2:1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture:
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
7 So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”1
8 and
“A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
2:1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture:
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
7 So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”1
8 and
“A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:
I invite you to open your Bibles to 1st Peter chapter 2. First Peter chapter 2, and tonight we're gonna look at the doctrine of the church. We'll begin reading in verse 1, and we'll read the first 12 verses. So put away all malice, and all deceit, and hypocrisy, and envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Jeffrey Heine:
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by man, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture, Behold I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. And a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do.
Jeffrey Heine:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Behold, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds, and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Jeffrey Heine:
Pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would come and that you would speak clearly, that you would teach us about your precious church. I ask that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord, let your words remain, and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:
Defining church is not an easy task. For instance, if you meet with a few of your friends at Starbucks and order your $4 lattes, and you're sitting around and you're talking, and one of your friends just kind of just unloads on you and tells you what a horrible time they're having. And you pull out your Bible and you say, Well, you know, gosh, I was just reading this in scripture, and you encourage them, and you talk about how God's word has that effect in your life. Is that church, was that church there? If you're driving down the road and you're listening to a John Piper podcast, and you're just really getting so much out of it, and when it's done you put in a praise CD and you were just singing the top of your lungs, Is that church?
Jeffrey Heine:
Did you just have your own personal church? Or maybe a group of 50 people or so, they meet in a building and this building has a steeple and everything. It has the word church in front of it, and an ordained minister, he gets up there and he talks about love, and and he talks about tolerance and peace and how we all need to just be loving one another, and and he closed in a song that talks about how love is the answer to everything, and you leave. Is that church? I mean it was an ordained pastor there.
Jeffrey Heine:
You know, if you gave it was tax deductible. You know, you had you had the word church. There was a steeple in everything, but was that church? It's a word we use all of the time, but it's it's actually where this somewhat hard to really understand, And as a broad meaning in scripture, if you were to look at the book of Acts, you're gonna find that if a group of Christians gathered into a person's home, that was called a church. You'll also find that, Paul, he would describe a church just being all the Christians within a city.
Jeffrey Heine:
And so he would write letters to the church of Thessalonica or to the Church of God in Corinth. Sometimes the word church can mean not just to a particular, home or to a particular city, but it could be even broadened to mean all Christians from all time church. And we just, confess that when we did the Apostle's creed and when we said, we believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and that that does not mean that we believe in the Pope or the Papacy. The word Catholic there just means universal. We believe in the one great universal church of all believers of all time.
Jeffrey Heine:
Church is a big word. Historically, the church has been defined as having two characteristics. It's it's a gathering of people to hear the word of God rightly preached and the ordinances rightly administered. Those two things. Those 2 things happen and you've got a church.
Jeffrey Heine:
The word of God rightly preached and the the ordinances rightly administered. And you can look at John Calvin, John Wesley, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards. They will all agree on that definition of a church. It's what has to happen in order for there to be a church. And so you have to have the Word of God rightly divided.
Jeffrey Heine:
And Martin Luther, he said that when the Word of God is rightly divided, the gospel means the gospel will be proclaimed. And so, for a pastor to get up there and rightly divide the Bible means the gospel will be proclaimed. So I can't just get up here and give you good morals, I can't give, you know, a good inspirational talk. You know, rah rah rah, go out there, reach Woodlawn, go ministers to the poor, all that. That will not be church.
Jeffrey Heine:
And that's why, you know, there's a number of of really large church buildings full of people on Sundays that don't when when the word of God is not rightly divided, I would not call that a church. It's just a gathering. In addition to the word of god being rightly taught, it says the ordinances, they have to be rightly administered. And the ordinance that we ordinances we believe in are 2, It's the Lord's supper and it's baptism. Those two ordinances need to be rightly administered.
Jeffrey Heine:
And so if this is one of the reasons why places like the Salvation Army, which is a great institution, it's not a church. They don't serve communion. They don't have baptisms. That's why if you you meet together with a group of Christians and you have great teaching, but, but over a year's time, you've never once celebrated the Lord's supper. It's not a church.
