The Midnight Sermon
I was having a conversation yesterday. I was up in the mountains at a young adults retreat that we were hosting between Rock Harbor and Canopy.
We had about 60 young adults up there. It was an amazing time. I wanna tell you more about it. Before I do though, real quick I had an interesting conversation a few weeks back with somebody in our church who is, let's just say it like this, who is not a young adult. Who was asking me, they were saying tell us about the vision for the church because we love this place.
But something that's hard for us is that we come here and we don't see a whole lot of people our age. We see that you want to be a church for young adults. That's what they said to me. You're, you've got a background with young adults and college students and we know that's your target audience.
And I said Hold up just a second here. I want, and I wanna be clear on this cuz if. Is a, an idea that's out there. I wanna be clear on the kind of church that we want to be. Cuz you've heard us talking a lot about young adults over the past several six months or so. And there's a reason for that.
It's because I think that part of a healthy church is to have a solid core of young adults cuz they bring something to a community that's really important. And I saw it yesterday, I saw it over this weekend, like clearly the sense of adventure. I mean there were so many times where I was standing there watching stuff happen that I was thinking, I am so glad we made you sign a liability release
I just, I, there were moments where it's like, Dear Lord please don't do this. I can't stop you. You're an adult, but I, but please don't do this. But there was just this sense of passion and energy that, that, that ignites something in a community. And if a community doesn't have it, it's not full and it's not healthy.
But that doesn't mean that's the only thing that's essential for a good community. When I came to Canopy, we had a lot of families, and that's really essential for a community as. We have people who are raising kids in the faith and that they bring their children and their families into a community, and we get to all raise them together.
That's an essential part of family and community, and the stability that families bring into a community is massively important. We have people in later seasons of life that bring wisdom and experience. And the goal, I just want you to hear this from me, it's really important. The goal for Canopy is not to be a church for young adults or for young families or for older people.
The goal of Canopy is to be a church period. And for me, the definition of church's diversity, it means we have a broad range of experience. From youngest to oldest and everything in between. And not just age diversity, but socioeconomic diversity and ethnic diversity. We can't really fully experience the gospel if we don't have to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of people who don't look or think or act like us if we don't have to lay down our rights and privileges for others.
And just so you know, our goal is to be a church holistic, rounded and diverse. And so I, this person I was talking to just said, I just wish there were more people like me here and I. Then bring them. That's what I've been saying to young adults for a while and it's finally starting to happen. I was just telling Nick the other night, where's Nick at?
Just telling Nick the other day, for the longest time, Nick was our sole young adult at this church. Like really holding down the for and and I had a lot of young adults say, I wish I'd come here, but there just aren't more people like me. And I said, And there won't be unless you stay right. And I say the same to anybody in any season of life.
Help us build. This is a church for builders and we have a vision for a church that is rounded for the sake of diversity, for the sake of a full expression of the body of Christ. So that's my kick. All that to say, I was at a young adults retreat in the mountains yesterday, till last night, and I was having a conversation with a young adult who really didn't like the Apostle Paul.
It read his letters and they just, they said in their words, he just seems really. He just seems really intense. Like he's this really driven, entrepreneurial, visionary sort of leader that's charging to the nations and nothing gets in his way. Nothing. He says it here, right? He says, I am, I'm finishing this race.
There's nothing that's gonna stand between me and the completion of this goal. And we have this sort of, like I said, vision driven, hard-nosed, entrepreneurial image of Paul. I've actually heard that preached in many churches, usually by leaders who themselves tend to feel more entrepreneurial. Or visionary or whatever else they see themselves reflected in Paul.
And oftentimes I've even heard this this kind of perspective of Paul used to justify all sorts of things like charging forward regardless of the obstacles, even if the obstacles are people like even if we have to grind up some people we're going to this goal, to this task. I've heard people say things like there's Paul leaders and there's Timothy leaders.
The Paul leaders are the out there apostolic on the front lines. Leaders and the Timothy leaders are the ones who like stay behind and care for people after the Paul leaders come through and crush them. You know what I mean? And you need both in a church. And so this person was like, Yeah, I like the Timothy leaders.
I don't like the Paul leaders so much. And I said, Have you read act? Because I just so happened, I, we weren't talking about this at all, but I said I just so happened to be preaching on Acts 20, and I don't think that picture you painted of Paul is accurate cuz this passage just drips with love for the church.
