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And yeah, there's two types of churches you'll hear from a lot of pastors. I mean, you might think, oh, I know that answer. It's the rural church and the city church, right? The rural church and the city church. But no, they wouldn't say that's the two types of churches. Or you might be like, oh, okay, got it. It's the it's the megachurch and the small church. Even in a in a like a little town, right? There's there could be a we have a version of a megachurch, but that's not what they're going after either. Or you might be like, oh no, it's the traditional church and the the contemporary church, right? Nope, not going for that either. Anyone got to guess what they'll say it is? Pretty close. You can you can divide it, but like, and and just as a clue, for folks like Andy Stanley, Rick Warren kind of believe this. If you know their churches, you can kind of get where I'm going. But there's growing churches and there's not growing churches. There's growing churches and not growing churches. Um, this book that we're doing on Monday nights with the with the men's groups, um, he believes the same thing. That we're always either moving forward in life, moving forward in marriage, moving forward in our relationship with God, moving forward in church, moving forward in work. We're always either moving forward or we're moving back. There's no such thing as a complacency where we're just standing still, he believes. He says, no, we're either moving forward and we and that life is just this constant moving forward, moving back. We're pursuing God sometimes. Maybe sometimes we're we're we're moving back a little bit. And he kind of he he he relates it to it's like we're we're going up a little bit of a hill and we we're moving upward, but if we put it in neutral, we might think we're just standing still. We might just think, well, okay, we're chilling, but you know, a couple weeks go by, we're back down the hill, five blocks down the hill. I mean, and I and and similarly, I think that you could say the same thing with churches sometimes that we're either growing or we're moving back. We're falling back. I mean, it's not that we're just growing X like number numerically or we're growing by numbers or all these things. No, but we're growing in our relationships with one another, growing in our relationship with God, growing in our service of one another, growing in our impact in the community, or we're just kind of falling back. And I think that's kind of the nature of life. And Andy Stanley and Rick Warren probably are leading these massive churches because they believe like we continually want to be moving forward and reaching more people. And when I was hired, there was a survey that a lot of you did. And what was the number one thing that y'all wanted to see? Growth, right? You wanted to see growth. I mean, when you put that on a paper, you know, it could be easy to think like, well, okay, we want growth, but we want like our kind of growth, right? We want our kind of growth. We want the people that we like, right? Or like, I just want this one type of family that I like, or I just want maybe two families. You know, we can we have seven families. Okay, we can get to 10, you know, but no more, you know, no more. When we think of growth, we might think that way of like, well, I want growth, yes, but I want it to grow in the way that I want to the point that I want and no more. But really, I think if you if you kind of like adhere to the Rick Warren, Andy Stanley kind of framework, that doesn't exist. You're either continually growing, continually reaching more people, continually having more impact, or you're not. And so, like the the hope is that just that we would be a growing church, not that we just want to increase X like numerically, but we will have greater impact in the community, right? Because we live in a lost city, a town, and we just want to be a presence that God uses to impact more people. Um, so that's what we're going for. And I thought I'd just start again within that vision of being a growing church. What are our three pillars? We want to be people of passionate worship, right? And how do we become a people of passionate worship? We know God, right? We know God. We got a good listener, we know God. And because when we know God, the universal response to the knowledge of God is worship. So we're gonna we're gonna seek God to know God, and in our in response, we worship God. What's the second one? He said it, transformation, right? We want to be a people transformed into the like-mindedness of Jesus. He is our standard of maturity and nothing less. So when we look at his life, we think, okay, this is what we are called into. This is the life, the example that we are we are called to live. And he we're given his spirit so we can be empowered to walk like Jesus lived in his character, in his kindness, and his humility. And then what's the third one? We're gonna be a sent, right? We want to be sent. And so I just wanted to start with that of we want to be a growing church, not just because we want more numbers, but because we're we want to have more impact, right? We want to have more impact in more people's lives and all the different ways that that looks like. I mean, what are we what are we gonna do in that? We're gonna be a people of worship, people transformed in the like-mindedness of Jesus, and a people sent into the community. Um, with that, I'll pray and then we'll get started on tender and