SPEAKER_00: Now, if you uh know me well, I am not much of a movie person.
SPEAKER_00: Not that I think there's anything morally wrong with movies, but if it's a Friday night, I would just rather watch a sporting event.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone else out there?
SPEAKER_00: A few.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not Star Wars, I probably have not seen it.
SPEAKER_00: I do love Star Wars.
SPEAKER_00: I'll come back to movies in a second.
SPEAKER_00: A few summers ago, I had the privilege of getting to visit Rome, Italy.
SPEAKER_00: And I got to visit the Roman Coliseum.
SPEAKER_00: It was a spectacular sight to behold, the architecture of the building, all the seats, the VIP areas for the Roman senators, the underground catacombs where the gladiators would get ready for battle.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't much different than our stadiums today.
SPEAKER_00: As the social media joke goes, I've spent just about every day since thinking about the Roman Empire and the Coliseum.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if you know this about the Coliseum, but at one point in our tour, they talked about how they would flood the Coliseum floor with water, and they would have naval battles in the Colosseum Bowl.
SPEAKER_00: I spent the next few years trying to picture how that would work.
SPEAKER_00: And what would it look like?
SPEAKER_00: Was the floor really that watertight that it didn't instantly leak out?
SPEAKER_00: How big were these boats?
SPEAKER_00: My imagination raced at what this could look like.
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward a few years, I'm watching a basketball game and a commercial for the new movie Gladiator 2 comes on.
SPEAKER_00: In the commercial, they show the Roman Coliseum flooded and gladiators having a battle on water.
SPEAKER_00: I'm quickly like, oh man, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to go see this movie because I have been dying to know what it would look like to have a ship battle in the Coliseum.
SPEAKER_00: I will say my first order of action was to watch Gladiator One because I was 30 years old and had never seen Gladiator.
SPEAKER_00: Justin would be very disappointed too to know that.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
SPEAKER_00: My imagination of what these naval battles looked like, it was fulfilled when I saw the movie.
SPEAKER_00: It came to life.
SPEAKER_00: I got to see a representation of it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, pivoting to us here today, I know for me, as we've gone through the book of Romans for the last year, we have gotten to walk through some of the most epic sentences, paragraphs, and chapters in the whole Bible and of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Big question.
SPEAKER_00: Has the book of Romans' epic theological teaching captured your imagination for the practical?
SPEAKER_00: What did it look like in the church?
SPEAKER_00: Do you long to be in a gospel-saturated church like the one we read about here in Rome?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a question we ask ourselves often.
SPEAKER_00: What did the early church look like?
SPEAKER_00: I know for some of you here today, you may be struggle with Christianity because you've seen the church act in terrible ways.
SPEAKER_00: I've got great news.
SPEAKER_00: Here in Romans 16, Paul is painting a portrait for us of what the church should look like.
SPEAKER_00: My prayer, whether you are on fire for Jesus or far from him, is that you'd see the beauty of the church in today's message and be drawn in.
SPEAKER_00: To set our stage for our text, the book of Romans is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at uh verse 2, because of Paul's instructions there, where he asked the Roman church to welcome Deacon Phoebe, scholars agree that this letter written by Paul was most likely hand delivered by Deacon Phoebe to the church.
SPEAKER_00: You could call it the Phoebe Express if you'd like.
SPEAKER_00: Here we find ourselves at the end of the book.
SPEAKER_00: These people have opened this letter, they are starting to read it.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the letter, Paul ends it by personally encouraging members of the Roman church he knows.
SPEAKER_00: These personal greetings are regularly found at the end of Paul's letters.
SPEAKER_00: You might think of Colossians, 2 Timothy, By Lemon, 1 Corinthians, just to name a few.
SPEAKER_00: But one thing that makes this ending in Romans different than all the other letters is the unparalleled amount of people mentioned.
SPEAKER_00: Mariah can tell us about that.
SPEAKER_00: 30 people and families are referenced here.
SPEAKER_00: This is by far the longest and largest of Paul's closing personal greetings.
SPEAKER_00: Here in this passage, we get to know about 30 people in and around the Church of Rome 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: What we'll see from our text today, and it'll be our three major points, the church is made up of a diverse group of people.
SPEAKER_00: The church shows diverse acts of love to one another, and the church's unity is in one thing: Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see those points in your bulletin.
SPEAKER_00: Our main idea for today is the church glorifies God through diverse relationships.
