SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: All the same height, one size fits all.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: Um well good morning, Proclamation Church.
SPEAKER_00: It's good to be back here.
SPEAKER_00: Um if you in case you just walked in or maybe you've tuned us out for the last 20 minutes, um, I was here with my family at the beginning of Proclamation with Rick and Jimmy to help uh plant the church here.
SPEAKER_00: So proclamation will always be special to our family.
SPEAKER_00: We were here from the beginning um when you know we sat on nasty couches downstairs uh when Brennan almost drowned out at the Gromlicks in the middle of a church meeting.
SPEAKER_00: Um and that's when our church planning advisor was like, I'm gonna distance myself from you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and when the sound booth wasn't the size of a small church, uh, we were here for that.
SPEAKER_00: And it's good to be back.
SPEAKER_00: This is a special place to us.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm I was voted in by about 10 people at Grace Church uh in September of 2023, and then about 25 people from Proclamation uh came with us to help revitalize this little church in our town.
SPEAKER_00: And we're currently running around 65 or 70 people.
SPEAKER_00: We're seeing a lot of new faces from our community, which has always really been a prayer of ours uh from the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: So if you know anyone out in Danville or out that way uh looking for a church, send them our way.
SPEAKER_00: We would love uh to reach the community there with the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: So all of that to say I'm not the pastor here anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a pastor elder here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so no one here is uh following my lead on anything, and rightfully so.
SPEAKER_00: They should not be following my lead.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you have your own elders and your own pastors leading you.
SPEAKER_00: But if you were trying to follow me, that would create uh some really strange and difficult situations.
SPEAKER_00: It would be pretty awkward for everyone because I'm not here.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna be in Acts chapter 2, uh, we're gonna go through verses 42 through 47 and try to imagine with me the lives of these new Jesus followers without Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So there's there's around 120 people that have followed Jesus closely before this, before our text this morning.
SPEAKER_00: They followed him close enough that they waited in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And they are left with this burden to to this mission to tell the world to follow a guy that isn't even here anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the Browns left Cleveland in 1996.
SPEAKER_00: It was hard to follow the Browns in 97 and 98 because they weren't there.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to follow someone that's not there, but that's what they were tasked with.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the Holy Spirit has convicted these followers of Jesus to tell the world to follow someone that isn't here.
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but to follow him so closely and with so much devotion that they're willing to reorient their entire lives around this person's teachings.
SPEAKER_00: And it's actually working in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: 3,000 people or even more have been cut to the heart, repented of their sins, and turned to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The church has been born of people that have been born again.
SPEAKER_00: But how would this sustain?
SPEAKER_00: How did the early church keep this up?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's excitement.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you can read through the book of Acts, you can find that there's a lot of excitement.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there are miracles being done.
SPEAKER_00: But how does it go from a little movement of some people that got emotionally stirred up into what it is today?
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I think for me, the answer to that is part of what solidifies my belief that God and his word and his son are actually true.
SPEAKER_00: If this thing wasn't supernaturally charged, if the church never took off in the book of Acts, if the Holy Spirit didn't actually convict people and move them to repent of their sins and follow Jesus, why how are we still doing this today?
SPEAKER_00: Why would we even be here today if this wasn't of the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: And I think what we'll see in our text today is that these early Christians are captivated.
SPEAKER_00: They're held, they are captivated by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They are enamored with the God that has done all of this in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: And my goal for us is to say, is not to say, well, let's look at this text and let's read the book of Acts, let's read the Bible in general, and let's copy exactly everything that they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Or let's feel really bad about our faith because it doesn't look as amazing as these people's faith did back here in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: But my goal would be for us to allow this same Christ, the same Jesus that they're following in the book of Acts, the same person to captivate us, to be moved by him so much that we're willing to reorient our lives in a way that he sees fit.
SPEAKER_00: And if it looks like it did here in the book of Acts, fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: But whatever it looks like, we would be so held by Jesus that we would joyfully want to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: Because I I think what captivates us will change our heart.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever met someone, I don't know if you've ever met someone that's been totally taken by themselves, someone that brings every conversation back to them, or someone that never ask a question, someone that can't get past themselves, that they think everyone is thinking about them, that everyone wants to hear of their experiences.
