SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Dan.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament reading is found in Jeremiah twenty-nine, verses four through seven.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles, I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Build houses and settle down.
SPEAKER_00: Cultivate gardens and eat what they produce.
SPEAKER_00: Get married and have children.
SPEAKER_00: Then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands, in order that they too may have children.
SPEAKER_00: Increase in number so that they you don't dwindle away.
SPEAKER_00: Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.
SPEAKER_00: Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: The New Testament reading is found in Ephesians 2, verses 8 through 10.
SPEAKER_03: You are saved by God's grace because of your faith.
SPEAKER_03: This salvation is God's gift.
SPEAKER_03: It's not something you possessed, it's not something you did that you can be proud of.
SPEAKER_03: Instead, we are God's accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things.
SPEAKER_03: God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives with the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Good morning.
SPEAKER_02: This is Hate.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for standing for the gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Reading this morning found in John thirteen, thirty-four through thirty-five.
SPEAKER_02: This is how we have loved you.
SPEAKER_02: So you also must love each other.
SPEAKER_02: This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples.
SPEAKER_01: That you know it.
SPEAKER_01: That you love it.
SPEAKER_01: That you're aware of all that we are holding and caring.
SPEAKER_01: That you are not aware of that you are not caring for us in some way.
SPEAKER_01: And even as we think about life outside of ourselves, as we think about the common good, as we think about others.
SPEAKER_01: Could you help us to hold those things together in you?
SPEAKER_01: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we pray, and all God's people said, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, Saints.
SPEAKER_01: It's great to see you guys this morning.
SPEAKER_01: My name is Jason.
SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the pastors here.
SPEAKER_01: If you are new or newer or visiting, we're absolutely delighted that you're here.
SPEAKER_01: It's great to see you.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, the school year has started off well.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is the first day that all of the freshmen are no longer uh attending middle school on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: So, freshmen, welcome into the room for wherever you guys are.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we want to say a special hello to anybody that's watching online or watching later.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we love you all.
SPEAKER_01: Hope that you are doing well.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was 25 years ago this fall that Jim Collins wrote the sort of business blockbuster book Good to Greats.
SPEAKER_01: It's that book that gave us like the hedgehog concept and the bus analogy of it's not, you know, you just need to get everybody on the right bus, and then you can get them into the right seats.
SPEAKER_01: And the opening chapter of the book, it has this, you know, very, very sort of like upfront title that says, Good is the enemy of greats.
SPEAKER_01: Just like right off the bat, he comes out swinging um at every sort of conception around goodness and greatness.
SPEAKER_01: And the impact uh of that book is actually really profound.
SPEAKER_01: 25 years later, it still tends to be one of the books that gets referenced a lot in management circles and uh even its impact extended beyond business, uh, certainly into the nonprofit sector and churches, where that book was just talked about uh a lot over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: So it's probably no surprise that at some point someone in the publishing industry was going to sort of pick up on that traction and come out with a different book.
SPEAKER_01: Well, there was a couple of years ago that Pastor Jehoon Lee came out with a book called Great to Good.
SPEAKER_01: And the opening sort of aspect of the book is that greatness is drastically overrated.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, it's just cheeky, right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is what publishers do.
SPEAKER_01: I remember like in the late 90s when I was a youth pastor, um, everyone at that time kind of the that was the maybe the height of purity culture.
SPEAKER_01: And that book, I kissed dating goodbye, was sort of everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are like, oh, please don't mention that book.
SPEAKER_01: Um and then there was a book later on that said, I gave dating a chance, written by the same author.
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, I wonder what changed um in between book one and book two.
SPEAKER_01: Turned out he met a girl.
SPEAKER_01: Um and so I mean, we we do this a little bit, right?
SPEAKER_01: There's a little bit of like cheekiness sometimes in publishing, and the idea that greatness is overrated, of course, is an overstatement to some degree, right?
SPEAKER_01: We just say about how great is our Lord's.
SPEAKER_01: There is a sense that we're like, no, there is a great one.
