Good morning. It's nice to see you.
Sorry about the cold. I I like that joke though.
That was good. Darren, I got to be honest with
you. I I thought about fibbing this
morning because like the emphasis of my sermon is
cultivating and developing a preference for mission over and
above comfort. So I would, I honestly, I was
like, what if I told them this was all just like some pre
planned object lesson, but it's, it's not.
Maybe maybe it was by the Lord. So you know, maybe enjoy it that
way. If you've got a Bible, go ahead
and get that open to the book of Titus.
That's all the way in the New Testament.
If you don't know where that's at, there should be a, an index
on the inside of the Bible that helps you get there.
If you can't find your, you don't have a Bible, that's OK.
We'll have all the relevant texts on the screen for you.
All we're doing this morning is Titus chapter 3, the final
chapter in Titus. And we're just looking at one
verse and that is verse 8, Titus 3, verse 8.
Only one verse to cover this morning.
That's on purpose because this one verse is going to get us
thinking about and it's going to have us explaining the
difference between two different models of church.
We want to explore what was the New Testament model of of the
church. And I know that there's people
out there who get excited about that.
I know there's also people out there who are like, dude, I just
want to know if God is real and we're going to be talking about
models of church this morning. But if that's you, I'm asking
you to stick with me. That exploration of two
different models of church will help us gain a better
understanding of the nature of God, but it will also help us
gain a better understanding of like what we're trying to
accomplish when we even gather together as a church.
What I, one of my prayers is that this morning you would have
like just a moment, maybe at the beginning of the sermon or at
the end of the sermon, or maybe in the middle of the sermon,
that you would have kind of a light bulb moment where you
think, oh, that's why Frontier Church does it this way or that
way. I hope it's an experience that
kind of illuminates why we have this model of church and not
that model of church. But before I really dig deep
into that, I've got a proposal. Imagine if the Army decided to
radically redesign its boot camp to radically redesign its boot
camp. Suppose that instead of using
boot camp to prepare soldiers for war, suppose that the higher
ups and positions of leadership decided that the real problem
with boot camp and the Army was actually numbers and attendance.
People just don't want to do something so demanding anymore,
they said. So imagine that they rebranded
boot camp and they decided to rebrand boot camp for the Army.
Less around sweat and more around self-care.
Perhaps instead of rifles and push ups, maybe massage therapy
and pedicures. Whatever.
Whatever it takes to get people in the doors.
Whatever it takes to to get more, to get more numbers up,
they said. So rather than training soldiers
how to load and shoot rifles, they hire the best pop bands in
the world to come perform for them while they sit in massage
chairs, consuming the entertainment and no doubt
increasing the numbers rather than training soldiers for
combat. A boot camp spa hour with face
masks and cucumbers. And The thing is, and this needs
to be said, The thing is that radical redesign of boot camp
might work. It might get more people in the
doors, It might increase Army attendance.
They might get more recruits. But what's going to happen when
they get dropped into combat? They would have every reason to
say you got us killed out here. And of course we could all
chuckle at the craziness and madness of the proposal of
preparing soldiers by teaching them what fingernail paint
colors best bring out their eyes rather than training to load
their guns right. It sounds ridiculous.
There's a war out there, There's a war out there.
Of course, it'd be crazy to redesign boot camp around
comfort and consumerism and cucumber face masks to get more
money, right? But if that's so crazy, then why
is that exactly what the church has done over the last several
decades? Why is that exactly how the
church has remodeled itself over the last 20-30, forty, 50 years?
There's a war out there. So if you're able, let's go
ahead and stand for the reading of God's word.
A lot of this text requires explanation.
I'll make sure to front load it a little bit in just a second.
But here's the here's the one verse we're looking at this
morning. Paul says the saying is
trustworthy. What saying?
And I want you to insist on these things.
What things? We'll get to that in a second,
so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote
themselves to good works. If you have a voice this
morning, let me hear it say devote, devote themselves to
good works. These things, doing good works,
these things are excellent and profitable for people.
