SPEAKER_01 0:00

Barnett, and we have the privilege of reading scripture today. Our reading today is from Ephesians chapter 3, verses 1 through 13. For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Of this gospel, I was a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the things, this grace was given to preacher to the Gentiles the insearchable ridges of horizon, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that though so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, and we have the fullness with confidence.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Yeah, this is good. I'm excited to be gathered with God's people. A particular welcome uh to any guests in the room. Um thank you for being here. Um we're excited to have you, and uh, this is a great place to uh listen and and learn if you're uh wrestling or just questioning what this uh God and Jesus stuff's all about. We're glad you're here. Um there's a uh what are you calling it? A bulletin? I guess bulletin's the right word. Um one of these guys, uh it's here, it's it's got some uh helpful um information and a place to take notes. Uh you should have gotten one when you came in, but if anyone who doesn't have one, you can raise your hand in our helpful uh little kind of church elves will come and magically make it appear in your your hands. Um it's not quite Christmas time, right? It's a little early for elf jokes, yeah. I'm learning. Um for those of you who don't know me, my name's Tim. Uh I'm one of the elders here at Point. Uh, if you come here, you know I'm not the one who preaches most Sundays. And so um yeah, I'm excited to be up here. I um appreciate your your patience with me as a church body as I uh get some reps under my belt and and come and do this. And being new to this, it it's uh I'm starting to learn some things. It's it's a funny process. Uh I I put my name, or my name kind of gets put in a a week where I'm gonna preach. So I've known October 20th was gonna be a week for a while now. And it's kind of like, all right, cool, I'm gonna preach that Sunday. And then last Sunday comes and it's like, okay, I am on the clock. And it starts getting more real. And then I'm full of ideas and excitement and possibilities, and I'm eager, and I'm flooded with all these cool things I'm gonna say as I read the text and think about it. And then the next day comes and it's like, what did I get into? Why in the world did I think this was a good idea? This is Nick's fault, he shouldn't have done this. I do not understand. Um and then it feels like the next day I'm back to feeling like Superman, and this is great, and I cannot wait to share these truths. And then the next day I'm thinking, surely there's a good preacher somewhere with a YouTube video that I can just show up there, and and we'll be way better off than whatever kind of mumbo jumbo is gonna come out of my mouth. And so um here I am. I'm up here, I'm before you. I am genuinely excited, and the reality is I'm insignificant, right? Whoever's up here, right, we're we're messengers. It's it's the message, it's the word. It doesn't rise and fall on my skill of a community as a communicator. It doesn't rise and fall on the brilliance of any insights that I'm gonna have or not have. Um and don't get your hopes up. Um but it's it's God and it's his message, and it's for this people. It's not about finding the most skilled teacher somewhere, it's about coming up in the body and through the body, and I'm here um serving God and serving you as to the best of my ability, as flawed as it may be. Um so that's where I stand right now. Even if I don't quite feel my extremities and fingers and toes, that's where I am, and that's where I'm resting. Um and so what I just described to you, right? This is the this week-long uh little mini picture of of uh the search for perspective. Okay, and I want to begin today by by talking about perspective. And I I was reminded uh earlier this week, um, and I genuinely I am deeply embarrassed to share the story. But Wednesday exactly, October 16th was the 16th anniversary of one of the five probably worst nights of my life. Um I don't have the worst nights of my life ranked. Uh it's solidly top five, though. Um so October 16th, 2003, I was living in in New York City. I was uh in my third and final year of law school, um, which maybe sounds like I was busy. Uh I wasn't. Uh your third year of law school is pretty pretty tame, honestly. Um wasn't married, wasn't, didn't have a job because I was a student. Last year I could say that. Um and I was at that point in time where baseball just meant a little bit too much to me. Uh I was more or less raised in Massachusetts. You guys have probably heard me talk about it. I, to this day, I still love the Boston Red Sox. That is my team. And on October 16th, 2003, they were playing the dreaded and hated New York Yankees in game seven of the American League Championship series. Um, which reminds me, happy Yankee Elimination Day for everybody. That's a that is a a holiday where I come from, thank you. I knew I should have led with that. Uh it's it's right up there with Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter where I come from. And so I was really happy that