SPEAKER_01: And then we see throughout the scriptures things like God saying to Abraham, I will make your name great, or Jesus is called the great light that shines in the darkness, or Jesus teaches that those who become like little children are great in the kingdom of heaven, or he says to his church, you will do even greater things than I have done.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a sense like, okay, we kind of get, there's a little bit there that we have to hold on to, but I think what uh Jehun Lee's trying to get at is that we are in many ways, as a culture and society, obsessed with personal greatness.
SPEAKER_01: That there is something about sort of the Western way of life that places a huge emphasis on who's the goat and how do we become the greatest of all time at something.
SPEAKER_01: And what we find in the scriptures is a repeated refrain about good, good, good, turns out to be one of God's favorite words.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're taking up this six-week series as a little bit of a break in our series through the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna come back to Acts.
SPEAKER_01: We know we have more to go through uh in that book.
SPEAKER_01: We want to come and take a seven-week break to focus on a key aspect of who we are as a church.
SPEAKER_01: Our sort of guiding framework for our life together is this is that we say that communion of saints is a community of disciples formed in a common faith through a common life for the common good.
SPEAKER_01: You've seen our t-shirts common faith, common life, common good.
SPEAKER_01: What we're attempting to do is to recapture exactly what Tyler was just talking about, that discipleship has always happened in the context of community.
SPEAKER_01: That you can have community without discipleship, but you cannot have discipleship without community.
SPEAKER_01: Those things are anathetical to one another.
SPEAKER_01: That we don't grow in love and isolation, we only grow in love in relationship with God and with others.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're trying to recover a sense of communal discipleship and a culture of radical individualism.
SPEAKER_01: You can sort of think of it this way if you're like, I'm not sure what all those words mean, is by saying a common faith, what we're recognizing that as followers of Jesus, we are conformed to a pattern.
SPEAKER_01: That pattern is the image of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And what we want our lives to do is to match what we believe about God and what we believe about ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: The early church referred to this as the rule of faith or a common faith that sets the mark out for us who is our God and who are we becoming in Him.
SPEAKER_01: But we're formed into a pattern, but we're formed through practices, through the things that we give our time and attention to.
SPEAKER_01: We're formed through worship and prayer and scripture and Sabbath and meal groups and serving and all the other things that we give ourselves to.
SPEAKER_01: These become the very sort of aspects of our formation.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the writers of the church's past refer to all these things as the means of grace, the ordinary ways by which we encounter God's grace in our life.
SPEAKER_01: The monastic communities refer to this as a rule of life.
SPEAKER_01: This is the pattern by which we're being formed.
SPEAKER_01: These are the practices that form us into that pattern.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a huge emphasis also within the church is that we are formed for a purpose.
SPEAKER_01: That our formation is not just for us.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes in some of the spirituality movements in our world, it makes it seem like spirituality is just another tool towards self-actualization.
SPEAKER_01: How do I just sort of have like my best life?
SPEAKER_01: But from a Christian perspective, we were always formed for the sake of others.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Augustine called the rule of love, the rule of charity, that our life with God should lead us outward into love for the world.
SPEAKER_01: And so each of the last couple of years, we've taken a few weeks just to talk about one of those three components.
SPEAKER_01: So if you were here in 2024, we spent several weeks talking about a common life.
SPEAKER_01: Last summer we spent several weeks talking about a common faith.
SPEAKER_01: And so today we're gonna start a series on the common good.
SPEAKER_01: If you've been around for a long time, you know this is a deep, deep, deep part of our story as a church.
SPEAKER_01: We were launched with the dream to be uh to be in the city for the sake of the city.
SPEAKER_01: We were launched with that dream to hear and to heed that reading from Jeremiah in the Old Testament where God calls his people to seek the shalom, the flourishing, the well-being of the city which we have been sent into exile.
SPEAKER_01: We have throughout our life just sort of sought to be a church in downtown, a church for downtown, and a church that reaches from downtown to our city and beyond from that.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, now we're just sort of living between two worlds, downtown and here at Mitchell.
SPEAKER_01: When we think about the common good, it's important to sort of talk about what do we mean by that?
SPEAKER_01: How are we defining that phrase?
SPEAKER_01: Because in different circles, it can mean different things.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you hear the phrase common good, and some might sort of like sort of perk up right away and say, well, that just sounds like kind of a nuanced way of talking about communism.
