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"Here as in Heaven."
For more information visit : garden.church
You're listening to the Garden Church podcast. We're in a series called church on fire, a journey through the book of acts. This is a story of ordinary people filled with the spirit, carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
Darren Rouanzoin:Well, people came back. We had, I they told me, like, 640 people in that service, adults. So same as last week. So we have a problem because the 9AM was completely packed and the 11:15 is packed. And I was hoping last week, I'm like, alright team, if one isn't there's no one at one, it's okay.
Darren Rouanzoin:We can close her down. And last week it was full so God's just moving. Yeah, maybe five. God's moving right now. This is crazy.
Darren Rouanzoin:I was driving back and you know I this is a personal side like I I was something like I feel like I've been preparing my whole ministry life for this moment. Like when I was 22 and filled the spirit and then went to India I felt God say start a church like in my imagination I had like church planning. Like I had cities in this like original drawing. I had Long Beach and it was like Cosmos and LA and Paris. It was all these things.
Darren Rouanzoin:And like as a 22 year old, it's like Joseph going like one day you're gonna bow down, know. And it's like, but I'm like, what if it's possible that God would release a church who's been formed in obscurity for eighteen years for this moment to speak a message and to live that message in this moment. Perhaps it would awaken a church and we would embody the resurrection reality. And I'm dreaming about that because I have to preach something similarly right now. So if you have your Bibles, let's go.
Darren Rouanzoin:We're Acts chapter four. Let me see them. Hold them up. I'm judging every environment. I am in.
Darren Rouanzoin:Totally judging you. I I realize you are like, Look I have a It is magnified on big and I can't see. They make giant print Bibles. And I said, If you if you have to like wheel yours in like on a dolly, I will reserve front row seats for you and the three chairs for the Word of God, no problem. No quite.
Darren Rouanzoin:No. I'm just kidding. But people pushed back online. Online I was like, people are like, oh you know, why are you being legalistic? I'm like, I'll tell you why.
Darren Rouanzoin:Because this has all of your idols with it. This doesn't. Alright. Let's stay. Let's stick to the word.
Darren Rouanzoin:Here we go. What am I supposed to say? Oh yeah. Okay. Acts chapter four verse 32.
Darren Rouanzoin:Last week if you were here we looked at the the the episode before. I I you know I just have to say I read the book of Acts. If you're new to the Bible. Book of Acts is about the the the testimony of the early church. Right?
Darren Rouanzoin:And it's written as a narrative so the best way to read it is like a movie. And unfortunately like we're not we're not immersed in a literary kind of culture. We're immersed in like entertainment culture so we get movies right? We get thrillers like anyone watch Alex Climb That Tower last night on Netflix? How many of you watched it?
Darren Rouanzoin:I had to I had to I couldn't finish it. You guys know what I'm talking about? You're like the most epic live event in human history? And you're like yeah nobody does Now explain to your neighbor okay. Go ahead.
Darren Rouanzoin:Take your time. This is great. And there was fellowship. This guy climbs a tower, a 100 and something story skyscraper free soloed it and and they kept like, I was watching and he's like gets to this part where he has to like lean out and like not use his hands and I'm like, I'm done guys. I'm done.
Darren Rouanzoin:And then it would like cut to like him and his house with his daughters and then like, I'm like, oh thank God. Okay. Okay. But that's Acts. Yeah.
Darren Rouanzoin:Like last week, what we read is like, you know, the disciples are gonna get shut down and they're like, you know, they don't say stop them God. They say enable your servants to with all boldness to go out and proclaim Jesus the resurrected Messiah. And then God's like, Holy Spirit comes and where they are it says, the room shook like it shakes which is which is a theophany in the Old Testament. It's like the manifest presence of God was experienced. That's what it's like.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's like this epic sequence and then and then Luke cuts to the next day. To the next season. It's not it's not like the Holy Spirit just fills rooms and shakes the rooms. It's now it pans out and it zooms in and this is what it looks like when we live empowered by the spirit together. Because the Holy Spirit just doesn't just fill rooms.
Darren Rouanzoin:He rearranges your life. He doesn't just shake worship gatherings. He reorders your desires. He reorders your longings. He reorders the things that matter most Because you are not called as a disciple of Jesus to do spiritual things.
Darren Rouanzoin:Well, let me just rephrase that. Everything's spiritual. He's very interested in the the conversations you have in your kitchen. He's very interested in how you manage your resources like your bank account, your 401 k, your cars, your phones, your material possessions. He's very interested in how you live amongst the fellow brothers and sisters in the church.
Darren Rouanzoin:You with me church? We're already preaching. In case you didn't know, I already started. And you know, I think about that because when I look at Southern California context, we live with so much spiritual content. Like we live in a moment in time where we are rich, overly saturated with information and access and spiritual options.
