: This is Ed.
SPEAKER_01: He was here sitting here this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, one day we left him behind because he wasn't feeling good.
SPEAKER_01: He came to and then got the hairnet on and dove into the kitchen, and they were like begging for him to stay.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody know what those things are?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: They're like so famous in America.
SPEAKER_01: That's a capybara.
SPEAKER_01: You don't see as many as you would think, but you can find some.
SPEAKER_01: So we hunted them.
SPEAKER_01: The Brazilians thought we were nuts.
SPEAKER_01: They're about like this big.
SPEAKER_01: You've never seen one.
SPEAKER_01: So it's like the size of a medium dog, but it looks like that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what that looks like to you, but that's a capybara.
SPEAKER_01: We had some fun goofing off as a team.
SPEAKER_01: So, again, thanks for allowing us to go.
SPEAKER_01: I would encourage any of you if you're interested.
SPEAKER_01: You got an amazing program.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a young person, you're like, I got some time between semesters.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go serve for four or six weeks, just dive into some ongoing ministry and some crazy places and see God work.
SPEAKER_01: It's really was a special time for our team.
SPEAKER_01: We find ourselves this summer doing uh about nine or ten or eleven or twelve weeks.
SPEAKER_01: We'll see how it all goes.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, really using this acronym, SBC, which also, as many of us know, stands for Sierra Bible Church, as kind of a cute way to help stick what the Bible teaches us, and Jesus specifically teaches us, about what it looks like to live our lives as children of the King.
SPEAKER_01: Of not just having like the name of Jesus, but having the life of Jesus in us, that we'd be formed into his image.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're using this SBC as a way of kind of getting some language to stick around the idea of discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: So the S, let's see how we do here.
SPEAKER_01: Test time.
SPEAKER_01: I've been gone for a couple weeks, so but I know Nate talked about it last week.
SPEAKER_01: The S stands for steward.
SPEAKER_01: We're steward our life with purpose.
SPEAKER_01: That the reality is God's given us gifts, he's given us opportunities, he's given us life.
SPEAKER_01: And so, how do we steward that in a way that makes a difference to those around us?
SPEAKER_01: The B, that's the section we're in right now, is to what?
SPEAKER_01: Belong.
SPEAKER_01: We are meant to belong.
SPEAKER_01: And you'll see Jesus' call to be in community, one who invites others into community.
SPEAKER_01: And then what we'll look at next week is on community or on mission with others.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're just asking, what does it look like to be a child of God and to belong?
SPEAKER_01: Like I have like a real family, right?
SPEAKER_01: I've got real how do how does all this blend and what does the Bible teach us about belonging?
SPEAKER_01: We'll do a little bit of that this morning, and then what we're gonna look at in uh the coming weeks is um is this idea of stewardship, which sorry, I got that backwards.
SPEAKER_01: So S is steward.
SPEAKER_01: We're doing that at the end just to make it work for the summer.
SPEAKER_01: B's belong, C is, I'm throwing this all in screwy, sorry, I apologize, kind of language, is cultivate.
SPEAKER_01: The word to cultivate our life with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And we started with that in June.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're talking about stewarding, belonging, and cultivating.
SPEAKER_01: One of the ways we've been talking about this is each of us has a kind of mission and a kind of calling, that we have been called to be disciples, to be formed into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's doing in us.
SPEAKER_01: We hope, when we avail ourselves, when we surrender, when we allow his will to be ours.
SPEAKER_01: And with that, he invites us then into a purpose or a mission, and that is to say, how can I take what God's given me, imperfected as it is, and help others in that same journey?
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm a disciple that is meant to disciple others at all stages of our growth.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we look at those things, uh, we're talking, as we said, about belonging.
SPEAKER_01: Ralph said a couple of weeks ago, as he taught that we belong to God first.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that becomes the model.
SPEAKER_01: We'll look at that this this morning as to how we belong to each other.
SPEAKER_01: But then, you know, Jesus always attaches this relationship with God with God.
SPEAKER_01: If you were to ask Jesus, is it just about me and God?
SPEAKER_01: He would say, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_01: In so many ways.
SPEAKER_01: It's about you and God and this thing he calls the church, his family, his body, the temple he is building.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's always this overlap.
SPEAKER_01: Last week, Nate said, taught brilliantly, I think, about this idea that stuff gets in between God's design for our belonging.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's the elephant in the room, sometimes it's the, if you were here last week, bear in the room, right?
SPEAKER_01: In his son's room, as he taught, and just a great message about what does forgiveness look like and how do we reflect the forgiveness that God offers to us, to those around us, so that in ways that others can see, we learn to love each other and live in unity.
