Speaker 1: The reading for today is Ephesians four verses 11 through 16. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry. For building up the body of Christ until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. This is the word of the lord.
You may be seated.
Speaker 2: Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Well, brothers and sisters, good morning.
Good morning. How are you? We're still figuring out all the logistics here. By the way, there are plenty of seats still up here. If you want to come up here, there's lots of places to sit up here.
We're glad that you are here this morning. My name is Frank. In case you don't know, I know we have probably have a lot of new people Sermons here today. I'm the lead pastor here at Redemption Arcadia Sermons Redemption I will tell you that, there's been a few times in my life when I have I've gotten emotional and I've started crying and, on my wedding day with Jackie, I cried then. Parents were really excited, but I cried.
The day my two daughters were born, I cried then. Two episodes before the end of the series run on The Office when Jim and Pam got back together, I cried then. Well, did recite out of first Corinthians after all. Then they got back together. And I've been I've had trouble not being emotional with all of this that's been going on.
So if I lose it, it's a good thing one of our founding pastors, Tom Trae Fraley, is here. He'll just come up and take over for us. He hates that, by the way. He hates that I acknowledge that he's here, but I'm in charge now. So I get to do that.
So many people to thank for everything that's happened. People who have given money to make this happen, we thank you so much for all of that. And we just pray that you'll keep on giving, of course. We're thankful for that. We're thankful for all the people who have helped volunteer in so many ways with time and talent and just hard work.
I was mentioning Friday night at a prayer service that we had here. The last two weeks there hasn't been a day that I haven't shown up at this campus where there haven't been scores of people who are not on staff who have been just volunteering their time and and working hard to get us ready and to make this thing happen for this morning and beyond. We need to remember that we're going to be here long after today, so that's really exciting. And then of course just an exemplary staff, I mentioned this before, Cody, Stephanie, Kent where's Ken? Is Ken in here or did he leave?
Oh, there he is. Ken, really kind of super he was our project manager and supervised this whole thing. He works for Big R Redemption but he's been at Arcadia the last five or six weeks and we get him for the next five or six weeks. If you see Ken individually, please thank him for all of his hard work. Linda Longmire, David Massey, Chelsea Ponce, all the people we appreciate all the help.
But I will also tell you, we've been talking a lot about how God has contributed and made this happen and that is true. But there's one other really important link that made this happen and we're glad that they are here today. This property, starting in about 1959, was Biltmore Bible Church. And many of you have heard me talk about this. They when they finally decided it was time to sell this property, they determined that they wanted the legacy of the gospel to continue on this property.
And so rather than going for the gold, they went for the gospel and they decided to sell it to a church knowing full well that knowing full well they wouldn't get market value. And so, pastor Bill and his wife Donna are here along with, Chuck and is where's Jeff and Todd? Where did they go? Oh, There's okay. So they're back there somewhere.
Anyway, if you see the can you guys just at least stand and turn and wave? Please, so everybody sees you. So, I'm a little intimidated. I got Schrader over here. I got Bill over here.
I'm gonna be thoroughly corrected as I preach this morning. So that's really exciting. Let me pray, and we will get started. Lord God, again, we just thank you for this beautiful home that you've given us. And I pray that we would be wonderful stewards here.
Thank you for blessing us. And God, our desire is that we would give you glory in all that we do. We ask that in Jesus' name. Amen. In the Gospel of John chapter one verse 14, many of you are familiar with this.
John writes this, and the word became flesh. In other words, God came to us. He the incarnation was happening. He he didn't wait for us to come to him. He came to us.
And he dwelt among us. Literally, he pitched his tent with us. He tabernacled with us. He lived inside of our skin. He did what was necessary for our salvation because we couldn't do it.
He came and did that and we have seen his glory. Glory is that of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth, full of grace and truth. We get this idea with mathematics that if Jesus is full of grace and truth, it's fiftyfifty. It's 50% grace, 50% truth. No, Jesus is 100% grace, 100% truth, something that you and I have had a very difficult time doing.
We need to remember that every time Jesus spoke the truth, he did it with 100% grace. And every time Jesus acted with 100% grace, it was in 100% truth. That's hard for us to do. And yet, that's what he calls us to do by his power, his grace, his truth, his wisdom, and his glory. By filling us with his Holy Spirit, he calls us to do this.