that happened last night. I felt like God was really confirming my message today. But anyway, it wasn't so in 2003. And and on the day that that for those of you who don't, and I really don't want to get into it, but the Red Sox at that time had a long and painful history of getting to the brink of ultimate success and then falling flat on our faces. And each one was like a knife to my heart. And so this day I woke up, I I it was like the first thing I thought about. I planned my my menu, all my my lucky things that I was gonna eat. I didn't believe in luck, but uh sometimes you just you know can't hurt, right? I had my menu planned out. My roommate who loved baseball, he was a Mets fan, so we we we joined in a hatred of the Yankees. He knew, I didn't even have to ask him, he knew to leave me alone. He he was scarce that night. He he went and he found somewhere else to be, somewhere else to watch the game. And I I had my little tiny New York City apartment and my little tiny man cave, and I had my food, and I had my TV, and I had my couch, and I it was like Eye of the Tiger, kind of like a dun dun dun. I was just ready. And the game unfolds, and I'm not gonna relive it. Uh they went up, they were winning, and at the very end, the Yankees tied it, and in extra innings, they hit a home run to win the game and win the series, and the Red Sox failed yet again. Um, and I I just remember sitting there in the darkness and just crushed. Like, legit, not not joking, crushed, like when I say top five worst nights of my life, I mean that literally, literally, the one of the worst nights of my life. And I'm questioning like the pain of human existence, and why do I even care? And why do I subject myself to this? And why is there so much evil and cruelty in the world? And I outside my apartment, I hear uh horns blaring, and and the I'm in the belly of the beast, right? And the Yankee fans are cheering, and I am just like I just made it black. I I closed the things, I shut the TV off, I shut my phone off, and I just stared at the blackness of like the wall in my room. And my roommate told me later he came home and he knew I needed a moment, and he circled the block. I kid you not, for an hour. He sat on the curb outside of the apartment for an hour. Um because he knew he was a very sensitive roommate, he knew and cared about me and knew I needed alone time. Um so I I said at the beginning, and I do, I I'm embarrassed by that story, and why is it embarrassing? Um it's because of the painful lack of perspective, right? Like, like it's sports, it's baseball. It's not wrong to like or invest or care about a team or follow. It is wrong to stare in the void of blackness because your team lost a baseball game, questioning like the goodness of the purpose and meaning of life. I lost perspective. I was so focused on me and what I wanted with my baseball team that like the reality was, right, like there's famine and starvation and cruelty and injustice and all these things are existing in the world. I didn't give a flip about any of that. I was so focused on my baseball team. Okay, and so perspective matters, right? How we see and frame and understand things and our place in it matters. And um lest you think I'm kind of doing a confessional, this is related to Ephesians here. And Paul's words um in this passage, it has the effect of trying to lift our eyes up, lift our eyes off of ourselves into God. He wants to broaden and deepen our perspective. Um the rest of my little talk here, we're gonna dial that in on on three things. He wants us to broaden and deepen our perspective on ourselves, um, number two on the church, and then number three on the mission of the church. And so a common thread in all three of those things, and and what Paul's trying to do here, it's the story of us versus the story of God. Okay? We are inherently selfish, okay? Um, and I know we talk about it a lot up front, and anyone who's ever had a toddler, you don't teach the toddler how to say no, right? It starts young and it stays with us. Even after we receive salvation and we come to know the Lord, we still have our flesh that is always going to drift and pull us to a place of selfishness. We we get self-absorbed in a self-focused, focused view of ourselves in our lives. Um, if you think about it, in our own little thought life, in our own little world, I am always aware of what I want, of what I'm striving for, of what I think I need, of what I fear, of what I think I deserve and what I don't deserve. Um and this this can lead over into our relationship with God. Um we we can acknowledge, especially if you've been in church long enough, we we can acknowledge that we need the grace of God to rescue us and then fall right back into a self-centered view of our salvation. Uh we live effectively as if the point of our existence is to be happy or to achieve as much as possible or be the best, most mature person that we can be. Um when we fall into this view, we we we are pursuing our goals, and then we call upon God to grant us wisdom when we reach a fork in the road. All right, so I'm trying to be whatever it is that I think is gonna bring me meaning or desire, and I reach a fork. So do I marry this person or not? Do I take