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"Here as in Heaven."
For more information visit : garden.church
Welcome to Garden Church Podcast. We're in a series called Walk with Jesus. This series is about learning to cultivate a passionate love with God. Joy.
Darren:Alright. 11 AM. Good morning. How are we doing? Yeah.
Darren:Great. Good. Alright. That's a mixed mixed bag. Alright.
Darren:Alright. Glad you're here. Hey, my name is Darren and last week was, the end of our ministry year and I think you were here and I said we need a $100,000 to end our ministry year in the black. That was a lot of money. Would you agree that's a lot of money?
Darren:And I talked about how every week we drink coffee here for free. Do you anyone remember how much it cost a week? 300. Good. Look at you.
Darren:Can we get her a free coffee right now? Thank you so much. Anybody remember, 400? Look at that. Alright, you already participated.
Darren:So that's that's that's already been given to you on the cross. So that yes, communion elements every weekend. We said hey, for 15 years your generosity has been poured out and as a result of your generosity and the stewardship of this church, we've been ending every year in the black. And last week that day we need a $100,000 and I wanna tell you we got $135,000 coming in one day. Unbelievable, so that is amazing.
Darren:So we just give, glory to God. Thank you for your generosity. I just know that it sets us up for this year. We have a lot of things in store. Now I'm gonna start our our our, our talk today.
Darren:If you have a Bible, would you guys grab your scripture and hold it over your heads. Let me see all the bibles. And let me just see. That's a big one. You got it.
Darren:Yep. Okay. Who's got the most read over there? That's right. I see it falling apart over there.
Darren:Well done. We're in a series called walk with Jesus and I wrote this series with this intention. I have a friend who is an atheist or agnostic from her whole life and she accepted Jesus 5 or 6 months ago in our church. And as I was thinking about how we could help her along, you all get to experience that through this series. So I was like hey, how do you build a life with God with no context?
Darren:And so I was like well one, if you wanna have a life with God, you need to create space in your life, quiet time to walk with God. So we first talk was on quiet time. That was basically it. I can't build a life with God through creating space and time and and and then the next several weeks we talked over what you do in your quiet time. We pray.
Darren:One of the ways we we learn to live this faith out with God is to talk to God and listen to him, And then also to intercede and contend for the things that he desires to become reality on earth. That's prayer. And then we talked about, scripture. Talks about all of us are being formed by something, someone, by culture, and we as followers of Jesus wanna be formed by the word of God, amen. And so we're gonna bring scripture into our life and allow our worldview the way we see the world to be shaped by the scriptures and Jesus' way of life.
Darren:And then we'd last week we talked about worship. Do you remember this? I said for most of us we worship like this and I said the importance of our life being offered to god as a living sacrifices. We have these moments as the body, as believers where we we come to worship corporately. So let's start at at a 10 today.
Darren:Did you start at a 10? Yeah. Mixed bag. I get it. Some of you brought it, some of you forgot already, right?
Darren:Yes? Which is why I'm gonna make a case today for participation in the local church. I wanna talk today, I've never preached on this subject, some of it's familiar. I wanna talk about the things that help you build a life with God. And one of the things we often miss, especially in our culture today is devotion, commitment, participation in a local body.
Darren:The local church. Yes, you're part of this universal body of Christ. But when Paul and the new testament writers talk about his church, it's in local form. It's incarnated, it's here. It's not just digitally disconnected online.
Darren:It's in together. This thing we gather for, and there are lots of things we do here that if you don't know what this is about, you'll be confused by. Like you're like we're singing for 40 minutes. We're we're we're eating this wafer that tastes like paper and but there's like we're crying over the elements and and then there's this guy that's gonna, we're gonna do announcements through a video and then we're gonna open scripture and then we're gonna invite people to come forward in prayer. And these things we do, we carry a lot of assumptions, but for us, they're deeply anchored in a rich theology.
Darren:A tradition for 1000 of years that have eternal impact on your soul. So today I wanna make the case for participation, devotion in the local church. You with me? Can I pray first? Because I know I'm about to offend you.
Darren:It's coming. Alright. So Jesus, you are lord and you're raised from the dead. That's why we gather. We confess, we believe, we organize the resources of our heart around that belief.
Darren:We ask now that your presence would be here and that we would be good soil to receive from you what we need to hear from your word. I pray that you ignite it with fire from your Holy Spirit. I pray that you tear down idols and that you release saints into the world with a deep conviction today in Jesus name. Amen. There is nothing more unchristian than a solitary Christian.
Darren:To turn back to private devotions alone is to turn back to the devil. Told you I was gonna start off with So if we start there, we're gonna go up from here. You ready? So the church is the body of Christ and every believer is a member of that body. Not to be a part of the church is to miss God's plan for your life.
Darren:That's AW Tozer. One more, churchgoers are like coals in a fire. When they cling together, they keep the flame a glow. When they separate, they die out. How many you know that to be true?
