Community | John 15:12 | Gospel

Behold what manner of love The Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God. Not just the amount of God's love, but what kind of love. It was a serving, it was a self-emptying, an empathizing, an incarnating, gap-bridging love.

So now the question for us becomes: does this describe our relationships to one another? Hey friends, welcome to the Summit Life Podcast. I'm Molly Vitovich. Are you looking for a way to deepen your walk with God each day? This podcast is of course a great option, but Summit Life also offers a free daily email devotional that's designed just for you.

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Now for today's message. Did you know that if you only have one tomatillo plant in a garden, it'll never produce any fruit because it needs other plants to cross-pollinate? And Christians are kind of like tomatillo plants in that way. Healthy believers will produce the fruit of the Spirit, but first, you have to be rooted in Christ. And second, you need to cross-pollinate in community.

And where is that community usually found? Local church. Today, Pastor JD continues our series called Gospel. Let's join him now. I want you to get your Bible if you haven't.

I want you to open it to John 15 if you haven't done so already. Let's review real quick where we have been. The very first week, we took an overview of the chapter, and I tried to show you how the gospel changes us in a way like nothing else can. Religion can tell us what to do, but religion cannot give us either the desire or the power to do it. The gospel changes us not by changing our behavior first, but by changing our desires so that we begin to do what's right because we love what's right.

And so then what we started to do from John 15 is look at the several different components that Jesus gives of a heart that has been changed by the gospel. And we've compared them to a wheel.

So you've got the gospel in the middle. The first thing is you develop this passion for the word of God. You want to know God more and expressing that back to him in prayer. Your personal time with God grows. Then this week, we're going to look at the development of loving relationships inside the church and in community.

And then lastly, we're going to look at generosity and how it creates a generous spirit that is within us. sanctification is. All right, sanctification is a big fancy Theological word, I realize, but that's all that it means. All right, John 15:12. This is my commandment, Jesus says.

that you love one another as I have loved you. All right, mark number three of the gospel changed heart, living in community.

Now, what you'll find is that this theme surfaces quite often in Jesus' talk that he's given in John 13 through 17. You remember the first week I explained to you that John 13 through 17 is kind of a unit. It is Jesus' farewell speech that he's giving to his disciples. John 15, the 17 verses there in John 15, they kind of function somewhat like a summary of all that Jesus has talked about in the rest of the talk.

So that's kind of where you go for the, you know, for the outline, but you'll find at other places in John 13 through 17, he'll take these subjects he mentions in John 15, he'll go deeper with them.

So let me take you a couple other places in John 13 through 17 to show you where he developed the idea that he's talking about there in verse 12. Go first to John 17. All right, jump two chapters forward, John 17. We're going to look at verse 23. John 17:23, this is Jesus praying for his disciples in their presence.

All right, this is, you know, by the way, you've heard the Lord's Prayer, and we always think, you know, our Father who art in heaven. That's not really the Lord's Prayer, that's the model prayer that He gave us. This is the Lord's Prayer, John 17:23. I pray, He says, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me.

All right, now that's a reference, first of all, to the Trinity. The Trinity.

Now, I realize that there is a lot of things about the Trinity that are difficult to understand. That many of us have trouble, all of us have trouble with, namely, me to begin with. God is one God, but He exists eternally in three persons. You know, and people hear that and they're like, well, it sounds like there's three God, three different persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Sounds like there's a triad of gods. I know that's what it sounds like, but the scripture could not be clear. There's only one God. You're like, one plus one plus one equals three. I've heard it said maybe you should think of it as one times one times one.

That still equals one. I don't know how it all works, but I know we're talking about God. Right, and if we're talking about God, your little pea brain, no offense, should not be surprised that there's some things about God that you don't understand, it blows your mind. It blows your mind. We're talking about the nature of God.

God has eternally existed as three persons, but there is only one God.

Now, even if we can't quite get our minds around that, what we realize from that though, is that watch this, God has always existed in community. God has never been a loner. There's never been a time when God was by himself. There's always been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existing eternally together, and God has always existed in loving relationships. When we say that God is love.