SPEAKER_01: Today, what I want to do is this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna kind of just push out this model of relationships that the Bible invites us into.
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's a little bit of some stuff you would learn if you went through sort of marriage counseling around here.
SPEAKER_01: We talk about these things.
SPEAKER_01: And then we're gonna come back and look at Jesus' invitation and I would say command to being the kind of person that helps other people belong.
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like from Jesus' perspective?
SPEAKER_01: This outsiders becoming insiders.
SPEAKER_01: And so we'll wrestle through some of that together.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your bulletin, you might want to take a couple of notes.
SPEAKER_01: This little picture is on there without the fill-ins.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to just say this simply.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna try and break down relationships into two broad categories, and then we'll we'll look at those some today.
SPEAKER_01: And again, we'll dive into it a bit tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things you see when you look at relationships is in many ways there are these two broad categories.
SPEAKER_01: And we start at the top with some kind of initial commitment.
SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes, we are in some kind of a contractual relationship.
SPEAKER_01: And now we live it as a result of sort of this kind of consumer world or Western world that we live in.
SPEAKER_01: And so most of us think most of our relationships operate contractually without even thinking about it.
SPEAKER_01: We think organizations are here to serve us.
SPEAKER_01: We think other people are here to serve us.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's true of everybody in every society, but it's the air we breathe and the water we drink.
SPEAKER_01: Let's start this way on the left side of these as we move ourselves around.
SPEAKER_01: If you start with a contractual relationship, basically you're starting with a relationship that says, hey, here, there's a sort of an agreed-upon way of doing this relationship.
SPEAKER_01: A relationship like this might be Amazon.
SPEAKER_01: So if you order something from Amazon, right, you're in a contractual agreement because at the end of that little agreement, you're gonna do what?
SPEAKER_01: Pay for it.
SPEAKER_01: So you've seen it, you read the reviews, eh, close enough, you purchased it.
SPEAKER_01: That was the agreement, right?
SPEAKER_01: And again, you then it comes in the mail one day, five days, 20 days later, and you look at what you got and you decide, did they meet my expectations?
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm gonna hold them to a contract because I paid for this and I expect a certain kind of response to my um commitment.
SPEAKER_01: So out of a contract, then I have a law, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, did they do it or did they not?
SPEAKER_01: Did they fulfill it or did they not?
SPEAKER_01: Did they meet my expectations or did they not?
SPEAKER_01: This is going to determine how I move forward.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you in the last week have returned something to Amazon just by show of hands?
SPEAKER_01: Week.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you?
SPEAKER_01: How many in the last month?
SPEAKER_01: How many ever have returned something?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: This just defines the fact that we live and breathe in these contractual relationships.
SPEAKER_01: Because if they don't meet our response, our like expectations, what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: Go to Kohl's and drop it off.
SPEAKER_01: Kathy dropped something off a few weeks ago, and it was this kind of clunky thing, but it was weird.
SPEAKER_01: It was like, that doesn't look anything like the picture.
SPEAKER_01: You should try and take that back.
SPEAKER_01: And she'd been told by someone you don't have to repackage it, just take it to Kohl's.
SPEAKER_01: If you work at Kohl's, I apologize because this might start some.
SPEAKER_01: And so she drops it off.
SPEAKER_01: She's all apologetic.
SPEAKER_01: It's like not that big, you know, and she's carrying it in there.
SPEAKER_01: And Kathy's like, I'm sorry, you know, do you want me to take it home, take it apart, have my husband take it apart?
SPEAKER_01: And and the lady looked at her and she's like, Hey, don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_01: She's like, Two weeks ago, someone dropped off a full-size trampoline, and we had to like figure out how to ship it back to whoever, you know.
SPEAKER_01: So it's like, return it all, just bring it back, and they'll take it.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because it's a contractual relationship.
SPEAKER_01: You've made this agreement, and that's how that goes.
SPEAKER_01: So typically, what happens in a contractual relationship is there's a law.
SPEAKER_01: We've all agreed upon this.
SPEAKER_01: What happens then is some version of control.
SPEAKER_01: This is that cancer culture thing we've heard about, right?
SPEAKER_01: If a person doesn't meet our expectations, what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: Cha-ching, cancel, find someone else.
SPEAKER_01: We write a review.
SPEAKER_01: This is how our world works.
SPEAKER_01: It's the air we breathe.
SPEAKER_01: We control.
SPEAKER_01: Every one of those kinds of relationships will end up in some version of distance.