Darren Rouanzoin:But acts doesn't describe a church that's mastered content. It describes a church that's been conquered by the risen Lord Jesus. They've they've surrendered everything because he lives. It's a very different discipleship culture we live in today. Let me just say as a disclaimer, this sermon is not about money.
Darren Rouanzoin:You hear me? Okay. Good. Like when people say it's not about something it probably is. You liar.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is me talking to thumb warriors. Which now I think of spy kids. Anyone know? Right? The thumb the thumb people?
Darren Rouanzoin:So when I talk about thumb words I think of the spy kids walking around its thumbs. So if you're watching online I'm thinking of you. All your negative comments. Anyway, so let's keep going. This passage is not about money it's about freedom.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's about what happens when fear loses its grip on a people And Luke will show you that the resurrection power creates a new social reality. Alright. Here we go. I I I did three points in at the 09:00. I did two points at the 10:00 so I might get to one.
Darren Rouanzoin:No, I'm gonna We're gonna see how many how many how many things Jesus reorders today but for sure we're gonna get to one. Here we go. Acts chapter four. Oh this is so good. Let me pray.
Darren Rouanzoin:Jesus open our hearts to your word. Like a surgeon with a scalpel. Cut off the things that are tender to our heart but destructive to our soul. And release us into wholeness in Jesus name. Amen.
Darren Rouanzoin:All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their stuff was their own. But they shared some stuff. That's the Southern California translation of the Bible. They shared everything they had.
Darren Rouanzoin:With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Okay. We're gonna we're gonna break down this these verses in just a bit but I wanna start with this line that Luke uses and it's so beautiful. It's he says, all the believers were one in heart and mind. One in one in heart or another translation in Greek and soul.
Darren Rouanzoin:And how, have you heard those phrases together in the Bible? Can we be good Bible students real quick? Have you heard like heart and soul, heart and mind together? Anyone wanna talk about where it's said? What?
Darren Rouanzoin:Deuteronomy. There we go. What? Deuteronomy six. Oh you got the reference.
Darren Rouanzoin:Deuteronomy six verse what? Four. You're good. You're good. Four, five.
Darren Rouanzoin:I got your back. That was great. This is so good. So when we read this phrase as good students of scripture I'm gonna come down here because I'm I'm I got energy from you all. Eleven fifteen.
Darren Rouanzoin:So far you're my favorite. So let's keep it up. Bring it up. You're competing against three others now. Competition's higher.
Darren Rouanzoin:So Deuteronomy six four is this famous prayer. It's the, hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And it goes on. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Jesus quotes this as the greatest commandment, adds Leviticus into there, love your neighbor as yourself.
Darren Rouanzoin:But the Shema in the first century would have been read, said and spoken out loud all the time. That Shema is that first word here and that's what it was referred to. This kind of pledge of allegiance to the covenant of Yahweh. This was the summary prayer. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's the summary of everything that's commanded in the Old Testament. Summarized in a prayer. You wake up, you say the Shema, you go to bed, you say the Shema right before bed. You walk into a building, you say the Shema. So Luke is saying something very specific.
Darren Rouanzoin:He's drawing your imagination back to the entire covenant of the Old Testament which is about living faithfully to God and God's ways. Are you with me church? But it's not just the the theology of covenant and maybe you're new to church and you don't know that word covenant. Covenant is what we make when we marry someone in a Christian wedding. It's not a contract.
Darren Rouanzoin:Sure I might sign a paper for this day but when I make a covenant, a vow before God I'm saying, I'm in no matter what. Death does us apart. If you're sick, I'm with you. If you get injured, I'm with you. If we get crisis, I'm with you.
Darren Rouanzoin:If you change because by the way, everyone changes. That's just a thing. You're gonna grow. I'm with you in the changing. When I make a mistake, when you make a mistake.
Darren Rouanzoin:I'm here. I'm not going. This is not based on my performance. It's based on my word that I'm with you. That's covenant.
Darren Rouanzoin:God makes a covenant with us first. So what Luke does is he says, hey, the covenant community of the Old Testament is embodied and fulfilled by the church. How's that? You still don't get it. Let me, no, no, no.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's okay. I'm gonna dig deeper because I'm gonna make you do some work with me. Number two, is it's not just drawing us to the covenant of the Old Testament. Luke is a student of Greek and Roman antiquity. And we read Aristotle, we read about Plato.
Darren Rouanzoin:There was in Roman and Greek antiquity an idealized community. I mean I know that's ancient. Hold on real quick. I know that's what we, that's like that seems very primitive. Like the idea that you would idealize a certain group of people that you wanna belong to over other groups of people.
Darren Rouanzoin:Right? Like this is archaic. Like we don't do that today. We would never today try to assume that there are better groups of people to associate with than others. Right?