Love has to have an object.

So God's first love was there within the Trinity. And that becomes a model to us of how we are to love each other. That's very important because everything we're going to talk about today is rooted in the nature of God Himself. All right, you still with me? Is your head hurt?

If it doesn't, you're not thinking about it. Um, all right, go from John 17, go back four chapters now, go back to John 13. You'll fly right over the top of John 15, wave at John 15:12 as you go past, then land in John 13:34. John 13, 34. Here's where Jesus takes us even a little deeper here.

John 13, 34, a new commandment I give to you. that you love one another, just as I have loved you, so you also are to love one another. By this will all people know that you're my disciples if you have love one for another.

Now I want us to dig down on this one. And I want us to ask some questions of what Jesus just said. Is that I think we'll get at the heart of what he's talking about here? First question that I would ask of this text is in verse 34. First of all, why is this a new commandment?

I mean Leviticus 19, 18. You know, Leviticus is the oldest book that the Jews have. It's like their original charting founding documents. It's their constitution. Here's what Leviticus 19:18 said: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord. Did Jesus just forget about that? and say that this is a new commandment when in fact it was not.

Well, of course not. He wrote Leviticus 918. He didn't forget about it. Listen, what was not new was the commandment to love each other. What was new was the standard they would use to measure their love.

As I have loved you. They were to love each other in the same manner and to the same extent that he had loved them. That word new can carry the connotation of revolutionary. This is my revolutionary commandment to you that you love one another in the manner and to the extent that I have loved you.

So that's the second question we would ask of Jesus' statement. How did Jesus love us? How did Jesus love us? Let me give you five ways. That Jesus in John 13 has just demonstrated and expressed his love to them.

If you take notes, I'd encourage you to write these down. Number one, he served them. He served them. The whole context of John 13, if you go back a few verses, is you see that Jesus has just washed their feet. which pretty well blew their minds.

Right, because the universal approach to power is that when you have power. You use it to elevate yourself. Right? Do you have the power of smartness? Then you use that power to get into the best school so that you can get the best job to make the most money.

Do you have the power of money? How do you leverage that power? You leverage it to create a better standard of living for yourself, to live in a nicer house, to drive a nicer car, to go to nicer places. Do you have the power of power? Then, how do you use that power?

You use that power to control situations so they always exist for your benefit. But here Jesus is in John 13 with all of those things. Right? I mean, he was plenty smart. He created the universe.

He had intelligence. He had plenty of money. I mean, if not, he could just create a new universe with new money. He has all the money he needs. He's got all the power in the world.

He's omnipotent. But at the end of his life, he's not using any of those things for self-benefit. In fact, he's taking those things and pouring himself out for them. He's not even using his power to control a situation so that he is protected. He's using his power to pour himself out in death so that they can be saved.

And as he washed their feet. In John 13, you'll see that he explains to them. that this washing of the feet is just a symbol of the ultimate way he was going to serve them. He was going to spill his blood to wash the dirtiest parts of them. which was not their feet, it was their sin-blackened souls.

So, his whole life he spent leveraging his power for their benefit. That was how he loved them. Which leads me to number two. He leveraged his abilities for their needs. He leveraged his abilities for their needs.

Let me go on to number three. Number three, he shared in their pain and their sorrow. He entered into it. He felt it. Right before these chapters in John chapter 11, there was...

A uh a story. where Jesus shows up at the tomb of Lazarus. Where Lazarus is a friend of his who's died. And when he gets to the tomb, Mary and Martha, Lazarus's two sisters, are standing there outside the tomb. And of course, they're weeping because their brother died.

And it says that when Jesus got there, the shortest verse in all the Bible, you know what it is? Jesus wept. Shortest verse in all the Bible, one of the most difficult, I think, to understand because here's the question: why was Jesus weeping? Didn't he know that in just a few minutes Lazarus was going to be coming out of the grave and everybody was going to be having a party? If you knew that, if you knew how the story was going to end, don't you think that he would have been like, don't stop your crying, I'm going to fix this.

