What Now?

hi guys pastor matt chandler here pray that this sermon this resource uh be used by god in conjunction with you belonging to a local church to grow you and sanctify you in your faith if these resources bless you would you consider giving back to us here at tbc you can do that either through the app or you can go online to tbc resources and give there again pray that this blesses you and grows you in your love for jesus christ good morning we said in our last two weeks of this series dual citizenship that uh it would probably be a mess uh and here we are uh we have a president-elect we have no concession speech and we have controversy uh and if you've been paying attention we should be fairly rooted right now in this moment we should be fairly confident right now in this moment in the fact that the godhead's not panicking uh jesus hasn't ordered a special meeting in the heavenlies to you know work out what's coming next for us that you and i as followers of jesus christ we've been made for a moment like this a moment wrought with anxiety and fear a moment uh concerned about the future for our children and grandchild like you and i we were made for this moment that's what we talked about uh last week and so what i wanted to do uh regardless of what happened with the election is kind of answer the question what now right that's all i'm trying to do today okay what now uh the election's quasi over it should be over sometimes the next six to nine months we'll know uh right or maybe it'll never be over maybe it's just four years of fun again right but but regardless of what's coming what is the church what are the people of god to do now well the the first answer and the easiest answer is to submit to god joyfully in prayerful obedience in praying for the leaders of our nation regardless of who they are um we have as a church and i don't like here's what's funny i'm in here 18 years we we prayed for w we prayed for obama got some great emails in that run uh we uh have prayed for trump and now we will pray for biden and trump and however it plays out we are a people that are going to pray for the leaders of our nation because that's god's command not a suggestion not as remember we looked at how paul gave us the blueprint for overthrowing wickedness and it looks a lot different than we thought it did last week right like we're to do good we're to seek the welfare of the city we're to pray we're not to lash out and get vengeance we're to trust god with vengeance we are to walk in humility and and so let me for this is first timothy two one through two what's next first of all then i urge that supplications prayers intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people thanksgivings for all people look at me thanksgivings for all people does that rustle you a little bit let's keep amen it does wrestle you or amen you like that passage amy let's keep going all right uh for kings and all who are in high position that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life godly and dignified in every way now i want you to remember we covered this last week paul is writing this about the roman empire no matter how left you think we're going no matter how wild you think things are we've got a long way to go to catch up to rome right we got a long way to go up for you and me to be thrown in prison and killed we got a long way to go uh for you and i to be caught on fire uh to warm and light some senators garden party we got a long way to go before they're feeding us to animals and and what does paul write to timothy here pray for him pray for caesar no sir pray for herod do you not know what they did to jesus no he says and here's why we here's why we struggle with this i don't think we struggle with it conceptually i think we struggled doing it i think we continue to not fully grasp just how much power there is in earnest prayer and the seeking of god through fasting and prayer we we we just can't quite get that that's actually where the battle is right and and when we do then you can do this and you'll understand that you're not wasting your time but you're actually um causing some war in the heavenly so i maybe i've already said this i've done i'm saying a lot of stuff i've said a lot uh i've been here 18 years i got one testimony that's all i got but um you know we're coming up on advent and and if you read the christmas story in any of the gospels it's this quite like it was a silent night it was a holy night it was like everything was calm and and it was bright and it's such this surreal quiet beautiful picture but go read about it in revelation 12. go read what was actually happening go read what it was what it was like in the heavenlies when jesus is being born the revelation 12 describes like an all-out war breaking loose in the the heavenlies over the coming of jesus christ could it be that when you and i pray we're actually joining in a kind of combat that actually changes things more so than our whining complaining thrashing fighting and so we pray we're to be a people of prayer about our president about our leader about our nation and so that that's the first thing and then the second thing would be to get back to work here's what i mean by i love this this is um ephesians 1 22-23 i'm going to read it out of the message i don't know how you feel about that but you'll be fine so you know ephesians 1's this is just epic huge salvific christological look at jesus look at the look at how he's outside of space and time look at what he's up to and then it ends like this at the center of all of this christ rules the church listen to this sentence the church you see is not peripheral to the world the world is peripheral to the church the church is christ's body in which he speaks and acts and by which he fills everything with his presence so i love how peterson took the greek there and and broke it down to say this the church is not peripheral to the world the world is peripheral to the church so if i could simplify that ultimate reality is what god is doing in his church it stands as what is most true what is most right and what is most good i'm not saying the church as many of us has experienced it that is broken and frail and weak i'm saying like c.s lewis wrote in the screwtape letters the church across all time and space mighty as an army with banners that ultimate reality isn't what we're watching on the news right now ultimate reality is god pushing back darkness