Rehearsing for Heaven | Elijah Lamb

This powerful exploration of communion and community challenges us to see the church not merely as a building or organization, but as a living rehearsal for eternity. Drawing from Matthew 22 where Jesus identifies loving God and loving our neighbor as the greatest commandments, we're invited to understand that these aren't separate callings but beautifully intertwined realities. The message unpacks how communion isn't just a backward glance at Christ's sacrifice, but a forward-looking rehearsal for the marriage supper of the Lamb described in Revelation 19. Every time we gather around the table, we're practicing for the eternal feast where Jesus will finally drink the cup with us in His Father's kingdom. The church becomes what Isaiah prophesied: a mountain where nations stream together, where swords are beaten into plowshares, where the first fruits of the fall—brothers made into enemies—are reversed into brothers reunited in love. We're challenged to recognize that our individualistic culture has left 54% of adults feeling isolated, while Jesus offers something radically different: belonging to a family, seated at a table, rehearsing for heaven. The call isn't complicated—build your life around tables, share meals, join the community, because our love for one another isn't just nice, it's the very thing that makes our witness to Jesus credible and effective.

Chapters

Chapter 1: The Greatest Commandment: Love God and Love Others

0:00 - 7:18

We explore Jesus's teaching that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything we have, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves, understanding that these two commands are inseparable.

Chapter 2: The Church as Eden Restored: Zones of Recreation

7:18 - 16:44

We learn that the church functions as a zone of recreation where God is restarting the creation project, embodying the kingdom of God as a great banquet feast both now and in the future.

Chapter 3: From Swords to Plows: Unity as Our Witness

16:44 - 27:15

We discover that our unity and love for one another is the primary way the world will recognize us as Jesus's disciples, transforming us from enemies into a family.