Darren:Jesus himself says, and I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it. How's that for what we're doing on Sundays? We are the place that confesses that Jesus is Lord and raised from the dead, and on that confession, that rock, Christ has built his church and against it, hell cannot overcome it. What we are doing here has spiritual implications for eternity. This is not something you Yelp or shop.
Darren:This is something mysterious going on, and I wanna make the case for it. Go to Matthew chapter 4 verse 23. Go to Matthew chapter 4. So here's here's the structure of today's talk. I'm gonna give you some hopeful outline because there's a lot of history in this talk today.
Darren:Any history buffs here? Anyone like history? Raise your hand. There's 17 of us. Oh, there's more than I thought.
Darren:Great. You gotta love history. There's a reason why I love Christianity as a Let's call it a religion for a moment. As a philosophy, as a religion, as a way of life because it's anchored in history unlike many other philosophies and religions out there. It's actually one of the things as an apologetic that brought me back to faith because it's easier to believe in Christianity than almost any other religion or idea out there.
Darren:You actually need less faith. I mean, the idea that someone raised from the dead is not hard when you look at the cosmos out there, but to see that the scripture that we believe is, has the most text in textual criticism, the most integris ancient document we have as a scientific community. And it's not written by 1 person in a cave or by 1 person wearing spectacles looking into a top hat with his discovery he found somewhere in the United States. That's Mormonism, and I don't mean to diminish it. It's written by several people over a long period of time and it's the continuation of the old testament, which is 1000 of years.
Darren:And so we have this continuous story of creation and life found in this document. It's easier because it's also anchored in history. We know for a fact Jesus lived in history. Our dating system's based on that reality. Do you live in AD?
Darren:Or That's right. You do. So every time you give the date, we are announcing he is lived in human history and raised from the dead. Amen. So we go to the scriptures to to anchor this.
Darren:So here's the outline. Number 1, we're gonna look at the life of Jesus. We're gonna look at the rhythms of his life. Number 2, we're gonna look at what caused the radical growth of the early church in unlikely circumstances. From there, we're gonna contrast those characteristics from modern cultural expectations of Christianity in the church.
Darren:And then we're gonna talk about why you should be in a local church and how to participate. You with me? Alright, that's gonna be quick. 40 minutes. Here we go.
Darren:I wanna start with Jesus because this this perhaps is something we overlook. I'm not gonna read all the text I read in the first service but here we go. Verse 23 of chapter 4. It's a summary statement in the gospel of Matthew that summarizes the activity of Jesus as he ministered in the power of the holy spirit. It says Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.
Darren:Jesus, in Matthew's gospel, went around to different synagogues teaching there, proclaiming the kingdom of God, healing the sick, and casting out demons. Go to Mark chapter 1. Just go right in your bibles. If you're new to reading the bible as a paper bible, just go right. Google can't help.
Darren:You'll just get muscle memory as you keep reading. Mark chapter 1 verse 21. They went to Capernaum and went, when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. So Matthew's gospel, he went to the synagogue.
Darren:Mark's gospel, he went to the synagogue. I'm just gonna summarize this. Let me tell you. Luke, guess what? He went to the synagogue.
Darren:John's gospel, guess what? He went to the synagogue. If you go to the book of acts and you see the story of the church as the apostles go around or specifically Paul the apostle goes to different territories like Ephesus, Philippi. He starts in the synagogue. And then he preaches that Jesus is the messiah and from there, he he takes his disciples and starts the church.
Darren:Now the synagogue at Jesus's time was a space for communal life for the Jewish people. It was the primary place where one's faith was developed and passed down from 1 generation to another. After the temple was destroyed in 586 BCE, the Jewish people were in exile and they created the synagogue model as a way of maintaining their religious belief in community life in the absence of the temple. So you had these local chapters called the synagogue where all sorts of things took place on Saturday. Check this out.
Darren:These are all the things you would expect on a Saturday. There would be a gathering of those who are Jewish. There would be a reading of scripture. There'd be teaching and interpretation. You would worship through singing Psalms.
Darren:You would practice communal activities like hosting meals and, and caring for one another based on the needs of the day, and you would educate the next generation in the faith. Does that sound familiar? So there where do you go where you gather with people of the shared faith, where you read scripture, where you teach scripture, where you worship, where you pray, where you have community activity and you educate the next generation? The church. Okay, okay.
Darren:You're gonna make that leap with me real quick? Let's just put the next slide up. This will make it really easy. The early church follow the synagogue model. So what you see when the church begins is they had a framework for what this was for.
Darren:They copied what was placed in front of them as a way of raising disciples, right? The church became very similar to the synagogue model except they met on Sundays. But what's interesting is that when you study the early church, it was very different than the Jewish synagogue model. It's similar in those characteristics. Those things happen in in the gatherings, but they there was a life force that took took on in the church that changed the world.
