Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Romans 10:9-15.
Because if you confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord and believe
in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart
one believes and is justified,
and with the mouth one confesses
and is saved.
For the Scripture says, everyone who
believes in him will not be put to shame.
For there is no distinction
between Jew and Greek.
For the same Lord is Lord of all.
Bestowing his riches on all
who call on him.
For everyone who calls on
the name of the Lord will be saved.
How then will they call on him in whom
they have not believed?
And how are they to believe in him of whom
they have never heard?
And how are they to hear
without someone preaching?
And how
are they to preach unless they are sent?
As it is written,
how beautiful are the feet of those
who preach the good news.
Well, hey,
welcome to the weekend
gathering of Christ Community Chapel.
So great to see you this morning.
If we've not met before.
My name is Jimmy Kozy.
I'm one of the pastors here
as a part of my role
I also have the privilege
of leading Orchard NEO,
which you just heard about on video.
Orchard NEO is our church planting
organization here at Christ Community
Chapel.
We started it in 2019 with the goal
that by the year 2050,
we would plant 60 churches in communities
all around Northeast Ohio. And Jorge
and Brandon, who you just met via video
represent our 11th and 12th churches
that Christ Community
Chapel has planted in Northeast Ohio.
And I
was having a conversation
with somebody in the community recently,
a person who works in the school district
I coach there.
And, this person, she was asking me
about my day to day here at CCC.
And one of the things that I told her
is that I'm involved in church planting,
and I could tell that didn't
really register with her because I don't
I don't think she's a Christian.
And so I said, well,
we start new churches and communities
all around Northeast Ohio.
So we bring a guy in, we train him,
we resource him,
we find him, and after two years,
he leaves our program,
the pastor of a fully independent,
autonomous church.
And I could see the question on the tip
of her tongue, why would you do that?
With all the things that a
church of our size and with our resources
could be involved in?
Why are we so engaged and invested
in starting new churches
all around Northeast Ohio?
And the answer is found in
Romans chapter ten.
In Romans chapter ten,
I see there's a three part answer.
It goes like this.
This will serve as our outline
for this morning.
Jesus gives clarity.
Jesus gives us clarity.
Clarity creates urgency.
And then urgency drives action.
Jesus gives us clarity.
Clarity creates urgency.
Urgency drives action.
We'll start with that first point.
Jesus gives us clarity.
Let me read for you Romans chapter
ten, verses nine and ten, which say this
because if you confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord, and believe
in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart
one believes and is justified,
and with the mouth
one confesses and is saved.
Here's what I mean
when I say that Jesus gives us clarity.
Because of Jesus, we can know God.
And if you're here today
and you are not a Christian,
or you would not identify yourself
as a Christian
if you don't hear anything else
I say this morning, hear this.
You can know God.
You don't have to wonder about him.
You don't have to wonder what he's like,
what he's interested
in, what his plan is for you,
what he expects for you, what he expects
from you, what it means for us
to have a relationship with him.
All of those things have been revealed
to us
through the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
What that means is
that God is not ambivalent toward you.
He's not standing at an arm's length.
He's not hiding from you.
He wants to have a personal relationship
with you that is made possible
through the blood of his son,
Jesus Christ.
You can know God.
So if you ever wondered what is God like,
look at Jesus.
If you ever, ever wondered,
what does God want from me?
What does God want for me?
Look at Jesus.
Does God want to have a relationship
with me?
Look at Jesus.
He sent his own son to die
that he might have relationship with you.
You can know God.
Jesus gives us
spiritual clarity, crystal clarity
about what the nature
of our relationship with God is like.
But that clarity creates urgency.
And that's my second point.
Here's what I mean by that.
Let me read for you again
from Romans chapter ten.
I'm going to read verse 13,
which says this
for everyone who calls on
the name of the Lord will be saved.
This verse is both amazing
and terrifying simultaneously,
and here's why I say that.
It's amazing
because of what it says about the goodness
and grace of God that is available to you
and I through Jesus Christ.
Here's what it means
to have a relationship with God.
God sent His Son Jesus to die
so that the barrier between us
and him could be broken down
so that we could be forgiven of our sins,
so that we could be reconciled to him
and have the opportunity to belong to him
forever. Here's a test
if you really understand this.