Jeffrey Heine:
Those things must be present. That's the bare minimum of what a church is. A healthy church is a lot more than these things. It's gonna have church discipline, it's gonna have a lot of mercy ministries, it's gonna have different things, but the bare minimum is this, and God forms the church. He pulls the people together.
Jeffrey Heine:
That's one of the reasons why churches fight so much over stupid things like carpet, and hymnals, and and whatever. The reason they do, is because you're you're full of, like, people who would never normally gather together. You you, a lot of you have nothing in common. But God pulls you all together and He says, alright. I'm forming a church.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's not a country club in which we all just kind of, yeah, I believe in this. I want to be a part of this, and we all pull together our same backgrounds and our same ideals, and we're like, that's us. That's not a church. God pulls you together. Of course, there's gonna be tension.
Jeffrey Heine:
Let's look at the church's purpose. We know what it is, but now what is its purpose? And to do this, we're gonna have to take a really big step back, and I want us to look at all of the Bible to see what the purpose of the Bible is, or the purpose of the church is. Last week we we looked at how God created Adam and Eve, put them in paradise, put them in a garden. Everything was great.
Jeffrey Heine:
The relationship with one another was perfect. The relationship with God was life giving and perfect. It was beautiful. All creation, it was working in in perfect harmony. The word with, the biblical word for that is shalom, in which there is the spiritual and the emotional and the physical peace and harmony of all things.
Jeffrey Heine:
There was shalom there. And then man sins, they disobey God's one commandment, and it is all shattered. Guilt and shame come in. The relationship with each other is fractured. The relationship with God is fractured.
Jeffrey Heine:
A curse falls on the entire world, work now becomes burdensome, it's toilsome, thorns and thistles are growing up. And also in this shalom of the world, this harmony is shattered. It's broken. And Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden, and we looked at last week, Genesis 3:15, the protoevangel, the very first hint of the gospel, in which God says, okay, it is not always going to be this way. Yes.
Jeffrey Heine:
All of creation is under a curse. Everything is broken, but I will bring redemption and it's the first hit of the gospel. And then we see through the rest of scripture, this plan of redemption unfolding. Genesis 12, this plan of redemption begins to take a little bit of focus when God calls Abraham. Abraham wasn't a righteous guy, he came from a family of idolaters.
Jeffrey Heine:
There was nothing about him that God said, great person, I'll choose him. God just said, Abraham. And he said, I'm gonna make a covenant with you, Abraham. And and let me just read to you, what God promised Abraham. Says, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
Jeffrey Heine:
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all of the families on earth shall be blessed. All of the families on earth shall be blessed. Abraham, I want you to start having a relationship with me. I want you to start having faith, and through this, I'm gonna build a nation from your descendants, And this nation, this group of people, is gonna begin in some way breaking down the curse.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's gonna begin blessing the families. No no longer a curse, but a blessing to your descendants. So Abraham goes, and after this calling, instantly children started singing the worst, most annoying song ever. Father Abraham had many sons and if you've got to some reason you gotta do all these motions and, actually, probably, the Lord told Noah to build an archer. He might be slightly more annoying.
Jeffrey Heine:
Caroline, she sings that song all the time, and it's actually, it is an annoying song, but it has good theology. Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. The church, we see that the church is spiritual descendants of Abraham. We are his children, and that means the calling that was given to Abraham is our calling.
Jeffrey Heine:
That we are to be a nation, that we are to be a blessing to the world, that we are to see God's plan of redemption unfolding through us. We have the same calling. We're also to be sojourners in this life, and we're to go around blessing the world. We don't have time to go into all of Abraham's life, but you see that early on he understood his calling. Genesis 19, when God comes down to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, what does Abraham do?
Jeffrey Heine:
No, Lord. Don't. And he intercedes. He says, Don't destroy the city. And he keeps interceding.
Jeffrey Heine:
He's seeking the welfare of the city. He wants to bless the city, not destroy it. After about 20 years or so, Abraham has Isaac, Isaac has Jacob, Jacob has Joseph. Once again you see in the life of Joseph, how God is using Abraham's descendants to bless the world. When Egypt was under a severe famine, it was Joseph who had prepared for it.