SPEAKER_00: And right now, if you're thinking, I've never met anyone like that, I have some potentially surprising news.
SPEAKER_00: It could be you.
SPEAKER_00: But really, someone that arranges their entire life around themselves.
SPEAKER_00: We have some people that live uh somewhat close to us that are like they're obsessed with their property.
SPEAKER_00: They think all of the neighbors are after their property.
SPEAKER_00: And this has led them to set up their lives in a way where they feel like they have to protect it at all cost.
SPEAKER_00: So they put up signs and they put up cameras and they put up stakes, they make constant laps around the property.
SPEAKER_00: And we live like in the middle of the country, and they're thinking somebody is has tampered with some stuff around here.
SPEAKER_00: And they're even so convinced that they'll confront neighbors and accuse them of messing with stuff on their property.
SPEAKER_00: They are held by their property, by themselves, so much that they think everyone else is after whatever they have.
SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, no one is even really thinking about them.
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't stop them.
SPEAKER_00: They're held by it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, picture if we have that same kind of devotion and love and obsession with Jesus, where we were willing to confront and tell others, not caring how he appeared, because we were so convinced that this was a worthy cause.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we see in our text, in Acts 2, 42 through 47.
SPEAKER_00: They're so captivated, they don't care.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the fact that they cherish Jesus that pulls their hearts to action.
SPEAKER_00: And then those actions shape their lives.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, if this morning, if we say, the call for you is to change your behavior, and if we uh if the call to behavior change supersedes the call to heart change, then you'll end up with legalism.
SPEAKER_00: And if I stand up here and I say, change your behavior, and you do, but you don't have a supernatural encounter with the Holy Spirit, then you walk away feeling like those behaviors are the standard by which you will encounter God and stand before Him righteous.
SPEAKER_00: What you win them with is what you win them to.
SPEAKER_00: So if we are not held by Christ, and instead we're held by miracles or life change or giving and receiving gifts, or we're held by speaking in tongues or fellowship or fill in the blank, whatever it is, that will fade away, and then we will fade too.
SPEAKER_00: But if we are held by the unfading glory of Christ, we will sustain.
SPEAKER_00: There will be seasons of ups and downs, but he will hold us fast.
SPEAKER_00: So my prayer uh is that you will cherish Jesus and your life will be changed by that, by him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we see in the from the early church here in the text this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm gonna read a verse and then I'm gonna talk a little and I'll read a little and then talk a little.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we'll start in verse 42.
SPEAKER_00: And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
SPEAKER_00: There are four things here that it says that the first church devoted themselves to.
SPEAKER_00: They devoted themselves to the apostles' teachings.
SPEAKER_00: This would have been everything from the Old Testament up through the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's being taught at this point.
SPEAKER_00: They devoted themselves to fellowship, they hung out.
SPEAKER_00: They devoted themselves to eating together, probably as they hung out.
SPEAKER_00: And they devoted themselves to prayer.
SPEAKER_00: This this is a description of the early church as a whole.
SPEAKER_00: When you uh when you help in starting a church or you lead a church, there's always a lot of discussion and a lot of questions about uh what the church is supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: What is it supposed to look like?
SPEAKER_00: And in my experience, a lot of those discussions are centered around this, the gathering on Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: What is that gonna look like?
SPEAKER_00: What does the music look like?
SPEAKER_00: Like what's it what's the music like here?
SPEAKER_00: What are your service times?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of preaching do you guys do?
SPEAKER_00: How many people go there?
SPEAKER_00: Uh what do you have to offer kids?
SPEAKER_00: What do you have to offer teens?
SPEAKER_00: What do you have to offer married people, single people, seniors?
SPEAKER_00: What's the coffee situation?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a meal together?
SPEAKER_00: What's communion like?
SPEAKER_00: What's membership look like here?
SPEAKER_00: What version of the Bible do you use?