Darren Rouanzoin:Like the idealized version people that look like me, that dress like me, that vote like me, that talk like me, that have money like me, that educate like me. We would never just form that community as the ideal. That's what they did back then obviously. Those tribal people. Do you see sarcasm?
Darren Rouanzoin:Yes. Because I wanna make some of you like wow. That pastor doesn't know what it's like to live right now. So there is this thing that was expected and and what Luke does is he borrows from cultural ideal and he says the ideal is found in the church. And that ideal he redefines because we'll see there's diversity, there's difference, there's conflict, there's need, there's wealthy people, there's poor people, there's agendas that all are pushed to the side because what unifies the church is Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:Jesus is their shared center. This is what unites us. So the first thing though, that the Holy Spirit reorders. Is the Holy Spirit reorders our commitment to community. The first thing that we see happen.
Darren Rouanzoin:So in Acts two, Holy Spirit comes. Acts four, the Holy Spirit comes. The very next, part of Acts two and four are these snapshots of what communal life looks like. This is what happens after the God encounter in a worship gathering. What happens next is the spirit begins to reorder and rearrange the everyday life of the community.
Darren Rouanzoin:So we don't live in the high of a worship gathering. We live in the ordinary places where God's manifest presence makes us something new and that new thing is called church. Now the problem is I say that and we are being formed by something else other than covenant and this rich idealized community with Jesus at the center in our context. Are we not? Or do you have it naturally?
Darren Rouanzoin:You've figured it out. Yes? You're like, don't know what you're talking about. I nailed it. Right?
Darren Rouanzoin:I nailed my discipleship to Jesus. I figured it out. No. You didn't. Because you can't do it without people.
Darren Rouanzoin:You can't do it without the church. And the problem is, you wake up every morning, you don't even have to try and you're being deformed by culture. Anyone wanna say yes and amen? Little do you know that every algorithm, every story you believe, every agreement you have made about yourself that doesn't align to the teachings of truth is a formation machine conforming you into the image of the world or an image of dark kingdom of darkness and Satan not the way of Jesus. So our job as a church is to take off those habits and practices the old self and put on the new self being conformed to the image of God.
Darren Rouanzoin:You know what I'm talking about. So but we approach community based on this consumer culture. It's hard to envision the kind of community that's written in the New Testament that's expected of a spirit filled community when we read this through the lens of consumerism. When we approach not just relationships but everything as a product to consume, right? So we treat community like a subscription model.
Darren Rouanzoin:We'll participate as long as it meets our needs, fits our schedules, mass matches our taste preferences and reinforces our sense of control and belonging. We approach community with a mindset that actually sabotages covenant community. Sabotages what Christ is working in through the power of the spirit in the early church. So our natural tendency, our default is lack of commitment. Right?
Darren Rouanzoin:We keep our options open. We love the invitation that says yes, no, maybe. I just hold on. So you got a thousand maybes coming to the event. And two nos and seven yeses.
Darren Rouanzoin:So what do you prep for? Because that's what we've done. We've and this is why Jesus says, let your s be yes and your no be no. We don't say maybe. We say yes or no.
Darren Rouanzoin:We let people deal with the consequences of our decisions and our words actually meaning something today. I had this conversation with my boy Ezra on the on the drive the other day. He was like, what does it mean to swear to something? He's like, because somebody so and so said, oh I swear or do you swear it to him? And I was like, what does that mean?
Darren Rouanzoin:I'm like, oh buddy, I love your innocence right now. I'm like you're right because as Christians we live in a world where we say what we mean and we mean what we say and we don't need to add exaggeration based to try to convince people that we are truth tellers. We are always truth tellers. This is the sermon on mount. That's all it is.
Darren Rouanzoin:Right? So for us because we're living in consumerism, we don't have commitment. We lack consistency because busyness is a mode of life. We we're we love unintentionally. We love being shallow because we don't know how to be vulnerable.
Darren Rouanzoin:Because we live with fear of being rejected, of being known. If they really know me, then these things happen. But see in covenant, it doesn't matter. You could bring the worst and it's like, I'm still in. That you did this thing way back then, that's okay.
Darren Rouanzoin:That no longer defines who you are. What defines who you are is Jesus. Now, let's work this out together over a long period of time because I'm in. But we hide and we're dishonest in community today. We carry bitterness and resentment and unforgiveness.
Darren Rouanzoin:All of these sabotage community and we have lots of expectations because we're consumers. We yelp everything. Right? We love the coffee that you make at the coffee shop but the vibe was off. Am I right?
Darren Rouanzoin:Like the tone of the hostess was rude at the restaurant so it's one star. It was the best burger I've ever had and it was beautiful inside and everything else was great. But I am curating a world based on myself. Now this is what, Dederich Bonhoeffer addresses in his book Life Together. Great book.