No, he weeps. Why? Because he entered into their pain. Because he had become one with them, just like he's saying here in John 17. He had become one so that when they weep, he weeps.

Which means that when you go through pain He weeps. It means that when your heart is broken, it means when you're lonely, God's not standing in heaven shouting platitudes at you about how one day he's going to resurrect everything and fix it. He enters into that pain. He enters into it because, just like the Trinity is one, so that what one member of the Trinity, because they're all God, a little difficult here, but because they're all God, what one member of the Trinity is feeling, the other ones naturally feel because they mirror whatever the other one's feeling, because they're all one. Jesus, even when he knows that in five minutes the situation is going to be different.

Even then, he weeps because they weep. Do you have a broken heart? Are you lonely? If Jesus Christ has entered into you, then whenever you weep, he weeps. Because he shares in your pain and his sorrow.

He has made them his very own. Number four. He lived among them. He lived among them. He came close to them.

He didn't stand in heaven and shout his love toward them with a bullhorn. He incarnated himself, which is a theological word, incarnation, which just means he took on flesh and blood, incarna, in the flesh. He was born into our pain and our poverty. In fact, he was born just about as poor as you could be born. I mean, I know some of you grew up poor, but not one of you was born in a stable.

Or maybe I had actually had a girl come up last night after one of the services and say, I was born in a barn. I was like, I don't want to know the story. You might have but none of you were probably born as poor as he was He was born as poor as you could possibly get because he was taking on himself the poorest of the poor and coming close to them. He got so close that he could be touched. He could be interrupted.

He could be betrayed with a kiss. And as he came into our world and he got close and he shared our pain and our sorrow, there's a different kind of love that we experience than if he is at a distance. When I served as a missionary in Southeast Asia, I noticed that the first year that I was there, it was very difficult to have relationships for two reasons, real relationships with the Southeast Asian people. Number one is I couldn't really speak the language. Right, I mean, when I got there, they dropped me off.

I could say, hi, my name is JD. Where's your bathroom? My house is on fire. That was the extent of my vocabulary. All right, so that that put a gap there.

Then the other thing was Because I was part of a team of Americans who did share my culture, I've noticed that what I would do is I would kind of every once in a while, you go out and do these things out there with these Southeast Asian people, but then I would come back and my real circle of friendship and fellowship was taking place with my American team.

Well about nine ten months into my my time there something tragic happened and that is that my roommates came down with something I don't really know how to describe it except that I kid you not they discovered 103 kidney stones in his left kidney Right, which is doesn't work out well. And so they mediaced him out. They had to take out part of his kidney, but bottom line was I was left by myself for about four months. At that point, there was no more. I didn't have a roommate.

I didn't have a team to go back to, and that forced me to actually get out of there. House and I began to do life with these Southeast Asian people. I became a part of some of their families. You know, if I wanted to eat dinner with somebody that wasn't an American to eat dinner with, I'd eat dinner with them. Then to figure out how to talk and suddenly my compassion for.

These people took on a whole different level. And their knowledge of me and their compassion of me because I wasn't from a distance anymore talking to them about the love of God, I was up close to them talking to them about their lives. And that's what Jesus does: He. He lived among them. Number five, that's what part of, number five, part of number four.

He bridged the gap to get to them. He bridged the gap to get to the, you know, I think there's something in all of us, isn't there, that wants to be with people like us. You want to be with people of your same education level? Have the same sense of humor. A lot of times from the same race.

of the same socioeconomic status. That's just who we enjoy being around the most. And so we have the most in common with. There was never a greater gap than that which Jesus overcame in coming to us. Right?

I mean, first of all, he was the creator. He designed the nucleus of the atom. Like I've told you some of you can't figure out how to get the your DVR to quit flashing 12 o'clock midnight There's a gap between your abilities and his. He was rich. He was rich, but he was born into a family that couldn't afford medical insurance.