Darren:Like so Christianity is the greatest human movement in history. Like it's done more good for the world than any other human institution that's ever existed. Right? The birth of orphanages, hospitals, even ideas of libraries which was were formed by the monks, as the empire fell in the Roman empire. Places for the elderly to die with dignity.
Darren:All of this came out of the local church. K? So the greatest universities that are now secular and progressive in the United States started as seminaries to educate the next generation of pastors. Are you with me? Okay.
Darren:So this is the history that we are on, but I wanna go back and say what what about the early church? What about it that made it so significant? So there's a couple of authors that have studied and, sociologists and historians that have studied what happened in the move movement we call church. One of them was a sociologist. His name is Rodney Stark.
Darren:He wrote a book called The Rise of Christianity. And he tries to answer the question, what happened? Because at 100 AD, there were about I think it was 20,000 Christians, Right? 200 years later, there's about 20,000,000 Christians. K.
Darren:That's in the Roman Empire. That's with no formal building. That's with no, canonization of scripture. That's no website. That's no formal education.
Darren:That's with persecution. How did it go from this marginal marginalized community that's persecuted to 50% of the entire Roman population in 200 years? That was the question that he answers in his book, The Rise of Christianity. And he says this, look at this quote. He says, Christians lived radically.
Darren:People looking in from the outside outside wanted to be like them. There was this force that moved. We know it's the holy spirit, so it's not a force. We know that there was a spirit that moved amongst the local church that in the harshest of conditions and environments, it thrived for for generations after generations after generations. And so what I wanna show you real quick is kinda the early like the If you were to look at the first few 100 years of the local church, what was expected of them?
Darren:What what did they gather around in a Sunday gathering? And then we're gonna look at what we kind of expect in cultural Christianity and our individualistic culture. And then ask the question, why should we participate and how do do we participate in a local church? Are you guys good with me so far? Okay, so that's a little bit of the history.
Darren:Now I'm gonna go a little bit further in this. Okay, so stay with me. Now, there's a book called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. And in this book, this author looks at the historical practices of the 1st few centuries in the local church that separated the local church from other organizations, other movements, other religions, pagan practices of its day. These 8 things, there's 8 of them so stay with me, it's a long list, that made the local church so significant, okay?
Darren:So this is what the early church for 100 of 1000 of years gathered around and made them significant. Now stay with me for like 7 minutes and then we'll come back to you. You good? Okay. So first thing, what did the church do that that stood out?
Darren:They gathered around the Eucharist. So the the early church gathered around breaking bread and and if you go to the bible real quick, go to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2 verse 42. It says this. It says This is the first picture in the scriptures of the early church.
Darren:It says, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of prayer, bread and prayer. That phrase, the breaking of bread is not just meals. That's a phrase to refer to the Eucharist, the Lord's supper. The the the elements we take every Sunday here that are that are are symbolic of Christ's body broken for us, his blood poured out. They the church gathered regularly as a community to reflect and unify their faith around the confession that Jesus is lord and raised from the through the body of and blood of Jesus called the Eucharist.
Darren:Are you with me on this? That that that brought this sense of of ritual to where 200 years after the church is formed, they will the the early church will keep outsiders from coming into the Sunday gathering. They won't allow them in. I'm gonna read a quote on that in a second. But it was closed off because of its sacred ritual.
Darren:And then it the second reason that the author gives us is this what created a sense of uniqueness in the church is this idea of formation. So it says in Acts 242, they devoted themselves to the apostle's teaching. In the early church, they chose, to follow Jesus. And the early church had a process called catechesis or catechism where it was an intentional spiritual formation or discipleship pathway. They believe that when you accept Jesus, you come as you are, but there's a process of transformation that you must take take on.
Darren:You must take off the old self and put on your new self. That you were formed by a pagan worldview, pagan habits, pagan ideas about your body and follow Jesus over a lifetime. And they created a process and that would take many many years. This discipleship ideas that you would come in formed by this pagan worldview, but they The the the purpose was to be, formed into the image of Christ. So where you look more and more like Jesus.
Darren:That was just baseline for belonging to a church. That you insight when you joined a church, you didn't just say I believe then keep on binging out on Instagram, Netflix, and doing all the pagan things you were doing before. But when you accept Jesus as Lord, he's the Lord of your life. He's not Lord of your future salvation, he's Lord of your finances. He's Lord of your body.
Darren:He's Lord of your calendar. So I know we're talking about Sunday gathering here, but there was a devotion to being together on Sundays that we lack today. It wasn't like they were like a meh culture and, to the apostles teaching into the breaking of They were like a maybe come, may all feel it out if I really enjoy it. They were devoted to the teaching of the apostles to fellowship to breaking of bread into prayer. There was a sense of Jesus changes everything.
