Together For The Gospel - Together We Point - 1 Peter 2:9-12

Together For The Gospel - Together We Point - 1 Peter 2:9-12

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Good morning, church family. It's good to see you guys on a holiday weekend. Um glad that you're here. Uh I have a uh a neat privilege this morning in that my uh my in-laws are here, so it's always fun. Uh they don't get to be here very much uh because he actually uh pastors a church uh out in the Lubbock area. Um and so I'm so thankful that uh they got to be here this morning right here on the front row with my family. And uh if you haven't met them, uh I can just tell you that you will sense uh God's goodness and his grace on their lives just in interacting with them. Um it's a real it's a real neat deal. So I'm very thankful that they're here this morning. Um we're glad that you guys are here. If you are a guest with us, let me just quickly remind you uh that first off, we would love to get you connected more here at Point if that's something you're interested in. Uh my left, your right, on the way out today, we have a small just gift to say thanks for being our guest, as well as just a place we call a connection point, and that's where you can find out more information about how to get connected here at Point. And uh we want to be um just a place where you can learn and grow in your faith. Uh, just so you guys know, I'll speak out the obvious. None of us here have arrived, and none of us have it all figured out, none of us have it all um you know perfect in our theology or understanding of who God is or how to do life. We're all growing, uh, we're all learning, and so this is a safe place to do that. And so if you if you feel like you came into a group this morning of people like, I don't know if like this is a okay place to be. Um I'm struggling with this, I'm struggling with that. Let me just go ahead and uh just calm your fears. Like, we're all a work in progress and we all need grace, amen. And so that's where we are. Um but as we do that, we do believe that God's word is such uh an important, significant tool in how God grows us, how he develops us, and so we teach from God's word and uh and we also call people into community with each other so that we don't just listen to sermons, but that we actually uh experience life together. And so I want to invite you that if you're new to Point or if you've been here a long time, uh our hope is that you wouldn't just come in and listen to a sermon and then go out and do your life. Um, church is actually way more, we'll talk about this in a minute. Church is a lot more than an hour and a half of your week. Uh it's actually all of life. And so we want you to experience that more and more, and that's part of our desire. And so the next two weeks in particular, today and then tomorrow, I'm just gonna say this uh to you guys as well, just kind of point you to some resources and that we want every person who attends Point Community Church to get into community. Um, and there's a couple ways you can do that. One is is through life groups. We call those, we call these our small groups here life groups, which is uh you know used pretty often around churches just because it's it kind of describes what it is people doing life together, okay? And the reason we we do that is because we don't want to just know information in our heads about God, but be in community where we can trust each other to understand do we actually believe this? Not just in theory, but in practice? Uh, how are we applying this to our everyday lives? How are we loving each other uh enough to even encourage and challenge and push and prod each other to grow? And so uh our life groups they meet in homes around our area. Uh some meet on Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, Thursday nights, and we would love for you to be a part of that. It's also where uh people minister each other's needs when they're going through hardship, uh job loss, and having babies and just life that happens, we get to minister to each other in that, and I love that. Um, and so that's how I know personally for me, that's how I continue to grow spiritually, is in that community of believers. It's more than just a gathering once a week for an hour, it's how we do life together. Um, it's how we really get to know others and spend time with them as a spiritual family. So, all that being said, if you uh would like to get more connected, there's lots of opportunities ahead of us to do that. Um we can we can help you do that. But then within those groups, we even want you to get into smaller groups, uh discipleship groups, if you will. And uh and we want people to get connected in in life-on-life interaction where you really dig into the nitty-gritty. And I don't know about you guys, but that's that's uncomfortable at times, but it's really healthy, it's really good. And the Bible says we need it to grow. And so that's what we want to do is encourage you guys in that way. When you came in, if you did not get a worship guide, if you just lift your hand real fast, uh, some of our ushers can hand you one of those. Anybody not get one of those? Um, hopefully you did, but you can write some notes there. You can also read along in the scripture, um, and then we encourage you to use uh the the reading plan on the back of it during the week. It's a great way to just kind of follow through. This week we're gonna be reading through the entire book of 1 Peter. Um I'm gonna be teaching from it this morning, so it's just an opportunity for you to read through it on your own. I hope, again, maybe you're brand new to the Christian thing, maybe you're brand new to church, but I do hope that uh you know that that maybe um, well, just that the Bible is not to be just read once a week on Sunday or hear somebody else preach about it, but every day you can actually read the word and you can learn, you can grow, and you can hear from God yourself. And so we would encourage you to do that. All right. So let me ask you uh a quick question. Um which one of the following environments or situations uh that I'm about to list out are when you are actually being the church? Okay. The first one, you're taking your dog for a walk in the neighborhood. Are you the church or are you not the church? Okay, y'all don't have to answer out loud. You're at a you're at your kid's soccer game, sitting among