Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
I'm glad that you're here. We begin each week with a
confession. Confession is just telling the
truth, right? Like we, we confess.
Maybe it's something that we've been hiding.
Maybe it's something that we're having a hard time wrapping our
brain around, but our confession is the truth that we believe and
it goes right along. It's like each week this the
kind of along with our series with Ephesians where we're
looking at what God is doing in his church and we've been in
some deep kind of theological waters as Paul is unpacked
things like identity, like who we are and and alienation and
separation, right? But it all kind of boils back
down ultimately to this confession that we make each
week. And so we stated each week so
that when we're then confronted by it in the word, when the word
shows us this reality, it's easy for us here to go.
Oh yeah, we've already talked about that.
That's fine. I can acknowledge that and then
see what's left. So we confess each week as a as
an exercise in submission to him, to each other and of grace.
And so our confession, as his church is we're badly broken.
Yes, you are. Grace and peace to you.
We saw last week as we're continuing kind of to slowly
move. Through.
Kind of Ephesians one and two, we saw last week how Jesus,
we've been kind of talking about these divisions, right?
And you know, the division that was in Paul's mind, the division
that would have been in the first listeners would have been
this division between Jewish person and Gentile person,
right? And the Jewish person had the
promises, they had the covenants, they had the temple,
they had all of that. And the Gentiles had not that.
Not those things. But.
Paul last week in his letter made this kind of crazy
assertion. Right like that the.
Things that divide the people have been torn down literally.
We saw a graphic and illustration of picture of the
temple and how you have the temple proper in the middle
where the holy of Holies and the altar is, where sacrifices made
for the forgiveness of sin, where the priests go in and
these kind of corresponding courts, right?
The court of the Israelites for the men, the court of the women.
And then finally the court of the Gentiles in the balustrade,
right. This little temple wall that
said, if you are a Gentile and you cross this line, the penalty
of death is on your own shoulders.
And we saw how systematically the Gentiles had been excluded.
But then last week, Paul tells us his revelation and his
revelation is his apocalypse is now the two have been made one.
Not like, hey, this is a table where, like, Packer fans and
Texans fans and Cowboy fans can get together and like, hate each
other across our jerseys, right? But then we get together and
we've been made one. And the word that Paul uses
there that he used last week, it shows up in his.
Letter to the. Corinthians, it shows up that
the word to describe that is reconciliation, to be
reconciled. Now I have 3 kids, right?
And so reconciliation is sometimes that your kids aren't
like this, I'm sure, but occasionally some of our kids
will have a disagreement about things, right?
And to reconcile is to come in and to make peace and to bring
them together again so that we can be one big happy powers
family. And that idea of one big happy
powers family is important for this idea of reconciliation,
because what Paul tells us is. That's actually how.
What happens it goes back to Ephesians chapter 1 and if you
read it the second the end of verse 4, it says this in love
God he predestined us and this was at the time just the Jewish
people. He predestined us to adoption.
He predestined us to adoption to be.
Part of Christ. And he goes on as sons and
daughters. The idea is an adoption.
It doesn't. It's not like like sons,
daughters and housemates. When someone is adopted, they
become part of the family. They become part of the
household through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the
good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his
grace with which he favored us in the beloved.
In the beloved is one of those words.
It shows up in different kind of forms throughout the book,
right? It says in him, in Christ, in
the beloved, it's all pointing back.
To. Jesus and our participation him.
So you're like, well, what does that mean to be in him?
It's similar to be saying, if I said my children Jackson and
Reagan and Madison and even my wife Natalie, they are in the
Powers family. They are part of what it means
to be a Powers. They get to experience all of
the manifold riches and blessings of being a Powers,
right? But here's the thing, some of
you in here have experience with adoption.
Either you have been adopted or you have adopted someone else.
But the thing about adoption is if I were to go out and adopt A
child, that child would come in and they would have all the
rights and privileges of my children.
That's why adoption is such a beautiful picture.
It's such a powerful story to tell.
And if you're in here and you've been adopted, you have a special
story. It's such a beautiful picture of
God's love for His people. It's this idea that He chose you
and brought you in to be a part of the family.
Whether you're adopted, whether you're natural, you are a part
of the family. And so here's what that means.
