Sabbath (2)
Good morning, friends. How are you? Good. Well, this morning, we're going to have maybe a little bit of a different kind of sermon. Maybe it's not going to be, I don't know, because I'm not supposed to be up here right now.
Speaker 1:Pastor Luke, both Pastor Luke and Oksana have fallen sick this week, and I found out yesterday that I needed to be preaching this morning. So may the Let's spend a minute to pray for them, and then we'll jump into what we're gonna do this morning. Heavenly Father, we pray for our brother and our sister, Pastor Luke and his wife, Oksana. Father, we pray. Lord Jesus, now in this moment, Lord, that they would feel the rushing power of your Holy Spirit come upon their physical bodies, bringing health, restoring strength, Lord, taking away fever, taking away cough, Father.
Speaker 1:Lord, would you build them up in your strength. Lord, we ask that you would affirm in their hearts, Lord, your love for them, that your spirit would witness to their spirits that they are indeed children of God. Father, we thank you for their leadership and their presence here in this family, in Jesus' name. Amen. So we are in a Sabbath series, and my job this morning was to come up before the preaching on the second message in Sabbath, and give two different announcements.
Speaker 1:And so I was already struggling a little bit to know how I was gonna fit in everything that I wanted to say about those two announcements, and then have pastor Luke come up and preach a whole sermon to you. So we're gonna do kind of like three mini sermons. You're excited. I can feel it. I can feel the the excitement is palatable this morning.
Speaker 1:Three mini sermons. One sermon on each of the announcements that I wanted to talk about this morning, and then one on on Sabbath, although it's going to be from a different perspective, a different heart, and you'll know when we get there. So here is what I want to talk about. The first announcement, which is also a mini sermon this morning, is about our And hold the slide for me for just a minute, okay? Is about our food truck ministry.
Speaker 1:Many of you are, or you're probably aware, and maybe if you weren't aware, you've come to church and you've pulled in the parking lot, and you've seen this big food truck out in the parking lot. It's all decked out in conduit branding, that conduit has a food truck, and that among other things, once a week on Sunday afternoons, there's a small team of people who put together usually they're here prepping on Saturday or throughout the week, put together a large meal that they then go out and serve on Sundays after church down in Brooklyn Square to whomever would like to come and receive a meal. Typically, if you track it on Facebook or look at it on Facebook, you'll know that it serves anywhere between, a rough estimate, anywhere between two fifty and up to 400 meals a week on that truck. Fantastic ministry, just incredible engagement with the community, an incredible sense of mission, and vision, and passion to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to extend mercy to our community. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that and then share an announcement with you regarding it.
Speaker 1:As a general philosophy of mission in our region, meaning how does conduit approach how the idea of being on mission in our region, having God use us as the body of Christ to fulfill his mission in the world, right? There are really two ways that we see that, or our philosophy of mission exists in the region, is acts of mercy and cultural engagement. All right, so our philosophy of mission here at Conduit is, it's kind of twofold. It's acts of mercy, and it's cultural engagement. Now, we're not going to talk about the cultural engagement piece too much this morning, but you'll be hearing more about that this coming year.
Speaker 1:But what I do want to talk about is just acts are acts of mercy, which when I talk about an act of mercy, what I'm talking about is an act of compassionate, love filled response to the needs of those in our community. This is what the food truck seeks to address. Our community, our region, the greater Chautauqua community region lacks in many ways the proper resources to provide for or sustain the needs, the hunger needs of people. And so one of the ways in which Conduit has decided to get involved and to extend an act of mercy is to help bridge the gap between people's resources and the needs that they have for food. We've talked here before about why we think feeding people in the city and in the region is an important part of ministry.
Speaker 1:We believe that it follows the teaching example, or we believe that it follows the teaching of Jesus. Jesus taught about the about how followers in the kingdom or members of the kingdom do this. The example of Jesus, in his own ministry, directing his disciples to feed those, the crowd that was with him, as an act of compassion for them. We see that the organization of the early church began to form in many ways around these acts of mercy, ensuring that those who were going without food would have proper food for them. Acts chapter six, as an example.
Speaker 1:We see this as the consistent teaching of the early church fathers. For example, James in the new the the New Testament epistle of James, we see this as a consistent theme in his ministry of ensuring that our faith moved us to deeds which expressed that our faith was legitimate in the Lord. And so, we think it's a pretty well established we think it's a pretty well established principle within Scripture that caring for the poor is both a biblical and historical mark of all those who follow Jesus. This is why we do it. We don't Sometimes people will say things, and I understand this premise, sometimes people will say things like, Well, you have a food truck that's so cool, no other church does things like that.
Speaker 1:What you're doing is great, and I agree. I mean, I do think the food truck is cool, and I do think it presents tremendous opportunities for continued ministry in our community, but we don't do it because it's cool. We don't do it because it is a good story, or looks good in the paper, or on social media, although I appreciate, deeply appreciate all those things. It is a reflection. Ministry like that is a reflection to our commitment to continue the work and ministry of Jesus until He returns.
