Begin With Grace "Come Together" [1 of 2] Sermon by Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 9/19/2010

morning how you guys doing uh we want to welcome you to blackhawk my name is tim one of the pastors here and uh we're a community of jesus we're here to ground ourselves in the story of the gospel today amen amen it's good to have you guys here uh one of our our core values here as a church community at black hawk is that part of the journey of following christ involves learning involves opening our minds to new ways of seeing god and other people in the world and so on so we have these things called journey classes on these kind of cycles throughout the year they've shifted previously they've been on saturday mornings now they're going to start going on thursday nights and this thursday night begins two different classes each of them is four weeks long one of them is called slavery suffering and prayer it's a four week study in the new testament book of philemon the second class is called after you believe it's about exploring what it means to form christian characters so both of those begin this thursday night you can find out information that's in your bulletin you uh if you could please do if you're gonna come sign up online so we can anticipate how many people are coming and make handouts and materials and that kind of thing so journey classes sound good great and one other piece happening literally right now is we're starting uh nine about nine minutes at 9 30. uh the down blackhawk downtown is starting their first service today so we're really yeah we're really excited about just the new opportunities the new people who will come and hear about and experience god's grace because of what's going on down there so i'll say hi to them at some point in the message and this kind of thing but we're stoked that that's uh that that's going on i would like to introduce you to uh somebody i don't know i just had a chance to meet them over email over the last couple weeks this is a picture of a woman named crystal jones crystal jones in 2003 crystal jones signed up for the organization you've probably heard of it before it's non-profit called teach for america they mobilize young and aspiring teachers and they do one or two year internships and kind of send out these young teachers out into low-income neighborhoods to under-resourced schools to just kind of throw me in the deep end this kind of thing give him the passion for education and for youth and and so on crystal in 2003 joined teach for america and she was assigned to an elementary school in atlanta georgia a first grade classroom it was a low low income neighborhood the school did not have a kindergarten so all of the kids that are coming into her classroom like hardly any of them had ever been in a classroom before this is like their first experience and she describes i came across her story in a book called switch how to change when change is hard it's all psychology of behavioral change fascinating fascinating stuff but in this book she tells her story and she talks about the makeup of the students on that first day of class and in her words at the beginning of the year i had two or three students who could recognize kindergarten site words and i also had some that didn't even know how to hold a pencil or even a book the ones who had never been to school their behavior wasn't where it needed to be for them to be in a classroom for that long i had students who didn't know their alphabet or their numbers they were all on different levels and no one was where they needed to be for the first grade the deep end of the pool just kind of tossed tossed in what would you do so she thought long and hard about how to motivate this group of students and so she thought like what in the psychology of a first grader how am i going to motivate these kids what do what what do first graders want more than anything else especially when they're out on the playground with all of the other grades and so on and she thought well and these kids these kids want to be they want to be like the third graders because third graders are like almost adults so they're taller they can run faster jump higher they're cooler you know this kind of thing so first week of class she made a commitment to them she said my goal students this year is to turn you into third graders come come june of next year she created a culture in the classroom a culture of learning where she referred to every student by the title scholar and then their last name so scholar johnson scholar mackey or something scholar jones this kind of thing and she required that every student refer to each other as scholars whenever anyone came into the room like a visitor she would introduce her young group of scholars and then say class what is a scholar and she had them all memorize the definition of a scholar and the class would all say together a scholar is someone who lives to learn and is good at it she tells the story of how one day like one of the students had to leave earlier to go to a doctor's appointment or something like this and a bunch of the kids started groaning like oh you know scholar jones has to leave or something like that oh it's and she's thinking you know um these kids are bored they don't want to be here this kind of thing so she asked she was like what are you guys groaning about what's what's going on and one of the kids said scholar jones is going to miss out on all our important scholar work what if he doesn't become a third grader right and and she says that at that point she knew she had them she knew she had them right so by spring break march of the next of the school year she did like a reading proficiency test and every single student passed for first grade reading level in march and so she teamed together with a principal they held a graduation ceremony for these kids they passed out diplomas and everyone referred to them as second graders soon to become third graders you know this kind of thing it's just you know really inspiring kind of kind of success story now i'm certain that crystal did a lot of curriculum planning really hard kind of detailed work what we're going to do today mapping out how the kids were going to get to where they needed to be but what what fascinated fascinated me about the story was the relational dynamic that she created in that classroom because she she looked out on a group of people who are just these students are all over the map some of them don't know their numbers or alphabet some of them can still actually read and pronounce words they're