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Well, my name is Matt Altman, and I'm one of the elders here at Point Community Church. And I'm excited to be here this morning with you, excited to open up the Bible and see what God has to teach us today. And so I want to welcome you here and I want you to know that when Nick stood up here stood up here earlier and said that we're a family, we really mean that. So it's okay if you're here today and you don't have all of the answers because we don't have all of the answers either. And it's okay if you're not sure about church or the Bible or you have questions or you have doubts. That's perfectly okay. This is a safe place for you to wrestle with those things, and we hope, as Nick said earlier, that you'll find some warmth here in this community and that you'll uh you'll be willing and uh find the freedom to explore those questions that you may have while you're here today. When Nick asked me a couple of months ago to teach, I was excited. I was a little bit nervous. Um as an elder, I'm not a paid staff member. I I don't receive any of the offering or anything like that. I'm actually a school teacher by trade. So you would think teaching just comes naturally to me, but my audience is a little different on most days. It's uh it's full of eighth graders, so you guys are gonna be easy. Um and I teach math in a classroom in Dell Valley, and I love my job, uh, but I'm thankful for this gift of teaching that I believe God has given me, and I'm I'm excited to share it with you today. In case you were worried, I'm not planning on giving any math homework at the end, so don't worry about that. All right. Nick talked about Launch Point yesterday too, and that was a great time while we were here, and uh just again can't echo that enough how thankful we are for this community and their desire to serve each other and to serve uh just everyone who comes through the doors of this building. He also said, since we made it until three o'clock yesterday, that I could have the same amount of time. So if you guys are okay with that, then uh no, I won't do that to you. So uh we're in this series right now called Everyday Church, and uh the idea is it's in this book, this letter written by a guy named Peter, and he wrote two letters, so this one's called First Peter. And a couple of weeks ago, Nick talked about our salvation as believers, okay, as people who say we've put our faith and trust in Jesus. And he said, Because of this salvation, that our lives should be full of this uncontainable joy. All right, like this amazing gift that we've received that just would naturally express itself outwardly. And so, because of that salvation, last week we talked about how it should produce in us a life that looks differently than the rest of the world. We call this a holy life, the set-apart life, as opposed to the common life or just what everybody else is doing. And so today we're gonna actually start chapter two, and it's gonna start with some of and a focus on us as individuals in the church, and then we're gonna move into the church as a community, and then finally we're gonna wrap up as we talk about what's the mission of the church and what are we called to do. So I invite you this morning, if you've got a Bible, go ahead and open it up. If you don't have one, there's one nearby in a chair somewhere. If you don't own a Bible personally, you can keep the Bible that you find here. You can take it home. We really believe that if you open it up and you read it on a regular basis, it'll change your life. Okay? So, 1 Peter, it's toward the end of the New Testament, and uh we're gonna start in chapter 2. We're gonna read all ten verses, and then we're gonna go back and break it apart into three different sections. So he says this so rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, desire the pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it for your salvation, since you have tasted that the Lord is good. Coming to him a living stone, rejected by men, but chosen and valuable to God, you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it is contained in Scripture, look, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and honored cornerstone, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame. So honor will come to you who believe, but for the unbelieving, the stone that the builders rejected, this one has become the cornerstone, and a stone to stumble over, and a rock to trip over. They stumble because they disobey the message. They were destined for this. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possessions, 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. I want to pray for us real quick before we jump into this in more detail. God, thank you again for your word. Thank you for uh guys like Peter and Paul and and uh who you inspired to write these letters, and just thank you for the encouragement that they offer us today, 2,000 years after they've been written. I pray that uh you would open our hearts this morning to see the truth that is here and to not only just hear it, but to receive it and apply it and to do it, and to do what you're calling us to do, whatever that may be today, as we respond to the text, I pray that you would give us hearts that are willing to do that. I ask that your spirit would just come over us and that you would enlighten our minds and our eyes to see and understand what you have to say to us this morning. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Alright, so that's the first word of this chapter. So. All right, so, in light of what's happened in chapter one, so is oftentimes translated as therefore. Okay? So, therefore, because of this salvation that we have in chapter one, because of the word of the Lord which endures forever, which Peter has just said at the end of chapter one, because of this, we need to rid ourselves of hypocrisy and deceit and malice and envy and slander. Pretty hard stuff. Okay? There's this list of sins that start off chapter two, and he's saying, as a church, you've received this salvation, so these issues should not be a part of who you are. You may be saying, well, I we don't really even use words like malice anymore. I haven't heard anybody say that word in a long time. You know, hypocrisy we've heard, and envy maybe, but this why are we talking about these things now in the 21st century? Well, these issues were an issue for the early church, and believe it or not, they're still an issue today. As a matter of fact, if you were to talk to people who don't go to church, what's one of the number one reasons that they tell you they don't want to go to church? They're full of hypocrites, right? And sadly that can be true. Now I'm thankful for a community here at Point Community Church that doesn't display that, uh, but that's that's the case in a lot of churches, and so hypocrisy is a very real thing. When we say one thing and do another, that's an issue, and that that doesn't represent Christ well. So Peter's trying to address that at the beginning. He says, rid yourselves of all of this stuff. Now you may be thinking, okay, so what do I do? I just wake up one morning and decide I'm not gonna be a hypocrite anymore. Well, it's not that easy. If you've struggled with any kind of sin in your life, you know that it doesn't just go away on its own, and it doesn't go away even with your own desire to stop it. Okay, you can have the best heart and mind in the world that wants to quit doing something, but you need more than just your own will. Okay? So what do we do about that? Well, if we keep reading and we see that in verse 2, Peter says this like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. Now, I typically read a different translation that adds a few words here, and it says, long for the pure spiritual milk of the word. So there's a direct connection between the amount of sin in our life and the amount of God's word in our life. Okay, I told you I wasn't going to teach you too much math, but it's kind of a it's like a proportional relationship here. If we increase in God's word, what happens to the sin in our life? It decreases. That's a natural result. Okay, but if we don't increase in God's word, we can expect to struggle. So how do we do that? Or what does that look like? Well, Peter says it's like a baby that's ready for dinner time. Okay, now I know we've got moms in the room, and uh, I know my wife, we have one child, and uh I remember in the beginning those days when she was nursing, and man, when it was time to eat, there wasn't anything else that needed to happen but let that baby eat. Okay, that's what Peter says we should do with God's word. It should be something we are starving for. Okay, so I'm gonna caution us this morning. I don't know where you are personally, but if you call yourself a believer who has grown as a Christian and you're only counting on Sunday morning to be your spiritual nourishment, you're gonna starve throughout the week. Okay? You're gonna need to eat more than that. So I believe one of the defining characteristics of a growing Christian is a love for God's word. And how does that affect us in these sins that he's talking about? Well, Psalm 119, 11 says this I have treasured your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you. So again, as we grow in this, we find ourselves living a life that we would say is a holy life. Okay, and that's not meant to make us self-righteous because it's not our power that's doing it. It's God's power and it's the power of his word in us. So your first fill in the blank is this. As believers in Christ, we each have been called to be in God's word for our individual growth. Now, I brought a picture here that I'd like for you to look at. That's my daughter, Greta, when she was about four months old. She's a little over a year now. This was the first time she tasted solid food. Okay? It was pretty significant. You know, parents, I know for Nick and Jada, they've got six, so maybe they're not taking pictures of every one of them as they taste solid food, but this is our only one, so we got a ton of pictures, right? So she's she's trying solid food for the first time, and and she's transitioned into solid food now, and and she's been weaned, as we say, and so she's not she's not a newborn babe that's longing for milk anymore, but she does need to eat, right? And we spoon feed her certain things, but she's now gotten to where she can eat solid food on her own, and she can take