He was perfectly holy. And we were so sinful that if we had appeared in the presence of the Father, God, we would have been incinerated. These are the things that he overcame to come to us. He didn't come to us because he was lonely. God existed as a Trinity.

The Trinity was his circle. God hung out with other people who were also God. That was God's circle. He left that circle and came into ours for the purpose of including us in his. These five things are probably what's on the Apostle John, who wrote obviously the Gospel of John, when he wrote 1 John 3:1, when he says, Behold, what manner of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God.

Not just the amount of God's love, not the fact of God's love, but what kind of love the Father gave to us. It was a serving, it was a self-emptying, an empathizing, an incarnating, gap-bridging love.

Now let's go back to verse 34 there in chapter 13. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you.

So now the question for us becomes. Does this describe our relationships to. one another and to the world. Let's go back through that list. Number one, he served us.

Are you serving others? He served us. Is your life characterized by the service of others? We are constantly at this church always talking about the need that we have for people to serve on ministry teams. Right?

And you just hear people, you would not believe the comments I hear over the years. I hear people say things like, you know, I hear married people say, oh, well. I don't want to volunteer in the kids' ministry.

Well, I got three, four, five kids of our own. We got two kids of our own. I deal with them all week. I heard somebody say one time, it's like I deal with kids all week. That's the last thing I want to do when I come to church.

I'm gonna let some of the single people take care of them. They don't have any time with kids. That's their role. Right? Then I I've heard single people say, well, I don't.

know what kids are like. I don't. I don't have kids. There's a reason I don't have kids yet. I don't really like kids.

I didn't have these kids. I shouldn't have to deal with them. The main people ought to have to deal with them. I mean, tongue-in-cheek, we're all kind of joking here. Can you think of a more unchrist-like attitude on either side than that?

I come to church because this is my time. I come to worship a guy who said that he came not to be served, but to serve. And this is how I worship him by talking about the things that I want. And things that I don't really want to do. When you follow Jesus, it means that you pick up that towel and you begin to wash feet, you begin to serve others.

So let's just ask another question. Is that your general attitude toward life? Are you using your power to go up, to elevate yourself, or are you leveraging that power to go down? St. Augustine said that the church most differed from the world in its attitude toward three things.

St. Augustine, 1500 years ago, said the church is most distinguished from the world by its attitude toward three things: money, sex, and power. Money, sex, and power. He said the world. The world is promiscuous with its sex, stingy with its money, and uses its power to self-elevate and give self-promotion.

He said, the church, however, is not promiscuous with its sex. It's promiscuous with its money. That's what promiscuous means. It means you just give it out everywhere because it doesn't matter that much to you. That's what the world does with sex.

And St. Augustine said that's what believers do with money, because money is not that important to them, so they give it out everywhere.

So they're promiscuous with their money, but they're stingy with their sex. Because they know that God has created that for marriage and the marriage bed is holy. He said, and then they use their power not to elevate themselves and to serve themselves and to leverage it for self-promotion, but they use their power to serve just like Jesus did. What that means is that the most powerful among you, the most wealthy among you, the most significant in status among you, ought to be those who serve the most. To be a follower of Jesus means that your life is characterized by service.

So that's a good question for you just to think about. Is your life more characterized by the world's attitude toward power or Jesus's? And you ought to just kind of wake up and say, I might have been somebody who prayed to receive Jesus like a fire escape to get out of hell, but I have not become his disciple. Because to become his disciple means that you live as he lived. And until you're using your power and what God has given you the way that he used his, you haven't really become his disciple.

Number two. He leverages abilities for our needs. Again, I would just ask: are you leveraging your life for others? Here's a question. What if Jesus had leveraged his power?

For you, the same way that you're leveraging yours for others. Would you still be in your sins? If Jesus leveraged his power and ability the way that you were leveraging yours. Where would you be? You see, again, a lot of Christians have received Jesus, but they continue.

to leverage life for themselves. Because Jesus is like a fire escape. And I'm telling you, listen, you're going to have to answer to God for it. Because you might be a fan of Jesus Christ. You might have prayed some prayer, but you haven't become his disciple.