Speaker 1:When Jesus returns, I hope he finds us displaying acts of mercy, compassion filled love for those who need it, who desire it, who are poor, who have needs. I hope that's what he comes back and finds us doing. Something that honors him, that glorifies him. Now, I've preached two sermons recently in the last year or so on on this topic, and so I'm not going to go into it extensively from a theological standpoint, but if you're looking to just kind of get an understanding of what our theological or biblical position is on why we feed people in the city of Jamestown. Want to point you to these two sermons on our YouTube page, and if you haven't seen those, haven't listened to them, weren't here for them, just go back in the YouTube page, and they're both there from August, A Theology of Feeding People, and from October, what it means to be a people on mission for God, or with God.
Speaker 1:Now, in regards to the food truck, and the ministry that happens every week out of it, there is, you probably have seen it on Facebook, in the Facebook group or whatever, there's a relatively small group of individuals that organizes, that prepares, and that serves the meal every week. And when I mean a relatively small group, I mean, respective to how many people are in the room right now, or the conduit family as a whole, a relatively small group of people that organizes, prepares, and serves the meal every week. It is our desire to expand that pool of people, both for the sake of the longevity of that ministry, but also for the joy of serving Jesus and serving alongside one another. We want more people to take part in the joy of what it means to be the body of Christ serving others, and serving alongside one another. And to be honest, I have a bigger vision for the ministry with the food truck than we currently have the people capacity to sustain.
Speaker 1:And so the vision is kind of held back until we can call forth enough people to sustain it and have capacity to staff it. Now we have been thinking about ways in which we can continually bring this ministry opportunity before you as a church. And the idea was brought to us. Was like, well, why don't we do this? Don't we Let me ask this question.
Speaker 1:Has anyone ever left your church on a Sunday morning and been like, wow, the food smells really good? Two. Okay. Gotcha. Okay.
Speaker 1:So listen here. We gotta do better. Okay? You gotta help me. I had like twelve hours to prepare to alright?
Speaker 1:Help me, help you, help us. Okay? Okay. I often leave on Sunday mornings, and I'm like, dang, that smells good. I'm about to go down and get in line.
Speaker 1:Okay? The food smells good. It doesn't just smell good. It tastes good. It is good.
Speaker 1:We're not just nothing against hot dogs, right? But we're not just down there slinging hot dogs out of the truck, all right? There's a deeply held value and belief, right, that there is dignity in a good, solid, hot, nutritious meal, and then it's our joy and our honor to serve and to share that with our guests down there, the people that we meet and are encountering with. And so here is an idea that we're going to pilot this idea for a few months here, and we're going to see how it works. We're going to hold a a food truck fundraising lunch on April, which is the first Sunday April.
Speaker 1:And how this is going to work is it's going to be kind of twofold, or manyfold, should say. Number one is it's going to give you an opportunity to see the food truck ministry kind of in its function. Meaning after For the next few weeks, we have an open sign up on the app. If you get on your app, the Church Center app, and you go to the main page, and you click the three little dots at the bottom, and it says more, and you go to sign ups, you're going to see that there is a food truck lunch fundraiser button that you can sign up for, that you can sign up to purchase the meal that the food truck is going to serve on that day, and you can get lunch for yourself. So we're taking essentially reservations for the food truck team to provide or to purchase X amount more of the meal that they're serving for that day.
Speaker 1:For you to purchase as a fundraiser, all money is just going go right back into the tank that takes to do this every week. But it'll give you some exposure to what the food truck does, how it operates, the type of food that it serves. It'll give you an opportunity to support the ministry of the food truck by buying a meal. It will also, on that day, will have several different opportunities for you to sign up to, if you were like, you know, this sounds like something that I want to get involved in. I want to get involved in meal prep, or I can shop for groceries for it, or I want to serve on I want to serve once a month, or every six weeks, or I want to clean up.
Speaker 1:I want to I'm great at doing dishes afterwards, so I can clean up. We have lots of ways for people to get involved, but what we want to do is get more exposure to you of it, so you understand what it is exactly that it does. On the sixth, they're serving we're serving burritos on the food truck. Burritos with chips and salsa, okay? So there are The truck The team that puts that together has graciously offered to give you three options for burritos, I mean, which is just the standard burrito that they would that they make and assemble, and then there'll be a There's a vegetarian option, and there'll be an option where we have gluten free wraps if you have a gluten intolerance, but you need to sign up for those on the app, and you can pay for that when you come to pick it up, either cash or check.
Speaker 1:It's $10 per meal, so it's $10 per lunch. We'll have tables set up downstairs. You can stay and eat with your church family if you want. You can also take it to go if you prefer. You can buy 30 burritos if you want, and put them in the freezer, and eat them for lunch every day next month, if that's what you want to do.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I have they asked me, were you expecting? Like, how many extra burritos do you think we're going to have to make? It's like, I don't really have any idea. I mean, my family's good for seven, so it's going to I don't know, a hundred maybe? I'm unsure.
Speaker 1:But this is also a fundraiser for food truck ministry. It takes about, I mentioned this at the family dinner at the end of the year, it takes about, all in, about $1,000 per week if we had to buy everything to provide the 300 ish meals or so that the food truck serves. So much of that food is donated, but if we had to purchase everything, and sometimes we've had to, it costs about a thousand dollars. So we can always serve through your monetary donations, but also through your donation of food that is needed each week. Has everyone who who has seen the Facebook the Facebook group posts about the food that's needed each week?