If I adopted a child and one day I walked in and this adopted
child, my son, my adopted son and my natural daughter were
fighting and my daughter said, well, you're just adopted,
you're outside. What I would do is immediately
step in and insert myself. And you know what I would say in
that moment, there's no difference between an adopted
child and a natural child. You are my children.
And if they didn't get it, well, they'll get it when it's time
to. Separate the will.
Not that my kids have any. There's no will, all right?
Like we don't get that right. But listen, this is an important
truth. Right.
Like this is the thing that and, and, and honestly, it's the
thing that we have to confess. We believe that those who are
different from me have every bit as much access and right and
privilege to the body as I do. And the reason it's so
important, we have to go over this over and over again.
When I see people who are obnoxious, who are, who are just
wrong or who or whatever, like I have to remind myself, it's not
just about me. And this is fundamental truth,
that the walls are down, the balustrade is gone.
The things that separated the Gentiles from the Holy of
Holies, from the place where God dwells has been removed.
It doesn't exist there anymore. And The thing is, that's true
whether we believe it or not. It falls in what philosophers
call untold logical reality. It is a truth, whether we feel
like it or agree with it or not. And here's why that's so
important. Are you listening?
Because everything in US and everything in our culture and
everything in our world draws us to build walls.
Everything that we see when we watch TV, the TV tells us where
to build the wall and who's on the outside of it.
The things that we do for our recreation, they tell us where
to build walls and who's on the outside of it.
We divide like I have kids in high school, right?
And we build our identities based on who we are and on what
we do. And what happens is when the
news or our social circle tells us, build a wall here and keep
them out. Who?
Whoever it is, left-handed people, tall people,
right-handed people, Republican people, smelly people, tall
people, whatever, it is the wall.
Says you're on the other side, you're excluded.
You don't get to get in. Now this is the part where I, as
a pastor, get to own something that I wish I had said
differently last week. OK, to illustrate this point, I
held up two signs, right. I showed a picture of a sign
from the Jim Crow era that said whites only waiting room.
And then I showed a sign of Augusta National Golf Course
that said members only. Let me make a distinction.
That's important. Being excluded from a Country
Club is not nearly remotely in the same universe as the kind of
violent generational exclusion that Jim Crow was.
I wish I had been more careful in setting up that illustration.
Being excluded from a Country Club is annoying.
It's dumb. I wish that it weren't the case,
but it's not the same as you're not allowed in there by virtue
and nature of who you are. I wish I'd said that
differently. I wish I'd set that up
differently to make that point, but the point that I was trying
to make in that moment is that we naturally devolved to that.
We naturally go to that place. We are.
By instinct, wall builders and the thing I just want to say
whether it is it is violent and generational and and whatever of
of Jim Crow that was terrible or it is something as seemingly
innocuous as Country Club membership.
Wall building is an instinct to us.
And what I want to say is wall building runs counter to the
heart and mission of Jesus. It is contrary to it when we
look at someone. Based on some external service,
say you don't get to be in here because people in here are like
that. And listen, here's the thing I
want you to know. I want you to be able to put
your finger on those things to go.
Those things are in me. I have those instincts.
I want to tell you. How can you be a Cowboys fan,
right? We talked about that week.
I'm not going to unpack my trauma here again.
But what we do want to say is we want to say like, how can it be
like that and do that? And the thing that we miss again
as we come to the book of Ephesians was this wasn't
written to us first. We have been joy and we have
been enjoying an invitation to a space that was not originally
created for us. We are given access by the love
and the grace and the peace of Jesus.
And so all the boundaries and all the tribal walls have
fallen. And so here's the thing I want
to tell you as much and as often as I can, whatever distinction
you think exists between us and them, between me and you, it's
probably not as distinct and as clear cut as you think.
And the point that I want to make, are you listening?
I love you. I hope like that thing that we
hold onto and justify that sets us at odds against the people.
It is certainly not from Jesus. The King who left heaven to
reconcile Gentiles to himself, tearing down the wall of
hostility, is now resident in US.
His Spirit is in US and we. Are.
In him. So one of the things I know that
I do, and it's probably frustrating for you, I sometimes
just say, well. Stop like don't do that.
Like don't build walls like like don't separate, don't don't do.