Darren:Are you with me? So there was this formation that transformed the people and and I just need to I need to like there's such rich history about this in the early church. There was this Bishop, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, and we have a letter he wrote to one of his local churches that he oversaw. There's a local church pastor asking a question about a situation that happened in their local church. This is in the 2nd or 3rd century.
Darren:And a stage actor, which acting back then was about worshiping false gods in this time period, right? It was a pagan thing. It was morally incomprehensible if you became a Christian, and a stage actor became Christian and wanted to join the church. And so this local pastor writes the bishop going what do I do? And the bishop says essentially this, he can't work anymore as an actor because of what he's doing.
Darren:It's it's an idol. Instead, you as the local church provide for his resource. So that he doesn't have to suffer as he makes a decision to follow Jesus, which cost him his job. Do you see how that's crazy. That's church.
Darren:Alright. Number 3, is there was a sense of community. They devoted themselves to fellowship. That word is koinonia, which is this idea of spirit empowered fellowship. The early believers took the communal bonds that they had with their blood relatives and said this now applies to anyone who follows Jesus.
Darren:So we are literally brothers and sisters. So what I would do for my mom or my cousin or my brother in a time of crisis, I do with you. Are you with me? They there was an emphasis of prayer and worship. They would gather regularly for prayer and worship.
Darren:Now that happened Sunday, but what we know is that the church would also gather according to the scriptures during the prayer hours that the Jewish community had before the church started. And they had a morning prayer, an afternoon prayer and an evening prayer. And I find it fascinating that in Acts chapter 2 when the holy spirit comes down, it happens on the liturgical calendar of Pentecost. It was a time separated in the old testament for a festival of all the Jews to gather in in Israel to renew the covenant and celebrate the first fruits. And it was that day at the prayer hour 9 AM when they would gather for prayer in the morning that the holy spirit came and filled the upper room.
Darren:And the next chapter, acts 3, Peter and John are going to the temple for the afternoon prayer at 3 PM when they see the man at the temple gate called Beautiful and they say I don't have silver or gold, but in the name of Jesus walk and the guy gets healed. They had a rhythm of prayer and worship. It was devotion to Jesus. I want you to think about what you're devoted to. And what's hard is this is the water we swim in.
Darren:When we talk about a calendar with prayer hours, we hate it. That's gonna limit my freedom. I just wanna walk by the spirit. I'm praying all the time. Why do I have to show up for prayer morning on Wednesday?
Darren:There is this expectation in the early church that Jesus is everything. We have an expectation formed by culture that I am everything. Myself is most important. My job is most important. My kids are the most important.
Darren:I worship their routine. No. Jesus is Lord. Therefore, you are not. Your kids are not.
Darren:Your job is not. Your house is not. Your dream is not. Your body is not. And just keep going down the list.
Darren:Are you with me? Number 5 is lifestyle. The local church 4 was prayer and worship. Number 5 is lifestyle. The Lord added to their number daily.
Darren:This is probably the most significant thing. This is a long quote, but I need you to see this. This is so crazy to me. We're talking about the characteristics of a gathering of a local church. Alright?
Darren:Look at what the writer of Patient Forment said. He said by the late 2nd century, many Christian communities had decided that outside outsiders non Christians could not be admitted to their worship services. The Christians determined that it was not appropriate for outsiders to be admitted to the power filled center of their worship prayer, worship prayer and the Eucharist. As the 2nd century progressed, there were enough experiences of persecution to persuade the Christians in Athens that if lying informers were allowed into their services, the results might be our slaughter. So the growth of the Christian communities, listen to this, which was a result of their visibly interesting behavior was rooted in the parts of their life that were invisible.
Darren:Inaccessible to outsiders. Pagans could observe Christians who were economically compassionate and say, look. Pagans could not, however, observe a Christian worship service and say, look. And yet I contend that it was the Christians invisible activities, the worship services that enabled their visible lifestyle to be attractive. These invisible activities were this, were the of growth of the churches in the Roman Empire.
Darren:This is what caused the growth of the church. It was there's something mysterious going on here that transformed their lifestyles to be observable and say I wanna become like you. Number 6, hospitality and generosity. The hospitality of the early church was so offensive to our culture of hospitality today. Even if you are hospitable, The kind of hospitality of the early church was the kind of hospitality that would say, if our friends are sick, we will get sick with them.
Darren:During the black plague, the church stayed while every other form of religion or pagan fled from the black death in order to care for this those who are suffering with disease and sickness. This is a historical account of the church. The 7th thing that that stood out for the early church was their leadership structure. Their leadership and structure. By the time we get the new testament, only a few years after Jesus has ascended into heaven.
Darren:We have letters about leadership in the church. I I need you to know people weren't sitting around organically saying there's no leadership structure in the 1st century. In the 1st century, there were deacons and elders and apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. And there were bishops, there were these there was structures for leadership and the expectation of leadership was not because you have a platform like a podcast, or not because you have a lot of followers or you have a lot of money. It was your character and integrity.