Do you guys see it? Do you see how much like passions? There's some of it that we don't notice. So part of it, when it says he goes to Macedonia, he went to Corinth, and Macedonia, where the letters to the Corinthians were written. He had visited there before and planted a church. We read that story earlier in the book of Acts, and then that church went wildly off the rails in some pretty some pretty gross ways.
And so Paul heard about what was happening in the church, that there was heresy being preached, that there was all sorts of sexual immorality and all sorts of not just sexual immorality, but practices within the church where they were damaging one another. They were judging one another on the basis of who had the best spiritual gift.
There was a bunch of chaos in the church of every kind. And so Paul wrote this letter and he sent it along ahead. We have it today. It's called the book of First Corinthians. He wrote it during this season, like while he was in Ephesus. He sent it on ahead to, to Corinth and we'll discover from second Corinthians that he was so anxious about the reception of the letter.
Cause the letter's hard, like it's harsh. We read it and we think it's this light, fluffy thing cuz it's got first Corinthians 13 in it. Which is all about love. It's all about marriages, right? It's all about how to be like to be a really loving person. No. The love passage in one Corinthians 13 is nestled between two passages about spiritual gifts and what happens when you damage people with them in 12 and 14, and he says in the middle of that, between the two.
If you speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but don't have love, you're just making noise. See, it's not, It's about the. He is desperately pleading with the church to love each other better than they're doing. And in second Corinthians, he'll say, I was so anxious, cuz he wanted to go back and visit them and he wasn't sure what would happen when he arrived.
Would he find a church at all would have evaporated under the weight of their just corruption. an idolatry, would it have just disappeared? Would they come in with all sorts of hearses that he'd have to spend months and months trying to correct? Would what would he find? And he was so desperate to know what was happening that he sent Titus to Corinth to investigate.
He sent him to Spy on the Church, and when Titus arrived, he discovered that they had repented, that they'd read Paul's letter and they had dealt with the corruption in their church and they had made changes. And Titus came back to Paul and he said, Hey, it went well . The church is flourishing. They got on their knees.
They wept over what? Over the sin. They repented, they dealt with it. And Paul was so overjoyed that he wrote a second letter and second Corinthians is very different than first Corinthians. And then he went afterwards and he spent three months with them encouraging them and blessing him so deep as his love for the church.
We forget that this church planter Paul, while he was planting new churches, was always sending letters to old churches to make sure they were doing. A lot of his missionary journeys were go out and plant and cycle back and visit, go out and plant and cycle back and visit. We have this frontier missions guy, but he's also a pastor with the heart for people.
We see it again in TR ads. So he moves on from Corinth to TR ads. It's this port city right on the Mediterranean beautiful spot I hear. And he preaches until. It's interesting because what it says in Acts here, it says because he intended to leave the next day, he kept on talking until midnight. Why did he talk so long?
Because he didn't want to go, like he just loved them so much. I, at this young adults retreat last night, like I already mentioned, and I. Somehow, I don't know how it happened, but I preached a 90 minute message. Come on. I won't, I promise I won't do that to you here. But I felt a little bit of this where I, it wasn't like I wanted to hear my own voice, although that happened sometimes last night.
It was just this I feel like God's doing something good in the church and this generation and I'm so excited to share it with you. And I feel like that's what was happening to Paul, like on a much bigger scale here, cuz he was there. It says on a Sunday right after Passover, what does. Probably Easter Sunday as we know it.
Easter Sunday didn't exist then, but the Sunday right after Passover is Easter Sunday. It's resurrection day, and Paul is here at this church. He's planted and loves dearly and he's not gonna see him again, he thinks. And so he just keeps going and keeps talking and telling them how much Jesus loves them.
And he showed up here that he died for us, that he rose from the dead. That resurrection is available and he is talking so much and it. Spring night in the Mediterranean and they've got these oil lamps that are burning that set off this incense, like this fragrant incense in the room. And it's such this idyllic setting of like love and the word of God, and so much so that this poor young man sitting in a window just falls asleep and falls out the window.
His name is Tys, which is, It's funny, it's ironic because it means in Greek it means lucky. Isn't that interesting? So lucky he's hanging out there listening to Paul ramble on until midnight, and then he falls out the window and dies like unlucky until Paul goes down and wraps his arms around him and he comes back to life.