SPEAKER_00: All of these questions you think through and you're expected to have an answer for when leading a body of believers.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what we get a glimpse of here in the text is that these, this is what the believers, their week looked like.
SPEAKER_00: Not just the gathering, because the gathering, what we're doing here, is just a piece of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: It should be just a piece.
SPEAKER_00: But it cannot be the only piece of our life that looks distinctively Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Did they, in the text, in the in Acts, did they develop structure over time?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Were there things they organized as a gathered church?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Were there formalities?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they developed a level of formality within the church.
SPEAKER_00: But what really shaped their lives was their weeks, the days in between their gatherings, what their weeks looked like, not just what Sunday morning looked like.
SPEAKER_00: And I guess what I'm getting at here is all of the formalities that came out of the early church, all of the structure that developed, came out of a necessity and clarity for what God was already doing in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't want to get that backwards as churches.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be a church, and forgive me, because I have preached this to my church, so I'm saying this as if I'm talking to my own church, but we don't want churches that get this backwards.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want a church that spends all of its thought power on dotting every I and crossing every T that has an answer for every scenario that pops up, but is full of people that aren't captivated by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And I know for me, for sure, and I'm pretty sure with Rick and Jimmy, we didn't become pastors so that we could lead a membership meeting or control the money that uh that people give or dedicate our weeks to a one-hour gathering.
SPEAKER_00: We don't exist as a church so that people have a nice, cozy, non-threatening place to feel good about yourselves on a Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: If we are not devoted to the Bible, to the apostles' teachings, if we aren't using our days and weeks to spend time helping each other, being with each other, if we aren't a praying church body, if we don't even know each other outside of this room, who cares what the structure is like here?
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: We can't get this backwards.
SPEAKER_00: The essential things that are actually in the Bible have to inform the practical things that we do.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, when we are actually held, I believe that God provides the structure and the answers and all of the good, the good questions that arise, all of the challenges that come along the way, God provides answers for those things.
SPEAKER_00: But when we lead with the practical, when we get more worried about the system than we do the worship, we've lost what it even means to be a church in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the first group of believers did here.
SPEAKER_00: They got what was necessary right.
SPEAKER_00: They gathered to listen to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking bread, and to prayers.
SPEAKER_00: They got the essentials right.
SPEAKER_00: Then the rest of it fell into place with lots of grace and lots of love, and them doing the necessary things.
SPEAKER_00: Those things that they were devoted to showed that they were actually captivated by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that to be true as it's explicitly stated in the next verses.
SPEAKER_00: We said at the beginning that what you cherish will pull your heart, and what pulls your heart will compel you to action, and those actions will begin to shape your lives.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we see in verse 43.
SPEAKER_00: It says, And all came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: All came upon every soul.
SPEAKER_00: That has to be the closest thing to heaven described in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I understand that the apostles are doing miracles.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure that added to the awe.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, it says that many signs were being done.
SPEAKER_00: So more than what's recorded here in the book of Acts, there's more going on than that.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that you could argue that they're at an unfair advantage because they're getting to see all of these explicit miracles.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure that if I came in here today and I healed someone from an obvious long-standing ailment, and then I shared the gospel in a foreign language to an exchange student, and then uh 3,000 people came and were saved, next week this place would probably be packed.
SPEAKER_00: I would be gone, but the place would be packed because they would be like, what is happening?
SPEAKER_00: But man, what it must have been like to see all come upon every soul.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone taken by what God was doing.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds like glory to me.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't, they weren't being cynical or divisive.
SPEAKER_00: There were they were new enough at this that they hadn't gotten into any disagreements yet.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have all the answers.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't even know what the questions were.
SPEAKER_00: That's probably the biggest miracle in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: That over 3,100 Christians were in awe together over what God was doing.
SPEAKER_00: It even says that many signs and wonders, that many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: So that means that there were thousands of believers that were not doing signs and miracles.
SPEAKER_00: And no one was fighting about that.
SPEAKER_00: No one was jealous yet.