Speaker 1:Okay. So you've seen it. If you're in the Facebook group, Conduit Ministries Facebook group, if you're not, go and search in groups for Conduit Ministries, join that group, because you'll see every week what the menu for the food truck is, and what the food needs are. And one way that you can participate in that ministry is say, Hey, I can provide for that this week. I can provide those six bags of lettuce, or those 10 bags of cheese, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:But you can always serve through your monetary donations, but also through your donation of food that's needed each week. This fundraiser is a great way for us to connect with the mission of mercy, and to be on mission for Jesus in our region. And so really hope that you'll take advantage of that. Really, really hope that you'll participate in that as well. So that's your first announcementmini sermon.
Speaker 1:Second announcementmini sermon is that coming up on April 27, which is the Sunday after Easter, we are doing some baptisms here during our worship service. What is baptism? Baptism is the outward and public profession of an inward decision to surrender lordship of my life to God, to repent of my sin, and to trust in Jesus for my forgiveness and reconciliation, God, unto eternal life. Baptism is, as we've described it somehow, all analogies break down eventually, and this analogy will break down if you try and stretch it too far, but baptism is similar to the ring that I have on my finger right now. I've worn this ring for twenty one ish years or so, and what it does is it displays outwardly to everyone else that I have inwardly made a covenant and commitment to my before God, with God, and to my wife.
Speaker 1:I am married. Okay? It is an outward sign and symbol of an inward decision that I have made to be faithful to my wife and only my wife as long as we both shall live. Now if I take this ring off, I do not cease to be married. The symbol is not the commitment itself.
Speaker 1:The symbol displays to those out here the decision that I have made, and baptism is the same. Baptism is not necessary for salvation, meaning we believe firmly, the scripture teaches that we are saved not by the water of baptism. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It is the grace of God moving upon our lives that brings us into faith in Jesus Christ, and it is that faith that saves us. This is something that the Bible teaches very clearly as Dutch as does church history.
Speaker 1:But what it also indicates is that is that throughout scripture and throughout church history, we do not have a category for the unbaptized follower of Jesus. Meaning that the overwhelming narrative of scripture, the overwhelming narrative of church history is that when we come to faith, legitimate faith in Jesus Christ, that the one of the next steps that that believer takes is the public proclamation of that faith before the community of faith. The Bible knows very little of an unbaptized follower of Jesus. In this way, baptism is meant to be extraordinarily public under normal circumstances. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, right?
Speaker 1:But under normal 99% type of circumstances, Baptism is meant to be public. We don't do private baptisms, because baptism isn't a private occasion. I honor those who have asked over time, hey, you know, I'm kind of I have a fear of being in front of people, would you mind if you just came to my house after church on Sunday, and just kind of like baptized me privately in my pool, in my back lawn, or something like that, just me, and like my family or whatever, and out of my most gracious and pastoral heart, I have to say, no. Would love want you to experience the gift of baptism, for sure, but baptism is not a private event. Baptism is a public event.
Speaker 1:It is decidedly public. It is a moment where the inward decision that I have made to surrender my life to God, to put my faith in Jesus, to be forgiven of my sins, to be sealed by the Holy Spirit unto eternity is one that I am unashamed to proclaim. Baptism is the symbolic moment where we put the life of sin to death as we go down into the water under the into the grave, under the water, right? And as we come up out of the water, it is the symbolic moment of Jesus raising us to new life in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the reason that we have chosen here to do full immersion baptism, because the symbolic moment of going into the grave of the water and coming up into resurrected new life is powerful.
Speaker 1:We can fully immerse ourselves in the symbolism of the grave and the resurrection. Our life of sin has been put to death, and we have been raised to new life in Jesus Christ. Now I'll be preaching a whole sermon on baptism on that day, on April 27, to go along with celebrating those who have made the decision to follow Jesus. But if you have not been baptized, but you have made a decision to surrender your life to Jesus, to trust in him by faith, to ask that he forgive your sins through his death, and unite himself with you, you unite yourself with him resurrection to new and eternal life, then baptism is indeed for you. You do not need to pass a theological test or have a certain number of years under your belt of coming to church.
Speaker 1:You need only to believe by faith that Jesus Christ is your Lord, and to walk in that reality, in the forgiveness of your sins, and the adoption now of you as a son or as a daughter of the Father into eternal life. I mean, just as an example, in the book of Acts, Philip in the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip was like, he ran up to this carriage, heard the Ethiopian eunuch reading out of the book of Isaiah. He jumps up in the chariot. He says, Hey, do you know who this is talking about? Philip shared with him the gospel right now.
Speaker 1:This is talking about Jesus, and the Ethiopian eunuch was like, Well, here's some water right here in this puddle. Why shouldn't I be baptized right now? And Philip's like, Let's do it! Jumped down onto the chariot. He baptizes the Ethiopian.
Speaker 1:This is a crazy part of Scripture. Crazy part of scripture. Baptizes him, alright, and then Philip it says in the scripture that Philip disappears and goes back to Jerusalem. He does what? Literally, the man teleports.