some parents in the stands. Are you the church or are you not the church? You are in your life group talking about the scriptures and what they mean to you. Are you the church or are you not the church? You are spending the day with your family at SeaWorld. Are you church or not the church? You're on the golf course with your buddies, knocking the ball around. Are you the church or are you not the church? You're with your grandkids, just hanging out and enjoying them. Are you the church or are you not the church? You're in a team meeting at work planning out the next quarter and how you're gonna up your income for the company. Are you the church or are you not the church? You're in a worship gathering on Sunday morning singing worship songs and listening to a sermon. Are you the church or are you not the church? Okay? Now, the reason why I tell you that or even ask that question is because there is, I would believe, a misconception around what it means when we use the word church. In that definitely there is a gathering component to the church, but there's also a scattering component to the church. In that when we become a Christ follower, when we become a Christian, and some of you may in this room may not even be Christ followers, you may not be Christians, maybe you're just exploring the faith. But if you're a Christian, if you're a Christ follower, you are adopted into a spiritual family. And we call that spiritual family the church. We call it the people of God. This summer we did some training with our people and we talked a little bit about how that when you want to really understand what the church is, you have to sort of at times wrestle out what the culture says the church is, because a lot of times the culture says the church is the building. We're going to church, the building. Or some people believe that the church is the programs, maybe even the Sunday service. So we're going to church. But if you want to understand what the Bible actually means, then you again have to think of it more broadly and more deeply. You have to think of it, no, actually, the church is the people of God saved by the power of God for the purpose of God. Now, when you begin to embrace that and you lay that grid over these questions that I just asked, when are we not the people of God? If you're one of God's people, you're always God's people. Many people want to reduce church and being a Christ follower down to an hour and a half of their week. And then the rest of the week, we're just people. We just do the people stuff. We just do our work, we just do our hobbies, we just participate in life. And then we go back to church. And the reason I'm bringing that up this morning is because I know that not every one of you believe that, but there is a cultural view that says we separate life from the reality of our new identity in Christ, which is part of the church, the bride of Christ. And then everywhere we go, everything we do, every day is church in a sense. Every day in all of life is us embodying the role that God has given us as his people to carry his good news, to demonstrate his goodness to the world around us. We've been working for the last four weeks through a series called Together for the Gospel. And the reason is because when the elders came back from elder retreat, you've heard us say this a couple different times. Philippians 1, 27 and 28 was really heavy on our hearts, in a good way, heavy, that this is a great way to think about how we move forward as a church body this year. And I want to read it to you again as we kind of wrap up our series today and prepare for Ephesians next week. And here's what it says in Philippians chapter 1, where Paul is writing to the church of Philippi. He says, just he says these words just one thing. Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Man, I want to live like that. I want to live a life that is worthy of the gospel of Christ. And he goes on to say, Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you, that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, working side by side for the faith that comes from the gospel. So we said and have been saying each week that we want to be a church that when we live in our everyday lives, that it reflects that we actually believe the good news about who Jesus is and what he's done for us. That the gospel, the good news about Christ, that we were sinners who could not save ourselves, but Christ came and he laid down his life for us and took on himself our punishment so that we could be forgiven and free. And he came out of the grave, conquering sin and death, our greatest enemies, that when we became a Christ follower, that we now live all of our life from this new place, from this new reality for us in Christ. That's really, really good news. And it transforms everything. It transforms the way I am a husband, it transforms the way I'm a dad, it transforms the way that I manage money, I manage time, I see my hobbies, I see all of life. Are you with me this morning? Okay. And so we want to live a life worthy of the gospel we have received. Now, some people think that's being super crish, some people think that's like being too holy, some people think that's being too spiritual. Listen, the Bible says that all of our life is affected by the realities of what Christ has done for us. So everything changes. How I view my relationships, how I view everything in my life is transformed by this new identity that I have in Christ. I'm not completely sure all of you are convinced of that this morning. But that's what the Bible tells us. And Paul says to this church at Philippi, he says, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel. And don't forget to be unified in this mission, this purpose, standing side by side, laboring for the work so that people will know the gospel. We get distracted by a lot of things, don't we? We get we get distracted by politics, we get distracted by our own personal preferences, we get distracted by lots of things. But he says, focus on the mission at hand, which is to make sure that the world knows the good news about Jesus Christ. And that's what we want to labor for as a church body. And this morning, even specifically, I want to talk about this last piece. We've said together that we serve, together we give. Together, last week we love, and this morning together we point. I could say we proclaim, but I'm going