Heavenly Father, I pray that we would be the type of church that
gathers together to be filled up with the fuel of the gospel and
to be sent out with good works and good news so that we would
be of benefit to our city. So that we would really live for
the glory of Jesus and the joy of of Des Moines as we think
about being a benefit to our city to being good for all
people. Maybe there's a face you want to
bring to mind. Who's that that family member?
Who's that friend? Who's that Co worker?
Who's that buddy who doesn't know Jesus?
Lord, maybe you'd be so kind to bring their face and name to
mind right now as we think about that individual, would you fill
us with an earnest desire to go tell that friend about who Jesus
is and what he's done for us? That if we live that way, Lord,
we really would exist for the glory of Jesus and the joy of
the morning. So it's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
You guys can have a seat. OK, so in a minute, we'll
explore the difference between two different models of church,
the attractional church and the missional church model.
But first, I want to show you the literary flow of verse 8
really quickly. There's a literary flow that
helps it make sense because it doesn't make sense on its own.
If you look at the beginning of the verse, it says the saying is
trustworthy. What saying?
And I want you to insist on these things.
What things, well, the things that the church needs to insist
on are the things that he just wrote about.
The saying he's talking about was the saying right before
this. It starts in verse 4.
Here's the saying that's trustworthy and the things that
he wants the church to insist upon.
Verse 4 says, but when the goodness and love and kindness
of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of works
done in righteousness, anything we can do, but according to his
own mercy by the washing, by the washing of the regeneration and
renewal of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly
through Jesus Christ our Savior. So that being justified by his
grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal
life. That that saying right there,
those verses, that's the gospel. That's one of the clearest
articulations of the gospel in all of the New Testament.
And so the saying he's talking about and the things the church
needs to insist upon is the gospel.
So church, when you get together, make sure to insist
upon these things, these gospel truths.
Preach them week in week out. The gospel should be preached
every time the church gathers together.
And as it's preached, it should produce a certain effect in the
lives of the church members. What what's the effect?
Pick up right where we left off at verse 8, so that those who
have believed in God may get cozy.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, so that those who have believed in
God may be careful to devote. Let me hear your beautiful
voices again. Devote to devote themselves to
good works. Follow me.
Constant and consistent preaching of the gospel of Jesus
should produce in the church a devotion to good works.
So having you repeat that word devotion on purpose.
In fact, if you've got a Bible, squint at that word really
quickly. If you don't squint at the
screen, circle it in your imagination.
I'm going to make a big deal out of the word devote.
Devote yourself to to good works.
The Greek word here for devote means to stand before or take
the lead. You know what a good translation
for it would be? Devote.
That's why they picked that word.
It's the perfect word to take the lead.
I'm going somewhere with this. The word devote here is not a
passive verb as a part of speech.
Grammatically, it is an active verb.
And I'm again, I'm going somewhere with this one
Christian commenter states the word devotion here is an active
leadership posture again, to stand before or to take the
lead, to take the lead in doing good works.
Not passive, active. It's an active verb.
And this is the key. That's why I'm making a big deal
out of it. Sometimes as Christians, we have
the tendency to think phrases like this.
Devote yourself to good works is passive, as if what God's Word
is instructing us to do is just go out there and don't do bad
things. Just avoid doing.
Just avoid doing bad stuff wrong.
The verb here for devote yourself to good works is not
passive, it's active. And that means that the manual
for being a Christian in the 90s that a lot of you grew up with,
or so I heard, is not what's happening right here.
And I think you know the manual I'm talking about if you grew up
in the church, I've heard a lot of people just grew up hearing
OK, just don't cuss, don't drink, don't chew, and don't
date girls who do. Just avoid bad stuff.
Just don't listen to secular music.
Just don't watch R rated movies. Just don't do this.
Don't do that. That's not what Paul's
advocating for. Paul is not advocating for.