Speaker 1:I'm not joking. Right? This is like, well, all scripture makes sense. Right? Like No.
Speaker 1:This is miraculous power of God, the Holy Spirit. Like, out of the obedience that came from Philip's life, to jump up on that chariot and be like, I know who they're talking about, that you're reading about in the scroll of Isaiah. It's Jesus. Repent of your sins and believe by him in faith. And the Ethiopian eunuch's like, okay.
Speaker 1:I see that too. I want that. I receive I receive the Messiah, the son of God. I receive that. Yes.
Speaker 1:The holy spirit coming on in conviction. I repent of my sins. Let's get you baptized. Boom. Philip's like, whoop.
Speaker 1:Out. And then ask me then riddle me this with this question. You have this man who's from Ethiopia, who serves in the courts of the queen of Ethiopia, who by all accounts was the first person to take the gospel into the continent of Africa. So out of the faithfulness of one man to be present in a moment where he heard someone reading an obscure text out of the scroll of Isaiah, all of Africa became a seed for the gospel. I'm going talk about radical discipleship and calling, Philip just being like, Lord, I'm open to whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1:Walking on this Road. Oh, yeah. Someone wants to know about Jesus. Here we go. Baptism, teleporting, gospel to Africa.
Speaker 1:Here we are. What? Come on. This is crazy stuff. That wasn't even in the sermon that I didn't prepare to preach, so But here's what I wanna say about Here's what I wanna say about those of you considering baptism, okay?
Speaker 1:We have three classes that I love you, and I understand your busy schedules, but you must be in these three classes if you want to be baptized, okay? We need to see you in these three classes. In three consecutive weeks, they're all different classes, Sunday mornings at nine a. M. Before our church, before church, We're going to have a class downstairs on the April 6, the April 13, that's six plus seven, thirteen, and the April 20.
Speaker 1:The sixth, the thirteenth, and the twentieth, all April. And then is that correct? Hey, there they are. That's correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because we wanted to keep it away from the Easter week. Right. Okay. So, yeah, classes start next week. Classes start next week.
Speaker 1:Man, I'm glad you're all here. Who I would be a mess. They start next week, and I promise not to make them boring. It's gonna be a glorious time. We're gonna discuss the biblical theology of baptism.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk about your own personal story of coming to faith in Jesus Christ, and give you an opportunity to write down your testimony of your journey with the Lord, and your coming to faith in Jesus. We're gonna talk to you about what comes next after baptism. Baptism is not the period at the end of the sentence of your spiritual journey. It's like, it's not the end, it's the beginning. Right?
Speaker 1:It's where where God seals you with his holy spirit, cleanses you of your sin, unites you in faith with Jesus both in death and resurrection. And so if you if that's something that you're interested in, being baptized, or if you're not sure if you're interested in it, but you wanna come and sit through the classes and make a decision afterwards, we would love to have you do that as well. Please sign up on the Church Center app front page of the Church Center app. It says baptisms, and that will yes. Baptism, 04/27/2025.
Speaker 1:Please sign up there, and you'll receive an email from me tomorrow morning about that. End of sermon number two. No? We're good? Are we good?
Speaker 1:Okay. I love you. Thank you for loving me and being gentle, because I have some concerns. A concern, okay? As we've been praying into a series on Sabbath, and as we've been not just talking about it here, but as we've been talking about it in staff meetings and leadership team meetings, as we've been praying about it, as Pastor Luke and I are gathering together regularly to pray about these things, to talk about what we are discerning the Lord doing in the midst of the congregation, in the kind of the whole spiritual, gauging the spiritual barometer, listening to the spirit, hearing what he has to say.
Speaker 1:I have a pastoral concern about the heart attitude that I've been discerning regarding Sabbath in the last few weeks and months. And so I want to address it this morning, because while we'll definitely get to some practical measures of Sabbath, because I believe ultimately that's what a lot of the questions that you have, and you wanting to know, is the practical things. I think before we get down into practical things, similar to what we did with prayer, is that if we don't address the posture of our hearts towards the things of God, there's no amount of practical things that will make them take root in you in a meaningful way. Like I said, that first week we talked about prayer, and I showed you the whole stack of books that I've got on my bookshelf on prayer. All of the practical things you could possibly want.
Speaker 1:All of the information on developing a life of prayer on the internet, just at the couple clicks of your thumbs on your phone, you can get all of that. But unless God transforms your heart, unless you ask the Lord to transform your heart, to to bring upon you a a growing burden to pray, desire to pray, hunger to pray, there is no amount of quick hacks to pray that will sustain your spiritual life and mission for God into the foreseeable future. You will pray in little like sprints, but when motivation wanes, or when something difficult happens, or when you just forget, right, your heart will have a hard time refinding the center or the anchor and the spirit of prayer. This is the same with Sabbath. From last week, we looked at this kind of understanding of Sabbath, that Sabbath is an invitation to break with the pattern of the world by creating time and space for God and His gifts in our life.