SPEAKER_01: It will, it will move you apart, which is not a bad thing necessarily.
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't want to be super like close with my Amazon account.
SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't work for me, I'm finding new one.
SPEAKER_01: If you decide to sell gas 20 cents more than the place next door, I'm going to the place next door.
SPEAKER_01: I might think you're great, nothing personal.
SPEAKER_01: I don't need to be intimate with you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just buying gas.
SPEAKER_01: What I mean by intimacy is clearly not simply physical intimacy, although this is very helpful when we think about marriage, but it's in that like relational spiritual intimacy.
SPEAKER_01: Intimacy is defined as knowing and being known.
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of that Genesis picture of being without all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible describes it as naked.
SPEAKER_01: The word really is open and without shame.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's sort of what intimacy looks like.
SPEAKER_01: And again, if we enter contractual relationships, which we do all the time, there will be some kind of law.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody's going to control how that relationships move forward, how that relationships move forward, and then there will be distance.
SPEAKER_01: This is not the relationship, if you're new here, that God desires to have with us.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we default that way.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you were raised in a church, some of you hear me say certain things and you go, because we just slip and slide down into this way of thinking.
SPEAKER_01: But they always move to distance.
SPEAKER_01: If you were raised in a church, they said, hey, your relationship with God is dependent on how good you are, how well you perform.
SPEAKER_01: You probably got really good at looking good while your heart knew something else was true.
SPEAKER_01: And that's so disconnecting.
SPEAKER_01: Again, distance.
SPEAKER_01: But God invites us to a covenant.
SPEAKER_01: This is sort of in some ways a biblical language, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is from the very beginning of the story to the very end.
SPEAKER_01: It's covenant, covenant, covenant, covenant.
SPEAKER_01: It's a God that chooses you.
SPEAKER_01: It's a God that knows your name.
SPEAKER_01: It's a God that doesn't say, hey, when you clean it all up, then maybe you can come.
SPEAKER_01: It's a God who tells a story, Luke chapter 15, of a son who went out and tried to just raise, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Life fell apart, comes to his senses, turns back to his father.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember what prodigal son thought when he was in his mess?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe if I go home, my father, he knows he can never be a son again because of the way he's lived.
SPEAKER_01: But maybe, maybe I could be a servant in my father's household.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells this story.
SPEAKER_01: Dude makes it home.
SPEAKER_01: He's rehearsed his story of just confession and brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that I can no longer could you can I be a servant in your household?
SPEAKER_01: And what does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_01: Is the most bold and beautiful picture of the father's response?
SPEAKER_01: What's a covenant look like?
SPEAKER_01: It's a father that runs out, right, and meets him, throws his arm around him and says, What?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, maybe you can serve.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: He puts a ring back on his finger, tells everyone, my son is home.
SPEAKER_01: This is what covenant looks like.
SPEAKER_01: It's a God that chooses us.
SPEAKER_01: When we are chosen in covenant, we don't end up sort of under the pressure of Allah, trying to make ourselves look good, trying to be acceptable, trying to shave off the parts that aren't quite fixed up yet.
SPEAKER_01: We own those because we're invited into a relationship of grace.
SPEAKER_01: Grace is a gift of relationship that comes to us.
SPEAKER_01: Grace is God saying, come as you are.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, God's not happy with the mess that you are anymore than you are.
SPEAKER_01: But He doesn't want to keep He doesn't want that mess to keep you from coming.
SPEAKER_01: He invites us in.
SPEAKER_01: This is what grace looks like.
SPEAKER_01: And it comes by way of the covenant that God has for us.
SPEAKER_01: And then in that atmosphere of grace, the freedom of being able to let down, the freedom of being able to say, actually, this is how I am.
SPEAKER_01: This is what I'm struggling with.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, imagine if Kathy and I lived in a contract where I had to act a certain way and I couldn't go to her and say, Man, I'm really struggling with you.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it happens.
SPEAKER_01: I'm married, it's been 30 years.
SPEAKER_01: It could be tough.
SPEAKER_01: But if it's not safe for me to be just who I am, I will not choose to be who I am.
SPEAKER_01: I will bury that.
SPEAKER_01: And then eventually it will come out.
SPEAKER_01: Distance.
SPEAKER_01: So God invites us into covenant grace, ultimately to become people who take what we have to make others better.
SPEAKER_01: That's the piece of empowerment.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than thinking that there's only so much power, I got to fight for mine.
SPEAKER_01: She gets Thursdays, I get Fridays, we get Saturdays.
SPEAKER_01: No, I say I get every night.