That and what I don't often do well enough, I think, and this
is my fault I'm working on. I give you some grace right on
this. What I don't didn't tell is
enough tell you well what is going on?
If the walls been torn down, if I'm not a tribe, right,
left-handed people unite, right? Like if I'm not that, then what
am I If we're not defined by our walls, right?
Like that's a good thing about the Temple.
I could know who the Jewish men were because they were in the
gathering group that said Jewish men.
If we're not that, who are we? If we're not known by who we
don't invite into our meetings, then what are we known by?
What is it that defines us if it's not exclusion?
Well, I hope you know by the fact that I asked the question
in this context that Paul actually answers that question
for us. So that's good news, right?
So let's see what we can do. Let's see how we can resist that
instinct to build walls and just say you're not like me.
So you're dangerous, or you're scary or you're bad, or you're
unlovable or you're unkind, or you're just.
You're just. Terrible.
You're just wrong. Like what does he say?
So we go, we pick up where we left off in verse 19.
And what 19 does is kind of summarizes Paul's point from
above. So in verse 19 he says so then,
right? That's a great summary phrase
after verse one through 18. So then you are no longer now
listen to these words. Strangers.
Strangers to what right. Like we talked about last week,
the the Gentiles, they were strangers to all of it.
They were strangers to Christ. They were strangers to the
covenants. They were strangers to the
promises. They were excluded.
They're all and he says, well, Paul says you're no longer like
that. You're no longer a stranger.
You're no longer a foreigner. That's a word that just shows up
a lot just kind of in our natural going around.
It's a thing that we put a lot of weight in a lot.
And what Paul says is the most fundamental foreigner, non
foreigner distinction maybe that ever lived between Jew and
Gentile. He says that's not who you are
anymore. You're not known by primarily by
being excluded from all those things.
He says you're not a stranger, you're a foreigner.
You are a fellow citizen, an adopted child of the Risen King,
just like the. Rest fellow citizens with the
Saints, and you are of God's household.
You are a part of family. And So what Paul is saying is
the things that we look at, the things that we look at, the side
of the person is in or out, good or bad, right or wrong, or all
external things, things that the Jewish people use the law to
tell them, circumcision, dietary restrictions, ritual purity.
Oh, you haven't washed your hands a certain way.
You don't get to answer. You don't get to do that.
And that's how we know who is in and who.
Is out who is good, who is bad, who is right is wrong.
And let me just say something important important here, right,
like the physical isn't bad. I believe that God intentionally
One of the things we're going to talk about when we see about how
God is building this up is the specific and personal nature and
way that God has created each of us.
I want you to know that God has created you as you are.
It was well within his capacity to make us all some kind of
Gray, homogeneous kind of. But he didn't.
He created us black and white, tall and short, rich and poor,
left-handed and right hand, cowboy fan and Packer fan,
right? Like these things that are deep
in US, He created us. The physical is good.
It's just not ultimate. It's good.
It's just not the most important thing.
And so as I sit and I look at my high school friends over here,
your entire world tells you that you are what you look like.
The real world tells you that you are if you are beautiful or
tall or blonde or whatever. And we all know that and we've
all experienced. And what I want to tell you is
there's a truth that is deeper than that.
And that's what Paul is getting, that in the same way, that is,
if we're family, the walls have been torn down.
You're part of the household of God.
Now that household is an important thing.
My neighbor if my neighbor comes across the street and has dinner
to me at the put dinner with me at the same place where my
family has dinner, that doesn't mean that they're that they're
my family. Oh, well, we, you know, shared
macaroni and cheese. So you're you're in the will.
In the same way, if my daughter Reagan doesn't come home, if she
skips dinner one time and doesn't well, that doesn't mean
that she's she's out of the family.
This is an ontological reality. Ontological that there's a lot
going on in there, man I. Got to like, slow down and let
it get out. Ontology is true regardless of
what we believe about it. The fact is, you may not feel
like the walls have been torn down, but I think as we walk
with Jesus, what we find is war. Walls haven't been torn down.
Those are walls that we've been building, walls that we've been
tending to and nurturing. And what Paul said is he had
this apocalypse. And remember apocalypse, it's
not like war. It's not like bombs and and
napalm and all that. Apocalypse is just a pulling
back, a revelation from like the scales are falling off.
