Abiding is Abounding: Revealing Jesus

I want to talk to you about my last little take on Galatians.

So we've been in Galatians.

How many of you have enjoyed us going through this book of Galatians?

I have.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

I'm not trying to fish for applause.

I just know you're actually more excited than you sound.

So, you know, that's okay.

It's first service.

We're all sort of catching up to the coffee or whatever.

Except, yes, we're not all.

Sue is not catching up to the coffee.

The coffee's catching up to her, right?

Would that I would be like that, minus all the stuff it took to get there, huh?

All right.

So, book of Galatians.

Charles has done a really amazing job, as of course he would going through it.

He camps out on this point that it was for freedom that we were set free, and I love that.

I especially love that from someone in his generation coming into someone in mine.

It's really good to remember that in the middle of your life.

When everything's moving, right?

So, if you're in that phase of life, I bless you with that knowledge.

I camp out in a slightly different spot, and here's where that is.

And I'm going to, if you, and look, I understand that not everybody takes notes like John Leach does.

But if you take great notes, you might even know where I am.

I started this on a Wednesday a couple of months ago, and I put in a second installment on a Sunday a couple of weeks ago.

And this is the third one.

And all around the same verse.

It's just what stood out to me when I read through it with everybody.

Galatians 2.20.

I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Say, in me.

In is different from in front of and behind, right?

In, in me.

Not somewhere else.

A Christ who lives in me.

And the life that I now, say now.

That I now live in the flesh.

Not in the spirit.

What?

I now live in the flesh.

This is, this is the word flesh.

It's sarx.

It's not a, I said I wouldn't give you other languages.

I guess I lied.

It's a, that's a heck of a word, right?

It means the flesh.

All those times that Paul talks about overcoming the flesh and all those things.

It's that word.

That's where we now live a life of faith in Christ.

And I have a little bit of a vendetta.

Against, and not because I don't like you, but because I don't like to see you held down.

Against any version of Christianity that doesn't work in space and time.

Because this is where we live.

And the kingdom's already come everywhere else.

Right?

They're not waiting on God's will to be done in heaven.

But I've got neighbors, and I've got friends, and I've got family, and so do you.

Who are waiting for the expression of the kingdom of heaven on the earth.

And I don't like ideas that keep us out of the mess.

When Jesus, I believe it was Jesus.

There's a little bit of debate over this, but most theologians believe it was Jesus.

Reached down into the dirt to make man.

He had dirt under his nails.

Right?

He wasn't afraid to get dirty.

He wasn't afraid to make us.

And this gospel that he has preached from the very beginning and then came and fulfilled,

orchestrated, came and fulfilled, is a gospel that reaches into the dirt.

It's not somewhere else some other time.

It's here and now.

The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and

gave himself for me.

Amen to that.

When we look back, and I guess maybe I'm taking note of this, because for me, I don't know,

maybe it's my intellectual thing or something.

There's something, maybe something's off.

I don't know.

Don't tell me.

I'm good.

I like the way I am.

I'm going to keep going.

But when everything shut down in 2020, and I know you guys probably hate that we keep

referencing this.

But it was a...

Really large historical event, just so you're aware.

I think we could milk it for a little longer before we stop talking about it.

Lately, we've had large historical events that we've moved on from really quickly, and

I think that's a bad plan.

It's bad for the memory and bad for the conscience, isn't it?

So we're not going to do that.

So when I saw everybody reacting, I had just come on here.

I was like maybe six months in or something.

And so I didn't really have any say in anything.

I just was watching.

And I have connections to a lot of churches.

A lot of my friends run churches or are parts of churches.

And seeing the whole spectrum of responses was really interesting to me.

And I discovered that they basically broke down into two categories.

And what I'm about to say could sound judgmental.

I want you to understand that I know that not everybody's calling needs to look like

ours, okay?

So I'm not making a comment and somehow insinuating that everybody needs to be like us.

I'm just making broad strokes.

I'm just making broad strokes observation as a leader, watching other leaders act and

watching our own leaders act.

They fell down into two categories.

The one was fear and the other was faith.

And I'm slow to say that, okay?

Because I don't want to be critical, but I have discovered that there's a modern day

aversion to judging fruit.

Because we were raised on don't judge me.

You know, and I'm not going to judge you, but I'm taking note of your life because I

don't want to make your mistakes again, right?

This is okay, right?

I think this isn't even, this is, it's odd that this might feel heavy.

I'm so sorry if it does.

It's not.