Chapter 4: Building Life Around Tables: The Practical Call to Community

27:15 - 42:09

We are challenged to practically live out biblical love by building our lives around tables, sharing meals, and belonging to the family of God as the antidote to isolation.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Man, so we have been in like a micro sort of undefined series about community and about the church. And uh I want to stay there. This is kind of like a part two for the message I preached a few weeks ago called the Between Two Worlds ones, you know, where it's like jumping around talking about Ephesians. Uh this message is gonna be like just as weird as that, but I think it's gonna be a little even a little bit more personal than the last one. Uh before we like start digging into like weird prophetic text, which is where we're going, and I'm stoked about it. Uh I want to share a little bit of my story. So I moved here four years ago when I was 19 years old, and just sort of like on a whim, I drove my 2016 Ford Fusion that's missing the back left bumper, much to my chagrin, and I'm constantly being made fun of for that, which is why the car has rotted and died and it's no longer mine. But I I appeared 30, you know, 40-hour drive across the United States just off like this will be cool, and was immediately thrust into like the throes of depression. Like it was very, it was very, very hard for me. And I found myself feeling more isolated and alone than I'd never had in my entire life. It was I got to the point where I was visiting home once every two weeks. Like I was really, really going through it and regretting my decision, regretting signing that lease. I was like all the time, like, oh God, I just wish I was not here. And uh so I was I was the loneliest that I'd ever been, and my spiritual life was at its utter worst. Like I was a complete mess. And then over the months, in my first year of living here, I had several very significant moments with the spirit that changed me and transformed me, that changed my attitude, but also like totally uprooted the theology that I had built and showed me that the way I was trying to get this Jesus thing done was all types of wrong. And it just wasn't computing, it wasn't working, and wasn't the beauty that God had uh intended for me. So I had these just like incredibly powerful, hard to put into words moments, encounters with the Holy Spirit, where he healed my heart, where he redirected my priorities, where he changed the way that I saw him, changed the way that I understood the gospel in ways that are like I'm still trying to find words for. Like it was like, I don't know, it was like my Christianity was in black and white, and there was just a moment where like the color switched on. It was like, oh, I had like I actually kind of I feel like I get it now for the first time. And on the other side of these encounters with God, I became obsessed with this scripture that was obvious and that I'd always known, but the the power and the significance of it hadn't really captured my heart and stuck out to me the way that it that it began to and still does for me very much now. So as we turn to Matthew chapter 22, Jesus is in a series of debates with the Sadducees and Pharisees. They're intentionally trying to ask him difficult theological, political, social questions to get him to say something bad so they can get him in trouble. Like that's basically what they're trying to do. They're trying to trap him. And so this teacher of the law approaches and says, Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest? And this is not like a unique or original question. This is the kind of question that the rabbis have been trying to answer for several hundred years. And we have a ton of answers to this question. Uh, in fact, the the most common response the rabbis, the theological experts uh before and during the time of Jesus would give is to uh to honor your father and mother. That was their like main that for them, that was the most important command of the law, which is super interesting. And why when Jesus says that you have to love him more than your parents, that's like a very obvious divine claim. Anyway, because you're not you can't ask that of people unless you're God. Anyway, he's this is Jesus Jesus' answer, and he is the only person in Israel's history to bring these two thoughts together and to answer the question this way. Uh both of them had been answered been brought up as the answer independently, but never together. So he says to him, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets depend on these two commands. Jesus says, everything that was that's been given to us in the scripture can be summarized under these two commands that come from the law. And for the longest time, uh, when I sort of like the Holy Spirit just spoke to me through this verse in a way that, again, I'm like still trying to figure out how to express into words perfectly, but it became like this verse and verses like it became all that I could preach about, all that I could pray about. Like I was the biggest broken record, just trying to get people to see, like, oh, the