So, as He's done it, so must we. We must be as He was a faithful presence in our community. That's what Redemption Arcadia is about. It's not about building four walls so that we can hunker down. It's about having a place where we can headquarter and then go out and do the work of the Kingdom of God, do the work of the Gospel, do the call of Jesus to be a faithful presence.
And we're not only to do that as individuals, obviously, we want to be individuals doing that, but even more important, we need to be built up as a faith community and do it together because we are better together. That's really the tagline of Redemption Church. It's why East Valley Bible Church and Praxis Church five and a half years ago merged in the first place because they knew that we would be better together. And so today we are moving in, are planting roots, and we are establishing a faithful presence in Arcadia. I will tell you that it's been interesting to study church history since Jesus rose more than two thousand years ago and established the church.
History demonstrates, shows, and chronicles how the church has swung wildly between two extremes during its two thousand plus years history. Swung wildly between two extremes. We tend to move very often towards one extreme which would be isolation. Isolation. We believe that we have the truth and we get pushback from people who don't like the truth and so rather than just hanging in there and by the power of the Holy Spirit doing what we are called to do, we tend to isolate ourselves.
We come as foreign no more. And so, we isolate ourselves. The problem with that though is that it makes us very sure of what we have to say but we have absolutely nobody to say it to. Amen. And so, what we do is we decide we're going to swing all the way to the other extreme which is complete cultural surrender.
We want to become relevant we call it. And in fact, by becoming so relevant we actually make ourselves irrelevant because now we have tons of people to talk to but we have absolutely nothing to say because we've sold out to the culture. And Jesus says, no, there's my way to do things. And is there tension in his way to do things? There is certainly tension.
But he says you're not going to do it by your power you're going to do it by my power by the filling of the Holy Spirit. He says, he says you are to be in the world but not of the world. Well, that's hard. Yes, it is but that's our call. That's the sweet spot that Jesus calls us to.
And is there tension? Yeah, there's tension. The reason for these swings between isolation and complete cultural surrender is because of that tension and because human beings can't stand tension. We don't like to live with tension. We want to eliminate all tension.
I keep arguing probably because my personal number one idol my personal number one false god in my life is comfort. I keep arguing that that's generally everybody's biggest false god. It's comfort. And one of the ways we try to establish comfort is to remove all tension from our life. Jesus says you're going to live with tension in the world, especially if you're if you're Christ centered, especially if you're gospel centered.
And that's exactly what he wants from us. He wants us to be filled with the spirit and go into the world but not be of the world. We have a message of salvation, a message of redemption, and it is incumbent upon us because we have already received that message to go into that world and also be purveyors of that message. So how does Redemption Arcadia seek to do that? Well, one of the ways is by embracing what we call the seven values, biblical values, and the seven cultural shared items that we all embrace at Redemption Church in all of our Redemption Churches.
There are seven of these and I want to review them very quickly and then we'll get into the text, the two texts that I have for today. So if you're a part of Redemption Church, I want you to understand that this is who you are in Redemption Church. This is what we believe. These are our biblical values and our biblical shared culture. Number one, we are gospel centered and outward focused and the idea of being outward focused is driven by the fact that we're gospel centered and we're going to talk more about that later.
But if you're gospel centered you cannot help. You have no excuse but to be outward focused. The gospel isn't just to redeem us, it's to help make us ambassadors of reconciliation to others. Second of all, all of life is all for Jesus. In other words, there's no segmentation in our life.
The gospel is supposed to be a part of everything we do including work and family and education. Everything we do. We don't get to come to church and play Jesus on Sunday and then go and live like hell the rest of the week. We don't get to do that. In the Gospel, we are called to have the Gospel infiltrate everything that we do in our lives.
So, all of life is all for Jesus. Number three, we take God seriously, but not ourselves. I love this one. I love this one. The minute we start taking ourselves seriously, we screw everything else up.
Amen? And so we take God seriously and not ourselves. And I'll tell you, that takes a little pressure off of us, doesn't it? Isn't it nice to not have to take ourselves seriously? Those of you, like me, who take yourself so I used to take myself pretty seriously and then I married Jackie and I figured things out.