SPEAKER_01: Like a state-led forced equality that fails to address sin that leads to authoritarianism and economic stagnation and humanitarian crises.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's the best pitch I can give for communism from there.
SPEAKER_01: Not really the inspirational sales speech.
SPEAKER_01: Um you're like, well, wait a second.
SPEAKER_01: I I find myself maybe resistant to that.
SPEAKER_01: Or others may think, well, this just sounds maybe like some form of utilitarianism, just trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
SPEAKER_01: But then there's a part of this like, but but who misses out and who decides like what is good and who decides who gets to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
SPEAKER_01: Whenever I like hear the phrase greatest good, immediately in my mind, the movie Incredibles starts playing.
SPEAKER_01: And you're like, where is he going?
SPEAKER_01: Uh but there's this moment where Frozone is looking for his super suit, and he like yells at his wife in the other room, he's like, Where's my super suit?
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, Why do you need to know?
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Because I've got to go and like serve the good.
SPEAKER_01: And she says, I am your wife.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the greatest good you will ever know.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, too bad, superhero, you're gonna stay at home here for a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, when we think about the common good, the gist is maybe a part of us uh may not even be conscious that just feels like, well, that seems like futility or folly.
SPEAKER_01: Because really, what everybody needs to do is just look out for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Look out for number one.
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, we've sworn a loyalty to me, myself, and I, according to Taylor.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: There's a sense, like, oh, if we just all take care of ourselves, look out for our own selves, like that's what we really need to do, and then just not worry about the rest.
SPEAKER_01: Others, maybe particularly outside of Christian circles, will just sort of push back on the idea on the grounds of pluralism, that everyone should be able to determine their idea of a good life and be able to pursue it freely and unencumbered without any sort of common definition.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in that worldview, there is no common good, there's only individual good, and there's no way of sort of agreeing upon something from there.
SPEAKER_01: But from the Christian point of view, we've always said that there is a common good, a Christian vision for the world that has been given to us by God.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we're trying to capture is what is the Christian vision of the common good?
SPEAKER_01: As we said before, good is one of God's favorite words, and it pulls up right away at the very beginning of scriptures, the Hebrew word tov, and we encounter it in the refrain that happens over and over again in Genesis 1.
SPEAKER_01: That God saw what he made and he said it was good.
SPEAKER_01: That he saw it and he said, That's good, that's good, that's good.
SPEAKER_01: And eventually that climactic, this is very good.
SPEAKER_01: It's over and over.
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting in that chapter that God doesn't look at what he made and said it was done.
SPEAKER_01: He looks at it and said it was a good.
SPEAKER_01: However, we think about good in all of its sort of multiple faceted ways of thinking about it.
SPEAKER_01: It was good in every way and good for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: And it was good because it was exactly how God wanted it to be.
SPEAKER_01: That God, being the good God that he is, of perfect character and perfect love, made something good in every way for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: And that's how he wanted it to be.
SPEAKER_01: The sense that it's his kingdom was fully present.
SPEAKER_01: Dallas Willard defined God's kingdom this way.
SPEAKER_01: He said, God's own kingdom or God's own rule is the range of his effective will.
SPEAKER_01: It's where he wants done is done.
SPEAKER_01: So we can look at God's creation as like everything is as he wanted it to be, and as such, it was good.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, that scene changes drastically in Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: When we humans decide to take matters in our own hands, we decide that we want to define good and evil for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit of what's happening there in the tree, that we really wanted to remake the world according to our will.
SPEAKER_01: We wanted our kingdom to come, our will to be done.
SPEAKER_01: So the Genesis 3 narrative is not a fall like, oops, humanity sort of tripped and stumbled into something.
SPEAKER_01: It's very rude, it's a coup d'état.
SPEAKER_01: It's humanity rebelling against God in every way.
SPEAKER_01: And say we want to take the reins for ourselves, and we made a mess of everything.
SPEAKER_01: But since that moment we read is that God has been at work in the world to repair and to restore his good creation.
SPEAKER_01: That this is the very heartbeat of God, not to look at what we made a mess of and go, well, that's too bad, but instead to partner with us in repairing and restoring his good world.