whole point is that we're supposed to love him. Like we're supposed to be obsessed with him, we're supposed to have undying loyalty to Jesus. It's supposed to be radical, it's supposed to be crazy, we're supposed to love God. That's the point. And I became frustrated, like looking back at how many years I tried to follow Jesus doing this like loveless version of Christianity that it left me feeling empty and bored and disinterested. You know, it's like reading this suddenly, discipleship felt so shockingly simple. You know, obviously, sanctification and Christ-likeness, there's a there's a lot to those things, and it's complicated and it's it's gonna take the whole time, you know, it's until we drop dead. It's it's a it's a long, lifelong, ongoing process. But at the end of the day, Jesus gives us a sort of simple slogan, the big overarching plan that everything else falls under, and it's it's love. First and foremost for him. And so upon like really digging into the scripture, I grew this very passionate, almost sometimes kind of angry discontentment with a vision of the Christian life where disciples are indifferent or maybe only mildly interested in Jesus. I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't do a version of Christianity where the prize was not going to hell when I died, instead of getting Jesus in the right here and now and experiencing him and walking with him and being being tight with him, you know, like that became the thing. I began to understand that the best thing that God had to offer me was Himself. And so I had I was in love with theology and I was in love with preaching. I was in love with all the but I but I wasn't in love with Jesus. It's like something had to like wake up in me to change. And so I began to feel like, man, there's just no way that I'm going to settle for anything less than utterly sold-out obsession. Like I can't find like a lower-hanging fruit and just rock with that. I can't do it. And at the end of the day, that's what the cross should do to us. That's what the cross should awaken in us as we look at the gospel and we see the love of God displayed in the most obvious, uh, revelatory, powerful possible way. Something in us is meant to be awoken. Like we're meant to look at that and go, Oh, that's what I've been looking for. That's what I've been searching the world for. That's what my life is supposed to be about. So became this person, like, I just want to talk about loving God. You gotta love God, you gotta love God more. Whatever it is, you know, you gotta you want to get free from sin, you gotta love God more. You gotta look, because I had like a whole like you gotta hate yourself more kind of approach for like all the years of my life. You could get free if you just like hated the sin more and like yourself with that sometimes. And that's incredibly ineffective because most of us are not very good at hatred. Like, we're very inconsistent. But if you can love him, it's like, man, things matter. I'm like, man, this is like the secret point. Why didn't anybody say this to me? Why didn't everybody tell me this? It's like looking at someone, like, hey, imagine, would you like, you know, if God summarized everything he wanted from you in one sentence, would you want to know what that sentence is? Well, yes, of course. Like, yes, that's obviously what I want, but like nobody put it that way to me. So I started to feel like bitter and resentful, but you know, I had to work that out. But the point is, Jesus doesn't stop there. He doesn't stop with just you gotta love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength. He extends it and he's like, and also, by the way, this too. The first one might be obvious, but then there's like this second bonus thing. The first bit, the love of the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, comes from Deuteronomy chapter six. It's a prayer in the Torah called the Shema. And it's a prayer that from ancient Israel to Orthodox Jews today, something that they pray in the mornings and the evenings. They pray this thing twice a day. It is this is the prayer, this is the liturgy and the creed of the ancient Israelite faith. It's the strongest affirmation of monotheism and loyalty to one God, which we were just kind of just like expressing through Psalm. You know, so they wrote it down all over the place and they wore it in their necklaces. Like this was their statement of faith. This was their Nicene Creed. And Jesus, very offensively, adds to it. You know, so like imagine if I threw up the apostles and the Nicene Creed on the screen, which you go through in essentials, and I at the very end, you were like, wait a minute, what's that little stanza down there? I've never heard that before. Oh, sorry, guys. I just threw that in there. I thought it was relevant. You're gonna go, you can't do that. That's 100% against the rules. That is not allowed. But Jesus is like, I can do that. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. And and the crazy part is the thing that he decides to add in is some random verse from the middle of Leviticus 19, which is it's not like this super important verse in Israel's history or theology. It's like dropped in the middle of the most random context. It's love your neighbor as yourself. That's his number two. And this becomes the consistent teaching of the New Testament and of the early church that if you don't love your neighbor, then you cannot claim to love God. You know, it's like Paul will write in Romans 13, 10 and Galatians 5.14 that if we love our neighbors, we fulfill the law. And James will say in chapter 2, verse 8 that neighbor love is the royal law God has given to us, and if we do it, then we are doing well. Like James is like, Wanna know if you're succeeding? Wanna know if you're doing well in life? How are you loving your neighbor? It's like, okay, thank you, James, for summarizing and simplifying that. John, John gets like, I love John, he's like a big hippie in the Bible. There's a there's a popular story from church tradition, which is that when John was like a hundred years old, he he outlived all the other apostles, and he was like frail and blind and like could barely move. And the disciples of John would come and they would ask him questions, and he would every single time, and they were super frustrated with him about this, but every single time they'd ask a question, he would just go, Well, if you just love one another, if you just love if you just love one another, and you're like, You friggin' hippie, dude. You're just no, it's just love, dude. You're like, Yeah, okay, you are weird. Um, he writes in his epistle, his whole epistle, this is cool. Uh, you know, he talks about love like all the time. And one of the mistakes that we make in like modern America is we have made love primarily an emotional experience, which emotions are a part of love. I'm not gonna pretend that they're not, but it's not the whole picture. And so we've made it sort of like love is what I feel about somebody. And the Bible uh has a much uh more specific and sort of like a broader definition of love that includes a lot more than just what's going on in our the touchy-feely parts of our lives. And so John is super is rebuking the one of his churches because they're failing to love one another. And how does he know that? Not because they are like lacking this weird, vague sentimentality or this, you know, hypothetical openness to altruism, but because they're literally in the middle of a church split. So the the church that John is writing to, they're actively dividing from one another. And so when he's writing about love, he's talking about unity in the family of God. It's like, oh, you're claiming to love one another. You don't. You need to rejoin, you need to get back together, you need to heal this brokenness. Love for John is unity. Like they're basically synonymous terms. And he says in 1 John 4, if anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. And so the way that early church theologians will explain this is that if we love God but not our brother, we love our brother but not God, then we're we it doesn't work that way. Like you're you're you're you're like halfway virtuous, but it's not really the picture and and the thing that God has commanded. You guys with me? Yeah, and so we gotta remember this is what I preached about a few weeks ago, that love, that unity that we share is how we prophetically declare God's future to the world. Remember, we're like we're heaven's outposts, we're Dumbledore's army, we are living a life that predicts the future that God is going to bring through Christ. The way that I'm like beginning, I was thinking about it all this week is like the church is a zone of recreation. So, like here's what I mean. Like, picture like a zombie apocalypse movie, you know, nuclear fallout, and there's always like the little like societies that start, you know, and they got like the walls because it's like a biohazard and everybody's fine and it's cool, but not like all the way like that, because it's always the the person leading is always like an evil, evil dictator. So that's I don't know why that's the most common trope for apocalypse movies, but that's what it's like. And uh it's in this is like it's where God is like restarting, you know, he's like restarting the creation project in the church. We're zones of recreation. Another way of saying it is the church is where Eden is happening again, or like it's Eden is is trying to happen. You know, it's like it's starting out, it's it's trying its best through us, you know. And that's what I talked about a few weeks ago about inaugurated eschatology, that like God's big eschatological plan of reunification and recreation and putting everything right has started, but it hasn't gotten finished yet. You know, we have the now and also the not yet. But the point that the scripture would have us understand about the church is that walking through the church doors, so to speak, as it were, should be a little bit like entering another world. You know, it should be like walking through a time machine that takes you back to the Garden of Eden. You know, that's what we're trying to embody, that's what we're trying to do. And uh when when I think that way, I can't help but