And Paul's awareness was in the church.
We're one the same Jews and Gentiles, those who went to the
temple and those who didn't go to temple, those who were raised
in the promises and those who weren't raised in the promises,
equal access to the throne now with God.
And so Paul is kind of hammered us with this illustration.
You're part of the family. Now.
One of the things that Paul does a lot as you read him, and you
may have been frustrated by it and not even know, but one of
the things that Paul does a lot is switch metaphors, right?
Like he gets in and he gets going.
You're like. You're like.
Right. I'm a like, I'm the, I'm the
body of the body of Christ. And then he starts talking about
foundations and you're like, what?
What? What?
Why? Right.
Whole different thing. So now Paul is being, he's
talked about this household, this family, the walls.
Are torn down and he's all these pictures of of Jewish imagery
that would have made the Jewish people the Jewish people he's
talking about now Gentiles have access to it and now he switches
the metaphor and he starts talking about a building an
edifice a thing and again what's he talking about What's he
talking about the temple where we draw near to God where
sacrifice has been made right and so we build start talking
about a temple verse 20 now you're of God's household family
metaphor having been built on building are we good are we
tracking so now he's going to talk about this building right
having built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets
right Jesus himself being the cornerstone so now there's good
construction analogy here right when do you build the foundation
of your house after the walls are up after the roof is all
dried in or first the picture that we.
Have is of the apostles and prophets, right?
And there's some question we read, I read some commentaries,
right? Is this the Old Testament
prophets? Are we talking about like
Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel? Or are we?
Talking about like the New Testament prophets, right, like
we read in Antioch, there was there was some the prophets and
the answer is yes. Point of the prophets wasn't
telling the future. The prophets weren't just like,
oh, it's gonna rain hail. The point of the prophets was to
call his people back to repentance, to say God's desire
is to bless you and to give you a hope and a future, But your
life and your tendency in your direction and the house that
you're building and the walls that you're building are keeping
you from that. So turn away from those
divisions and lean into the family.
What he says is. The.
Foundation was the apostles and the prophets, right?
Here's the thing about the apostles and the prophets.
Side note, I brought it up, the fact that it talks about the
apostles and then the prophets indicates kind of a lot of the
commentaries kind of to me he's talking about the New Testament
prophets, right And here's why that's important.
The apostles and the prophets eyewitness testimony was we have
seen the man Jesus, we. Saw.
Him dead, resurrected and ascended.
So what we're. Told is the foundation of this.
Divisionless reality. The foundation of this building
is the testimony of the apostles and prophets.
That's why it's trustworthy. This, you know, where we have
the words of the apostles and the prophets today and here.
That's why this is trustworthy. It says, right in the New
Testament, people saw Jesus. The apostle Paul says in First
Corinthians 15 he appeared to 500 people at once resurrected.
There were plenty of people who could have said, no, that wasn't
real, no, that didn't really happen.
No, that was just a myth. That was an allegory.
But they didn't say that. They said we've seen the man.
So this is the foundation that we stand on what the people said
about Jesus. So real quick.
What we don't get to do as. Christians is to kind of like.
Trump Jesus with Leviticus, right?
Like we don't get to say, well, I know Jesus said this, but I
get Leviticus, man, you got to fuck.
Yeah, we don't get to like Trump Jesus with the apostle Paul and
be like, well, I know Jesus did this, but the apostle Paul said
this, you can't do that and you can't have that.
And I'm like, Jesus is the one. It says he's the cornerstone,
right? So the foundation goes before
the walls, before the roof, before the plumbing, before all
of that. And you know what comes before
the foundation? The.
Cornerstone. The cornerstone is what you
said, and you put it in place so that it aligns, so that it faces
the direction that it's supposed to go so that it is stable, so
that now we have the level where it's going to be.
Everything's going to reach this height.
It's not going to be lower. It's not going to be higher.
We're going to set the cornerstone going this way.
That means the building's not going to go this way.
So the foundation is the apostles and the prophets, their
lives, their teachings, their ministries, their testimony,
their good word about who Jesus was and what he has done.