it off the tray and she can feed herself. And one day's gonna come where she's gonna learn that wonderful skill of picking up a spoon and a fork and being able to do the whole process without us helping her. Parents, you know what I'm talking about, right? You you you don't feed your eight-year-old anymore, do you? You expect them to do it, okay? So, again, believers in the room, if you're a brand new believer, hear me. It's okay to be spoon-fed the word because you're still growing and you're still like a baby, and that's not a bad thing. But if 10 years from now you're still expecting someone to spoon feed you, that's a problem. So we have a responsibility as members of this church of God, of God's household, to grow in his word. It would look pretty ridiculous if you traded that picture out of Greta and you put me in there with a bib on and a spoon, right? You'd be like, man, that guy, something's wrong with him. He needs to grow up. Well, the same is true when it comes to our time in God's word. Um, I want to give you one other illustration. I'm a music guy. I was actually a classical music major in college. I know you probably wouldn't have guessed that. But uh I love to go to the symphony and I don't get to go very often. But when I go, it's awesome to watch 80 people up on stage performing a beautiful piece of music. It takes every single one of those people doing their job, the months that lead up to that performance, in order for that music to sound the way it does. And the church is the same way. We cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that if we don't grow personally, that that somehow doesn't really hurt or affect the church as a community because it does. All right? And if we're not growing personally, the music that we're making to the world doesn't sound very good. Okay? If you've ever been to a performance where somebody made mistakes, it stands out. And we're not perfect, but we do have a responsibility to prepare ourselves and to fill our lives and our hearts with God's word. Okay, you get the idea there? Individually, that's our responsibility, all right? So we're gonna move on to section two now, and we're gonna start with verses four through eight. I'm not gonna read all these to you again, but they'll be on the screen as we move forward. And uh Peter is quoting a lot from the Old Testament, which is interesting because the church didn't exist in the Old Testament. So he's taking a lot of passages from the Old Testament and he's now applying them to the church in the New Testament. And he says, this coming to him, talking about Christ as a living stone, rejected by men, but chosen and valuable to God. Okay, so Jesus is this living stone, and then right after that, he says, uh he describes Christ as a chosen and honored cornerstone. Now, I don't know if you are familiar with the concept of a cornerstone. Um, it's pretty self-explanatory, but I want to give you a definition of a cornerstone that really has impacted the way I view this idea. Okay? A cornerstone is simply this it's the principal stone, which means the first stone that's laid in a building from which all other stones receive their positioning. Okay, so if Christ is the cornerstone, I had to have the whiteboard here just to help me feel like a teacher. So I want to draw a little illustration here for you and try to describe for you the church as it's described here. We've got this cornerstone, which is Jesus Himself. Okay. And I I didn't fill it in back here because we're gonna cover that up here in a minute. Um but Jesus is the cornerstone and he's what the church is, it's what the church starts with. And if we as a church place anything else here, then everything that gets positioned around it is not gonna be what God intended for it to be, right? And the truth of the matter is he's the only stone, the only rock that's great enough to hold all that needs to be built around it. Okay? So we start with Christ as the cornerstone. That's your next fill-in-the-blank. The church is built first and foremost on Christ, the cornerstone. Now, there's another passage in scripture, and it's found in Ephesians chapter 2, where Paul says that we are God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So we've already established that fact that Jesus is here, he's where we start, but then we've got these other people that are mentioned, apostles and prophets. Now I'm not gonna give you a huge history lesson, but basically these two groups of people are this. These guys were from the Old Testament, the first section of the Bible, and they told about Christ who was gonna come in the future at that point. And there's full, the Old Testament is full of prophecies that say there's one that's coming who's gonna restore and redeem the nation of Israel. Alright? And then in the New Testament, we have these guys called apostles, and they are the ones who continue, they the definition of apostle is one who had been with Jesus. Okay, so when you think about the twelve disciples, those guys were apostles, okay? They spent time with Jesus, he trained them, they he taught them, and then the movement of the church was actually born out of those those 12 guys and their relationship with Jesus. Okay, so you've got Jesus