And on Easter Sunday, what do we have in the church? A resurrection. How crazy. And then Paul gets up and talks some more. Cuz what are you gonna do after that? You gotta, you just gotta keep going. There's deep love for the church. And then he goes to Ephesus. And it says he didn't want to go into the city because he wanted to make it to Jerusalem by Pentecost.
Commentators have wondered why he didn't wanna stop in the city. And some of them say things like maybe he was worried because last time he was there, there was a big riot and he was afraid that might happen again. That there were opponents in the city. That's a theory.
I suppose that might have been a factor in his mind, but I just haven't in this story yet. Noticed Paul being afraid of confront. Do you know I haven't noticed him, like not wanting to go into a place because there's opponents there. I think what's happening here is he didn't want to go in because he knew if he landed at the church, he would never wanna leave.
That we have a place he spent three years. It says three years preaching the word of God daily. Can you imagine like sitting with the same community day after day, like loving them so much that for three years, for over a thousand days consecutive. You just want to tell him about Jesus, I love you so much that I will spend every single, I will show up here every single day in this lecture hall and tell you this story.
So much so that it says Everyone in the province of Asia eventually heard the message and he loves this church so much that I think, and several other commentators as well think he didn't stop in the city because he knew if he stopped, he would never leave. You ever felt that way about a community? I just love it so much here.
I feel like God's calling me to something else, but if I it's like you almost don't wanna say goodbye cuz I know if I say goodbye, I might not say goodbye. That's what's happening here. But at the same time, so he, he bypasses Ephesus and lands in another port city, close by, but he still can't resist himself.
So he sends a message to ESUs and ask the elders of the church to come and visit him there. So I better not go into the city cuz who knows what'll happen, but I still really wanna. Then they have this meeting that's just so moving as Paul, like in a very Moses esque or Joshua esque gives like his final address to people.
This happens in the book of, in the book of Deuteronomy, right before they go into the promised Land. It happens in the book of Joshua. Right after they take the promised land, the leader stands in front of his community and says, Now I'm handing this off to the next generation. Here's what I've done.
Here's what you've seen me do now. Keep going. And he just has this father's conversation with them. It's just this beautiful moment that we're not gonna unpack today. There's a lot to unpack there, but this beautiful moment of I have loved you now. Keep on loving each other, and then they weep. This young adult I was talking to, you might not have liked him, but they did. They wept over the fact that he was leaving and they'd never see him again. They loved this man. This was not a Hardnosed entrepreneurial leader who ground up people and spit him out. This was a pastor who had cared for them, who had shown up every single day for three years and brought the word of God into their lives.
And I imagine that's not just preaching, that's not just standing on a stage. Sometimes bringing the word of God means sitting across a table and saying, In this situation you're going through, here's what the word of God says, Here's what the kingdom of God means. And he did that and they loved him for it.
But he said he had to get to Jerusalem. He had to go to Jerusalem. He felt compelled by the spirit to go to Jerusalem and everybody says, Oh there it is. There's the mission. He's driven on the mission, so he's so much so that he leaves the church behind you. See, there it is. It's the entrepreneurial leader saying, I love you guys and everything, but I have to do this.
Problem is that Jerusalem wasn't the mission field. The mission field for Paul was. He's heading the wrong direction. And not just Rome, but beyond Rome. When Jesus said, You'll preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, the ends of the known world at that point was a place called Spain. That's the extent of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire was beginning to branch into what we know is Great Britain now, but not yet. So at this point, Spain's the end of the world, and Paul talks about an ambition to go to Rome and then sail onto Spain because his mission as the missionary to the Gentiles is to preach the gospel where it's never been.
So why is he going to Jerusalem? He's going the wrong direct. The answer, We don't get it in the Book of Acts, which is interesting that Luke doesn't mention it, but we see it in some of the other letters. The answer is there was a massive famine that had hit the land of Israel and the church that we had seen in Acts two, in Acts four become, be so generous with one another was now impoverished.
They had nothing and so Paul went around the entire Mediterranean and everywhere he went would find from his letters, he collected an offering from the Gentile churches to take back to the church in Jeru. Why was he going back to Jerusalem? To care for the church, to care for the poor suffering, famine stricken church in Jerusalem.