SPEAKER_01: How do I use the nights I have to make my wife's life better?
SPEAKER_01: This is what it looks like in marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, this leads towards intimacy.
SPEAKER_01: All of us know it when we think about it for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: That it's only a relationship of grace that will move towards intimacy.
SPEAKER_01: If not, we're not safe enough to be who we are.
SPEAKER_01: This is the relationship that God desires to have with us.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, snapshot.
SPEAKER_01: We'll come back to that, if not today, a bit next week as well.
SPEAKER_01: So here's what I want to do: uh, I want to take us through uh sort of this the and ground us in what Jesus uh wants us to see and learn with regards to this idea of belonging, specifically strangers.
SPEAKER_01: This is the language Jesus will use, and what it looks like to be a stranger or to be an owner that invites strangers in.
SPEAKER_01: How is it that I could help?
SPEAKER_01: How is it that God's invited me to be a part of what he desires to do?
SPEAKER_01: Strangers to owners.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we're going.
SPEAKER_01: I think that one shocking thing uh is found in in a number of shocking things, but one shocking thing is found in Matthew chapter 25.
SPEAKER_01: Some some of you, I just mentioned that, and you're like, oh, yeah, that's kind of a weird, it's the end of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_01: He says some really hard things.
SPEAKER_01: You know, these are like narrow road kinds of things, as we've been talking about this summer on the way to discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, so here's what Jesus says He says this to a bunch of people.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Hey, you guys have done it.
SPEAKER_01: You met my kind of low bar.
SPEAKER_01: The sort of like this was just the basics of being one of my children.
SPEAKER_01: You guys have those in your family?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you do.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus does too.
SPEAKER_01: This for him was the low bar.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Come on, you got to at least do this.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is talking about sheep and goats.
SPEAKER_01: He's separating people and he's saying, Here's the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: They met it, they did the low bar.
SPEAKER_01: What was the low bar for Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: He says this, for I was hungry, you gave me something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't take a lot.
SPEAKER_01: What else?
SPEAKER_01: I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.
SPEAKER_01: I was a stranger, you invited me in.
SPEAKER_01: I needed clothes and you clothed me.
SPEAKER_01: I was sick and you looked after me.
SPEAKER_01: I was in prison and you came to visit me.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus invites us to consider, I think, in this list, that there are physical needs of those around us that He's inviting us to meet.
SPEAKER_01: But what's fascinating to me in this list is this little line right here where Jesus is, you know, he's talking about drink and thirst and clothing and covering, sickness, prison.
SPEAKER_01: But then he says this, and this just seems out of place to me.
SPEAKER_01: I was a stranger and you invited me in.
SPEAKER_01: What Jesus is saying is it's not just we're not just these people with physical needs, we are these people with relational needs.
SPEAKER_01: And my church was designed in such a way that strangers would be intentionally, by way of covenant and grace, invited in, that they would feel like owners, they would feel like they belong, they're part of the we rather than just sort of some someone that sort of kind of sits on the outside.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Jesus also flips this script in Matthew 25 to the goats.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Hey, you guys didn't do this, and so you're going out.
SPEAKER_01: Like these are the people that met the low bar.
SPEAKER_01: And they kind of go, Jesus, when did we see you without clothes on?
SPEAKER_01: And when did we, you know, see you a stranger?
SPEAKER_01: And when did we see you?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus' response is this truly I tell you, whatever you did, I mean, that gives permission to all of us.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, some of us are good at helping other people belong.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us aren't that good.
SPEAKER_01: What Jesus says is there's a whatever you did.
SPEAKER_01: That he put the low bar low for some of us to say, just consider a step, consider that you've been given some kind of whatever to do for someone that's a stranger that might change everything for them.
SPEAKER_01: After first service, I met a gal out here, and you guys know her name is Nancy.
SPEAKER_01: She's bawling.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, her life's falling, what's going on?
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Nate, she said, I just gotta tell you, when I was a stranger, she said, I came about a couple years ago, and people within this church just began to love me.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't know how messed up I was, and they didn't seem to care.
SPEAKER_01: They just started loving me.
SPEAKER_01: There was a whole bunch of these whatever you did.
SPEAKER_01: You invited me here, you invited me here, you welcomed me, people talked to me.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't let me just want they, and she's crying and just going, You can't.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, now I know not only does this church care, but my God cares.
SPEAKER_01: And she's just like, it's changed everything about her.
SPEAKER_01: How some of us got it right.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus makes this incredibly personal.
SPEAKER_01: So for Jesus, the minimal standard is that strangers or outsiders are invited in.