this job or don't I? Do I go to the school or don't I? Which one of these options? And we say, God, show us the way. Okay, it's it's our working out, and we're trying to have God help us. Um a lot of times we call on God to remove roadblocks. Um, we want circumstances in our lives to change. And so we we see God as the one who kind of has the power to change things. So it's like, clearly, what I'm doing is is good and right, so come on, God, like let's let's do it. I need this obstacle removed. Um and when God removes those obstacles, we celebrate and we'll say how faithful and wonderful he is. Um when he doesn't, we're oftentimes left confused, uh, sometimes even hurt or angry. Um, and the common threat of all that, whether he removes it or doesn't, or acts or doesn't, the focus is on us. Um accomplishing what it is we feel that's set in front of us. And we'll say to the glory of God, but it's really about accomplishing what we feel is in front of us. Uh, God's role is to guide and assist us on our journey to accomplish his will. Okay, I've been there. I'm there a lot. Um Paul paints a different picture. Uh he's trying to lift our eyes off of ourselves and to see the bigger picture where God is the one at the center. Life isn't primarily about our achievement, it's not about us at all. God's bigger than all of this. Um so let's dig into the passage a little and see how how Paul's trying to pierce and break through our small view of God and give us that accurate perception, right? Um, so I'm just gonna, and there's a lot to mine here. I'm gonna focus on on three three um three points, um as far as Paul trying to change our perspective. Um and I have a it's the same passage, but there'll be some bolded words here I want to point out. Number one, uh Paul repeatedly emphasizes mystery. Okay. Uh if you see it, yeah. Um so he's talking about how God's this mystery that was just recently made known, that Gentiles are fellow heirs, and um what mystery connotates and what it's it's it's sort of kneading into the way of seeing it, what is the nature of mystery? It's something God knows that we don't. Okay? If God's the one that that is the author of the mystery, he's the one directing the steps, he's the one that's knows the full picture and is is showing and doling out uh different forms of history, the a bigger piece of the mystery, it underlines the fact that God's the main one, and we're we're we're lucky to get pieces of the mystery, right? God's big, we're small. Um, this mystery was only revealed to certain people at certain times. Um and it was hidden, right, for ages. So lots of people came and went throughout history, um, never knowing the content of that mystery. Okay, we happen to live on the other side of that where we have scripture and we have this access, right? And it can lose the sense of the mystery, um almost as if it's just ordinary, but this mysterious element, um, it's important to think about. Um the second thing, Paul emphasizes the the revelation. Okay, Paul didn't arrive at these truths due to his intelligence. Uh he didn't do it by his hard work and his diligence. He arrived at these truths that he's writing about in this letter that were revealed to him by God because God wanted it to, right? At his pleasure. Uh Paul didn't do anything to earn it. It wasn't a bonus for job well done. It was Paul, uh it was God choosing to reveal. And when you're the one who can do that, it's it's in your discretion, it's in your will to do that. Right? So again, emphasizing this thread of God's the big one, God's the actor, and we're the the weak ones. We're the ones who who are just entirely dependent on God. Um the third thing that you'll notice um in Paul's writing in this passage, he's using words emphasizing how limitless God is. Uh words like unsearchable riches of Christ, not you know, 100% or not, you know, kind of the things that that have defined top and bottom. Unsearchable. It's it's it's infinite, okay? It's showing us how big, how immense, how completely limitless God is. Um unsearchable riches of Christ, God who created all things, not not some things, not most things, not the things that you can see, all things, okay? Um, according to what? According to his eternal purpose. Not something that he woke up with one day. God's had this plan since before we graced this earth, before any humans were ever on this earth, God had this plan. There's this eternal purpose. It goes all the way back, all the way forward, okay? You see how it's it lifts our eyes. When we contemplate the bigness of God, the majesty of God, the unsearchable nature of God, the fact that He's been planning this since before humankind was ever a thing and will be all the way in infinity to the end, it changes, right? It's you move from baseball is the most important thing in the world to me right now to like, hey, there's other things going on, right? It lifts our eyes up. So what is the the mystery? I don't want to just talk about kind of Paul's rhetorical techniques. Like, what is this mystery? What is this revelation? Paul's saying the purpose and design from the beginning was a reconciliation of peoples to himself. Okay. In the Old Testament, it was the Jewish people, and now Paul's