Jeffrey Heine:
It. Joseph who was raised up to power, who prevented all of Egypt and all of the neighboring regions to not starve to death. He was blessing the nations. He was seeking their welfare. He was fulfilling his calling as a descendant of Abraham.
Jeffrey Heine:
400 years later, God raises up Moses to lead Abraham's descendants, which were now in slavery, to to lead them out of Egypt. And once they left Egypt, they come to Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 19, and we looked at this a lot a few months ago. And God gives them the law. He gives them the law and, but this is what he says when he gives them the law. He says, I want to make you a kingdom of priests.
Jeffrey Heine:
I'm giving you this law so that you might be a kingdom of priests. Not so you have all of these barriers that we think of the law, things that just make us strange and isolated to the world, says, No, I'm giving you this law so that you might be a kingdom of priests. A priest is someone who points to God. A priest is someone who intercedes for others. God enters a special relationship with Israel so that the world might be blessed.
Jeffrey Heine:
After they received the law, they wander in the desert for 40 years, and then finally Joshua, he leads them into the promised land, and God does another miracle. He parts the Jordan River, and and all of Israel passes through, and and Joshua says, let's set up memorial stones here so that we remember this event. And in Joshua chapter 4, he says, for the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you, so that all of the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty. And so he put up a memorial, not just for Israel, but so that all of the world might know the mighty power of God to save. And so the people of Israel, they they go into the promised land, they they establish themselves there, and it's not too long before they finally set up some kings.
Jeffrey Heine:
And you know, you have King Saul, you have King David, you have King Solomon. Solomon decides to build a temple, a place where people can come to pray, a special place where God will come and meet his people. And in 1st Kings 8, Solomon says this at the dedication of the temple, when a foreigner comes to this house and prays, hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name. And may they fear you as do your people Israel. So Solomon, he understands that the reason he builds this temple is not just for themselves.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's a temple for all of the nations. All of the nations that they might know God, not just Israel. And you find the same theme throughout all of the prophets and through the Psalms. I I just kind of, you could pick any psalm. I went to Psalm 96 and I thought, well, just kind of go chapter by chapter.
Jeffrey Heine:
And listen to this, Psalm 96 says, Oh sing to the Lord a new song, Sing to the Lord all of the earth! Declare His glory among the nations! One chapter later, Psalm 97, the Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice, let the many coastlands be glad. Psalm 98, one chapter later, says, he has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Jeffrey Heine:
Make a joyful noise to the lord all the earth. Psalm 99, the lord is great in Zion. He's exalted over all of the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Psalm 100, make a joyful noise to the Lord all of the earth, serve him with gladness.
Jeffrey Heine:
And you could go on and on. All the Psalms are, yes, they appreciate what God is doing with Israel, but they realize that that's just part of the plan for him blessing all of the world. All of creation. We don't have time to go through all of the prophets, and so I'll look at the greatest prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 25, he says, The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wine.
Jeffrey Heine:
And he will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces. Isaiah 45, Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, For I am God, and there is no other. And if you look at, the reasons that Israel was destroyed in 722 BC and also in 586 BC, they were destroyed, it's because they didn't fulfill their calling. They they started committing idolatry, and then they became so inward focused that they no longer were a friend to the widow. They no longer gave to the poor.
Jeffrey Heine:
They no longer fought for justice. They no longer were instruments of mercy. And if you read the prophets, that's what the accusations are, over and over. Saying you're just like the world, you're not a light unto them. So God destroyed them.
Jeffrey Heine:
And when Babylon came in to destroy him, and the people of Israel were sent out in exile, even in exile God wanted them to stick stick with the plan in their calling. And he tells Jeremiah, as as all of these exiles are in Babylon, this pagan city, forced there against their will, living with the enemy, Jeremiah 29 says, Seek the shalom. Seek the welfare of the city. Yes. Seek the welfare of the people who have persecuted you.
Jeffrey Heine:
Seek their good. Be a light unto the nations. When we come to the New Testament, we hear Jesus say in John 10, when he's talking to disciples, Israelites here, He says, I want you to know that I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them all in also. They're gonna listen to my voice so that there will be one flock.