to use the word point because we are point community church for a reason. We are pointing people to life in Christ. That's why we exist. That's what we're here for. Many people think of the church as a place where Christians kind of go to get safety from the storm of life until Jesus comes back. Have you ever felt that way? It's like I have to have my Christian fix and just to survive. Now, again, I don't belittle people that feel that way. I understand we need reprieve. We need a place to go, a refuge, a safety, a place where we can get into a room with other people who believe what we believe and help us process what we're experiencing in our everyday lives because many of the people that you interact with don't believe what you believe. And increasingly they're becoming hostile towards what we believe as Christians, as Christ followers. We need that, but did you know that the church exists for more than just simply being a place where we can go and be safe and say, okay, we all believe the same thing, this is good. And then just go back out and try to survive. Actually, we have a mission. We have work to do. We have a life to live in this thing called, it's a vapor. This Christian life is a vapor that's here and gone, and we have work to do in that process. And I think there's no passage in scripture that speaks to this more clearly to me than 1 Peter chapter 2. So if you have a Bible, I'm gonna ask you to pull it out. 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9 through 12. Okay? I'm gonna read it to us, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about what I think Peter's speaking to us. There's as with always, there's no possible way we could communicate everything that's in this passage this morning, okay? But I hope that somehow, some way, God will spark a new passion for you to live the life that He calls you to live. Here's what it says in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9. For some of you, this will be a pretty familiar passage. It's one of my favorites. Peter says, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Amen. Dear friends, I urge you as strangers in temporary residents to abstain from fleshly desires that war against you. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that in a case where they speak against you as those who do what is evil, they will, by observing your good works, glorify God on the day of visitation. Now, in this passage, Peter is speaking to a group of people who are exiles. They have been separated out, they've been dispersed, and some of that's happened purely through persecution, some of that's happened just because the Roman government uh would just move people around where they wanted them. And so Peter's writing to these guys, and they're feeling some of the weight of persecution, they're feeling some of the weight of suffering and hardship and difficulty of following Jesus. And Peter writes to them and he's he's he's just trying to encourage them and speak into them. In fact, 1 Peter 4, just a couple of chapters over, he says something which not too uh long ago we preached on here and said, he says these words. He says, Don't be surprised when you face fiery trials, when you face hardship, when you face suffering. In fact, throughout this entire book, Peter keeps saying, suffering is a normative part of the Christian life. I know in America we do everything we can to pad and to sort of keep ourselves from having to suffer, but the the the New Testament, as we've said before, is a is a whole picture of what happens when people follow Jesus and how they suffer for that. So suffering is normative for the Christian for the for the believer. I know that's really encouraging this morning, right? But it is. You can't read the New Testament and be honest with yourself before God and say, well, you know, if you follow Jesus, your life gets easier. You would have to actually say the opposite when you just read the New Testament for what it's worth. And he says in this passage to these men and women who are part of the church, he says, I want to remind you this who you are and from who you are, what you are called to do. Okay? Now, that being said, um, when we said that in this passage from Philippians 1.28, the the the last part of it working side by side for the faith that comes from the gospel, I mean, this is what I believe it looks like. What are we actually working to do in the world? What are we actually working as the church to participate in? I can tell you this, it's not just simply to convert people to come to church. Okay? Now, we have unknowingly kind of moved in the West to this idea that if we can just get people to come to church, that that'll that that's it. We've converted them to church. I think we have a lot of people who are converted, catch this, and I'm being very careful here. I think we have a lot of people converted to church that are not yet Christ's followers. I think there's a lot of people who go to church but are not yet Jesus' followers, have not yet laid down their life and given their control over to Jesus, submitted themselves to Jesus. That's not a popular message, but I think it's a true message because what we've noticed is that people, when you begin to call them to Jesus and call them to trust Him and to follow Jesus, they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I didn't sign up for that. And I think it's a misunderstanding of the gospel because the gospel is not just a call to come and experience the blessing of God and go to heaven. It's a call to come and die. It's a call to come and lay down your life and actually find real life in Christ. But in the passage here, we have to be reminded what we receive when we actually do lay down our lives. Now, Peter is actually referring to some of the Old Testament passages, which is great because he's actually connecting the dots. Some people think that the Old Testament is irrelevant, it doesn't mean anything for us today, it doesn't have any connection to the New Testament. That's actually a farce, okay? The Old Testament is what gives us this beautiful context, though ugly and difficult, and if we're just real, like read the passages in the Old Testament and you will feel some of the bleakness of the human nature. You will feel some of the darkness, some of the sadness of just seeing humanity rebel against our Creator. You will see a people throughout