SPEAKER_00: You'll also find that in your bulletin.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, the main idea: the church glorifies God through diverse relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at our first main point and takeaway from the passage, diverse people.
SPEAKER_00: Hope you still have your copies of God's word open as we'll be referencing back to them a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start by looking at these 30 incredibly diverse people mentioned here.
SPEAKER_00: Starting in verse 3, Prissa and Aquila.
SPEAKER_00: Now you might be asking, is that the same Priscilla and Aquila?
SPEAKER_00: It is.
SPEAKER_00: The ESV here translation is just a slight variation of the translation of the name.
SPEAKER_00: So in verse 3, we meet Priscilla and Aquila, a married couple who were missionary partners with Paul in Corinth and Ephesus, and now find themselves in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: Similar to Paul, they were tent makers.
SPEAKER_00: You could have called them the APP Aquila, Priscilla, Paul Tent Making Company back in the day.
SPEAKER_00: Aquila and Priscilla's ministry for the church is so wound together that you can't mention one without the other.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 5, we meet Epineatus, who get this, was the first Asian person to ever accept Christ.
SPEAKER_00: What a cool piece of history that is.
SPEAKER_00: Scholars estimate that the book of Romans could have been written as recently as one year after Eponaius came to faith.
SPEAKER_00: He's a young believer in the church.
SPEAKER_00: He's also a different nationality than the church he goes to.
SPEAKER_00: He's in a European church, but he is from Asia.
SPEAKER_00: This means he's an immigrant to Rome and an immigrant in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Looking at verse 7, we're introduced to Andronicus and Junea, who were fellow prisoners with Paul.
SPEAKER_00: The text doesn't state why they were in prison.
SPEAKER_00: They could have been put in prison for their faith.
SPEAKER_00: There's also the possibility they had been in prison a long time and came to faith in prison.
SPEAKER_00: Or a myriad of other scenarios.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the scenario is, we've got ex-prisoners in this church.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 13, we meet Rufus and his mother.
SPEAKER_00: Rufus' mom was a mother figure to Paul.
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk more about what that looked like later.
SPEAKER_00: But demographically, we see this church has older women in it who are mature in faith and making an impact on all those around them.
SPEAKER_00: Even the apostle Paul is edified and sanctified through these mature, faithful women.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of women, nine of the 30 people mentioned in this passage are women.
SPEAKER_00: As many of you know, to uplift, mention, exonerate, uplift is, hey, our structure of the church, there's a lot of women in there in leadership.
SPEAKER_00: To do that was very countercultural.
SPEAKER_00: Parkside ladies, you play a critical role in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Paul sees women as vital to the health of the church then, and you are vital to Parkside now.
SPEAKER_00: Keep going.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 8, we're introduced to a lady named Ampyletus.
SPEAKER_00: Now we don't have a thorough description of her from the text, but Christian tradition and secular scholars hold that she was a member of an imperial family that was extremely noble and wealthy.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 10, we actually meet another wealthy person, a man named Aristobulus, who was the brother of King Agrippa.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 11, we meet Herodian, who historians say was a current slave at the time, or at best a recently freed slave.
SPEAKER_00: Here in the Roman Church, we have men, women, singles, married, families, Asian, Europeans, Jews, Gentiles, old, young, rich, poor, slaves, prisoners, immigrants, spiritually mature, missionaries, new believers.
SPEAKER_00: And who knows what other differing backgrounds.
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean for our biblical portrait of the church today?
SPEAKER_00: The early church was one that was extremely diverse in every physical and spiritual demographic you can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Our church today should also reflect the diversity of our surrounding area.
SPEAKER_00: And all these categories I mentioned earlier, right?
SPEAKER_00: Gender, marital status, nationality, race, age, tax brackets, spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_00: We should look like the community around us.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what, Parkside?
SPEAKER_00: In some of those ways, I think we're doing amazing.
SPEAKER_00: We are doing a great job.
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, I'm sure we could all agree we we could do better.
SPEAKER_00: As we look to reflect on this portrait of the early church, I want to give us as Parkside one specific encouragement of how I've seen us grow in diversity and one specific challenge for our church in an area that I think we can grow.
SPEAKER_00: I'll start with the challenge.
SPEAKER_00: Growing up here in Brownsburg, going to church here and going to school at BCS, I know I personally always kind of had the assumption that our town was not very racially diverse.
SPEAKER_00: In 2018, I went to my first Brownsburg football game in many years, and I was shocked at the diversity I saw in the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: Caucasians, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, all in the crowd wearing Brownsburg purple.