SPEAKER_00: No one was like, well, wait a second.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's doing that.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Let me in there.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone is just amazed.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of what heaven will be like, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: Different people just kind of popping off doing their thing, with no one else jealous about what the other person is or is not doing.
SPEAKER_00: That's what drove them to devote themselves to teaching, to spend time together, to eat together, to pray together.
SPEAKER_00: They were in awe.
SPEAKER_00: They were enthralled by the splendor and wonder of God and what he was doing in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: And that drove their hearts to take action.
SPEAKER_00: And so they did.
SPEAKER_00: And then those actions began to shape their lives.
SPEAKER_00: And we see from verse 44, uh 44 on what their lives actually looked like.
SPEAKER_00: Their weeks, not just their gathered time together, but their weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 44 says, and all who believed were together and had all things in common.
SPEAKER_00: And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
SPEAKER_00: So in their midst in the church here, there were people that were in poverty, and then there were people that were enjoying great wealth.
SPEAKER_00: This moved the people with wealth to do something about it.
SPEAKER_00: To not just look at their brothers and sisters in need and say, Yeah, I'll be praying for you, buddy.
SPEAKER_00: But to give to it, to sell possessions and to give to those in their midst that had physical needs.
SPEAKER_00: This is not communism.
SPEAKER_00: This is not government run.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the Bible making a case that personal property is a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the next verse there says that they met in each other's homes.
SPEAKER_00: So they definitely still had personal property.
SPEAKER_00: So we're not trying to say, hey, let's all live in a commune together.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible isn't promoting that.
SPEAKER_00: Nor is this policed by the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like at this point someone is keeping tabs on everything.
SPEAKER_00: This is voluntary generosity from the early church.
SPEAKER_00: This is people being so overwhelmed by what God is doing that their cup is running over into and onto their other brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: They're filled with gratitude for what God has done for them.
SPEAKER_00: So when someone bumps into them with a need, what comes out of them is gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: And so they help with whatever they have.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 46 says, And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.
SPEAKER_00: So it attending the temple, uh, it probably looked not a lot like what we're doing here, but it probably looked like a meeting in the temple courtyard to discuss all of the stuff that was happening.
SPEAKER_00: No one had a house or a building big enough to accommodate, you know, the 3,100 and growing uh community of people that were coming to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So they would meet in the temple courtyard, probably then break off into smaller groups.
SPEAKER_00: Again, generosity was marking these new Christians.
SPEAKER_00: They were using their homes to meet in with these smaller groups.
SPEAKER_00: If you host a community group, you know opening up your home is a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: You're probably not getting out of there without a hole in the drywall or a glass being busted and somebody being cut and it being your fault for no reason.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of the generosity.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know all of what to do or when to do it, but they knew how to do it.
SPEAKER_00: They received their food with glad and generous hearts.
SPEAKER_00: You know who receives food with glad and generous hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Glad and generous people.
SPEAKER_00: Uh for Thanksgiving last year, we had uh some of the guys that were staying at Lazarus Life Ministries over to have Thanksgiving dinner with our family.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you don't, you most of you probably know that Lazarus is a house for men in addiction to come and heal and be shown hope in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so we had uh my family, my parents, my two sisters, and my brother with their families.
SPEAKER_00: And then we had the five, we had five of the last.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, and one of the leaders with his wife and another leader in our midst with uh our Thanksgiving dinner.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the guys came up to me during dinner and was like, Man, this is great.
SPEAKER_00: You guys always get together like this?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, like, what do you I don't know what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like what?
SPEAKER_00: Like, we get together for meals and we hang out and we do cookouts and stuff, and it's pretty boring.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what do you mean like this?
SPEAKER_00: This isn't anything.
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, we could never do this with my family.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of my family are not speaking, and some are strung out on drugs, and um, if if we ever actually did get together, there was for sure gonna be a fight.
SPEAKER_00: And here I am just having just an ordinary Thanksgiving dinner with my family.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little underwhelmed with the company, I'm a little unimpressed with my sister's dish that she brought.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm a little bored with the same routine, but the guy that received it with a glad and generous heart was blown away.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's not so much about the accessories.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the decor isn't gonna make uh Thanksgiving any different than it did last year, but the heart will.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's like that for the church too.
