Fashion of the Faithful - Ben Stuart

well in 2017 donna and i had the opportunity to visit jerusalem and we went one day to the church of the holy sepulchre it's a beautiful church a thousand plus years old that's on the historic site of the death and burial of jesus and we showed up there it's it's amazing to see this gorgeous church but when you walk up you see how beautiful it is but then there's a a ladder just kind of sitting above the door next to a window it's a bit odd i remember asking our guide why is there still a ladder up there are they working on something it seems like an old ladder can they take it down and he explained to me well ben there are six different sects of christians that have a claim on this building and there's been a lot of animosity working out who gets to move where when do what has power over which door which window and as they've been working out who gets to control what no one's been able to decide whose ladder that is and so it stayed up there for decades which sounds crazy but you know it wasn't too long uh before that moment that uh the international news had a heyday reporting upon one of the sects leading a holy procession towards the tomb of christ and another group of monks in holy arraignment got in their way and a melee broke out and there was video of it you see monks flying in from the back superman punching other monks their form was terrible but the uh you could see the animosity there and as the international news covered this story you could read these articles and they just felt like they had a smirk that here at the the space that's meant to be the heart of christianity the death burial resurrection of jesus the followers of jesus can't get along and it's meant to be in some ways an embarrassment about us that christians fight and it can be ugly uh spinoza the jewish philosopher of the 17th century said i've often wondered that persons who make a boast of professing the christian religion namely love joy peace temperance and charity to all men should quarrel with such rancorous animosity and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred this rather than the virtues which they profess is the readiest criteria of their faith gandhi who was in some ways attracted deeply to christ built much of his philosophy off the sermon of the mount struggled with the exclusive claims of the deity of jesus he couldn't handle colossians chapter one the exclusivity of jesus being above all things and in him all things hold together and yet he was drawn to the sermon on the mount went to the west hoping to see the virtues of jesus lived out among the people of jesus and was disappointed to see he did not see the kind of overwhelming compassionate love espoused in the life of jesus manifest in his people and he was asked at one point about his thoughts about jesus you quote him so often why don't you trust him and he said i love your christ but so many of you christians are so unlike your christ now let me say this there are christians all over the world right now selflessly laying down their lives for others so this isn't a bash christianity fest and let me say this too that christians don't corner the market on animosity you look through human history human beings have trouble figuring out how to get along our human story is a wash with blood of enemies warring against each other and we're dealing with it now in america today we're all i think asking the question can we get along do we even know how anymore gallup has done a poll for decades in america where they ask the question uh would you say that relations between white and black americans are very good somewhat good somewhat bad or very bad and around 2004 white people 74 said that relations among white and black americans are good or somewhat good 68 of black americans said the same relations between white and black americans are good pretty good and if you look from about 2001 to 2013 it's about the same somewhere in the 70 percentile of white americans say relations between white and black americans pretty good at about 60 something 65 of black americans said the same but about 2014 you see a dip begin to occur you get to 2020 that same question was asked 46 of white americans say our relations are good 36 black americans it's cut in half now you can ask why we'll say hey racism is on the rise in america or you can say no it's a racism that's always there now it's being uh brought to the fore you could say that hey the media is is championing it and haranguing us with us if it bleeds it leads and so they're putting a lot of animosity out in the news some people say no it's a political tool uh polarization for mobilization you can try to find all this causation and i'm not arguing any of those causes there's probably a mix of all of them in all of this that there's real tragedies and real using of those tragedies etc but all i'm saying is this poll shows us that you look around at us today and we're saying more than the last few decades i don't know that we know how to relate to each other well we're struggling and how to relate cbs did a poll uh in january where they asked americans what is the greatest threat to america americans west what is our greatest threat eight percent said foreign countries 17 said the natural world covet um 20 said economic forces but 54 said other americans that's historic that when asked what's the greatest threat to america we said us that we don't know how to get along right and that's a human story america doesn't corner the market on animosity in among race or any other way that it's a global phenomenon we hurt one another but the christian is meant to model a different way we have access to a source that allows us to live differently so the apostle peter will say in his epistle we are meant to adorn the gospel we're meant to