And Jesus himself is the cornerstone and the foundation
and what what Paul says is that's what we're being built
on. And in Ephesians, who is you?
Oh y'all? What God is doing here is being
built on what the apostles and the prophets said was going to
happen. So here's what that means for
us. Here's what that means for you
and for us. We build our lives on the solid
foundation of God's word revealed in Jesus.
This is the body of Christ, not just this place, but God's
church, the church, the body of Christ around New Braunfels,
around the San Antonio, Austin metro.
But about all of that stuff. It's all a.
Picture of Jesus, which means that what we do in this place in
His name should look like Him. It should reflect him because
here's the thing, if it's not built on this, if we don't come
to this to talk about our money, if.
We don't come to this to talk about our identity if we don't
come to this to talk about who we are.
Then what that just means is that I am just whatever I think
and feel in a moment, you know? The problem with that is I don't
think or feel the same as I did when I got here this morning.
My mind changes all the time. Sometimes I feel neat, sometimes
I feel angry. One of the great.
It's hard to be a pastor's kid because you're always like a
sermon illustration, right? And so, but I, I want to say
like, I want to hold my kids up as a celebration right now.
Like I've watched my kids this year deal with difficult growth
things. And underneath all of these
growth things that I see my girls wrestling with is this
question, who am I like, like what?
What am I about? What is it?
What is it that defines me and and my daughter Reagan in
particular has had to make some difficult choices about who she
is this year and what she is. And So what I want continually
to point my daughter Reagan back and you is to this because what
this tells you is you were chosen before you were a
cheerleader or an accountant or tall or handsome or wealthy.
You were seen, you were included, you were given a name
and a place and a hope and a reality in him and with Him.
If what Jesus says about you isn't true, then nothing's true
because everything is changing. Everything is trying to tell you
that you are different, something that you're not.
And so when? Jesus tells you who your
identity is as you walk through life.
You pick this stuff. I remember being in college and
I went to college and I played baseball and dude, that was all
I did. That's.
That's who I. Was it was my whole identity.
I felt great. I felt better than most people.
I was like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And then I quit. And then what?
Disaster. Because I didn't know who I was.
I didn't know what was real about me.
And here's the thing about you, Whatever it is that you do for
your identity, it's going to go away, going to go away, and then
you're going to be left to figure out who you are.
And so he's building this, God's building this church.
And I just also want to acknowledge there's a lot of
questions about the Scripture with Genesis 16 literal days.
I don't know what do I do with science?
I don't know what this means to build your life on the
foundation. What it means is to come to his
people with your questions. It means bring your doubts and
your fears and your concerns and your weaknesses and your sins
and all of those things that you think you've got to hide.
And you've got to keep out all those things that you think keep
you behind the wall, that keep you from pressing into that holy
place. You bring them all, but you
bring them to His people gathered around His word.
Animated by His Spirit and we say, what does this say about me
and what do I do in response? Because your boss will tell you
what you got to do and it'll ultimately be about His bottom
line. Your neighbors will tell you
what to do, and it will be about their own property values.
Everybody's got an agenda for you, but Jesus is the one who
wants to make you most you. So Paul talks about a building
he's calling a family. He's building a building.
And now in the next verses, he tells us what that building is.
And this is where it gets good news.
I spent all week trying to find an analogy that would
communicate the weight and the substance of what Paul is
communicating with. And I I don't, I don't know that
there's one that would carry the same kind of emotional weight is
what Paul describes here. But he goes on in verse 20,
right? So he's building, having been
built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, verse
21, in whom the whole building being fitted together.
Here's that deliberate, specific, intentional, right?
Like he knows the parts, he knows the pieces.
You don't have to worry about, like, you don't have to get
worried about being misfit in this building.
You don't have to get worried about being typecast in the
wrong place, right? Like, like that's where it is.
That's why we cling to things that don't fit us anymore,
because we're so worried. But what we're?
Told is God is putting the pieces together with an eye
towards fitness with what matters he so he says the whole
being being fitted together is growing into a what a temple in
whom you also all y'all are being built together into a
dwelling of God. So he's talking about this form
being fitted, this relational sense, right?
Being put together again like this, this picture of a family
and of a household being crafted.
It's this picture of God's intentional delight in bringing
his things together, of putting together, he says.