Jeffrey Heine:
There will be one shepherd. I will bring all of the world in under me. In John 17, Jesus prays at his disciples that they would be unified on earth, and it says, the reason I want you unified is so is so that all of the earth may believe. The reason I want you to stick together, the reason I want you to love one another with a deep deep love, so that all of the worst world will see. And as Jesus is ascending into heaven and after His resurrection, in his famous words, he says, all authority has been given to me in heaven and earth.
Jeffrey Heine:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. Go over all the earth. And then he told his disciples, but you need to wait. You can't just do this with your own strength. You need to wait.
Jeffrey Heine:
My spirit's gonna come upon you. Wait and pray. And so they go into that upper room, and and they're they're praying, and they're waiting, and they're praying, and they're waiting. And then the strangest thing in the world happens in Acts chapter 2. Tongues of fire comes out.
Jeffrey Heine:
I have no clue what that means. I don't know if it's literal tongues, but I don't know. Something miraculous crazy happened. They are filled with His Spirit. Peter rushes out like a man on fire.
Jeffrey Heine:
He's just running out and he just starts preaching. Just starts preaching. And he preaches from Joel 2, which says, this is the fulfillment of Joel's prophecy says that God will pour out his spirit on all flesh, on everyone, and everybody hears it in their own native tongue. But the disciples, you think the disciples kinda instantly change, you know, after Jesus is resurrected and after Pentecost, but they're still somewhat dimwitted because they don't go into all the nations. They don't start spreading out.
Jeffrey Heine:
They actually stay right there in Jerusalem. They've just been filled with the power of the spirit. God's told them, go and make disciples of all the nations, and they sit in Jerusalem. So God says, I gotta scatter them. So he brings in persecution to scatter them.
Jeffrey Heine:
Stephen is stoned. And when Stephen is stoned, it says that all the disciples of Jesus fled. They scattered. It says they preach the gospel all the places that they went. The gospel starts going out into all the nations.
Jeffrey Heine:
In Acts chapter 10, the Gentiles, they have their own Pentecost experience. After God gives Peter a vision of that blanket coming down with all this, I mean I would call it soul food. I mean you got pigs feet in there, you got all these things that a Jew is like, there's no way I'm gonna touch. God says, eat it. I've made it clean.
Jeffrey Heine:
Doesn't quite get what this means, and then he has a vision and he goes over to Cornelius, who's this Gentile, and there's all these Gentiles around, and then they have Pentecost with Gentiles in Acts 10. Peter's like, oh, I get it. You mean, Pentecost just wasn't for us. We're to bless the world. Bless the world.
Jeffrey Heine:
And Peter would always forget that. Paul says later, he goes, you know what? I went up to Peter, and I opposed him to his face. I love that. Because he forgot that he was supposed to be going to the Gentiles.
Jeffrey Heine:
Actually the very first church controversy that we have is in Acts 15, and it was because all these Gentiles were being saved. And there's this group that thought, Well, wait a second, this is a Jewish thing. I mean, this is just for us. So let's just kind of keep in our little holy huddle, let's just keep it with us. But then Paul's bringing in all these people, all these Gentiles, confessing Jesus is Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:
The spirit's falling on them, and what do we do? And so they have this big council, this big controversy in Acts 15, and they finally decide, well, I guess Gentiles can be Christians too. And so it spreads. It spreads. God's plan of redemption spreads.
Jeffrey Heine:
And here we come to 1st Peter, in which he gives a great description of what he believes the church to be. And it's this culmination of all of scripture. This culmination here. Look at look at chapter 2 verse 45 again. See if you don't recognize some of these themes.
Jeffrey Heine:
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, as a spiritual temple, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through worship. And when Peter looks at the church, he says, This is what the church is. You're you're forming another temple, kind of like Solomon's temple, which is Shekinah glory is going to come and fill, but the blocks are you. And your lives are to be so interlocked with one another, That together you form something collectively beautiful, this temple of the Lord. And Paul says the same thing when he says, You or y'all are a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:
When we come together, God's spirit blows in our midst. And that's why you can't just listen to a John Piper sermon, you know, as good as that is in your car, you know, maybe even lift your hands in some parts during worship afterwards and call that church. That's not church. It's not part of God's plan of redemption. That's not going to change the world.