Just go out there and the evil world and just like avoid doing
bad things. Again, the verb here is not
passive, it's active. So what Paul has in mind is
equipping church with the gospel so that they go out and actively
devote themselves to good works. It's about actively looking to
do good works at home in your job in the city, to walk into a
room and actively create a good work to be done, even if it's
not ready for you in there. Why?
Like I heard one leader this week said something really
helpful. He was like, there's two types
of people in the world. One type of person walks into a
room and inwardly announces to himself, Here I am, right, the
ego barely fits through the door, here I am, you guys come
talk to me, you come ask me how my day was, you guys serve me,
and people like that just tend to live miserable lives.
The second type of person walks into a room and she inwardly
announces to herself, there you are and begins to seek other
people and actively look for good works to be done and draw
other people out and bless other people.
Which one are you start with? Like which one are you when you
walk into church? Are you here I am, feed me, here
I am, or are you there you are. Who needs, who needs to be
blessed? Who needs to be built up?
What good work needs to be done? And as you do that, Paul has a
really specific reason why you should devote yourself to good
works. It's to make yourself look good
right now to impress people with how religious you are.
No wrong. Look at the text, the last
sentence in verse 8. Insist on the gospel that
propels us out on mission to do good works.
Verse 8. These things are excellent and
profitable for all people. The people he's talking about
right there. I know this is going to blow
your mind. It's not just the church people
on the island of Crete He's talking about the whole island
of Crete. Did you know that when the paste
on. Depending on the scholar you
read when when the letter of Titus was written, our best
estimates suggest that .01% of Cretans were Christians.
If Paul's not saying go do good works for the sake of .01% of
Crete, it should be for the good of the entire island.
That's why. That's why our mission statement
at Frontier is for the glory of Jesus and the joy of who the
morning, right? If the Cretan church has had
mission statements, they didn't yet.
But if they did, I am certain that their mission statement
would be the Crete and church exist for the glory of Jesus in
the joy of Crete. So here's the thesis statement
if you were to put it all together, of verse 8.
The purpose of the salvation of the gospel is to set the church
on mission for the good of the city where they live in.
In other words, the church is to gather, train, equip, and then
go win the city for Jesus. The question is, do we want a
church structure like that or not?
And so let's talk church models really quickly.
The historically dominant model of the church was equip, send,
equip, send. And that was the dominant model
of the church until about 100 years ago.
So what happened about 100 years ago?
About 100 years ago, something started to happen in the Western
world. Church attendance started to
decline. And as a result of church
attendance declining, the church started to ask a different
question that it never asked before.
The question the church always asked before that was how do we
glorify God and be faithful? All of a sudden they started to
ask the question, OK, people aren't coming to church.
How do we get people to come to church?
And so about 100 years ago, a new church model was born called
the Attractional Church. Essentially, church population
dwindled. You know what?
OK, you know what dwindles when church population dwindles?
Tithing. What happens when tithing goes
down? Bills don't.
And so the church started to say, Oh my gosh, we got to go.
We got to convince people to come to church.
And so America, now I'm going to question church leaders started
to ask was how can we attract people to come to church?
And there's actually nothing wrong with that question.
I hope you asked yourself that question.
I think, I hope you invite people to church, hopefully not
this morning because it's, you know, the boiler issue, but
hopefully you invite people to church, right?
That's a great first step. The problem is that the
attractional church model answered the question by saying
what if we attracted people to church by lowering the bar for
truth and primarily entertaining and comforting them.
It was a radical redesign in the history of the church.
It was like redesigning boot camp.
Rather than rigorous expository preaching, 20 minute
inspirational talks with a little little Jesus thrown in
took the place. Rather than rigorous and
biblical liturgy that trained people and dense theological
hymns, liturgy got thrown out and the church started to sing
Top 40 radio hits with Jesus name sprinkled in where the
lover's name was. The attraction of church's
slogan became come and see. And my problem isn't with church
size. I think there's a lot of big
churches that are super faithful.
They grew not as a result of developing a come and see
mentality. They grew because of the Spirit
of God. So I'm not like I'm not, I don't
want to be critical of big churches.
