THE NEW REALITY: Mosaic Conference 2019 - Erwin McManus

you would think the theme the new would not be very new but one of the great challenges in the space of faith is that so oftentimes we're much more captivated by the old than we are by the neo in fact there's something about not just christianity but religions as a whole that that it seemed to be better at holding on to the past and taking hold of the future and so there's attention sometimes because when we talk about the new it seems so much of the conversations around faith are really about fear of the new and a romantic relationship to the old i started doing some research just to remind myself what the struggle is because one of the interesting things about something that's new is that once it's embraced it becomes the old and so something doesn't really stay new forever and and there are always different things i hear about realities that i have to go back and ask is that really real i think we've probably all heard that every cell in our body regenerates every seven years and that's almost true there are some cells in our body that regenerate every four or five days because they're connected to our stomach and our stomachs demand the new and there's some of our cells that take up to 10 years to renew and and then it seems that our brain cells do not actually renew which is really disturbing that the only part of us that actually gets older and older and older is our brain but then there's some new research in neurogenesis that says maybe parts of the brain are made too are new too and i started thinking how strange it is that we are physiologically biologically being made new all the time whether we believe in god or not no matter what our faith is whatever our background is whether we're buddhists or muslims or or or or catholics or or hindus or atheists or agnostics or just downright confused all of us are being made new all the time it's inherent in our genetic makeup in fact if you stop being made new you die but not right away see one thing they discovered is that when you die it takes sometimes hours if not days for all your cells to die and so if all of your cells have all the genetic composition of you it means there's some of you that actually knows your dad long after you're dead just waiting to die i wonder how many of us are actually more like that and i look back i thought you know one of the big dramatic moments of the new was copernicus i i love copernicus i i love copernicus because he said something that was true and it got him in a lot of trouble copernicus was a heretic because he decided that he would unwrap this idea that that the earth is not the center of the universe that the entire universe does not revolve around the earth but in fact if the earth revolves around the sun and that there's this ever expanding galaxy and everyone thought copernicus was out of his mind and and i i just pulled up a couple of quotes which i thought were so interesting because western christianity has mostly been affected by two people john calvin and martin luther and they were both contemporaries of copernicus and so john calvin said this he said we indeed are not ignorant that the circuit of the heavens is finite and that the earth like a little globe is placed in the center john calvin the great theologian said everybody knows that god holds the earth like a globe and the entire universe revolves around it i think how amazing that most of christianity's thinking is still shaped by someone who thought that the earth was the center of the universe martin luther said this he said some other things that i really wanted to repeat but i couldn't repeat them and he said speaking of copernicus he must do something of his own this is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down even in these things that are thrown into disorder i believe in the holy scriptures martin luther was angry because copernicus was willing to violate their view of reality john calvin was angry and used the scriptures to convince people that copernicus was violating god's view of reality i wonder how many times we actually use god's name to defend our own inability to see the new and our fear to let go of the old i want to talk to you for a few moments about the new reality and of course history has progressed around 1680 newton came up with his laws and and newton had huge breakthroughs that seemed to explain everything until of course einstein came along and then around 1915 einstein came up with this theory of special relativity and and and this phrase that has become famous of e equals m c squared has become known by everyone and this incredible idea that that mass and energy are actually the same thing but moving at different speeds different rates of speed and to me this is so exciting because it sounds like magic a scientist sounds like he's a magician saying everything is energy it's so obvious he's wrong it's so clear einstein is wrong because what we see is reality or is it one of my great challenges when it came to faith and one of the reasons i love this particular event because we can talk about things that we don't usually talk about see when i when i was growing up i had views of reality that were violated when i came to faith not by jesus and not by the bible but by christians and i thought that i had to take all these different ideas and flatten them down so that i could think like a christian one of the huge problems in our faith is that we think we're supposed to have big hearts but small brains and i want to submit to you that one of the new realities is that people of faith need to be the best thinkers in the world i just had today the same conversation i walked over to a store and