SPEAKER_01: This is ultimately what he is doing and has done and will do in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Then in Jesus' life and death and resurrection and ascension and eventual return, God is remaking the worlds according to his will.
SPEAKER_01: He's remaking the place.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus, we can say that that prayer, his kingdom come, his will be done on earth that is in heaven, is being fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: The way that the writers in the New Testament talk about it is some of these kinds of language.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: This is what God planned for the climax of all times to bring all things together in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The things in heaven along with the things on earth.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, in Jesus, God is reconciling all things to himself.
SPEAKER_01: He's removing all hostility and restoring all unity.
SPEAKER_01: He's putting everything back together.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that has been torn apart and fractured, and bringing all things together.
SPEAKER_01: God has reconciled me to my Himself.
SPEAKER_01: And I have experienced what it means to be reconciled to others.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe even that deep prayer, the deep longing for that kind of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_01: This is what God does.
SPEAKER_01: And not only reconciles all things, Revelation puts it this way: it says, the one seated on the throne said, Look, I'm making all things new.
SPEAKER_01: He's reconciling all things and he's renewing all things.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, what God wants to do is to take everything in his good world and bring it all back to life, to restore its vibrancy, its beauty, its vitality.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to do that in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Some, when we talk about the ways in which we encounter the gospel, we encounter Jesus or encounter the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, we oftentimes will use those phrases of born again and new life.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because that's the best way we can describe it is that somehow there was a brand new lease on everything.
SPEAKER_01: Acts put it this way: it says, Jesus must remain in heaven until the restoration of all things, about which God spoke about long ago through his holy prophets, reconciling, renewing and restoring.
SPEAKER_01: He's healing whatever has been broken and bent and cracked and damaged and discarded.
SPEAKER_01: That whatever has become subject to death and decay, Jesus is restoring.
SPEAKER_01: It means he's restoring both us as people and he's restoring places.
SPEAKER_01: I love that image.
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like for any one of us to live our lives fully restored?
SPEAKER_01: To have the image of God fully restored in all of us.
SPEAKER_01: If you think about the people that you love, that you pray for, that you care deeply about, what is that longing that you have for them?
SPEAKER_01: Is it not for the restoration that God has intended for them to be complete?
SPEAKER_01: But it's not just the people, it's all the places that we love as well.
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like for Jesus to restore all of those places?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has come, according to the scriptures, to make all things.
SPEAKER_01: Notice how inclusive that is.
SPEAKER_01: To make all things good again.
SPEAKER_01: Good in every way and good for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: Good because he wants to return it to the way that he wants it to be.
SPEAKER_01: Good because God will look at it and see and say that it is.
SPEAKER_01: Good according to his will.
SPEAKER_01: And what we recognize all the way here at the very beginning is we can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: That's not something that we can do.
SPEAKER_01: That we can't just sort of like walk out of here and say, okay, we're gonna fix it.
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly it's just gonna be fixed.
SPEAKER_01: And we wake up in the morning, it'll be fixed, and it'll all be sort of done because we gave it our best efforts.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of work, the recognition.
SPEAKER_01: Reconciling, the renewing, the restoring of all things is something that ultimately only God Himself can do.
SPEAKER_01: But God, in His great mercy and wisdom, and grace and kindness and love says, Yeah, but I want to do it with you.
SPEAKER_01: Like it's my work, but would you come and do this with me?
SPEAKER_01: Think of maybe those moments, maybe with uh with a parent when you were a kid.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it was they were doing something in the kitchen or in a workshop or out in the yard, and you had that moment of like, oh, can I help?
SPEAKER_01: And maybe like dad was pushing the lawn more, and then you had that little like play school one like coming alongside.
SPEAKER_01: It's like I wasn't actually cutting the lawn, but oh man, was I joining him in whatever was happening?
SPEAKER_01: Now we've all had those sort of moments, but the difference, of course, between that analogy is that what we get to do is actually meaningful.
SPEAKER_01: It's significant.
SPEAKER_01: It is actually joining him in what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: And Ephesians 2 puts it this way: He says, instead, like we didn't save ourselves, we can't do that, and we can't fix the world, but we are God's accomplishment.