I think there's awesome big churches.
The problem is developing an entire mentality of come and see
will lower the bar for truth to get as many people through the
door. Because the problem with that is
that it got a bunch of Christians killed because it
turns out that painting people's toenails and then pushing them
into a battlefield is not a good idea.
And so somewhere along the way, Christians started to say, oh,
this, this isn't, this isn't working.
And we're still in the middle of this conversation in the Western
world. Like, is this?
Is this working? And in response to that,
Christians began focusing about a couple decades ago on a bunch
of literature, a bunch of books, a bunch of articles on this idea
called the missional church model.
And the thing about the missional church model is that
it's actually just an old ancient church model that's
based on what we see in the New Testament.
So if the attractional churches come and see, the missional
church is equip and send. So instead of entertaining
people for 45 minutes, the church began to see the central
purpose of his gathering as training people to go out into
battle like a boot camp. And again, this is the way that
the Bible conceptualizes church. Let me just read one verse for
you. This is Ephesians 4.
Jesus gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
shepherds and teachers to the church.
So all these leaders, God gives the church leaders.
Why Jesus gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists and
shepherds and teachers to do ministry for us.
No, that's that's the American model of churches called we pay
you to be a Christian for us. We pay you to go do the ministry
and we benefit from the ministry.
The problem with that is the Bible.
Watch this Jesus gave the apostles, the prophets, the
evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.
To equip the Saints for the work of ministry.
That's you guys. My job is not to do ministry for
you. My job is to equip you guys to
go do ministry out in the world. Notice this is the model of
church that Paul is advocating for in Titus.
Look at verse 8. I want you to insist on these
things, the gospel, so that those who have believed in God
may be careful to go do the work, to devote themselves
actively to doing good works in their city.
These things are excellent and profitable for people.
Train people with the gospel to go and actively be on mission to
their city. If you take apart all the
elements of of church, if you look at all the elements of
church at Frontier, my hope is that you start to see them a
little bit differently as a result of this.
Every piece of our church is intended to equip you, equip
you, equip you, equip you preaching at Frontier.
We preach long biblical sermons, and this is designed to train
you to think rightly about God. That's why I point at words in
the Bible and I say look at it right there.
That's why I explain words even when I illustrate with a story.
I'm not trying to entertain you guys.
Like when I tell you a story about one of my kids asking for
a snack out of the cupboards drawer, it's not to entertain
you. It's because I know your kids
are going to ask you for a snack out of the cupboard drawer and
there's something to be learned about God in that moment.
It's all designed to equip you to think rightly about God
singing, right? When we sing together, Joseph
will even sometimes pause and encourage you to press into the
Spirit more deeply. Why do we do that?
Because we're trying to train you to feel rightly about God in
the songs. It's aimed at your heart with
good theology. Even the liturgy, right when
we've got Alex Pascher coming up doing an awesome job calling and
then we respond. She reads, we read right with
we've integrated call response liturgy to train you how to talk
to God. It's giving you language and
vocabulary that you can use in the rest of your week so that
your dialogue with God becomes more fluid and more natural and
more regular. Trains you to talk to God.
Communion. We practice weekly communion to
train you how to hunger for God. You're going to go eat like
what's 3 meals a day? You're going to eat 21 meals
this week. What communion does is it trains
you to approach all those meals with a posture of gratitude and
communion with with God. And so every time we gather
together, if you put all that together, every time we gather
together as a church, you are going to hear from God through
the preaching, you're going to respond to God through the
liturgy, you're going to worship God through singing, and you're
even going to eat with God through communion.
Every Sunday is a spiritual boot camp for you.
Why? Because the church is for
mission. Amen.
I, I heard one theologian, I just love the way that he
phrased this. He said, he said no, no, no, no.
The church doesn't have a mission.
The mission of God has a church. You see what's primary and
secondary there? Let me phrase it this way.