Jeffrey Heine:
We have to interlock our lives together and let God work in our midst. That's church. Peter says that we are being built as a spiritual house in order to be a holy priesthood. Once again, what's a holy priesthood? People who point others to God.
Jeffrey Heine:
Constantly pointing others to God. And so collectively, we we we're so joined together, we live lives so radically different, people see us, and they see that as a giant arrow that points to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Verses 11 and 12 tell how we do this. How we do this. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
Jeffrey Heine:
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of salvation. Peter says that once again, we're sojourners, common language, language throughout the Bible of Abraham and his calling. We're sojourners. But he uses actually a technical term here. This is not just a foreigner who comes in for a visit.
Jeffrey Heine:
This is not a foreigner who is sightseeing. This is not a foreigner who who's coming to make a little money and then go back to their home. He's using the term a resident alien, a resident foreigner. This is someone who has come in, they're an outsider, but they've come here to live permanently. That's what he calls a church, Your resident foreigners.
Jeffrey Heine:
You're staying. You're committed to your neighborhoods. You're committed to the places where God is planting you. And then he says, and and we're we're to somehow keep our distinctiveness. He says, you're to be pure, but we're also to engage the world, and and I'll flesh it out in just a second.
Jeffrey Heine:
But we're we're we're to keep ourselves pure. How did how does he phrase that? He says that we are to to flee from these passions. He says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that they may see, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds. And in verse 11, he says, abstain from the passions of the flesh.
Jeffrey Heine:
And so he's saying that as a church, we are morally pure. We're committed to these these deep morals. Yes. That should isolate us from the world, but we're not gonna let it because we're gonna engage the world. And Christians were certainly considered weird and foreigners and, you know, the the early Christians were considered cannibals.
Jeffrey Heine:
You read some of the earliest writings against Christianity, and they called them cannibals because they met together in secret, and they ate somebody's body, and they were drinking blood. They were terribly misunderstood. And then they said, You know what? The Christians, they practice incest because they call everybody brother and sister. So there's incest going on there and Christians were so misunderstood.
Jeffrey Heine:
They were foreign and the church is going to always be that. We're gonna always be that. The world's not going to understand our values. Christians would have been thought to be very weird if they said, no. Sex is within marriage, or homosexuality is wrong, because sex outside of marriage and homosexuality were just prevalent and accepted.
Jeffrey Heine:
The Christian said, no. We'll keep ourselves morally pure. But they didn't let that isolate themselves. They engaged their culture. And so the the the world, it's in this kind of dilemma because they're they're gonna look at the church, and they're gonna revile you.
Jeffrey Heine:
They're gonna think you're evil, actually, because of all your views of all these moral issues, but then they're gonna look at how you love the poor, how you love the enemies, your enemies, how you fight for justice. And it says they're gonna give glory to God, So they're gonna both revile you, and they're gonna praise you, and they're gonna give glory to God. Like Jesus said in Matthew 5 16, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. And so that's that's what the church is. It's kind of almost in 2 worlds.
Jeffrey Heine:
We are distinct, we are separate, but in the same time, we engage. We're both blessed and reviled. And that's our vision for this church as well. I want us to love God so passionately that we will be misunderstood. We will be misunderstood and we will be reviled by those who do not know God.
Jeffrey Heine:
But then I want us to love our neighbor so fervently, and to fight for justice so readily that the world praises us, and they give glory to God. We want both. It's what the church is. This is how we can be a royal priesthood. It's how we could be a holy nation.
Jeffrey Heine:
That's the calling of the church. And I wanna just take some some time to tell tell you how our church into that, for maybe just a little bit of time to tell how I think our church fits into this. It's a continuation of this theme. We have the same calling to be a light into the world. Next week, our church is going to be 1 year old.