all over the map most of them are below average and when she looks to that group of kids she sees she doesn't see failures right she sees potential and she treats them not according to where they're at at the moment she treats them according to the level that they could become she sees them you could say with eyes of hope she does not allow their present circumstances to determine their future or to define their identity she treats them according to who they could become and this this i think is exactly the kind of mindset that the gospel of god's grace should be creating in us as christ followers a community of the gospel should be a community made up of people all over the map most of whom are probably below average you know and when we look at each other when we relate and how we treat each other when we begin with grace and see each other with eyes of hope we we shouldn't be treating each other according to what our past is we should be treating each other according to who we're becoming in christ it's looking at each other with eyes eyes of hope and beginning with grace a community of the gospel begins with grace that's exactly what we're going to see as we jump into our new teaching series today i want you to grab your bibles and turn with me to the book of first corinthians first corinthians if you brought your own bible you're a rock star if you're using brown bibles that we have here you're going to find on page 806 806. today we're beginning a new teaching series we're going to be camping out in the new testament paul's first letter to the corinthians for kind of the rest of the fall we're actually going to be doing three teaching series based out of the first 10 chapters of first first corinthians letter to the corinthians he's writing to a group of christ followers who are a motley crew most of whom are below average you could say and uh he personally helped start this uh church community uh he stayed in corinth because we're gonna find out we'll do historical background this kind of stuff he stayed there for a year and a half investing in these people and uh he set up leaders and then and then he left and after leaving he begins hearing reports of all these problems those are the huge problems that are going on uh in the people's lives in the church community and they're sending him a letter asking him questions about all of these problems what kinds of problems uh well let's just look at the hit list here he hears that there have been deep divisions and infighting in the church he hears that there's a man in the church who's sleeping with his stepmother with his dad's wife there are a number of church members who are suing each other there's a number of men in the church community who are still sleeping with prostitutes there's a group of women who are forbidding other christ followers to get married some of them were still going to worship in the pagan idol temples the poor members of the church were being ostracized by the wealthy their sunday gatherings were chaotic and some people in the church were denying that there is such a thing as a resurrection from the dead first church of corinth you want to go there right right holy cow holy cow this this is a church where there are people involved and where there are people your life is messy and so you're paul you have personally invested over a year of your life in these people and you hear about this and you're going to write them a letter how would you begin this letter yeah what are you guys thinking are you kidding me right that's not how he begins the letter let's uh read the first couple sentences here paul called to be an apostle of christ jesus by the will of god and our brother sosthenes to the church of god in corinth okay let's pause real quick here so paul is very familiar figure he figures huge in the new testament you can read a good chunk of his biography in the book of acts it's thrilling action-packed reading i highly recommend it paul is he's a he was a jewish rabbi he was a pharisee zealous devout passionate he had an encounter with the resurrected jesus and it just turned his whole world view inside out he became uh in he was called to be with an apostle which is just uh technical terms literally a greek word spelled with english letters it refers to leaders in the early church who were like entrepreneurs they were innovators they were people who were so passionate about the story of jesus they would go they would tell people about it they would go to new cities tell people about jesus start new communities of jesus followers and so on and paul went all over the ancient world as we'll see starting jesus communities he went to corinth and he's writing along with his uh his brother uh who was involved with him in the in the work at corinth to the church of god at corinth okay let's just pause real quick here let's kind of get a map here of what is going on uh we kind of have a little chronological animated map high-tech awesome stuff we have really cool people who work here kind of thing uh that might give us some bearings in context for what's uh for what's going on here so uh the jesus movement begins on the early 30s a.d jesus is crucified raised from the dead and the movement begins to spread to the non-jewish world it spreads north and actually in the non-jewish world the city of antioch becomes the center of the movement paul is sent out by the church in antioch he goes on a missionary journey to a number of towns in southern southern turkey starts communities there he goes on a second journey and he stays for a while in ephesus and also corinth for a year and a half he stays with them more than any other church he ventures uh back he goes to jerusalem he gives a little report and then back to antioch and he's so antsy he's like i gotta go see all these people again so he goes out on another journey he does take years and he wants to raise money for the poor in jerusalem and judea and so he visits these churches he arrives in ephesus and while in ephesus he learns of the troubles in the corinthian church and you write the letter to correct the issues and we don't have that letter anymore but he writes another letter to the church in corinth the one you have in your lap right now to respond to the questions raised by the first letter and that's up to speed of where paul is writing right right now he's heard of the problems he's heard of what's going on there now why would paul spend more time in corinth starting the church community there than than any of the other churches well there's a very good reason corinth