Frontier doesn't have a mission. The mission of God has Frontier
Church. To the degree that we're on
mission, we're doing what God's doing to the degree that we're
just kind of coming here to be entertained.
That's just not what God's doing in the world, right?
If we're not equipping you for mission, we're doing something
different than what God is doing in the world.
And it's like, OK, I get a cold, but why would a church not be on
mission? How does that even happen?
And it's simple because the vast majority of Christians will
leave the church if you make it about God's mission rather than
their comfort. It's just true.
You got to hear me out on this like I want to.
I'm going to phrase this as strongly as I can for the sake
of it landing in your heart. The most dangerous threat to a
local church. It's not that atheist in the
pews. If you're an atheist this
morning, we're psyched that you're here.
That's not the biggest threat to the church.
The biggest threat to the church.
You want to do the biggest threat to the churches.
It's not the drug dealer or the person struggling with porn, or
even Satan himself. It's not who's the biggest
threat to the church. It is the church person who
thinks that the mission of the church is to pamper them.
That's a threat. All Satan can do is take shots
from the outside of the church. Comfort crazed preference junkie
church people are like novocaine that can spread on the inside of
the church. That person will make a long
checklist of all their preferences and they will demand
that the church exist to meet all of those preferences.
And when those preferences don't get met, hell hath no fury like
a disgruntled church person with a Facebook account That happens
to you once or twice. Ouch.
That happens to you four or five times.
You know what you start to do as a church, as a church leader,
You start to go, oh gosh, I just don't, I don't want to deal with
that. So I'm just going to try and
meet this individual's needs and preferences for as long as
possible and try to hold them off.
And this is, that's how churches drift from the mission.
That's how it practically happens in real time.
Like there's a reason why mission drift is such a
predictable thing within all institutions, not just churches,
but all institutions. I was listening to 1 podcaster
talking about that this this week and he he talked about how
legacy institutions predictably drift from their fiery original
mission that drove them into existence into predictable Luke
warmth. He said institutions are kind of
like battleship kind of like battleships.
The first people who built that battleship, they built it for
battle building up. They sent them out there to
fight battles and somewhere along the way, people just after
fighting a few battles, they started to clean it up and
maintain it, which is the right thing to do.
But somewhere along the way people just start to believe
that they built the battleship to wax it down and not to fight
battles. Every institution, every church
struggles with that drift. And when we planted Frontier, it
was like, grow or die, ma'am, be on mission or we're not here
next Sunday. And then 789 years in, you get a
plurality of elders, maybe your own building.
And somewhere along the way, maybe you start to think, maybe
our job is to just maintain this.
And we do have to maintain this. But right, Sometimes I need to
be reminded of that, but not for the sake of maintaining it,
right? We maintain it for the sake of
being on mission for Jesus. That's why we do all the stuff.
And oh, oh Christian, the church was built by Jesus as a
battleship for war. It's not just for waxing down.
You too. You were built for mission.
You were built for the purpose
of God, not for being pampered and being cozy.
And don't pull away from me when I talk about comfort.
I feel you backing up right now. Let me just drop a little bit of
a clarity bomb. The missional church model, I'm
not opposed to comfort. I hope you don't hear me saying
that the missional church model should be comforting, right?
You're going to hear the gospel every Sunday.
And you know what you should experience by hearing the
gospel? Comfort.
You should be comforted by the fact that Jesus loves you apart
from anything you could do for him.
There's nothing more comforting than that there.
I think, I think Heidelberg Catechism, the first question is
maybe it's Westminster, is what is your only comfort in life or
death? And the answer is that I'm not
my own, but I belong both body and soul to Jesus Christ, my
Lord and Savior. That is comforting.
You should know that Jesus will never leave you or no, never
forsake you, no matter what season of life you're in.
You should have relationships where you feel comfortable, like
it's there's relational safety. You know they're not going to
throw you away or gossip about you, right?
You should experience comfort in that.
When you need counseling and pastoring in tough seasons, I
think you'll find our pastors comforting.