SPEAKER_00: It was seemingly the most diversity I had seen in Brownsburg ever.
SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful picture of all kinds of different people coming together to cheer for one thing, the Brownsburg football team.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure all of you can think of a similar story where you anecdotally see our town getting more diverse.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe at the store, maybe your kids' soccer team, maybe the school your kids go to.
SPEAKER_00: First person anecdotes are helpful, but data is also helpful.
SPEAKER_00: According to a 2010 census data, Brownsburg was over 93% white.
SPEAKER_00: 2010 census, 93% white.
SPEAKER_00: According to the 2024 census data, 14 years later, Brownsburg is now 77% white, making about a quarter of Brownsburg African American, Latino, and Asian.
SPEAKER_00: In the last 15 years, our town has become three times more diverse.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't want you to hear this wrong.
SPEAKER_00: We are going to be ecstatic at every person who joins our church through membership, every person who makes a decision for Christ, every person who gets into our baptismal.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we are going to be ecstatic at anybody that does those things.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that would go without saying.
SPEAKER_00: But as a church, we should in essence be a representation of our community around us.
SPEAKER_00: If we are evangelizing to the parents or the kids on our children's ball teams, our neighbors, those who come to Storytime in the park, the data is saying that group should look more and more diverse.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'll say diversity is not something we need to go out and explicitly go out and search for, right?
SPEAKER_00: It should really just come naturally as we live lives in Brownsburg and the surrounding areas.
SPEAKER_00: I know for Alice and I, we moved to Brownsburg one year ago.
SPEAKER_00: And on one side of our house is a white family, on the other side of our house is an African-American family, and across the street from us is a Latino family.
SPEAKER_00: So as we look to evangelize, the fruit should look like those we are rubbing shoulders with.
SPEAKER_00: One of those things that I think works against this is the temptation of what Justin talked about last week, where it can be human or worldly nature to kind of surround ourselves with people who look like, talk like, and act like us.
SPEAKER_00: But that is not what we see in the Roman church 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: And it should not be true of Parkside today.
SPEAKER_00: We want our fellowship and our worship together to be a small taste of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is in the business of gathering a people from every type, tongue, and nation to himself.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 7 would say this.
SPEAKER_00: After I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: So Park Side, let's look to keep evangelizing to those around us, our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends.
SPEAKER_00: Invite those around you to read the Bible with you and come experience the beauty of the church.
SPEAKER_00: I will say I have seen us growing in this area, but I think we still have a ways we can go.
SPEAKER_00: I just heard a beautiful story this week of some members in our church who are immigrants from Africa going to church here.
SPEAKER_00: And their son had a planned surgery this week, and during the days in and around the surgery, they were showered with visits, prayer, encouragements, and love.
SPEAKER_00: What an incredible sight for the outside world to see.
SPEAKER_00: This is a beautiful, beautiful display of what our unity as a church being formed in Christ, not what the world tells us.
SPEAKER_00: Now go to my encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: That was my challenge.
SPEAKER_00: Let me go to my encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: In the last 10 years, I have been so encouraged by the increasing amount of young adults in our congregation.
SPEAKER_00: Adults who are in their 20s, 30s, early 40s, singles, families.
SPEAKER_00: If you would have been here 10 years ago, 10 years ago plus, seeing a baby or someone in their 20s and 30s was a rarity.
SPEAKER_00: If you've been here for less than 10 years, talk to someone that was here 10 more years ago.
SPEAKER_00: It was a rarity 10, 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I remember hearing stories of there being one, two, three babies in the nursery.
SPEAKER_00: If you've seen the nursery recently, that is kind of hard to fathom.
SPEAKER_00: As a church, about 10 years ago, as we have founded ourselves on our four core principles, delighting in the gospel, growing through relationships, serving our community, and sending into the world, this Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting base has allowed us to grow in love for one another.
SPEAKER_00: I have heard of countless young people that have come here in the past decade and said, wow, this church seems really healthy.
SPEAKER_00: They love one another, and they are all about the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Our church is being a light on the hill, and people are becoming attracted to the light.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus would say it this way in Matthew 5.
SPEAKER_00: You are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
SPEAKER_00: Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: We shine our light as a church, God gets the glory.
SPEAKER_00: One story that I think really reflects this being lived out well as a church comes from one of our members who is a grad student.
SPEAKER_00: Now I need you to maybe watch me, follow along, because I don't want this story to get confusing.