Darren Rouanzoin:One of my top recommended books on community. He says this, every human wish wish dream that is injected into Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He says, he who loves the dream of community more than the community itself becomes the destroyer of community even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community, demands that it be realized by God, by others and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, set up sets up his own law and judges the community and God and himself accordingly.
Darren Rouanzoin:What's he saying? If you love the idea of community, if you love an ideal of community, if you love a vision of a community where you're doing things a certain way, where the liturgy looks like this, the people do it this way, where people do it this way, where you get to do this and you get to use your gifts because God gave you that gift and that's the gift that matters most, you destroy the community that you wanna be a part of. Okay, so let that sit for a little bit. You want you wanna do some internal work to realize that that group wasn't the problem you were? And then what happens is you go and you're like, Oh that group looks awesome.
Darren Rouanzoin:This one's toxic. I'm out. Not realizing you're the yeast of toxicity and then you just and then it happens again. It's self fulfillment prophecy. They don't become the image you want them to be and you hate them for it.
Darren Rouanzoin:I know I'm preaching. When I started the garden, my wife and I lived in Newport Beach, right next to Kit Coffee, Keen Coffee, 17th Street Costa Mesa in Newport. Beautiful place where you wanna retire or have millions and millions of dollars. I drove a Dodge Neon and would park it. She worked at Fashion Island.
Darren Rouanzoin:I would park it off-site if you've ever been to Fashion Island because I was embarrassed. Because I was formed by image, right? Now it can go both directions. I'll tell you a story later. My friend parked one of his vehicles at my house for three weeks because he was out of town and and he and he he's like, please drive my car.
Darren Rouanzoin:And I was like, not gonna drive your car. He's like, no, no, you need to drive it. And then one day he text me a snapshot picture of his email from Mercedes Benz. It's a G Wagon. And it says, it needs to charge for sixty minutes.
Darren Rouanzoin:And he's like, you have to drive it for sixty minutes. And I'm literally inside at war. What will people think of me if I'm driving a G Wagon? Because I live in this world of what a pastor should look like and what he shouldn't look like. Because don't we all do this all the time?
Darren Rouanzoin:Some of you are like, I don't have that problem. I'll drive the g wagon all day. Let's go. I'm like, who's gonna see me? And the only person that saw me out of context in our church was at a 5AM workout on Tuesday of last week because I drove it. And he goes, wow, Costa Mesa should be doing great right now. Where
Darren Rouanzoin:was I? I don't know where I was going. You curate an image. Oh, so I I was talking about so anyways back in Costa Mesa when I came here we had this massive community in Costa Mesa and they were all coming to start this church with me. 40 something people like, oh, we're gonna go to Long Beach.
Darren Rouanzoin:We're gonna plant this church. And by the time we moved here, all of them left. There wasn't one person. They're all like, no, we're not gonna come. Except for one person who was the worship guy who served, one of my best friends.
Darren Rouanzoin:And I remember Bill, he said this line that changed my heart forever. He said, hey, Darren, you gotta love the people that Jesus brings to build the church. Not the vision you think God gave you. I tell church planners that all all the time. That's pastor Bill, that's not me.
Darren Rouanzoin:I'm not that smart. And it's so true. This is the great secret of finding community. You don't start with yourself. You start with, how can I serve?
Darren Rouanzoin:How can I belong? And the early church is one heart and one mind. And there's this beautiful thing that takes place. Can I say one more thing about this? Yeah.
Darren Rouanzoin:I'm I don't care what I'm gonna I'm gonna do whatever I want. I got I don't have to drive anywhere. Freedom at the 11:15 and the 01:15. This this is I wanna press in a little more. Can we do that?
Darren Rouanzoin:Because this consumerism that marks the way we do community, the way we do life with Jesus is not a new thing. So how how many of you have heard about the Benedictine monks? Right? In the sixth century. Yeah.
Darren Rouanzoin:Okay. So Benedict created this monastic movement and created a list of vows and convictions about community and about what it would mean to be a Benedict monk. And at the time that he became a monk and formed this new rule of life, The Roman Empire was in chaos. They were had a political upheaval. They had a cultural like debaucherous culture that was like destroying people.
Darren Rouanzoin:But he said, there was a spiritual disease within the church. Okay. And he wrote and he this is a summary of him. He says, there was this spiritual restlessness. He called them wandering monks.
Darren Rouanzoin:He said, constantly moving from monastery to monastery, always claiming God was doing something new somewhere else. So they avoided accountability, They resisted obedience and they never stayed long enough in community to be formed into the image of God. In the sixth century, you had consumer Christians going about dabbling in different places, consuming different spiritual communities. And so his solution to the crisis of Christian consumerism was the vow of stability. It's about covenanting to a people and place.