fierce. Um, but Lord Jesus, we just thank you, God, for this morning. We thank you, Lord, that um you are, Lord, stirring us and giving us vision for um, Lord, what it looks like that we can be a light in this community, salt and light, transforming lives, Lord, one at a time, Lord, and just being an impact, a place of hope and rescue and healing, and um just the realization, the revelation of the gospel of Jesus, Lord. I just pray that you just give us that heart, that hunger today, and that, Lord, we would be a people just committed into your mission of God wholeheartedly. Thank you, God. Well, if you are new today, we're in this series reflecting on the beauty of Jesus through the gospel of John. Reflecting on the beauty of Jesus through the gospel of John. We'll be in John chapter 11 today, and we're looking that he at how how he is both tender and fierce. He is tender and fierce. If you were out like 2020, this was kind of one of the big COVID books. I mean, it was called Gentle and Lowly. It was published in April of 2020. Kind of just was for a lot of people, they found it just made sense, make made sense of COVID. Um, but Dane Ortland, he wrote this book, Gentle and Lowly, based on the verse in Matthew, that's come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. This is Jesus speaking. Give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. This is Jesus, he is gentle and lowly in heart, for you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light. This word that we translate, easy, is really just merciful or good or kindness. And his yoke is kind, his yoke is good, his yoke is merciful. And the whole book is based on that single premise that Jesus is primarily first and foremost, gentle, lowly. And I I put some quotes together just to kind of summarize his book. Meek, humble, gentle. Jesus is not trigger happy. He's not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated, right? He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture, most natural him, is not a pointed finger, but open arms. Why was this so moving for so many people? It's because we slowly started to realize is that the Jesus that I see? Do I see him pointing fingers or open arms? Do I see him exasperated, reactionary, quickly to be upset with me, harsh, trigger happy, or do I see him gentle and lowly? Time and again, it is the morally disgusting, the socially reveled, the inexcusable and undeserving who do not simply receive Christ's mercy, but to whom Christ most naturally gravitates. We are all factories of fresh resistance, resistance to Christ's love. Christ is his whole premise. Christ is communicating love. We are resistant to Christ's love, even when we run out of tangible reasons to be cast out, such as specific sins or failures. Specific sins, oh okay, I know God's mad at me now. This failure, okay, I know Jesus is unhappy. He's pointing the finger. Even when we run out of those, we tend to retain a vague sense that given enough time, you're just around with around me enough, Jesus, you'll finally grow tired of me and hold me at arm's length. Right? Gentle and lowly is his premise that Jesus is kind to the brokenhearted. He is tender, primarily. But when you kind of consider that, um, the opposite side to that, sometimes verses in in scripture or the things that Jesus says don't really fit into this idea. For example, in Matthew, Jesus writes, Do not suppose that I come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Feels kind of contradictory, the whole gentle part that whole of Dane Ortland's book. Uh, Matthew, also Matthew, the first of the seven woes, where he's talking to the Pharisees. He's very vocal and harsh. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. These are people who committed their entire life to know the scriptures. They committed the whole of themselves to be diligent, dedicated, to be faithful, to obey all that they thought that the scriptures were saying, right? And he's saying, Woe to you, Pharisees, you are hypocrites. You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying. Tender and fierce. It can feel kind of contradictory sometimes. If you read one passage, you're like, okay, Jesus feels he's stirring the temple up. He feels fierce. Read another passage, you feel like, okay, he's primarily gentle. But how do we reconcile the tender and fierce? Just as an observation, I feel like we, as both as individuals, as well as a lot of times as churches, they either focus on one or the other, either tender or fierce. They're either tender or fierce. Andy Stanley, if you're in his stream, people don't need to hear about how bad they are because they already know that. He focuses on the tenderness of God in all of his sermons. That is his passion. Um and there's a whole stream of churches, it's it's kind of becoming mainstream actually at the moment, that like they focus almost exclusively on the tenderness of God. That God is tender, he is gentle, he is kind, he is loving. People don't need to know that they're sinners because they already know that. So I'm not gonna tell them that. I'm not gonna correct them, I'm not gonna instruct them in righteousness necessarily. They're focusing on tender. The other side kind of will focus on fierce. If you're John MacArthur fan, it is the preacher's responsibility to confront sin and call sinners to repentance. He pretty much tried to do it every single week, too. If you listen to his sermons, he is so focused on the fierceness of God, right? The faithful preacher must be willing to