He's talking about the form, a building, a family, these
relationships. But now he's talking about
function. Here's why he's talking about
function. Are you listening?
Because what's the point of the temple?
Why did we talk about the temple last week?
Because we talked about being drawn near, right?
Like we talked about those doors of the temple where the priest
stood with the altar behind. That's where reconciliation was
made. That's where forgiveness has.
And what he's saying is now you're the temple.
You're where forgiveness is made.
You know how people get forgiven in this place?
Unless we don't, unless we keep building walls and go, you can't
get in here. You don't look right, you don't
have enough. You don't come from the right
place. You don't vote right, you don't
believe right. And what he's saying is this
form this thing, look around the room, look at us, a motley crew
from all over the place in the world.
He's like, that's where they're going to experience what the
Jewish people had to go to the temple to experience the the
whole thing that he's building. We are the we're the temple of
Christ. We are where Christ's spirit
dwelt. I grew up man, right in my
little bed like this is the, this is God's house, as if we
like locked the door and left the Holy Spirit on the inside,
right? No, you're the house and not
just you all y'all. So when you go to target and you
run into somebody and you ask somebody, hey, how can I pray
for you? Dwelling of the Holy Spirit is
in your presence. When you send a text message to
someone, you just say, hey, you crossed my mind and I want you
to know that I love you and I'm thinking of you.
I don't need a response. I just want you to know that
you're like you. You're the church.
You're the body of Christ doing the things that Jesus did.
When we stand against injustice, are you listening?
When we stand against injustice by embracing those who have been
marginalized by oppression, we are.
Doing the things. That Jesus did.
That's what this is. Jesus put his Spirit into us so
that his Spirit. Could love the people that he
loves. But if we come here and meet
anger or suspicion or rejection or fear or danger or whatever,
we'll naturally assume that's what Jesus feels too.
And so he has called us together.
He's torn down the walls. He has put his Spirit in it.
Do you realize what that means last?
Week we, we, we. This is me and you now, right?
Like in all of our like Christian stuff last week we
weren't allowed across the balustrade.
Last week we were hundreds of feet from the presence of God
under penalty of death. Are you listening today?
You're the holy of Holies. One person don't.
Cry, don't cry, don't cry. Listen, I'm not not like fishing
for it, but I'm telling you like that's a reality we need to go
home and meditate on. Last week we couldn't get close
enough to smell it. This week it indwells us.
It lives in US. It moves in US.
What that means is that the spiritual connection is realer
than any kind of external physical thing that should keep
us apart. We don't like people who vote
different from us or who have a different color skin than us, or
who live in a different part of town, or maybe they smell
different or they believe different, or they have these
different things right. Whatever being, we look at these
external things and we go, you're too different from me to
be with me and to be like me. And what Jesus says is you're
just looking at the stuff you need to get in to the heart
because the spiritual connection, it's realer than the
external one. You have more in common with a
4th century peasant who was a follower of Jesus than with your
neighbor across the street who doesn't follow Jesus.
Because the Spirit of God that is in you is real and it is
alive. So here's what that means for us
who live in and are dwell. You know, the Spirit of God
dwells in US. That means that our gatherings
should have a distinct quality. There's no other building like
the temple man. You can walk up.
You'd see it for miles around. You'd see this on the hill.
You. There was no.
You.
Couldn't miss the temple of Artemis, right?
Gold is one of the seven wonders of world.
It was the whole point. Then what Paul is saying is
like, it's not Aaron's temple, it's not Solomon's temple, it's
not Artemis temple, it's you. Our gathering should be as
unique as those temples, and what that means is there should
be a distinct sense of otherness about us when we gather.
And it doesn't mean that we don't talk politics.
What it? Means is there is no issue.
Yeah, none. No, there is no issue.
That is a wedge between the. People of God.
It means, I mean, I like, have an opinion.
I don't care. The problem isn't that we have
opinions. The problem is that we take our
opinions and we make judgments out of them.
And we believe that the people who are different from us can't
be different from us. And So what it means is I begin
with the fundamental assumption we're the same.
We're the same. What's in US is greater than
what's outside of us and what distinguishes us.