the Old Testament who God loves and he calls out, and then they just keep abandoning him and rejecting him and rebelling against him, but yet he keeps graciously, lovingly calling him back to himself. And one of the big parts where this actually starts is in uh Genesis chapter 12. Now, if anybody has been around church very long, you probably know that in Genesis chapter 12, especially verses 1 through 3, are the Abrahamic covenant, where God approaches this man named Abram. And this guy, by the way, in case you didn't know, uh, he wasn't the best dude. Uh he actually worshiped many gods. He was just like everybody else in his time. He worshipped many gods, so so he uh he didn't worship Yahweh alone, and yet God chooses Abraham. He pulls him out, and in in uh Genesis chapter 12, verse 1, it says this. I'm gonna read the first three verses. It says, Then the Lord said to Abram, Go out from your land, your relatives and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. Pay attention to this. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on the earth will be blessed through you. Now the reason I draw that out to you this morning is because when Peter is talking about this language of uh chosen people, holy nation, royal priesthood, he's referring to the fact that even in the Old Testament, God is about pursuing people and choosing people to represent him in the earth. Okay? And God's always been that way because our mission actually is rooted in the fact that we have a missionary God. Have you ever thought about that? That actually the reason we live on mission is because God has a mission. And his mission is to redeem humanity, to redeem humanity even in our rebellion. Last week we talked about this, that we talked about the fact that we are people of love. Well, why are we people of love? Because God first loved. And how did he love us? He pursued us. And here's Abram in the Old Testament, this guy who's just out there living his life, worshiping God, and got and God calls him out and says, Abram, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to make you a blessing to all the nations. And it wasn't because he was righteous enough, good enough, uh, smart enough. It was because God was gracious enough. And that's no different than us today, is it? If you are a Christ follower in this room, if you have received the gift of salvation, it has very little, if anything, to do with us. It has everything to do with God pursuing us. It's amazing that God would graciously pursue sinners like me. It's great, it's crazy, honestly, that he would come after someone like me who really would want to do everything in my life just to make me happy. And he says, I love you. I want to pursue you, I want a relationship with you. And he did that, we know, through his son. You see, our mission is rooted in a missionary God, not just because God chose a people in the Old Testament to represent him in all the earth and say, I'm gonna bless all the nations through you. Which by the way, I don't know if you realize this or not, but even when Moses gets the law in the book of Exodus, did you realize that that the law is actually actually a missionary purpose? It has a missionary purpose. That the law is to make these people distinct so that they stand out against all the rest of the people that are around them. So that people will look and say, Whoa, these people are not like us. They're different. Most people don't think about the law that way, but one of the purposes of the law was actually to make his people distinct. Holy is another word for that, by the way. Set apart. And God wanted his people to live distinct lives. And when he gets to the New Testament, or we get to the New Testament, the story, we know that God saw his humanity, he saw his people who he had chosen, and he realized that they could not keep up their. End of the bargain to just simply obey the law. They were failing, and they needed rescued still, so what does he do? He sends his very son. In John 3.16, one of the most famous verses in all the Bible, it says this for God loved the world in this way that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. So most of us know that verse, but did you know the following verse? The following one says this that God did not send his son into the world that he might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. We have a missionary God. We have a missionary savior. In fact, John 1 says it this way: that he became flesh and dwelt among us. The message, which some of you guys have heard me quote from before, literally says, And he moved into the neighborhood. He pursued us out of his love for us so that he could save us. Aren't you glad for that today? Aren't you thankful that our Savior, that our God, that he came after us? That's why when I read Luke 15, my heart is stirred because Luke 15, if you haven't read it lately, just go spend a little time in that today. Or this sometime this week and sit and just think about what Jesus is trying to convey when he talks about the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal, or you could call it the two sons, one religiously lost and one rebelliously lost. And in both of those scenarios, what you see is the father's heart pursuing people. It's beautiful, it's amazing, it's what drives the church. It's what should drive the church. Not religion, the father's heart. And so in this passage, we're reminded that Peter is pointing to the fact that we are missionary people. We have a mission because we are just simply responding to our missionary God. But also we have a new identity. We actually have a missionary identity. Our mission flows from who we are as these new people in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5.17. Many of you probably know that verse. It says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation. We have a new identity. Before we knew Christ, we were enemies of God. We were rebels at our core. In our flesh, we just rejected God, right? We resisted him. We were enslaved to sin. But now, as God's children, because of Christ, we actually have a new nature and a new identity, a new name, even. Loved, forgiven, free, redeemed. It's beautiful. And when we lose sight of that, the mission in our heart dies. The reason why I don't share the gospel with my neighbor is because I forget that truth about what Christ has done. Do you notice the