Darren Rouanzoin:It's the if you wanna be a Benedictine monk, you say yes and you're committed to these 16 people, these 20 people and you're with them for the good and the bad because God forms his church in the crucible of covenant community. He forms you into the image of Christ not by picking and choosing where you wanna go but by committing to the same people and that over a long period of time is what creates the greatest transformation guaranteed. You with me church? So something about the Holy Spirit comes and all of a sudden there's this new life forming, this new community and it's it's the spirit that empowers a covenant community because he reorders the community, the commitment to community. With me church?
Darren Rouanzoin:Okay. One observation is that the It says, with great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. I love this because what they show you is that resurrection power creates a visible social reality. The apostles proclaim resurrection with power and the community embodies resurrection with practice. What that means is witness is not only what the church says about Jesus, witness is what the church becomes because Jesus is alive.
Darren Rouanzoin:That something about the way we live together in community actually is the greatest evangelistic tool for the world to see. And I can't read all of the quotes but there are historians, are early church fathers, there are bishops, there are people who are outside of the church that were historians looking inside at the church from a secular perspective and they all said the same thing. How Christians lived amongst themselves were was the reason for radical growth. Based on how they lived together, people on the outside said, I wanna be like the church. Could you imagine?
Darren Rouanzoin:If rather than having to post our ideas, people could see our lives with one another and the outside would be like, let me in. This is what I wanna be. I wanna become like you based on how you live. That was the strategy of the Holy Spirit. To form a new family with committed people.
Darren Rouanzoin:You with me church? Okay. Point number two, let's finish the rest of Acts four and then we'll talk about my one of my favorite passages of scripture next week, Ananias and Sapphira. That was a joke. Oh, you don't know your Bible maybe.
Darren Rouanzoin:So Ananias and Sapphira is a story of what happens when someone says something and does something else and they get killed for it in the New Testament. God judges them and they die. If you are new to church welcome. Next week is really important. Got these rugs up here not just for your knees when you bend down.
Darren Rouanzoin:Just going to roll you up and take you to memorial or whatever we do. That's why we got all this security up here. We got some, you know, hospitality volunteers are trained in what to do. Just roll them over. You won't be laughing next week.
Darren Rouanzoin:I'll tell you that. Just kidding. I can't. I don't know what it is. Eleven fifteen.
Darren Rouanzoin:You bring out the best in me. You complete me. Is that Jerry Maguire? Yeah that's Jerry Maguire. Yeah that's great.
Darren Rouanzoin:I'm just a lot of movies flowing right now. Here we go. Center in Darren. Okay. With great power the apostles continue to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is so good. Orange County translation. And God's grace was so powerful at work in some of them. No. God's grace.
Darren Rouanzoin:God's grace. God's unmerited favor. The the power and the ability to do what you would never be able to do on your own. Flowing through everyone. That there were no needs among them.
Darren Rouanzoin:For from time to time, they own those who own land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet and it was distributed to anyone who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom got a nickname, he got a nickname from the apostles Barnabas which means son of encouragement, sold the field and he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles feet. Oh, I love this section. I'm not gonna have time to get through all of this but I wanna just highlight Barnabas. Can we just bring back nicknames in the church?
Darren Rouanzoin:Like I just think, it'd be so great. You're like, hey, you know, my name is is Frank. And we're like, not anymore. You know, he was given like the son of lions or whatever you know like gospel heralder. And But there is something beautiful because a lot of guys get new names and there's something about that because in Jesus, Levi, Joseph the Levi becomes son of encourager.
Darren Rouanzoin:The son of encouragement. And and this is what Luke does. He zooms in. Here's what one individual's doing. Here's what the community's all been doing.
Darren Rouanzoin:But then he cuts to like one guy, Barnabas. And they're gonna frame this story so that next story has some pretty significant things. So we'll hit on this. But Barnabas is clearly wealthy, he's upper class, he's educated, he's a Levite so he worked in the temple. He's a significant dude.
Darren Rouanzoin:And over and over again, Luke will let you know, there's gonna be wealthy people that follow Jesus, there's gonna be poor people that follow Jesus, there's gonna be politically left that follow this Jesus, politically right that follow Jesus. There's gonna be so much diversity and they're all united around Jesus. Not just united by a statement. No. Their lives are reordered to him.
Darren Rouanzoin:So now this Levite who's wealthy, his main story is Jesus and the unfolding narrative of the church. The main story is in he joined the community. He was really gifted at making money and he got a seat on the board. No. His main thing is I just laid at the apostles feet.