So sure, we may talk politics, but we talk more about who you
are in Christ as and who I am in Christ and what Christ is doing
in our neighborhood. And we don't, and we need to
find some who can we go be Jesus to That doesn't look like us.
We talk about lost people. We talk about however we want to
break it up, foreign people outside, right?
Jesus calls them the people that I miss the most.
I just want to go get them. Will you go get them?
Oh, but there, listen, it doesn't mean that we don't have
money. It doesn't mean that Jesus wants
you poor. It just means that if you do
have money, his desire is that your money would be given to the
flourishment of the community, not just yourself.
It doesn't mean that we all have to have more education or less
education. It just means that whether you
have more education or less education, you don't have more
or less value. You know why you're valuable?
Because that moment in your life when it all fell apart and the
tears were coming in, that self loathing and hatred in you was
just deep and rich and you thought you were excluded your
love. Because in that moment Jesus sat
with you. You didn't feel it maybe, or you
didn't know it, but he was there.
And his point for you was I love you.
This was the apocalypse. This was what Paul saw when the
scales fell off, when the curtain came up and the veil was
torn. The wall is down.
The temple is US. And God lives here, here, here
now. That's what this is about.
This is not about sermons or songs or uncomfortable chairs
and tight rows. This is about the Kingdom being
birthed inside of us. This is about people who walk
outside of this world and the world says you shouldn't be
together, you don't belong together.
Y'all don't? And we just say, Nah, I don't
really believe that. I believe that the wall of
hostility has been torn down. And the danger in this and what
I listen, there's a temptation and I want to wrap up every
sermon with like, go do this, right?
But here's the danger. We call it moralism.
The danger of moralism is we take this truth that God says is
real. And the truth is that the wall
is down, right? And then we tried to just like.
OK, now go do it. Now go out and and be in the
water. And it's not always that easy,
right? Moralism say go do this so that
you can have the. Presence of God.
Here's the reality. If you fall in Jesus, you have
the presence of God. You have a spirit that wants to
lead you into all truth, and you're going to screw it up.
You're not going to listen to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit's going to want to tell you to forgive
something. And you're like, Nah, I would
rather fight them. Holy Spirit's going to say get
on your social media space and be a voice of life and goodness.
And you're going to be like, yeah, I'd.
Rather just burn some stuff down or I'm mad or I like, like, I
get it. I know I'm me too, right?
Like like, like like that's. That's all of this, right?
So what I don't want you to do is just go give you a handful of
things that you can go out and now start practicing and
working, right? Like what I want to do is I want
to paint you a picture of what it looks like when the Holy
Spirit dwells richly in a group of people, when people who,
because the point is it's supposed to overflow, right?
Like my kids look like me. They talk like me.
And guess what? What that means is they look
like my dad and they talk like my mom because it flows out.
And who they are, they can't, they can't escape that.
And what I want to say is who you are as you follow Jesus, You
can't escape that. It's going to leak out.
And so if you don't have love and you just go, oh, I gotta go
love people no more. No, you got to be loved.
You got to let the wall come down.
You got to stop and back up and look at Jesus and go, could you
love this? This is terrible.
And he's like, brother, brother. See, that's the thing.
When I look at my kids, right? And I know where they are and I
know the identity struggles that they're wrestling with.
And I know the identity struggles that where they come
and listen, what I want to tell my kids who are in the room for
sure talking to you, even though I'm not looking at you.
Like here's the thing. What you don't understand is
this identity marker that you've got right now.
It's not done. And the thing that it's easy
with your kids because you see how wonderful they are, right?
And the thing that I want to tell my kids is that God sees
you here, here. You're so worried that that this
isn't it. Like, of course it's not.
You don't even see yourself there.
And what I want to tell you is God is fully able to love you
there. And so we don't lose ourselves
in this middle, right? We don't try to go run and
figure it all out. We just simply let ourselves be
loved. We tear down the walls between
people when we see people and listen.
I drive cars with apparently the worst people in the world.
I want to yell at them. I want like you're.
The reason, right? Like it's, it's you.
You're like, like. You're the one, right?
And I but I know that that's not coming from the place.
That's not what what Jesus has for me or says for me, right?
And So what I need to do is pause and stop and rest and
meditate on the reality that that guy who just cut me off in
traffic is every bit as welcome in the presence of God as Zion.
