Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to the sermon audio from New City, orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: com
Sarah Bruner: Good morning.
Sarah Bruner: Please join me in the prayer of illumination as we ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts.
Sarah Bruner: Heavenly Father, we wish to see Jesus.
Sarah Bruner: By your Spirit's power, give us eyes to see his glory.
Sarah Bruner: Through Christ, we pray, amen.
Sarah Bruner: Today's scripture reading comes from 1 John 4, verses 7 through 13.
Sarah Bruner: Reading comes from 1 John 4, verses 7 through 13.
Sarah Bruner: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Sarah Bruner: Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Sarah Bruner: In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him In this love.
Sarah Bruner: Not that we have loved God, but this is God in us.
Sarah Bruner: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit.
Sarah Bruner: This is God's word.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, good morning.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There you go.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's pretty good.
Pastor Jason Dunn: My name is Jason, I'm one of the pastors here at New City and, as Ben has already said, we are in a series in August we do our vision series.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We are in a series in August.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We do our vision series both in August but also in January, and we did something similar we preached through communion, community and commission in January and we're doing that again this August, and so that's where we're headed today, and I'm going to be talking about community, as Ben already said, and Josh does such a good job talking about how we want to be known and loved in this community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, before I was a pastor, I was an engineer, so that's why I get to talk about pivot tables and different things up here, and my daughter recently asked she had a math problem and she's like, hey, hold on.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I got to go talk to mom about this she's the one who can teach me about this math problem and then I had to just inform her that, as an engineer, I took lots and lots and lots of math in high school but also in college, and that I do a thing or two about math, and she tried to give me an opportunity to do that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, one of the things that I've learned in mathematics is that you have to always define your terms.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You can't make sense of the formula unless you define the terms in it.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's gonna help you understand the work that you need to do.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so the formula for New City is our vision and it's our mission, and we just heard it right with the kids up here.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our vision is what Is to see the Father answer the Lord's prayer, and how are we going to accomplish that vision?
Pastor Jason Dunn: We're going to accomplish that vision by calling, forming and sending disciple makers.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So in this series here in the month of August, we are trying to define the term of what a disciple is, and we're trying I mean, we've defined it this way and I think there's a slide for this Disciples are those who are united to Jesus, in communion with God, community with one another and commission for the world.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So this is our definition.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We're defining the terms of what a disciple is, and so that's where we're at here in the series, and I'm jumping into that middle part community with one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So that's where we're at, and let me just jump in Now.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I thought about starting this sermon in two different ways to talk about community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I could tell you about all the stats of loneliness that we've experienced.
Pastor Jason Dunn: 30% of you in the room probably experienced significant loneliness even in this last week.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I could talk about that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I could talk about the pandemic of isolation that we find ourselves in, and I could describe the fact that we have lost connection with those around us, that we don't truly know our neighbors or feel loved by those around us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So that's one way I thought I could start the sermon and I kind of just did.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But I thought the better way, the better way to start the sermon would be with something positive, something to draw you in, something like honey.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I say this sometimes to Ben, I said we need to use honey and not vinegar when we're leading our people.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We want to draw people into a mission together, into community together, and so what's the honey today?
Pastor Jason Dunn: It is the beauty of our triune God, and so, kind of on that theme of beauty, I want you guys to think about something.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Think about what's been truly beautiful, what has captured your heart, what captures your emotions, your desires, what has struck you in this awestruck kind of form of beauty?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, since I was preaching this Sunday and that we had our all-staff retreat this last week, a 24-hour retreat.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We weren't gone the whole week.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I asked the question, I pulled the staff, I said, hey, where have you experienced beauty?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And they answered it in like two different categories.
Pastor Jason Dunn: One category, the first category, was an area of creation, and we all know this type of beauty right, if you have traveled in the United States or have traveled the world, like places like Yosemite or the Rocky Mountains, there's just awestruck beauty of God's creation.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We also talked about sunrises and sunsets, because we're on the beach.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The other category that kind of came up was the one of beauty in relationships, and you guys know this type of beauty too.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's when the child is first coming into the world and they breathe their first breath.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There is something majestic about that, there is something beautiful about that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's your bride dressed in all white on your wedding day.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And for me, as I reflected on that question of where I've experienced beauty, it's where I've experienced beauty is in the love of a father for their child.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Simone Bay, a French philosopher at the turn of the century, she says this there are only two things that pierce the human heart.