offend people. And he got in the pulpit and he offended people pretty much every week, you know, and he because he focused on this idea that Jesus is fierce. When Matt Chandler started his church in Dallas, the the way the story goes, it was a small Baptist church. And if you know, it's Dallas, granted, people are always moving churches, looking for churches, and it slowly starts growing. And so he's like, Well, this isn't good. I'm today, I'm gonna make sure people leave. So he started preaching more and more difficult sermons, and the more and more difficult it was, he's like, Okay, I'm convinced today people are gonna walk up offended, the bigger and bigger and bigger it got. Um, but he also, especially in the early days, he focused kind of on the fierceness of God. His messages were very kind of correctional a lot of times. Um, but I feel like also as individuals, we can do the same with other people. Either just in the tenderness of God, everything's great. God just genuinely loves you, He is so for you, He's so proud of you, He is He is so He feels for you, He is compassionate towards you. And that's where we kind of end. We we don't we don't see beyond that. Or there's kind of sometimes, I was in this route a little bit at one point in college. When you're younger, it's easy to be this where it's like constantly there's a fierceness of like there, there's God is calling us to more. You know, we need to be re repentant of our sin, we need to walk in holiness, we need to to to to be honest and pure in our integrity with one another and with God. So I think it's easy to for us both as churches or as individual to fall into one rut or the other. But looking at Jesus, how did he manage both tenderness and fierceness? And we'll start in John chapter 11. And now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha. Bethany was just east of Jerusalem, right next to Jerusalem, basically. If you remember the stories of Mary and Martha, right there in the home. Mary is at the feet of Jesus. Martha is cooking and cleaning, getting everything ready, and she's upset with Mary for doing nothing. And Jesus says, Oh, you know, oh Martha, if you only knew what the the prize that Mary had found. Mary's also the one that later in John, she's anointing Jesus' feet with oil. Anointing Jesus' feet with oil. Sometimes she's confused with another woman that was crying on Jesus' feet and washing his feet with her hair. Um it's more than likely a different woman. But Mary and Martha and Lazarus were close friends with Jesus, lived close to Jerusalem. When they traveled to Jerusalem, it's thought with as the disciples, it's thought they stayed at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus' house. They're very close disciples of Jesus. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair. We'll see that in a second, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, Lord, he who you love is ill. We know you love him. He is sick. But when Jesus heard it, he said, This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of Man may be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Says it plainly. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. If that doesn't seem like a contradictory statement, we're not reading very closely. Like he loved Martha and Lazarus and Mary, and then he knew Lazarus was sick. And what did he do? Okay, we'll just stay here for two more days while their need is is known to me. I know their need. The disciples said to him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, then great, he will recover. Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest and sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, Hey, Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe, but let us go to him. For your sake I am glad that I was not there. Sometimes when we read through scripture, I think it's just easy to kind of push to what we know the ending is, especially with Lazarus. But if you're in the middle of it, you're like, okay, wait a minute. He has died, and you're actually glad about this. And we waited here for two days. And I think it demonstrates a little bit of the fierceness of God. Jesus is fierce for our salvation and formation. Fierce for our salvation and formation. If you think through Lazarus, Mary, Martha, they're in a place of mourning. They're hurting, they're sad, right? Lazarus himself, you know, he's probably sick, maybe in a lot of pain. Jesus is just ignoring it, it seems like. Spending two days, not even bothering to come. He dies, right? They're going through the whole process of a funeral, spending all the money. They're having Jewish funerals lasted multiple days, and and and they're going through this great process of mourning. And Jesus says, Well, I am glad, so that you may believe. Glad that you may believe. I think it in our kind of vision or idea of what we think the gentleness of God would look like or how his yoke would be easy, we think of just our our universal comfort, right? Generally, at least I do. I'm like the gentleness of God, he is going to come for me in all places and all ways. If there's ever a problem, he's going to come through immediately. He's not going to wait. He's not going to wait up there in the Galilee. No, he's going to come immediately and and solve this problem. Jesus doesn't do that here. Instead, he's letting this the pain fester. And they're going through real, genuine pain. Why? Because he was wanting them to believe Jesus is fierce for our salvation and formation. Second thing, I think it's easy to kind of forget that is following Jesus is costly. Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become popular in recent years simply because all the movies and documentaries and whatnot, but he was a German and World War II, really brilliant theologian in a lot of different ways. He wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship. In this, the first Christ suffering that everyone has to experience is the call which summons us away from our attachments to this world. The very first thing that we do in Christ, the experience, is this responding to this call of getting away from our attachment to this world. It is the death of the old self in the encounter with Jesus. Those who enter into discipleship enter into Jesus' death. They turn their living into dying. Such has been the case from the very beginning. Our living then becomes dying every day. Instead, it stands at the beginning of the community with Jesus. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death. It can feel fierce, right? In both sense, of the fierceness of him wanting them to believe, right? They're walking into through pain and suffering. Why? So that the glory of God can be revealed in that Jesus is fierce for our salvation and formation. Continues in chapter in verse 20. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him. She ran out and met him. But Mary remained seated in the house. We can only imagine why is she staying there? There's got to be some sort of disappointment, right? Some sort of sadness, right? Of, you know, okay, she's the one that was at Jesus' feet before. Now she's Jesus is coming. I'm gonna stay here in the house. Mary Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. If you had been here, my brother would not have died. Probably a true statement, right? Probably a true statement. She's not making it up. And she's saying, If you could have been here, you were you're wasting your time. If you were been here, my brother would not have died. Now, when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. They were still mourning, four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died. My brother would not have died. Another true statement. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him? Deeply moved, greatly troubled. And they said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Famously the shortest verse in the Bible. So the Jews said, See how he loved him. Jesus is tender in our pain. Jesus is empathetic to our tears. He's he is tender. He is gentle. He is lowly. He is close to the brokenhearted. He is tender to the vulnerable, the suffering, the marginalized, the powerless, the invisible, the inconvenient, the broken, the crippled who are ignored and rejected. He is tender. If you remember from a couple of weeks ago, I defined this the mercy is the Father forgiving, restoring, and delivering the broken. Forgiving, restoring, and delivering the broken. And this has been just recycling over the last couple of weeks for me of just kind of a new realization that there is no mercy without brokenness. Mercy requires brokenness. And the only way we know the mercy of God is because there is the brokenness of humanity. And so if we want to experience mercy, we must know that we are broken. Mercy requires brokenness. We are all broken. The realization we want to know the tenderness of God. We want to know the mercy of God. But it's in the midst of our brokenness that we, in the acknowledgement of our brokenness, our desperation, our need, our hope, our begging, our clinging to God is where we get to experience the tenderness, the mercy of God. It continues in verse 40. Then Jesus said, Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God? So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for their benefit, standing here, that they may believe that you sent me. When he had said this, Jesus called out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped in strips of linen and a cloth around his face, apparently like a mummy. Jesus said to them, Take off the grave clothes and let him go. And Jesus' fierceness and in his tenderness, he resurrected Lazarus. He called forth Lazarus. He resurrects us, he gives us new life. But similar to Lazarus, in this tenderness and fierceness, we're given the same encouragement. Take off the grave clothes and let him go. I think for far too often we are living resurrected. He has met us fiercely and tenderly and commanded us in a loud voice come out of the grave, come forth, but we will still walk around in the dead clothes, carrying all the baggage from the dead life, all our past traumas, triggers, sins, and the sins done against us. We refuse to let go of the dead things. Paul kind of playing off this in Colossians says, Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off, and the word taken off is mostly used for clothes. Since you have taken off your old self with its practices, and have you put on the clothes with on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge of the image of its creator. We take off the grave clothes and let go. And in the salvation, fierce for salvation, fierce for formation. He is tender, gentle to the broken, to the hurting. So what does that mean for us as a community? We want to be fierce for the salvation of Gunnison and beyond. We want to be fierce. Spurgeon says it if you're not willing to bear reproach for Christ, bear reproach, if you're not willing to endure shame, criticism, rejection, pain without