But those of you who take yourself seriously, let me tell you something, you could relieve a lot of pressure in your life if you just wouldn't take yourself so seriously. But take God seriously and that leads into number four, we have nothing to prove and no one to impress. There is great freedom. There is great freedom. We don't have to prove anything.
We don't have to impress anybody. I don't have to give anybody my spiritual resume. You don't have to give anybody your spiritual resume. We are just obedient to Christ, his calling, and the gospel and go and shut our mouths and do our job. Amen.
And so we have no one to impress and nothing to improve. And because of that, number five, there are no little people in no little places. We can go anywhere. We don't have to worry about whether or not we have a big ministry or something important to do. We can do whatever it takes because if it's in the gospel, it's important.
No matter where it is and who it's to. Number six, we're called to do God's work God's way. Not God's work our way or our work God's way or our work our way. We're called to do God's work God's way. And the psalmist, Solomon, is very clear about this in Psalm 127 where he says, if God does not build the house, the workers labor in vain.
And number seven, life is naturally supernatural. We are filled with the Holy Spirit, y'all. Amen. And that's what empowers us. That's what leads us.
That's what guides us. That's what gives us our wisdom. And so, we live a supernatural life, but it's very natural because Jesus resides in us through his Holy Spirit. So we're going to talk about the church today. Seems only right on a day like today.
Jesus, after his resurrection, he established it. He came and he said to his disciples, he said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, you are to go and you are to make disciples and you're to baptize them and you're to teach them everything that I have commanded and understand that I am with you this whole time. You're going to do this under my power and not under your power. So that takes some of the pressure off for us.
So today we're going to talk about the body, the church. This is Body Sunday as I've been calling it. We're going to talk about equipping, equipping disciples for service and to build up the church, and we're going to talk about unity and diversity. Those two things actually go together in the scripture and in the gospel. So here's that passage that Amy read.
This is the part about equipping. This is where Paul writes in Ephesians chapter four about the purpose of the church, the gospel centered, Christ driven purpose of the church. He writes, so Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers. And he gave them in order to equip his people for works of service. Here you go.
It's not about me. It's about thee. All of us should embrace that. It's not about me. It is about thee.
We are equipped for acts of service, not acts of self indulgence. And we're equipped for those acts of service so that the body of Christ, the church, may be built up. Until we all reach unity in the faith and unity in the knowledge of the Son and God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful scheming. Well, pastor, what about this? I read this on on the Internet and I saw this on the television.
No, if you're centered in the gospel, you'll understand what the truth is and what falsehood is and you won't be tossed to and fro anymore. And the church is here to help do that for everybody. Instead speaking the truth in love, 100%, 100%, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body, the church of him who is the head, that is Christ. Christ is our head. Christ is our ultimate senior pastor.
Amen. Okay. That is Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Three things that you can see from this paragraph where Paul talks about the purpose of the church. Number one, Christ is the source of our equipping.
We look to Christ to be equipped. Number two, love is the motivating characteristic of our equipping. And love moves us to action. It's not just a feeling. Love is a commitment.
It is an action. It is tangible acts of service. And that is the motivating characteristic of this equipping. And finally, equipping works best and is best manifested when there is both diversity and unity. Amen?
Now, again, diversity and unity. Is there going to be tension? Not a trick question. There's going to be tension there. But in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, we can do that.
And so that leads us into talking about this second point, the unity and the diversity together. And we really find that, most beautifully spelled out in first Corinthians chapter 12, where where Paul writes to the church at Corinth. The church at Corinth has been having some issues and some problems, and Paul's been writing back and forth to them, answering some questions, And he gets to this point about spiritual gifts. And this is a really important passage to understand the body of Christ, to understand the church. So let's kind of work our way through that.
This first paragraph. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. So he's moving on from his last subject that he was writing on and moving into spiritual gifts. And he says, I don't want you to be uninformed because they have been uninformed. They've been misinformed.
They've been practicing their spiritual gifts incorrectly. They've been concentrating on the things of man rather than on the things of God, and they've been forcing everything up, and that's a problem. So he says, I don't want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, were led astray by mute idols, however you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.