words that Peter uses? He says, you are a chosen race. Just like Ephesians 1, we'll start next week. Before the foundations of the world were laid, you were chosen in Christ. Again, not because you deserved it, because I deserved it. If you're in Christ, you are Christ's child by his choosing. It's a miracle, it's mysterious. I don't get it, but I believe that's what the scripture teaches. And I receive it with gratitude and with humility. He says that you are royal, a royal priesthood. We're part of the king's family. And we're part of the priesthood. Every single one of you, not just the guy who stands on stage and preaches the sermons, every one of you are priests. Every one of you can talk to God directly, not through a person. You can go straight to God and talk to God because you're his child. And not only that, but you can minister to others as a priest. And you're like, I don't know about that. I don't know if I want that responsibility. I'm just telling you what the Bible says. You are part of the priesthood. You have the spirit of God, the same spirit that lives in whatever leader that you think is like the most awesome, coolest, most gifted leader on the planet. Oh man, you love their podcasts, you love their books. Listen, the same spirit of God that resides in them resides in you. And so you have authority in Christ to minister for him. You don't have to be Francis Chan. You don't have to be Matt Chandler. You don't have to be John Piper. You can be you and let the authority in the Word of God and the Spirit of God in you use you to minister to the people around you. Because you're a priest. Everybody has their role in the kingdom for sure. We don't want to minimize that. But we also don't want to minimize the fact that every single one of you who has the name of Christ on you, that you have put your trust and your hope in God, you are a part of God's amazing redemptive mission to reach this world. You are chosen. You are royal. You're a priest. You are holy. I hope. No, you are. You are set apart by God. Are we living that way? Maybe not. We belong to God. He purchased us. 1 Corinthians 6. That He purchased us at a high price. What was the price? Jesus Christ, his life. If you ever think that you're not valuable, especially you teenagers who are wrestling with this, I know adults don't talk about it as much. Teenagers wrestling with security identity. Do you understand that Jesus Christ laid down his life to purchase you? That's how valuable you are. Aside from the fact that he made you, he actually put you together in your mom's womb. Like Psalm 139 tells us. You are valuable. And you're called. We are called. So these are the things that our missionary continues in our lives as we understand our missionary identity, that we are these kind of people. Now, I want to talk just for a minute about this issue of what he says here. He says, missionaries, I think this is the idea. Missionaries proclaim the praises of God. They proclaim the praises of God, who he is and what he has done. So what are we actually proclaiming? He says that we proclaim what? The excellencies, the praises. That word excellency, it's a very interesting word in the Greek, okay? And the reason why it's interesting is because it's not this word where we kind of make an assessment based on our evaluation, like our standard. The idea here is that what Peter is trying to convey to people, is the same thing that we need to understand and explain to one another, is that we don't get to like size God up based on what we think is right or wrong or good or bad. Actually, what Peter is trying to convey here is that God is the essence of these things. He is the essence of good because he is the standard for all good. Are you with me? So he's the standard for love. He is the standard for grace, he is the standard for all of the characteristics that are good and right and true. God is the standard for those things. And so what are we actually proclaiming? We're proclaiming that we believe that He is the standard. That He is those things, that He is good, that He is faithful, that He is true, that He is right. Now, we know when we moved on from this attitude that God is these things, when we start to see God as useful rather than beautiful. Let me explain this a little bit. So in my house, this happens fairly often. Um I'll be sitting in my study and I'll be working on something, and one of my kids, I won't name them the names, will um will come and and and knock on my door or not knock on my door, and they'll just kind of walk in and they'll they'll come and sit up in my lap. And it's one of those moments as a dad that I just I love. I just love that. Um I love that my kids can come and that they know that I'm approachable and and that they can come and sit on my lap and we can just talk. And sometimes they'll come and they'll do that, and they'll put their arm around me, maybe give me a kiss on the cheek, and just say, Hey dad, how's it going? Or hey dad, I love you. And and it's and it's really good. And it's like this really neat moment. As a dad, I love those kind of moments. And then what's what's weird, something happens. Um, as they kind of get there and they get comfortable, and I'm kind of like, oh, this is awesome. I love being a dad, I'll see this little hand. And this little hand will kind of sneak around over here, and then it'll reach out and it'll snatch my phone. And then I get kind of a little squeeze hug, and then I say, see dad. And I look over and they're sitting in a chair playing a game on my phone. Now, I think my kids actually love me. Uh I'm I'm I'm okay. Kids are way less um capable of sort of masking manipulation. Adults, we get really good at it. Um, and we we get really good at like masking duplicity because we can say a lot of the right things, but our hearts aren't there. Uh and so the reason I was thinking about that illustration this week, I was thinking about how that in that particular instance, what my kids, you know, they're saying they love me, but they want my phone, so they want my stuff, so they can play the game that they want. I I would argue that we do this with God a lot because we see God as more useful than we see him as beautiful. I think rather than us seeing God as this beautiful, amazing, awesome, worthy God to worship, we see him as how do we get what we want and what we need to make life better and easier and