No matter what your experiences with me, when I preach up here
and individually in a room with you, if you need comfort, I'm
going to listen, empathize, care, and like Jesus, who is
gentle and lonely. We will not break a bruised
Reed. The difference is the difference
between being comforting and being comfort centric.
There's a difference, right? We're not a comfort centric
church. We're not going to make church
decisions based on whether or not it will or won't upset
people. We're not going to shy away from
tough subjects because some people don't want to hear me
talk about that. We're not going to convince you
week in and week out that you don't need to grow closer to God
or that you don't need to become more transferred in the image of
Jesus because we're afraid you won't tithe next week, right?
A comfort center church is built around a comforting church just
preaches the gospel. A comfort center church.
A comfort center church is built around the preferences of the
least mature church members. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
And that's why when churches drift in that direction, they
lose all their power. Because you can't policy.
I was reading Galatians this week.
He's so clear. He says I cannot please man and
please God. If our church tries to please
you, definitionally we are no longer pleasing to God.
And getting all your preferences met doesn't make you like Jesus
anyways. It doesn't even make you happy.
Right? If God, if all God gave you was
comfort without mission, was meeting your preferences and not
sending you out, he wouldn't be God.
He would be an enabler. Enabler.
God calls you to something greater than your comfort.
Again, I hope you experience comfort in the gospel.
I hope you have comforting relationships.
I hope that the relationship you have with God through the gospel
is is comforting. But he calls you to more than
comfort. Like notice this at the end of
Matthew 28 and Jesus said to them, all authority in heaven on
earth has been given to me, go, everybody say go, go.
Therefore make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the
name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you as you're out
on mission. What's Jesus promise?
Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
Jesus is with you when you're on a mission.
Why would Jesus promise that if you are on mission, then He will
be with you? Because that's where God is.
He's on mission. Where's God?
He's on the mission field. Where can I find God on mission?
Where's God hiding on mission? He told you where he's at.
He's on mission to people who don't know him.
I want to be with God, get on mission.
I want to grow closer to God, Get on mission.
Why don't I feel close to God? Go share the gospel with people,
right? Like postmodern sensibilities.
They suggest sometimes that like, if you want to find God,
then what you have to do is you have to turn the lights down.
You have to knock on wood, keep a rabbit's foot in your pocket.
You want to find God, Cross your fingers behind your back,
discover your right Zodiac sign and at the right place on the
right time, if it's a full moon, maybe you'll discover God within
yourself. It's not Christianity.
No, you want to feel close to God, Believe the gospel, share
the gospel, believe the gospel, share the gospel.
That's where the joy is. Like have you ever experience
the joy of leading somebody to Jesus?
It's awesome. There is no worldly pleasure
that exceeds the joy of leading people to Jesus.
That's the most under preached thing about the mission of God
is sometimes the mission of God is packaged as it's this duty
that you got to go do. I think the the closer I grow to
Jesus, the more I recognize that the mission isn't just some duty
to go do. It's this cake that God's
inviting me to take a bite out of.
It's like where the joy is. Sometimes it's hard to listen to
preachers preach on mission. And I, I did earlier this week.
So I know because sometimes you're like, dude, it just
sounds to me like you're interfering with my friendships.
And it sounds like all you're trying to do is boss me into
having an awkward conversation with an otherwise good
friendship. I don't know.
God is offering you joy. Like, I'm going to try really
hard to not quote my favorite rapper, Eminem, but I can't make
any promises. Charles.
I was a couple months ago, our two year old wanted a snack.
He drops the S and calls it a Knack.
So Jack wanted a Knack. Wow, that's the beginning of a
poem. So Jack wanted a neck.
And so I took him to the stack cupboard, opened it for him and
I, I got Jack one of these applesauce packets.
Any parents out there? Do you buy these little go
applesauce squeezes? They're great.
I don't know if you've had one. You should treat yourself.
They're great. And so I get one of these
flavored applesauce packets. You take the, you know, you pop
the tap and then you just drain it.