was an extremely important city and because we're going to be spending the next couple months in first corinthians it's crucial that we understand the background and the culture and what's going on in corinth because it informs what paul is doing here reading first corinthians have you ever been a situation where you're with a friend and they get a call on their phone and you're listening to their phone call and you're like trying to figure out who it is they're talking to and what they're talking about you know have you ever done this yeah and you're like what is this person they're talking about like cracker jacks and gray whales and you know just like random whatever so i just pulled that out of my head so this is random whatever just random stuff and you're like who is this person and when my wife gets a phone call i always know immediately who she's talking to based off of what the first sentence is about you know this this kind of thing so that's exactly what's happening in first corinthians we're hearing one end of a telephone conversation and what's going on on the other end well we don't know we have to infer we need to get into the cultural background of corinth and figure out what the problems were and why why these would be problems and and so on so corinth uh we kind of saw it on a map here let's look at another picture of a map this was uh quartz was a major city it was one of the largest uh greek roman cities in in the ancient world and look uh look at how it's located on the lower map here where where is corinth located turned geographically it's on an isthmus holy cow that's awesome so mounted just like medicine right it's on isthmus the isthmus is about a little over three miles wide and so think of how this affects business or commerce right so to the north is a gulf called the gulf of corinth to this to the southwest is a gulf that opens up into the aegean sea now you're a businessman and you have goods that you need to transport from the gulf of corinth out to the gnc you have two choices right you could sail around that big huge peninsula it'll take you a long time or you could dock at corinth for a day or two let all your sailors have a really good time transport the goods three miles over the over the isthmus and you know new ship be on be on your merry way can you guess what most people were doing in the ancient world sailors like to have a good time right that's kind of sorry that was stereotypical but uh in ancient you know okay moving on so all right so uh so this is a major major city so here's you can go there today they've excavated much of the city on the right it was just main street corinth just imagine a whole city well over fifty thousand seventy five thousand people packed into this peninsula commerce and trade on the upper left here is uh something of like what perhaps the first christ followers would have met in a little public forum of someone's someone's house a pillared pillared forum here corinth wasn't just a major business center too it was a major religious center there were temples temples everywhere greek and roman culture was polytheistic they believed in many different gods gods who governed the sun the moon and the stars who covered the forces that we experienced in human life of sex and fertility and food and the rain and so on so today you can go there and this is a temple to the to the greek god apollo the god of the sun there were temples everywhere and the corinthians would would on a daily weekly basis be sacrificing animals to these different gods so that they'll be happy with us and give us rain for our crops and give us good good weather as we sail and this this kind of thing and bound up with the religious culture of corinth is is sex corinth was known for its for the ease by which you could access prostitutes in fact it was so well known in the ancient world that the phrase to be a corinthian was actually slang for to be a prostitute right so there's the phrase corinthia i am a corinthian means i am a prostitute in ancient greek okay there's a historian rodney stark who kind of unpacks this a little bit here corinth was the most licentious city in all of greece the number of merchants and sailors who frequented it caused it to be a favorite resort among wealthy roman leaders the patron goddess of the city was aphrodite the goddess of sex and fertility who had a splendid temple where there were kept more than a thousand female slaves for the service of strangers corinth was at once the new york los angeles and las vegas of the ancient world and in the early 50s of a.d paul the apostle planted a small community of christ followers there that's ambitious right now let's let's put the list of problems back up here the troubles of the corinthian church here does this begin to make a little more sense right so like nobody grew up with christian parents like no one's heard of jesus before this is all brand new every person at the church in corinth is a brand new convert they have come right out of the culture and the lifestyle of ancient qurans and so what we're going to do because to be quite honest with you i think american culture is uh is very very similar to life in uh in ancient corinth we're going to kind of create a map of our whole fall teaching series based on these first chapters of corinth let's put the problems back up here again so uh in chapters one through four the church in corinth was was dividing up into little groups some were jewish christians some were non-jewish christians some were wealthy some were not some were slaves some were free and there was division and so in these first four chapters paul is exploring what does it mean to be a community of jesus that's unified that has a common purpose but yet is made up of very very very different kinds of people who likely disagree about all kinds of things i wonder if that's a relevant issue for us in the next we're going to camp out here for a few weeks and just do a series called come together where we explore what it means for us as a church community to be unified in mission and purpose but be made up of very different very different kinds of people in october we're going to camp out in chapters 5 through 7 and just do a series about sex because that's what paul is exploring in these chapters and paul is going to guide us as we explore a christian vision of gender of sexuality we're going to move all towards the issues pornography the hookup culture sex outside of marriage all this kind of stuff that paul explores and thinks through with the lens of the gospel that's going to