the guy who was there walking us through said i'm an atheist he from sweden seemed like a really wonderful guy i said you're an atheist he goes yes i am and i said i i could never be an atheist i believe in endless possibilities and he said well well he said i don't i said it's amazing that you can be an atheist i don't have that level of certainty about anything because well i'm not really certain i said so you're not an atheist because well i'm not one of those atheists that thinks they're right or sure or certain i'm just an atheist who believes there's no god i said that's fascinating and and we just had this little brief conversation i thought it it to me so amazing because see when i came to faith i thought that my brain had to get smaller and smaller and smaller my ideas had to get smaller and smaller and smaller my imagination had to get smaller and smaller and smaller if you hear nothing else from me over these days i want you know that is not jesus's mandate for your life when you enter into a relationship with jesus let me tell you it's gonna be reason to erase the boundaries of your imagination he's gonna open you up to endless possibilities i'm convinced that when you actually grow in a relationship with jesus you get smarter because you are no longer allowed to be arrogant and dogmatic you have to be open that there is truth out there that you have not yet gotten a hold of you have to learn how to live in uncertainty and mystery and love the fact that you don't know everything you think you know so i grew up with all these different ideas and thoughts connected to quantum mechanics and complexity theory and string theory and and the possibilities of not a universe but multiverses and and and i couldn't find any space in faith where that was allowed where you can have conversations about it but i keep finding that that there was a period of time where science seemed to be a violation of faith but now i find science to keep affirming the complexity of faith see when i first heard about complexity theory i thought this is amazing that complexity theory believes that a butterfly flapping its wings in the amazon can actually have an effect and cause an avalanche in antarctica it sounds as if one action can cause a cosmic reaction as if one person could take one fruit from a tree and cause the entire universe to go into chaos and and i started wondering if if we need to step back and begin listening to the scriptures in a fresh new way and understand that god trying to take us into a new reality so i want to throw you into a new reality i want to throw out the possibility that you are not of this world and you think you're of this world because all the material evidence tells you you are but it's the same kind of data that tells you that wood is not energy just because your test of reality with your senses violates the reality doesn't mean it's not more real one of the verses that i have always been intrigued with because i want to learn how to think like god in isaiah 55 9 the scriptures tell us as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts i read that and i go i agree it's really obvious god that you and i are not the same that you're thinking at a different level but one of the things i do know is that i'm thinking at a different level now than i used to and i never thought i could live and think and see at this level but when i was younger i thought i was thinking and seeing at the highest level and each time i live longer walking with jesus it's almost as if he keeps removing the ceiling and saying you thought this was all i could do you thought this is all you could see that you thought this is all you could become but there's more and there's more and there's more so i thought about this imagery as the heavens are higher than the earth and the imagery can sometimes help us and sometimes it can actually us you see when we think about heaven and earth and hell the our ideas of heaven and hell are created out of a construct where we believe the earth was flat and we thought the earth was flat and so heaven is up and hell is down and we're in the middle i don't know if you've kept up with some of the recent advancements but we've actually broken out of the atmosphere have traveled into space and heaven was not there we've gone pretty far we even found out not only that heaven was not there but that pluto is not a planet we've made some incredible discoveries and some of them have broken our hearts and we thought that hell was down there except where's down there except the center of the earth because now that it's round down there is the other side of the earth see is it possible that our way of seeing reality has actually made us blind to the new reality that heaven and earth and earth and hell are not geographic locations separated by up and down but they're textures of human experience i want you to listen with me because what i love about jesus and what i think is so interesting about him is that he seems to constantly contradict himself he says i will never leave you or forsake you i go thank you and then he says and i'm coming back and go good all right we need you to come back but if you only believe he's coming back you may miss that he's actually here and you only believe he's here you may miss he's coming back see well but jesus is here but he's also there so you know how we explain that well he's god he can be here there and everywhere because that's how jesus rolls in ephesians chapter 1 verses 18 to 21 it says i pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened we're going to come back to that in order that you may know the hope to which you've been called the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe we're just getting started that power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly realm far above all rule and authority power and dominion in every name that is invoked not only in the present age but also in the one to come so what we know from the scriptures is that jesus who is here has also been raised and is seated at the right hand in the heavenly realms so if we're going to believe what it actually says we have to believe these two things that jesus is here right now and that he's seated in the heavenlies we go thank god god can do that but then i want you to read a parallel passage in ephesians chapter 2 verse 4 it's in the same book written by the same guy so he knows what he just said in ephesians chapter 2 verse 4 to 10 and i may not read that far but it says this but because of his great love for us god who is rich and mercy made us alive in christ we'll come back to that even when we were dead in transgressions it is by grace you have been saved now listen verse 6 and god raised us up with christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in christ jesus now you need to pay attention to the tenses because it says that god took his power and raised jesus from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly realms and then he uses the exact same language to say god has raised you up he has raised me up he has raised us up with christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms i've always wondered is it possible for there to be multiple universes that coexist at the same time are they different universes with different species and different entities or are those universes parallel to us and there are two me's and three me's and three thousand me and ten thousand means or is it the same me in every single dimension haven't you thought about that and i have wondered to myself how is it possible that a god who is eternal steps into time and stays with us in time but stays in eternity and why does that imply for us and maybe just maybe when you look at things like string theory that there might be an infinite number of futures it explains some of the possibilities of how god can be a sovereign god and a god who gives us free will because what if there are an infinite number of futures and god is in every single one of those futures and when we make a decision we eliminate some futures and we create other ones but they're not too big for god because an infinite number of futures are small in comparison to an infinite god i'm just i'm just sharing my thoughts with you because these are the things that drive me crazy and cost me sleep every night but what i see here and see what i know is this you can think i'm out of my mind but this is not me this is what the scriptures are saying so you can say irwin i think you're out of your mind i don't agree with you but you have to go back and read this and decide for yourself if you can believe in this possibility that seems impossible that you are here in this moment but you are also seated in eternity with jesus right now so you are a transcendent being that is not waiting for the day where you step out of time and space they've been trying to understand the time-space continuum and i think it's too limiting we need to understand the continuum outside of time and space that in this moment you are already in eternity with god you are at two places at the same time like yay i'm not sure if that's good and so then maybe the question is not are you in eternity but are you living for maternity but it goes on for it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves it is a gift of god not by works so that no one can boast for you or god's handiwork your guts craftsmanship your god's work of art created in christ jesus do good work which god has prepared in advance for us to do now it says that you are god's workmanship so i started thinking about artists true artists care about the material they use i have a friend named mako fujimora a japanese painter one of the most brilliant artists i've ever known and he goes to japan and uses a particular kind of parchment that can only be created by a very small number of all japanese craftsmen and this skill takes so long that when they die that skill will be lost and he'll never be able to recreate the same level of art in that particular genre and on that parchment he'll use minerals that are precious like gold the colors explode off the canvas because the quality of the material he uses and yet we think that god as an artist is using decaying material in his artwork what would motivate god in any way to keep trying to redesign us with the dead of us and not the life of us if we are god's workmanship we should pay attention to the material that now is in us because the first thing the artist does is he chooses his canvas and he chooses his material and then he begins to design his masterpiece and i want to submit to you that you have material in you that is eternal in colossians 3 the same rhythm exists again verse 1. since then since then since then you have been raised with christ assuming this i hope you get this now he says since then you have been raised with christ if you don't understand this nothing else is going to make sense to you since then you have been raised you think oh but that's like a metaphor we've been raised back to life no it says you were raised into the heavenly realms you were taken out of time and space you are no longer confined to the reality of this brokenness you are now a citizen of eternity and you can access that in time and space since then you have been raised with christ set your hearts on things above above where mars set your hearts on things above where christ is seated