SPEAKER_01: Other translations say God's handiwork, created or crafted in Jesus for what?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we're created to do good things.
SPEAKER_01: And God planned those good things to be the way that we live our lives.
SPEAKER_01: That our whole lives would be oriented around the good things that God has for us to do.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, we take Paul seriously here, each and every one of us has been handcrafted by the creator to contribute to the flourishing of the world, to participate with him and making all things good again.
SPEAKER_01: And that work according to the scripture is not just sort of temporal, sort of like, hey, we're putting up a signpost, and eventually that's going to get, you know, sort of thrown into the fire and gotten rid of.
SPEAKER_01: When we take the scriptures seriously, those things follow us into the future.
SPEAKER_01: They follow us into new creation.
SPEAKER_01: Revelation 14 says this, and I heard a voice from heaven, write this favored are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, says the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: So they can rest from their labors.
SPEAKER_01: But he says, But their deeds will follow them.
SPEAKER_01: Their deeds will follow them.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is a little bit of what Jesus meant when he was talking about don't store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where rust and moth and all of those things, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 3, each one's work will be clearly shown.
SPEAKER_01: The day will make it clear, meaning the day of the Lord when Jesus returns, because it will reveal with fire, the fire will test the quality of each one's work.
SPEAKER_01: And if anyone's work survives, meaning carries forward, they're going to get a reward.
SPEAKER_01: I love how N.T.
SPEAKER_01: Wright puts it.
SPEAKER_01: He says this, he says, What you do in the present, by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01: And we can, that list can go on and on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01: He says these will last into God's future.
SPEAKER_01: He sounds a little bit like Maximus and Gladiator here, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like what we do in life echoes in eternity.
SPEAKER_01: But I think what he's trying to get at here is that our good deeds, our good works, the way that we contribute or participate with God in the common good, become the very building materials that he uses for his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: That somehow he's able to take whatever our meager gifts are and allow them to be continued into eternity and parts of his glorious work.
SPEAKER_01: According to the scriptures, every single aspect of our lives can contribute to the common good and be a means of participating in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: We often say that discipleship, from our perspective, is our whole lives for our whole lives.
SPEAKER_01: That there is no aspect of our life that God doesn't care about, and no time in our life that God doesn't care about.
SPEAKER_01: He cares about all of it.
SPEAKER_01: And all of it can be a means of participating, joining Him in the restoration of all things.
SPEAKER_01: So in this particular series, what we're gonna do is we're gonna focus on two aspects.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna kind of take a deeper dive into our work, how our paid and our unpaid labor become a means of joining Jesus and what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: And then we're gonna take a look at how our resources can become a means for joining God as well.
SPEAKER_01: How through giving and generosity that we participate in the in-breaking kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Then we looked at another aspect this summer.
SPEAKER_01: For those of you who are in a meal group this summer, you looked at the service practice from practicing the way.
SPEAKER_01: Looking at how volunteering can contribute to the common good.
SPEAKER_01: Last week we had our Teams launch where we had people who are like, hey, if you want to get involved serving anywhere around the church, it's not too late to join in.
SPEAKER_01: You could sign up for a team.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not too late even today.
SPEAKER_01: We actually add people to teams.
SPEAKER_01: There's no fantasy draft where it's like the one day and the one time.
SPEAKER_01: If you miss it, you can't serve.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so there's a QR code up there if you're like, I want to get involved.
SPEAKER_01: This is a way we contribute to the common good by serving one another and serving our worlds.
SPEAKER_01: Today is going to be our fall discipleship launch.
SPEAKER_01: And this fall, many of our meal groups will be studying the witness practice from practicing the way, talking about what does it mean to witness with our lives and with our words and with our work.
SPEAKER_01: This aligns with one of our core values of our life together, is that we want to cultivate a beautiful and benevolent witness to our worlds.
SPEAKER_01: That we want our life and our witness to be beautiful and benevolent to our city.
SPEAKER_01: At the very last week of that session for practicing the way, you still need to go through it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just burying the lead a little bit from here.
SPEAKER_01: They talk briefly about two that I want to talk about today in our remaining time together.
SPEAKER_01: But when they talk about witness, they talk specifically about two things.