SPEAKER_00: Our grad student in their cohort of, you know, 30, 40 people, invited three of his cohort to come to church with him.
SPEAKER_00: They came to church.
SPEAKER_00: He let me know, he texted me the night before, hey, I'm gonna bring three friends to my cohort.
SPEAKER_00: Can you come up and say hi?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, great, I love getting those texts.
SPEAKER_00: I know Justin talks about loving getting those texts.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get those more often.
SPEAKER_00: Service ends.
SPEAKER_00: I look over at this member and his three friends that came, and there is a mass of people around these visitors.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like uh Jesus with the paralytic.
SPEAKER_00: I can't even get close, I might have to repel from the ceiling to get down there.
SPEAKER_00: That would not look good.
SPEAKER_00: Um, these people came and were warmly welcomed.
SPEAKER_00: Now it gets even better.
SPEAKER_00: This member of ours, after a long week of tests, the whole cohort's like, hey, let's go out, grab a bite to eat, grab a drink, hang out.
SPEAKER_00: It was a hard week.
SPEAKER_00: I like great.
SPEAKER_00: Whole cohort sitting around at this bar.
SPEAKER_00: These people over here who, these people were invited to church, these three came.
SPEAKER_00: Someone over here says, Hey, I've been looking for a church with great community in love for one another.
SPEAKER_00: These three college students who came to Parkside once, have not been back since, said to them, Hey, if you are looking for a church with great community, love for one another, you need to go to Parkside.
SPEAKER_00: Graduate students who came to our church once are telling their friends of the genuine love in community here at Parkside.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say this one more time.
SPEAKER_00: If our church's love is so well known and so evident, that is being talked about by college students in Broaderville on a Friday night by 20-year-olds in a bar.
SPEAKER_00: How awesome is that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that not what we're all living for?
SPEAKER_00: Is that not what we all mean by growing through relationships?
SPEAKER_00: That's astonishing.
SPEAKER_00: That is a miracle, amen.
SPEAKER_00: That is only something God can do.
SPEAKER_00: That's what a church should look like.
SPEAKER_00: And once again, especially, I hope you find encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: Those who were here 10 years ago plus, and maybe you listened to the podcast last summer, you can think of how maybe people in this own building used to talk about our church or people in the surrounding area.
SPEAKER_00: We've now got 20-year-olds in a bar talking about the love we have for one another.
SPEAKER_00: This is a city on a hill shining its light.
SPEAKER_00: How can we draw in a diverse group of people from every age, tax bracket, spiritual maturity, and ethnicity in here?
SPEAKER_00: How can we do that in accord with what scripture and the portrait Paul is painting here?
SPEAKER_00: John 13, 35 says it best.
SPEAKER_00: By this, everyone will know you are my disciples if you love one another.
SPEAKER_00: Our love for one another proves that we are Christ's disciples and will draw people into the church.
SPEAKER_00: But what does that look like?
SPEAKER_00: What does love for one another look like?
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at our second point: diverse love.
SPEAKER_00: Here in our passage, we see diverse diverse acts of love being displayed in the early church.
SPEAKER_00: Look down at the passage with me.
SPEAKER_00: Verse one we've got instructions to welcome Phoebe, showing her hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: A place to stay, a bed, food, fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2, we see that Phoebe was a patron to many and myself.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of this word patron here is providing help or assistance in times of need, especially in regards to hospitality and finances.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, we see Priscilla and Aquila risk their neck for my life.
SPEAKER_00: This was likely on their missionary journeys with Paul.
SPEAKER_00: You can maybe think of when Paul got kicked out of Ephesus.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6, we see work hard for you.
SPEAKER_00: These people are working hard for each other.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12, they worked hard in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Working hard for you, working hard for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 13, we see Rufus' mom has been a mother to Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this probably means both physically and spiritually, a mother to Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Physically, making meals, doing laundry, giving him a place to stay.
SPEAKER_00: And spiritually, she likely instructed him with sound wisdom, prayed for him, and encouraged him to keep going in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And our final act of love, cited here in verse 16, it's the infamous greet one another with a holy kiss.
SPEAKER_00: Now I've heard from many of you that you think it's awkward and forced when we do a mid-service, turn, greet, and shake your neighbor's hand.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine if we did a turn, greet and kiss your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: How awkward and forced would that be?
SPEAKER_00: I guess it depends on who you're sitting by, but just joking there.
SPEAKER_00: But seriously, some of you are probably getting a little nervous or weirded out when you hear greet each other with a holy kiss.
