Oh my goodness, crossing family, I am so glad that you are here
today. Today we are going to answer one
of the top 20 questions that I get as a pastor.
It is probably a question that you have wondered yourself or
perhaps have been asked. And I know that anytime someone
tries to answer a big theological question, there are
going to be some of you who'll be frustrated because I did not
say a particular thing that you thought that I should have
included. And I want you to know I don't
have an e-mail address anymore. Just joking.
I want to welcome those of you joining at all of our different
locations, those of you watching online, those of you are part of
the crossing inside. I am celebrating the first
baptism since our Weaver campus launched.
I hope you guys cheered a little bit louder for that.
I cannot wait to see 1000 more. I also want to welcome those of
you who are here for the first time.
You're new here or maybe it's your first time in a long time.
And I want to encourage you before you leave today to swing
by the new here booth in all of our different lobbies.
Now in two weeks, two weeks from this weekend, on Super Bowl
weekend, both Thursday and on Sunday, we are going to be
having a very special service. We are partnering with a
ministry called Riding High Ministries and during each of
our services we will be breaking a wild horse.
In fact, I can't even tell you how.
I'll tell you more next week about how over the moon I am
about this. We will be sending an e-mail out
to you this week with more details.
So if you have put us in your spam account, I would ask you to
remove us so that way you could have the best information
possible. I have to go over, if we're
going to pull this thing off, four important details.
Detail number one, there is not a better weekend for you to make
an invite of somebody that you love that is far from God.
I would absolutely love to pack this church out.
In fact, I've set my alarm for 9:50 in the morning and I've set
my alarm for 9:50 in the evening to pray for 9500 people to be in
attendance that weekend at our church.
I believe that strongly that whoever you bring will have a
powerful encounter with God. In my opinion, it will be the
most memorable service in the history of the crossing.
And if there's somebody that you love deeply, this is the time to
make the risk and make the ask #2 because I'm praying for so
many people and not that God owes me, you know, a huge favor
because I'm praying. And I, if you want to set your
alarm for 9:50 in the morning and 9:50 at night or for one of
the two and for 3:00 for a Weaver campus, we're, you know,
eventually we're just going to have all the times filled up.
We're going to be people who pray continually.
And I think that would be fantastic.
But because we're praying for 9500 people to attend at all of
our different locations, those of you who are Jesus followers,
I'm asking you to do 2 things which most of you are horrible
at. I'm asking you to show up early
and park far away because I do not want there to be a huge
crowd for people who are coming here for the first time, making
it difficult for them to come in and find a seat.
In fact, at some of our locations, you will not be
sitting in your normal seat because we're going to be
hopefully packing people in. When I show up for church, I
pick the furthest parking spot. So that way anybody who is
coming here for the first time never has a longer walk than I
have. And I'm asking you to partner
with me on that on that weekend at all of our locations #3 if
possible, would you consider prioritizing our Thursday
services for those of you who have a Thursday service or being
willing to sit in overflow if your campus ends up having it #4
this is for all the other locations.
This is not for you at 48th St. You're going to have your own
problems, and we'll deal with those later.
I know there will be some of you at one of our different
locations. Who's going?
I want to be in the room. I want to smell the horse.
I want it to pee on me. And I need you to know 48th St.
cannot accommodate people from other locations.
If we're going to have 9500 people at all of our locations,
that means that 48th St. will potentially have 4000 to 4500 in
three services because we're only having three services
because there's not a fourth wild horse.
OK. I have watched what he does on
video and I can promise you it will be impactful absolutely
everywhere. To add to that, we are adding
additional cameras and additional technology to make
that service as immersive as possible wherever you are
watching from. So if you attend a different
location and you show up at 48th St., you will be making it
harder for the people at 48th St. to bring their friends who
they've been praying for to come to church.
This is one of the ways that we love God and be a good loving
neighbor. Everybody.
OK, you might be wondering, why would we be doing all of this?
This sounds crazy. You better stink and believe it.
And I'll tell you why. Because it is our mission as a
church to help people find an intimate, personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. And our crazy goal is to make
this region where we do life and ministry, the hardest place on
planet earth to get to hell from.