SPEAKER_01: And the first one is this that living is living in community.
SPEAKER_01: That our life together is a way in which we witness to the world about the goodness of God, and our life together contributes to the common good.
SPEAKER_01: According to Jesus in the Gospel of John, our life together embodies the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: There's a signpost to the world for the world to come.
SPEAKER_01: It's meant to be this sense of that the world sees the way that we love and wants in.
SPEAKER_01: They see our love and go, oh, somehow God is more tangible now.
SPEAKER_01: As Tyler just shared about a second ago, that the idea that somehow God could love me becomes more apparent in the context of community.
SPEAKER_01: I love the way that Tim Keller put it.
SPEAKER_01: He says it this way: he says, the church is a counterculture for the common good.
SPEAKER_01: The church is a counterculture for the common good.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, our existence and the way that we live our life is meant to be different.
SPEAKER_01: We're called to live according to a different king and a different kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: The life of the church is meant to be, as Gerhard Lofenck called it, that's a great name, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Gerhard Lofink.
SPEAKER_01: Um, those of you who are pregnant, there's a word for you.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but he said the church is meant to be a contrast society, showing the world there's a different way to be human, there's a different way to live.
SPEAKER_01: And our difference in following Jesus, according to the scriptures, is a gift to the common good.
SPEAKER_01: It is a gift to the world.
SPEAKER_01: And so it begins here with the way that we love and care for one another, the way we show up in difficult places and hard times, the way that we reach across whatever things may divide us normally within sort of social circles, and say, here is a people who are united together by the spirits of God.
SPEAKER_01: The second thing that they share they say is this is the other way that we witness is by sharing the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: It's by sharing the good news that Jesus is the saving king, by sharing that revelation that if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus by sharing the good news that in Jesus we can know God and we can live in his love.
SPEAKER_01: And this is actually the ultimate good.
SPEAKER_01: That Jesus is good in every way, and Jesus is good for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: The gospel is good news in every way, and the gospel is good news for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot bracket that out of any conception of the common good.
SPEAKER_01: To say, oh no, no, the common good doesn't include the gospel, it inherently does.
SPEAKER_01: Andy Crouch once said that if we try to think about the common good without the gospel, then it shows that we're not taking the common good very seriously.
SPEAKER_01: Because God Himself is the ultimate good.
SPEAKER_01: Now, it is certainly possible to share the gospel in some very, very, very poor ways.
SPEAKER_01: To share the gospel in ways that are damaging and then loving, ways that betray the very message itself.
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking of the person standing on the street corner with a bullhorn screaming at those that come by.
SPEAKER_01: Or those tracks that looked like$20 bills that people left on their table in the restaurant on Sunday afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: And the waiter or waitress who was working so hard opened that and thought, oh, I just got 20 bucks.
SPEAKER_01: And then inside said, I'm giving you something more valuable than the 20.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, please give them a 50 if you're gonna leave that uh alongside.
SPEAKER_01: Like it's just unloving at that point in time.
SPEAKER_01: Or for those of you who have ever gone through a hellhouse on Halloween, maybe not the best ways to share the gospel, the good news that Jesus is the saving king who loves you.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, some of you don't know what that is, and just be glad.
SPEAKER_01: Don't even Google it.
SPEAKER_01: Um, just leave it alone and go for it.
SPEAKER_01: But what often I think sometimes happens in our pursuit of wanting to love others, wanting to respect others, wanting to show dignity and value and worth to others and their perspectives and their stories and their convictions, all of which are good.
SPEAKER_01: We're called to have a curious faith, to want to know more about all of people and their lives and their stories.
SPEAKER_01: But what often happens is that we're so worried sometimes about all the poor ways that the gospel gets shared that we end up just then not sharing the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Not sharing in a really dear and deep and personal part of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: We want to avoid those things, but it doesn't mean that we don't share.
SPEAKER_01: It just means that the people of God always seek to share the good news of the gospel in the context of love and relationship and hospitality and service and care and most importantly prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Of really praying for good to come to people.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah, when he tells us to seek the shalom of the city, the first thing he says, seek the shalom, the flourish in the city, and then he says, pray for it.