Speaker 1:Maybe even more practically, we would say that Sabbath is, in very practical terms, a twenty four hour period of stopping or ceasing. That is literally what the word Sabbath or Shabbat means, to stop or to cease. To stop or cease from our normal rhythms of work creating and building, or in 2024 language, embracing the grind. It was unexpected to me for this to come upon my spirit this week, but it did, and when it did, I weeped over the heaviness of it. Is that I feel like even within our body that the practice of Sabbath, or our obedience to the Word of God as it pertains to Sabbath, may be one of the most difficult spiritual movements we have ever made.
Speaker 1:Maybe one of the most difficult things to develop a desire to walk in obedience under. We'll talk about that. The Sabbath is perhaps this invitation to break with the pattern of the world by creating time and space for God and his gifts, to stop and to cease our normal rhythm of work, or creating, or building. That idea is perhaps the most counter formational practice that a follower of Jesus can adopt into their lives. Listen, we have been so formed and discipled into the culture of the kingdom of this world that many of us are not even willing to consider that following Jesus must involve, must involve the regular ceasing and stopping in order to embrace a time and space consecrated and set apart for God, and the gift of his presence in our lives.
Speaker 1:To that end, I feel implored to say this, you must determine the level of intensity to which you will follow Jesus. You must determine if there are some things that you're going to follow the example of life and teaching of Jesus in, but then other things you're just not going to. You must make a decision as to the level of intensity to which you will consecrate your life apart from the influence and formation of the world that we live in in order to fully embrace the life, the teaching, and the example of Jesus. What do I mean by this? Pastor, I this is of course, I follow Jesus with all my heart.
Speaker 1:Right? We go back into that one spot where we all kind of remember the idea of, or the principle of Sabbath coming into our minds. Most of us usually think about the 10 commandments, you know, Exodus chapter 20 verses eight through 11 there, I think it is. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. From six days you shall work, one day you shall rest.
Speaker 1:10 commandments, right? Pretty big ones. When I meet with followers of Jesus now, and we talk about the commandments, and even as they have found themselves spread throughout scripture and into the life and ministry of Jesus in the New Testament, you have all kinds of great conversations, right? And you start talking about the principles of the commandments. You're like and you say, Well, yeah, you know, do not lie.
Speaker 1:And everyone's like, Yeah, following Jesus, do not lie. Not going to lie, I'm going to be honest. Right? Yeah, and do not steal. Yeah, do not steal.
Speaker 1:Of course, No follower of Jesus would steal. And do not commit adultery. Yes. We believe that. Lord, consecrate my heart to my spouse.
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna commit adultery. Do not murder. Well, yeah. Kinda struggle with murder lately, but I'm getting there, you know. But there's this inner sense of like, Yeah, do not murder.
Speaker 1:Then remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, and you're like, Yeah, right. Funny. I get it. You must not know how many responsibilities I have, how busy I am, all of the commitments. Did you know that I have kids?
Speaker 1:Did you know all these things? We say it, and we can laugh about it now, but let me tell you what, brothers and sisters, this is dangerously, dangerously, dangerously close to mocking the things of God. It sounds to me a lot like the spirit that Paul was talking about in Romans chapter one, where people gradually gave way in their hearts to the things of this world, to the values of this world, to the principles of this world, and the gradual giving of ground to the kingdom of the world took their hearts and darkened and hardened it all the way to the point where they then began to celebrate in others' disobedience to the Lord. And we have a culture that is perilously close to celebrating disobedience to the Lord as it pertains to the Sabbath. I don't think you understand, pastor.
Speaker 1:If I Sabbathed regularly like we see in scripture, I'd have to rearrange whole portions of my week. There are commitments that I would have to change. There are things that I would have to step away from. I would have to rearrange a bunch of my priorities. This sounds similar.
Speaker 1:This is not a sermon on giving, or generosity, or tithing, but it is similar to this same type of argument, Pastor, I can't give. I can't be generous with others. I can't tithe. I would have to rearrange all kinds of priorities in my life, and really have to reassess my lifestyle and how I want to live. Right.
Speaker 1:Yes. Precisely the point of radical discipleship to Jesus is that Jesus is not a thing that we fit into the conveniences of our schedule. That Jesus and his gospel and the principles of his word and our obedience and adherence to it is the main orienting principle upon which every other thing revolves. All of our time, all of our resources, all of our gifts, all of our relationships revolve around the center that is the building of God's kingdom. I don't Sabbath because I would have to rearrange my whole life.
Speaker 1:Good. That is what Jesus wants you to do, and that's what he demands of all those who follow him, is that their lives would be rearranged by the call to come into radical discipleship. Not that he would fit conveniently into the open slots of your calendar when you're not doing the more important things. This is precisely what Jesus said in Matthew 16. He says, Then Jesus turned to his disciples and said, 'If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.' The cross is an instrument of personal execution.
Speaker 1:Do you understand that? What Jesus was saying here is like, If you are unwilling to die to everything that is important to you, you are not fit to follow me. Then Jesus turned to his disciples and said, If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good is it for a man if they gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul?
Speaker 1:Listen. I may be a little fired up about it, but but God is not God is not angry with you. I mean this truly. God is not angry with you if you lack a wholehearted discipleship to him. He still loves you.
Speaker 1:His love is still shed abroad in your heart and your life. He doesn't withhold his eternal love that comes from his character. He doesn't withhold that from you. But don't confuse God still loving you, in the depths of all that you are and have, with, oh, okay, it's okay then. Because what we lose is the process of his anointing power and presence and blessing over our life.