And I begin to let that spirit fill and fill until it begins to
leak out. Here's what it looks like when
it leaks out. Those who had received His word
were baptized and that day they were added about 3000 souls.
The reason we're going to baptize after this service is as
a way of demonstrating I'm with Jesus.
I'm immersed into the life that Jesus wants.
So what is that? To be immersed in that?
To be immersed in the life of Jesus is to say, I will not tend
any walls any longer because the life of Jesus is wall destroyer.
He destroys the hostility. And so he said they were
baptized into him 3000 that day. So what does this baptized body
look like? What do they do well?
They were continually devoting themselves to what?
Listen what we talked about the apostles teaching, and to
fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
If you don't think they were annoying, codependent boundary
issue people in the 1st century Ephesus, you're crazy.
What they said is over and over and over again.
They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching to figure out
what it looks like to live boundaryless in this world.
And what did it look like as they did that all the believers
were together and they had all things in common.
It doesn't say that. Peter came up and said, all
right, everybody sell. All your stuff and give it to me
and I'll divvy it up as we have needs.
What it says is this church was so consumed with the love and
the unity that they looked around and if somebody that they
saw didn't have enough, they gave what they had to that
person. There was no mandate.
There was no government mandate apart from the Spirit of God and
just saying that person shouldn't have less than you
just because whatever we read in chapter. 4IN in Acts.
We read about the people that they sold fields.
The guy had an inheritance, a family piece of property, and he
saw people that didn't have enough food, they didn't have a
place to live. And somebody said, well, I'll
sell my. Field so that they can have it.
Whoever was among them had enough.
They had in common. They would sell their property
and their possessions and share them to the extent that anyone
had need day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple.
So let's talk about one mind real quick.
One mind doesn't mean that we agree on everything.
One mind means that we agree that whatever we disagree on, we
agree on Jesus more. Oh, you don't like the tax
structure in our country? Wonderful.
Good. We both agree that the solution
is Jesus. Great.
Let's build on that. They together with one mind and
what did it look like? They were taking their meals
together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God
and having favor with all the people.
And into that context of community and life and building,
temple building, the Lord added day by day, those who are being
saved. In the same way that people
flocked to the temple in Jerusalem for what they needed,
that first church and acts, people flocked day by day.
That's what a temple does. It draws people to Jesus.
It reveals what his character is like.
It makes atonement. So how do people get forgiven
today? We forgive them.
You forgive them. How do you get forgiven today?
I forgive you, I forgive you, and I need your forgiveness.
I need your grace. That's what this is.
That is the Apocalypse. And Paul prayed that his
Ephesian brothers and sisters would receive it.
So I want to pray that you would receive it.
Will you pray with me? Jesus, remove the scale and the
covering from our eyes so that we could see the beauty of this
thing that you are creating and doing in US and around us and
through US, Lord, is unbelievable and spectacular as
it is that You have torn down the wall and given us access to
Your presence. I needed that and I didn't have
that. And you gave that to me.
And as astounding as that is, what's even more astounding,
Jesus, is that you didn't just give me access to the temple,
that you made me a temple. And not just me, all of us.
And so Jesus is your church. I confess that we get wrapped up
with walls and boundaries and divisions and separations.
And so I pray, Father, that this reconciliation thing would be
heavy in our hearts and on our tongues and in our moves.
And I pray that this would be a place that just seems different
because of your presence in US and with us.
I pray, Jesus, I pray Holy Spirit, that you would just leak
out of us, not in a sense of emptying, but in a sense of
overflowing. And I truly do pray that this
community would be different, that they would step back in awe
at what you're doing here. So Jesus, we ask in your name,
we thank you for your spirit. And Father, we thank you that
you loved us so much, that you adopted us, called us children
and heirs and citizens, the household of God, may it be so
forever. We ask Jesus, in your name and
for your glory, Amen. Today, River City Church is all
about experiencing and expressing God's love in our
lives and community, and we hope that you've been able to
experience that today. As grateful as I am that you've
spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no
substitute for full participation in a local church.
I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it
is those who show up week after week faithfully giving their
support and time and resources that make all of this possible.
If we can help you get connected to a local church, pray for you,
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.