Because the disciple is one who lives like he lives. Our love for our world and each other has to be more than words, it's deeds. That's what 1 John 3, 16 says. 1 John again, the writer, the Apostle John. By this we know love.

How do we know love? Because God articulated it to us with the finest nuances of systematic theology and taught us Calvinism. Is that how we know the love of God? No, we know the love of God not because he explained it to us, but because he laid down his life for us. We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how could God's love possibly abide in that person? Little children. Let us not love in word or in talk, but in deed and in truth. Not in talk, but in deed. Here's a question: What's your giving like?

You ought to realize that God did not give you all that.

So that you could just leverage it for self-promotion. God gave it to you so you could pour it out for the kingdom of God. You leverage it for one another. When you see somebody in need in our church, do you respond without being told? There was a guy who was living with his girlfriend.

He gets convicted about that, confesses that to a small group. But they said, my girlfriend and I, we don't have the finances to be able to live apart. We know that we need to get married now. God's taught us that at the summit church, but we don't know what to do because we can't afford it.

So one of our members says, will you just come live with me? Just got went and lived with them for the four months until he got married. They're married now and everything's going great.

Well, while he was there living in this guy's house, this guy who opened his house to him broke both of his ankles. Couldn't do anything around the house. And so this guy who's living there now is able to. To serve and minister to that household. That's the church loving and taking care of one another.

Galatians 6.10, I love how Paul says it. He says, do good to all men. especially those of the household of faith. Do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith. This is where our love starts, right here, just with one another.

Sometimes I think we forget that. We start thinking about what's going on out there, and we forget that we're a family. And then when one of us has a need, I feel your pain, and so I step into it and I share it.

Okay. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. We'll return to our new teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to quickly introduce you to our featured resource this month. What if prayer wasn't just about asking God for things, but responding to what He's already done? That's the vision behind our newest resource, the Gospel Prayer Catechism.

Based on the Gospel Prayer that Pastor JD has taught for years, this tool uses short biblical Q ⁇ As to help you anchor your prayer life in God's love, power, and grace. It's more than a tool. It's a framework for daily renewal. And when you support Summit Life this month, we'll send it to you as a digital download right away. Every gift given also helps others go deeper in their faith by making Summit Life available on the radio, online, and beyond.

If Summit Life has become a trusted source of spiritual encouragement for you, would you consider paying it forward by helping us reach others with the life-changing truth of the gospel? Find out more about how your support makes a difference by visiting jdgreer.com.

Now, let's return for the conclusion of today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. You know, Par, I remember hearing a guy one time teach on Galatians 16.10. I kid you not. He stood up in front of the audience and he, I was just, you know, sitting there taking notes and he said, now, this verse says, do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith.

He said, I don't really agree with that. I think we ought to do more good for those outside the church than those inside the church. And then he went on to teach. And I thought, I had two thoughts. I thought, one, it's nice to hear somebody actually admit.

that they're just going to go ahead and blatantly defy the Word of God. That was my first thought. But my second thought was, you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to just contradict the word of God. God's word tells us that my first responsibility is to you and your first responsibility is to me and we love each other.

We share each other's pain. The church ought to be the most well-taken care of community in the world. Because Jesus said when that happens, then they'll know that you're my disciples. Number three, he shared in our pain and our sorrow. Do you share in the pain of others?

Let me jump down to number four. He lived among us. Are you really involved in people's lives? Can people touch you? Are you close enough to them to feel their pain?

Who do you know? right now that you're praying for. daily that is outside of the people that are in your family. Here's one. Are you investing in people?

Even if you're a brand new believer, there's somebody you ought to be bringing along. That's the whole process of making disciples life on life, two or three people that you're bringing along. If I asked you to pull out your phone right now and show me the numbers of three people in your contact list. who are not Christians that you could call or text right now. And get them to meet you at Starbucks after this to talk about something.

Could you do that? Are you involved in the lives of others? Are you close to them?