starting it, and then you've got the teaching of these two groups of people that help form this foundation for what's called the church. Alright, so where do we come into this? Well, we are called living stones that are being built into a spiritual house. Okay, so here's where we are. And I was not an art major, I was a music major, so just forgive me that this may not all look exactly the way you think it should, but I think you'll get the idea. All right. There's all of these extra stones that are being added onto this building. And this building's not finished yet, by the way, okay? But this is us, all right, as the church, and we're called the spiritual house of God. Okay, so I know uh Gonzo, where are you at? Raise your hand. Everybody know Gonzo? Gonzo uh was a firefighter for a long time, he retired, and now he builds custom homes, okay? So he knows all about construction and building. And I asked if I could have his permission to use him this morning in this illustration. All right. Gonzo, how many homes are you working on right now? Six homes. Okay. And how many days a week do you work? Yeah. And how many hours a day? A whole lot more than six, right? Ten. Ten minimum, probably, okay? Now, Gonzo, if if you, let's say you only had, I'm gonna make your life simpler. Let's say you only had one home to build right now, okay? How many days a week would you work on that home? Five, six, maybe, right? You would still spend every amount of time that you had to see the completion of that home take place. As a church, we have to commit as a community of believers to build this spiritual house more than just one day a week. Can you imagine if that home builder called up Gonzo, if it was the only home he had to build, and they said, Hey, how's the home coming along? And he said, Well, I only work on your home one day a week. It would take, it would take a little while. No worries, I have an iPhone, I know how to turn that thing off. That that would be that would make me upset. If I was that homeowner, I'd be like, What do you mean you only work on it one day a week? What are you doing the rest of the time? Well, as a church, if we only commit to one day a week, this building process is gonna be terribly slow. And here's the other caution I have for us about one day a week. Sundays in a lot of ways can be easy. Okay, I can show up on Sunday, I can I can get get ready, and I can uh you know, I can comb my hair and I can put on a happy face. And and a lot of us may do that. Uh, you know, it's not a bad thing, but it's real easy for me to hide behind maybe what's really going on in my life when I know I don't have to see you for every other day of the week. Okay? I can be plastic, I think that's the word that I would use. Anybody struggle here with that? Am I the only one? Okay, some of us know that, yeah, like it's easy to forget about our problems on one day. But here's what here's what happens if we commit to seven days a week. And I'm not saying we gotta do something every day together, but what if we made ourselves available to each other as a community seven days a week? Here's your only math lesson. It's called probability. Okay? The more time I spend with you, the greater the chances are that I catch you on a bad day. And the greater the chances are that you catch me on a bad day. And guess what? That's life. But that's what the church is supposed to be about. It's supposed to be deeper connections than just what happened on Sunday. Sunday ought to be kind of the cap of the week that we have experienced life together during the week and we've done some things and we've seen God work and we come together on Sunday and say, Man, it's so good to celebrate God this week, isn't it? Okay, so I've pick out a couple of things that happened to me personally this week. Um, the Hallorans were trying to get moved out of a house and they needed some help, and so they posted a thing on the city, that website that we're talking about. And and I since I'm off during the summer, I was available and it's like great, I had the chance to go and help them try to move some furniture out of their house into their new house. That's just one of the many ways that as a community we can exist more than just on Sundays. And then that same night, uh Taylor and Lannon had called us and said, Hey, we're gonna go play volleyball. And again, I'm off and I don't have to get up early the next morning. So we went and we were able to hang out with some, met a new person and just got to hang out with some of our church family, and that was really encouraging. Okay, so I want to challenge us today that if you find yourselves just counting on Sunday and only Sunday, and yet you say, you know, I'm a follower of Jesus and I want to grow, then press into the community. We have life groups, all right, and they're we've been taking a month off for August, but they start up again on September 7th. There's more information at the connection point. But I challenge you, if you're not plugged into a life group, go and find one because there you will grow more deeply in your relationships and you'll grow in maturity. And some of these rough edges on these stones will get knocked off and they'll fit together a little bit more than they would have before, and this spiritual house called a church is gonna be built. Which, by the way, these stones aren't meant to just be on their own and glorify themselves, they're meant to represent the Creator who's actually doing it all, which is God Himself, and we're gonna talk about that here in just a minute. But that's my challenge for you today, okay? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, chapter 19, that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have received from God. So What that means is these four walls aren't the church. And I know we've probably heard that before, but I just feel like we need to say that again. All right, the playground and the preschool building and the portable and the soccer fields, none of those things are the church. They're useful and they're tools that we use to minister, but that's not what defines the church. So I want to take you back to if you uh grew up in church or maybe you had friends who did, you might have played this little thing where they they did the little illustration about here's the church and here's the steeple. You open the doors and here's all the people, right? Okay, anybody remember that? Okay, it's it's false. It's a terrible, it's a terrible illustration. It's not true. They've been lying to us this whole time. So let me tell you what I think it should say. Okay? Here's the church. Why do we even need a steeple? Open the doors, and you'll see that the church is the people. Okay? The church are these living stones. Yeah. Alright? God did not do this amazing, miraculous thing of saving people just to build a physical building. Okay? He saved hearts and he has rescued lives and he's putting us together for his glory, and that's what the church is. Okay? So the next thing, our next fill in the blank is gonna be this. As the cornerstone of the church, Christ has responded to in one of two ways belief or rejection. Those are the only two options. If we're gonna build a church on Christ, then we either accept him for who he is and we believe in him, or we don't. There's no third option. So verse 7 says this honor will come to you who believe. So if you're in the room today and you say, I've put my faith in Jesus, you are part of a royal family. Okay? With God as the King, the Heavenly Father. And honor has been given to you. Alright? And if you haven't believed, then Scripture says that you've rejected Christ as the cornerstone, and that you're not gonna obey his word and obey the message that you're gonna stumble, and that Christ can be tripped over. He's a rock that people might stumble over. So we need to kind of figure out what it what does that mean? Well, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul says this we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles foolishness. Listen, church, the message of Christ is foolishness to the world. It doesn't make any sense. Okay, it takes the Spirit of God to understand what Christ has done for us. So there's a whole world of people out there understanding Jesus is just some fairy tale, or better yet, maybe at the best, he's a good guy who taught some people how to do things better. And if we aren't careful as a church, we'll water down the message and we'll present a Jesus to people that's not very Jesus-like, and they may accept something that's not actually Jesus. So I want to challenge you with this. I would rather put the cornerstone out there and say, this is Jesus and this is what he's done, and if you submit to him and put your faith in him, this is what he calls you to do. I'd rather do that than offer people something cheaper. Because life is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ, not in any substitute. Okay? So let's make sure that we understand how we respond to him and how people might respond to him. Okay, so the next fill in blank is this as a result of these responses, one of two kingdoms will be advanced the kingdom of God, which is belief in Christ, or the kingdom of self, which is rejection of Christ. So you may say, well, I don't really, I'm not building my own kingdom, and maybe you're not. But the truth is there are many of us that do. We think that our one little stone here is like what it's all about. And we spend all of our time and our energy focusing on us, and there's not a lot that we have to offer the world as a single stone. I don't know about you, but despite my bad artwork, that's not very glorious. That one stone by itself doesn't have a lot to offer the world. But these stones fit together in the church can be transformative, and this is how this is God's kingdom. Okay, so I want to challenge this. Don't go after your personal kingdoms because you don't have a whole lot to offer. Can I just say that? I know that may sound rude, but we don't have a lot to offer on our own to a hurt and dying world, but the church of God is transformative, and the message of the gospel is what can rescue people, and then we could see people join this family called the church. Okay? So let's look at the last section here, verses nine and ten. The church on mission. Since we know what to build the church on, Christ, the cornerstone, and we know as living stones that we're being fit together, what do we do when we've become