All right. Hey guys. Welcome at all of our locations this weekend, man. We're excited to have you. If you are new with us, one of the things that I want to make sure we all understand together is that Mercy Hill is on a relentless mission to make disciples and multiply churches. That's how we say our vision here at Mercy Hill.
And if you're new, you're kind of stepping into that. One of the things that I want to make sure you understand is we feel, you know, about ourselves like, hey, individually, we feel like we want to grow and multiply in our own life. We certainly want that for our church. I mean, we want there to be just people that are just hungry to grow in their leadership and their maturity and to really step into the abundant life that God has for them. And that will spill over into making other disciples and multiplying your life. We really believe that will happen in our church's life as well.
In fact, we want to see so many disciples made that it spills over into church planting movements, you know, all over the United States and certainly all over the nations. So that we want to be a great help for other churches who are looking to grow and looking to multiply. So I want you guys to be aware this coming October, we're doing a conference here at Mercy Hill called Breaking Barriers.
All right. And this is a conference that is all about how churches can grow so that they can go. The tagline for the conference is, listen, churches can grow without going, but they cannot go without growing. Not at a sustainable clip. I mean, if you're not growing, but you're going, you know, if you're multiplying, you're going to grow. If you're multiplying without adding, really you're just dividing.
Or maybe even worse, you're subtracting. Okay. So the whole concept of multiplication is that those things and the mother church is really going to continue to grow. And so we want to bring churches in from all over North Carolina and the surrounding states even and put on a conference to help churches with this concept of lifting the lid, get away from limiting beliefs, man, be excited about their church growing so that they can be catalytic for church planting and multiplication.
Really in the United States and all over the world. And so I want to tell you two things real quick, then we're going to dive into our sermon. The first one is this, that you have an opportunity to invite others into this conference.
I mean, at a church like Mercy Hill, there are hundreds, if not thousands of churches that we know collectively. Who do you know that might really benefit from this conference in October? Okay. The second thing, of course, is that you can have a more hands on opportunity by jumping on our Connect page. All right. I want you to go to our Connect page and you can do that on the website.
You obviously can do the QR code thing here. But if you just get on the website, you go to the Connect page, one of the first things on there is going to be that you have the opportunity to sign up to serve at the Breaking Barriers Conference. I can't imagine a better way to spend a little bit of time in terms of leveraging your life for the kingdom than having dozens, if not a hundred churches coming in and they're here to learn and we get a chance to serve them just by putting on a conference. So, man, we're hoping that a bunch of you guys will jump off the sideline and onto the front line of that. Man, bring your kids, come for the afternoon, get them out of school, whatever.
Take some time off of work, move your work schedule around if you work from home or whatever and come up here and help us serve. All right. Here we go. First Thessalonians chapter 3 is where we're going to be today. We've been in a series called Waiting Well.
Waiting Well is not wasting time. Instead, it is investing time in growing our relationship with the Lord and growing His kingdom. What we're going to see today is that it's growing our relationship with others.
In a nutshell, I think this is what you're going to see today. A guy named Paul had been so radically affected by the gospel that that love that God had for him spilled out into his love for other people. And here's what he's going to say to the church today. And I thought about this story a few years ago. One of the old-time members here at Mercy Hill, a guy named Keith, they've since moved.
They're in the Charlotte area now. But Keith was just, man, when our church was really, really young. I mean, the church was young.
The age of the church was young. One year in maybe or whatever it was, Keith and his wife Laurie showed up. And man, their journey here was awesome. They ended up leading a group that still has different groups that were planted from it at Mercy Hill today.
He became an elder at our church. Man, they were so invested with their generosity. I think about whenever they got the call to move to Charlotte, he came to me and he said, hey man, we were in the middle of kind of a financial initiative years ago.
And he said, hey, we're moving, but I will finish this because I'm so invested in what we're doing here. All of that fruit and impact from their life. You know how they ended up coming to Mercy Hill? They came to a Christmas service like our first or second one ever. He gets out of the car and all of a sudden he sees multiple 20-something men run across the parking lot to embrace each other with massive hugs. I'm talking about the Mercy Hill way. Beard on beard, interlocking beards, rubbing your face on each other, the whole deal, okay? It so shocked him that he was like, what is this place?
What is going on? And the thing is, he came from a different background, came from a different church tradition, came from a different part of the state and sort of a very rural area and all that. And he just thought, man, what is going on here that these guys feel so open to show their Christian and Godly affection for one another in this way?
And it radically affected him. The Bible says that two are better than one. That a three-cord strand is not easily broken.
That iron sharpens iron. That the love of God in our life ought to spill over. That I should care about your faith because it is inextricably linked to my faith in the family of God.
Here's the big idea this weekend. Christian community is marked by a growing love for one another. That as we grow in our love for one another, we grow in our relationship with God. And the question that we've got to wrestle with today is, man, do we believe that? Do we need to invest more of ourselves in others and have them invest themselves in us? Do we think that my relationship with God, listen, is a me thing or do we understand that it is a we thing?