SPEAKER_01: That those who are connected move to those that aren't and do whatever they can.
SPEAKER_01: I want to give us this morning kind of Jesus' vision throughout the New Testament of what the what the church is, if you will.
SPEAKER_01: And because he uses these metaphors, I think are so helpful for kind of putting our hands around this.
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like?
SPEAKER_01: How do we take steps in this direction?
SPEAKER_01: And I think each of these is helpful kind of in its own right.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things we have to remind ourselves is not true, is that when Jesus talks about the church, he's talking about a structure or a building.
SPEAKER_01: You remember when Jesus launches his vision of the church?
SPEAKER_01: It's in Matthew chapter 16.
SPEAKER_01: He's got his disciples there, and he says, Hey, I'm gonna build my church.
SPEAKER_01: We've talked about this a lot.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that was good to be reminded of is when he says church, he doesn't mean like a building.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't even really mean an organization.
SPEAKER_01: He means a gathering of people.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we talk about inviting others in, it isn't like you're necessarily, I mean, part of it can be inviting to church, part of it can be being inviting here, but it's really in every space where we live our lives, where we operate, we are open and invitational to say, are there steps that I could take to help strangers become owners?
SPEAKER_01: What would that look like and how does that move?
SPEAKER_01: And what does it mean for me?
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus uses the word ecclesia, which actually means gathering.
SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus saying, I'm gonna build my gathering.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be global.
SPEAKER_01: You'll get to be a part of it in a thousand different life-changing kinds of ways.
SPEAKER_01: Here's some of the formal kind of metaphor language that Jesus uses.
SPEAKER_01: John 10, we remember that Jesus says, Hey, I'm the good shepherd of my sheep.
SPEAKER_01: Not one sheep, many sheep.
SPEAKER_01: He goes so far as to say, when one of my sheep wanders away, I'm committed to what?
SPEAKER_01: Going and getting that sheep, because it wasn't meant to be out there on its own.
SPEAKER_01: It was meant to be together with other happy sheep like you all and me all.
SPEAKER_01: And that's part of God's picture there.
SPEAKER_01: Paul, he would spend, we've looked at this together, the body of Christ, right?
SPEAKER_01: And one of the fascinating things is as Paul teases out this idea that we are together as his gathering, the body of Christ, isn't simply that every single one of you has value, that eyes and brains and feet and mouths all have sort of this value given to them because of the purpose that God has given them.
SPEAKER_01: But what implication Paul draws out is that our value isn't simply to God, our values to each other.
SPEAKER_01: And in essence, he says, imagine if the eyes can see and the brain can think, but the feet can't move, or they're just MIA.
SPEAKER_01: He says, and it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: He says, the body of Christ is this is how connected you're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01: We we don't want the feet in this corner, the brains in this corner.
SPEAKER_01: He said, No, you're supposed to belong in a way that you're connected.
SPEAKER_01: You can respond to what God is saying and seeing and moving in the body.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't believe me, walk out and just stomp on your toe.
SPEAKER_01: We're meant to be interconnected, it's meant to matter how our feet are working to our ears.
SPEAKER_01: Another picture that we see within the scriptures is this idea of family.
SPEAKER_01: Family.
SPEAKER_01: And so we hear this all over, right?
SPEAKER_01: As children of God, uh, this verse gives us a little bit of structure around that.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews chapter 13.
SPEAKER_01: Keep on, keep on, the author of Hebrews says, loving one another as brothers or sisters.
SPEAKER_01: You know how to do this in your uh in your family.
SPEAKER_01: So again, you're in the family of God.
SPEAKER_01: Love each other with that kind of love, that kind of commitment.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't choose your brothers and sisters, most of you.
SPEAKER_01: Although some of you wish you could.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't choose them, they're your brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_01: And in some ways, God's saying, think about this with regards to the picture, the image of the church.
SPEAKER_01: These are your people.
SPEAKER_01: Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers.
SPEAKER_01: Why does he have to remind us to not forget?
SPEAKER_01: We forget.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us are insiders, we've completely forgot what it's like to be an outsider.
SPEAKER_01: To wonder if people will talk to me, to wonder if I'll be good enough.
SPEAKER_01: If if my confusions, my doubts would push people away.
SPEAKER_01: If they're gonna come at me with law or they're gonna embrace me with grace.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us have forgotten.
SPEAKER_01: The people don't know where the toilets are when they show up on campus.
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's just a campus thing.
SPEAKER_01: But but we forget, and so he says, Don't, don't forget, and then this fascinating part.