SPEAKER_00: As you can probably guess, how people have warmly greeted each other can vary from culture to culture, century to century.
SPEAKER_00: The call from Paul here is not that after service you need to turn to your neighbor and kiss them.
SPEAKER_00: It is that they need to be greeted with a warm affection for one another.
SPEAKER_00: In first century Rome, what did it look like to warmly greet each other?
SPEAKER_00: It looked like kissing each other.
SPEAKER_00: In my stereotypical mind, I think Europeans still greet each other like this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's true, but that's just what I got in my hood.
SPEAKER_00: We want to emulate greeting each other with warm, holy affection.
SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, today we've got handshakes, hugs, the combination of the two, the bro hug, or dap as it's now being called.
SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of ways to show affection.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell some stories later where we where we see those in action.
SPEAKER_00: In these 16 verses, we see various kinds of acts of love: hospitality, finances, risking lives for one another, working hard for others, working hard in the Lord, being a physical or spiritual mom or dad to someone.
SPEAKER_00: And in verse 16, greeting each other with holy affection.
SPEAKER_00: Now I have two observations of the acts of love in this text.
SPEAKER_00: One, there is no act too small to be done for God's glory in the church.
SPEAKER_00: My second observation, there is no act too big to be done for God's glory in the church.
SPEAKER_00: As we went through this list of the ways the Roman church is loving each other, I hope you noticed many of them seem a little menial, insignificant, not that hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go with our first one, showing hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: Today, what that looks like for our church, having people in your home for the called out conference when heart song and guest speakers come.
SPEAKER_00: Inviting new members over for dinner to get to know them.
SPEAKER_00: Hosting a game night for your Christian and non-Christian friends to come over.
SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful thing last called out.
SPEAKER_00: The lady who ran the bookstore came up and gave a little spiel of what they were doing.
SPEAKER_00: And she had mentioned Gary and Mindy Buck were some of the most hospitable people she had ever met.
SPEAKER_00: That's how we want to be known as a church, a hospitable people to guests.
SPEAKER_00: Let's continue on in that.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, like Phoebe, you need to step out and be a financial patron to missionaries, others in the church, or maybe for the first time, the church itself.
SPEAKER_00: We see regular and sacrificial giving as normal in the early church.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a member here at Parkside and not giving, let Phoebe's example be an encouragement to you to start giving today.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are giving generously to the church, there are plenty of other opportunities.
SPEAKER_00: We see Deacon Phoebe generously giving to missionary Paul's mission work.
SPEAKER_00: Now, our church generously gives to our missionaries, but our gifts cannot totally suffice for the missionaries' mission work.
SPEAKER_00: So they're required to go out and find funding from other churches and other individual supporters.
SPEAKER_00: For youth groups, like events like Called Out, Winter Camp, Mission Lab, they just left the other day.
SPEAKER_00: Kids regularly need scholarships in order to go.
SPEAKER_00: You could give a few hundred dollars for a student to hear the gospel for a weekend.
SPEAKER_00: If any of that sounds interesting to you, come up and see me, see one of the pastors.
SPEAKER_00: We would love to let you know how you can be a patron in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not just a say-say statement.
SPEAKER_00: I would love for multiple of you to come up to me after and say, Austin, next time a student needs a scholarship for a youth group event, could I be your first call?
SPEAKER_00: Me and John would love to hear that.
SPEAKER_00: We'd love to work with you on that.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love for some of you to come up and say, Austin, the budget's tight.
SPEAKER_00: Can you pray that I would faithfully and cheerfully give and can we meet and make a game plan?
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear some of you say, hey, we'd love to go beyond, above, and beyond and support some of our missionaries as individual supporters.
SPEAKER_00: I know some of our individual missionaries who need that.
SPEAKER_00: I would love for you guys to approach me after and ask how you can get involved.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look back at our acts of love.
SPEAKER_00: How about in verse 6 and 12?
SPEAKER_00: Paul talks about people who are working hard for others and hard for God.
SPEAKER_00: This looks like, well, maybe the what's seemingly is easy, we know it's not, but working in the nursery, working in kidstown, setting up chairs on Saturday or Sunday so that we can meet in here.
SPEAKER_00: How about continuing to reach out to your Christmas project family or helping out in the park when we had our workday a few weekends ago?
SPEAKER_00: I heard an awesome example of this in our young adult Sunday school class.
SPEAKER_00: One gal mentioned, now it is June, she said, I am still regularly meeting with the family I was paired with for the Christmas project.