at the right hand of god it says set your hearts on things above but they're only accessible in the heavenly realms if you're seated with jesus there see if you choose to act like you are bound to this world you will be bound to this world if you choose to act like a prisoner of time and space you will be a prisoner of time and space but if you understand that you are an eternal being that you're not waiting for the end of time or the end of your life to begin your eternity that attorney has been poured into your essence that you have been transformed from the inside out and that it is this attorney that god is using to create the masterpiece of you what god is doing just like your cells regenerate and push away the dead and they step into the new god is pushing out the old jew and recreating you from the inside out so since you've been raised with christ set your hearts on things above this is where we're supposed to live see this is a beautiful world because god gave it to us you're supposed to enjoy this world you're also supposed to take care of it you're supposed to be a steward of this planet and the things in this life are to be enjoyed because god loves when we experience pleasure but what you need to realize is that you're not supposed to be confined or limited by the realities of this world you're supposed to access the things from above he says set your minds on things above again not on earthly things why for you died and your life is now hidden with christ in god for when christ who is your life appears then you will appear with him do you hear what he's telling you you are already drenched in the glory and wonder and presence and beauty and power of jesus but if you want to act like you're just this earthly being confined to time and space then god will let you but if you realize that you have already stepped into the reality of eternity you just need to unlock it and unleash it and this is what's beautiful you see the metaphor when god talks about heaven and he talks about earth he's shifted he says i'm going to talk to you about life because heaven is not a place it's a space that is filled with the presence of god and when you're alive you are eternal for you died and your life is now hidden with christ in god when christ who is your life appears you will appear with him why because you're are you with him have you realized that the new is already you have you come to embrace that you are the new stop waiting for the new to come step up and be the new for it has come and we are supposed to be the declaration of life that the new is available for every person who gets sick of the old i don't know about you but i'm done wasting one more minute dying i'm gonna spend every minute living now listen to what the scriptures tell us in second corinthians chapter five verse four for while we'll we are in this tent i love that for while we are we are in this tent we groan and are burdened because we do not wish to be unclosed but to be closed instead with our heavenly dwelling so that what is mortal listen to this may be swallowed up by life so the imagery telling us here is okay here's what the tension is you still have a temporary tent this body is a temporary tent every year i live i'm kind of glad it's temporary and this body is the last remnant of the old but the new has already been born in me and the new in me knows this body is just a tent it's not a permanent residence it's just a temporary space holder and so my body is groaning oh my knees are groaning and my back is burdened and my joints are a declaration that something's wrong that's right [Music] and your body is trying to tell you that this is not the permanent you [Music] and so we have this beautiful reminder of our bodies getting older and older and older because our bodies are still in this old order but our soul our spirit is alive and we are already the new and so guess what your soul actually feels naked in your present body that's what it says see your soul knows this isn't quite right your soul knows this is temporary your soul knows this is the old being pushed out because we do not wish to be unclosed so our souls are longing for the day where our bodies catch up with us but to be closed instead with our heavenly dwelling and here's what it looks like here's what the clothing looks like so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life so here is the outcome here's the outcome going what do i do with this all right okay i can accept i'm in two places at the same time i'm in eternity and in time and space i'm seated in the heavenlies with jesus and i'm living in the presence of jesus right now but what do i do with that the journey on this earth is to allow the life in you to consume every part of you and to not allow that which is a part of the old to dictate who you are you need to step up and tell yourself that's the old that's not the new that's who i was that's not who i am and every day what is mortal will be swallowed up by not the immortal but by life see we we've i think held on to some wrong constructs we thought okay there's got to be the end of time and then there's eternity now if it's eternal it's already going you with me [Music] see it was eternal before time it's eternal during time it's eternal after time do you realize the implications of this i probably shouldn't say this but i'm going to say this anyway and you know the scriptures tell us that jesus he was crucified he had a couple of days off god you ever i just had a couple days ago i'm just going to do my thing right so what does jesus do when no one's looking for him no one's asking him to do anything but the scripture tells us he descends into hell and it says that he proclaims