dress it in clothes that fit with it not to try to dress up our message to look better than it is he said we are meant to arraign ourselves in clothes that accentuate the positive features of our gospel the christians meant to dress in a way that's commensurate with the gospel and that's the language paul's using here paul has said that jesus christ has created a body of christ that has been knit together greek jew barbarian scythian slave free christ is all and in all that jesus christ his death burial resurrection purchased a community a family across all these different lines of animosity he's knit us together as close as a body is to one another as close as the hand is to the finger so we are knit together as a body and it's fascinating in this passage paul's used that imagery over and over again jesus has made a body and now as he gets to this application section of how we're meant to live he uses the imagery of clothing now the body of christ is meant to take off certain clothes there's outfits that don't fit the christian right and then he says but there are other clothes we are meant to put on and that's the question of today what is the proper fashion of the people of faith and i know all of you probably have a copy of church vestments their origin and development we could sit here and read through this you wonder the sorts of things your pastor studied in seminary what is the proper dress of christians the different answers been given throughout the ages of different kind of robes or vestments or haircuts you shave the top and leave the crown of hair that was a good look different jewelry you could wear or there's an appendices in the back about proper sneakers and gold chains uh you know just different things you wear to express your faith in different ways and yet here's the interesting thing paul doesn't talk about the physical clothing at all he says you want to know how the christians meant to be clothed we are clothed and we're going to live in this passage we are clothed with compassion and we are tailored with truth what does the world need to see as we engage the world they need to see what we have and what we have is we are clothed with compassion we are tailor-made with truth how do the people of jesus walk through a culture and crisis together we're about to see it in this passage and these are our two major headings but there's a lot of ways paul will fill this out so these first couple verses are about how we're clothed with compassion you see in verse 12 put on then as god's chosen ones holy and beloved compassionate hearts kindness humility meekness and patience bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against the other forgiving each other as the lord has forgiven you so you must also forgive and above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony so he says put on light clothes and then paul will do something interesting paul will never give us action he won't go very far into action before he gives us motivation because for the christian our activity is always an effect not a cause we don't do things to earn god's approval we do things because we are god's people and so he'll say put on then and he's going to tell us five dispositions to put on and three actions they should produce but before he even gets to them he gives us two motivations right here at the beginning put on then as god's chosen ones holy and beloved compassionate hearts why put on compassion he gives you two reasons one he says then or therefore it calls you upward in light of a previous reality we should put on compassion and meekness and patience what's the previous reality well the verse right before it is where he says in christ there's therefore now no jew gentile barbarian scythian slave free but christ is all in in all he says this is essential for us because jesus has decided to knit together a community and then paul purposely names all the fault lines that split humanity not just christians humans we split along mistrust among different races ethnicities socioeconomic backgrounds that humanity divides on all these friction points paul names them he's not afraid of them but he said jesus for god's glory knit together humanity purposely across these bonds of human hostility to show the power of god to make a family out of formal hostile parties so he says god purposely knit together people who don't naturally get along he said and he's done that on purpose so because he's knit together people that maybe aren't natural affinity groups you're going to need to put on some compassion and some patience and some kindness you're going to need this it's essential but it's not just essential it's also logical he says put on then as god's chosen ones holy and beloved what's beautiful about that we've said this before those were titles of jesus he is the chosen one he is the holy one he is the beloved right and jesus gave those titles to you and to me he chose you weak and foolish as you are he made you holy set you apart unto god made you pristine and clean by his grace and you are loved you are the beloved it is the most true thing about you if you are in christ you are chosen you are holy you are loved and you don't deserve any of that he freely gave it to you and so he did that to us the chosen holy beloved one said you are chosen holy and beloved so when you look at each other the people i bled out for choose each other understand that i made you for each other and love each other manifest my attributes in my body dress like me look like me because i gave my life to knit you together so it's essential and it's logical we're gonna need these attributes and they've been purchased for us in christ he already bought the outfit we just got to put it on so what does it look like he gives us five dispositions that promote three actions as we talk