And I, I grab one of those and I give it to Jack.
And Jack looks at it and he responds to my offer by taking
the swing at me. I dodge it.
I'm OK, You didn't want that. So I put the applesauce packet
back and I, I noticed Chloe got these.
These things are awesome. They're like these little
granola bites with chocolate chips in them.
What are they called? What's that?
Made well made goods. Heavenly honks, heavenly hunks,
Heavenly hunks. That was Joseph's name and
nickname in, in high school. Heavenly hunk.
They're so good, these little heavenly hunks.
So I'm like, you know what I'm feeling.
I'm the feeling like giving them the best.
And so I grab some heavenly honks for them and I, I hand
them the Jack and he looks, he looks at me like I'm the idiot.
It's like, no, I don't want those.
And I was like, OK, you pick out your own snack then, bud.
And so I let them rummage through the snack cover, and he
doesn't pick the applesauce. He doesn't pick the heavenly
hunks. Do you know what he insists
upon? One piece of uncooked spaghetti.
Palms are sweaty.
He says no to the flavored applesauce in the heavenly hunks
because he wants a piece of uncooked spaghetti.
Friends, do you see your nature in this?
You want so badly to experience coziness and comfort and it does
not satisfy. God offers you mission purpose
to go bless the world, and we want uncooked spaghetti.
If only you knew how often you resented God for offering you
heavenly hunks because you wanted uncooked spaghetti.
I have been angry at God for calling me to be on mission
rather than granting me non-stop, never and in comfort.
And I promise you the comfort you desire, the worldly comfort.
Let me frame it that way. The worldly comfort that you so
badly desire will not satisfy you.
It's on cooked spaghetti. It won't.
Only God will and only God's mission will fill that purpose
void in your heart. Again, the joy of leading people
to Jesus is unrivaled by any of the joys of the world.
When you experience that, you're like, OK, I get why God's so
crazy about mission, right? This is what the church.
This is the purpose of the church.
Verse 8. I want you to insist on these
things, the gospel, so that those who believe in God may be
careful to go devote active verb, go actively create good
works, go devote themselves to good works.
These things are excellent and profitable for all people so
that people would know the Jesus that they serve and worship.
God calls you to something greater than your comfort,
right? And that's I keep on picking on
the comfort issues. I think I've rightly defined
that it's good to experience comfort and relationship, but I
keep on picking on comfort because that's the biggest
obstacle to living on mission for God and sharing the gospel.
Sometimes we pretend like it's technique, like I, you know, I
don't know how to like draw it on a white board or I can't do
the Romans road. And I think that stuff is great.
But that's not why you don't share the Gospel.
It's not, it's not. You can tell your friend, hey,
Jesus died for your sins. You can do that.
Why don't you do that? It's not because I, you know, I
don't know how to like, draw out the little cross and then the,
you know, the void and how to get no, no, no, you can tell
people the gospel. You know how to tell people
Jesus died for your sins. Why don't we do it?
Because we don't want to be the awkward guy, right?
And I got to be honest with you, as somebody who's awkward,
Awkward is an underappreciated experience.
Being embarrassed is an underappreciated experience.
It's very good for you and I think your friends actually want
to hear you talk about God. Don't let the media convince you
that they that they don't. What they don't want to hear is
a little sales pitch. People can tell when Kohl's just
telling me this because like he feels obligated to.
What people want to see is they want to see a person who has
really experienced God. They want to hear that person
talk about God, you know, like you cut them open and it just
bleeds out kind of way people want to.
Like I was really, I've been thinking about this clip I
watched with Casey Newman on Wednesday.
He was like, dude, you got to watch this clip and I watch this
clip and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
It was it was it was 2 atheist bloggers and it was a segment
from their podcast about hot takes.
And one of the one of the podcasters says, I got a hot
take. I don't think people are
actually religious. And the other podcaster goes, no
disagree. How could you even say that?