It's actually just how we all work anyway, right?

We take note of the way that the people around us are living and what it's producing and

we pick and choose outcomes.

If you don't, you're being foolish.

It's a really great thing.

It's a really great thing to learn from somebody else's mistakes.

And it's a really great thing to acquire shortcuts from somebody else's price they paid.

That's all a good way to live your life, right?

And so I just watch.

I spend a lot of my time, people watching and thinking, you know, how would I and why

would and what if and all those kinds of things.

And with understanding that there are diversity of situations and cases and scenarios and

all that stuff and callings.

I watched Charles just march up to me one day.

We were in here.

All the chairs were out.

We were filming the services.

That was awkward.

And he comes up and like he was, he had for weeks, he had sort of like walked around like

this, you know, like thinking and kind of pensive and stuff.

And he like, you know, he bebopped in and the sparkle was in his eye and he said, I've

made a decision.

We're opening on Pentecost.

Was it Easter or Pentecost?

Whatever it was.

Yeah.

And I saw, look, there's, that's it right there.

That's leadership.

That's leading in faith.

And, and I had wonderful friends who, who were nervous about it.

I understand that at one point we thought we were going to be stacking bodies in the

streets and all that stuff who shut down and stayed shut down and did everything and played

the game and all that stuff.

And I've, I've discovered that in relationship to following Jesus period, there's a real

safe kind of thin approach.

That, that will always win you the room.

You can lead by kind of taking note of the temperature of the room and then telling it

back to them.

You don't have to ever go against a consensus and it's very safe, but it doesn't get its

hands dirty.

Right.

And there is a faith based, ironically, faith based approach that is an affordable approach,

a faith based approach that isn't afraid to dive in.

And I know I'm using a very, very sensitive example, but it's where I saw it.

Okay.

And so we can stay away from any unnecessary absolutes in that and still take the lesson

home.

Right.

When we teach the gospel as the gospel of salvation, hear me out.

Oh man, this is going to be on the internet.

I'm going to live with this.

We run the risk of staying safe and thin because salvation is of the soul.

Right.

And, and who in the world can't get behind that?

Right.

I mean, it's not, that's not really all that controversial actually.

Right.

That doesn't, that doesn't change the environment that doesn't change the room that doesn't

change politics.

It doesn't even run for office actually.

Right.

It's really concerned with how it comes across and it is safe.

It's a safe way to think about it.

But the reality is that we stepped in through salvation to the gospel of the kingdom, which

is much larger and far less safe.

It demands more of us.

It's, it's why you go to a church that does talk about politics.

It's why we go to the sick and seek healing.

If we were solely solely, Oh, that's good.

If we were completely fixated on the salvation of their souls alone, then why do they need

to get healed?

Yeah.

Why?

Why does their husband need to come home?

Why do their kids need to get off drugs?

Just, just pray.

Just pray that prayer with them and send them on their way.

You know, John 3 16, which we all love in this particular context, doesn't say that

for God, so loved the soul of a man that says for God, so love the cosmos.

Did you know that the created order, everything from the top to the bottom now, man is the

crown of creation and, and, and I'm not trying to put this at a lower level than it belongs

at.

But.

The salvation of the soul is the beginning of redemption.

It progresses from there.

We don't want to reduce this thing to a rescue mission because it's not, it's an occupation.

And I know that that's even inflammatory language, right?

I'm not trying to, I actually, Dylan told me I could do this.

So Dylan, I'm throwing you right under that bus, bud.

He said, he said, Dylan.

He said, Dylan.

He said, just, oh, one of these two did just, oh, Ben agrees.

Good.

The two tall, handsome boys agree.

So I'm good.

I'm in good company.

He said, just use the words that are appropriate.

Don't let somebody take them from you.

So, um, so there you go.

Salvation is the beginning of redemption.

It's where we start heading towards the restoration of all things.

And at the end of all of this, the goal is indeed that everyone would be saved, but not

just everyone.

But everything, everything, everything that, that the soil under your house would be saved.

I believe in this.

I, I, I won't get all nerdy on you, but I have a pretty weird, probably if I say it out loud

relationship with nature.

I grew up in the woods in the middle of nowhere.

And, um, Liz actually, when we were dating, one of her nicknames for me was nature boy.

So nobody can use that.

Okay.

Dylan, you can use that because it sounded good.

It sounded good when you said it, but this was the first place that I ever, I remember,

you know, like we always in our home, we had all sorts of manifestations and in our churches

that we went to in those days.