Darren:The expectation was holiness. Church, I wanna say this. You should expect your leaders to live holy lives. I say that knowing that I'm imperfect, but that does not diminish the call of first Timothy chapter 3 of qualifications for elders and deacons. We should expect leaders in the church to move towards holiness in everything they do.
Darren:We're we're we're we're dismissing the commands of scripture. Settling saying, well, no one's gonna live perfect. There are expectations Paul has on leadership in the church that we have to have as our expectations. Please don't diminish it. Does that make sense?
Darren:Alright. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going. The last thing is, a fun one. Witness through martyrdom. So good.
Darren:The expectation of faith was that you might get killed for believing in Jesus. Now in our context, you might be, blessed financially by by certain communities if you believe in Jesus. You know, it might add benefits to your life. In that context, it was the risk of being disowned and killed. And the early church grew as they suffered with for their faith.
Darren:And it it it was a testimony to the powers about what actually is going on. It was a testimony to the authorities going there's something else going on. Too many people are staying faithful to their death That that made pagans pay attention. Now, it reminds me of what Paul writes in the book of Ephesians. He says this, he says, his intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
Darren:According to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our lord. In other words, god's multifaceted wisdom, intelligence, His omnipotence, his power is being put on display through the local church. And through the local church, we put on display who God is to the powers and authorities and angels in the spiritual realms. That when we gather as a local church and live out of what we're supposed to live, we are testifying to Jesus's purpose and plan to the demonic forces, to the kingdoms of this world that there is a risen Lord Jesus Christ. In the gathering of the Lord's people, the church puts God on display to the authorities and powers out there.
Darren:You with me on this? So that's the history lesson. Now here's a question for you and don't put this up there. We'll just we're actually gonna do this as a class. Okay, you ready class?
Darren:I want you to put I don't want you to put on your Sunday church answer, okay? What I want you to do is answer this question. What are the expectations you carry about church based on your formation in Christian culture. So what what does Christian culture expect of the church? Forget all the list I just gave you.
Darren:What do you How do you judge a church when you're shopping church? What are you looking for? Throw out answers. Worship. Great.
Darren:Good teacher, power of the Holy Spirit. You guys are giving me Bible answers. What integrity. Coffee. There we go.
Darren:That's what I'm looking for. The fence. What's that? The fence. The fence?
Darren:The fence. The service. What? Parking. Park Yep, parking.
Darren:Good energy, cool vibes. Okay, here's the list we came up with years ago. I'm just gonna read ours. Coffee parking, parky attendant, great worship music, sound system, place for the kids to go, projector, LED screens better, lyrics on the screen, Bible on the screen, Building that safe, clean, comfortable, large enough, large gathering so I can be anonymous. Cool stage design, comfortable seating.
Darren:This is a little tight. Sorry about the hour and a half service max. 35 minute talk. Should feel good about myself with a little bit of conviction, signage, ability to observe without commitment. Oh, you didn't know I know what you think.
Darren:I need to be greeted. Oh, this is great. There needs to be snacks and water and cold coffee when it's hot outside. It start with worship. There should be a website and ministry that fits my need.
Darren:Let's keep this list up for one second. This is the list we get emails about. This is the list that you Yelp. No one's ever like emailing before they show up. Hey, do you have a strategic plan to help me die to myself according to the Bible?
Darren:I do. I'm like, I have a philosophy. Here you go. No one's emailed. They're like, hey, at my old church, I had this specific like ministry to cats, and I wanna lead the cat ministry.
Darren:And I'm like, I'm like man, go to another church for sure. We're we're about dogs here. No I'm just kidding I'm just kidding I'm just kidding. Or like I get, I get the email like it doesn't feel hospitable to me because somebody didn't greet me. And in the midst of, you know, 1,000 people here on a Sunday, our greeters are doing amazing job.
Darren:They're doing so many different things. They might have missed you on your 1st Sunday, but now you're emailing the lead pastor to say you're not hospitable because that person missed you. This is crazy. Right? This is what we swim in.
Darren:Now what is what are the expectations you carry being formed by scripture? Here's the list for you. Ready? This is what you should Yelp. Right?
Darren:They love one another. They pray. There's needs are being met. They're led by elders. They're led by the spirit.
Darren:They're filled with the spirit. They're called to give an account for our lives to God. They're not judging other people. They give generously locally and globally. They bury each other's burdens.
Darren:They everyone brings their spiritual songs. How many of you brought your spiritual song today? I heard some of you up here. How many of you left it at home? How many of you only notice spiritual song is?
Darren:Like we already sang those. No, no, no. Are you bringing your spiritual gifts, your your spiritual songs for us? Because God gave you a gift for us to receive, not for you to receive. Gifts are to what?