SPEAKER_00: And guess where they met?
SPEAKER_00: They met at the park just as like two weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: Park was clean, beautiful, new mulch, things are tidied up.
SPEAKER_00: Plenty of us in this room met a month or two ago to clean up the park, and now there's other people in the body inviting people from the Christmas project to continue to build a relationship and build and uh ask them to church, ask them about doing a Bible study.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 16, or sorry, in verse 13, we see Rufus' mom become a spiritual mother to Paul.
SPEAKER_00: What would our church look like in five years if ten of you, wise, mature believers, like Rufus' mom, said, I'm gonna be a spiritual mom or father to someone a few decades younger than me in the church.
SPEAKER_00: We'll meet for coffee, read our Bibles, pray, talk about what it looks like to be a godly believer and a faithful spouse and parent.
SPEAKER_00: I would love to see so many of you take up that challenge and meet with someone a few decades younger than you.
SPEAKER_00: If you'd be interested in being discipled or being the discipler, please come and see me after.
SPEAKER_00: Along with these relatively small acts of love, we do see that there is one that would cost us everything.
SPEAKER_00: And I do want to make sure and call that out.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 3, we see Priscilla and Aquila risk their neck for my life.
SPEAKER_00: We talked earlier about how there is no act too small to be done for God's glory in the church, but there is also no act too big to be done for God's glory in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Here in Romans 16, we see people risking their lives for their fellow brothers and sisters in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not sure if any of us in this room are going to be called to do that, but in Hebrews 10, we have a beautiful example of people who are willing to give up their property, their reputation, their jobs for their fellow Christian brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's plenty of us in this room that might be called to something like that.
SPEAKER_00: There is no act too big or too small to be done for God's glory in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to tell a quick personal story.
SPEAKER_00: While it's obvious to us, probably, that big acts for God have eternal impact for all those around us.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a personal story that even the small acts of love can change lives for the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Let me get a drink.
SPEAKER_00: I hope I don't cry during the story, but maybe.
SPEAKER_00: As many of you know, I grew up here at church and went to school at BCS.
SPEAKER_00: I then uh went off to Purdue for college.
SPEAKER_00: And my freshman year after um, during my freshman year, following Christ was a major struggle.
SPEAKER_00: I was lackluster in my church attendance.
SPEAKER_00: I did not commit to any single church, chased after the things that the world's chase after.
SPEAKER_00: And I came home that summer and uh I was living at home and I got a call out of the blue that one of my best friends from college had passed away that morning in a car accident.
SPEAKER_00: In that moment, for lots of reasons, the way I had lived my freshman year, I was crushed to say the least.
SPEAKER_00: Felt like I had lived a wasted year spiritually at school.
SPEAKER_00: I spent hours sobbing, questioning how could a how could a good God allow something like this to happen?
SPEAKER_00: Do I even want to be a Christian and follow a God that cut my friend's life short?
SPEAKER_00: I was in a serious crisis of faith in May of 2014.
SPEAKER_00: The next Sunday, I came here to church, numb in my mind to what was going on, just didn't care.
SPEAKER_00: Really just wanted to come and see my friends.
SPEAKER_00: My heart was cold toward God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember a song that was sung.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember a single word from the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: But after the service was over, Donna Hooper made a beeline for me and gave me a big old Donna Hooper bear hug.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, I'm sorry to see what happened to your friend, and I'm praying for you.
SPEAKER_00: In that moment, my heart melted.
SPEAKER_00: I had uh tears streaming down my cheeks, feeling the warm embrace of a fellow church member, and that my church family was there for me and praying for me.
SPEAKER_00: Greet one another with holy affection.
SPEAKER_00: The body is being built up for the glory of God, even through what is seemingly small acts of love.
SPEAKER_00: I'd encourage you, we don't have 30 minutes in between Sunday school and uh service just because it'd be fun or the timing works out better.
SPEAKER_00: We we call that community time.
SPEAKER_00: Revolutionary things like in my life happen during community time.
SPEAKER_00: They happen in the 30 minutes hour after service is over.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I didn't remember a single song or word that was said during the sermon, right?
SPEAKER_00: There could be people like that out there today that need to know their church family loves them through holy affection.
SPEAKER_00: This is why one of our core values is growing through relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
SPEAKER_00: In Paul's encouragement to the Roman church, we don't see any ministry cited, any events, any small groups, all great things that the Lord has designed.