So I, I had all sorts of experience with the presence of the Lord, but it was the first

time I'd ever experienced the presence of the Lord alone.

Um, man, I'm good at telling these stories without crying when I'm alone, but, um, I,

uh, there's this, there's this, oh man.

This is gonna get so nerdy.

So fast.

There's this group of plants called spring ephemerals.

Take your notes, kids.

There's going to be a time they, uh, they pop up in the woods before the trees have

leafed out.

They bloom, they do their whole life cycle all the way to seed and they die back to the

ground.

So they're not competing for light by the time that the leaves have come out on the

trees.

So it's a niche little role that they play and it works for them.

It's pretty cool.

And if you don't have an overpopulation of white-tailed deer, which we do in this area,

but didn't where I grew up.

Um, they actually persist, they survive, um, here they all get browsed.

But where I grew up, there were these fields in the forest of Trillium Trillium.

I should have put a picture.

I do.

I did this.

I'm way off notes.

Just, you know, I'm not like playing it.

I wasn't planning to say this.

Uh, Trillium are this really magnificent spring ephemeral, beautiful flower, large, beautiful

flower.

Uh, and, and to see a field of them, I'm talking like 10, 15 acres of them underneath this

kind of high canopy, sugar maple, uh, old growth forest is stunning.

It's really, really stunning.

And, uh, and the, the first time that I was ever overcome by the presence of the Lord

as a kid was there in this Trillium field.

And I remember like thinking I'll walk through it.

I'll get out.

Cause it's just so amazing, you know, so I'm probably death's age, eight or 10 years old

or something.

And I'm walking through it.

And I get to the other side of it and it drops off in this Creek and down at the bottom

of the Creek are a couple Trillium growing right along the bank.

And I thought to myself, how wild think about how many of these things live and die and

no one sees them.

And at, at that point in time and in the world that I was raised in, which kind of like crossed

lines with mainline denominations, um, you know, I couldn't imagine a world in which

those things existed by themselves for God's glory.

I thought they had to witness to us.

And I looked down at one and I thought, oh my gosh, what's that thing doing down there?

The Lord said, it's, it's mine.

I believe in the restoration of all things.

It starts with humanity.

We're the crown of creation, but it moves beyond.

Eventually.

Yeah.

The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God.

This is what we're living for and T right.

As a, I'm looking at a friend who's reading this with us says that the gospel of Jesus

Christ announces that what God did for Jesus at Easter, he will eventually do for the entire

cosmos.

I like that.

This one's eight 19 it says for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing

of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of

him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to

corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God, just linger there

for a moment.

This is how a real authority works.

I'm sure we've all done this where you've been in an organization where somebody was in charge

and somebody else was in authority and everybody kind of follows the non-positional leaders and

you have to figure out how to live your life. Real authority is irresistible.

You don't, you don't, nobody at the end, now look, God in his mercy has given us a leash

from with to potentially resist him should we choose to here in space and time. But

he's going to eventually revoke that privilege and every knee is going to bow and every tongue

is going to confess and nobody's going to go, ah, I'm opting out. This isn't, this doesn't work for

me. There's no, that's not even a possibility. It's not even an option. Nobody will have that

ability in the presence of God. Charles read to the staff Tuesday, it feels like 10 weeks ago,

but it was Tuesday, from this book by John Burke. I think it's John Burke.

Called Imagine the God or imagine there's, he's got to imagine God. He's got another one called

Imagine the God of Heaven, I believe it is. But they're both about near death experiences

and they're great books. I, I, I dug deeply into them when my dad passed. And one of the,

one of the things that he's doing in that book is he's taking a pretty clinical look

at sort of the broadest swath of, of real sort of non-Christian, just, just data that's out there

about these reports of near death experience.

And what they see when they're out of their body and all these kinds of things. And can things be

verified and all that stuff. It's really, really fun. It's very interesting. But one of the things

that is noted as one of the most common features of a near death experience is a life review.

So this life review, you know, you stand before as I can't imagine, I feel I'm talking about it

flippantly. It's gotta be pretty wild, but you're, you're, you watch your life play out

standing there with Jesus. Um, and it's a, it's a feature. It's like a statistically significant

feature. Some way more than a majority. It's like, it's like 70, 80% or something of people

who report these have this 0% of them really actually Christians, non-Christians, any other

religion, totally atheists. It doesn't matter. 0% ever say you're wrong when Jesus describes

their life to them.