Now, that sounds a little bit confusing, but let me just kind of sum up what Paul's saying here. This is really important. Here's what he's saying. The purpose of spiritual gifts are not for me, but they are for thee. The purpose of spiritual gifts is not so that you can become self indulgent and look inwardly and make sure that your spiritual resume looks really good so that you can impress others, but rather they're to be expressed outwardly for the benefit of others, for the building up of the church, and for God's glory through Jesus Christ.
That's the point. He says, the spiritual gifts are not for me, they are for thee. And he does this by setting up here you go. Here's a word some of you may get a little annoyed with, but I want to take you through it. He sets up a binary here.
What's a binary? In its simplest terms By the way, if you've taken postmodern philosophy in college school you probably know what I'm talking about. Cody Kimmel knows all about this. Okay? So I went to the Cody Kimmel School of Philosophy and I got this for you.
Alright? So here you go. A binary in its simplest form, of dumbed down for a guy like me, is this. It's somebody who says this is good, this is bad. This is right, this is wrong.
This is godly, this is wicked. And in our culture, we hate binaries. We are literally told by people who have this kind of vocabulary, don't set up a binary, binaries are bad. Okay. That's what we're told.
Now, does anybody see the irony there? The minute you say binaries are bad what have you done? You've got a binary. So you're a hypocrite. Here you go.
It is impossible to live life without binaries. It is impossible to live life without making judgments. It is impossible to live life without truth. When I was at Arizona State University going through my degree in communication, I ran into all these people all the time who would say, there is no such thing as absolute truth. And I'd say, that's an absolute truth claim.
You just proved how silly you are. Okay? That's an absolute truth. You can't do it. You cannot live your life without binaries, judgments, and truth.
You can't do it. Just try to run that red light and see how your life goes. Red lights and green lights are a binary, y'all. You're living with binaries all around you, even if you don't like them. Paul sets up a binary.
He says, Jesus is Lord, and that's who we must look to rather than to ourselves. Verse four, now there are varieties of gifts with the same spirit. There are varieties of service with the same Lord. There are varieties of activities with the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for what?
The common good, not your personal spiritual resume, not for your own self indulgence, not for my own self indulgence. The gifts of the spirit are given by Jesus, by the Holy Spirit for the common good. Now a lot of people read this passage here and they say, oh this is where we find what the spiritual gifts are and we can make a spiritual gift inventory and we can have spiritual gift tests and we can talk all about the spiritual gifts and I'll tell you what you can find spiritual gifts in here that's true but that's not the point of this passage. The point of this passage is where the spiritual gifts come from and the hint is in the word spiritual. Comes from one spirit, one God, Jesus.
And they are for the common good. For to one is given through this given through the spirit, the utterance of wisdom, to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between the spirits, that's my wife, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same spirit who portions each one individually as he wills. The purpose of this chapter is not about what gift do I have but rather where does the gift come from and how does it build up the church, the body for the common good. That's the most important thing that we find here.
And notice he's getting into this. There are a diversity of gifts but a unity of spirit. Amen? You see that? He's he's he's setting up this tension for us here now that we have to live in by the power of the spirit.
For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews and Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. You see it again there. We're all different people.
We are all individuals. He's not trying to destroy individuality. He's trying to show us the common grace that we have in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. He's saying, you can be who you are, but you need to be it in the common spirit and have unity. And then he gets into a paragraph that I think is fairly misunderstood and I'll try to explain why.
He says, for the body does not consist of one member but many. If the foot should say because I'm not a hand I do not belong to the body that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say because I'm not an eye I do not belong to the body that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear where would be the sense of smell?
But as it is God arranged the members in the body each one of them as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts yet one body. A lot of people think that here's what Paul's doing in this paragraph. He says, oh, there's people in the church at Corinth with really low self esteem.
They know that God has gifted them in some way, but apparently, they think it's some insignificant way, some minor way that isn't very important, and the body really doesn't need them. And so Paul's writing to these people with this low self esteem to try to help build them up and encourage them and let them know they're a part of the body. That's not true. He's writing to the people in Corinth who had been lording their superior, in their mind, spiritual gifts over everybody else saying, well, if you were really in Christ, your giftedness would be more like me. If you were really a Christian, you would have these other gifts.