SPEAKER_00: But God's church is designed to grow through relationships.
SPEAKER_00: God's church will not grow through cool new auditoriums.
SPEAKER_00: God's church will not grow through attractive ministries that meet every need and check every box of every person going to the ministry.
SPEAKER_00: God's church will not grow through seeker-sensitive events with cool keynote speakers, lights, cameras, projectors, LED walls.
SPEAKER_00: It won't grow through trying to water down Jesus through TV shows, merchandise, or having your favorite athlete have a Bible verse on their shoes.
SPEAKER_00: How has God designed the church to grow?
SPEAKER_00: God has designed his church to grow through the covenant family, loving one another.
SPEAKER_00: Why has God designed us and the church to grow through relationships?
SPEAKER_00: I'll try to keep this short.
SPEAKER_00: It's because it's a small echo and foreshadowing of himself.
SPEAKER_00: This is actually part of what it means to be made in God's image.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is a relational God.
SPEAKER_00: One God, three persons.
SPEAKER_00: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, together for all time, loving, serving, and being fulfilled in one another.
SPEAKER_00: It's a relationship that's a beautiful, almost song and dance, a weave together.
SPEAKER_00: I kind of imagine it'd be like if uh here in Indiana, you know, we love our basketball.
SPEAKER_00: It's like if Magic Johnson, Tyrese Halliburton, and Michael Jordan did a three-man weave, just a beautiful in and out.
SPEAKER_00: No, you have the ball, no, you, no you.
SPEAKER_00: When God created us in his image, we mirror and echo this reality.
SPEAKER_00: We as humans grow through relationships, and in turn, the church is designed to grow through relationships.
SPEAKER_00: God's church will grow as we love one another and serve one another, and we'll be united like the Trinity is united.
SPEAKER_00: We see this idea actually all throughout Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: I'll read two of the more common ones.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4.
SPEAKER_00: May we no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 10 describes the gathering of believers, the church, this way.
SPEAKER_00: And let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all more as you see the day drawing near.
SPEAKER_00: The Roman church grew through relationships, then Parkside today should grow through relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture is clear, God's church will grow through relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Let's now look at our third and final point: unified church.
SPEAKER_00: With all this diversity that we've talked about, what could possibly be strong enough to unite us together?
SPEAKER_00: Where do men, women, old, young, singles, married, new believers, missionaries, Asians, Africans, Europeans, Americans, tent makers, prisoners, immigrants, rich, poor, and all the members of the church, where do they find their hope and unity?
SPEAKER_00: In Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Here in this passage, Christ is mentioned 12 times, and 10 of those is in the Lord or in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you like to highlight or underline in your Bible, this would be a great repetitive phrase to underline, and I'll go through them quickly.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1, welcome her in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, fellow workers in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7, they were in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, my beloved in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, fellow worker in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10, approved in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11, greet those in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12, greet those workers in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Also later in verse 12, who has worked hard in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 13, chosen in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: From Paul's perspective, his common ground with members of the Roman Church is one thing and one thing only.
SPEAKER_00: It's that they are believers in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They are one family in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is what enables all the diverse love we see in the Roman Church.
SPEAKER_00: It's what has given Paul such a deep love for these people.
SPEAKER_00: You can hear it in his writing here in chapter 16.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, we covered in chapter 15, he said he had longed for many years to be with these people and he hopes to be with them soon.
SPEAKER_00: These are not superficial relationships, these are deep friendships.
SPEAKER_00: They have been through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows of life together.
SPEAKER_00: They've stayed at each other's houses, they've shared meals, they've been family to each other, and they've risked their lives for one another.
SPEAKER_00: These are not friendships built on worldly standards that come and go, rise and fall, but friendships that are built on the bedrock of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When I think about these kinds of friendships that find their unity in Christ, one friendship that comes to mind for me is with our missionary Eddie Ferguson.
SPEAKER_00: Eddie and I joke often that when it comes to worldly standards, we should not be friends.
SPEAKER_00: My favorite thing to do in my free time is watch football and basketball.
SPEAKER_00: If you know anything about Eddie, he knows nothing about football and basketball.
SPEAKER_00: In Eddie's free time, he likes to watch and review movies.
SPEAKER_00: We already talked about what I thought about movies.
SPEAKER_00: Quick funny story on that.
SPEAKER_00: Eddie and I watched one movie together, and it was Guardians of the Galaxy.
SPEAKER_00: He promised I'd love it.
SPEAKER_00: I fell dead asleep halfway through.