Pastor Jason Dunn: One is beauty and the other is affliction.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so what I want to reveal from our scripture today, reveal from God's word, is the beauty of our triune God Father, son and Holy Spirit, that our pursuit of community is in light of the beauty of the triune God, who experiences community together as the Father, son and Holy Spirit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And those are our two points the beauty of the Trinity and the beauty of our trying the beauty of community, excuse me, so look with me if you have a Bible or device.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Starting in verse 7 of 1 John, chapter 4.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So we see here there's two truths, really simple truths, in two short verses.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The first truth is that love is from God, god is the source of all love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And the second truth is that God is love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God and his substance and his being and his character is love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now let's pause for a moment on that second truth, because that's going to help you connect, or help me connect, truth to the beauty of who God is as the triune God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God is love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It doesn't say that God has love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It doesn't say that God is sometimes loving, but it says that God is love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's in his very being, it's actually in his nature, in his ontology, it's who he is.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God is love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So if he is love, then everything hinges on what type of God we worship.
Pastor Jason Dunn: In Michael Reed's little book, delighting in the Trinity, he subtitles this and I forgot.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I was going to bring it as a book giveaway but I have it in the car.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So if you guys are desperate of a book about Trinity, come find me in the parking lot afterward and I'll give it to you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But Michael Reed he says Delighting in the Trinity.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He subtitles it An Introduction to the Christian Faith.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He belabors the point that the Christian God we worship is God the Father, god the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is actually integral to our Christian faith.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's just not an add-on that someone created.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But the Christian God is the God who is three in one, one in three.
Pastor Jason Dunn: For 1,700 years Christians have been given voice to the mystery of the Trinity and we've been doing that every Sunday as we confess our faith together here.
Pastor Jason Dunn: In a little bit we're going to confess through the Nicene Creed.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So that's kind of why we've been doing that because we want you all to have a deep, rich theology that is Trinitarian in its nature and it's the anniversary of this year, so it's a big, big deal.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But let me connect now that truth that God is love to beauty.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It is only when you grasp that God is Trinity, three in one and one in three, that you really see the beauty of who our God is.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Karl Barth says that the triunity of God, the Trinity, is actually the secret of his beauty.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we can also say from that first truth that the triunity of God is the source of all beauty.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we know this just through music.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I'm not going to talk about music up here because I'm not a musician, but when you play a chord, right, it's three different notes but they're brought in together and it makes a beautiful sound.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or when your children or you see beautiful art in the Louvre or in the Orlando Museum of Art, there are multiple different colors that come together in a beautiful painting.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So there is diversity and in that diversity there is unity and there is this beauty that is formed.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There is unity and there is this beauty that is formed the three in one.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So why is this important for us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The three in one existed before all creation in relationship, and out of that relationship between the Father, son and the Holy Spirit, they're overflowing love for one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They're overflowing kindness toward each other.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It has given to this self-communing expression of creation in the world.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They didn't create because they needed something from us, but they created as an overflow, as a fountain of their love towards the world.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And Dr Reeves he does an excellent job describing the pitfalls of a singular and not triune God by asking this simple question, and Josh alluded to this earlier.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He says how can a solitary God be eternal and essentially loving when love involves loving another?
Pastor Jason Dunn: So the beauty that we have is that our God is three in one and they have always existed and they love one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The Trinity is the bright lane, it's the path that leads us into the beauty of God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's not this abstract idea, this abstract force, but the loving communion of the three persons Father, son and Holy Spirit is perfect in fellowship.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That loving communion has never been self-serving but has always existed to be self-giving.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So let me ask you this question Does the beauty of our triune God, does that, move you, not just in theory but personally?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Is your heart pierced by the beauty of the triune God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The reality is that we cannot love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We only choose to love the things that we find beautiful, the things that are desirable to us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: In CS Lewis, in his little essay called the Way to Glory, he reminds us that we are all too far easily pleased with mud pies when infinite joy and beauty is offered to us as a holiday at the sea.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that's what I'm saying here, is the infinite joy and beauty of our to us as a holiday at the sea.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that's what I'm saying here Is the infinite joy and beauty of our God is the triune God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is why King David asked for that beauty in Psalm 27.4.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And I quote King David says One thing have I asked of the Lord that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
Pastor Jason Dunn: To do what?
Pastor Jason Dunn: To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So where do we gaze upon the beauty of the Trinity?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, look down with me at verse 9.