picture one of the metaphors that Jesus commonly employs in his parables, um, that the kingdom of God is like a great banquet. It's like a king who's throwing a party or a wedding feast or a, you know, it's like a everybody come along. We're gonna eat and drink and be merry, and we're gonna have fun, like we're gonna square dance, you know. There's square dancing in heaven for sure, and I'm gonna be good at it. That's how I know, that's how I'll know the fall has stopped. You know, like heaven is basically like Ireland in my mind, you know? Or like the Shire. Like it's I love it. Anyway. But so Jesus describes the kingdom, which is invading earth now through the church, as a place of feasting and rejoicing. Like that's how I imagine it. Like walk into the church doors and you look, and everybody is just like partying, and but not like in a you know crazy way, but partying, like celebrating and rejoicing. It's like a little kid's birthday party, you know? Like, not no, those suck. That's not a good. I'm gonna rework that analogy. And this is how Isaiah describes the kingdom of God as well. In Isaiah 25. Listen, this is so cool. On this mountain, which this mountain is a common description that he uses to describe God's coming kingdom realities, which includes both the church and the new heaven and the new earth, what we'd call, you know, the heaven eternity with God. On this mountain, the re-establishment of God's temple, which is happening now, the Lord of armies will prepare for all the peoples a feast choice of meat, a feast with aged wine, prime cuts of choice, meat, fine vintage wine. I'm like, let's go. You know, Isaiah is looking forward to the church as this like great party that has started now in you and I, in the kingdom of God that we're participating in. And remember, this is this is a now and a not yet thing. The promise starts in the church. Like we're doing the feasting and rejoicing in advance, but this will come to absolute completion in the new creation. The key question for us to answer is how is it starting in the church? Like, let's get practical. What like let's talk about the mechanics of this? How are we embodying God's great big banquet party? How are we doing that now? Any guesses? It's communion. Yeah. Maybe you noticed that we didn't take communion at the beginning of service. We planned that. We're gonna take it at the end. I wanted to sort of like build some theology around communion. Communion is the table, is the feast that God has prepared for us now. This is the holy meal, the drink and the food that we approach together as a people. And this is important because the way that God has designed communion, it doesn't only look backwards to the gospel, right? The broken body and the and the blood that was spilled and the bread and the wine. Yes, obviously, this the imagery is there, it's potent, it's powerful. We know exactly what we're doing. We're remembering the sacrifice of Jesus. And really powerfully, what the church has taught through the writings of St. Paul is that when we take the bread and the juice, we are actively participating in Christ. That by the Spirit, the bread and juice become more than just bread and juice, and they are the means by which God gives us grace and his very presence. So it's a it's a super serious, holy, reverent thing that we do because God is giving himself to us through it. Okay, so there's a past reality, there's a present reality in the current experience, but there's also a future forward-looking thing built into communion. Communion, as we take it, looks forward to the fullness of God's coming kingdom, right? So Paul, for example, challenges us to think this way after he retells the story of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. He says in verse 26, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So when we when we eat the bread and we drink the wine or the juice, we are literally announcing the soon coming king to the world and to one another, right? Why does Paul think it works that way? Well, Jesus at the Last Supper, when he gives the cup and when he breaks the bread, he literally says, I will not eat this bread or drink from the fruit of the vine, wine, until I drink it new with you in the fullness of my father's kingdom. So Jesus is fasting bread and wine in heaven, like he's taking a very long break from the Last Supper till finally when we arrive in God's kingdom, then we will all gather around the table and rehab that meal again. And there will be no betrayer at the table. There will be no drama going down at the table. Is it me, Jesus? No. It'll be perfect love. There will be no fear on the horizon. It won't be preceding the atonement, it will be on the other side of it. We're rejoicing and remembering what God has already accomplished. It's like sick. And so then it gets crazy in the book of Revelation. Here's this description that we get from John right at the end in chapter 19. John says, I heard something like a voice of vast multitude, like the sound of cascading waters and like the rumbling of loud thunder saying, like this is a big, powerful proclamation coming from heaven saying, Hallelujah, because