kind of saying that the the veil's been been torn, and the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, all different kinds of people. You're not limited to just being one of the descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel. You are now uh all peoples are coming united in Christ uh to be a new family from every people group. Okay, so um he in my notes. He brings creation and redemption together, right? He's making us big and he's this timeless redemptive plan together. Okay. Um and so I I want to look at the fruit of Paul's God-centered uh version or God-centered view of his story. Uh he's writing this, he's in prison for preaching the gospel, okay? Uh, and you can read sort of the parallel account in Acts, but he's in prison. He's writing this letter from prison. Um, and at the verse 13, the very last thing, he says that uh he asks the the Ephesian church not to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you, which is your glory. He's concerned about God, right, and his story. Paul understands that God's unfolding this plan of redemption, that Paul has a part to play with it, but Paul's not the main thing, okay? And if Paul saw himself as the star of the story, of the of the story kind of being around him, it would be very easy to lapse into thinking where it's like, I'm planting churches, I am preaching the gospel, I am enduring ridicule, I'm enduring beatings, and I'm seeing God's messages, it's his will, and it's it's it's spreading all throughout. And like now I'm in prison. And this is wrong. This is this is this is wrong. I need prison to change. I need to be out there, I need to be sharing the gospel with the world, I need to be planting more churches. And you could feel a sense of frustration, a sense of somehow God's got this wrong. Like, I I need Be out there. I have been gifted by God. I have been called by God. I need to be out there. That's not his orientation. He is in prison. He so trusts God's plan, his unfolding plan, his wisdom and in the character and nature of God, that he knows he's in prison and that it's not about him. God will raise up other people. God is empowering him to write, to even experience what he's experienced in order to encourage the church. And he's even telling them. If we can be real sly in deceiving ourselves in a man-centered versus God-centered view of our place in the world, what happens when you're frustrated? What happens when things don't go your way? Are you going to be the way Paul demonstrates and models for us in this verse, where you still see it as God's plan and God's glory? Or are you kind of questioning or wondering? And I'm not saying this isn't a naysaying of any doubting or anything like that, but just fundamentally as an orientation, right? If we see ourselves as bit players in God's big unfolding plan for his people, which is to gather them as the church and to make that going out into the world, it's a different orientation. Okay, and so having said that, I want to move to the second part. Paul, right, he's saying, right, he's suffering, which is your glory. He's speaking to the to the church, to the Gentile church. He's speaking primarily. The reason he's in jail is because he's making the Jewish people in power angry who are kind of defending this old way. And he's challenging that. And he's saying, no, the Gentiles are welcomed in, the Gentiles are welcomed in. And that's why he's in jail. He's doing it for their glory. He's doing it for the church. He's defending the church. And so he's concerned with the church and wants us to lift our eyes. Here we are, right, today. We don't feel that same tension, right? We're kind of familiar with this notion of the church, it opens its doors. Like we don't have these hard Jew-Gentile distinctions in modern time anymore. But it doesn't mean that we we automatically have this high view of the church. And so before I dive in, I had a quote that I came across in my research this week that I feel does a good job of kind of framing this on the front end. So this is uh by a man named John Stott. Um he says uh in his commentary on Ephesians the major lesson taught by this first half of Ephesians 3 is the biblical centrality of the church. Some people construct a Christianity which consists entirely of a personal relationship to Jesus Christ that has virtually nothing to do with the church. Others make a grudging concession to the need for church membership, but add that they have given up the ecclesiastical institution as hopeless. Now it is understandable, even inevitable, that we are critical of many of the church's inherited structures and traditions. Every church in every place at every time is in need of reform and renewal. But we need to beware lest we despise the church of God and are blind to his work in history. We may safely say that God has not abandoned his church, however displeased with it he may be. He is still building and refining it. And if God has not abandoned it, how can we? It has a central place in his plan. Oh, hello, wasp. Um the the uh in Ephesians, right, uh in this passage, it talks about the church as this manifold wisdom of God. Um and before we we kind of dive into that more, why the church? Okay? It seems a