Darren:Be given. We should live holy lives. The expectation of a local church is to be holy. Look, you can't earn holiness. You get it on the cross, but then you can pattern your life after Jesus.
Darren:And he begins to speak, you forgive one another. Are you judging whether or not God's presence were there was here? One of the things I can't stand is we build churches for outsiders. I love that but are we building the church for Jesus? Are you ambassadors of Christ?
Darren:We're preaching the gospel. I This is just a few of the text that I could come up with off the top of my head. Do a longer study from the epistles and you'll see the commands of the new testament church are massive. Why you're allowing culture to form your discipleship? So why should you participate in a local church?
Darren:I wanna answer this question real quickly. Okay? Number 1, the local church is the primary context for discipleship to Jesus. You I I believe there's a plague in the modern church right now that says because of expressive individualism, which is a cultural philosophy formed by postmodernism that shaped millennials, gen z, gen x, that shaped the new generation that's worshiping the god himself. There's this plague that's deconstructing the church.
Darren:Hear me out. That that you think it's devotion to Jesus but you cannot follow Jesus without a local church. There there's there's no such thing as me, myself, and Jesus. Like the there there isn't. The bible says you're either disciples of Jesus or family and there's 59 one another statements in the new testament alone.
Darren:So if you're gonna live out the new testament life, you need other people to live out your faith. And I what I'm saying is you can't just cherry pick a community and call it church. There's some there's some things you need to be church and it it it requires Jesus as lord. It it it requires the intentionality of disciple making. It requires worship.
Darren:It requires organization on the scripture. It requires a mission to the ends of the earth. It requires a lot of things. And it could be a house church absolutely, but it needs to be a dedicated house church with the leadership structure I believe. And also I wanna just say that the moment it's it's cut off from outsiders, it's no longer a church.
Darren:So like you get your friends together for a meal and call it church, that's not it. Unless you're inviting outsiders that are not yet friends that get to come in and they become friends and then you invite others and then it just keeps growing because that's how the church grew. It's not that they were exclusive in their gatherings. They were exclusive for the purpose of mission that eventually that those people came in and were a part of it. Does that make sense?
Darren:And I have a problem right now because I see so many individuals trying to do church their way. Trying to follow Jesus as rabbi, but not Lord. You're trying to follow Jesus as rabbi to help you with your anxiety, but you're not following Lord and savior of your body. You're following Jesus, the self help guru who looks like a modern soul cycle instructor, who who wants to pump you up with good vibes, but you don't wanna come to the cross daily and follow him. Do you see the difference?
Darren:Discipleship to Jesus leads to the cross, and that includes the kind of community we will be. Cruciformed community, shaped in the image of a of us, a crucified Messiah, not the image of any other God. That is our image. So if you don't look more and more like a crucified God, you're not following the right Jesus. Believed that we can pick up parts of Jesus and say it's discipleship when he wants all of us.
Darren:There's a story of, of, an emperor of Rome who, the Roman Empire who became Christian. And when he was baptized, he he held his right arm with his sword out and baptized the rest of his body in the waters. The left is sword in his arm out. Like Jesus, you can have all this but this. And we're doing the same thing with Jesus today, Except it's not a sword, it's our identity.
Darren:It's not a sword, it's our sexuality. It's not a sword, it's our career. It's not a sword, it's our agenda. It's our politics. It's our philosophy of life.
Darren:It's our happiness. It's our marriage. It's our kids. It's our longing for a marriage. That's not baptized, but everything else is.
Darren:The church is a baptized community. When we come into this faith, we are baptized. We are immersed, covered, drenched, saturated, soaked, complete in the waters of baptism. Everything must be under the lordship of Jesus. Man, I went off on that one.
Darren:Number 2, why should we participate? The local church is the antidote to the cultural crisis of loneliness. Right? 41 percent of Western people are lonely. It's a health epidemic in the United States.
Darren:People are longing for connection and you can't thrive without each other. Right? Mother Teresa said loneliness is leprosy of the modern world. It's it's it's an antidote that will cure. I love, and number 3.
Darren:The local church is essential for a well lived life. In other words, a follower of Jesus whether you're a follower of Jesus have not or not, excuse me, you were made for meaningful relationship. The book Relational Soul says this, at the core of our being is this truth. We are designed and defined by our relationships. We were born with a relentless longing to participate in the lives of others.
Darren:Fundamentally, we are relational souls. We cannot not be relational. We cannot exist well without connection and communion with another. In other words, you can have your dream job, your dream house. You can make lots of money, but if your closest relationships are fractured, your life is miserable.
Darren:It's because life is better in community. You were made to live in meaningful community. And there's a truth to this. Listen to what Ronald Rolheiser says. He says part of the very essence of Christianity is to be together in a concrete community with all the real human faults that are there and the tensions that it will bring us.