So that leads me to number five. He bridged the gap to get to us. Are you bridging the gap to get to others? Are you building your life around people that you feel comfortable with or are you building your life around people who need Jesus? Because to follow Jesus means that you follow him across the gap.

Told you last week that we got 150 of our members right now, 150 of our members who right now, this weekend, are living somewhere in an unreached people group. Contrary to popular opinion. That's not because that's their preference. They didn't do that because they thought, hey, I always wanted to live overseas in a fundamentalist Muslim country. They do that because they realize That Jesus left heaven to come to earth for them when they were lost and now we who know him have to leave what we know to go to people whose only way to hear about them is that we go to them ourselves.

That's why they do that. Because there are unreached people groups in the world, and to live like Jesus means you have the same attitude toward them that he had towards you. I remember when I felt, when God first called me to ministry, I thought it was to go overseas, and I told my parents that. Remember how much of a struggle it was for my parents. You were godly people.

I remember at the end of this struggle, my mom told me, she said, She said, we always had dreams of our child. Our first son living in very close to us, raising our grandkids next to us. She said, but let me tell you what God's taught me: there are somebody's sons and daughters all over the world. who don't know Jesus and they are as precious in God's sight as you are in ours. And if that means that we have to postpone real fellowship with you until you get to heaven.

Until we all get to heaven, that's okay because somebody's sons and daughter needs to know Jesus. And if that was you that needed to know Jesus, I would hope somebody would come after you. You bridge the gap. Are you involved in the poorer parts of our city? And we talk about the homeless, the orphan, the prisoner, the unwed mother, the high school dropout.

God, those aren't projects. That's not what we're talking about. Let me say this. I realize God has not called everybody the same thing. He's not called all of you overseas, not called all of you to do what I'm about to say.

But let me tell you this, some of you The way that you're going to follow Jesus is you're actually going to uproot your comfortable life and go live among the homeless, the orphan, the prisoner, the only one mother in the high school dropout in our city. It's not one time a year that you're going to foray out into them, do something, run back to your car, parrel your hands, and go on with your life and feel good about yourself.

Some of you, we have people in this church that have moved out of rich neighborhoods. and moved into poor neighborhoods because they wanted to incarnate Christ to those neighborhoods. Because you got to come close. I'm not saying God's called all of you to do it, but I'm saying some of you, this is precisely how you're going to follow Jesus. You're not going to live where your income says you can live.

You're going to live among people that you can incarnate Christ in the midst of. How about this? Are you willing to be a part of a church that's not about you? There are two kinds of people we want in our church: those people who need Jesus and those people who know Jesus who are now involved in His mission and realize that it's not about them. Are you willing to be a part of a church where everybody's not just like you?

which means that we're going to do some things that are not according to your preference. This is a letter I got from a girl that this girl totally gets it. And this is such a challenge to some of us and me. She says, I am writing to you as an African-American female. I was in search of a church home in Durham and visited many different churches in the area.

So I first went to where all the black people go in Durham. And at the suggestion of my friend, I came to the summit.

Now, my first reaction was quite hesitant simply because the praise and worship at my home church in Virginia and at the summit are about as different as Beyonce and Mother Teresa. She goes on to say how the worship grew on her after a while. And then she said, she said, I was mainly just super excited to hear what was going to happen next in the Bible. I found myself leaving church every Sunday, meeting up with friends or calling my mom and sharing what I'd learned and how the word was directly applicable to my life and circumstances. I've learned that it isn't about the color of the pastor, but am I getting the word?

Am I hearing the gospel? Am I learning and growing in my relationship with Christ? And the answer to all those questions since I've been attending the summit is yes. I was just writing to thank the summit church. Keep making it so that people like me who were far from God.

Feel like it's okay to come back. She gets it. That gospel-centered unity is not about, it's not that she doesn't have preferences. It's that the gospel is larger than those preferences. And that makes the rest of us ask a question: are you willing to be a part of a church that's not catering to your preferences?

Are you willing to be a part of a church like That. As I have loved you, love one another. There's five ways. Notice real quick. Notice Jesus' prediction in verse 35 of the kind Of power, this church would have and its effect on the community.