about how to be clothed with compassion so the first attribute is put on compassionate hearts that's literally compassionate hearts he uses the word splagnitsuma it's uh lower intestine guts you're meant to have a gut level concern for other people that at the deepest part of you you have co-passion that means pain if you're in pain i hurt with you i don't stand aloof from the hurting of other people i care in the old testament this is one of the most fundamental and championed attributes of god over and over again the old testament says the lord the lord compassionate and gracious do you know want to know what he's like he cares and the great manifestation of that was uh in the exodus that he came to moses and said i have seen the pain of my people i have heard their cries so i have come down when i see my people hurting i hurt with them and i move towards them it was his motivation to send jesus john the baptist dad in luke chapter one says because of the tender mercies upon high the sunrise will visit us the tender mercies of god that he talks about there is the same words translated here compassionate hearts because the deep gut level concern god has for our pain he sent jesus that was one of his most motivating factors and when jesus showed up on the scene this same thing motivated him do a study of the word compassion in the gospels it was constantly motivating jesus to act that when he saw the pain of others he moved towards them he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless so he taught them many things he had compassion for those who were sick and so he healed them he had compassion for the dead so he resurrected them that you see jesus's compassion motivated into action and in several of his stories the key attribute of the hero was compassion that if you heard i heard paul said it was the animating factor in his life as he began to teach about it as well this is christianity 101 what happens when you come to christ you care you care about the suffering of other people now does that mean you might agree on all the ways that suffering should be alleviated and how that money should be allocated and whether it's the church's role or the government's role hey we can get into specifics of how we care for each other but don't skip past the important point that fundamentally and first as christians we are meant to care if you hurt i hurt with you over whatever issue it may be i i mentioned last week we were on a call with several pastors in the community and it was after the shootings in atlanta that happened at all these uh massage parlors and uh multiple pastors spoke who were asian american and they had different ways to even understand the details of what happened but what i loved about the way this meeting led was hey even though we're on there's mixed uh ideas of what happened and how it should be dealt with the main thrust of the meeting and the way it was led by the pastors who were guiding it was but just tell us how you feel and they kept encouraging these pastors to share how they feel and there was something powerful and cathartic about just caring about the pain of somebody else it was powerful and i gotta tell you i rarely lead meetings like that i have a hard time tapping into that let's just talk about how you feel and some people will go what good does that do that's not the end but it's where we must always start that if you're hurting i want to hear about it and i want to care this is the christian's call and so i have co-passion i hurt when you hurt and then you add to that kindness selfishness and indifference is anti-christian that we are not meant to be indifferent about the pain of others so i have compassion about your pain and then i have kindness towards you kindness is a desire to help an inclination to act on your behalf which again is a major motivator in jesus's life it's one of those favorite words in the old testament to talk about god's readiness to help us it's a major theme in the psalms god stands ready to help you when he sees that you're in pain you see it in titus when the goodness and the kindness of god our savior appeared he saved us god's desire to help us motivated him to send christ and so now as the people of christ i care when other people are hurting and i have an inclination and a desire to alleviate that pain that's what kindness is when i see a problem i ask how god am i meant to be part of the solution so i read a report in 2017 washington dc won the prestigious award of being the most literate city in america the most well-read while simultaneously being one of the most illiterate cities in the country how does that happen well we've got some disparity in our city and we can debate all of how why whatever and we can say hey i didn't get here to get involved in all the city's problems i got here to advance my career make a bunch of money and leave well okay but as a christian we look and say hey guess what man god has changed my life let me have a disposition to act so when i hear stats like that hey i i know how to read and there's other people some say a quarter of the adults in dc are lacking the ability to read proficiently which is going to hurt their chances to get a well-paying job you can hear that and maybe your call is to be a part of that but all of us should feel the inclination of god how do i help solve that god if that's a problem we can alleviate how do we lean into that and that's one of the things i'm happy to say is as we do things like uh love dc which is coming up in a few months that's part of us is the church saying hey it's the people of jesus that's a solvable problem let's help let's help people in some tangible ways develop a skill that will help them succeed in life i can feel your pain and have an inclination to alleviate that pain to the best of my ability right