really bad fit for showing off God's wisdom, right? Like we're we're kind of aware, right, uh, of the church being imperfect. Um it's I think it's a helpful to think about. Like God didn't focus group that one, okay, right? Like God wasn't thinking, brainstorming, like I need to demonstrate my wisdom, my heart, my plan. Like, let's think, like, how can I broadcast this to the creation? Um, right? And it's like you come in and and right, like, like maybe write a really long big book that just details all of it, right? Could have done that. Um, you look uh like he could have done like the burning bush thing worked pretty well, right? Get this bush, make it on fire, make it so it doesn't get consumed and talk out of it, right? Like that would get people's attention, and you cut out the middleman. Like God can just communicate directly. Uh and he chooses not to, right? He chooses to use the church. And um I was trying to think of a way of illustrating that. And forgive me, um, I'm double dipping with the baseball thing, and they say preach what you know, and so I like baseball. Um, but if if God wanted to demonstrate the awesomeness of baseball, right, he kind of came and was like, let's demonstrate how great in just the beauty and majesty and just inherent awesomeness of baseball. Like, you'd be like, okay, um uh let's write out all the rules and people can read them and they can see it. It's like, eh, no one likes that. Um so let's let's uh maybe like pick like an all-star team and let them play, and people can watch them play. They'll see baseball played at the highest level. Um and or maybe like like uh we'll get like clips of like home runs and diving catches and all these cool things, and we can kind of compile it and show like this is the best that baseball has to offer. It would be like God kind of being like, I have an idea. Let's show T-ball. All right, and you know, like I I coached T-ball for four years, and T-ball is a mess. It is uh it is unlike anything. Like you get these these these four and five-year-olds, and then you give them bats, which already is kind of like okay. And the ball's on a T, and and like you'll get the kid, and he'll go and he'll hit it, and he like runs to third base, and you're like kind of running after him, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, go this way. And then you'll get I had a kid on one of my teams who used to hit the ball to the pitcher and then charge him with the bat, and so you're like, no, and you're like getting the bat, and then one of my children's line. One of my children developed this habit, he'd swing in the helicopter around and let go of the bat, and it would be like a crack, and like the ball gets hit, and like seven kids jump and like wrestle, and they're like trying to, you know, while the runner, like it is a mess. You have to really squint to see baseball. Okay, and that's what the church is like. Okay, so that's it, right? Yeah, thank you. Uh that's us. And so if that's the vehicle that God's using to demonstrate and proclaim his wisdom uh to creation, and God doesn't make mistakes, huh? Right? And so what has to be, it's not about our performance, it's not about our perfection. In our imperfect church, God's demonstrating his character and his heart and his forgiveness, right? And so it's still up to us to be the church. It's not a license to kind of not take seriously what it is to be holy or to be God's people. But in God choosing the church, it's his way of saying it's about me, not about you. Okay? So take heart, okay? It matters. What we do matters, but it's about God, not about us. So diving back in. The church as the manifold wisdom of God. Manifold, right? That's kind of a weird word. Um I can't remember the last time I used it outside of reading this passage. Uh, but what manifold's getting at, um, it means detailed, it means taking various forms. Um from what I've read, in the Greek, it was often used to uh describe intricately embroidered patterns on fabric. Um it refers to many colors kind of coming together, like a field of flowers or intricate designs. Uh and so the church is this multicolored, multi-right, flavored collection of people that God has put and that he puts up, right? That he's calling different people with different priorities, different orientations, different everything, and making them one family. And that contains his wisdom. And it's not just that, okay, he is displaying it um essentially, right? Uh I'm sorry, I'm I always I always mess up the the language. Um he's he's doing it um to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, and this is referring to angels, angels and demons, actually, right? Uh they're created by God and they're observing. And um, I was even talking to Nick earlier today. There's so much to be said about angels because they're weirdly not talked about, even though they're in scripture, and then sometimes they can be over-interpreted or over-exalted. Um but a quick rundown on angels. They're messengers of God, they deliver decrees, they explain his activities, and they execute judgments. And they're they're also God's essentially his worship team. They're praising him all day and all night. Um, and they're watching, okay? But they're