And that's why Luke includes this details about all of these names of people that were with Paul. Why was he so concerned to give us these names, to show us that Paul had an entourage traveling with him? Why did Poly entourage? Because he had a massive amount of money that he was carrying over road and by boat, and he needed both security and account.
He needed people around him to protect him if anything went down, and people to protect him from himself to watch over the offering. And he was desperate to get this money back, so desperate, in fact, to get this money back to the church in Jerusalem that he was willing to take a detour from his mission to Rome.
He was on his way to Rome and he turned and came back to care for the church entrepreneurial visionary frontier Missionary. Put the mission on pause to care for God's people in need, and the mission would never be resumed in the same way. We'll find out that Paul's not gonna make it out of Jerusalem.
He will, but not the way he thought he would.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is Paul shows us that apostolic leadership or leadership in the church is rooted in relationship. That there's not some sort of dichotomy between an entrepreneurial visionary, mission focused leader. And a leader who cares for people, you don't get to do one or the other.
And the same is true not just of leadership, but of the church. I hear so many churches talk about being outward focused or inward focused. We're focused on mission or we're focused on pastoral care and discipleship. And I wanna say no. You do both. If you don't do both, then you don't do either.
They are symbiotic. They rely on one another to live. If you take out pastoral care and focus only on mission, then what exactly are you inviting people into a family where they're just gonna get churned up and used for the sake of mission? And you just have this constant rotation of people in and out of your church as they come in, compelled by the compassion with which you reach into the world, but then leave broken by the fact that same compassion isn't expressed in the church.
That doesn't work. At the same time, how many churches do we know that are just dying from the inside because they love each other really well, but that love never leaves the walls of the church. There is no dichotomy here. Paul shows us that to be a leader in the Church of Christ, to be a, to be the Church of Christ is to have your eyes fixed both on the church and its mission in the world.
People and people. It's really important. Oftentimes in our zeal for building in the church, we forget what it is we're building. We're not building an organization, we're building a family. And you know that You build a family very differently than you build an organization. It's relational, not structural.
And the fundamental element necessary for a family is not vision, but love. And that's what drives Paul at the end of the day. Yes. Does he have a vision? Does he have a mission? He's on? Yes. But he says what the love of Christ compels me. He's driven by love. He builds out of a place of love. This is the inciting and sustaining element of Paul's mission.
Love for God's people. Those who don't know they're his people yet, and those who do. And I just wanna say to be a healthy church, we have to have. We have to have a deep love for the world and longing. This kind of compelling sense that we have to be out there doing the work of the Kingdom of God without neglecting the Church of Christ and the people who call it home.
And this is not just a message for leaders. This is a message for leaders. This is personally convicting to me. I want you. Try not to preach any message to you that I haven't preached to myself. And this one convicts me cuz I've gotten caught up in those cycles of, Oh, are we outward focused? Are we inward focused?
No. No. Both. But this is not just about leadership. This is about anyone who calls the church home. What does it mean to call this church home? Tell you real simple. It means you have a deep love for the other people who call it home. They're your family. And you have a deep love for the family business, which is seeing the restoration of the world.
That's what this church is all about. That's what a church needs to be all about. Both of those things, Paul held these things, so with such gravity, with such weight that he was willing to die for both. That he's willing to die. For the mission of God in the world and for the sake of the church.
That's what's happening here. He's convinced that something's gonna go down in Jerusalem. In the next passage, in Acts 21, he will receive a prophetic word that is unlike the prophetic words we give in this place, cuz we will want ours to be encouraging. Literally, in the next passage, a prophet will show up and demonstrate by binding Paul's hands with a rope, what's gonna happen to him in Jerusalem.
If you go there, you will be arrested and bad stuff is gonna go down. And he says, I have. I have to go. He will die to care for the church and die for the mission in the world. And I just wanna ask the question, if that's the call, if the call is to love the church and its mission in the world with such passion that we are willing to give our lives for both, how do we get there?
Because I'm not always there, I'm just being really honest. And it's clear as we look at the American church that most people aren. Church is a an optional add-on and mission is something that we'll write a check to from time to time or think about on occasion but to really have this driving compelling fire, like how does, I guess the question I'm asking is why would a person be willing to pay such a price for the church and the world?
Like what is the fuel of Paul's death defying? I've got four things. You ready? The first one is the reality of the kingdom of God breaking in. So Paul was convinced that what was happening when Jesus showed up and died and rose from the dead was nothing less than the beginning of a new age. He applied this very literally to the real world with a sense of urgency.