Not one. And these are not, these are mostly not believers. These are just people all over the

world. And when they've lived a trashy life and they have not submitted their life to Jesus and

it plays in front of him, they just agree with him. When he says, that's not what it could have

been or whatever language he uses, probably very gracious. That's how real authority works.

When human beings,

beings sinned, creation fell.

That's real authority.

Irresistible, real authority.

And while we participate in the salvation of the soul,

creation's still waiting. It's not waiting on Jesus.

Paul says creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption.

It will be set free from its bondage to corruption.

The glory of the children of God.

How wild is that?

This is because the life that we live by faith, we live in the body.

We're the conduit between heaven and earth. There is no plan B. There's no other solution.

We're the whole thing. Jesus will come back. And when he does all of that ability to give and take

actually ceases.

Between here and there, the kingdom that is established is coming.

And it comes no other way. And I know I'm preaching to the choir. You guys live this way, but

I have felt that seasonally, maybe there was a need to sort of just emphasize this freshly.

Jesus had every right to make us his children, but he didn't. He made us the children of his father.

That's unbelievable.

He made us the children of his father.

He will always be the only begotten and he will always be the firstborn, but he made us brothers and sisters.

Sharing in that authority, sharing in that redemptive call, sharing in that salvation.

Sharing in that salvation.

And where he is now, he has chosen not to forfeit his human body.

We're still being saved by a man.

It's incredible. This reality is incredible. And I hope that what it does for us is it not only

imputes some sense of meaning to our daily whatever, takes it out of the menial and into

the holy, but that it inspires us to pursue more. The body, not the soul.

The body, not the soul is the temple of the Holy Spirit. At every point, the kingdom has expanded.

It's never contracted. It works in collaboration with humanity every time. And I don't, I'm not

going to go into detail, but just look at that's macro biblical. That's everywhere. You could just

read the book. It's in there. It works through calling in the individual, but it produces a

multiplied breakthrough. This is the life you live. It's not just the life that we live up here on Sundays.

It's the life that you live. So faith has activity. And because I love you, I'm going to

blast through these instead of taking a ton of time. You can look later at James two. These are

all in there. Activity shows faith. This is in James. It shows faith activity makes faith useful.

This is what James says. Activity activates and completes faith. It's the fulfillment of faith.

Activity serves alongside faith.

And this is activity in the body. This isn't somewhere else. This is us here in our lives

being believers. It joins faith in justifying a person. That's a radical statement. Look at James.

It's really interesting. Activity is even, he says, the life of faith when he says that faith

without works is not alive. What a radical statement. So you and I all have a calling to

stand redemptively. Go ahead.

Stand redemptively. And I'll prepare you to go.

Calling is in each one of us.

Calling isn't something somewhere else. It's not. It has eternal consequence, but it is in time.

It's not going to happen on the other side of eternity. It's happening now.

And for us, you know, so Charles and John and Brian and Chondi and I,

and David, whoever, we all stand up here and we do this thing. What we're doing, it happens to be

our calling, but it's a very unusual one. We're demonstrating. We're teaching. We're inspiring.

We want you to know what's possible. Did you ever show up at a worship service? Somebody has a

word of knowledge and you go, oh my gosh, that's possible. Now I have something new to aim at,

right? Or you hear somebody say something a certain way, demonstrate a gifting, and you go,

okay, that gifting, that's actually in me. I could do more of that. I could do some of that,

right?

That's what we're doing. You're doing the stuff. You're actually the body that is out where the

dirt is. You're the ones really reaching into the world. This is why the church is built on

the foundation. It's not built apostles and prophets and then everybody else. It's the

foundation. This is upside down kingdom leadership. That servant of the most is the servant of the

least is the greatest in the kingdom, right? And so what we demonstrate, you practice.

And I just want to encourage you because I know it's weird out there.

And when it's weird, there's a temptation to thin things out to make them safe.

And I love you enough to ask you not to do that.

Because I don't want you to wish you had done more.

I want you to be brave, to be courageous, to take risk, to speak up.

To reach out, to pray for somebody, to break from precedent.

And again, I know that I'm preaching to the choir. I know you live this way.

But sometimes it's helpful to just be reminded of who you are.

And there's only one way to really do this. If it was up to me and I was taking a hold of

the calling inside of me, I'd probably do a lot of, no offense against these things,

but I'd probably do a lot of assessments

and try to figure out who I am

and how to maximize myself.

And I'd get a branding agent.

Again, nothing wrong with those things.

They're just part of the picture,

not the whole picture.