SPEAKER_00: My two least favorite things in life, movies and raccoons, all wrapped up into one.
SPEAKER_00: I was dead asleep.
SPEAKER_00: Thankfully for me, the second half of the movie went by pretty quick.
SPEAKER_00: Jokes aside, Eddie and I are very different people.
SPEAKER_00: Yet through our unity in Christ, we have been able to show diverse love to one another.
SPEAKER_00: As a young man, Eddie raised me up and trained me to be a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Together we prayed, read God's word, and confessed sin.
SPEAKER_00: We labored for the advance of the gospel through leading a Sunday school class together.
SPEAKER_00: As Sarah and Eddie got ready to go on their mission field, my wife and Alice and I were able to support them going.
SPEAKER_00: For the five years they were in Costa Rica, we FaceTimed every three months to catch up, share the highs and the lows of life, pray for each other.
SPEAKER_00: And last year, Alice and I even got to go to Costa Rica and spend a week with them.
SPEAKER_00: We landed at the Costa Rican airport, it's very much like the Indy Airport.
SPEAKER_00: We walked out of the airport, there's a road where you get picked up.
SPEAKER_00: Eddie's standing there by his car, and what do you think it looks like?
SPEAKER_00: It looks like a run up and bear hug each other.
SPEAKER_00: Deep, familial love.
SPEAKER_00: With these types of relationships, the church moves forward in unity.
SPEAKER_00: The church's unity is not about just getting along or not fighting, it's a tight bond of being on mission together.
SPEAKER_00: The church's unity is based on being in Christ together.
SPEAKER_00: Here at Parkside, we call that delighting in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is why delighting in the gospel is our first core value.
SPEAKER_00: Delighting in the gospel then drives us as a church to be able to grow through relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And especially those diverse ones we saw in point one and two.
SPEAKER_00: We never graduate from this gospel base.
SPEAKER_00: What allows us to love diverse people?
SPEAKER_00: A deep understanding of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What allows us to love diversely?
SPEAKER_00: A deep understanding of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That we were under undeserving recipients of love, how can we not continue to pass on that kind of love?
SPEAKER_00: As I wrap up here, Paul has painted a picture, a portrait of what gospel unity looked like in the Roman church.
SPEAKER_00: May we likewise be a portrait of gospel unity here at Parkside.
SPEAKER_00: The church glorifies God through diverse relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Here in a few minutes, we will take a few moments of silence to think on Christ's death and the gospel message as it relates to this passage.
SPEAKER_00: We will then take communion together as a unified body.
SPEAKER_00: We can partake in this family meal together, unified, because Christ has first unified us to himself.
SPEAKER_00: In the gospel, hopefully this rhymes with what you saw today.
SPEAKER_00: In the gospel, we see through Christ's ultimate act of love, a diverse people is made unified in him.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 2.10 would say it this way.
SPEAKER_00: Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel message is this we were all born as isolated, self-seeking people.
SPEAKER_00: We miss God's mark of perfection every day when we decide to go our own way and seek sinful division.
SPEAKER_00: In our desperate state of sin, Christ came down, put on human flesh, lived the perfect life that we could never live, died the death that was rightfully ours, paying the debt of sin against the holy God.
SPEAKER_00: Now we can be reconciled to this holy God through faith in Jesus and his sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: If you have never done that, that is the first time you've ever heard that, me, any of our members, any of our pastors would love to talk with you about that after the service.
SPEAKER_00: If you are not a believer, partaking in the elements is not for you.
SPEAKER_00: Communion is for the unified body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a baptized Christian and in good standing at a gospel preaching, like-minded church, you are welcome to partake.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and take a moment to start passing the elements.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there should be in the front.
SPEAKER_00: Matt, you mind grabbing this one right here?
SPEAKER_00: Um, go ahead and grab them and just start passing them, pass down the rows, pass one behind you, and we'll get those passed out as I pray.
SPEAKER_00: And once I pray, we'll take just a few moments of silence, and then Pastor Lynn will lead us in communion.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, your word is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Even parts that are quick and easy for us to skim over.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we praise you that Christ and the gospel is on every page.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, today we saw a diverse portrait of what the church should look like.
SPEAKER_00: Diverse people loving each other in diverse ways, all founded on this base of being in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, would we not look like the world?
SPEAKER_00: Would we not follow trends and sinful habits?
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, would we be a unified body anchored in Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that we would emulate that, just as the church in Rome did 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: We pray all of this in your name.