In other words, he had this sense that something brand new was happening in the world. That changes everything and you have to know about it. It's almost this is a terrible example, but it's almost like he had foreseen a tidal wave coming. In this case, it's a tidal wave of grace, but he had seen it coming and he's yelling to everyone, Get ready.
It's about to. There's this sense of something is happening in the real world. There's a sense of urgency about him. Cuz Paul had this experience on the road with Jesus and this Jesus who he thought they had dealt with. He thought they had crucified him and it was over. And now he was just dealing with picking off a few of straddling Stradling disciples who were causing problems.
That's what he was going after. He met this Jesus and saw that he was in fact very much alive and risen. And then therefore, because he's risen, he has to be the. Paul's knowledge of scripture kicks in, and he starts to realize that all these prophetic images throughout the entire Bible are pointing to Jesus.
The suffering servants in Isaiah is Jesus, but somehow so is the victorious Messiah because he rose from the dead. And Paul's mind must in that moment, those three days where he was blinded, must have just been spinning outta control as scripture was just like firing in all cylinders. For him, it was just lighting on fire and he understood that what was happening was nothing less than the beginning of the restoration of all things.
For him, the kingdom of God was breaking into the kingdom of this world and that must have messed with his head because he always thought, like we've talked about before, that the kingdom of God would make a clean break between the old age and the new age. But if it's in fact breaking out in the moment, then what that means is the king is extending an era of grace before judgment.
Does that make sense? Yeah. He didn't break the age in half because if he did, then all the wicked people would be out. Which is all of us. Instead, he initiated the kingdom of God within the wicked age to allow the wicked people, the broken people, to have a chance to repent and join him in the kingdom.
And Paul realized that's what was happening. He experienced it firsthand. He saw it with his eyes. He experienced the power as miracles and signs and wonders broke out. And for him, he is just like it, you guys, it's real. I don't know what else to tell you, but it's real. The kingdom is. You have to know it.
I don't know the right analogy, but just imagine something like, just mind blowing in your life happening that was available to everybody. It's like this is the stupidest like dumbest analogy, but the best new restaurant opened up. You have to try it. You know what I mean? That's what we don't we?
Yeah. When something incredible happens and other people could experience it too, we go and tell them about. That's what he's saying here. That's what drives him, is something incredible is happening. The kingdom of God is open. You can enter in. So the first thing that fuels Paul's defying mission to the church and the world is the reality of the kingdom of God.
And out of that, this deep love for people that I don't think we give him credit for, I've mentioned this before, he's called the missionary to the Gentiles, but in every city he walked into, he started in a synagogue. Because he loved his people and he didn't wanna leave them behind. He's Moses interceding for them.
I know I'm here for the Gentiles and I'll get there, but God please help my people. They just don't see it's, there's just this like passion and then every time he does it, he gets kicked outta the synagogue and beaten and arrested, but he keeps trying out of love.
It's crazy how much he loves. Listen to this. This is out of Second Corinthians verse chapter 11. Paul's just describing his journey, his time. This is what he says. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews, 40 lashes minus one three times.
I was beaten with rods once. I was pelted with stones. Three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a day and a night in the open sea. I've been constantly on the move. I've been in danger from rivers and danger from bandits, and danger from my fellow Jews, in danger, from the gentiles, and danger in the city, in danger, in the country, in danger, at the sea, in danger from false believers.
I have labored and toiled, and I have gone often without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst and have gone often without food. I have been cold and naked beside everything else. I face the daily pressures of my concern for all the churches. If a guy like that walked into town and told you, I have to tell you something, you're gonna listen, aren't you?
Because you can see with your eyes on his body the scars of his love. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So what would compel a person to do that, if not this deep love for people? You have to. This is true and you have to know you have an opportunity to experience full and abundant life. The kingdom of the heavens is available.
He just loved them so much and I hate the fact that he's getting this image of this hard-nosed mean guy. When he bore on his body, the scars of his love reminds me of a story I read about a young man in the Amazon from a tribe that was visiting a city and he ran across like a revival that was happening in the city.
And there he met. He was just so compelled by what happened there that he felt like he had to share the message with everyone. So he went back to his tribe and they didn't like what he had to say. So they kicked him outta the village. He was very poor, didn't even have any shoes, but he was like, I have to tell people.