our Lord God, the Almighty, reigns. Let us be glad, rejoice, and give him glory. Why? Because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has prepared herself. Theologically, this is of serious significance. The marriage supper of the Lamb. You and I are called the bride of Christ, right? The church is called the bride, not the wife. Those are different things. A lot of parables that Jesus gives, they look forward to a wedding that is going to happen. This is what we're talking about. There is the what's called the consummation when Christ returns and brings his church into new creation, and we're finally perfectly made one with him. Right now we're a bride, you know, veil over our heads, waiting along. We're like walking down the aisle to Jesus, basically. And in the end, there will be the perfect consummation, and we'll move into the feast, bro, and the festivities will begin for forever. It's like this is so sick. What is the Mary Shepherd of the Lamb? What's the meal? It's when we sit with Jesus at his table and we we eat of the bread and we drink of the wine that he's been waiting to give us since he was here on earth. It's like, this is sick. And so when we when we do that, when we come around the table of communion, the way to think about this is that we are rehearsing for a coming feast. Right? You've been to a wedding rehearsal before, right? Like just like a picture, that's the imagery that we we should think of when we're trying to imagine like what's going on at communion. We're we're doing the wedding rehearsal, right? It's like the day before the wedding. We're gather around, we're practicing, you know, it's always gonna go the exact same way. All the bridesmaids are gonna line up really perfectly and beautifully, and all the groomsmen are gonna look like toddlers, you know, just completely jagged and out of line, looking like idiots. That's always how it's gonna go, no matter how many times you practice and rehearse, and that's probably a good picture of heaven, you know. Like I think most elderly women Christians are like saints, and they'll enter heaven basically sinless, and purgatory exists just for dudes, and we're gonna need to get some stuff burned off. You know what I'm talking about? This is what we're doing. When we come around this table, we're it's like rehearsals. You know, we're rehearsing for a feast that is coming. We are acting out God's future. We're not just remembering what God has done, we're looking forward to what God will do and the table that we will finally sit at him with. And that's just one example. It's a really poignant exam example, but this is a cool way to think about the whole Christian life. Like when we sing, we make music to the Lord, we're rehearsing for heaven, right? Like we're getting our pipes going, we're getting ready for like the big worship service that's ahead. You know what I mean? Right? Like we're God's little choir and we're getting ready for the songs that we will bring him. You guys you guys with me on that? Like it's cool. When we as Christians pursue God's mission, when we carry out healing and we pursue justice, we we're embodying the new creation, right? We're we're acting out the final work of Jesus to bring ultimate healing and justice across the earth, right? Like we're we're bringing that into the world around us. But but above all, and I think this is what the scripture would have us believe, when we live together and love and unity, we are bringing God's future into the present. That's the that's the big key. And so for me, I like all week, I couldn't stop thinking of this verse from Isaiah chapter 2. It's gonna sound a bit like the other one. In the last days, the mountain, right, the house of God, uh, the mountain of the Lord's house will be established at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills, and all the nations will stream to it. And many peoples will come and say, Come, let's go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us about his ways so that we may walk in his paths. For instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples. This is Isaiah describing the church, and then this is my favorite part. They will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives. Like, that is the most powerful description of mankind being put back into the Garden of Eden that I could think of. We're like, we're trained to war against one another, and at the coming of Christ, we will bend our swords into plows, and we'll be farmers instead. That's that's so sick. I'm loving that. That's what's happening now in the church. Like, we've all been born into a world that's hostile, that's resistant, that's angry, that's hateful. And we come into the church and we're invited into the way of Christ, the way of self-sacrificial love that takes the sword, like Jesus would have us do, and bends it into a plow and says, Instead, I'm going to build, instead, I'm going to give. Instead, I'm going to tend to others. Instead, I'm going to beautify, instead of destroy. It's like, yes. This has an ultimate fulfillment when Christ really comes and when the curse of Adam is unequivocally