the gospel to everyone there and he set captives free now stay with me for a minute you see earth the human story is contained within time but our concerts of heaven and hell are outside of time so that means everyone who's ever lived who has gone to hell was there everyone who died when jesus was alive and what the hell was there everyone who has lived after jesus and what the hell was there and everyone who will ever live that is going to hell will be there that every human being who will ever exist was there and jesus showed up declared to them hope and set them free and i know i know people have free will and they have choice but i'm kind of thinking i i was pondering in my mind there was a time where people didn't believe the americas existed you know that that's why native americans are called indians my grandfather from el salvador told me when you go to the states they're going to call you an indian they're going to call you an indian because a man came across europe landed on the wrong continent was confused don't let someone else's mistakes define you and so [Applause] but just because you didn't believe the americas existed didn't mean they did not exist see someone may not believed africa existed but it existed but let's say you went on a trip on a ship in the 1500s and the ship got blown off course and you landed in america and there was an in and out burger and you went oh it really exists see it's a lot easier to convince someone who's there that it's real and then what if while you're there you're hoping someone would come and help you because you don't know how to get out of where you're at you know how you got there but you don't know how to get out and you're not sure who's actually god and you're not sure what religion is right you're not sure what you should believe but only one person shows up and his name is jesus and he declares freedom to you and he says i know you earned this i know you deserve this i know you chose this but i came down here because i'm not giving up on you so get out of here right now see why do we keep limiting god to time and space when god is eternal and so is his love these are just thoughts that i think we should consider because as i've stepped into a relationship with jesus i've experienced something shift inside of me i find myself less and less comfortable with living as if i'm a species contained in time and space and i find it so much more natural to live my life as if i'm spirit transcendent connected to the creator of the universe and have access to life you do not have access to a lower grade of life than you will have in eternity jesus only gives one kind of life it's life the question is not is jesus giving you a lesser life to survive this life the question is are you satisfied with a lesser life in this life or maybe it's time to say jesus i believe you are life and i am convinced that you have transformed me and that you have erupted life within me i believe that the material inside of me is called life and that life is transcendent it cannot be stopped by death so i don't have to worry about death it cannot be contained by time so i don't have to be limited by time it cannot be contained by his face don't have to act like i'm a victim to space i know i'm a lie and you have to decide how much of that life will you access and take a hold of i want all the life that god has for me how about you i want us to change humanity's view of reality i want us to be video the new reality when i was a kid because i was you know messed up i actually came to a point where i convinced myself i was from another planet and it was all the science fiction i was reading never seen a bible but i read a lot of robert heinlein and isaac asinov and all those guys and i used to run away a lot i would go out to fields and i would look at the stars in the middle of night and i would just scream i just beg whoever left me here to come back and get me i i would i would i convinced myself that i was like a social experiment that my species was trying to see if we could integrate with humans and i i won't let them know no it doesn't work and we don't work with humans and we look like them we kind of we move like them we have a lot of features like them but i just knew that that whatever species i was it couldn't be this one because i felt so disconnected and alone and broken and empty and i realized what was happening is my soul didn't know how to translate the fact that i knew i was dead and i was existing and if i accepted this as the only reality that there was i would die never having lived see that's why jesus came he didn't come to make you a better person he came to make you a new human and you'll never step in the fullness of who jesus longs for you to be if you don't realize you are not of this world that's why the scriptures tell us that you are an alien and a stranger in this world because you've been redesigned with new material and i don't know what your old material looked like but don't let anyone tell you you still are who you were you need to go back home look at the mirror and go i look the same on the outside but it's all new material on the inside we've been wrong about a lot of things we thought the world was flat we thought that the sun revolved around the earth we thought that that matter and energy were two different things we've been wrong about so many things and we've also been wrong about what it means to be human and there's so much conversation now about you know humans are just no different than any other species do you realize that to make that declaration is a violation of everything that's obvious not just everything that's true but of what's obvious see you are a transcendent being you