establishing the light and saying hey the gates of hell they're not gonna be able to hold up here the gates of hell will not be able to hold up here so here's part of what i want to do today is just to provoke your missional imagination i want to encourage your zeal for what is good and right um so i i became a christian through uh the testimony of a guy i played football with he played i was on the team but um he he just listen i don't know if you know this discipleship actually begins before a person accepts jesus i don't even knew that discipleship doesn't okay now i'm a christian now disciple you're actually discipled into the kingdom like you really are and so the reason i think i am the way i am is for how i came into the kingdom which is a man who is just fearless about what anybody would say about him and very loudly in a non-righteous locker room as though there is a righteous locker room said to me um i need to tell you about jesus when you want to do that and then jeff i never felt judged by him he wasn't like hey these girls these aren't the right kind of hey these these parties that you shouldn't be living that it was just all about hey man what do you think about um god like do you believe there's a god man do you think there's eight right and then inviting me to jam on wednesday night which stood for jesus and me and then giving me a book and answering my questions and and walking and showing me hospitality like like him and i held hardly anything in common other than we played football together right he liked quartet gaither music he listened uh he he kind of lived with his grandparents was a a really kind of rigid soul and i am not any of those things to this day i don't really care for quartet music i know who the gaithers are never really got never that was never my scene and so like jeff was just always there always drawing me in um and and put up with my person out like i remember uh went and saw run dmc beastie boys at the houston summit anybody see that show i'm 46 you're gonna date yourself was there a hand anybody see you're on the mcbc boys thank you i knew somebody in here all right so see run dmc bc boys incredible show keep in mind i'm a lost person don't email me about their lyrics or don't do that all right i was like a 17 year old kid and who didn't know jesus and then the very next night went back with jeff to see michael libby smith and dc talk yeah see oh that gets uh there we are now i know where i am now how many of you saw that concert that's that's what i thought that's what i thought no no judgment but but as a 17 year old unbeliever like i thought that second night was like kitschy like it looked like a saturday live sketch and yet jeff just continued to invite me in and so what happened when uh the spirit of god opened up my heart to believe is that i didn't know what to do except what i saw jeff doing so i got a t-shirt that said i heart jesus and i didn't know how to share what jeff had shared so so i just there were these little comic book tracks called chick tracts you guys remember those they were terrible most of them were but there was this one uh called this was your life and i was just handing that out to everybody and i had handed it out to a buddy of mine named uh jimmy hereford and then i'm sitting out in the hallway i don't know why i was in the hallway don't quite remember i'm sure i was just making up a quiz or something and and i'm sitting up there and jimmy walks out and he's like i can never do this man i'm smoking weed every day i'm selling weed um and i'm just like who's talking about weed jimmy we're talking about jesus here and this starts this relationship with jimmy i start bringing him to jam jesus and me on wednesday nights uh and after a while of answering questions that he had and trying to assuage his concerns that there's no way if there was a god that the god could love him and care for him and forgive him and see he was a violent kid a kid very much into the drug scene of our high school and so i take him to jesus and me again on a wednesday night and we're watching a video called hell's bells and i don't know if you got to watch this video again by the dc talk michael ivy smith thing maybe you have um hell's bells was a video that basically said that if you listen to secular music you would do amphetamines and kill your parents and it was so dated i don't know if you maybe you didn't see this it was so dead it was like patrons of the band journey show up to the concert in a drug-induced haze and it was just like this fear-mongering don't why would you listen to journey when you could listen to um russ taft and it was this weird and at some point in the middle that jimmy looked over to me and said hey man i want to do it i was like bro you cannot kill your parents like they will know it you are a troubled kid they are they will they will arrest you as soon as you kill your parents like no you're an idiot like i want to do this jesus thing i literally i didn't know what to do next i literally didn't know what to do next so i was like oh well let's go let's go talk to jerry who's the student pastor i told my dad's like hey this is my friend jimmy he he wants to give his life to jesus and and so then you know jerry just asked some questions and then the three of us prayed and like to this day jimmy's following after jesus and and then he didn't know what to do except what what i had done and so he immediately got gets a t-shirt irg he starts in fact if you remember if you remember carl brauer here carl brower was an unbelieving pagan working at abuelos in abilene until a co-worker named jimmy herford started to share the gospel with carl leading carl brower to christ and on and on it goes now i wish it sounds so clean and neat man it was i mean it was wrought with foolishness so since i didn't know anything since i didn't know anything there are these moments that i look back on and cringe um and so there was this time where i was talking with jimmy and trying to help him understand and um i had jolly ranchers in my pocket and he was like hey man give me one of those jolly ranchers so i pulled him i was like what flavors do you have i was like all i have is fire and he was like man i don't like fire i was like well you know you know we've been talking if you don't like fire jimmy i i think we need to you need to reread that this was your life thing and like that happened like that happened i i was texting