And she said because, and this is an atheist, she said, because
if I really believe that God was real and people would burn an
eternity in hell if they didn't know him, I would be breaking
into people's houses in the middle of the night, shaking
them awake, telling them to accept Jesus into their heart.
Do you hear what she's saying? She's she's saying, I don't find
Christians convincing, not because they're too crazy, but
because they're not crazy enough.
That's what she's saying. She goes on to say.
She says she goes, I quit eating sugar for like a week one time
and I couldn't stop telling all my friends about the benefits of
not eating sugar. If Christians really believe
this stuff, how can Christians be so good at not talking about
Jesus? How can Christians be so good at
not talking about Jesus? I had to ask myself that this
week. Why am I so good at not talking
about Jesus again? She says she she doesn't find
Christianity compelling, not because Christians are too
crazy, but because they're not crazy enough.
I think one of the biggest lies I've believed personally as a
Christian is I believe the lie that the best way to win the
world to Jesus is to become like the world as much as possible
and fit in as much as possible, and then just try to slip some
Jesus in there. People don't find that
compelling. Doesn't work.
No, we got to be crazy about the gospel.
They want to hear about God from somebody who has radically
encountered God, and we as people who believe in the gospel
need to be those people. That's the purpose of the
church, to fill you with the gospel and then send you out.
I designed that illustration at the beginning of the sermon to
sound crazy. The idea of designing boot camp
into a pampering parlor is supposed to be ridiculous.
But as crazy as it is, it is not as ridiculous as redesigning the
church into a spiritual pampering parlor.
Imagine going to the beach, and you go to the beach and there's
two people at the beach. OK, hold on a second.
You go to the beach and there's one other person at the beach.
That person is on a folding chair.
And they say, hey, I can't reach this spot on my back with the
the sunscreen. Can you help me?
Yeah. I don't want the person to get
sunburned. That's a legitimate need.
Fine, but imagine you go to the beach and there's two people at
the beach, one person on a folding chair, and he can't
reach the spot with the sunscreen.
Say, can you help me with the sunscreen?
The second person is drowning. Who gets your attention?
Help the drowning person. Now imagine there's a bunch of
people on the beach. You go there, a bunch of people
on folding chairs who want sunscreen and a bunch of people
drowning. What's the best solution?
Now? The best solution is to run
around trying to convince all the people in the folding chairs
that their sunscreen isn't that big of a problem and that they
should go out and try to rescue as many drowning people as
possible. And my hope is that when you
hear that, you think our church does that.
And if we don't, we need to grow up in that area.
Our hope is to be a gospel boot camp.
Our hope is not to build Christians who are passive, but
Christians who are active. Again, I'm not trying to sell
you on the mission of God as an obligation or a duty.
I'm not going to pressure you into handing out gospel tracts
on the way out or making signs for the street corners.
The mission of God is not an obligation.
I'm, I'm preaching about mission as joy.
I'm trying to get you to see that all those preferences that
you so desperately want to get met, it's just uncooked
spaghetti and what God offers you are heavenly honks.
Go, Therefore go make disciples. Go bless the world.
Go be on mission. There's no joy like leading
people to Jesus. Heavenly Father, would you help
us do that? I just really, these sermons,
they just really bother me because that's the thing that
I'm bad at as a pastor, as I'm bad at being on mission.
And so I'm, I'm just always so convicted by this.
And again, we're not a comfort centric church, but I pray that
people do experience the comfort of the gospel, that they would
know that they are saved by grace alone, apart from any
works. And so if they get to the gates
of heaven and stand before the Lord one day, and they have
legitimately LED nobody to Jesus, they will still be
welcomed into paradise forever on the basis of the blood of
Jesus. They do not need to earn that.
There's so much comfort in that, and yet there's a strange way
that preaching the gospel of God's grace propels people
towards good works. And so I pray that we would just
be people who were on mission, people who lead other people to
Jesus. Would you equip us to do that?
Lord, it's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people
prayed. Amen.
Let's, let's stand and let's worship this God who is on
mission to us right now.