more comfortable. So let's be practical. We say, God, I'll go to church today, but man, you really got to help me get this job promotion. God, I will, I will, man, I will serve on the kids' team, but here's what I need. I need my husband to change. Amen, ladies. Wow, we're getting claps out of this. This is serious. This is hitting home. Listen, what I'm saying to you, and we mentioned this last week again, we have got to break this cycle of transactional God. And I think for us, sometimes we we we miss God's beauty and his wonder and his, and we and we lose our awe in the midst of wanting stuff from him. And and and I just want to remind you this morning that more than the gift, we need the giver. We need the giver. We need him because he's actually what we're wanting anyway. And we're never gonna get what we think we want here. And until we learn that, we will continue to see God as this like genie in the sky, this Santa Claus, this like slot machine. Where we put things in hoping to get something back out. Listen, the reason I don't proclaim the praises of God is because I'm still waiting on Him to deliver some of the goods. Ouch. And my heart this morning for myself and for you, I think God's heart for us is to say, I'm what you want. I'm what you need. I can satisfy you. That security you're longing for, that position you're longing for, that safety you're longing for, that healing you're longing for, it's in me. You're not gonna get it in that stuff. I could give you that stuff all day long, but it would get old really fast. It's in me. And so we proclaim those excellencies when we begin to understand how beautiful and good and trustworthy and faithful and loving our God is, in spite of our imperfections, in spite of our failures, in spite of our pride, in spite of our time and time again, false worship, worshiping other things, looking to other things other than Christ. So is God just useful to you, or is he beautiful to you? It's a question that we need to ask ourselves. So, how do we actually proclaim this? How do we actually proclaim these excellencies? It's interesting, the word proclaim in this passage, uh, when we hear the word proclaim, most of us think verbal. We think words. We think that that's what it's, you know, that he's saying basically we need to preach sermons at people. Uh proclaim is a part of what he's saying, but actually the idea here is that it's all of life communicating who he is and what he's done. All of life. Now, again, I'm just gonna tell him myself, all right? Sometimes, I know this is hard to believe, but sometimes I get frustrated with my kids or with my wife or circumstances in our home. I know y'all can't believe that, but sometimes I do. And sometimes my wife will look at me and she'll say something like, Hey, are you okay? And here's my answer. Yeah, you know I'm okay. Great, everything's awesome. Now, I know in my heart that is not true. That's a lie. I'm saying the right words, but my life, my actions, my countenance is not okay. What I'm saying to you this morning is that as we proclaim the excellencies of God, my question to you and to me is do we actually believe what we're proclaiming? And I would say this goes hand in hand with what we just talked about when seeing God useful or beautiful, in that we are called to preach Christ not just with our words, but with our very lives. And we won't preach Christ with more than just words until we actually believe it right here. I actually think that we have a lot of people who are pretty articulate and can answer really good questions in small groups, but actually personally don't believe that God's really good and that he actually loves them. You know how I believe that? Because I've been there. There are times where I am preaching something to someone else that I don't even believe for myself. And I'm learning to pray, God help me to believe the truths that I'm proclaiming to others. I'm not saying it is wrong or bad or evil to learn evangelistic methods that can get us out on the street telling the people the gospel, but let me say this. People need more than little tips and tricks or little helpful resources on how to share the gospel. We need real people living real lives in front of people that communicate the good news of Christ and all those things. Like not just saying it with our mouths, but actually demonstrating it with our lives. To demonstrate the gospel, to demonstrate that we are loved people, that we know that God is good, that he is beautiful, that he is everything that we need. It is possible to preach the goodness of God and not display it. It is possible, especially just caution. I'm a church brat. I grew up nine months before I was born, I was hearing sermons, okay? So I've heard a lot of sermons. That means I can give a lot of the right answers. But giving the right answers and believing in your heart that you are loved by God and that you believe the gospel are two different things. Right? I've heard people preach sermons. I've preached sermons, and in my own heart wrestled with, do I actually believe that? But thankfully, God's Spirit is working and his word that's living and active is teaching us how to believe it. Not just here, but here. And it changes our countenance, not just what we say, but how we say it. I think our city is dying, is thirsty for genuine Christ followers. For people who are not just faking it, but actually are living as people of love and grace because they believe it for themselves that they found it in Christ. You know, um, I know you've heard us say this before, but you know, you talk about what you're passionate about, right? Just spend time with somebody for just a few minutes, and they will start to talk about the things that they're passionate about. I've learned this with my neighbors, I've learned this with people just, hey, like what do you like to do? Or even I don't even get to ask that question sometimes. They already start talking. All right? So, I mean, I have to get this in. The horns. The longhorns. You know, they won last night. It was awesome. Hook them, it was great. Hopefully, this is a good new trend, right? But if you get around people that like the longhorns, they just start talking about it. And man, they get passionate, they get amped. Right, Tim Gillen. All right? And people get really amped around the longhorns. And and that's okay. But listen, the reason, the reason