SPEAKER_01: For by doing so, some people have shown hospitality to what?
SPEAKER_01: To angels without knowing it.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's crazy and super cool.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody ever think they've like shown hospitality to an angel?
SPEAKER_01: I heard an angel story last week, was mine.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is hard to believe, but like I think that's cool.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's how angels, I mean, this is a bizarre passage.
SPEAKER_01: Like, you can invite people in.
SPEAKER_01: That person is not like a person, a person's like an angel.
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's cool.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine me in heaven?
SPEAKER_01: The angels all show up, they're like, hi five and you, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01: I love that barbecue we shared together.
SPEAKER_01: And you're like, Well, the what?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, but but let's just wrestle with it.
SPEAKER_01: If nothing else, this is meant to wake us up.
SPEAKER_01: I love standing at the back because it's like for me, this I know some of you, but it's like a church full of possible angels, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so he says, Don't forget to offer hospitality, clue in, lean in, be intentional.
SPEAKER_01: You might miss far more than you would ever want to miss.
SPEAKER_01: So don't come short of the invitation Jesus gives us.
SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, this beautiful picture of the temple.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bible, I want to invite you to open it to Ephesians chapter two.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, just a short piece of this passage is Jesus invites us to consider the church as the metaphor of a temple.
SPEAKER_01: But I think this is such a beautiful passage.
SPEAKER_01: It comes at the end of Ephesians 1 and 2, where Paul over and over and over shares the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: He shares this incredible message that God comes to us by way of covenant, the covenant of what he's done on the cross, the covenant that he desires to make with us through his blood.
SPEAKER_01: We are invited then not to clean ourselves up, but to be embraced by his hands of grace.
SPEAKER_01: Paul explains all this and he says, and you've got a purpose, right?
SPEAKER_01: At the very end of chapter two, he's like, Man, as good as this is, you have a purpose.
SPEAKER_01: You've been drawn into good works as God's handiwork.
SPEAKER_01: And then down here in chapter two, verse 19, he says, This consequently, it's going to talk about our identity.
SPEAKER_01: You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but you're fellow citizens with God's people.
SPEAKER_01: You're fellow citizens with God's people.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of you like us this year have had the privilege to travel out of country.
SPEAKER_01: We're coming back in country, and as you're going through the sort of passport checks, you're like, okay, which line do I get in?
SPEAKER_01: There's like 75 different versions of partial citizens.
SPEAKER_01: You want to be a citizen, you're not a citizen at all.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's the like US citizens with US passports, and you're like, that's my line.
SPEAKER_01: That's my home.
SPEAKER_01: Those are my people.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not proud of all of them, but those are my people.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm in.
SPEAKER_01: And so you got your passport and you're ready to go.
SPEAKER_01: You're ready to, like, hey, believe me, I'm an American.
SPEAKER_01: And you get ready to step in and do what you need to do.
SPEAKER_01: Start singing the Star Spangled Band, whatever it takes, right?
SPEAKER_01: And what's cool now, and in many uh places like DC, where we walk through, is you have your passport, but you don't need it.
SPEAKER_01: It just takes a picture of your face and it's like, oh yeah, Nate.
SPEAKER_01: And then the person's like, hey, Nate, welcome home.
SPEAKER_01: Kathy, welcome home.
SPEAKER_01: Caden, welcome home.
SPEAKER_01: Skylar comes up to the little thing and it's like, eh, go back.
SPEAKER_01: And we all laughed at him.
SPEAKER_01: We're like, you're not coming.
SPEAKER_01: You know, and then the lady's like, take off your hat.
SPEAKER_01: We'd already told him four times, you got to take your hat off.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know about how it works in your household when you tell a 10-year-old boy what to do, but he has no relevance for why his hat might matter, except that he's headed back to Brazil, which we were thought was somewhat comical.
SPEAKER_01: This is the picture here.
SPEAKER_01: God takes us from foreigners and strangers, reshapes our identity, that we would be fellow citizens with God's people.
SPEAKER_01: He goes on, he says you're also members of his household.
SPEAKER_01: It isn't just simply that you're part of this citizenship, but you're actually you've been given a place in his house.
SPEAKER_01: This is that, again, that picture that Jesus gives us in Luke 15.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't welcome us back as servants, he welcomes us back as children and says, Welcome home.
SPEAKER_01: Your members with his household built, he goes on, verse 20, on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ, Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.
SPEAKER_01: And then here's where it gets really interesting.
SPEAKER_01: In him, that is Christ, here's the vision, the whole building is joined together and it rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And in him, when the building is is joined together, when it's when it's whole, in him, you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: This is what he's doing in the church.