That it is an us thing? That there is no growing in your holiness without growing in your relationships with other believers. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. We're going to start there. We're going to end up in chapter 3.
But here's what it says. But since we were torn away from you brothers for a short time in person, not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face. Because we wanted to come to you. I Paul again and again. But Satan hindered us. Now we don't know exactly how he was hindered, okay, but some kind of way he couldn't get there. For what is our hope or joy or crown or boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming?
Is it not you? For you are our glory and our joy. Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone and we sent Timothy our brother and God's co-worker in the gospel of Christ to establish and exhort you in your faith.
I'm willing to be left alone if it means that you grow because my heart is so given to you. We sent Timothy our brother. Alright verse 3. That no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we were destined for this and when we were with you we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction just as it has come to pass.
And just as you know, remember they prepared the church for this. Love isn't telling somebody what they want to hear. Love is telling what the truth, what they need to hear. And he had prepared them for just this moment of suffering. For this reason when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.
Guys, I want to turn the dime in about three different ways but honestly y'all it's all the same point. It's about love. It's about the joy that we have for one another.
It's about how our growth is all wrapped up in each other and all of that. So it's all about Christian community today. I want to show you three marks of it though.
Alright, the first mark is this. Christian community, and we see this all over this passage, it drips with it, is marked by desire. Paul had desire to come and see them face to face. Honestly, he had what I would call an overwhelming almost desire. I mean look at some of the things that he says. Some of the things that he says to them at the beginning of this are like if you said these things to me in a community group I'd be like man this is getting weird. That's what he's going to do. I mean he is going to say to them, we were torn away from you. I love you so much that what I felt in my heart was a death.
That's the idea. You ever had someone torn away from you? This is what he's getting at here. One of our sister churches in North Carolina, they lost a directional elder last month. Best friend with the senior pastor directional elder and I talked to him this week and he said man I've never lost anybody that close to me and it just ripped my heart out. He was torn away. That's the language that he uses here. That's the imagery.
I felt as if someone died when I couldn't see you because I desired you that much. You know what he ends up saying to them. He actually says to them when he says man I desired to come and see you face to face in chapter 2 verse 17. That word desire other place in the scripture is used as negatively like lust. Now he's not obviously talking about that here but he's he I mean I bring that up just to say I mean this is like as strong of language as you could expect someone to use.
This raises the temperature of the Christian community. He is saying man I longed to be invested in and to invest in you. Why? Because he says this you are my hope joy glory crown. You are you are these things to me. I want to come and sit with you face to face not over zoom. I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with that but he's saying I want to be there. I want to be with you because I love you in this way.
I want to have those conversations of investment with you. Pastor Jeremy dagger that was here. He's now in Halifax Nova Scotia. He was famous around our staff for getting figures of speech wrong. Okay so I remember one time he was walking into a meeting and he said man we got to get this ironed out and he was trying to say I'm going to have a face to face conversation with this person. He said we're going to have a mouth to mouth conversation. Okay different thing. All right a little bit of a deal there.
No no no face to face. I want to what is he saying here. Man I want to see you in the flesh because I long for you and I desire you. Now one of the things that I want to say and I think it would be good for you to hear from me on this is that I understand what Paul is getting at here because honestly at the bottom of this passage today is a pastor's heart for the congregation. And I pray that people around me that are closest our directional elders our executive team my wife I pray that they would look in at my life and they would say man I understand this passage because I see you that the congregation at Mercy Hill and you got to realize that there's there's a way in which Christ alone is our glory and Christ alone is our joy and I mean I understand that I certainly think Paul understood that.
But there's another perspective here where he's saying yeah but there's also this this idea that you reflect so much on me and I am so bound to you that you are my glory and my crown of my joy that's what Paul would say. And I feel that for our church I feel that for you you might be new here today and you're like you don't even know me but I've been given the task of shepherding this flock of which you are coming around I am bound to you. And I think I'm bound to you in the way that Paul is bound and here's what I mean because if I preach the gospel and labor and if our elders preach the gospel and labor but this faith community isn't changed it reflects upon the message it reflects on the elders there's a there's a way in which we are all sort of wrapped up together in my calling and your growth.
Now I want you to understand here today I do think that's exactly what he's getting at pastor to a congregation but you got to understand that is not only my burden that is not only our elders burden because when you begin to think about the people in your life is it not your burden as well? Is your life not inextricably linked in some ways to why because we all have decided that the gospel's message is what I have staked my life on. And if I am a gospel person in relationship with gospel people but we are not changing then that bedrock of our life is failing there there's some there is something in which I understand that my life is sort of wrapped up in your testimony you could say it like this. The communication of the gospel and a changed faith community are bound together. Now wha