Speaker 1:When we embrace a diet form of following Jesus that demands nothing of us other than a few hours on a Sunday morning. We forfeit the anointing of God, the blessing of God, the presence of God, the movement of God in our life when we reduce following Jesus to one thing we put on our calendar on a day in the weekend. We forfeit all the rest. Now God is not angry about it, but what God is saying is like, you settle for so little of what I have for you. You settle for so little, and then you wonder why you walk in powerlessness.
Speaker 1:Pastor Luke shared this quote last week, and I thought it was powerful, so I want to share it again, from John Ortberg. He said, For many of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith, It's that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them. See, we forfeit God's active presence in our lives when we do not rid ourselves of the idols of work. Make no mistake about it, our culture worships at the idol of constant motion, constant calendaring, embracing the grind, too busy to stop, too important to rest.
Speaker 1:We worship at that altar. And you know how I know? Because I know, because I know that even in some of your hearts right now, the response to all of that is, this just sounds like a bunch of excuses to be lazy. He doesn't even believe in hard work. I do a bunch of great things.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to stop them. I have responsibilities. You have been so discipled into the culture of the kingdom of this world that your heart won't even let you receive a message of counterformation to the spirit of God. Your heart is hardened because it's been so discipled to believe something that is not of this kingdom. We're so discipled by the culture of the world that we don't even have a category in our hearts for what it might look like to embrace the radical call of discipleship to Jesus, and to stop for twenty four hours once a week.
Speaker 1:And what I'm praying for you and calling you to right now is to let the Holy Spirit of God speak truthfully to your heart about your attitude towards Sabbath. Want to take my word for it? Don't take my word for it, but do the spiritual work of saying, Lord, if my heart is twisted about Sabbath, if I have been discipled by the kingdom of this world rather than the kingdom of your word, Lord, would you reveal it to me? And Father, if you reveal sin in my life, Lord, my commitment is to repent and to confess of that sin, and to turn to you in grace for forgiveness. Don't take my word for it.
Speaker 1:Allow the Holy Spirit of God to reveal it to your life. And if you ask in sincerity of heart, desiring truly to hear from Him, and allowing Him to bring conviction upon you if He so desires, he will bring it if it needs to be brought. But there is danger, increased danger, in asking him to bring conviction, for him to bring conviction, and then for you to ignore it. Because then it then it more fully hardens your heart against the speaking of His spirit into your life. And as we harden our hearts, as our hearts get hard, our ears get closed.
Speaker 1:And it's not anymore that the Lord is not speaking, it's that you've displayed a heart attitude and posture that says, I don't wanna know what you have to say. Back to this idea of forfeiting what the Lord has for us when we let the idol of work remain in us. I'm gonna draw our attention to second Corinthians chapter six verse 14 through the end of the chapter and into second Corinthians seven verse one. Now the Corinthian church was a very powerful church of Paul's. It was kind of like his flagstone church, but they had a tremendous amount of they had a tremendous amount of spiritual pressure against them.
Speaker 1:The Corinthian church, the city of Corinth, was set in a very Corinth was a port city. It was a pretty cosmopolitan city. If you were looking for a modern example, you would say something like New York City, or something like that, Like Los Angeles, or It was a cosmopolitan city, and because it was a strategic port city, there was a lot of trade that came through there. Most of the Mediterranean world traded out of the port in the city of Corinth, and one of the things that was distinct about the city of Corinth is that there was temples to gods of sex and power, essentially. And so, sexual sin in the city of Corinth was, if you read Paul's letters, probably one of the most besetting issues that he was seeking to disciple them through and call them out of.
Speaker 1:And for a believer to live in the city of Corinth presented a tremendous amount of pressure and trouble for them to walk in a distinct Christian Jesus following ethic of life in the middle of a city that pulled them hard in the other direction all the time. And so when Paul comes to them and he writes to them over and over and over and over again in this type of language, he continues to tell them these types of things. He's like, Listen, you followers of Jesus. Yes, you live in Corinth. Yes, you live in this place that has completely abandoned any type of biblical ethic sexuality, but you are called to be different, people.
Speaker 1:You are called to be strange in the eyes of the world. You are called to a radical form of discipleship that you will not find in Corinth, you will only find in the kingdom. So he says this to them. He says, Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. We use this as a text to our teens about dating.
Speaker 1:This is a it's a very shallow use of it. Okay? And contextually inappropriate. Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. Then he goes on to say this, For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common, or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
Speaker 1:What harmony is there between Christ and Belial, which is another name for Satan? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? He uses a couple different examples to say the same thing to Christians in Corinth, this city that is beset with sexual sin. He says, Listen, why are you continuing to act as if you're still living in the kingdom of sin and darkness?
Speaker 1:Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. What does righteousness and wickedness have in common? Nothing. What does Christ and Satan have? Nothing.
Speaker 1:What do light and darkness have to do with one another? Nothing. He says to them, he's like, Listen, there is a distinctive quality to all who come to faith in Jesus Christ. Don't walk like they walk. Don't live like they live.