Darren Rouanzoin:I'm part of this journey and I wanna follow Jesus to the cross. He doesn't come in saying, alright apostle make my dream a reality. Make my ministry a reality in the local church. He lays it. This isn't designated giving.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is this is him going off thoughtfully selling something. There's a bunch of needs. I have stuff. Here it is. And Barnabas is introduced here as this wealthy guy.
Darren Rouanzoin:We know about Theophilus who funded the Gospel of Luke being written. Who funded the the book of Acts being written. We see all these people in Jesus' ministry that fund the ministry that happens because they're wealthy. We see everyone going out because they're being reordered around the life of Jesus. Barnabas is introduced and we don't really hear about him until later on.
Darren Rouanzoin:And if it wasn't for Barnabas taking his vocation, taking his wealth, taking his life and laying it at Jesus' feet, we wouldn't have the Apostle Paul. Because it's Barnabas that hears about this Pharisee that was kill slaughtering Christians and then became a Christian and he went to see him And he shows up and brings Paul who is Saul, he gets a new name too. And maybe it was Barnabas. Maybe Barnabas like, hey I got I have this gift of renaming people so come on. And he he brings them to his community and he puts his reputation on the line in the church.
Darren Rouanzoin:And then it takes off with the Apostle Paul's journey of taking the gospel all the way to Caesar's household. I mean it's you. If you're making a movie it would be amazing. The point is Jesus at the center. Now let's go back because this there's something else going on here.
Darren Rouanzoin:The second thing the Holy Spirit does is he reorders our relationship with our stuff. So this is so important because I've heard this in in in so many, I'm gonna just say ideological books that wanna take this text and say, oh there, this is how we get to the church to live without stuff. We have to take a vow of poverty. We have to we have to sell our possessions and live in a commune. That is a that is not being taught here.
Darren Rouanzoin:In the Greek words and language that Luke uses, it's clearly not a new law that's being shared. It's not a new rule that's happening. What's happening right now and actually I'm gonna read this. The the imperfect verb of this moment suggests not a sale of property upon conversion but believers selling their property when needs arose contributed contributing to a common fund supervised by the apostles. So the language itself in the Greek is saying, what was what what what if this wasn't a rule, this was a new reflex.
Darren Rouanzoin:The church began to live in such tight community that when those that had stuff began to live ordinary life with those that didn't have enough. They they didn't just sell everything. They they chose with wisdom and stewardship to to sell some things to to provide for the need. To share what they had because they were no longer owned by their stuff. This is exactly what is so controversial today to say and it's hard because you don't get this because you live, we, I'm a part of this, we live in the wealthiest nation in the world.
Darren Rouanzoin:We live in the wealthiest state of the wealthiest nation in the world. And we live in the wealthiest region, in the wealthiest state, in the wealthiest nation and country in the world. So does that influence how we see our stuff? Yes. It just say.
Darren Rouanzoin:Like because I looked at cost of living in Kentucky. I looked at cost of living in Idaho. I've looked at and then I see what it's like in the winter. Winter. Obviously, the expense of living here is totally worth it because last week we had summer in January and right now we're in person gathering while all my friends who lead churches on the East Coast are doing live stream because it's a snow blizzard storm everywhere else in the world except in SoCal.
Darren Rouanzoin:God bless Southern California. God has not forgotten this place. Everyone's running. Let them run. No.
Darren Rouanzoin:They're gonna come back to California in droves because Okay. First in the natural then the supernatural. Okay. Let's just Yeah. We are the only state without drought right now.
Darren Rouanzoin:Yeah. It rains so much in California and if that's not a symbol of what the rain that's coming in the supernatural, I don't know what to tell you. God is waking up a church. But here is the thing, he doesn't just wake us up so we are going to sing songs. He wakes us up to reorder how we live together.
Darren Rouanzoin:He wakes us up to reorder what you do with your stuff. This is so important. This remember this is not about money. This is about your freedom. Because what what happens is the spirit does not confiscate confiscate your stuff.
Darren Rouanzoin:He converts your stuff. Right? When you get converted to Jesus as a follower, your household is converted. Now all of your possessions belong to the king of your house which is Jesus Christ. But when you have the self image consumer Christianity, you just add Jesus onto your busy hectic schedule.
Darren Rouanzoin:You add Jesus onto a line item. No. He is the budget. He is the spreadsheet. He is all that is all and you lay everything at his feet.
Darren Rouanzoin:That is what it means to be a follower of Jesus and empowered by the spirit and a disciple. The promise we've made something else up. We've made a Frankenstein. We've we've created a monster that looks that looks like Christianity, it talks like Christianity but it's not Christianity. So we've made following Jesus the least common denominator.
Darren Rouanzoin:Like, oh yeah, grace gets you in it. Yes, it does. He welcomes you as you are. But then the very next thing is okay, this is how you're supposed to live. Now that you're in, you don't have you don't have to earn your way in.