be a boring series probably so and in november we're going to camp out in chapters 8 through 10 where paul is exploring what does it mean to be a christ follower and living in a culture of religious pluralism where other people do not believe what you do or practice what you do how do you live and relate to religious others and to each other because we may have disagreements about how we relate to the culture around us how do we do that as a community of christ followers so there you go that's the next next three months and this christmas holy cow so uh what do you guys think sounds good all right this is relevant this is relevant relevant stuff our we are ancient currents we're on an isthmus for goodness sakes you know this our city is so paul's going to write a letter to this group of christ followers they're below average they're not following christ very consistently full of problems a number of them have hurt him they've personally attacked him in their letter they've rejected him some of the corinthians have as their leader and he's going to write to them a letter how does he begin the letter it's astounding let's go back to first corinthians here verse 2 to the church of god in corinth to those who are sanctified in christ jesus called to be holy together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our lord jesus christ their lord and ours let's pause real quick here he has a couple little descriptive words that he uses he calls the corinthians what do they call them he calls them sanctified who used that word in conversation this last week okay so what does this mean this is where we get our word saint it means to be holy and holiness in the jewish scriptural tradition means being set apart for a unique purpose god has called the people to join his mission of redemption and forgiveness in his broken world and god's people are to be distinct have a lifestyle that sets them apart as different and he says to the corinthians yeah you know you all all of you who are saints you're holy and sanctified set apart for god's purpose what what really that's like calling a room of first graders who can't read scholars you see anything what it gets even better keep reading grace and peace to you from god our father and the lord jesus christ i always thank god for you because of his grace given you in christ jesus just pause again real quick here wha what you're kidding me right what's he doing he's he says he's thankful for the corinthians these are people with whom he has a very strained relationship right now and they're not following christ very consistently if at all and paul can say i'm thankful i'm so thankful to god for you all what on earth and why is he thankful look look closely verse 4 why is he thankful this is so bizarre see i'm thankful for coffee because it tastes great and it gives me a little treat to look forward to every morning kind of gives me a little perk to start my day i love coffee why do i love coffee because the thing itself that i am thankful for it actually has benefits for me it does something for me right that when we're thankful we're usually thankful because of something good that comes from the thing that we're thankful for are the corinthians offering paul very much good or happiness right now why does he say he's thankful for them not because they're doing good but because of because of god's grace what does that even mean this is uh this is my guitar i don't know if it's a nice guitar maybe i don't know very much about guitars uh but there you go it's my guitar i'm not super good at playing it i pluck away on it now and then when i can and if i were to say you guys i am so thankful for my guitar what kinds of things would you expect me to start talking about it's great it plays really well i don't know it handles nicely i mean i guess that's what you say about a car but i don't know if it's so but maybe i think it handles just fine has good resonance or something i'm thankful for my guitar because the guitar is great and it sounds great when i play it that's what you would expect me to say but the reality is i am not thankful for this guitar because it's broken and i can't fix it no matter what i do with this guitar it never stays in tune for like more than an afternoon okay so you know i don't know if you're musically inclined but does this sound like a good g [Music] [Laughter] or d and the a is really hard holy cow right i don't okay so this has been issue for years and just on my personality i just kind of put it off and don't want to think about it i'm not thankful for my guitar sits in my closet and i'm frustrated with it right last week i was i hang out with my friend tom who's a good local guitar legend here in madison actually he's uh playing with the band was the part of blackhawk downtown so hey tom hey blackhawk downtown if you guys are doing well uh he i was hanging out with tom last week he's a very very talented guitar player and i was telling him about my guitar woes you know i don't know what to do it's really frustrating i can't it never stays in tune and uh and so we started asking me about it and we discovered uh that uh the neck of the guitar i mean i can't even see it apparently the neck of the guitar is bent ever so slightly it's broken it's bent forward that it makes the strings all wonky and do just they can't you can't get in tune because the the neck is bent and so i was like oh that's lame i like it's going to cost a lot of money to fix it or whatever and tom responds by saying oh no it's not a big deal oh i can totally fix that for you i was like oh really isn't that like you have to take apart the whole guitar and he's like oh oh yeah but totally it's not a big deal i'll totally fix it for you i was like oh great thank you you know that's really wonderful so so now i'm going to give my guitar to tom this week and now that i'm telling all of you about it i really have to like put on my to-do list and you know do it and do it this week i cannot fix my guitar i don't know how to analyze what's wrong with my guitar but now i know someone who can deal with my guitar in fact now i know someone who loves guitars with a passion that i will never have and he is really excited to work on my guitar he sees it as like a project he's eager to do it and even though i don't know what's really wrong with it i couldn't explain it to you really in detail i can't fix it it opens up the possibility now for me to stand before you and say i'm thankful for my guitar not because it works right now right and not because i know how to fix it i can be thankful