By this, will all people know that you're my disciples? What if you? if you love one another. How's the world going to know? How's the world gonna know?

It's because I can articulate. Christian doctrines with precision and clarity. Because our worship teams are able to lift us to the throne of God with how majestically they play the worship anthem? No. How will they know?

By seeing the love Christians have for one another. John 17, Jesus said, when they observe your love for one another, what happens is they get in their heart an echo of my presence. They might not even be able to articulate it. There are some things Jesus says that are even more powerful than logic. And that is sometimes you just know that you're in the presence of your Creator.

And when there is a church that is living in love with one another, that is exactly what the unbelieving community sees. That's what you see in Acts 2, isn't it? Remember, it says that 5,000 people got saved at the end of Acts 2. How did it happen? How did it happen?

Acts 2. It says that the Spirit of God filled the church. The church was just doing what I'm describing. They were loving each other. They were sharing their stuff.

They were praying for each other. They had all things in common. And it says that a great sense of fear and awe came upon every soul in that community. And God started to add to their number daily, those that were being saved. You see, you know what he's showing us?

What the author is? He's showing us, watch this, that the greatest evangelistic catalyst in any community. is the presence of a healthy local church in that community. Just a church being the church. It's not even that the church sends missionaries into the community, the local church is itself.

the missionary, just his presence. When the church is the church. The community says God must be at work among them. Francis Schaefer. You know who that is?

Strange little European man who wore long stockings that taught us more about apologetics than any other man in the last hundred years. He said this, Francis Schaefer, we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gave is the observable love of true Christians for other true Christians. The world is going to judge whether Jesus has been sent by the Father on the basis of something that is open to observation. Summit, how are we going to change our cynical community? Is it my sermons?

No. It's not even so much what we do from the stage in here, it's how you live out there that does that. That's why we don't spend a whole lot of money on buildings. You wanna know why? Because the beauty of the church is not in the architecture, it's in how the members love one another.

What we do in here is not as compelling to them. is what happens when we live the way that Christ taught us to live out there.

So, my desire in all of this is that you see the centrality of the church, the local community, and God's plan. There is a rich cross-pollination that produces abundant fruit.

Some of you, I can hear you right now. I can. I can sense the value. No, no, no, I'm part of the universal church. I'm not really part of a local church.

Wrong. The word church, ecclesia, is used in the New Testament 115 times. Over 100 of those times, it refers to. the local church. The word ekklesia in Greek literally means an assembly.

The very word church means a gathering. of people together. The Old and New Testament recognize no walk with God separated from the people of God. One of the phrases we say around here, and you'll hear it a lot: the local church is God's plan, A? The local church is God's planning.

The local church is God's planet. What we mean by that is that's how God gets his best work done. The local church is God's plan for doing that. I'll show you what I mean by that real quick. First of all, it's how God works in your life.

The image of the church is the body, right? 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about this. Paul says that God the Father is like the mind. And we are like the members, Jesus is like the mind, we're like the members of his body.

So think about that for a minute.

Okay, on my body when my left elbow itches. And so it sends up a little messenger up to my brain that says, I it, okay?

Well how does my brain fix the itch? Does it like zap it with mental power, you know, zap the itch? No. It sends a message down to my right hand. And says, hey.

Your brother elbow. Has an itch. Go fix it and my right hand goes over there and it fixes the itch Many of you are praying for God to do something in your life, but you cut yourself off from the very thing that God intended to answer that prayer.

Some of you like, oh God, I need direction in my life. You're wanting God to zap you from heaven with some kind of vision. That's not how He usually works. He puts it in the church.

So if you have separated yourself from the people of God, you separated yourself from the power of God.

Some of you are like my marriage is falling apart. God fixed my marriage. The local church is God's best plan for keeping healthy communities and healthy marriages. I've learned so much about raising my children just from being in the presence of this church. The local church is Is how God works in our lives.