We see the impact that Satan and sin are having in our region, in
our counties, in our cities, in our workplace, in our schools,
in our friends, in our families. And we are compelled to do
something about it. And we believe there has to be a
place for people to connect and discover the love of God that is
found in Jesus Christ. However, we cannot create the
place that we want to create unless we createspace in our
lives to become the people that God created us to become.
That is why we have been talking about making space in our lives
for spending time in the Word of God, creating space in our lives
to spend time in prayer, and creating space in our lives to
use our gifts and abilities to serve the mission of God.
And if you've missed any of these sermons in the series, you
can find them at all kinds of places if you go to at One
Crossing, wherever you consume your stuff.
I recently got an e-mail of a church not too far from here
that the high school Sunday school teacher said that they
watch the services here at the crossing and then they discuss
them with their students. And they said, is there any
chance that we could ever come on a particular weekend and just
hang out in person? And I want you to know those
high school kids who are gathered at some church that I
don't know the name of. I cannot wait to meet you guys
and cheer you on as you try to live out your faith in your high
school. Now, one of the top 20 questions
that I get is what does it mean to be a Christian?
If somewhere to ask you what does it mean to be a Christian,
how would you answer that question?
Well, I believe that there is an answer to that question that we
can all discover and learn from. Now, let's start with the
spiritual spectrum. We've been talking a lot about
the spiritual spectrum. If you were to give yourself a
number for like your level of Christianity, what number would
you give if you were a - 5 you're going I don't even
believe in God and a - 2. I'm starting to believe, but I
got a lot of questions and maybe a person who would say I'm a 0
is like I am ready to start an intimate personal relationship
with him. And maybe a + 2 is I'm starting
to develop a a pattern of faith and obedience that are maybe a +
5 is my life is defined by faith and obedience.
What number would you pick? Now hear me, I am not as
concerned with the number that just popped in your head as I am
with this year being a year where you move from left to
right on the spiritual spectrum. There are a lot of things that
can't have been said and could be said about what it means to
be a Christian, but I believe that Second Corinthians chapter
5 we find a great explanation of what it means to be a Christian
at all of our locations. Turn to your neighbor and say
Second Corinthians chapter 5. Great job.
Next time somebody says what does it mean to be a Christian,
you are going to turn to your other neighbor and say Second
Corinthians chapter 5. I believe that Second
Corinthians chapter 5 should be on the Mount Rushmore of Bible
chapters, right up there with Romans chapter 8, right up there
with Psalm 23, Second Corinthians chapter 5.
In fact, it is such a good chapter that that is going to
form about 50% of all the words that I'm going to speak from
here on for the rest of the message it that chapter is that
good. Let me show you what Second
Corinthians chapter 5. I'm getting it in your head says
about being a Christian verse one.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we
have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not
built by human hands. To be a Christian is to
recognize that this life is not all that there is.
It is also to recognize that as Christians we have an eternal
house in heaven that was built by God.
Tents are temporary, houses are forever.
Remember in the Decisions in the Desert sermon series, God made a
temporary place for them to worship him.
It was called the Tabernacle. It was a tent, but the
Tabernacle gave way to a permanent structure, the temple.
When Jesus came to earth in John chapter one verse 4, it
describes Jesus as coming to earth to tent with us.
Jesus was physically on on earth for a temporary period of time
before he ascended into heaven. Now, you know, I had a lot of
people come up to me after Thanksgiving this year and say,
Clayton, you didn't talk to us about your Thanksgiving
extravaganza. And I said, well, just wait.
And I'm not going to go into all the details, but my family, it's
growing and there's lots of people and lots of people come
over. And so somebody in our family
recognize that in order to cook all of the food and take care of
everybody's needs, that somebody needed to sacrifice that.
Somebody needed to take one for the team and they needed to move
out of the house and into a tent.
So that way everybody else could have a bed and everybody else
could stay warm. And I don't want to make a big
deal about who it was, but I know him.