a part of the church? You know, let's let's pretend that like right here, this is Point Community Church. We're kind of this section here, and I don't know, maybe over here there's uh you know a church that we're partnering with, Hill Country Bible Church, Round Rock, you know, okay? There's churches all over, and the global church and the whole world is all being part of this building. Well, what do we do when we're kind of in our position and God's shaping us in that? Well, we have a mission. The church has a mission, or maybe we should say the mission has a church. Okay, and here's what it is. Uh this section, starting in verse 9, begins with the word but. Okay, and he says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, talking about God's possession. He's contrasting the church with the people in verse 8 and verse 7 who have stumbled over Christ, who've said, No, I don't believe in who he is. And so he said, These people have tripped over him, they've stumbled over him, they've rejected him, but you are a chosen race. Okay? So there's a lot of language there that's used, and we need to go back into the Old Testament really quickly and talk about, because this passage was actually quoted out of the Old Testament, okay? So I'm gonna give you a quick history lesson. This is like the Bible in three minutes. All right. So in the beginning, after God created the world and mankind's sin, then there was this big distance between us and God. Okay, so we've had this relationship with him that's been broken, and the whole Bible has been telling the story about the one, the cornerstone, who would come and restore people back to God in relationship with him. Alright? Well, in the Old Testament, in chapter 12, God talks to a man named Abram, whose name then was changed later on to Abraham, and he says, Abraham, I'm gonna make you the father of a great nation, and I'm gonna bless the entire world through you. Okay? So Father Abraham is what Israelites or the Jews know him as. Okay, he's the father of this great nation. Well, Abraham had a son, Isaac, and Isaac had a son, Jacob, and Jacob's name was changed to Israel. And then Israel had twelve sons, where we get the phrase the twelve tribes of Israel. And God had given them a task, their primary mission was to represent his glory to the rest of the world. He was gonna give them a promised land, and he was gonna let them live in this land filled with milk and honey, and he was gonna say, As you live there and you interact with the nations around you, you represent my glory to them. And you tell them how good I am, and you worship me, and he gave them some rules to follow, and he said, You're gonna be my chosen people, set apart, and the nations are gonna look at you and they're gonna worship me, the God of the universe. Okay, so that was Israel's job. Well, rather than staying humble and grateful in their unique position as God's chosen people, they prided themselves on their own works and they kind of started to build their own kingdom. And they made it about them instead of about what God wanted them to do. And as a result, when Christ came on the scene in the New Testament, they rejected him. So, verse 7, if we can go back to verse 7, it says this uh so honor will come to you who believe, but for the unbelieving, the stone that the builders rejected, this one has become the cornerstone. The original builders of God's spiritual house was the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. That's what he wanted them to do. And they rejected the cornerstone. So now let's fast forward. Who's writing this letter? It's a man named Peter, and he was he was Jewish. When I say Jew or Israelite, those things mean the same thing. Okay? So Peter was a Jew, and he accepted Christ as the cornerstone. So he's what we would call a Christian. He's been saved, he believed in Jesus. He said, Yeah, you are who you say you are. As a matter of fact, there's a really cool story when Jesus asked Peter, Who do you say that I am? And he says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And then Jesus said, Flesh and blood did not reveal that to you, but my Father in heaven is the one who revealed that truth to you. So Peter got it. And as a Jew, Peter knew this story of the Old Testament. He knew all about the nation of Israel and what they had they were supposed to be doing. But he says, Look, this building is still supposed to be built. God still has the same mission for the church to build this spiritual house of God. So he uses that language. He takes what was given to Israel as a chosen race and a holy nation. He says, The church, you are these things. So when we stand up here and say the church is the people of God, we're a people for God's own possession, we're using that language that used to apply to Israel, and now God said, Hey, my church, these are the people I want to build this spiritual building through. This is how I'm going to represent my glory to the world. So, how do we do that? What's our mission and what does it look like to represent God's glory to the world? Well, let me tell you a couple things that it's not. Okay? The mission of the church is not political, it's not financial, it's not social, it's not moral. Our primary mission