If you were really an important member of the body, you would be more like me. Look at all the work I'm doing. He's writing to the people in the church at Corinth who have their spiritual resumes on display, not for God's glory, but for their glory. And they're lording it over those other people in Corinth. He's writing to them and saying, you're being silly.
That's an easy way of putting it. Paul would never use the word silly. He'd use harsher words than that. But he's telling them, you got to stop doing that. You need to remember that everybody's a part of the body and everybody's just as important.
And he begins to explain that in the very next paragraph. He says this, The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you.' So he's still talking to the same people. He hasn't changed audiences here. Nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
And on these parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor. And our unrepresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it that there would be no division in the body but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, I love this verse here, verse 26, if one member suffers all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together.
You are the body of Christ and individually members of it. So, he reminds us again of the diversity and the unity. But listen, this is so important for us to understand. Here's what Paul is saying. He's saying there is no gift or ministry that really, in the end, is more important than any other because we're all part of something bigger.
We need to understand that. That if if your thing is missions, your thing is missions and you should go for it but it doesn't mean everybody else thing is going to be missions. If your thing is refugees, go for it. Serve the refugees. But it doesn't mean that the whole church has to be about refugees.
You know why? Because there are going to be other people who are about prison ministry. And if your thing is prison ministry, go for it. But don't insist that everybody who works in the children's department come with you to the prison ministry thing. Everybody is gifted differently so that we can all work together to form this magnificent body.
That's what he's saying. And we all have our parts. I want to tell you something. Every Sunday, we gather here. And you see me up here.
You see David and Josh and Cody up here. You see the musicians up here. You see the people supposedly with the greater gifts. Okay? And you think, wow, that's really cool.
That's really awesome. I need to let you know for sure if you don't know already that none of this happens without the people who have the indispensable gifts, the people who are doing all the work behind the scenes, the people who are standing out in the sun greeting people and passing out bulletins and making sure they don't crash their cars in our new beautiful parking lot. All the people working all the people in the children's ministry, none of this happens without them. And we need to celebrate them and we need to honor them. Can I get an amen there, please?
Good grief. That's what he's saying. No one is indispensable in this body, and Christ is the head. And so that's what our prayed for, hoped for outcome is, is that we would all become gospel centered, outward focused disciples of Christ. That's what this is all driving to.
And let me end with these these characteristics of a gospel centered, outward focused person. I want to work through this with you. This is ultimately the outcome that we're looking for as the church to help minister to people and to help develop a community that truly proclaims the gospel is gospel centered, outward focused disciples. So, the first one, a gospel centered person. Here are the four characteristics.
Number one, gospel centered person doesn't just know who Jesus is or how to read the Bible, but actually exhibits the fruits of the spirit in their life. The fruit of the spirit. Okay? I know people. I've exhibited this myself even.
I can quote a verse just like that. But then the way I live is not very fruitful. And really, the fruit is the proof of whether or not this gospel has really taken hold in your life. And so, it's a high calling, I know. You think about the fruit of the spirit.
What's the fruit of the spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self control. Oh, and gentleness. See, can't even remember them all. Okay.
That's a big call, isn't it? That's why we need the Holy Spirit in our lives. That's why we submit everything to the will of God and to the Holy Spirit in our lives. And that is the evidence of the gospel in our lives. That's the fruit of the gospel in our lives.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. Second of all, the gospel centered person exercises spiritual discipline. What does that mean? It going read means your word. You're going to word your read.
You're going to read your word. You're going to read the Bible. You're going to pray. You're going to be in community with other believers. And that will lead to and should be leading you to the spiritual disciplines of serving, caring, and giving.
And then there's one more that hardly ever gets talked about, but I will tell you, it is one of the biggest and most important spiritual disciplines that all of us are supposed to be practicing and that is forgiveness. If we are not a body and a church and a faith community of forgiveness, we've got nothing because Christ has forgiven us. Because Christ has forgiven us of everything, we can forgive each other of anything. Third, the gospel centered person lives in submission to and reliance on the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel of John, towards the end, the night before Jesus is crucified, he spends three or four chapters talking to his disciples.