David, when he was older and he had been injured,

he was self-conscious about it.

He was really down.

He had peaked.

I mean, really, he had peaked.

He was in his 70s at this point.

This is 1 Chronicles 21.

And he wanted to know that he still had the stuff.

He wanted to feel good enough, big enough, strong enough.

He was having family issues.

Family issues can drive you crazy.

So he has this friend,

I think his name is David,

he says, Joab, go count the army.

I want to know, what do I have?

How strong am I?

Who am I?

Tell me who I am.

And Joab's like, amazing.

He says, no.

I would not say no to David.

He kills people like this and kind of moves on, you know.

Joab has the courage to say this.

It's interesting how the writer of Chronicles says it.

It says,

So he had to go do it anyway, right?

And yet, he took this sort of righteous stance.

No, no, no, I'm not going to do this.

And then he doesn't count Levi and Judah,

which he feels is somehow like, it's like a,

he doesn't tell him that he doesn't,

but he feels like maybe this is a concession that he could make.

Comes back and he tells him an instant,

not instantly, but instantly the story, the next line.

David is conscience stricken and realizes he has measured

what only God can do.

What only God can define.

And Israel's judged for it.

So let's not, in all of the chaos and in all of the things

that are going on around us, let's not define ourselves.

And let's not pick and choose how and when and where

we do the stuff.

We bring the kingdom to our world.

Let's do what David did in Psalm 91,

when he did it right.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

Let's just abide.

Let's let him define us.

Let's let him activate us.

Let's let him move us.

Because I'll be wrong both ways.

I'll be overly fearful one day and overly confident the next.

But you and I are God's workmanship.

We are his poema or his art piece.

He has a plan.

And there are good works that we were created for.

They're specific.

You know, I forgot who used this example this week.

Somewhere around here, somebody did.

That Michelangelo kind of reached into the marble

and set the statue free.

What if he did?

What if Michelangelo had made the marble?

Because that's how God knows you.

That's how he knows us.

How about this?

Search me, O God, and know my heart.

We'll start there.

And then we're not going to be reluctant.

We're going to dig in.

I'm not at my best when I just try harder.

I'm at my best

when all of my effort is spent on abiding.

And then he fights for me.

So don't give up.

I know it's wild out there.

And don't react.

You were made for this.

Life Center, you were made for this.

You were made for this.

You are the people of God.

You were made for this.

To bring the kingdom.

It's in you.

It's on you.

It'll come out from you.

You were made for this.

Go ahead and just hold up your hands

and I'll pray for you and send you on your way.

So Father, thank you.

Thank you for the right to abide.

Thank you for sending the Son.

Thank you for making a way.

For creating the possibility

that we could even come.

You made a way for us to enter into the secret place.

And so we come.

We come running.

There's nowhere else we'd rather be.

There's nowhere else we'd rather go.

And every time we turn to something else,

we get in trouble.

So we're just going to stick with you.

We're just going to stick with you.

You're the only thing that keeps.

You're the only one who's worthy.

Oh, man.

You're the only one.

You're the only one who was found worthy.

You are truly the only one who was found worthy.

And so we come in and we come under

and we don't resist the call on our lives.

We step in and we ask you, Father,

don't extract us.

And don't let us reduce this thing

to survival and escape.

But bring the kingdom,

righteousness and peace and joy

in the Holy Spirit.

Bring it, bring it, bring it, bring it,

bring it into our everyday.

Bring it into our jobs, into our marriages,

into our families, into our bodies,

into our homes.

Bring it into the grocery store with us.

Stop at the stoplight

with the guy who we annoyed when we cut him off.

He's next to us.

We don't want to look at him.

And bring the kingdom to him.

Bring it to our politics.

Bring it to our art.

Bring it to our music,

the way that we interact with the world.

Bring the kingdom, God, and do it through us.

We say yes to you.

Thank you, Jesus.

You are worthy, so we will.

Come and get the reward you paid for.

People from every nation

and eventually the whole thing.

When that city of our God comes landing,

I want to already have those streets memorized.

I want to have my citizenship card.

I want a familiarity with that city

because it's coming here.

So, God, we welcome your kingdom.

Bless us as we go.

Come with us.

We don't want to go if your presence doesn't go with us.

So come with us, God.

So, Life Center, I bless you to flourish.

I bless you to rise.

I bless you to manifest Jesus.

And as you lift him up,

he's going to draw him into himself.

So go.

Be him.

Be the kingdom.

You were made for it.

Love you.

Bless you.