Pastor Jason Dunn: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
Pastor Jason Dunn: How do we gaze upon the beauty of the Trinity.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We gaze upon the beauty of the Trinity by gazing upon Jesus Christ, who was sent into the world by the Father so that we may live through him.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, at the beginning, in terms of the different categories of beauty, I mentioned two.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I mentioned the beauty of creation and I mentioned the beauty of relationship.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But there's a third category of beauty that I want to talk about.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's called moral beauty, and a UC Berkeley report says that the greatest kind of beauty is in fact, this thing called moral beauty.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It defines moral beauty as this exceptional virtue, character and ability marked by a purity and goodness of intention and action.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The report goes on to say that, in fact, moral beauty is what actually transforms people's lives.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we see that if you keep reading in verse 10 here in our passage in this is love, not that we have loved god, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation, the satisfaction of god's judgment for our sins.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And if you skip down with me actually to verse 13, because I'm trying to pull out the idea that Trinitarian theology is right here in this text, verse 13 says by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us his spirit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So the question is I think we all resonate with the idea of moral beauty as the greatest type of beauty.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Let me tell you a story.
Pastor Jason Dunn: A pastor has told this story before.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There's two brothers kind of younger brothers who go out after lunch.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They go out to the river and this is a big river that ebbs and flows and it creates these big sandbanks and so, as any young boy would do, you got to climb to the top of the hill and unfortunately, as they climbed to the top of the hill, their weight actually caused that sand dune to cave in and they were stuck.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So they never made it back home and somebody good parents were like hey, where are the kids?
Pastor Jason Dunn: They sent people to go search for the boys and what they found was the younger boy who was up to his head in sand.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He was unconscious, so they started moving the sand away and then he awoke at some point when they got enough sand away where he could start breathing better, and they said, hey, they couldn't find the older brother.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They said where is your older brother?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And the child responded and said I am standing on his shoulders With the sacrifice of his own life.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The older brother lifted up the younger one to safety.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is the tangible and sacrificial love of the older brother.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He literally served as a foundation for the younger brother.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, don't you understand that?
Pastor Jason Dunn: That is the moral beauty we all seek for, the moral beauty that we want?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And our text tells us that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That means that Jesus is the one who satisfies God's loving judgment for our sins.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We stand on the shoulders of Jesus so that we don't longer have to be in the pit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We don't create love, but we actually receive and rest upon the one who is sent in love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is the moral beauty that is for you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is the moral beauty that is for me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Let that triunity of the Father, son and Holy Spirit be your source of love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Let them be the one who secures you in love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So how do we gaze upon the beauty of the triune God and let that pierce our hearts?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, here at New City, we do that in numerous different ways, but one of the ways is we have eight different practices.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We practice together as a community, four daily and four weekly practices, and it's up on the website.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's probably not behind me, but there's a great, a lot of good information that we have about how we do common practices together to build our love up for God and for our neighbor.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And one of the practices that has been so impactful to me and Ben did not pay me to say this has been prayer, and particularly praying the Psalms every Wednesday from noon to two.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And it's just opened my world up to who God is, the triune God, the beauty of the Trinity.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's opened up my world to know God as a father, because that's who he is.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He's this self-giving, loving Father who gives to the Son.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's opened my world up to see who God the Son is.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus Christ is the beautiful one.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He's the propitiation for our sins.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Prayer has opened up my eyes to see God, the Holy Spirit, as the one who has been given to me to comfort me, to strengthen me, to support me so that I might abide in the triune God Beloved, let their beauty, father, son and Holy Spirit, captivate your soul, captivate your heart, and let their community, father, son and Holy Spirit, be the pattern for our community, a community that is self-giving, overflowing towards others in love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that brings me to our second point.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Turn with me to verse 11 and 12.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's a command there.
Pastor Jason Dunn: As we receive God's love, we then in return and respond to loving one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Verse 12, no one has ever seen God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If we love one another, god abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So the beauty of the community that we all have established here as Christ's body is meant to reflect the beauty of the Trinity.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's meant to reflect a love that goes out, a love that does not separate but goes to war.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Teresa of Avalos states this Christ has no body on earth.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But yours, no hands.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But yours, no feet.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But yours, yours, are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So yes, jesus still does have a body.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We believe that it's ascended into heaven and he's seated at the right hand of God, the Father.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But on earth his body is the church.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now look with me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: At the beginning of verse 12 again, it says no eye has seen God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: What is John doing here?
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's kind of an odd sequitur.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You could read those verses 11 through 12, like this Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Skip that part.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If we love one another, see, it flows perfectly.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But John puts it here for a reason.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He puts that phrase no one has ever seen God because he actually intends the beauty of our community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The love that we extend outward towards other people is where the invisible God actually becomes visible.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God's love it says in verse 12, is perfected in us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or better understood, god's love in us is matured as we are able to love others.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The goal of God's love in us is to move outward toward our neighbors.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now let me tell you a story, a true one.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is another true story that I read recently and it was printed in a newspaper a while back.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There was an older woman who lived in a neighborhood and she was surrounded by neighbors who you could say were not cruel neighborhood.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And she was surrounded by neighbors who you could say were not cruel, but neighbors who were very responsible, like many of you all in here.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, when the old woman's, this older elderly woman, when her grass got too high, they sent a boy over to mow her lawn, and when her water pipes broke, they sent somebody to turn off her water and fix those things, and when her mail on her front porch got a little bit too high, they finally called the police.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They did everything except check on whether or not she was alive, and she wasn't.