backing down, you are not worthy of him. In Spurgeon's framework, he would say you probably don't know him. So first of all, we want to be fierce for the salvation of Gunnison and fierce for our formation in Christ. And we want to be tender to the broken. There's a lady I was reading about this last week, Elizabeth Fry. Um she was a Quaker in the 1800s in England. She was wealthy. If you know anything about 1800 Englands, she demonstrated her wealth and her beauty and her size. But like she she was a Quaker. If you know anything about the Quakers, I think they're kind of a charismatic movement that focused the inward spirit of God. And then God reveals Himself inwardly. And so they would wait on God for hours for God to speak to them, to move in their heart, to reveal things to them. And she was a wealthy lady in her 30s. She just decided there was a prison kind of in the town. She decided to start going to the women's prison. And at the time, it was very, it was not a popular thing to do. There was, there was no the all the prison ministries and things that we have today. It was not the thing to do. It was not like she had read it in a magazine or or or heard other people doing it. Prisons at the time also were taught as primarily as punitive. I mean, they're still pretty much that way, but at least we have a concept of reforming people. Um at that time in England, it was incredibly punitive. The people that were in a prison were seen as kind of the worst outcast and kind of defunct. You needed to do something with them to keep them away from the civilized society. Um the prisons were terribly kept, especially the women's prisons. If you had a baby in prison and you didn't have parents or others to take the baby, you kept the baby in prison. And it it and so in in England at the time, 1800s, the prisons were a rough place to be. She decided she wants to start going to these women's prisons. There was no like openings to do this, but she had the connections, and everyone was telling her, like, this is dangerous. This is not gonna be, you know, like a good idea. You can't help them, they're not reformable, they're not teachable. And she did it anyways, led to a prison reform, it was a prison reformer and really led to a lot of reforms in the prison system. And she wrote, It is not by severity that you can reform, but by love and kindness. She found remarkable change in a lot of these women, of just being present tenderly, gently, in their brokenness to speak to them kindly, to teach them, to train them, to encourage them, committed her life to that. We must not shrink from any duty, however painful, that may be laid upon us. It was painful, but she was tender. So, what does that mean for us as a community? We want to be tender to each other. And how do we know the tenderness of God? We the mercy of God requires some sort of brokenness. We have to know that we're in need of the God who can save us. So we, if we want to know the tenderness, the mercy of God, we have to recognize, realize our desperation for God. But also we recognizing that for other people, being tender in the in the gentleness of God for each other, but also tender and just in the brokenness of Gunnison, the tender in whatever lot things are happening in people's lives. You know, there's a I'm I'm excited about the community center one way of just you know doing all the support groups. And there's a guy, electrician, who was gonna do all the electrical work, you know, and and trying to get things in his life together, except he, I guess last week had like police chase, you know, DUI. So he's going to jail for a little bit, but he'll be back in 30 days. But like, I just was like, you know what? Like, you're the type of people, like you're recognizing, at least in this point, in this moment, that you know, you're in a broken place. And Jesus is your answer. There, there is the tenderness, gentleness, rescue of God for you, available to you. Um, just as a community, that is what we want to be to the people, the tenderness, the gentleness of God in whatever broken situations people come from, but also fierce, also fierce, fearless, right? We're not afraid. We're we're bold in the truth. You know, it it's the fierceness that is is for salvation and our own information that we want to, we don't want to get in one ditch or the other. Um, we want to, we want to, we want to maintain them both, fierce and formation and salvation, but also maintaining just the tenderness, the gentleness of God to each other and the community. And Jesus perfectly demonstrates it better than anybody. So, how do we grow into the tenderness and fierceness? It is reflecting knowing Jesus, the beauty of Jesus, the kindness of Jesus, the gentleness of Jesus that we experience in our own life, of both his fierceness as well as his tenderness. And with that, I will pray. Well, Lord Jesus, we do just thank you, God, for Jesus. You're you're your clear example. You are so tender, Lord, that Lord, mercy is is available because of our brokenness. And so, Lord, we thank you that you're gentle and that you see us and that you're compassionate, that you do empathize, that you do weep with our weeping, that you you feel, Lord, and that you're kind and patient. And Lord, we can trust that. And you're also fierce, Lord, in your mission of salvation and formation. You're fierce in accomplishing your will on earth. And Lord, just pray that we would maintain the balance of both, Lord, individually and corporately as a community. That's that. Amen.