not made aware of God's plan for redemption. They're they're not kind of brought in. God doesn't sort of like huddle up with them and be like, all right, first I'm gonna do this, then this, then this, it's gonna be awesome. Wait and see. Like, they're kind of like looking through the window. They're not privy, they're not made aware of like the heart of what God's doing. And um what's really interesting uh about this, right? If you think about it, God created everything. We we saw that earlier, he created all things. Um, so that includes angels, right? And God created angels, and God created mankind. We know in scripture that that some angels rebelled and became demons. All of humanity rebelled. That's where we are now. Okay, and yet God, there's no salvation for demons. There's no possibility of salvation. It's not part of God's plan to enter into and rescue and redeem fallen angels. And yet, for humanity in the form of Christ, he enters our world, suffers, bleathes, dies, takes the punishment for sin, and redeems us, right? That must blow their minds, angels, right? Watching that. It's gotta be marvelous to them, right? And that in its form is the church, okay? I I wager that most Sundays you don't wake up kind of with that thought. I am gonna gather together with my brothers and sisters, and together with the church worldwide, we are gonna be this manifestation of God's wisdom that is gonna be seen and appreciated and marveled at by this spiritual realm that we don't even do. That is a big thought, right? How big do you feel when you kind of entertain that thought, right? Right? This helps lift our eyes up. Like Paul is showing us, it is a big world, it is a big spiritual world. There are dimensions out there. God is amazing and we're known and loved by Him. And the church is what matters to Him. Um in the vein of lifting, right? Like when we're in that space, when we see the church that space. And that's what I liked about the start quote that I started with. No one's saying the church is perfect. No one's saying the church is above criticism, no one's saying that that you know abuse doesn't happen in the church or ungodly things don't happen. But those things happen when when the broken humans, the the T ball playing, right? Like the kid who's who's right chasing after the picture with the bats, not acting in the rules of baseball, right? But it's still like like we can't we can't see the church um from a consumeristic place of what is it doing for me? Am I feeling fed? Am I feeling my needs met? Are the programs to my liking? Are the the childcare options or all these things? It's not that those things can't ever matter, just like baseball, it doesn't have to not matter, but it can't be the perspective that we view it through. We have to first and foremost see the church as this big collection of God's family on display. Um and my final point I don't even know what I'm doing with time. Um buckle up because we're we'll see how we're landing this plane. Um the third point, right? So ourselves with church, and then number three, the mission. Um the church isn't just called together by God and kind of effectively put in a trophy room where God's kind of like, all right, here's these people, I've saved them, I've pulled them out, they're my family, now I'm just gonna put them on a shelf and we're just gonna wait until it's heaven time. Okay. We are on display, okay? And so by that it means our interaction. Okay, we're not just sort of call to the church and then stop. God's wisdom, the fullness of his heart and in his uh design for for making this family and being this light to the world, it's in how we we interact, okay? Uh we um we display the heart and wisdom of God and how we form a new family oriented around our identity as sons and daughters in Christ. Okay? And as we turn away from our sinful desires, which lead us to want to segment and cuddle up with the people who think like us or look like us or act like us and then hurl insults and make ourselves feel better, the people who aren't in our group, and we splinter that way. We we need to turn away from that. Um, and we seek to unify and we seek to serve one another, we seek to build one another up. Uh, we seek to love and serve our neighbors and the world around us. Um when we do that, we're displaying God's design and God's wisdom. Um I'm sure I know I know I grew up sitting in Sunday messages and heard this quote plenty, um, but it doesn't make it less sticking in the heart or less true. Uh there's a famous Gandhi quote you've probably heard. He said, I like your Christ. I don't like your Christians. Um, your Christians are so unlike your Christ. Um and that's it. Okay, so we're we're kind of in this tension where we're committed to the church and yet the church isn't perfect, right? But what we we do and how we act, it projects to the world and it projects to this heavenly realm. Um and so I wanted to, you probably, I don't know, anyone who went through some of our training stuff over the summer, uh, you've heard this concept of contrast communities. I first heard it from a uh uh, I guess, seminary professor named uh Mike Goheen. Um and it's this idea of a contrast community. The church, um, because we