So he goes walking the Amazon without shoes to the next village. Village after village, getting kicked out of one after the other. Nobody wanted to listen. And he walked into a village, they chased him out and threw rocks at him. And he was like, just exhausted and burnt out and just done. So he lays down under a tree and falls asleep.
And a little while later he wakes up inside a. And his feet have been bandaged cuz his feet were bruised and bleeding cuz he'd been walking the Amazon barefoot for months trying to tell the gospel. His feet have been bandaged and the entire village is there. And they say, Tell us the village he had just been chased out of.
They say, Tell us about this Jesus. And he said, What changed? And they said, We, somebody ran across you laying on the hillside and we saw your feet bruised and bleeding. And we thought if he would do this. To give us this message, we better listen.
Gives new meaning to the famous verse, doesn't it? How lovely. On the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news. Those lovely feet are scar and torn out of love.
Why was Paul able to do this? Why? What was the fuel for his defying mission? Reality of the kingdom of God. A deep love for people, a hope for the future. I think the third thing is a hope for the future. Paul says in one Corinthians 15, he says, If for this life only we have, we I just lost it. If in this life only basically saying, if it's just about this life, forget it all.
I lost the verse entirely, you guys. It's, I promise if for this life only, we hope in Jesus, we are among, we are above all people most to be pitied. What are he saying is if there is no resurrection from the dead, if there's not a life beyond this one, then I'm wasting my. And have you ever felt that way?
Sometimes when you just navigate this world like, Yeah, it's good. God made it, but it's really hard, especially to follow Jesus. It's really hard. It comes with a lot of pain and a lot of sacrifice. And Jesus, if you're not real and the resurrection's not real, then I'm out. That's what he's saying here, But he has this deep hope in the future that everything that's been lost will be restored in.
There's nothing unredeemable. This is a big deal for me as I get older. Cause I start to get the sense that there's some things that you just don't get fixed. When you're young, you think you can fix everything. The older you get, you realize that sometimes you just don't fix them. They just end.
And this is painful and difficult
unless there's a resurrection, in which case everything that's lost is restored and then some.
Can you imagine living in this world without fear? Cause that's what resurrection is. It's the world restored and us restored in it, and insecurity is gone and fear is gone and death is gone, and sin is gone. And we get to be in this place without all those things. Can you imagine that being in this place without all those things, being in a good world?
Without badness, without wickedness, without evil, without fear. That's what resurrection promises. That's what Paul's inspired by. He says, Let's drive toward that day. It's gonna happen. Jesus is gonna come back and he's gonna renew it and restore it. In the meantime, he's given us a job to do. So let's do that job with all of our might, with our hope fixed firmly on the future, that Jesus is gonna come back and make it all right and the world will be made new and your bodies will be made new.
Paul talks about us having resurrected bodies like Jesus. What does that. Right now our bodies they operate in this weird inverse relationship, whereas you age, you gain wisdom and experience, but your body declines. it's a terrible thing. But in the resurrection, I think what happens is as we gain experience, our bodies improve.
Cause that's, I think, how it's supposed to be. I think sin causes death in decay. But imagine if your wisdom or your integrity as it increases so too, does your,
Imagine not declining, but increasing, growing, having capacity for endless creativity, endless investments in the planet and other people. I don't even know how to wrap it into words, but Tom but Paul has this great hope here. He says this in Romans eight. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Not only but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we eagerly await for our adoption to sonship and the redemption of our bodies for this hope we were saved. But hope that is not that is seen, is no hope at all. What hopes for what? Who hopes for what they already have.
But if we hope for what we don't have yet, we wait for it patiently. Paul's describing this waiting, this longing for redemption and resurrection and that drives. If the road to resurrection is this one I'm walking, then I'll walk it as you can do anything. If resurrection's at the end of it, right am I right?
If that's the hope of the future, and Jesus says, the way you get there is by following me on this like cross shaped life where you're laying yourself down daily, where you're dying to yourself daily, empowered by the spirit. If that's the way to get there, then you can do anything, Don't you? For me, the analogy is a simple one.
Imagine that you have two people and you give these two people the most miserable job on the planet. I don't know, like digging fence holes post whatever it is. Just hard soil. You just do it day in and day out for the rest of your life, 25 years. And to one of them, you promise a normal salary and to one of them, you promise at the end of 25 years they will have a vast fortune.