is spiritual. It's life and death. I love the language Nick used yesterday when he said, we don't have enough time to waste. We've got work to do. Our mission is the gospel. Alright? So I don't want to rant on this for too long, but I know we're we're in an election year with governors, and then two years from now we're gonna elect a new president. And they're, you know, when when elections start to happen, Christians specifically start to kind of their feathers get really ruffled, right? And we start to we start to get really antsy about who's gonna be elected because we think one person is God's chosen and the other one is this is the devil himself. Okay? And we seem to put all of our hope in who's gonna be elected. And that's a terrible, terrible thing to do. That's not our mission. And our mission isn't to try to get people to believe the same things we believe politically. And our mission is not to try and get people to elect a certain person so that all of a sudden the nation will be transformed. The nation that we live in is not gonna be transformed by any politician, by any law, by anything that man does. The nation that we live in in our neighborhoods are gonna be transformed by people encountering the gospel of Jesus. That's the only way it's gonna happen. And so our mission is simple. We proclaim the praises of God. And so that's our next fill in the blank. That's our last fill in the blank. As the people of God, the church is called to proclaim the praises of God. Now, that can kind of sound fluffy and high, pie in the sky kind of stuff. Well, we proclaim the praises of God to everyone. What does that mean? How do we how do we really break that down? Well, I'm gonna give you three examples because we actually do this a whole lot more. We proclaim the praises of something all the time. Okay? So, number one, here's an example for you. My wife. She didn't know I was gonna do this, but I love my wife, and I'm not trying to get brownie points here, all right? But I married an amazing woman, and she loves God, and she's an incredible wife and an incredible mom, and I'm so thankful for her. And I brag about her to people. Sometimes they get a little sick of it, you know, like, okay, I get it. Your wife's amazing. Like, leave me alone, okay? Honey, why don't you do that stuff? And I'm like, I didn't want to get you in trouble, you know. Like, but I love Tracy, she's awesome, and I proclaim the praises of Tracy to people around me. All right. Last year, uh, every Wednesday at work, she sent me with uh with like cookies and stuff for the my co-workers to have, and and people loved that. And I was proud to like say, Man, I'm so thankful for my wife who does this. It was great. Okay, so that's what it means to proclaim the praises. When I became a dad last summer, you bet I was posting pictures on Facebook, left and right. Look at my daughter. You remember in the Lion King when uh he holds up Simba and he's like, Behold, right? Man, with Greta, I wanted the whole world to know about her. And whether you believe this or not, she is the cutest kid in the whole world. Okay? So I announce to people around me, and I'm proud of her, and I proclaim the praises of Greta to the people around me. And last, and in this case, very much least, I'm a Texas Rangers fan. Okay, can I confess that? And it's a terrible year, all right? They're not doing so well. But when it comes time to talk baseball with anybody in any setting, I'm proclaiming the praises of the Texas Rangers. That's my team, okay? Nick's a college football guy, UT football. Man, it doesn't matter how bad they're doing. He's still, we got hope, right? But there's a chance, it's gonna happen someday. So we get excited about those things. God's the same way, he's far greater than all of those things. So, what does it look like to proclaim the praises of God? You don't have to be weird about it, it doesn't have to be strange, but if God truly is in you and working in you and increasing in you, like we said in week one, you're not gonna be able to contain it. So I can picture a conversation like this with a coworker tomorrow if it happens, and I pray that it would. Maybe they asked me, hey, how was your weekend? And I get a chance to say, it was really amazing. I got to spend time with my church family on Saturday and Sunday. We we were reflecting on what God has done for us and how Christ has served us, and I'm just really thankful for them and what God's teaching me right now. Now, they can respond in a lot of different ways. We we don't control someone's response. And they may look at you and they may think, okay, I'm shifting this conversation to something else right now because I don't want to talk about the things of God, and that's okay too. But I will tell you this they will know who you praise, and they will know what's most important to you. And that one of the worst things we could ever do as believers is to be ashamed or be hiding behind, like, oh, I don't know, I don't have the boldness to do it. I struggle with this. Can I just say that personally? This is an area of struggle for me. Like, I'm not always ready to just be like, hey, let me tell you what Jesus did. Sometimes it's hard, but we need to pray and we need to ask God to give