Jeffrey Heine:
Can you believe that? 1 year old. How many of you were at our house when we went 1st Sunday, March 30th? A few of you. Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:
You know, we we gathered at our house, and it was a result of prayer over a lot of years, and and then God's just slowly starting to grow us. We want to be a church that preaches the Word of God rightly, that does the ordinances rightly. I want us to be a place that has authentic community, that reaches out to our neighbors. And I think we're doing a number of things well. Not perfect by any means.
Jeffrey Heine:
There's other churches that do it better, but I think we're doing some things well. And so I want to commend you on some things. That's your church doing well. And I want us to to just kind of explain why we do some things the way we do them. And some of this you've heard me say before, but everything we do at this church is for a purpose.
Jeffrey Heine:
We always have our calling in mind, and everything is very intentional from from things like having the band set up on the side here instead of in the center. Is because we we don't want to draw attention to the band. Now I just said that now probably all of you will be looking over at the band, but that's not what we want. We want the your attention to be on the word. That's up there.
Jeffrey Heine:
Attention to God. It's very intentional. I've mentioned it before, but we will never use prayer as a transitional time. You're not ever going to pray, open your eyes and the band's up on stage, or I'm over here, Or you you pray and you open your eyes and they're all gone. We we don't use prayer as a transitional curtain.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's an, it's, that's not it. It's not we pray so we can move things around. When we pray, we want to engage the Lord. As that means there's gonna be times of awkwardness. I hope you can deal with the slight awkward silences that we have to have, you know, as we, as we transition things around, but it's very intentional.
Jeffrey Heine:
It's very intentional. The reason that we read so much scripture and we have joint confessions in our service, it's because we do believe that scripture should be primary in our worship service. That the word of God is the sword of the spirit, and you can't just say spirit, spirit, spirit, and yet not arm him. But God uses the word of God to change us. We believe that the word is central to worship.
Jeffrey Heine:
We're not gonna be a church with a lot of programs that can occupy your every moment, because we actually want to be a church that forces you outside of your holy huddle. This forcing you, you know, we're never gonna have a Starbucks at our church. Now I'm not saying that's wrong, other churches might be called and that might be absolutely right for them. We're not gonna do that, our church, because we actually want you to go to Starbucks. We want you to get to know the people who serve you.
Jeffrey Heine:
We want you to get to know the people who frequent there, so you can actually build relationships and be salt and light into this world. That's what we want. We're we're, you know, we're meeting in a gym, at least it's not ours, we don't have access to it during the week, but we're we're not gonna have a gym because I want you to go to the why. I want you, as hard as it is, to actually try to live the gospel while you're playing basketball. You know, to to interact with others, and so they actually think, man, that person's different.
Jeffrey Heine:
You know, the purpose of salt is the work itself into something that will naturally rot without you. So you need to go to the places that are rotting. Otherwise, you're useless, as Jesus says. The reason that we are here in Girls Inc instead of, our own building is because we believe it's the best way to fulfill our calling. I mean, I I admit, you look around here, it's not in the most conducive place for, for worship, to to get that emotion for worship.
Jeffrey Heine:
Our lights don't dim. We've got kids toys everywhere, girl empowerment signs everywhere, you know, vending machines, a rock we have a church with a rock climbing wall, 4 basketball goals, hula hoops. I mean, it's just it's not very conducive. It's the coolest church. It's the coolest church around.
Jeffrey Heine:
It is. It's intentional. If if you can't worship here, you can't worship in a cathedral. So that's not what it's about. But being meeting here enables us to invest in other areas, which I believe is worship.
Jeffrey Heine:
Let me commend you on a few things, you're doing very well. I want to commend you, church, on your giving. We're a small church, Look, we're small. This year alone, we've already set aside $31,000 for missions. Our church has $31,000 this little church for missions.
Jeffrey Heine:
I commend you on that. That is awesome. I mean, we've got, like, what, maybe 80 people, and it's a very young demographic. It's not like any of you are heavy hitters or something like that. You're generous.