One way to think about it
is this if you stood before God today
and the question was asked of you,
why should God accept you?
If your answer is anything
other than the body
and blood of Jesus Christ broken
and shed on my behalf,
then you may not understand fully
what the Bible says
about what it means to be a Christian,
because what that says
is that everyone who calls on
the name of the Lord will be saved.
That means that everything that you think
that you need to do to please God,
every bit of religious performance,
whether it's being a good person or
being moral or being generous
or attending church or reading your Bible,
all of those things, while they are good
things they don't accomplish for us.
Our relationship with God.
Our relationship with God is based
solely on the performance
of Jesus Christ on our behalf
that is credited to us all we do
is trust in him,
call on his name and be saved.
That is amazing.
But it's also terrifying.
It's terrifying
because of the converse of that statement.
Because if it's true
that everyone who calls on
the name of the Lord will be saved,
then the logic must follow that.
It must also be true
that everyone who does not
call on
the name of the Lord will not be saved.
This makes me
think about Jurassic Park,
and I know what you're thinking.
I can't believe this guy is going to try
to connect Jurassic Park to the Bible.
That's a fair criticism.
I guess it's possible I spent so much time
thinking about whether I could, that
I didn't stop to consider whether or not
I should, but we're going anyway.
I love Jurassic Park.
If Jurassic Park is on, I'm in.
Like if you held up an iPad
in the middle of the service right now
with Jurassic Park,
I would be tempted to stop
and just watch it play out.
There are seven Jurassic parks
by this point, I think.
Seven.
And I was watching the seventh one
a couple of weeks ago,
and I noticed something
that maybe you already know, and it's this
every Jurassic Park
movie has essentially the same story.
It goes like this.
There's this guy over here.
He's got dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs are great.
Check it out. Don't worry.
The dinosaurs are under control.
That's part one. Part two. Whoops.
We made a mistake.
The dinosaurs are loose
and people are getting eaten.
And we need to get out of here.
That's what I mean
when I say clarity creates urgency
in every Jurassic Park movie.
Whatever the side story is,
if it's about genetically
engineering crops or building a theme park
or creating new species of dinosaurs,
there's this side story that's going on.
But there's a moment in the movie where
you realize, oh, the dinosaurs are loose,
and that that clarity creates urgency
because everything else
that you were thinking about at that point
in time for the characters
in that movie, it's over
that the movie just becomes about,
we have got to get out of here
because the dinosaurs are loose,
because there's a piece of information
that raises the stakes and clarifies
things such that
you can't think about anything else.
You just got it. You just got to move.
Listen, people
who do not trust in Jesus go to hell.
That's what the Bible teaches.
In John 14 six, Jesus says,
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
Nobody comes to the father except by me.
And I know that depending
on your spiritual or religious background,
the idea of judgment
and hell can be uncomfortable.
But it's what Jesus teaches.
And so if we're going to follow him,
then we need to follow everything
that he's teaching and not pick and choose
things based on their comfort level.
Because if we do that, it flips it upside
down, then we're not following Jesus.
We're asking Jesus to follow us.
He says, I am the way,
the truth, and the life.
Nobody comes to the father except by me.
And this creates incredible urgency for us
because of what's going on around us.
Northeast Ohio has 4.5 million people.
I saw some data from a survey
that was held in 2024.
The most recent thing I could find
estimated that about 40%
at most of people in Northeast
Ohio would consider themselves Christians.
If you think about what that means,
that means that right now,
there are 2.5 million or more people
within driving distance of where we are
who have not called
on the name of the Lord
and will not be saved.
That's urgency, but it's personal.
It's more than just big numbers.
It's about you and I.
Every one of us has people in our sphere
of influence friends, neighbors,
kids on our our or parents of kids
on our other, our kids sports teams,
people who play golf with people
we see on a day to day basis,
who we know are not Christians,
have not placed their faith in Jesus.
That's what I mean
when I say clarity creates urgency,
and that
leads to a feeling of
somebody needs to do something.
We need to do something.
So the question is,
what are we going to do about it?
And that leads to my third point,
which is urgency drives action.
You can see that logic, by the way,
play out in this passage.