Darren Rouanzoin:You receive it by grace. You come in. Great. And then he gives us the Sermon on the Mount. And he goes, okay, now this is what it's what it looks like for you to live.
Darren Rouanzoin:How's that church? Well, it got real quiet. This is this is what he calls us to. The spirit converts yourself. He does not simply change what's in your hands, he changes what's in your heart.
Darren Rouanzoin:Remember, this is about your freedom. Jesus is not after your stuff, he's after the things that hold you captive. Ownership is not necessarily a problem but it definitely becomes an idol in our lives. Would not? So the question is, do you own your stuff or does your stuff own you?
Darren Rouanzoin:And how do you know? Because what we do is we make generosity in our lives convenient and a percentage. Someone asks to borrow something, we we put limitations on that and as long as it doesn't inconvenience me then we'll do it. Early church there was a shared sacrifice, a shared burden. If you suffer, we will suffer together.
Darren Rouanzoin:So are you guys all right? It's pretty hit, it hits hard yeah? Yeah let me just let you sit with that for a second. Like there was this moment in 2016. How many of you done the throwback 2016 thing?
Darren Rouanzoin:So we were doing, my wife and I did what's called safe families for a while and we welcomed kids into our life that were at risk going into the foster system. And so often times parents or foster moms didn't have people to go to if they needed to take a work trip or if they had to go to the hospital. So say families would come around these at risk families and provide families from the church to watch children for a while. And so Alex and I got to watch a couple kids for a couple for one week and it was it was powerful. We just had Ezra at the time and there was this really fascinating, it was such a fun week.
Darren Rouanzoin:It was it was just eye opening to our family. But but these two girls who came from different systems and it was heartbreaking their stories. They were obsessed with Alex's closet as you can imagine. And this one girl like loved these new and I I I found out the term from her but they're like a specific shoe. Like I I I have tennis shoes and boots and flip flops like that's it.
Darren Rouanzoin:But they're called booties and you know, is that a thing? Eleven fifteen? It's a thing. Yeah? Yeah.
Darren Rouanzoin:Okay. So very specific thing. And this girl, she just wanted them so bad but she just wanted to use them for her birthday. She stayed over her birthday week with us and and she wanted to wear them at school and they were new for Alex. They're like suede tan booties.
Darren Rouanzoin:And and there was this wrestling. Right? Like Alex is like, well, if I give them to her, she's gonna destroy them and that's exactly how we think in our world. Right? We immediately go to scarcity.
Darren Rouanzoin:In the land of abundance in SoCal, you are all living in fear of not having enough. If I give this, that means I lack all this. And as we talked about, was like, what? I mean, they're like $80 or something which obviously that's very expensive. But I was like, this will be a symbolic moment.
Darren Rouanzoin:This will be so much more than $80 just in And I'm like, I'll buy another pair. Okay. Like, one day when I can afford it. And in the future, when I drive G Wagons. Someone's gonna clip that right there, right?
Darren Rouanzoin:That's it. And then the thumb warriors come out. Put your phone away. So she did and they got ruined and she had the most amazing time. Her whole friends like the the story that was told.
Darren Rouanzoin:But the bigger lesson, it was this identity piece for Alex and I were like, what are the things that own us? And to be honest, I'm gonna say this. I think we need to be unreasonable with our generosity. We need to be unreasonable with the things that we share. Because if Jesus gave everything, what else matters?
Darren Rouanzoin:We can share the things he's entrusted us with. And I love this because this is what it's telling us. It's not telling us that they give everything. What it's saying is that fear will tell you to hold on to things tightly because tomorrow is uncertain. Resurrection tells you tomorrow belongs to God.
Darren Rouanzoin:So generosity is not performance. Resurrection shapes our stewardship. Right? So when we live generously and when we share, we're living in light of the resurrected Jesus. Do you see how this works itself out?
Darren Rouanzoin:If fear is saying, tomorrow is uncertain. Don't share what you have because maybe you won't have enough. Christianity is saying he lives. He died and rose again. He lives.
Darren Rouanzoin:He reigns. He's coming again. In view of that eschatology, in view of that theology, he owns the tomorrow what ifs. Where fear is like here, think of all the things. Hold on.
Darren Rouanzoin:Jesus wants to form you to be like, trust me. The more you let go, the more access you have. Are you with me church? How much time we got? Oh, we're good on time.
Darren Rouanzoin:I gave you two points. Can I just leave that? No. No, you want more? I mean you can have more.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's the thing. You guys can You won it today. You earned point three. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding.
Darren Rouanzoin:I know I know. Today is good. Yeah? It's not always this good. I don't know what it's because I had pizza last night.