with jimmy just a couple weeks ago we were still like that happened and then at a junior varsity football game we were up just kind of hanging out and a guy that that jimmy really hated the guy really hated jimmy and the guy walks in and jimmy's like man i hate that guy i just like to go down there and punch him in the face and i said well brother if you if you do i mean he might kill you and he's i ain't afraid to die and so i was like okay i mean you're gonna throw me a softball lob like that i gotta swing i was like well i think i mean cool that you're not afraid to die but i think you should probably consider the things that we're talking about before you kind of just put yourself out there to be killed by somebody i mean i mean just terrible ways of evangelizing right there's not a book that's jolly rancher evangelism all right like just terrible plays and yet like i've been trying to tell you salvation belongs to our god it didn't belong to me it didn't matter that it was like i couldn't answer questions and i'm using hard candy to you know invoke fears of hell and like none of that mattered right it was just god honors faith and he honors a love for him that can't help talking about him he just honors it and so i wanted to kind of pull our hearts back to what has god given us to do what has god called us into and so with that said um let's look at this is matthew 28 18 through 20. and jesus came and said to them all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit teaching them to observe all that i have commanded you and behold i am with you always even to the end of the age now um when i first got to the village this kind of missional angst to see people come to know jesus he was all that i knew other than a four or five year stint at a small baptist college i've never been immersed in christian culture and what i want to see is people come to know and love jesus i love watching the miracle of spiritually dead to spiritually alive there's nothing no miraculous healing no prophetic word no resurrection from the dead that is of greater miraculous power than someone who is dead in their trespasses and sins being made alive in christ no greater miracle no greater stunning heavenly wow what was that thing than watching someone far from god fall in love with jesus so when i got to the village early on i mean some of you were here i was like i don't want transfer growth like i don't want people from other churches coming here i want to see people who don't know jesus come and god answered that prayer and it was chaos and difficult and that the trauma for me back in that those early days were trying to hold this line between historic her church folk god bless us and those who who were new to all of this and so the the volume of emails i had to answer every week about people smoking uh on the front steps as people were walking because they were new i mean they didn't even know anybody they was like say man can i get a light in fact one guy got saved on easter because josh drew if you remember josh drew is one of our worship guys he actually was late starting the the the service on easter if you've been here at easter it's crazy right we're late starting the service because josh ran to his car to get a lighter to light this guy's cigarette and then the guy finally finishes his cigarette and he comes in and i know all about second-hand smoke let's not start those emails again and and he sees the worship pastor lit his cigarette it blew his mind and gave his life to christ that week right like and then the emails about somebody needs to tell these women to quit dressing like strippers and i'm like but they're strippers we had a guy od in the martin building bathroom had to call an ambulance i mean it was grimy and then after about three years i was like please god give us some transfer growth anyone with the bible anyone who knows something about hygiene to teach these young bucks anything are you right like then we were like please give it to us now the call on your life and on my life is to go make disciples teaching them to observe let me i want to be careful here but i want to be honest there's this dance that occurs in this area maybe it occurs everywhere i just know where i am let me try to explain the dance let me do it this way valley creek down the road here's their mission statement great church we are a movement of hope for the city and beyond praise god i'm for that yes let there be hope in an age of cynicism let there be hope rock point making more and better followers of jesus christ love rock point i sit by ron twice a week as we watch our boys play football together right love ron holden man of god doing a beautiful work over at rock point here's the well for god's glory the well exists that through us he may change lives by reaching the loss yes equipping the church please and sending disciples to all people yes i love matt over at the well he's actually that's an acts 29 church i'm i'm the president of acts 29 i've been the president of acts 29 for eight years gateway church our vision is to see people saved healed set free discipled equipped empowered and serving anybody want to argue with that they were like uh no they shouldn't be doing no that's an amazing desire this is their intent we want to do this and here's watermark to call people to be fully devoted followers of jesus christ i want to get on board with every one of those but i don't want to spend my life shuffling the deck and reshuffling the deck see here's the dance and again i'm not it's in a by shaming for anyone um but i just want to expose the dance so we can talk a little bit about it um by and large these churches that i'm naming are growing off of each other so here's the way it works i've been here 18 years i can speak to this with some authority you're you're at rock point or you're at whatever and they do something that bothers you you love them at first but then they do something that bothers you maybe they touch on one of your idols maybe they they're not doing something you wish they would do or they're not and so you're like oh great let's come over here and then you're there for a few years and they do something you don't like so then you come over here and you and you kind of join and then listen i'm just if you ever come up to me and say i just feel like i wasn't being fed at the last church i was at and then theologically they're here i literally internally am putting you on