Darren:Spirituality for a Christian can never be individualistic and never be an individualistic quest. The pursuit of God outside of community, family, and church. The God of the incarnation tells us that anyone who says he or she loves an invisible God in heaven and is unwilling to deal with the visible neighbor on earth is a liar since no one can love a God who cannot be seen if he or she cannot love a neighbor who can be seen. Hence, a Christian spirituality is always as much about dealing with each other as it is about dealing with God. You can't have a love for God without a love and commitment to each other.
Darren:That's why we need church. Now here's what I wanna say. I'm gonna give you some practicals and I'm gonna preach through these quick. Okay? And there's another list, I'm sorry.
Darren:But this is the practical. I remember I wrote this series for my friend. One person in our church who's new to faith. And as I was thinking about the ways you build a life with God with no historical context. I grew up in the church.
Darren:She did not. I I I wanted to teach her that participating here, devoting yourself to a a rhythm of life of gathering as the Lord's people shapes your soul for eternity. And in a world where we don't wanna submit ourselves to anything, it will limit our freedom. We don't wanna we don't wanna commit to anything because it limits our options. We have to challenge the individualistic cultural mindset formed by by honestly a demonic destructive force to the scriptures, to what's true even when we don't feel like it.
Darren:So in in our church, what I wanna teach you is whatever church you belong, you should belong to a local church. That I made the case for everyone should belong to a local church. Here's how you can belong to garden church, and here's what I'm gonna ask of you. Are you with me? Number 1.
Darren:Participate in the Sunday gathering regularly. Live as a wholehearted worshiper. I wanna say this that there's something significant you need in your life to commit to a weekly rhythm of going to church and being church as the body. Right? Uh-uh I can't overemphasize this anymore because I think what we've done is we've diminished the role of Sunday gatherings.
Darren:In our culture, we've dismissed the significance of being together in a room where we do certain things that feel like ritual, but that have significant formational impact on our life. So at Guardian, we will worship god. Right? We'll worship God. Every Sunday, we worship Jesus.
Darren:We gather around the presence of Jesus to worship God, to take communion together. So when we gather today, we had our kids up here. Why? Because I want our kids to be a part of a worshiping environment. I want them to know from a young age that when you come to the the to worship Jesus that they're not gonna just do fun and games where the the kids are gonna go off and do fun and games.
Darren:They're gonna learn as 5, 6, 7 year olds to worship Jesus through song, and it might go 45 minutes. And after that long set of worship with words you don't even know, omnipotent, marvelous. They're being formed by truth. And then we get up here and pastor Ramin preach the heck out of the the communion talk. What is he doing?
Darren:He's preaching the gospel. Every time we take the Lord's supper, you're hearing the gospel proclaimed, and when the gospel's proclaimed, demons flee. Hearts are set on fire. There's a truth being proclaimed, and it's happening underneath the surface. Why?
Darren:Because everything we do here is theologically enriched by a biblical perspective. We organize this. We structure this. We create a liturgy as the leadership team for the presence of God to be glorified. We glorify him in worship through the Lord's supper, through proclaiming the gospel in that moment, through reading and teaching the scriptures.
Darren:We will be a church that organizes around the scriptures that submits to the holy scriptures. We will be that church. Even if the culture calls it archaic, says it's domineering or whatever it wants to say about this book, we will submit to the word of God. We will, we will do ministry time every Sunday. We will create space where you can receive prayer.
Darren:We will create space every Sunday for you to have somebody pray for you if you want prayer. We will build an altar every Sunday for you to respond to Jesus as the living God and let the holy spirit minister to you and let Jesus minister to you. Let the father minister to you because we believe that God is a living God and he wants to bless you. He wants to heal you. And we also believe that the ministry of the spirit is for everyone.
Darren:And so everyone gets to participate. So we create an environment where the spirit is alive. Also, we create environment that's filled with hospitality and generosity. These are convictions of Sunday by the way, our church. Do you see them played out?
Darren:Do you see our hospitality conviction? When we have coffee for free, when we host things, there's Our hospitality team is imagining you driving into that parking lot, walking through this place, making sure you feel at home. We do it for your kids. We do it for the youth. That's what's happening and we're generous.
Darren:We give our best away. You are generous as a people. These are convictions. And lastly, we're led by, consecrated leadership in this church. These are the seven things we're organized.
Darren:Do we have slide? We don't have slides for these. So these are all under Are you guys good? Yeah. We have an expectation that when we gather on Sunday, the leaders, the worship leaders are held to a higher standard.
Darren:Like, we we confess our sins and that we call that the consecration room. Why do I talk about that? Because I've been in green rooms in churches and it's a different culture. I don't want that culture. I want people who have been with Jesus all week long.