Darren Rouanzoin:One piece and a salad. I was like, I'll just have one. I was watching Alex climb that thing and I had to shut it off because remember that that fear mechanism where your heart's beating and your digestive system shuts off. I was experiencing that as he climbed. I was like this is the most intense thing I've ever witnessed in my life.
Darren Rouanzoin:He literally like what are we doing right now? And I like this is a historical moment for all of humanity. Watching someone do this like imagine have imagine if you watched Free Solo live. That documentary where he climbs El Capitan. I was like that would have been insane.
Darren Rouanzoin:We never got to see anything like it and we got to experience it live anyways. Where do I go from here? Oh, let's just hit on one thing. Okay, one more thing. I wanna hit on the the the last point where it says that there was no needy person among them.
Darren Rouanzoin:I think what I see in this text is the spirit reorders our response to needs. If you were to be honest with yourself, when people ask for help or something from you, don't you kind of feel inconvenienced by it? Like don't you kind of hold back like and then also like let's be honest, you kind of judge people. And what I see in in this passage is a reflection of the covenant faithful community of Deuteronomy. So when you read Deuteronomy, you read it as Moses' last words to his community.
Darren Rouanzoin:Moses, the leader of Israel is about to die and Israel is about to go into the promised land. Promised land is where they no longer receive manna. Right? Water from rocks. They're now gonna live independent from God's daily provision and they're gonna be a part of this abundance.
Darren Rouanzoin:There's gonna be this land flowing with milk and honey. They're gonna build homes. They're gonna plant gardens. They're gonna have vineyards. They're gonna marry.
Darren Rouanzoin:They're gonna have grandkids. Like there's this prosperity coming. And Deuteronomy is like this pastoral epistle of grabbing a young man's face and saying, stay here as long as you can. Like, be be Don't lose what you've received from God. And so the Shema prayer is this, and then it's talking about what's coming.
Darren Rouanzoin:Here's how you're You are to remain faithful to Yahweh when you step into abundance. Do you guys hear the theme right now? As we step into abundance, living in this land of abundance, here's what faithfulness looks like and they they he has this line in Deuteronomy 15 verse four. He says, however, there need be no people, no poor people among you. For in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance.
Darren Rouanzoin:He will richly bless you if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I'm giving you today. So when it says there's no needy person among you, Luke draws your imagination back to Deuteronomy 15. Where the people of God are to live in such a way that the covenant of God of loving God is lived through the way we love each other. And the way we love each other is not like a slap in the back and a good good job boy. It is actually sharing our resources with those that are in need.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's the imagination. So the early church is the first place the fulfillment of covenant Israel, what's designed to be the covenant faithfulness of Israel is finally realized. Because we know Israel's history, the rest of the Old Testament and the prophets come out of come out of the woodwork to say, you keep singing worship songs but you keep exploiting your neighbor. You keep singing worship songs and you keep exploiting the widows. You keep singing these worship songs and fasting and doing these things in the temple but you're missing out how to live here.
Darren Rouanzoin:And all of that is true. All the way to the end of the Old Testament until Jesus comes around. And now you begin to see the fulfillment of these promises of covenant faithfulness in Jesus' ministry but then Luke wants you to really get it, the community does it in the power of the Holy Spirit. Luke is not claiming poverty vanish from Jerusalem. He's claiming neglect vanish from the church.
Darren Rouanzoin:He, the spirit does not erase inequality overnight, he erases indifference immediately. And this is the invitation to first recognize that if you are a follower of Jesus and you have been filled with the Holy Spirit, ask the question, are you committed to community? I'm not talking about like your little friend circle. Are you committed to the local church? In a world of wandering Christian consumers, have you committed to be stable?
Darren Rouanzoin:The vow of stability, to covenant to a group of people that look different than you, that vote different than you, that believe not all the same things but have Jesus at the center of their lives. Second, have you allowed the spirit to invade every part of your life including your relationship with your stuff? Have you allowed the Holy Spirit to bring conviction when he whispers, let's stop the mindless consumerism. Let's stop the mindless hours on social media. Let's begin to redirect our attention to the things that build us up.
Darren Rouanzoin:Fruitful things. Trust. Love. Have you allowed the Holy Spirit to transform your relationship to your things? And third, have you allowed the Holy Spirit to transform your response to need?
Darren Rouanzoin:Maybe it's not, hey we need to give cash on the stage although I love the spontaneity of that. Maybe you become so disciplined in your love for Jesus and your love for community that you create margin in your budget and you live in such proximity with people that you know needs are gonna come up and as soon as they come up because we live in a community that's vulnerable and shares needs, we answer it because we have a line item ready for them. That's what that's what made us, the church, a movement. Not just cool worship environments, not just room shaking But the power of God lived in every day or in your life. Amen?
Darren Rouanzoin:Can we all stand?
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