have a consciousness you're aware of your existence and of your mortality how could we ever have ideas of god how could we have ideas of the infinite and the eternal it's our souls trying to let us know that we've been confused by the mirage and we've relinquished the reality and what jesus came to do is he came to give us the reality of life it's so hard to talk to people when you know their language but you use different meanings with the same words and jesus would talk and talk and talk and say you're blind they go no we can see trust me you're blind it's oh jesus he doesn't get it we can see jesus says you know you're dead no no no we're alive no no no no you're saying you're dead oh no we're alive okay it's all the words you see we have taken all the words that god gave us in our search for meaning and our search for our intention and our search for our connection to god and we've diminished those words are you really living or are just existing are you surviving are you bound by the old i i remember years ago when i was in beverly hills when i was working on some film projects and i had a chance to maybe sell a film and i had this guy they said it was going to finance it and you know how that goes so i drove up to beverly hills it was 40 acres and there was a gated i didn't know that somebody could have that many acres in beverly hills and there was a gated road and i had to get past the gated road and go down another road and get to his house and and while we were there i was really nervous and he walks in and goes you got 30 minutes i have a meeting with caa he was not warm he was not kind he was just business so i choked i panicked i just i just looked and then my two friends were producers started pitching my ideas and me they did a really good job and then finally looked at me goes you're going to say anything and i said uh yeah yeah you know i'm latino and my mom always said either take someone to a meal or buy bring them gifts because that's the latin way and uh you didn't have time for meals so i brought him some gifts and i gave him a box of things and books and art and work and he pulls out this short film that was in there and he goes tell me about this one i said no not that one pick a different one because right before i walked in i said i made a deal with god you ever prayed but really you were just telling god i said god i'm so grateful that you got me here but no one wants to make the movies i want to make because they know i'm a pastor and they go no no you need to make faith films you make christian films like oh no i want to make art pieces they go yeah yeah i know and uh and so i said he doesn't know i'm a pastor he doesn't even know i'm a christian so if god if it's okay with you i'm not gonna like bring you up i did i said god okay like it's not personal you know i'm just not gonna bring you up because i i really want to get a movie made and you kind of get in my way and so i didn't bring god up and then he said what's this film and it was something around ecclesiastes and i said you know it's about a jewish guy and uh and uh i mean you know like a jewish philosopher king you know named solomon in the book of ecclesiastes you know in in the bible and uh and and he goes what's it about he goes well where solomon says there's nothing new under the sun he goes well do you agree with that and i said no i think solomon was wrong he goes well then why is life so mundane i have this billionaire look at me and ask me why is life so mundane and i explained to them well you see when you live your life outside of god you are part of the created order so there's nothing new under the sun there's nothing new you're just in the old it's an endless cycle but when you're a part of the creative order when you're connected to the creator of the universe he makes everything now and he goes can you come back tomorrow and i said to talk about my phone he said no no no i probably won't finance one of your films but but i'd like to talk more about this so i said sure so i went home came back the next day because you know i don't do anything i don't work right so i just go up to beverly hills and we start walking and he explains to me he has a volleyball court where all these famous actors play volleyball every saturday he never invited me and uh and then as we're walking goes you want you want to know why i asked you to come back i said sure i'd like to know that and he said when i walked in you had an unexplainable piece that i've been searching for all my life i just wanted to know where did you find that piece i thought so funny i was terrified i was nervous i was anxious and all he experienced was peace you know why you see you may decide you don't want to talk about god or you're not going to bring god into the room but if you're alive life goes with you everywhere you go so i am so excited to be here with you tonight but i want you know this is not my better vantage point right now in this moment i am seated in the heavenlies at the side of jesus i have complete access to life i have everything god has ever hoped for me wanted for me promised me it's all mine and that me that is in eternity is wondering why the me that's in time and space is acting as if i'm trapped in time and space i want to change your view of the time space continuum you are an eternal creature you have already connected to the creator of the universe you are transcendent you are already the new now stop acting like the old and let the new begin [Music]

Channel: Mosaic

Views: 1,609

Rating: 4.9322033 out of 5

Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC

Id: KDuAtLHpTDc

Length: 42min 55sec (2575 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021