SPEAKER_00: The gathering here isn't going to be all that impressive.
SPEAKER_00: There's buckets hanging there.
SPEAKER_00: The meals are mostly average, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00: The coffee, I had a cup.
SPEAKER_00: It was okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's neat.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's basketball hoops and there's neat.
SPEAKER_00: But let's be honest, the preaching is pretty average.
SPEAKER_00: But if you could get a hold of this glad and generous hearts thing, if we could give as we saw need, and then receive with glad and generous hearts, I think the next part of verse 47 would be true too.
SPEAKER_00: It says in verse 47 that praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
SPEAKER_00: From their glad and generous hearts came praise to God and favor with mankind.
SPEAKER_00: I think often we feel like we have to offend people in order to be walking with God.
SPEAKER_00: So we do our best to not be in favor with the world.
SPEAKER_00: If people are offended and annoyed because your answer to everything comes back to Jesus, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: That's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: If they are offended because you're a jerk about it, that's not Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Don't hide behind the Bible with a billy club swinging it at people.
SPEAKER_00: Our glad and generous hearts should produce joy.
SPEAKER_00: People like to be around joyful, rooted, generous, hard to offend people.
SPEAKER_00: We often are so bent on having this world our way and saying everyone is so easily offended that it ends up being us that are so easily offended.
SPEAKER_00: Don't give the world extra material to hate you.
SPEAKER_00: We should live a life that is blameless.
SPEAKER_00: That if people don't like us, they would have to say, I can't stand that person, but I cannot put my finger on what it is because they are actually very favorable.
SPEAKER_00: That is not compromise.
SPEAKER_00: That is Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: And in the early church, they devoted themselves to each other in a way that was attractive to the outside world.
SPEAKER_00: That is not me saying we need to water down the message and tell everyone that they're doing really good and there's no such thing as sin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever heard me preach, you know that I'm not saying that everyone is okay and it's all good.
SPEAKER_00: You're not okay.
SPEAKER_00: We are not all good.
SPEAKER_00: Peter literally just preached a message and told everybody that they killed Jesus and they repented and were baptized.
SPEAKER_00: There is no watering down the message.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: But now those same people are living life together in a way that confounds the world.
SPEAKER_00: They found favor with people.
SPEAKER_00: They were so struck by what God was doing that they didn't have any thought of staring down at themselves, wondering, why is everybody against me?
SPEAKER_00: They lived their lives in a way that brought about praise to God and favor with all people.
SPEAKER_00: I want in on some of that.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
SPEAKER_00: I would like to get close to that.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds incredible.
SPEAKER_00: They were attractive to the world for the right reasons, not because they allowed sin to infiltrate their lives, but because of how well they treated each other.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder what if they were writing this five verses about proclamation church?
SPEAKER_00: What would it read like?
SPEAKER_00: Not that it has to sound exactly like this, but would it sound Christian at all?
SPEAKER_00: Let's say they wrote this about us here.
SPEAKER_00: And they said, and at Proclamation Church, they devoted themselves to what?
SPEAKER_00: What would it be if they were being honest?
SPEAKER_00: They devoted themselves to convenience, to autonomy?
SPEAKER_00: They devoted themselves to going to work and grabbing fast food, and they devoted themselves to having things their way, and boredom and apathy came upon every soul.
SPEAKER_00: And all the people that professed belief in Jesus gathered on Sunday and tossed an extra 50 in the giving box and headed for the car.
SPEAKER_00: And day by day they spent their time isolated from the group and their own personal space, they received everything they wanted with cynical and skeptical hearts, complaining to God and pitting themselves against everyone.
SPEAKER_00: And they never saw anyone added to their number because who and the world would want to.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that we should copy exactly and try to do exactly what they're doing here.
SPEAKER_00: But this was written to tell us about what God did.
SPEAKER_00: I'm certainly not saying this to guilt you into action.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if that sounds like proclamation church.