so compassion kindness humility humility here doesn't mean i think of myself as less than or i'm not that great jesus was humble and he thought he was pretty great right and yet jesus modeled humility what does it mean it means a willingness to disadvantage me for you that's what philippians says jesus christ always in the very form of god didn't take that comfort and glory as a thing to be grasped unto himself but he alleviated his advantage took on the form of a servant why for our advantage so we wouldn't die he disadvantaged himself for our advantage and then philippians he says now you're meant to do the same thing we're meant to come to each other with a humility i am moving towards you to help you and i'm willing to disadvantage me for the sake of you meekness that's another word that nobody gets tattooed on themselves uh it doesn't sound like a great word it sounds small but again jesus said it about himself it was one of his defining characteristics he said i am gentle and lowly i am meek what does he mean by that meekness there means gentleness courtesy kindness that when i see someone who's hurting i i i'm not harsh with them i care you go what if that's person's caught in sin what if it's someone in our church that that is doing something that i know is wrong i'm supposed to blow them up online right well galatians 6 is brothers is anyone caught in any transgression you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness should you confront somebody when you see their life going astray yes but don't just load up the confrontation without a spirit of gentleness that i want to see you restored and i'm going to be kind even as i maybe say some hard things to you but what if they're teaching false doctrine ben if they're false teachers i have to make a youtube video about them to excoriate them second timothy paul tells timothy correct your opponents with gentleness if perhaps god may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of truth speak evil of no one avoid quarreling be gentle and show perfect courtesy to all people can i vigorously oppose your beliefs and still respect you as a human being francis schaefer did that that was challenging for me as a young man to say that he would go and say my goal is he was invited to debates all the time francis schaefer was like the cs lewis to the hippies right in the 60s and he said i won't debate but i will talk to you on stage in front of a crowd of people if you'd like and he said my goal was to strongly oppose the wrong philosophies of people on that stage but so respect them as a human being in the process that it would not at all feel odd for us to grab dinner afterwards and that's what the christians meant to do uh that i can disagree with you but i can do it with a spirit of gentleness with meekness and patience i love the word patience in greek folks it's the word macro thumia it means for a macro amount of time i can bear the thumia the heat right uh i can take the difficulty of hanging in there with you when you don't get it so i can be patient with you i can handle that it's going to take that when we talk past each other and don't understand each other i remember for me early in life i talking to my dad when jesus was blowing up my world in college i was going to break away this massive worship event with all these college students worshiping god it was just so powerful and i would talk to my dad about jesus and he always kind of had this tepid response to me it felt a bit dismissive i was like i do not get it and i was mad at him about it but i remember once at parents weekend i brought him to breakaway and he sat there in the crowd with his mouth wide open he was like what is this and i'm like well we sing about jesus and read his word and explain it he was like this is crazy and i remember him saying if i had a thing like this in college i would have gone and i was like what i was like this is what i've been telling you about bible study worship church we've been talking about this for years but then in this moment as we share this experience he began to open up about his life that when he was late in his teens he he tried reading the bible had some legit questions so as a young man he set up an appointment with a pastor and asked the pastor if he could meet with him and he asked the pastor some questions and the pastor looked at him and said boy don't you ever ask those stupid questions again my dad quit church walked away and he had had some experiences that were pretty painful and i remember for me as a guy in his 20s it suddenly hit me if we had a a flash card and i had the word church written on this side and then my definition on the back word association church what do you think of me i would have thought of love acceptance people who were patient with me kind with me have helped develop me but my dad if he had that word church on the back of his it would have been hurt hypocrisy pain and if we just fought about the word church we would have talked past each other the whole time it took humility meekness gentleness patience for us to get to the root issue and as we did it i understood my dad better i understood his pain i had co passion and then he was able to hear what the church is really like and what it's meant to be like and the beauties of christ and some beautiful reconciling happens when we can manifest these qualities right that christ purchased for us on the cross but we're going to need them all compassion kindness humility meekness patience to do what in verse 13. here's your first action word bearing with one another that word means to put up with each other i love it one translation says to continue to put up with exasperating conduct that is your call as a believer right so just know when someone at the church is exasperating you you say thank you lord for