As many of you are crying out to God, but you're like a person standing beside a water fountain. Complaining to God about your thirst. He's like, I'm not going to dump water on you from heaven. Here's the other thing we mean by this local church is God's plan A It's how God reveals himself to you. You ever notice this?

I think this is fascinating. You ever notice that very rarely in the New Testament did Jesus ever heal people the same way? He almost always did something different.

Some people, he would just speak a word.

Some people would say, do you believe me?

Some people he would you know let him die and raise him back from the dead bummer Some people He spit on the ground and made mud pies for their eyes. I mean, imagine that guy. You're like, come on, seriously? You just spoke a word and healed the guy over there, and you're gonna spit on the ground, make me wipe out of my eyes now. Seriously?

Why did Jesus do it differently? Because everybody needed something different. That was why. And that means watch. that it was only when they came together and shared their stories that they got the fullest picture of who Jesus was.

That's how God works in the church. He works with everybody differently based on what you need. And see, there is a, watch, there's a part of Jesus I'll never know unless I know you. Because I only see one part of Jesus, and that's how He's dealt with me. But He had to deal with you differently because you were much more proud, stubborn, and rebellious than I was.

That's it.

So he revealed himself a certain way so that I could know Jesus through you. And that is why together we know Jesus more fully than we do alone. The action step for you is if you're not involved in a small group, that you need to get involved in one because that's part of being in the church. But let me just kind of close this whole thing by telling you. as a pastor now for low these many nine years.

I have, there are two reasons I've seen that people don't get involved in small groups. Here they are, number one. Number one is they have an unhealthy desire for privacy and isolation. They're afraid to let people in because they're afraid that everybody will see how screwed up they are. News flash.

We already know it. And the more you try to convince us of your perfection, the more ridiculous you become in our eyes because we can all see it, even if you can't. Around the summit, we say everybody's normal until you get to know them. And then when you get to know them, you realize how dysfunctional they are. What happens watch this.

This is this is I love this What happens is when you come to know Jesus. You are in the presence of one who is infinitely holy. but one who accepted you through all of your faults because He died to make you new. And when you have the opinion of the only one whose opinion really matters. Then you suddenly become much freer in being able to let other people see your flaws because I don't need you to think I'm perfect.

because I'm accepted by Jesus. The second phrase of the gospel prayer, you're all I need for everlasting joy. I don't need you to think I'm perfect. I can let you see my weaknesses. I can let you see where I'm screwed up because Jesus sees those and he has accepted me and promised me that I will be made new.

You see, what we believe around here is that Jesus is not just the model for how we love each other, he's the power. Because until you get this right, you'll never get this right.

Some of you need to open up your lives. Because the only way that God can work in your life is for you to open that up, and you'll never be able to open it up until you realize that you are loved and cherished by Jesus himself, who accepts you beyond your flaws. and has died to make you new. An unhealthy desire for privacy and isolation. Here's the second reason.

Because some of us Our Christianity has nothing to do with knowing God. You want to be a good person to come to church, so you come do this on your religious checklist. Check, I came to church, I feel like a good person. But truth be told, your Christianity has nothing to do with knowing and serving God. And that is demonstrated by the fact that you never take the steps of discipleship that would lead you to knowing and serving God.

You have zero thirst for God. That's why you're just a spectator. Yeah, you might be a follower of Jesus, but you're a follower of Jesus, like I'm a follower of people on Twitter.

Some of you follow Jesus like I check in on him. To be a follower of Jesus is not that you check in on him and receive pieces of advice. He is the God of heaven, and to be his follower means that he has total control and domination of you. And that means that you avail yourself of the commands that he has made to you and the offers he's made to you of how you could come to know him. And I will tell you this, weekend attenders, weekend spectators are not disciples of Jesus, and they are not part of the kingdom of God.

And you need to move beyond. Fan of Jesus, and you need to move to follower of Jesus. And this is one of the ways you will express it. You can explore more resources connected to today's teaching at jdgreer.com. That's where you can also sign up for the daily devotional I mentioned earlier, as well as learn more about our featured monthly resource.

Thanks for spending this time with us today on the podcast, and we'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.