many of us don't talk about God is because we're really not passionate about him. We're not excited about him. We haven't meditated lately. Because maybe there has been a time when we were, but we haven't meditated lately on the grace and the goodness of God. And so our hearts have have kind of gotten spiritual amnesia. We've lost sight of what we've actually received in Christ. And when we start to meditate on that again, it will begin to bring us back to where what comes out of our mouths is actually what's in our hearts, which is gratitude and worship for what God has done in us. It's possible to have a relational belief about God's excellencies, but no deep sense of what is actually true. That it's actually true. Um, this week I was reading from Jonathan Edwards, which is always a dangerous thing to do. And I'm actually going to take a risk and read one of his quotes because I feel like it's really interesting and helpful. And here's what he says. He says, There is not only a rational belief that God is holy and that his holiness is a good thing, but there is a sense of loveliness of God's holiness. There's not only a speculative uh, I can't even say the word, judging that God is gracious, but a sense how amiable God is on account of the beauty of his divine attribute. There's a twofold, catch this, twofold knowledge of God, of good, of which God has made the mind of man capable. And I'm gonna skip down in his quote. He says, Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and the beauty of that holiness and grace. There's a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes, but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful and having a sense of his beauty. Did you guys follow that? Do you see what he's saying? Listen, this is where Paul in Ephesians he writes these things. I don't want you just to know about God's love. I want you to know God's love. It's not just here, it's a sense of love, of experiential reality. That's what we need, church. That's what I need. That's what we so desperately need as a church to be people who are proclaiming the praises of the one who brought us out of the darkness into the light. Have we lost sight of that? I don't know. I can't answer that question for you. But I know that every day I do in my own life. Mission is about proclaiming these praises. When we've actually experienced the excellencies of God, we will proclaim those excellencies to the people around us. So, one final thing he says here that I think it's important. He says, you know, he talks a little bit about the eternal realities. Mission is about keeping our eyes on these eternal realities. He says, Um, once you were not a people, but now you are a people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. And then he talks about how that as strangers and temporary residents, did you know this world is not your final home? And he says, if you have that mindset, he says, Abstain from fleshly desires that war against you, and conduct yourselves honorably among Gentiles, so that in a case where they speak against you, those who do what is evil, they will by observing your good works glorify God on the day of visitation. What am I saying to you, church? I'm saying this is that don't get lost in your everyday realities and forget that there's an eternal reality. Don't get lost in your everyday life and just doing your job, just keeping your house clean, just getting your kids to school, just doing the stuff that life requires, okay? Going to class. Don't just keep doing that stuff disconnected from the eternal reality that everything you do in this life actually has purpose because we are connected to a bigger picture, a bigger eternal reality. It's transcendent because it's actually connected to God's eternal plan. So that means that when you go to the grocery store, that you actually can participate in the eternal purposes of God in the grocery store. Some of you are like, yeah, right. You can. You actually can engage in God's eternal purpose in the grocery store. You can engage in God's eternal purpose when you're getting your hair cut. You can engage in God's eternal purpose when you are sitting at the park with your family. There are ways to recognize and to realize that God is working in and around us, and then to join him in his work by being aware of people that they are more than scenery in your show, that they are actually people God created and put in your path to love and to share the good news of the gospel with. To declare the praises, to declare the excellencies of God who we've tasted and seen and experienced. I want to close with these thoughts. There are some of you in this room that When I start talking about the excellencies of God, the praises of God, you're like, I don't know what you're talking about, Nick. I don't know what you're talking about. And I just want you to know that that God, that Rome, that John 3, 16 and 17 passage I read earlier, that God so loved the world, that includes you. He loved the world, so he gave his one and only son. He did not come to condemn you, but he came to call you, to invite you to eternal life, to invite you to life with him. In fact, John 17 reminds us that what eternal life really is, is to know God. To know him. Do you know him? If you don't, the gospel, this good news again, that we could not save ourselves, but God saved us through the person of Jesus, we're not asking you to convert to church. We're not asking you to convert to a religion. We're asking you to come and to experience the grace and the goodness of God that He offers you today. To come and experience what it's like to go from death to life. And we would love to talk to you about that more today. Now, there's some of you in this room, you actually have tasted God's excellencies before, but right now you're faking it. You're just in a faking mode. So right now, you're basically like, yeah, God's good. Let's sing praises. But in your heart, you don't really believe that. You've lost sight of that. Maybe life circumstances, maybe health issues, maybe relationship challenges. Listen, I know that y'all know this. This is maybe elementary, but God already knows where your heart is. And he still loves you. So stop faking. We don't have to play the game. Point Community Church is not a place where we come and put on our best face so that we can act like we have it all together. This is a place