I call it his famous last words. And he's talking about really important stuff. He's not talking about whether or not the sons will ever make it back to the playoffs. He's talking about important stuff. Okay?
And one of the things he tells his disciples is, I'm going to leave, but it's going to be better for you because I'm sending the Holy Spirit. And what do the disciples do? They're like, what? How is it going to be better if you leave? Okay.
Let me translate this for you. We think we live in a culture that resists change now, and it never was like that before. Let me tell you, two thousand years ago, people hated change. People don't like change. Tom, who planted East Valley Bible Church, is now the Gilbert Congregation of Redemption Church, They used to have placards up years ago at East Valley Bible Church that said this, change is inevitable.
Embrace it. Embrace it. And the reason we can embrace this change is because we're filled with the Holy Spirit. He can handle it. You don't have to worry about it.
And so we live in submission to and reliance on the Holy Spirit even when change comes. And then finally, a gospel centered person is responsible for his or her own growth and action. You are responsible for your own growth and action. Here you go. In the gospel, we are forgiven, but we are not blameless.
We are forgiven, but we are not blameless. You and I are not supposed to blame anyone else for a lack of spiritual maturity, spiritual growth, or spiritual discipline in our lives. We don't get to blame anybody else even though we try to. And the funny thing is that we seem to understand this truth when it comes to things like physical fitness or learning how to play a musical instrument or education. I mean, we seem to understand that if I'm out of shape, I can't ask somebody else to get in shape for me.
That it's my problem, my issue, Okay? Now, I will tell you, for the last four years, I've had Matt working on my pecs and Michelle here working on my core. See, everybody, that's so stupid. That's so silly. We get it there.
If I wanted to learn how to play the keys, Okay, the piano, I would have to work at it. I can't ask Maria Baer to take piano lessons for me so that I'd get better. I can't ask somebody now, some of you who watch the show Suits, Okay, you know that the whole premise of that show is based on a guy who takes tests for other people. And we go, that's silly. In fact, it's illegal.
We understand it in those realms, but we don't seem to understand it when it comes to spirituality. When it comes to spirituality, we want to blame everybody else. It's my spouse's fault. It's my family's fault. It's my community's fault.
It's my RC's fault. It's my church's fault. It's my pastor's fault. It's God's fault. It's everybody else's fault except me.
One pastor writes this, when Christians are frustrated, they tend to blame their church rather than analyzing themselves. The gospel centered person understands that they got to roll up their sleeves and dig in, and that they're responsible for that. So that's the gospel centered person. They don't just know who Jesus is or read the Bible, but they exhibit the fruit of the spirit. They exercise spiritual discipline.
They live in submission to and reliance on the Holy Spirit, and they're responsible for their own growth. And that leads to them, that transforms them to becoming an outward focused person. And here are the four characteristics of that. The first characteristic of an outward focused person is that they see everyone made in God's image. They see everyone made in God's image.
When God created everything, on the sixth day, he created humanity. And he said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. And so they made him. God, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, made man in his image and after his likeness. Male and female, he made them.
We need to remember that every person we come in contact with is made in the image of God. And here you go. Here's the key. There is no exception to this. That means even when they begin to act like the fallen sinner of Genesis three that they are.
So you don't get to treat somebody like they're made in God's image only if they're acting like a Genesis one or two person. You have to do this when they're acting like a Genesis three person because we're all Genesis three people. And so, we're called to treat people with respect. James, in his little letter in the New Testament in chapter three, he's talking about the destruction of the tongue, how what we say can be so destructive. And he says, the tongue is like a fire, and we need to be careful of what we say.
And along in verses eight or nine of chapter three, he says this. He says, the tongue is a problem because with it, we use it to bless and praise our Father who is in heaven, and then we turn right around and curse people who are made in his image. It not ought to be that way. He says, we we need to learn how to speak and remember that everybody is made in God's image. The great reformer Luther used to talk about what a gift God has given everybody by creating people who go into the marketplace and work so that they can bring you products and goods and services.
Think about that now. Think about that. Luther said it this way, that the maiden who milks the cow, those are the hands of God milking that cow so that you might have milk. Now, in urban Phoenix, we don't sit around and think about cow milking very often. Amen?