I know him really well. And so the first year I said,
mom and dad, could you just put a tent up outside?
And I don't know if you guys know where we live, but
Thanksgiving's not warm. And so my dad and his incredible
generosity, this is the tent that he found and gave me this
tent. Jesus used this tent when he
came to earth and we put a wood stove in there.
The door didn't close, so the wind came through in the middle
of the night. I didn't have a single warm
night, not one night of, of warm sleep.
And that's where I, I, that's where I stayed in.
It's, you know, it wasn't great, but it worked.
And so while everybody else in my family was, you know,
sleeping in a nice warm house, a permanent structure, here was I
suffering for them in a humble servant, servant manner.
I don't I don't want to make a big deal about how awesome I
was, but I just want you to know that somebody was out in the
tent. Well, my dad, in his greatness,
said, I kind of said, hey, it would be kind of nice if we had
a better tent. So this year my dad ordered this
tent, and this tent took six months to get to my parents
house and they had it set up for me when I showed up for
Thanksgiving this year. Let me show you how we trick
this thing out. Oh yeah, it's a house basically.
OK, I got a video here. This is Shug.
That's my son sleeping out there with me.
Everybody wants to be in Clayton's tent.
Now that there's doors, there's heat.
I got the savage Cologne out there.
It was bougie. And some of you, you're married
to somebody who's seen, like, pictures of people glamping and
like, Oh my goodness, that'll be so fun for us to go.
And they call them yurts. But you know what?
Nobody's ever said I want to live there.
Nobody's ever bragged about how awesome their tent life is.
Hey, you should come over to my house, see my new tent.
Nobody does that. You wouldn't know why because
everybody knows that tents are temporary and houses are
forever. This is how Christians are to
view the life that they have, that this life is the temporary
tent. And when you are bragging about
how cool your life is on earth, you're trying to say cool tent,
bro. When everybody else, Christians
are going, this is just where we're here temporarily.
I have an eternal house that is being built for me.
This is not all there is. There is something greater,
something grander on the horizon, a better structure, a
better reality, an eternal one. Second Corinthians chapter 5,
verses 2 through 4. Meanwhile we groan, longing to
be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when
we are clothed we will not be found naked.
For while we are in this tent, this life, we groan and are
burdened because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be
clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what
is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
While we wait for this new reality, you and I are forced to
live in this 1 and in the waiting we are burdened.
We experience pain on every side.
We have emotional pain and relational pain.
We have marital burdens and parenting burdens and burdens
that arise from singleness and burdens that arise from divorce.
And we have pain from anxiety and burdens from stress.
We see so clearly, as I mentioned earlier, the effect
that sin is having on our lives and in the lives of the people
we love. We're frustrated by it.
We are crushed by the pain. We long for the new heaven,
Christians long for the new reality.
We long for the eternal 1 the permanent one.
To be a Christian is to long for what is to come and at the same
time to be discontent with what is.
That's what it means to be a Christian, to have your eye on a
future glory while you live in a present grown.
Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 5.
Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God,
who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to
come. Christians recognize that this
future redemption was never our idea, nor was this future
reality our doing. It was God who has made us
eternal beings, longing for an eternal destiny with Him.
His plan that He has stretches from eternity to eternity.
In the eternity past, God was already making a way for you and
I in Christ Jesus, and in eternity future, all that He has
in store for us will be poured out on top of us.
That is why it says in Philippians chapter one verse 6
being confident of this that he who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
That when God began saving you. He's not going to take his hand
off of you until you have experienced everything that he
has in store for you. So while we are waiting, He
gives us something to keep our hopes and our eyes up.
He gives us the Holy Spirit as a down payment, as a deposit, as a
ticket, as a confirmation e-mail.
How many of you you have gone to some kind of show, some kind of
game, and you got a ticket? Did you get the ticket at the
game or did you get the ticket in advance?
While you had not seen the game, you knew that there was a place
reserved for you because you had the ticket.
While I have not seen heaven, while I have not been face to
face with God, when He gave me His Holy Spirit, He gave me a a
ticket saying what is coming is indeed coming.