You know, it starts with if you confess
with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart, God raised him
from the dead, you'll be saved.
That's clarity.
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
will be saved. Urgency.
And then he moves immediately into
a cascade of action oriented questions.
Listen to this in verse 14 and 15.
How then will they call on him in whom
they have not believed?
And how are they to believe in him of whom
they have never heard?
And how are they to hear
without someone preaching?
And how are they to preach
unless they are sent as it is written?
How beautiful are the feet of those
who preach the good news?
Urgency drives
action, and that's what Orchard is.
Orchard is action driven by urgency,
created by clarity given by Jesus.
Because Orchard, know at its fundamental
core, is not a church
starting organization.
Orchard NGO exists
so that people in Northeast Ohio
who do not currently have a relationship
with Jesus, who have not called
on the name of the Lord
and therefore would not be saved,
have an opportunity
to hear about Jesus, the goodness
and grace of God that is available
to all of us through him.
Church planting is a means to an end.
The end being that people
would be able to come to faith in
Jesus because they heard,
because they believed, because they heard,
because someone preached,
because someone sent the exact order
that plays out in that passage.
That is the mission that we are on.
And it's a mission for us
as followers of Jesus
that is driven by personal transformation.
A few
weeks ago, I stayed at a Ritz-Carlton.
I don't if you don't know me very well.
I'm not really a Ritz-Carlton kind of guy.
That's not really my vibe or my scene.
I'm more of a a Frontier Airlines kind of
guy, which we'll get to in a minute.
But I was at the Ritz-Carlton
for a conference,
and as a part of this conference,
they gave you a room at the Ritz-Carlton.
I know I said, tough job,
but I'll take this assignment.
It's going to be hard.
So I'm at the Ritz-Carlton,
and it was the day
that we were supposed to leave,
and our flight wasn't
until later in the evening.
And so you have meetings all day,
and then you got to try to
get to your flight and get out of there.
And I had a I had a situation
because I needed to check out of the room,
but my flight wasn't
until later that evening.
So I went to the desk at the Ritz-Carlton
and I said, hey, help me out.
I have to check out of my room,
but my flight's not till 5 or 6 tonight.
Is there anything you can do?
What are my options?
And, the Ritz
Carlton is known for its hospitality.
They're supposed to be the pinnacle
of guest experience and hospitality.
So I had high expectations
going into this conversation.
So I went to the desk,
and the first thing the person says to me
is, are you a Bonvoy member?
And I said, no, I'm not a Bonvoy member.
And so they said to me, well,
I can't really do much for you.
The room is available,
so you could pay for another night
if you want, but all I can really do for
you is give you another hour.
You fast forward to later that evening.
We're trying to get home.
My wife was with me.
This was on the weekend, a few weeks back
when the FAA reduced all the flights.
And so trying to go anywhere in an airport
was an absolute nightmare.
It was chaos.
And so we're in Sarasota, Florida,
trying to get back home to Cleveland.
So our flights were supposed to be
Sarasota to Atlanta, Atlanta to Cleveland.
We're sitting in the airport
and everything gets canceled.
And so we're just sitting there
trying to figure out, I run,
you know, to the line
to rebook, to try to figure out
how are we going to get home tonight.
And as I'm waiting in line,
my wife, Emily, who is a charter
member of the Frontier Discount
Den, gives me a call and says, hey,
frontier has a direct flight
to Cleveland tonight from Tampa,
which is about an hour away
in about four hours.
Should I book it? And I said, yeah,
I booked a flight.
So she booked the flight.
We hustled to the Tampa airport.
You know,
we get there and it's just chaos.
You look on the screen,
everything is red, yellow, blinking.
Every flight's delayed,
every flight is canceled.
And so we run through the airport,
we get to our gate.
Our flight is supposed
take off at, like, 8:20 p.m..
So we're
sitting at the gate having an experience
that's probably a universal experience
for anybody who's ever flown.
Says 820.
Then the time changes to 850,
then it changes to 930,
then it's 1010, then it's 1050
finally settles at 11:06 p.m.
that they say
this flight is going to take off.
My wife and I are just sitting there
saying, there's no way,
you know, there's no way
we're getting out here tonight.