But how about your barista? That's the cow milker of the twenty first century. How about the food server? Let me tell you why this is kind of important to me. I spend a lot of time in coffee houses, and I am fascinated at how lousy a barista can be treated because they got one little thing wrong.
Somebody walks in with their special order, and they've got a list of 12 things that they want in their they don't want to drink off the menu. They want to drink off the menu altered 12 different ways. And the barista gets 11 of them right and what happens? Explosion. That's a person who is made in the image of God.
Give him some grace. Same with the food server. By the way, baristas and food servers, as well as everybody else in this room, we're allowed to have bad days every now and then, Okay? Extend some grace. Extend some grace.
We are made in the image of God. Number two, the outward focused person seeks the flourishing of others even at our own expense. When the Bible talks about love, the Bible talks about love not as a feeling but as an action, fundamentally as an action. Tim Keller writes this. This is interesting.
Sociologists argue that in contemporary Western society, the marketplace and the ethics in the marketplace has become so dominant that the consumer model increasingly characterizes most relationships that were historically covenantal, such as marriage, work, family, and the church. Here's what he's saying. We treat marriage, work, family, and church as if it's a consumer product rather than being in a covenant loving relationship with them, and that's not right. We need to get back to the covenant of love, and that means action, not just emotion. Love is not a feeling.
It is an ethic. It is a way of life. Third, the outward focused person is willing to enter the suffering of others. Now, you and I push against this. We push against this because we tend to make things other than God more important to us than the things of God.
This is what Peter was doing with Jesus in Mark chapter eight when Jesus says, I'm gonna go to the cross and be crucified. Peter pulls him aside, literally, physically pulls him aside and says, hey, you gotta quit talking like that. And Jesus says, you are focused on the things of man because that's going to make you comfortable rather than the things of God, which is going to make things a little bit rough for you. We need to be willing to enter into the suffering of others, which means we need to make the things of God important to us. What breaks Jesus' heart needs to break our heart.
And more than just break our hearts, here this is really important, more than just break our hearts, we need to go and do something about it too. About ten months ago, Cody preached a sermon and in the middle of the sermon, he called us all out because of our ministry of awareness. Anybody remember this? It's like everybody's got a ministry of awareness. So, I'm aware of the suffering over there.
I'm aware of it. I'm so aware of it that I tweeted about it. God bless me in my ministry. I am a tweeter. No, you got to go do something about it.
If it breaks your heart, you got to figure out. You got to figure out how Jesus is leading you into something. Don't just have a ministry of awareness. And finally, the outward focused person seeks a true all nations vision of the kingdom of God. This goes back to this idea of being diverse and yet unified.
You know, when you get to heaven, when I get to heaven, we're going to be shocked at who's there. We are. And here's what's even better. They're going to be shocked to see us. Amen?
That's even better. Okay? Here you go. In Revelation 22, John is describing further the New Jerusalem. Best part.
And the leaves of this tree are for the healing of the nations. We're going to be healed, y'all. The gospel is going to bring us together and heal us. Here you go. This is going to really rain on some people's parade.
But you understand in the New Jerusalem, you're going to have Black Lives Matters people, and you're going to have police officers there, and they're going to be embracing each other in the gospel. Do you understand that? That all of this mess that's happening now, which drives me crazy. It's hard. He's gonna make it right.
He's gonna put it all back together again. And we can be ministers of this reconciliation. We can be ambassadors for Christ. And rather than just lamenting the fact that we've got problems, we can tell people about the love of Jesus. We can be gospel centered and outward focused.
The bottom line is that discipleship growth and maturity are not about a list, but rather about a person. It's Jesus. The kingdom of God is not just a place, but rather it's a person. It's Jesus. And we need to remember that.
And it's in him that we find our purpose and our power. And it's through our faithful obedience to him that we can be ministers of the gospel. And and the reason we can have a faithful obedience to him is because he was faithfully obedient to the cross for us. Let let me give you my benediction and my prayer simply by reading from Hebrews chapter 10 verses 19 through 25. This will be our benediction and our prayer.
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened up for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another in and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Amen.