reversed. And it's not just about farmers, this is about the fact that from the very beginning, the first fruits of the fall in Genesis 4 were brothers made into enemies. Like that's the first narrative you get after the fall happens. Is Genesis chapter 4 Cain kills his brother. So the very first thing the fall causes is disunity between brothers. So the first fruits of God putting everything right is going to be unity between brothers and sisters. Like that's what that's what we should expect the church. To be if God's not lying about what the church is. And so this is the other half of God's kingdom banquet. We're not just sitting around eating in silence, it's rejoicing, it's peace. It's, here's a way to put it, it's friendship. Right? The church is what takes, like how Cain is described in Genesis 4, the church is what takes restless wanderers like Cain and puts them in families. This is before anything else what the scriptures mean when they say that God sets the lonely in families, puts them in houses, takes orphans, and makes them sons and daughters. He plants them into the loving life of the church, of his people. The love that you and I are called to is not some robotic, universal goodwill offered to all, stripped of any relational connection or context. That's not the point, but it's more like Paul's command in the book of Romans that we should love one another with brotherly affection. Paul's writing to the Romans, like, y'all gotta like each other, man. It doesn't feel like this crazy, profound, poetic, holy commandment. Nah, you got you guys gotta like each other. So much that when you see each other, you kiss. It's like, all right, Paul, I'm not there yet, man, but but I'm open. I'm open to the idea. Like on this note, uh Augustine said a thousand, two thousand years ago, 1500 years ago, I'll get the number right. What is there to console us in this human society so full of errors and trials except the mutual love of true and good friends? Oh, yeah. Or like Aristotle, this is even cooler. You guys know the Greek uh philosopher Aristotle. You know, you guys have heard of him before. He said, This is so cool, anyone who is to be happy will need excellent friends. And then he begins to teach on the different kinds of friendships. He gives three different kinds, and the last one is the greatest. He calls them friendships of virtue. Friendships where a person can look at their friend and say, You are like another myself. He like predicted the way that love is talked about in the Bible. Like he was aligned on this. That true love is where we look at another person and we care about them just as much as we care about ourselves. We care about their, and this is specifically the way that he works it out. We care about that person's growth just as much as we care about our own. We look at another person and we love them for their own sake, and we think about what can I, what can I add? How can I help? How can I build? What can I give? How can I make you more like who you're supposed to be? Right? And in a Christian context, we're looking at going, how can I help you become more like Jesus? That's the way that we look at one another. And this is exactly how the scripture describes the church. You know, in that that verse that Jesus quotes in Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. The verse immediately preceding it is, hey, if you see your neighbor's sin, don't ignore it, rebuke them. Because what what the Leviticus is is helping us to see is, hey, your neighbor's sin is not this like private thing that has everything to do with you. Like actually get involved, like actually help them, like actually build them. Don't look and go, well, that doesn't really affect me, so it's no big deal. No, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Care about them and their needs and their priorities just as much as you care about yours. That's sick, you know? You're wondering like, is this guy really up here preaching about the power of friendship? Yes, and it's fire, okay? I am. And for me and my story, this is basically the second lesson I had to learn that put a final end to that truly brutal phase of my life. I'll never forget the moments I had with God where I realized that the Holy Spirit had been convicting me about my insecure resistance to the family of God that He had given me. I had basically lived like two to three years of my life. It basically been spent as like one long attempt to get out of a hug. You know? I remember when I when my family decided we were gonna start doing hugs, and I was like, this is insane. I'm not down, sorry. I'm glad that God is doing something. Uh please don't touch me. You know? So you like I'm telling you, I'm like a most, I'm be I was once, the Lord has healed my heart. But I was a hug squirmer, you know? All right, cool. Arms down. God, please let me go. It's so terrible. And I feel like that's really the way that I lived. That that's like a metaphor, the way that I lived my entire life. Was like, oh bro, bring it in. Get me out. And I felt like the Holy Spirit was like was resisting that in me and rebuking me on that and was calling me home.