a chance to live into colossians 3 that i get to bear with one another and if anyone has a complaint that assumes there will be legitimate grievances we have with each other will someone hurt your feelings yes will i almost assuredly all of us will bang into each other in the wrong ways that's humanity that's life but for the christian we have a way to solve that we clothe ourselves with the compassion of jesus and so when you do something that hurts me it doesn't say if you have a complaint against one another tweet about it give a prayer request to your friends can you pray for somebody i don't want to mention his name his name is ben s no that's too obvious be steward and if you could pray for him and his wicked heart we just fill this church with gossip which is cancer to a community or if we have a legitimate complaint do we forgive each other you know what's beautiful about that word forgive there there's a word for forgive this is a bit of a different word it's built off the word grace it's even more dramatic he says when someone hurts you you don't just go fine don't worry about it no it's fine because that's not even forgiving anyway that's saying i'll hold this resentment until it's useful for me to leverage it for a later date that's not grace grace says your sin stands at its full height and the love of god is taller still grace says i see the hurt i felt it i don't deny it i don't minimize it but i see the grace of jesus as a tidal wave that can even wash that wave away and so because the lord has forgiven you so also you must forgive but what if they don't deserve it of course they don't you don't either that's not the game we're playing that's not the clothes we wear we came to a god who forgave us while we were sinners so we forgive each other while we were sinners right we tap into a deeper well of grace so we can grace each other even when we hurt each other we don't walk out on one another we walk towards each other we don't cancel each other we forgive and above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony it's like the final piece of clothing it's like the belt that holds it all together or the vest i don't know it's the piece of clothes you put it all on agape love covenant making love love that says i have been bound to you by jesus so i will not let go right that i choose to remain in his community working out difficulty even when it's hard because that binds everything together in perfect harmony telos completeness do you want to be a spiritual person the complete spiritual journey is only worked out in loving one another so your spirituality will never be complete if you're isolated if you say no ben my spirituality is very personal thing i read a devotion on my phone listen to a podcast periodically and i'm good no according to this text your development will always be arrested spiritually because spirituality always works itself out in the context of community what will bring you to the completeness of harmony in christ it's loving us a multi-ethnic community across social economic lines bound together in the name of jesus loving each other across all these human boundaries the world sees that and says whoa surely god is in their midst no one's impressed when you like your friends everybody does that but when our love spills across unexpected banks people will say surely god is in their midst our love for one another as a community gives veracity to the message that we preach it's a gospel issue and so that's why in verse 15 he says let the love peace of christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body i love that word rule it's the word umpire that it call balls and strikes and the peace there is not internal peace let the let a sense of serenity guard your heart surrendering to now lord even as these people annoy me that's not what he's saying he says to what you were called in one body he's saying corporately make the commitment that as far as it depends on me when i interact with this community i am going to promote the shalom christ purchased the mutual flourishing of the human beings around me and let that be the umpire that determines what's legal and illegal for me to say and for me to do so when you want to say something to the people of jesus online you let the peace of christ be the umpire would christ be cool with that right here over your shoulder you good with that no okay delete right when you're in a conversation and that person leaves that you're annoyed with and you look over at your friend and you make eye contact and it's welling up surely now it's okay to throw them under the bus imagine the peace of christ being there and say does this help strengthen the bonds of unity or am i slowly unraveling them i'm not unraveling all of them i'm just cutting at a few of the strands but a few hundred of us do that and the whole body falls apart so what am i going to do as far as it depends on me the way i talk the way i live the way i move through this community is it selfish selfishness and indifference are anti-christian the christian is wrapped in compassion we love each other will this be hard yes that's why there's been so many verbs he's telling you love requires a lot of this kind of effort love that's gritty and real and not shallow sentiment is hard but when the world really sees it it's beautiful it's transformative because they don't see a love like this anywhere else christ called us to this let's manifest it and one of the key ways in verse 15 is to be thankful the way he says it there i thought it was a throwaway line and be thankful you're like okay but you realize he's been talking about gratitude all through this letter that according to paul to the romans what kick-started the chaos in humanity he said they neither glorified god nor gave thanks and their foolish hearts became dark