Speaker 1:Don't speak like they speak. Don't work like they work. Don't be in relationship like they are in relationship. We are different. Why are we different?
Speaker 1:Verse 16, for we are the temple of the living God, he says. The living God lives within you. It says this, for we're the temple of the living God, and God has said this, I will live with them. I will walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
Speaker 1:Therefore listen. What does God want? He is looking for a people who will consecrate themselves away from the values and principles of the kingdom of this world so that he can come and walk with them, and he can be their God, and we can be his people, that his presence may dwell in us as the temple. If we refuse to make ourselves different from the world around us, if we refuse a consecrated heart to the Lord, then his presence will leave. The presence of God enters the consecrated life and walks with them.
Speaker 1:This is all that we studied in Psalm 24, the first five weeks of our life together this year. Who can ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who can stand in His holy place? Those who consecrate their lives with clean hands and a pure heart, who destroy the idols of their life and speak only what is false, they will be the generation that seeks my face. So he says, Therefore, come out of them and be separate, says the Lord.
Speaker 1:Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Therefore, come out and be separate, he says. Then in verse one of chapter seven, he says this, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit.
Speaker 1:Now listen. You could take these passages, and you could apply them to any, any area. You could apply them to the contextual area that the Corinthians were dealing with, which is their sexuality, and just telling, preview of coming attractions. We have a pretty extensive block of teaching coming up this year on a holy view, holy and biblical view of sexuality. We can apply these things to any area of our lives, but now here we are in in this idea of Sabbath where, like, the world has discipled us into this culture of go, go, go, go, go, embrace the grind, always moving, always creating, never stopping, never resting.
Speaker 1:That's for lazy people. That's not me. Too many responsibilities, too many kids, too important, too this, too that, too that. And the Lord is like, would you just separate yourselves from the kingdom of the world for a hot second so I could come and live in you? Would you just consecrate your lives?
Speaker 1:Would you just set yourself apart from the values of the world, from the kingdom of the world, that I may come and be your God and that you may be my people? Like I said, we must make a decision about the intensity to which we will follow Jesus. Jesus, I am all in on this stuff about not lying and serving the poor and loving my neighbor. I am all in on all of this great spiritual stuff. Good.
Speaker 1:Follow the Sabbath day. Keep it holy. But I am too important for that. Do not fool yourself. You are living in sin.
Speaker 1:And sin has one response, repentance. You either embrace it or you repent from it. Those are like, there is no there's no, like, flirting with it. Like, we either embrace our sin and we live in it, or we repent of it and receive freedom from the Lord. Now, I know this is this is not like, this was not a message that we had planned in the Sabbath series at all.
Speaker 1:But over the last two weeks, it's just like come heavy upon me, like, From a spiritual perspective, these people do not want to hear about this. And I believe that we don't want to hear about that, even if it's a subconscious don't want to hear about it. I believe we don't want to hear about it because we've been so discipled in the other direction that we don't have a category to understand what it could even possibly mean for our life, our heart, our spirit, or our relationship with the community of God or with God Himself. It has so been divorced from our idea of what it means to be a follower of Jesus that we laugh when it's when when we talk about it. And I just feel like if we get to the heart of that type of issue, we'll carry that same heart into other areas of our lives.
Speaker 1:That that will be the our heart is the heart, is our heart, no matter where we take it. It will be the same in every other area of our life. And my I don't want that for you. I don't want that for us. I don't want that for me.
Speaker 1:I wanna respond to the Lord with a fully open heart, a fully consecrated heart that says, Lord, I set my life aside so that You may work in me and through me in Your powerful presence, that I, Lord, you will be my God, and I will be your son. Lord, I set aside my schedule, Father. I don't make it, you make it. You tell me what is important. I set aside my resources, Lord.
Speaker 1:They are not mine, they are yours. They are they are full they're fully available, Lord, for you to do whatever you want to do with them in the building of your kingdom. Lord, every bit of who I am, every bit of what I have, Lord, use me for your noble purposes that I may serve you and serve your kingdom. The Lord is searching. His eyes are searching around the world, seeking whose hearts are fully committed to him.
Speaker 1:I want to be that person that ruthlessly lays down everything that stands in the way of the fullness of my heart to Him. It is our intention. I don't want you to think that we're just gonna speak in the like big meta narrative type area about Sabbath. I know that a lot of our questions about Sabbath are practical in nature. I want you to know that we do have intention to try and bring some clarity to them from a biblical perspective.
Speaker 1:Maybe offer some wisdom where we have it as well. So questions like this, how do I sabbath when I have kids, family, commitments, responsibilities, jobs, stuff like that. Questions like, well, what is allowed on my Sabbath, and what should be avoided on my Sabbath? That's a question that a lot of us get. What am I allowed to do?
Speaker 1:Am I allowed to lift someone's donkey out of a ditch if it falls in there? Allah, the gospel of Jesus. Am I allowed to heal someone on the Sabbath? Am I allowed to work in my garden on the Sabbath, or go for a run? Am I allowed to take a nap?
Speaker 1:Maybe, Amy, answering the question also, isn't Sabbath just a spiritual excuse to be lazy? Which is often where it hits most of our hearts when we rest in the Lord, like, man, I just feel lazy today. The Lord wouldn't want me to do this. Sabbath is not laziness. We're gonna try and dispel that idea in as much as we have power to do so.