SPEAKER_01: This is why it matters.
SPEAKER_01: How we do our be.
SPEAKER_01: If we're intentional, if we're open in helping strangers become those that belong.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to belong?
SPEAKER_01: Quick wrap-up of the section.
SPEAKER_01: To belong is to move from outside to inside, from lone wolf to known sheep, from loosely interested friend to sacrificial family member, from individual stone in a rock, or individual stone into a rock in God's wall.
SPEAKER_01: These are our people.
SPEAKER_01: To belong is to move from, and this is sort of the wide path to the narrow path, unknown to known, casual to committed, consumer to contributor, participant to owner.
SPEAKER_01: This journey is pictured for me in my mind of a couple of guys that help us with our disc golf course, which maybe is kind of a funny thing.
SPEAKER_01: But you know, we built it hoping the community would come.
SPEAKER_01: The community seems to love it.
SPEAKER_01: It's like one of the most popular disc golf courses around.
SPEAKER_01: It's played all the time.
SPEAKER_01: We don't really know that much about disc golf, but we have a cool place to play.
SPEAKER_01: But there are some guys that like love it.
SPEAKER_01: They helped us set it up, they didn't know us from anybody.
SPEAKER_01: Well, be through the relationship that we built, uh, they you know, we would ask them for a lot of suggestions.
SPEAKER_01: And here's how their suggestions came you should do this, you should do that, you should change this, you should move this over here, you should.
SPEAKER_01: We get a lot of opinions around the church, which frankly we welcome.
SPEAKER_01: I don't say that with any kind of anything.
SPEAKER_01: We welcome part of our values around here is to make it better.
SPEAKER_01: We think that God wants us to make the church better, to better reach our community, to better help each other, love each other.
SPEAKER_01: If you figure it out, and so we're open to like, hey, if you see things, if you feel things, like come on.
SPEAKER_01: But it was so interesting with our disc golf community.
SPEAKER_01: These couple of guys, you guys should do this, you guys should do this.
SPEAKER_01: In the matter of a couple years that we've had that, these couple guys have come to faith, they've started worshiping here with us, and now here's how they talk because they're improving some things right now.
SPEAKER_01: We should do this, we should do this.
SPEAKER_01: We should what if we did that?
SPEAKER_01: And I sit back there and smile, and I think, thank you, church, for creating the kind of place where someone that didn't know God, but they need disc golf.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we don't even care about disc golf, amen.
SPEAKER_01: We we care.
SPEAKER_01: God can use anything to help outsiders become owners.
SPEAKER_01: We should.
SPEAKER_01: This is what God is inviting us to do.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's the journey that He invites us on.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let me figure out how I'm gonna land this plane this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I want to do.
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I had some plans for some other things, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_01: Where I want to go is this what it asked the question what does God-designed belonging look like?
SPEAKER_01: What does God designed belonging look like?
SPEAKER_01: And this is just a summary, and it's to help you maybe fill it in if you want to.
SPEAKER_01: It's and we've said this strangers becoming owners.
SPEAKER_01: This is the journey we're on.
SPEAKER_01: For the next 45 seconds, I want a little bit of feedback.
SPEAKER_01: What is it that makes this process so hard in our church, in our lives, in our culture?
SPEAKER_01: Just give me some feedback.
SPEAKER_01: What makes it tough?
unknown: Rejection.
SPEAKER_01: Rejection, right?
SPEAKER_01: Some of us have been rejected.
SPEAKER_01: Like, no, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Not going out there again.
SPEAKER_01: That's where you can see again, we're rejected.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because someone came at us with this whole law version of relationship, not a grace version.
SPEAKER_01: And so they rejected us, and man, it just sends us back.
SPEAKER_01: And we go, okay, that's how I'm go ahead.
SPEAKER_01: Great.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: Judgment, judgment.
SPEAKER_01: We might be judged.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we're judged for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody said first service, which was great.
SPEAKER_01: Plus, he was from like Ireland, so it took all of us about 15 minutes to figure out what in the world he was saying, which was beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but that this idea of judgment, like, well, what if I invite somebody to sit by me at church?
SPEAKER_01: What if I invite them out to coffee to see if there are ways I can pray for them, see if there's ways God's being active in their life, and then they ask me how I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually sitting there on behalf of a fight with my kids or a bit of my own brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: How is it that if I don't bring my perfect self, what it can I speak on God's behalf?
SPEAKER_01: Could I?
SPEAKER_01: So it's great, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: We judge ourselves and others.