understand, right, like we we talk about this a lot, the church isn't this, it isn't a building, it's not an appointment on Sunday morning. The church is the people of God. And when we come together and we act as the people and the family of God, and as we we turn away from ourselves, as we lift our eyes off of our self-obsession, as we orient around the gospel and what it means for us and what it's accomplished for us, we start acting different because we're in contrast to those who don't know Christ. Right? When you're spiritually blind and you doesn't mean you can't act in certain moral ways, but fundamentally you're you're doing kind of in your eyes what's the right thing, and you're trying to gratify your own desires. It's not directed by God, and it's not oriented around the gospel. So you're gonna see a contrast. Um, and so as the church, that's what we're called to be. And and here at Point, the way we organize, um, we come together and we do some of those things in this space. But primarily we we have our life groups during the week, and they're smaller groups. Um it's a little bit of a moving thing, but ideally around 14 or 12, 8, whatever, in that range of people, where we can kind of know each other better and we can really dig into warring against the flesh of what it looks like to come together, what it looks like to turn away um from fleshly desires and to model and to show um not in our perfection, but because we're forgiven by God how it is um that we're different. And so I just wanted to, he has just a couple of these I wanted to say. Um, as the church and as God's people, we get to be a community of generosity and enough in a world of consumption. Okay, do you see how that's God-centered versus self-centered? Why can we be generous? Is it because we just are philanthropists, or because you know we were taught by our parents it's good to share things? No, we're generous fundamentally because we have received infinite riches in Christ. We have received so much that we're freed from having to collect stuff and earn a high salary and to validate our existence. We're freed from all those things because we're deemed worthy and we're deemed valuable by God and Christ. And so we're free to stand against a world of consumption. Um, we can be a community of forgiveness in a world of hatred, competition, violence, grudges, and revenge, right? We can forgive because we've been forgiven. When we understand how small we are and how big God is, and how our part in this exchange is we bring this sin and God brings the forgiveness. We don't earn it, it's a gift. When that really sinks in and we know that we've been forgiven an infinite amount and been saved to unimaginable riches that we see in this passage, right? When that truly sinks in, we're able to forgive. We're able to authentically forgive. That's the gospel freeing us. We can be people who forgive each other, and as we forgive each other, we stand in contrast to a world that digs in. All right, a world that is looking at your weaknesses, is looking at how you've wronged us and how you can minimize you and strip away your humanity because you're not worthy. Right? It stands apart. God-centered, self-centered. Community of praise in a world of narcissism, right? You're starting to see. Why can we praise? I don't have to draw attention to me. I am known and loved by God because of the gospel. I don't need to draw attention. I don't need to feel big when I'm praised and then feel small when I'm not, to rely on the ups and downs of self-esteem or things like that. I am known and loved in an unchangeable way by God. I am free to build others up. I don't have to. It's not a competition, right? As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are all known and loved and worthy. We don't have to just scratch and claw and elbow and then try to say, like, no, I'm more worthy, or no, you know, God loves me more. Not like that at all. It's available to us in stark contrast, right? Community of humility in a world of arrogant self-interest. This one, I actually think, I don't know. Who am I to say? I'm just a guy. In my way of thinking, this is probably the most powerful tool that the church has. Okay. We have the ability to say I'm sorry. Okay, not that no one else can say I'm sorry, but because it's not about us, right? Another time, like when you wrong someone and you don't want to admit it, right, you're trying to save face, right? You're trying to uh you know kind of manipulate or you know arrange things so you can either distract or maybe you say sorry, like I'm sorry you reacted that way, or I'm sorry you felt that way, right? Christians, because we know that we're sinful and that because we've been we're we're broken, but because we've been forgiven and accepted, we can own things. Okay, hard, right? Because that is really putting the flesh to death, but we can own things and we can genuinely say, I'm sorry, because we can expect to fail, right? We know that this side of heaven, we are never gonna reach perfection. So it's not, especially when we're in these these these life groups together and we're in church together, it's not if we're gonna sin against each other, it's when. So when that happens, how are we