what kick-starts chaos in the human story a lack of gratitude and as he's talking to timothy about the last days how do you know the world is headed to its final destruction he says one of the key characteristics of the last days is people will be ungrateful it's what kick-started the chaos and it's what'll burn this all down it's a lack of gratitude so this to paul is seminal complaining is easy it takes no great skill negativity abounds we are saturated online can you find things to be grateful for can you find things to celebrate it takes effort to do that but i want to encourage you to do it consider making a list in your journal of things i'm grateful for if we're honest for many of us who journal it starts with negativity i don't know where my life's going i've not made enough money this people didn't notice me i'm slighted by this person i'm filled with anger and bitterness resentment inside amen i'm off to work right and we all kind of know how we can feel to stew in the pain of the world it's never hard to find tragedy in a broken world and yet the christian is meant to push back it and say but let me see god where you've blessed me let me see where you've helped me let me see where you've been good to me let me focus on where you've been so so kind to me we are meant to be cloaked in compassion and yet paul turns a corner here and says not just clothed in compassion but tailored with truth that's what you see in verse 16 let the word of christ dwell in you richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to god he says i want you to let the word of god these very words dwell in you richly now does that mean within you as an individual no he says dwell within you richly teaching and admonishing one another again this is talking corporately as the body as we speak to each other what should be our primary words the words of this book the words of god should saturate our communication with each other but for it to fill us as a community it's got to fill you as an individual that we're meant to be filled with truth that tailors and trims our thinking and our speaking and our living is guided by this word let the word of christ dwell in you richly when you dwell somewhere you live there that you take up residence and it's saying here the word of christ takes up residence in your heart he's moved in he lives there it's not a airbnb he didn't vrbo in your heart he's not even a renter he purchased your heart with his blood and then he moved in and when you move into a place you decorate it to fit your desires you don't go well these couches were left here i guess they're my couches if you show up in a house and the decor is ugly you say that couch out those blinds gone that rug ripped up you begin to change things and you say i want these kind of pictures hanging on the wall i want this kind of decor i want it to smell this way i'm going to get these kinds of candles and what jesus says is i purchased your heart and i moved in so when i move in i get to say what entertains in this house i get to say what this bedroom is like and what happens here i get to decide what kind of conversations happen around this kitchen table i permeate this place because this is where i live let the word of christ dwell in you richly richly means abundantly it means a lot the average american today spends seven and a half hours looking at their phone looking at a screen nine percent of americans interact with the scriptures on a daily basis nine percent it's a little bit higher when you ask weekly it's about 20 but how much of the bible are you reading a day i mean honestly maybe here in the church the most committed people you reading the bible for an hour a day that'd be pretty good reading scriptures for an hour a day so an hour a day versus seven hours a day on social media and like or let's take the average some of you read the bible the hour a day some of you read the bible zero minutes a day some of you five minutes a day i scroll swiftly on on my app so maybe average out half an hour a day as a church we spend half an hour with the unchangeable word of god and seven hours with whatever the world brings our day let me ask you who's discipling you at that point who's shaping your thinking who has tailored your assumptions who has formed the way you even think reality works and what a human identity is and for many of us if we're honest when we rarely interact with these words we judge it by our cultural norms rather than the other way around culture comes and goes cultural morays shift and move this word does not change it is fixed forever and we're meant to let this word dwell in us richly and if you say ben if i'm really going to do that a lot has to change in my life yes it does and if we're going to look different to the world we have to show them a very different way of living and i would submit to you the way the maker of the universe tells us to live within the universe he made is better and when you live this way you will be odd you will be strange and you will be attractive to a world that is stewing in resentment and fear and lust and pain we will be strange and alluring that's how it's been in the past that's how it will be now but we as a community need to let the word of god dwell in us richly and then dwell in the way we speak to each other richly teaching each other that means sharing with you things you do not know admonishing each other that means not just teaching you things but it means correcting where your thinking's wrong if your spirituality has never involved you pulling a brother or sister aside and saying hey i think you're wrong on this i think the way you're thinking about this relationship isn't in line with the word of god if you've never done that your spiritual journey is incomplete that this is part of what it means to be the people