where we come and we say, God, we all need your help. We started there today. We need your grace. God, right now I've lost sight of the fact that I was a sinner headed to eternal damnation, to hell. And right now, all I can think about is why you haven't given me this favor in this job. Why you haven't helped my spouse stop acting that way? Why you haven't made my kids obey me better? Why you haven't made more money in my bank account? Like we think about all the things he hasn't done, and we lose sight, and then we're just kind of faking it through the Christian thing. Like this, like we can be honest. We're all human and we have short-term memory. And so we quickly move past, just like the people of Israel. I know we give them all kinds of grief. Like God provides manna for them, and they're like, manna, yeah. Then he provides me meat, because that's the human heart. But God knows and he loves us and he's pursuing us, and he will provide what we need, but he wants us to know again that we can call on him. We can be honest where we really are today. But we will never be good missionaries as long as our hearts are just faking it. People don't need fake Christians to run around saying Christian stuff in Christianese. You know what I'm saying? Just using all this words, wind addressing. People need people, people need Christ followers, genuine Christ followers who love from a place of knowing that we are spiritually bankrupt. But God. But his Holy Spirit. But his grace. In fact, sometimes when we preach sermons like this, I hear people, man, I just feel so convicted. And there's a it's a good thing to feel convicted. It's not a good thing to feel condemned. Condemnation is not of God. Romans 8 tells us very clearly. So my encouragement to you today is as you hear the Holy Spirit leaning in on you like you're struggling to believe it. Like, listen, the goal is to call us back to Christ and to his grace and to his richness. Not to condemn ourselves, not to let the enemy speak into us. You're not loved, you're not cared about. That is not true. In Christ, you are loved, you are forgiven, you are free, you are redeemed, you are no longer a slave, you're a child of God, you don't have to be fearful. God has a plan, he has a purpose, he's got this. And some of us need to wake up and see his goodness a fresh way today. Let me pray for us. God, if you don't move, if you don't revive your church, God, then this window of time in the scope of eternity will be people doing church stuff, but missing the opportunity to participate in your grand scheme, in your grand work, in your grand plan. God, I don't want to be a church in South Austin that's simply doing church, that shows up and just hears sermons and sings songs and does the stuff that churches do without being in awe and wonder and even brokenness if necessary. God, because we see your goodness and your grace and your mercy and your justice and your righteousness and your truthness. God, we need you. God, we need you. God, we are a holy people, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a people that belong to you. And all of those things are true, not because of what we have done, but because of what you have done. So now, God, from that place, help us to live such good lives among those around us that they would glorify you on the day of your return. That they would join in the worship, that everyone would see ourselves as a worship leader, pointing people to life in Christ. And I pray that in your name, Jesus, this morning. Amen. As we close our time together, we just want to invite you to worship, to consider. And some of you just need to sit and reflect on God, what he has done. I hope all of us will. Um reflect on who God is and what he's done in our lives, how faithful he has been, even when we've been faithless, how forgiving he has been, even when we keep doing the same dumb things. God is gracious, he is merciful. And so I say this, I think most weeks we meet. But like you don't need just me to stand up here and give you some tips and tricks on how to have a better life. You can go to a pop psychologist and get that. What you need, and what I need is the Spirit of God to continue to make us new, to revive us, to realize who we truly are, and to live from a place of security and identity and worth in Christ. It changes everything to receive from our Father his blessing, his love, and his instruction to go help other people know this, to experience what it's like to participate and letting the world know that there's a God who made them and loves them. So one of the things that helps my heart is when we take communion together, which we have the five tables set around the room. If you're new, that's probably a new thing for you. But there's five tables set up around the room. And here's what we ask. If you are a Christ follower, if you've received the gift of salvation, that you would take some time to pray before you go, make sure you're not walking in deliberate sin, you're not walking in some place where you're like ignoring God's voice and walking in rebellion to him. Listen, ask God, is there anything in me? Kind of like the words of David, he says, Search me and know me, God. If there's anything offensive in me, like I want to deal with that. Deal with that first. And if you're a believer in Christ, then we call you to go take communion. I encourage you to take that with someone else and to remind them that we are forgiven, not because of what we've done, but because of what Christ has done. That we are forgiven and we are loved because of Christ. And remind them of that. Remind yourself of that today. And worship and be thankful. It's joyful. And then if you need prayer, we have a team that will be at the back. We'd love to pray for you. We'd be happy to pray. It could be physical healing you need, it could be emotional, spiritual struggles, whatever it is, we'd love to pray for you. Not because, again, we're the only ones who can pray for you, but just because we want to do that, because we're here. We're available. So we invite you to do that today. And if you want to sing, you can sing. If you want to sit, you can sit. If you want to stand, you can stand. You you just respond as God leads you to do that, okay? As long as it's genuine and we're not just faking it. Whatever is is genuine from our hearts, let's do that together, okay? As we listen to our Father.