gonna be? Okay, humility is an avenue that's available to us, and that speaks powerfully against a world where they don't want to admit, and I say they, we're we're there, we we jump in that circle all the time. It's powerful, okay. That speaks to I am not depending on myself, I'm depending on God. Um yeah, I have two more. I'm not gonna unpack them all because I feel like I'm getting repetitive. Uh, but they're still worth saying. Uh, a community of patience and a world of immediate gratification. Um and then the last one I put, and this is not limited at all, um, a community of depth and a culture of superficiality. Um I think when we pursue depth, right? That's what Paul's doing in this passage pursue depth, see how big God is, and see our place. And it um it's powerful and it helps us. Um so to wrap it up, um I want to loop back to that original story. Uh like I said, I was 24 years old, I was not married, no jobs, no kids. Um you gotta trust me on this. I I wouldn't react the same way today. It was funny because the way the the UT game went yesterday, I thought God was gonna put that to the test, but um I wouldn't react the same way. And why? It's because I've grown up, okay? I have a wife, I have kids, I have a job, I have perspective, okay? I'm stripping this away from any spiritual stuff, just in a life-living kind of thing. I'm 40 now, I'm not 24. And right, it's just the natural progression of things uh as you become an adult. Um I still like baseball. Um, it's a fun hobby. Uh, it's not critically important to my happiness because I have lifted my eyes and I have other responsibilities. I see the world in a bigger sense. The same process happens spiritually. Okay, as we grow and mature and walk with the Lord, and as we're guided by the Spirit, and as we lean into these uh disciplines, as we we we read the word, as we pray, as we gather with God's people, as we work these things out in community, it has the effect of lifting our eyes, right? We're quicker to see the big picture, we're quicker to see right perspective. Um and we're more, as we grow in spiritual maturity, we we find ourselves more able and quicker to adopt a God-centered perspective in life and move out of that self-centered perspective. Uh, our softness and appreciation for who God is and what he's accomplished in the gospel will grow. Um honestly, we'll deal with reality more, okay? It's really what it comes down to. Perspective, it's not about trying to maximize or minimize or trying to trick yourself, it's about dealing with reality. We want to deal with reality. The reality is God's big and we're not, okay? And God's majestic and glorious and we're not. And yet we have a part to play. And so the last thing I just want to underline um when we do these things, when we're acting like a contrast, when we're interacting and lifting our eyes up and seeing the fullness of God, and we're loving and serving with each other, that echoes in the spiritual realm. Like we're so in myself most of all, like we're so into what we see before our face. Right? So it's like if I decide to kind of put myself, my my flesh to death, and and maybe like do the dishes, right? Because I'm such an awesome guy. There's a part of me that wants that recognized, right? If I have a big thing and my wife kind of comes home and doesn't even notice, right? There's that small part of me that's like, that'd have been nice, you know, like it really should have happened. And then there's that part of me beyond that that's like she didn't notice, but I'm not gonna proud about it. That is how much I right, it's just like a pride on top of pride, right? Um, because we want that immediate gratification. But the reality is if we're to take this passage seriously and to really internalize the largeness of it, these bits of self-sacrifice, these bits of unifying, these bits of erasing like the divisions between us, right? With with with gender or race or class or all the myriad ways that we divide. And as we we come together, that's like shooting out, right? It's observable, it's seen. And we might not be may or our people around us might not know, but what God knows and the people watching in marveling at God's goodness, know, because that's a work that He's doing in us. All right, let us pray. Uh Father, um I thank you just just for the reminder of how big and majestic and wonderful you are. Um and I ask your forgiveness for all the times I lose perspective, for all the times I I just drift back into just looking, uh don't think, thinking that life ends at the tip of my nose. Um, and I thank you that the emphasis isn't on me, isn't on us, God, that um we are the the t-ballers, we are the ones who who kind of spin around and and make it a mess, God, but that serves to magnify just how deep and and uh uh amazing your grace is, God, that you can love creatures such as us. Um help us to have a renewed sense of purpose, help us have a renewed commitment um to the church in all of its forms, um, to seeing um that we are part of not maximizing our own potential, but that we get to together play a part in demonstrating your heart and your wisdom and your love and your grace to all of creation. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.