SPEAKER_01: Talked about this a few weeks ago, that the power of the church is the power of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And so here's my invitation to you as we begin this series.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk a whole lot about work and we're gonna talk a whole lot about generosity.
SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be our two focus.
SPEAKER_01: But today I just want to set before us that reminder that Jesus commissions us to go into all the world to make disciples, which includes sharing the gospel with all those who we have the opportunity to share it with.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we begin this series, as we begin the witness practice in our meal groups, I want to share just two challenges, two invitations to us.
SPEAKER_01: The first one comes right from practicing the way.
SPEAKER_01: And it's this just want to encourage us to pray intentionally for three to five people this fall.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure all of us know people in our lives, either in our families of origin, the people that we live with or work with or live alongside, or our favorite barista at the coffee shop, or wherever that might be, people that either are not following Jesus or who are no longer following Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to encourage you to write their names on a sticky note, or maybe write them on your bathroom mirror, just in a place where those names will be before you, stick it on your dashboard, and just take a few moments each day and just pray for them.
SPEAKER_01: Just pray every day and ask Jesus to make himself known, to show them his love, and then be open to whatever opportunities present themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Opportunities to love, to listen, to learn, to care, and to share your own story of life with God.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's to invite them to Alpha, maybe it's invite them to come to your meal group, maybe it's invite them over to your house for a meal, maybe it's just coming alongside and saying, Can I help you with your leaves this fall?
SPEAKER_01: Whatever those opportunities are, as we pray, I always believe that Jesus opens opportunities for us.
SPEAKER_01: And so begin to pray for three to five people.
SPEAKER_01: But I also want us to pray for three to five places.
SPEAKER_01: We believe that Jesus not only is restoring people, but he wants to restore places.
SPEAKER_01: He really wants to restore every aspect of his city.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want you to choose three to five places in our city, write them down on a separate sticky note or bathroom mirror, whatever it happens to be, and just begin to intentionally pray for those places and say, Jesus, would you restore that place?
SPEAKER_01: Would you restore it in whatever ways it needs to be restored?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's praying for Mitchell.
SPEAKER_01: Just saying, hey, this is our home right now.
SPEAKER_01: We just want to pray for the restoration of all things and including this school.
SPEAKER_01: May it thrive, may it flourish?
SPEAKER_01: Would you bless the teachers and administrators?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's Palmer saying, Oh, we love that place, we miss that place.
SPEAKER_01: We want to continue to pray.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's Colorado College and your connections there with Alpha.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're just praying for downtown in general.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's praying for one of our kingdom partners for Mary's home, for Springs Rescue Mission, for Lutheran family services.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's your place of work or your school or your neighborhood or your own home, wherever it has to be, just name three to five places and say, Jesus, I just want this place to flourish in every way.
SPEAKER_01: And just begin to pray.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, would you do that?
SPEAKER_01: Would you restore everything?
SPEAKER_01: And as we get ready to come to the table, we pray in that sort of posture, because the truth is that every single one of us is here because somebody prayed for us.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody was praying for us.
SPEAKER_01: That we happened upon encountered the gospel because somebody was praying for us.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it was a great grandma in my case, whether it was a neighbor also in my case, was dating his daughter and he was really worried about me.
SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's like this guy needs Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Um whoever it was, some of you just got some ideas.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, I know what I'm praying for.
SPEAKER_01: Um but somebody prayed for us.
SPEAKER_01: And that somehow, in some way, in the mysterious economy of God, led to the gospel coming to us and a time that we could hear it.
SPEAKER_01: And by the grace of God, we were able to receive it.
SPEAKER_01: And by the grace of God, our life has never been the same because of what he has done.
SPEAKER_01: And so we come into those moments of prayer recognizing that we are the recipients.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, we are the ones that get to partner with Jesus, join him in the restoration of all things, but we get to join him because we are the ones who have been reconciled to God in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We are the ones who have been renewed, we've been given new life in him, and we are the ones who've been restored.
SPEAKER_01: That he is by his spirit continuing to restore us in every way.
SPEAKER_01: And even as we come to the table today, we ask that he would continue to heal us, to make us whole by the grace that we receive in him.
SPEAKER_01: Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, for as it is, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
SPEAKER_01: World without end.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.