of christ it's not just and the pastor teaches and we all sit there it's to teach and admonish one another the admonishing is meant to happen across chairs even with six feet of difference distance then we say hey man i think you're off here i think you need to change here i think our lives need to conform to the image of christ because the world needs to see a community that's full of love and truth when john was asked to summarize jesus he said he was full of grace and truth when i first stepped into ministry i was building a youth ministry from scratch really overwhelming i was like how do you build a ministry from zero and i had to ask fundamental questions what even is a ministry what is a church what does a church do and i remember writing this sentence we are a network of loving relationships through which the truth flows freely that is what we're meant to be church that we are network knit together in love and in that love truth flows freely in the world today there seems to be this attempt to divide love and truth if i love you i just let you do whatever you want and i just baptize it and call it holy and if you speak the truth to people you're just judgmental and mean but jesus was filled with grace and truth i'm gonna come real and say some hard things because i love you and because i care and i care about you enough to say some things that are hard grace and truth go hand in hand and if we are a compassion filled scripture soaked society this town will think you are weird and beautiful and i promise you this is why we've grown as fast as we have and this is why we will continue to because the world is desperately in need of compassion and it's desperately in need of direction and we have both so whatever you do in word and deed do everything in the name of the lord jesus giving thanks to god the father through him he ends this section where we began it that jesus christ is lord not just life coach he rules all things and so to say no lord is an oxymoron we say yes so that everything every word and every deed comes under the lordship of jesus christ if i can't say that thing in jesus's presence i don't say it if i can't do that thing in front of jesus i don't do it but if there are things that he affirms i say them if there's things he approves i do them i want to live in accordance with the king because the world needs to see an authority who loves because that's our king he is the beautiful mix of grace and truth of strength and meekness of courage and compassion he is the lion and the lamb donna and i watched a video last night forget the title it was long it was like the most terrifying animal interactions on a gopro it's very specific little cameras out there people interacting with large creatures and it was listing them number 10 was a guy that got bumped by a great white shark and you're like get out of there zone right you know and all kinds of different interactions with animals through these little cameras that can go places cameras historically have not been able to go but the number one video is camera's sitting there and suddenly you see enter the view a lion and as it's coming up it's an hd video crystal clear and even when it's as far away from the camera you can tell that thing is big and it comes right up to the camera and you see that face without an ounce of fear in it you see the majesty of that muscular body and the size of those paws as it approaches the camera i'm safely on my couch in the living room and i'm scared and then you watch that lion approach this man and step forward and hug him and this man falls to the ground with this lion and begins to rub its mane and the lion is patting the man on the head with this enormous paw bigger than his head and you're watching this video and saying i don't know about the wisdom of this decision i'm not sure if i can promote your life choice and yet there's something majestic about it as we watched it to see an animal with instantly the power and authority to kill you the king of the jungle is my house but i come with all the power of my authority and i bring the affection of a kitten it's a resting to watch and you see the power and majesty of the lord jesus christ who made all things sustains all things rules all things and will end all things the day of his choosing step towards us not with the judgment we rightly deserve but with compassion kindness patience when his disciples don't get it again and again and again gentleness with you and me when you fail again when you break every promise bears with you forgives you speaks his word over you cherishes you promises to covenant in love and never let go of you until you're made complete that's the love that's been given to us and jesus says when you step out into the world dress like me put on the courage to tell the truth step out with the confidence of the fact that you know the majestic and matchless king and carry all that dignity with humility carry the power of knowing the truth about the universe with grace and this body that i gave my life for fill your interactions with love compassion patience kindness truth sing over each other sing over each other's psalms and hymns to remind you of my faithfulness sing over each other's spiritual songs to stir up reminders of how good i've been love each other so that the world will see the beauty of the matchless king let them see me through you you

Channel: Passion City Church DC

Views: 8,270

Rating: 4.9473686 out of 5

Keywords: Passion, Passion City Church, Passion Sermons, Ben, Stuart, Washington D.C., Passion D.C., christian, sixsteps, (six), passion conference, passion, passion city church worship, passion church, passion music, worship, jesus, ben stuart, colossians, live again

Id: t-GLEvzLCME

Length: 45min 33sec (2733 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021