Pastor Jason Dunn: When the police finally entered her home, they found her remains just bones, buried under five feet of trash.
Pastor Jason Dunn: She had been likely dead for four years.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Buried under five feet of trash, she had been likely dead for four years.
Pastor Jason Dunn: One of her neighbors, a woman who used to be close to her, said this she was alone and she needed someone to talk to.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But I was working two jobs and I was sick of her coming over at odd hours.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Eventually I just stopped answering the door.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Friends, this is a tragic picture of what a community is, not a community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This community is not a beautiful community when neighbors do everything except truly know and love one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our text says when we are loved by God, we have to move out towards loving one another, not from a distance, not just responsibly, not just, but instead personally, sacrificially, attentively.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Love is not a task, it's not a box to check.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Love is an overflow of the love that we have received from God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So this is not just a sad story but it's a mirror.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It shows us what happens when we believe community is responsibility without relationship, when we settle for proximity without presence.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This actually tarnishes the beauty of community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Here are some diagnostic questions to ask yourselves if you have or are you giving this type of of community?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Here are some diagnostic questions to ask yourselves if you have or are you giving this type of beautiful community?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Here they are.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Do you deliberately enter into another's joy or pain each week through personal connection?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Do you seek ways to give love to others, your family, your neighbors?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus calls us in the Sermon on the Mount to your enemies on a daily and weekly rhythm.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Do you have at least two friends who know the current season of your soul and you know theirs?
Pastor Jason Dunn: So there's the diagnostic questions, and I don't know where you guys find yourselves in that, but we really, if you're in deficit which I don't know where you guys find yourselves in that but we really, if you're in deficit which I'm sometimes in deficit, if you long to be more known and more loved and also to extend that outwards in a beautiful community, we encourage you all.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Find a community here at New City.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You can open up the app.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's really easy to do that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You can go out these doors and, on the left, you can speak to someone at the connect table.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But we long for all of you all to be in fellowship, to be in relationship with people who truly know and love you, and that you do that for them.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Drew Holcomb has this song.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He says you've got to find your people.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That will call your bluff, who will ride along when the road is rough.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You've so the song.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I really love it.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We sing it together as a family my family and I.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But the point is that, yes, you have to find your people, but you can't just find your people.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It actually takes work to build community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now I'm going to close with this.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I'm going to summarize where we're heading back to.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So Ben talked about communion and I'm talking about community, and next week we're going to do commission.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If we could put up that slide of the very last bullet, or not the bullet, but the picture of our defined disciple.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There it is.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So for those of you who weren't here last week, I'm sorry, but for those of you here this week, I'm going to summarize this real quickly.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But, ben, already we talked about this.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Our union with Christ is the centerpiece for our faith as a Christian.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That union with Christ actually gets us into communion with the triune God Father, son and Holy Spirit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And as we commune with God, I'm trying to make the case that beautiful community is actually the community that leads us to loving, knowing and loving one another here in this community, and then we are sent out, called, formed, sent as disciple makers, as those who, in our work and our witness, are bringing the name of Jesus and God's kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so one way that Ben talked about this was in relation to fruitfulness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We desire that all of you here at New City grow in your communion with God, the triune God, where you would receive and respond to that type of love that he's given you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We also want you to grow in your depth of community, where you are known and loved, and we want you to be sent out and commissioned to the world through your work and through your witness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The other way that we talked about that's a qualitative depth that we want all of us to experience here at New City is on the top, is kind of more qualitative, it's the numeric.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We want to see people who are not yet disciples become disciples and then take on responsibility of sharing this type of community with one another.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Ben is going to talk about this again next week and probably clarify a lot of what I just said.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So, beloved, I want to kind of close with this.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I want you, if anything, to remember from this sermon, I want you to behold the beauty of the triune God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God who is the loving Father, who sent his only Son to be a Savior for us, to be the propitiation for our sins, so we can have verse 13, the empowering, life-giving Spirit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The beauty of the Trinity is not only that God is love, but that we are loved and we are welcomed in to that communion with God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So let us pray to the beautiful triune God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Pray with me, father, we are grateful for your love for us in this that you sent your son, jesus, to ransom a people, to be a propitiation for our sins.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus, you are the faithful, promised one.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You are the one who brought us to the triune God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Father, son and Spirit and Spirit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We ask that you would fill us up, that you would help us to love and encourage those around us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We give you the glory, Amen.