us the strength and the boldness to go out there and tell people about what He has done for us. Because, like I said earlier, that's how the world is gonna be changed, and that's how this building is gonna increase. Okay? So let's talk about practically speaking where we go from here. I didn't leave, I didn't make this a section in the worship guide, but if you've got some room left over, I want to I want to just speak to those three areas again, the church as individuals, the church on mission, or the church as a community, and then the church on mission. Okay, because chances are, my hope is that God has spoken to you today through this, and that He's maybe He stirred your heart to respond in a certain way. And whatever that is, I pray that you would do that. Okay? So let's look at section one, the church as individuals. We really focused on the idea that we've got to grow in God's word and we've got to read the Bible, and we've got to know what it says, that that's what would increase our maturity and our holiness. So if God today is saying, you know what, you don't really do that very much, and I want to speak to you through my word, but you've got to make time for that to happen, then I want to give you three ways that you can move forward in that. Number one, take this worship guide, and you'll notice there's a reading plan on the other side where you've been taking notes. Monday through Saturday, there's passages, one for each day. Sunday, get up and read them all. Okay? But this is a practical way that you can read God's word every day. And then you might be saying, Well, okay, I can do that. I can get up and I can read it, but what if I don't understand what I'm reading? Great question. When I first became a Christian and someone started teaching me how to read the Bible, one of the I was taught at an early age that on my own I can't understand this. But if I would pray and ask God, since He's the one who wrote it, hey, what do you want to teach me today, God? Will you open my heart? Will you show me one thing in your word today as I read that that would make sense and would I could apply to my life? He has been faithful in that prayer. And I cannot think of a single time whenever I've asked God to do that and he hasn't shown up and said, Yeah, look at this right here. Okay? I can tell you when I don't do that, I don't I don't always figure it out. I'm not I'm not that smart. Okay? So, worship guide, pray, and then if still you're struggling a little bit, go find another believer and say, Will you read this passage with me? I you seem like you know what you're talking about, and like you you love God's word. Can you help me understand this? That's perfectly okay. Three ways that you can grow in your individual calling to grow in God's word. Okay, maybe the second section of today's message is what spoke to you as you think about the church as a community. How can you grow in that? And God's saying, you know what? You need to be committed to more than just Sundays. If that's you in the room, I encourage you, go find a life group. They start up September 7th, there's information back at the connection point. Go be vulnerable, go be willing to let some people see you on some bad days. Go do life with some people. You will grow in that. Uh, another way that uh you can increase in your growth as a community member is to serve. And we've been pounding that hammer a lot lately, serve, serve, serve, but it's the truth. You want to you want to grow personally, start serving and sacrificing, and it'll happen. Okay? And then the last section here, maybe maybe God's speaking to you and saying, you know what? You know my word and you're reading and growing in that and you're plugged into the community, but you need to grow in your evangelism. You need to grow in your proclamation or your speaking about who I am to people. You need to stop being afraid and you need to start telling people about who I am and what I've done. If that's you this morning, my challenge for you is to start praying for the people around you, your coworkers, your neighbors, your family members that don't know Jesus, start by prayer. You won't get anywhere with people if you just walk up to them and say, Okay, here it is. Now what are you gonna do with it? But if you start praying and ask God to soften their hearts, I but I believe that He will, and that when the opportunity comes for you to share the gospel with them, you'll be amazed at what God does. Now, just to personally speak into that, as I said earlier, I struggle in this area, and sometimes I'm afraid and I don't want to go and I don't want to share the gospel. But I can tell you this I have not shared the gospel with someone yet who slapped me in the face, who said, that's ridiculous. I don't who who responded negatively to me. Most people, when they're confronted with the cornerstone, they may internally have to process some things, but most of the time they're not gonna come at you with fists blazing. So don't be afraid of them. Okay? But ask God to give you boldness, and I believe that He will. As a church, if we commit to growing in these areas, the world around us can be transformed, and we can see the spiritual house of God built for his glory. Let's pray.