for my guitar because i now know someone that i trust who cares deeply about guitars and he wants to fix it do you see where i'm going with this here this is a different kind of thanksgiving being thankful for someone paul in a very strained and tense relationship looks at this group of people who you could see them as failures as christ followers you could see them as people who are below average they're not doing well they're not they're not successful but paul looks at this group of people and he writes them a letter and he says i am so thankful for you guys i'm thankful because of god's grace look at how he finishes the rest of this little opening paragraph here verse 4 i'm thankful to god for you because of his grace given you in christ jesus for in him you have been enriched in every way in all your speaking or all and in all of your knowledge so he highlights areas where they are growing they're growing and they're learning they may not be doing it very consistently but hey there's some progress here and i've seen it and i'm thankful for it verse six because our testimony about christ was confirmed in you we told you the story about jesus and you you you trusted that story you had an encounter with grace and that story was confirmed in in the life change that we began to see among you therefore think about who he's writing to right now therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift god's at work his spirit's at work among you as you eagerly wait for our lord jesus christ to be revealed he will keep you strong until the end so that you will be blameless on the day of our lord jesus christ and god who called you into fellowship with his son jesus christ our lord what kind of god is he he's faithful he's faithful what did he he begins a letter the whole letter is going to be about their problems and their shortcomings but he does not begin there he begins with grace and he sees these people with eyes of hope not because paul is confident he can fix the situation or not because everything is rosy between them he's thankful because he's entrusted these people to god's grace it's essentially paul saying i'm not in control here i i can't like change your hearts or make you want to follow jesus i can i can explore with you what it means to live consistently with the gospel and i'll trust you to god's grace and it opens up this possibility that he can now be thankful because of these people he begins with grace crystal jones looked at a group of first graders she saw who they could become i can be thankful for my guitar not because i know how to fix it because i know someone who does and i can trust him with my guitar paul writes to a group of people who he has a tense strained relationship with and he says i'm so thankful for you you saints you holy ones god god loves you more than you can imagine he's faithful he will not let you go his story is not over in your lives this is this is exactly the kind of relational dynamic that chris was exploring last last week in first corinthians 13 paul is modeling agape love as he talks to these people he's seeking their well-being regardless of how they treat him or they respond to him in every chapter of this of this letter he's living out and modeling this agape love that chris uh explored with us last week that's why we're memorizing this chapter as uh chapter first corinthians chapter 13 as a church community over the next few months and there's memory cards again this week out in the atrium what would it look like for you and i in the relationships in our lives that are strained that are broken people have failed you they've let you down they're not consistent things are not good between you what would it look like for you as a part of a community of grace to begin with grace with those people in your lives what would it mean for you to model what paul is doing to these christ followers here in first corinthians 1. i'm going to invite the music teams to come up here and in the other the other rooms and i'd like you to as we kind of transition here i'd like you to do something with them don't you put all your stuff out of your hands for a minute and i'd like you to close your eyes with me uh and uh hannah kind of had us focus a little earlier and just as a community and worship we're focusing uh i'd like you just take a couple deep breaths and i'd like you to picture in your mind a person or two that you presently are having a conflict with someone in your life that there's a strained relationship there's tension what would it mean what would it look like for us to love those people with agape love and to see them not according to their past but according to who they could become if god's grace were to be worked out in their lives what would it mean to begin with grace when you see that person tomorrow at work or in class or your neighbor across the street let's ask god to give us wisdom these strange relationships as a community of grace uh what it looks like for you to translate the grace that's been shown towards you into your relationships that's the journey that we all are on as we're empowered by god's spirit to follow christ in our day-to-day lives amen amen uh we want to as we leave today just as we kind of do now and then to allow the room to become something of a sacred space for for quietness and for prayer maybe you need to spend some more time with the picture of that person in your mind and committing them to god's grace and figuring out what you need to do in that situation we want to invite anyone who just wants to stay behind in the room here and just pray and be quiet for a while there'll be music in the background you can just stay right where you're seated and for the rest of us you can feel free to go if you need to we would ask that you would do so quietly to respect the people who want to stay behind and pray let me just close us in a brief prayer lord we thank you for your grace we thank you that your love your forgiveness and your healing intentions are towards us [Music] regardless of our failures our shortcomings our sin god we want to be people who treat other people with that same kind of grace and agape love would you give us wisdom to know how to be those kinds of people we ask for the help of your spirit as we do so and we can pray in the strong name of the risen jesus amen amen it's been good to have you here go in god's grace

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

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Length: 40min 24sec (2424 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020