SPEAKER_00: I know it could describe my church at times.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just wondering if this church would be known as a group of people that, like these people in the book of Acts, are captivated by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Are you held by him?
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to this.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: This is what everyone wants to know.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do with this?
SPEAKER_00: And it would be easy for me to say, well, let's do what the early church did.
SPEAKER_00: Let's devote ourselves to teaching of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Let's meet every day and just pound each other with teaching.
SPEAKER_00: I would actually commend you for devoting yourselves to the teaching of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: You're gathered here right now, and there's teaching.
SPEAKER_00: You're here.
SPEAKER_00: That's worth something.
SPEAKER_00: You're not, I don't think, that you're begging Rick and Jimmy to teach on non-biblical topics.
SPEAKER_00: You're sitting under and listening to the preaching and teaching of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you have made that a regular part of your life.
SPEAKER_00: It would be easy for me to say, okay, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we should give generously.
SPEAKER_00: And there are some generous people here.
SPEAKER_00: I know that.
SPEAKER_00: Not just with finances, but with time and effort.
SPEAKER_00: I know and I commend you for that.
SPEAKER_00: I see Christ's likeness in that.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to draw some parallels from the text and say, let's do what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: But are we captivated by Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Because a list of things for you to do with no love in your heart for Jesus is just religious activity.
SPEAKER_00: It's useless.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing that the children of Israel were doing in the Old Testament when God said, shut up.
SPEAKER_00: Your singing makes me sick.
SPEAKER_00: This is this isn't even from the heart.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, like at our church, there are many here that lack a devotion to Christ that would be evident during the week.
SPEAKER_00: Sure, you can sit here and look like you're present.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, the the gathering is full and it's tidy in here.
SPEAKER_00: But when we leave here, there wouldn't be a lot of people saying, man, those people at Proclamation Church are held by Jesus in a way that's so attractive and it's bringing praise to God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's the case, but I know that that's convicting to me.
SPEAKER_00: Are we cherishing Christ?
SPEAKER_00: I want us to because I believe that what we cherish will pull our hearts, and what pulls our hearts will dictate our actions, and our actions form our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I should do this turns into I want to do this.
SPEAKER_00: How much money do I have to give turns into, man?
SPEAKER_00: I just I want to help, I want to help my brothers and sisters in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: How much do I have to read today turns into a hunger for God's word because that's where we see him.
SPEAKER_00: How long do I have to be with these people?
SPEAKER_00: Do we have to stay for the meal today?
SPEAKER_00: It turns into a desire to be around them because your commonality in Christ is stronger than your differences.
SPEAKER_00: I'm horrible at praying.
SPEAKER_00: Turns into, I have to take this to him because you understand he's the one that holds you.
SPEAKER_00: All of this happens not by just following a checklist, but when we are captivated by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Stop being so taken by yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You're not that good.
SPEAKER_00: You're not that fun to hang out with.
SPEAKER_00: You're not that good looking.
SPEAKER_00: Is that my wife?
SPEAKER_00: Stop being enamored with yourself, so in tune with your preferences that you can't even walk into a room without thinking, what's being done wrong here?
SPEAKER_00: Turn to him.
SPEAKER_00: Set your face on him.
SPEAKER_00: Give your heart to him and trust him with the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Devote yourself to him and his word and watch the spirit move.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that looks like for you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're expecting me to say, do this, this, this, and this, and your life's gonna blow up spiritually, I can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that looks like for you.
SPEAKER_00: But I pray that as a people, we are so held by Christ that we will joyfully follow him.
SPEAKER_00: And then, just in closing, I have to always add, if you're here and you haven't found Jesus worthy of following, I pray this morning that your pursuit of self-exaltation, your pursuit of dream chasing, and all of this world has to offer, I my prayer is that that falls flat on its face.
SPEAKER_00: And you realize that Jesus is the only pursuit.
SPEAKER_00: He's the only person that can really hold you for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: All of the frivolous stuff that you're chasing to fill you will not fill you.
SPEAKER_00: He is the only one that can hold you for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: He is the only one worthy of your full devotion.
SPEAKER_00: Would you turn to him today?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.