Darren:That that when they come here, they've been warmed up for a long time. That the things that would the enemy would hold against them, as they walk in because this is what happens. Right? Like you fight with your spouse on your way to church before you preach and you're sitting in a worship going I I I'm I'm a hypocrite and I'm a liar And then I grab the elements. This is not today by the way.
Darren:But it's definitely happened. And I just remind myself, that where this all comes from. There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. I'm washed by the blood. I'm covered by the blood.
Darren:Let's go preach. Consecrate leadership. Okay, number 1, participate. Number 2, participate in house church. How many of you know that you can't share your heart here every Sunday, but that you need a community of people to share your heart with?
Darren:A small gathering. So get in the house church, join a Bible study, do a women's walk. I don't care what it is. Get in small communities here. Break bread and share the life that you have with others.
Darren:Number 3, serve the local church. You wanna participate and this is for my friend. Look, number 1, come on Sundays. Let me just say this one more thing. I'm sorry.
Darren:I got a couple more things. I'm like that church meme when the pastor says he's got one more thing and then it's like this 45 minute meme. Is Jesus lord of your work week? Is Jesus lord of your time? I I thought about the things that conflict with coming.
Darren:Right? You went to bed late so you don't come early. Well, we have a night night service. You don't you you I see it with with families where there is there is this participation in youth sports and I'm not challenging it but I'm saying, will your kids know Jesus in the priority of church or will they know sports is the most important thing in our family's life? Do you come when you feel like it?
Darren:When your life is sorted out? Or do you come as a discipline knowing that this shapes me? Knowing that when I don't show up, the gifts god's given me are being robbed from my brothers and sisters. I'm robbing them of the gift that I am. That's what that's that that's the kind of devotion that we need.
Darren:So join participate on Sunday, join a house church, serve the local church, live on mission, give to the local church, submit to godly leadership. This is I just wanna touch on this because this keeps coming up. I'm gonna do a, a midweek series in the fall called the heart of leadership. I wanna talk about our convictions as a leadership team because I I'm realizing one of the problems I see as lots of pastors keep falling is the expectation of leaders. The expectation we have as a church of leaders is that they don't have to be holy.
Darren:They don't have to be set apart. So we we're we're okay to admit the areas of sin that go on for too long without repentance. And so when the worst thing happens, it's been a years of of this thing and we get used to it. We should not get used to it. At our church, we have a philosophy where leaders should be holy.
Darren:They should be humble. They should be healthy, and they should be hungry for the presence of God. I I said this in the last service. I wanna say here, like like, yes, holiness, humility, health, like, there should be congruence between how you live at home and how you live on a stage. There should be congruence between your your body and your emotional, health.
Darren:Like we should have emotional, relational, spiritual, physical health. I believe that. Hit on this last week a little bit. There should be a hunger for the presence of God. Can I say something?
Darren:My prayer in my life is that when I'm 70, I'm hungrier than the 20 year olds. I keep seeing all these circuit riders, These y whammers, these youth. Look at, there's this unreal hunger they carry. What happens is the burden and succession of burdens that happens as you grow up become like this, container over the fire that puts it out. Right?
Darren:Like suffering comes in, heartbreak comes in, you don't get the job, you're not with, you know, 50 other people on mission, on fire worshiping every night. You're now waking up at 4 AM, going to a job you don't like, caring for your family and having to have a real job. That's nothing against circuit riders, but the fire goes out. It's not what I mean. Circuit riders.
Darren:I love you circuit riders. But when you're outside of that artificial environment, right, this is an artificial environment. Right? It's easy to take risk when there's a bunch of believers, but when you're at the workplace in real life, do you have faith to heal the sick? Like you're not gonna say do an altar call and come forward and open your hands like that.
Darren:We're training you for the real place, right? So but what I see is like life puts like your faith shrinks. I'm waiting for the 7 year olds to take the 20 year olds in our church. That as you get older, there's more passion. There's more faith that I wanna I wanna end going.
Darren:I've never forgotten my first love. Church, could that be our prayer? Like as we age as a church, like the thirties and forties and fifties and sixties, we, the as a 70 year olds in the church are more passionate than or or or just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Imagine that. Decades of hunger.
Darren:Why not? Why settle for something else? And I think that's the problem is we keep looking to our right going well, so and so is not is not shown up to the prayer means so and so doesn't have this one. They're buying all the other, you know, we just compare ourselves. Why not run after a life that's more alive as you age where you're not, you know, grumpy old man at 70, but you're more passionate, more compassionate, more joy filled, more faith filled, more childlike than you were as a child.
Darren:That's what I want for our leadership. That's what I hope for for all of you. Lastly, how do you participate in church, live the word of God and live the way of Jesus, you know. And Gerald Sitzer says, living with others is necessary for the cultivation of spiritual maturity. For life and community provides the best, in fact, the only setting in which the most important of all virtues can be formed, and that is the virtue of love.
Darren:We need each other, so be church. Amen? Alright. Let's stand up.
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