Jeffrey Heine:
You give, I commend you on that. That's good. I mean, to put this in perspective, our rent is $15,000 a year. So we pay we're giving out double permissions, more than double permissions than we do for facility. I think that honors the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:
That's exciting to me as a pastor. And actually, if you were to combine what we spend on rent, children's ministry, men's, women's ministry, the the new trailer we had to buy out there and facility, you were to combine that all together, we would still spend more missions than we do on all those things. I commend you on that, and I hope that number grows. It's exciting to see. Many of you are beginning to make investments in the lives of others outside of these walls.
Jeffrey Heine:
You're beginning to be stretched outside your comfort zone and it's fantastic to see, Like Kristen leaving her job to go on the mission field in Mexico for a year. Awesome. Or Kate just deciding that, how can the Lord use my gifts? Art show, so I could raise money for Peru. Fantastic.
Jeffrey Heine:
You know, Elaine or Amanda Blake leaving her job to go work in Cornerstone. I mean, just to see all these different things happening or are people working in what we would call ordinary jobs, emailing me and asking, how can I do this job to the glory of God? Pray for me as I get to know my coworker. Fantastic. It's happening.
Jeffrey Heine:
Our intention in starting this church was to grow in our 1st year far more outside of these walls than we did inside of these walls. That's one of the reasons we didn't put up the signs, you know, outside. We we were not in the phone book, we we didn't do any kind of advertisement because we wanted really for people to have seen our good deeds before they even hear about our church or visit our church. It was exciting to see even things like, you know, focus on Fairfield, where over 40 of you showed up. Over, that's over half of you showed up to work there.
Jeffrey Heine:
Every Tuesday night, you're going to the Woodlawn family homeless shelter and cooking dinners. It's awesome. We're growing outside these walls. I think we're understanding what Jeremiah meant when he said we're to seek the shalom of the city. Home groups are growing.
Jeffrey Heine:
I loved it that I received so much hate mail from you guys when I suggested us breaking up our groups a few months ago. So let's break up our groups and kind of reform them. And, man, you guys wanted to lynch me when I said that. Like, there's no way you're breaking up our group. Man, that was thrilling to hear that because you were, we are so committed to one another.
Jeffrey Heine:
If you put me in another home group, then our home group's gonna just wanna meet on our own. That's good. Let me give you an update real quick about where we're going. I get a lot of questions about church membership, church government. We're an elder led church, James Cling, Ryan De Villeneuve, Corey Scoggin, Thomas Ritchie.
Jeffrey Heine:
They're functioning right now as what I would call provisional elders. They've not been installed. I've not brought them in front of you and install them as elders for a couple of reasons. Once again, we do this purposely, very intentionally. For last year now, we've been meeting together every month to pray for this church, seek God's heart.
Jeffrey Heine:
For months now, we've been going over a 40 plus page doctrinal statement, line by line, to make sure we're all on the same page, to make sure that we know what what we want this church to believe. We wanna be in agreement to this. Send out references to their bosses to hear. What is their character like at work? We want I want to get all of the all of that back before I bring them before you and say, these are our elders.
Jeffrey Heine:
And once we get elders, then we'll have membership that I hope is meaningful and significant. I thank God for the work he's doing here, for His Church Universal, and for our ability to be a part of that. For this local church to be empowered by a spirit, to be built up together, to seek the shalom of places like in Woodlawn, in Peru, all over the world. Pray with me. Lord, I thank you for what you're doing in this church.
Jeffrey Heine:
We are not perfect at all. Lord you're doing some really cool things. As a pastor, it just thrills my heart to see how you're growing us up outside of these walls. We are small, but Lord, you're using us, and I give you thanks. I pray we would never, ever, ever be a church that says, if only we had more money, we could guard us from that.
Jeffrey Heine:
Money is never the obstacle for a church. I pray that you guard us from that, that you would draw us on our knees, that we would pray fervently, that we would go into our communities, we would get to know our neighbor, we would love our neighbor, we would go down to places like Woodlawn or Ensley, and we would seek the welfare of those places. Guard us from heresy, from ever not being centered on Your Word. May we truly come to understand your gospel through your word and may that change us. It's God we ask that you would bless this church, that you would use this church for your glory.
Jeffrey Heine:
We pray this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and our savior, our Redeemer. Amen.