SPEAKER_01: Well, other things that make it hard.
SPEAKER_01: What trust, great?
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: Hypocrisy, what else?
SPEAKER_01: Busyness, absolutely fear.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Other things.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: Pride, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a million things, right, in our culture that can make it super tough.
SPEAKER_01: Church, bigger churches make it hard.
SPEAKER_01: Like, wouldn't it be cool?
SPEAKER_01: Like, just envision this.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you guys like bigger churches.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine being a church, like 20 people?
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are like, I love my church, it's 20 people.
SPEAKER_01: I'm here visiting, and this is a little chaotic.
SPEAKER_01: But like, you got 20 people?
SPEAKER_01: You're like, high five, eleven.
SPEAKER_01: The thing is though, Jesus says part of why I put you on the planet is to help outsiders become what?
SPEAKER_01: Owners.
SPEAKER_01: So you can't like, sure, come.
SPEAKER_01: Sure, create spaces for people to hear and experience and come as they are.
SPEAKER_01: But there's some of it's like, it's just big.
SPEAKER_01: How do I fit?
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know how to belong, let alone help someone else belong.
SPEAKER_01: And now we're talking a little bit about the organizational side of it, but there's a million of those, right?
SPEAKER_01: From our come to, like we talked about this earlier, just the idea that most of us believe that every organization, in fact, everybody, is here to serve me.
SPEAKER_01: It's just the air we breathe, but it's the air we constantly have to confess.
SPEAKER_01: We've got to look down the broad road of relationships and repent corporately, individually, and say that's not God's best.
SPEAKER_01: It might be my easiest for now, but it isn't God's best.
SPEAKER_01: God's best is when I'm the kind of person by my openness, by my intention, that's helping outsiders become owners.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, Jesus says, help make that happen.
SPEAKER_01: Let me close with these verses.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's Romans chapter 15.
SPEAKER_01: And this kind of sums it up in a million different ways.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says this may the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ Jesus had.
SPEAKER_01: And specifically the attitude that Christ Jesus had towards you when you were an outsider.
SPEAKER_01: So may God give you his attitude, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 7, very important.
SPEAKER_01: Accept one another, then.
SPEAKER_01: If you have that mindset that Jesus has.
SPEAKER_01: What's the first application for Paul?
SPEAKER_01: It's all throughout chapter 14 and 15 of Romans.
SPEAKER_01: Accept one another.
SPEAKER_01: What does acceptance mean?
SPEAKER_01: It looks a lot like that image of the father running out onto the street to the prodigal and throwing his arms around his son.
SPEAKER_01: It's like aggressive, this word.
SPEAKER_01: It like it means you got some skin in the game.
SPEAKER_01: It means you risked something, it means you opened up your arms.
SPEAKER_01: And as some of you said, that's a tough process.
SPEAKER_01: Because what if they actually know me?
SPEAKER_01: That's a scary thing.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says, open up your arms, trust me.
SPEAKER_01: Prosalombono, accept one another just as Christ accepted you, in order to be bring praise to God.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we consider what it looks like to belong, to help others belong to God's family.
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like for us, first step, to accept one another, then just as Christ accepted us, just like he chased us down, just like he was open, just like he said, come as you are.
SPEAKER_01: Come as you are.
SPEAKER_01: We'll work on that.
SPEAKER_01: I got a new set of clothes for you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna fill you up from the inside out, but come as you are.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: God, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your covenant.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your blood spilt on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming after us.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for dying for us long before we looked up, long before we came back.
SPEAKER_01: God, I pray for those this morning that maybe have never considered, maybe we've been holding back on our lives or even just a part of our life because of maybe judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Because we think that in some crazy way, that if we come back to you, what you're going to confront us with is this list of all these things we have gotten wrong.
SPEAKER_01: God, I pray that we would lean in to the covenant that you've made with us, to the grace that you invite us in with, and that we, God, with you, would experience the belonging that you desire for us, that we would be citizens of your family, we'd be members of your household.
SPEAKER_01: And then, God, as those who have been loved, that we would, with an openness and intentionality, consider what it might look like to take the craziness of each one of us into our lives and be those that help outsiders take a step to becoming an owner in your family.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, God, for making that work for us.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for throwing your arms open that we can be accepted by you.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to be those kinds of people.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to be that kind of picture of your church in this world.
SPEAKER_01: We love you and we say thanks.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us, church.
SPEAKER_00: We hope that you enjoyed this message.
SPEAKER_00: To find more messages like this, or to see where you can get connected or to give financially, please visit Sierra Bible.com.