Do you think they will show up differently to. This is what Paul is saying. Jesus has promised us a vast fortune beyond this one, so show up with everything you've got. The last thing very clearly that we see in Paul, I'll wrap up with this Kingdom of God is breaking in. Loves people, has a hope for the future.
But what really compels him, what drives him more than all of this is the vision of Jesus. Why was Paul so willing to give his life for the sake of the world? Cuz Jesus made the world and he loves it. He loves it so much that he was willing to give himself for it. Jesus was the word of God that was spoken into creation.
That's what John says. The word that went out from the mouth of God is in some way I don't fully understand, is Jesus. His hands made it all. And so when policies, Jesus. Nail scarred hands in love with his world. How could he feel anything less? Why was Paul so willing to give his life for the church?
Because it's the bride of Jesus and Jesus loves it and gave his life for it. And if it was worth his life, is it not worth mine? Why was Paul so willing to give his life? Because he'd seen Jesus nail scarred, risen and reigning, and he knows that Jesus is better than anything else he has going. It's as simple.
He says that most clearly in Philippians, one of my favorite passages, one of my life's passages. And what I mean by that is not just the one that I like the best, but the one that challenges me the most. Whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What's more, I consider everything loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing King Jesus Christ, Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things.
I consider them trash that I may gain. Be found in him not having a righteousness of my own, which comes through the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is still on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ, yes, the power of his resurrection, but also the fellowship of participation in his sufferings becoming like him and his death somehow to attain a resurrection from the dead.
Did you hear it? He just said, Everything I've got's worthless compared to. He saw him and he realized in a moment that there is nothing in my life whether negative or positive, whether to my credit, or to my detriment that compares to him my plans, my dreams, my ambitions, my goals for my life are nothing compared to him.
Neither is my shame, my guilt, my brokenness. I'm going to lay it all down. I will sacrifice it all. I will literally throw it on the dump. So that I can be with him, so that I can gain him, so that I can know him, and that's it. At the end of the day, what is going to compel us into this death defying love for God's people in the church and in the world?
It's Jesus. See him as he is. Go after him with your whole heart. Lay down anything to be. You'll start to see the world through his eyes. You'll start to see the church, this broken, messy, confusing kind of entity through his eyes as a bride, radiant and spotless.
Jesus is all that matters. You guys,
all that matters. Nothing else compares. Did you pray with me?
Holy Spirit, I have it's ironic about this message, is I have suggested the answer is something that we can't do by ourselves. The answer is an encounter with you. that changes everything.
And all we can do is empty our hands and ask, Lord Jesus,
would you meet with us? Would you show us yourself in a way that changes everything?
So Holy Spirit. Bible makes it clear that's your job. Your job is to show us Jesus. So would you do that right now for my brothers, my sisters?
Would you give them a compelling vision of Jesus that changes things, that shows everything else to be less? S
it draws us out of our ambitions. Our plans are our small K kingdoms and draws us into yours,
into your work in the world, into your love for your church.
Yeah, Jesus. Would you just show up in this moment, in this church and change everything for us? We know you and we. We've seen you before, but we wanna see you again. We don't wanna live off yesterday's stories, yesterday's experience. We want more of you today.
We're gonna respond together in worship. You can go ahead for a little bit and stay seated though, and just have that conversation with him. Maybe it's a conversation about repentance, about things that are in your hands that are less than Jesus, that are keeping you from really going. and maybe the conversation with the Holy Spirit has helped me lay it down.
Maybe it's just waiting. It's just waiting. It's Jesus, I'm here. I'm ready. I'm ready to receive whatever you wanna give me. It's just an open handedness. Maybe there's something else he wants to do. Maybe it's something he wants to do in this room with someone else. Maybe there's somebody that he wants you to pray for or wants you to ask for prayer from.
Just take a few minutes and be attentive to what he might be doing. And as the worship team leads in worship, when you feel like you're in a space where you're ready, let's lean in together. Feel free to stand, feel free to kneel.
He's just that good. The songs we sing about him, they're just true. And when we sing 'em together, we just declare this like this. This value. We say we're prioritizing you above everything else. So when you're ready, when you're in that, that place, stand kneel and let's sing together. Take a few minutes though and just wait on him.