How many of you have placed an order on Amazon and you got the
confirmation e-mail? The confirmation e-mail is not
the thing. It is the promise that The thing
is on its way. You get the confirmation e-mail.
If you're like me, you go and you look at your e-mail.
You're like, I got the confirmation e-mail.
And then you know what I do? I go to the front door.
I'm an impatient person. When it's not there, I go, OK, I
go back. I pull up the e-mail.
I pull up the tracking data, refresh, refresh, refresh,
refresh. It is on its way.
The confirmation e-mail is not the thing, but the tracking data
that is associated with it is a sign that it is on its way.
When Christians receive the Holy Spirit in their life, it is
saying heaven is not here yet, but heaven is on its way.
Hear me, when you come into a relationship with Jesus Christ,
the Holy Spirit is a deposit, a down payment, the ticket, the
confirmation e-mail that says don't lose heart.
In this present reality, the eternal 1 is still to come.
That's what it means to be a Christian.
Let's keep going versus 6 through 8.
Therefore, we are always confident because we have the
Holy Spirit, because we have the down payment, because we have
the confirmation e-mail. We are always confident and know
that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from
the Lord, for we live by faith and not by sight.
We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the
body and at home with the Lord. Christians are always confident
because we know that God's plans are eternal, unchanging,
trustworthy, and reliable. No matter what we encounter, no
matter what pressure we face, we know that God's plan is steady
and God's plan marches on. How do we know this?
Because we have the deposit of what is to come.
And Christians live by faith and not by sight.
Oh, we would rather see Him now. We would rather be with him now.
But Christians submit our preferences to God's plan.
Our preferences get submitted to God's plan.
While I would prefer to be with him now, God's plan is for me to
point to people, to him in the waiting.
The work He has for you and I to do remains unfinished.
So what do you and I do in this meantime?
Second Corinthians? I'm getting that book in your
head or that chapter in your head.
Chapter 9. So we make it our goal to please
Him whether we are at home in the body, or away from it.
Christians have this goal. We want to please God.
It remains the same whether we are in heaven with Him or we are
here on earth. Our goal is to please Him.
All we want to do is to please Him.
Regardless of where we are, regardless of what we're going
through, whatever we have to endure, all we want to do is
please our king. You can have lots of goals.
You can have lots of desires, you can have lots of ambitions,
but if you are a Christian, all of them are a distant second to
pleasing God. That is why we read our word and
do what it says. This is why we pray for wisdom
and strength and guidance. This is why Christians use their
gifts and service to His Kingdom, because we are consumed
with the desire to please Him. And guess what pleases God?
Faith and obedience. Verse 10.
And we haven't even got to the good part of the text, for we
must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ so that
each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while
in the body, whether good or bad.
I mentioned this last week. On that day the truth about our
lives, our character, our deeds will be made clear to everyone.
We will discover the real verdict on our lives, the real
verdict on our ministry, our motives, our service.
All hypocrisy will be stripped away.
All temporary matters with no eternal significance will
vanish. The only thing that will be left
and be rewarded as eternally valuable will be in front of us.
Only the things that we did that matter in eternity will be the
things that we are rewarded for. Hebrews chapter 4.
Verse 13 says nothing in all of creation is hidden from God's
sight. Everything will be uncovered and
laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account
as we please Him. With our lives that are lived by
faith, we will do things to please Him and God will see
absolutely everything and reward us accordingly.
Verse 11. Since then we know what it is to
fear the Lord, we try to persuade others.
What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is plain to your
conscience. If we are out of our mind, as
some say, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it
is for you. It is out of this reverence and
awe for our great and majestic God that we point and urge
others to do the same. And there are going to be times
when you living for God is going to look crazy to other people.
But when you are being crazy in their eyes, you might be doing
the very thing that God is calling you to do.
People might look at you and go you're crazy.
You're doing what? You're starting your day, how
your calendar looks like, what your spending and your giving
look like, that you're out of your mind.