Speaker 1:Sabbath is not laziness. Sabbath is actually a proactive pursuit of the gift of rest that God desires to give us, and rest is something that we must actively participate in. We are not a passive receiver. We don't just receive rest, we actively participate in the things that allows rest to occur. That's what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1:So I commit to you that we'll get to questions like these, and even specifically these in the next few weeks of sermons, but more important than even these practical questions, is what heart posture we're going to carry towards the things of God and the life of Jesus when they come to bear upon our lives. Are we going to weigh these things? Are we going to weigh their convenience factor, and decide whether or not we are going to be that kind of Christian or not? Or are we going to trust that the God that calls us to great sacrifice in this life is setting us aside for a consecrated special purpose through our distinct way of living this life separate from the world around us. You want to come out of the world around you?
Speaker 1:Start Sabbathing. I mean, yeah, sorry, I can't do that. Not able to fulfill that commitment, I'm gonna Sabbath on that day with my family. Not able to commit to doing that over the long term. I've got a commitment to, I'm consecrating my heart and my life to the Lord, and I've blocked off periods of time in my calendar to just be fully alive to him and rest.
Speaker 1:When's the last time someone said that to you? Yeah. Hey, can we get together next week? I'm wondering if you could take care of that responsibility for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sorry, calendar blocked off. Got it marked for full consecration of the Lord that day. Must be weird. Let's make it weird. Okay?
Speaker 1:Let's make it weird for the people around us. Okay? Let's get like two Corinthians six and seven type weird, where people are like, What are you talking about? I don't know, bro. Just consecrated to the Lord this season of my life.
Speaker 1:He's going to use me, set it aside for noble purposes. Don't know what you're doing with your life. This is what I'm doing with mine. No judgment, only invitation consecrated over here. Let's go.
Speaker 1:Okay? I'm serious, man. Let's like this is let's not fool around with this. Let us not fool around. Let me pray over you.
Speaker 1:Let me pray over you. And then as we go into worship Ellen, you team can come up. As we go into worship, let's an opportunity to respond to this call, to this desire maybe, to this commitment to a consecrated life. I wanna Lord, I wanna be set apart for you. I don't want any area of my life where I'm like, yeah, Jesus, following you in all these areas, this area over here.
Speaker 1:Nah. We've got a difference of opinion. If you are feeling the call to once again say like, yes, Lord, my life is consecrated to you. Use me for your purposes. I have all that I have is given to you.
Speaker 1:I wanna invite you to come up during these next few songs as we're worshiping, to pray at the altar. Kneel, open your hands wide. Tell the Lord, Lord, I want to consecrate my heart and my life to you. I hold all aspects of my life with open hands and with open arms, Lord, asking You to take away anything that has set itself up an obstacle to You. Father, my heart is open.
Speaker 1:My heart is soft to your Holy Spirit. Come and speak to me. Come and reveal the areas of sin in my heart. Give me courage, Lord, and bravery to repent and to walk away from those things, Lord, but I wanna be used for you. Come and be my God, and I may be your daughter, and I may be your son.
Speaker 1:So as we begin to as we begin to worship, please, if you're feeling that like, yes, yes, consecrate my heart, consecrate my life, all that I have for you, Lord Jesus. Come forward, kneel at the altar, tell the Lord that. If you want me to pray with you, if you want someone else to pray with you, all you got to do is give me the wink or the nod or the nudge or the elbow, or I don't know. I don't always know if you want me to pray with you. If you want, you got to tell me.
Speaker 1:I failed mind reading in seminary. You've got to tell me, okay? I wanna pray with you if you need prayer, but I also want you to, do your work with God alone if that's what you desire. Alright. Heavenly father, we consecrate our lives to you, Lord.
Speaker 1:This is our desire, to be a people, Lord, so separate from the world around us that we display to you that we are open vessels for your filling. Lord, make us an open vessel for your filling, heavenly father. Lord, may our lives be set apart in such significant fashion in ways that, man, it's getting weird around this place. Looking at all these people who are just walking on unreal holiness to you. Father, we reject the formation of our of the culture that we live in.
Speaker 1:We reject the way in which it has convinced us, Lord, that there are things of scripture and obedience to you that are unnecessary for the modern person with lots of responsibility. Lord, we reject the way that the world has formed our hearts, Lord, and we repent of it, Father. And we pray, Lord, that your spirit would come and give us a time of refreshing now in this moment. Father, that you would come and pour over us, that you would wash over us with your spirit. Lord, that you would set our hearts ablaze for you.
Speaker 1:In Jesus name. Amen. Heavenly father, we give ourselves to you in holy covenant. Lord, and pray. Lord, that you would call our hearts from a place of partial consecration into full consecration.
Speaker 1:Lord, that there would be no area of our life, that there would be no spot within our heart. Lord, where we have not received the fullness of your presence, where you have not redeemed all that we are. Lord, we give ourselves fully to you. Open our hearts, Lord, to receive the gift of Sabbath that you are offering to us. In Jesus name, amen.
Speaker 1:Condo, you are loved. We'll see you next time.