We're gonna spend the night on a bench
in the Tampa airport
because it's too late to go find a hotel,
because we have to get back
for an early flight the next day.
And so we're sitting there
and it's about 1058.
And I see this frontier crew in green polo
shirts come sprinting through the airport,
run up to the gate.
And I'm telling you,
I have never seen a flight crew move
with such urgency in my entire life.
They got us on the plane in minutes.
They were doing
it was like they were going to do
whatever they could
to get us out of there. That night.
They were moving so quickly, like the guy
got up to do the whole safety thing.
He said, look, this seatbelt
is not going to do anything for you if
this plane crashes,
I can.
Would you please just put it on
so we can push back from the gate?
So, so we can get out of here.
I mean, it was it was amazing.
They were moving incredibly fast
and doing whatever they could.
So as we were flying home,
I was juxtaposing these two experiences
against one another.
On one hand,
you had the Ritz-Carlton, who's supposed
to be known for their hospitality,
and they were relatively ambivalent
to the situation that we were in.
On the other hand, you have frontier,
which is a budget
airline and often lives up
to their reputation as such.
But it seemed like they were going to do
whatever they could do
to get us to Cleveland that night,
and it didn't make sense to me.
I was puzzled by this,
and I was trying to figure out,
and it didn't make sense to me
until I walked off the airplane
because Emily and I walked.
We were among the last off the plane.
We walked down the jetway with the crew,
and as we're walking,
the crew is laughing.
They're joking, they're celebrating,
and I see they've all got big bags on.
And I realized in that moment,
every person on
that crew was from Cleveland.
So for them,
this flight was not about doing their job.
This flight was about getting home.
They needed to get home just as badly
as anybody else on that plane.
And that is the heart behind Orchard now.
That's why we do what we do
because of what Jesus has done for us.
Because of him, we have the opportunity
to have relationship
with the God of the universe, who loves us
and wants us to belong to him.
And so we want
to take as many people with us as we can.
That's why we plant churches.
This weekend at CTC,
we are going to baptize 36 people.
That means that year to date, in the year
2025,
we will have baptized 265 people
at Christ Community Chapel.
And if you think about what that means
when somebody gets baptized,
they're saying, I have called
on the name of the Lord and been saved.
And this is a symbol
for all of you to see.
That's 265 lives
that have been transformed
by the goodness and grace of Jesus Christ.
That's why we celebrate, because baptism
is not a bonvoy membership.
Baptism is a plane landing in the middle
of the night, in the cold, in the rain,
at home, when you never thought
that you'd get there.
And we want to take as many people with us
as we can.
Chad Young this year one of our church
planters in Ravenna planted
Upward City Church they launched on Easter
just eight months ago,
and on their launch Sunday,
they baptized 13 people.
They've baptized 14 people now,
and they have
six more
who are in the queue to get baptized.
That's 20 people in Ravenna
who had the opportunity
to hear of the goodness
and grace of Jesus available to us.
Jorge Alvarado is headed to Latin
American immigrants, which are flocking
to the Canton and Akron area.
And when I met Jorge,
we could not find a single
Spanish speaking church in that area.
So Jorge is going to go.
He's been sent to preach
so that they might hear and believe
and call in the name of the Lord
and be saved.
Brandon Stubbs headed to Chagrin Falls
Park, a neighborhood
I'm guessing you didn't even know
existed until 20 minutes ago.
So the people there
might call on the name of the Lord
because they believed, because they heard,
because Brandon was sent to preach
to them.
That is why we do Orchard now.
It's so that every community in Northeast
Ohio, 2.5 million people,
might have the opportunity
to hear of the goodness and grace of God
that is available
to every one of us through Jesus.
Let's pray together.
Father
in Heaven, we thank you for the goodness
and grace that you've made available
to us through your Son, Jesus.
The first and foremost.
If we've trusted in him,
we have been made new.
We've been forgiven. We've been redeemed.
We've been given new life,
and we belong to you.
We pray for our orchard church planters.
We pray that you would send them
with power,
that you would give them favor,
that you would help them
to have success in their communities, not
so that they would grow an organization,
but so that people would come to faith in
Jesus Christ, your son,
who you sent to die for us,
your son, in whose name we pray.
Amen.