Yeah, we might be from your perspective, but in Heavenly in
Heaven's perspective, we're doing the very thing that God
has called us to do. Everything we are doing is for
Him. In a world that is all about me,
it is going to seem out of your mind to have people living for
somebody that they have not seen.
If, however, someone sees what you're doing and it causes them
to chase after God, if what you're doing causes somebody
else to see the wisdom of a life surrendered to Him, if in the
way you live your life, people begin to notice that God's way
is indeed the best way, then they are drawn to it for their
own good. It is for you.
Why are you and I doing all of this?
Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 14.
For Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that
one died for all and therefore all died.
We, if you are Christians, are compelled and controlled by
Christ's love. It has consumed us.
It has taken over us. The love of God has
fundamentally changed our motives and our behaviors.
If you are having a hard time living a life of faith and
obedience, it is because you are struggling coming to grips with
the love that God has for you on your behalf in Jesus.
But don't you dare lose hope because at the very end of this
chapter, if you're going, man, I'm trying to live a life of
faith and obedience, and I haven't been moved by God's love
like you're talking about. By the end of this chapter, I
believe you will see the love of God in a brand new way.
You will see things completely different.
You will see that Christ's love was demonstrated in his life, in
his death, and in his resurrection.
You see, He died on behalf of us in all of our sin, in all of our
shame, in all of our guilt. He died knowing all the things
that we have done and all the things that we were we're going
to do. To be a Christian is to accept
that God's love was demonstrated on our behalf in Jesus Christ.
So what is the appropriate response to this?
How do you and I behave? What did he do?
And what is the response that you and I are supposed to have
based on what he did? 2nd Corinthians 515 He died for
all that. Those who live should no longer
live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised
again. Because Jesus died for you and
me, we can no longer live for ourselves.
How could we? We must live for Him now.
We must make His last words our first priority.
To be a Christian is to live for Jesus.
Instead of living for ourselves. We remove our I wants from the
equation and we live our life under what does he want and call
us to do and hear me it's worth it.
Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 16.
So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view.
The once we regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer we
no longer see the people around us from a worldly vantage point
because of God's love. It is fundamentally changed the
way we see people. We no longer see people through
the lens of rich and poor. We're done with worldly
standards. We don't evaluate people based
on success or failure, deserving or undeserving.
We don't see them as friend or enemy.
We see them as loved by God and lost without Him.
Think about an enemy. The reason that person remains
an enemy is because you have a hard time seeing them as loved
by God and lost without Him. Now we get to my top five.
This is going to be a tattoo verse one day.
You've heard me preach this 2nd Corinthians 517.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has
come, the old is gone. The new is here.
When you come into a relationship with Jesus Christ,
the old is gone, the new is here.
When you see somebody who is coming into Christ and the old
self frustrated you, bothered you, the old is gone, the new is
come, the old is gone. The shame is gone, the guilt is
gone, the sin is gone, the wickedness is gone.
Why? Because righteousness is here,
mercy is here, grace is here, love is here.
Hear me, you are not made better in Christ, you are made new.
And this promise is for anyone who will receive it.
Our old life is crucified with Christ, that what we live is our
new life in Him. It is not just our sins that are
gone. Our old desires, our old
passions, our old plans, our old ambitions, our old directions
are all gone and made new in Him.
Second Corinthians chapter 5, verses 18 through 19.
All of this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through
Christ and gave us what US what US?
The ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the
world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against
them, and he has committed to us.
What to us? What's the message of
reconciliation? All of this reconciliation, this
saving, this new in him, old is gone, came from him.
We didn't come up with it. God here's a plan to save the
world. We didn't pay for it.
God hears what I can contribute. We were the offender and he
moved on our behalf to ransom and save us.
And once he had the plan, he paid for it in full.
And hear me, He's the one who paid the bill.
He's the one who picked up the tab.
He's the one who made the way. But hear me, you and I don't
just get to receive it. We get to be part of it.
God is not just dusting us off and saying you're going to be
better now. He's going to make you new and
then allow you to be part of other people being made new.
He's not just saving you, He's putting you on His team to be
part of other people finding what you have found in Him.