unknown 26:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

And so, in response to those moments with the Lord, I made some serious adjustments to my life. Wait, it was way too late, but it happened eventually, and it's all worked out, in order that I might obey the scripture and take my seat at the table. And I'll never forget, after that series of conversations with God and really figuring out how do I give myself to the life of our church, my first trip, like I travel a ton. And uh years of living in Los Angeles and traveling, I remember just landing every single time and like groaning, like, uh, I'm back here. It just felt like I was on one really long business trip, you know? It was rough. I hated landing in LAX. It was a horrible feeling. I remember after this series of moments with God and making those changes to my life, landing at LAX, and for the very first time, feeling like I'm home. And maybe that sounds like corny or whatever, but it was really beautiful and really important to me. And I was shedding tears on the on the on the runway, dude, because I was like, oh man, I might not have to like run away and move back to Florida. You know, I might actually be able to plant my life and live here. You know, I might actually be able to belong here. This might actually be where God is calling me, and it might not really be miserable all the way through.

unknown 27:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

That's what obeying the scripture did. And that that's the that's the reason I'm still here. The fact is, I was made just like you to live in God's house with his friends. We were all designed for that. It's simple. And and the fact is that we're all aching for it. You know, the statistics don't lie here. Just reading last night, 54% of US adults feel isolated, and 70% of U.S. adults feel that they lack the support that they need. Individualism is killing people. It's killing people, it's ruining people's lives. That message of self-sufficiency is destroying people, and Jesus has the answers. Because, you know, shockingly, he seems to know how people work. Who would have thought? The guy who made us is like informed about how we work. Isn't that crazy? And here's why I would like to end here. The fact is, we have to recognize that all of that, that biblical anthropology, God's teaching about the way that humans work and what we need and our assessment of what's happening in our culture today, all of this should inform the strategy of our mission. Appealing to people's heads with really great arguments just isn't gonna cut it. You know? Everyone has a good argument for everything all of the time, given to them by a robot. You know? Like when you're living in a world where every single video that you watch is someone trying to convince you to do something or buy something and pretending that they're not being paid to say it, it's like, okay, arguments might not be the most convincing thing. And I'm not saying that arguments are bad, they're really important. It's like my full-time job. So it's like, you know, they're cool. But we have to, if we're going to be effective as disciple makers, then we have to take the whole person into account. And that means inviting people in, inviting people to take a seat at the marriage supper of the Lamb, to belong to the family of God. And that just is how biblical love works. When we're talking about the inner life of the love of the triune God, the affection that has been shared since forever by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's the kind of love, as we find in the scripture, that gets out, that goes public. It's a love that so deeply wills to share that an entire cosmos is made just so that its inhabitants can receive an invitation to live in that love. Like it's a love that reaches out and pulls others in. And if we really are people who love God, then we have to model love that way by reaching out and drawing others into God's indestructible life. We make our appeal to the world by speaking to that now often neglected silenced part of the human heart, to that piece of us that nobody is talking to anymore. That aching to belong, that deep desire to be planted in a family. And this, of course, is the wisdom of Jesus. John 13, 34 to 35. I give you a new command, love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. It's like Jesus gives us this wisdom, like, hey, here's how you'll become recognizable to the world. Not by a uniform or a haircut, not dietary restrictions, or a language, not a name tag, Joseph Smith, not a headdress. Like, no, no, no. There's something deeper. Your standout factor to the world will appeal to appear to be laughably simple, but in practice, it will be wildly costly, and it will be your love for one another. One of my favorite biblical scholars, Andreas Kalsenberger, he summarizes things this way. He says that John is trying to communicate that the successful accomplishment of our mission is predicated on our practice of God's love within our own community. If we fail to do so, if we fail to love each other, we fail to undergird our verbal witness to Jesus by the visual demonstration of the reality of Jesus' love in the lives of his followers, which will undercut our mission and render it ineffective. If we want to bring about God's future, the first and most important step is that we love each other. And I'm with Hippie John on this one. It feels like a reduction, it feels too simple. But John's like, no, if you can get this down, the other stuff will work out. If you don't do this, the mission won't go forward. New creation won't be happening. So, look, here's the simple challenge. I'm gonna give you the easiest altar call of your entire life. Number one, we're gonna come to the table. And we're gonna eat of the bread and drink of the blood. Not for like some private moments. You can go back to your seat and think really hard about how much this means to you. That's okay. But right now, we're gonna be the body, feasting on the body. We're gonna partake of a feast together. We're in the banquet hall of God, and it's party time. We're gonna rejoice as we receive his body and his blood together. One meal that we're eating of. There's one there's one bread, there's one cup. That's what we're feasting on as a people. And then after we take, after we partake, we're gonna leave. And here's my challenge to you: build your life around tables. Like, let me put this practically. Go to lunch with somebody new, man. Really? That's your altar call? You want me to like? You want me to go to lunch? Yeah, that's that's that's I think actually is a good idea. That's I think is how you get the ball rolling on fulfilling the biblical imperative to love each other. You know? Make plans to have somebody over. Get into a freaking dinner party, go to a neighborhood group, plug your life in to the life of the church so that you can actually be a scriptural Christian, you know? So that we can be biblical, so that the mission works, so that Eden can break out and the kingdom of God can triumph over darkness. Amen. I feel like I feel like the mom from the sand line. You know? And she's like, you know, and like she walks into his room and she's like, Have you made any friends yet? She's like, No, I'm still new. She's like, you know, and she's like, get in some trouble for crying out loud. That's me right now. That's me. I'm the mom from the sand line. Climb some fences, man, scrape your knees. Whatever she says, such a good movie, dude. Might be the best of all time. Anyway, sorry. So can we have can I just have everybody stand up? We're gonna approach the table together. Are you guys with me on those two follow ups? I feel stoked about that.