This is why we are such big fans of Jesus, because it is through
Jesus that our sins are not just not counted against us, but He
has placed in us a message that people can be saved from hell
and their sins through the reconciliation that God provided
by Jesus. Second Corinthians chapter 5,
verse 20. We are therefore Christ's
ambassadors as though God were making His appeal through us.
We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.
You and I in our newness have a new job, a new occupation.
We're ambassadors now. Ambassadors are both a messenger
and a representative of the one who sent them, the United States
ambassadors. If you guys gave a bunch of
money to a president, you could maybe one day become an
ambassador, right? That's what happens in the
political world. And what you end up doing as AUS
ambassador is you live in a foreign land and when you speak,
you speak with the authority of the United States government and
you are a representative of the United States government in that
place. We are therefore Christ's
ambassadors, which means we live in a foreign land, aliens and
strangers in this world because this is tent city and we have an
eternal home in glory. This world is not my home.
This world is not all there is. I am from another place and I am
here with divine authority to represent Him to people who are
lost with a divine message that they can be saved and made right
in Jesus. Look at what He has done to you.
He has picked you up. He has purified you from all
unrighteousness. He has made you brand new in
Him, and He has given you a new identity and a new occupation
and a new message. And the very thing that washes
over you, you get to be a part of distributing to the world
around you. And what is our message?
Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we
might become the righteousness of God.
You're sitting across the coffee table.
You're in the living room, you're at the restaurant, you're
next to the person at work. Tell me about Jesus.
God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we
could become the righteousness of God.
God took all of the sin that I have ever committed, all the
horrible things that I have done, the things that bring me,
the guilt and the isolation and the pain and the regret.
He took all of it. And He didn't just do it for me.
He did it for you and for you and for you.
And once He had taken it all up, He had to put it somewhere, and
so he put it on Jesus. And then he took all of the
perfection, all of the righteousness of Jesus, took it,
and he put it on me, and he put it on you and you and you.
And then God had to deal with the sin, and so he treated Jesus
like you and I deserved to be treated.
When you look at the cross, you see what we deserve and what God
thinks of our sin. And because he treated Jesus
like we deserved, He is able to treat you and I, like Jesus,
deserved. This is what it means to be a
Christian, to receive what God has done on your behalf in
Jesus, and to make it your mission to help others find what
we have found in Him. And to live a life about
anything else would be nothing but a waste.
We're moving to a time of decision.
If you are here today or you are watching online and you don't
have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
I've got really good news for you.
You can be made new and it could happen today.
And I keep talking to people in our church, and I know that
there are questions that you need to ask.
There are things that are in your mind.
And I just keep saying the same thing over and over again,
hoping that one of these days the Spirit will breakthrough to
you. Start asking those questions.
Very few times do people not know what they're supposed to
do. They're just not willing to do
it. The many of you, you know where
you are on the spiritual spectrum and you know whether or
not your life has been made right in Christ.
And if you're hearing my voice right now and you know that
you're not there, I would just tell you, be reconciled to God,
be made new in him. And it's just a few moments.
The people around you are going to stand and sing and people are
going to come to the steps and pray.
And I would encourage you to walk right over there underneath
that screen next to the baptistry and talk to somebody
about what it means for you to become a Christian, to be
reconciled to God, to those of you who already have an
intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
How dare we have all we have in Christ and keep it to ourselves.
And so would you, would you spend a little bit of time
thanking God for everything that he has done in Jesus?
And would you also spend some time praying that God would put
a burden on your life for you to be an ambassador who shares the
message and represents him to a world that is lost without him?
Would you stand with me? Oh, we don't deserve it,
Heavenly Father. We don't deserve your love.
We don't deserve your mercy. We don't deserve your grace.
We don't even deserve to be able to talk to you, to pray to you,
to approach you, to ask things of you.
But in your goodness, you have made a way for all of it.
Stir our hearts and our affections for you and your
Kingdom cause. Rewire the parts of us that are
broken and disconnected. Reprioritize our life so that
way it matters the most that we're good stewards of what you
have done on our behalf. And your name I pray.
Amen.