a clock in my spirit and knowing three years from now you'll be saying that about me and about us and this is the dance that we play now let me tell you why that's heartbreaking in the last census 60 percent of denton county said that they were religiously unaffiliated 575 000 residents of denton county said i'm a religious nun i i don't believe in anything meanwhile our big churches are shuffling the deck hey we'll take some members there we'll take some members here we'll send you these members and sometimes that's a delightful thing head on out and sometimes that's aw but but you're shuffling the deck where all these people are far from god and so i'm just you just got to know my heart like if you're you don't need to give me any qualifying statements when we meet this week well we started visiting from you're fine you're fine i'm just saying that i don't want the growth of the village church in the decade to come be a bunch of christians that are more like um hear this for the way i mean it because i don't necessarily mean it in a completely negative way that to come as christian connoisseurs right like a like a christian somalia going oh man i love the training program gosh i like chandler's balance he's just so i love his hermeneutics and he sometimes will be funny and oh gosh that's amazing right that's not what i want like i just think gosh find that in books in some other place 575 000 people that go yeah i'm religiously unaffiliated i'm not a christian i'm not a buddhist i'm not i'm a the largest growing um category of unbelievers is called nuns they don't identify as atheists or agnostics there's like i'm nothing i'm religiously nothing and over half of our county identifies like this right so let's let's dive into this passage oh i've talked a little bit oh no i'm going listen i'm not i'll just get in trouble by the way never mind i was about to hip a loss let me just keep i can't get in trouble everybody's quarantined so let's go uh and jesus came and said to them all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me so go therefore and make disciples of all nations so this literally translates as you go it's not like some of us are called to go do this it's all of us as we go where we are are to be doing what making disciples listen one of the reasons i'm just absolutely convinced that christians get bored and start to look more like the world is they haven't stepped into the very thing god's wired designed and placed them to do so you know what i was saying about uh the christmas story in revelation 12 i wonder what your neighborhood actually looks like you being an ambassador of jesus christ on that block what would that well i mean it's going to look like nothing if you feel like you have no responsibility there but but what if you understand why you've been placed there what if you understand oh there's an eternal purpose that i live on this block that's acts 17 that's psalm 139 what if you walked into work every day as an ambassador of jesus christ and understood there's a reason that god wired me and gifted me and gave me this job like think about what that might look like in the heavenlies if we actually stepped into god's call on our lives last four years i have said a thousand times you are not spectators in this game like you're on the field there is no 12th man sorry aggs it's like we're all on the field right now there is no six-man trophy if you're an nba fan we're all on the field all called by god all gifted by god all placed by god all for the glory of god and all that you would learn the joy and excitement of god using you as broken and as goofy as you are for his glory to call men and women unto himself gosh you don't have to be an expert i had jolly ranchers fire jolly ranchers it's not it's not about content always although the content of the gospel can't change we you and i we're living in a post culture i'm not saying that truth doesn't matter keep on me because i need you to not understand this what i'm saying is i watch my specifically my children and that generation and then these the 20 year olds and as we kind of see that play out those who are far from god like presuppositional apologetics i mean it's just we're post-truth so it doesn't really land like it because it's it's more about what they feel versus what they think if you haven't read the coddling of the american mind i just commend it to you it's not a christian book but it'll certainly help you explain the context that we find ourselves in but if you remember back to week one of this sermon that you and i obey a higher law than the law of the land remember the law that we obey the law of what love so radical hospitality compassion care concern those are the hermeneutics or that's that's the apologetic of our day again i just like i just keep trying to help you understand that something as simple as asking somebody how you can pray for them which by the way the the macro version of what's going on in western culture is that christians are hated and despised and seen as homophobic bigots but i have not experienced that on the ground in any way and data from the pew report says that people are far more open to this than than we think there listen to this in the latest pew research appeals reputable 81 percent of nuns so let's just play our game 575 000 people in denton county if they lined up with the pew research 81 percent of them believe in a higher force or a higher being that can be reached through prayer so i'm religiously unaffiliated i'm not a christian i'm not an atheist not a boost not an agnostic but i believe there's a force or some sort of higher power that i can pray to now who might be able to step into that and connect the dots i mean you know anybody they think churches that same 81 percent think churches benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor 20 said they prayed daily and a stunning 62 percent of that 81 percent said they would be open to an invitation to a faith community so at a macro level nobody's interested and we're all bigots and everybody hates jesus and nobody wants to have these conversations and they wish we'd just get on board and in reality they're very open to spiritual conversations they need the language that we possess to make sense of the world that they're inhabiting the brokenness of the world where does it come from well you know because you you've been in your bible most of the world doesn't know so they're thrashing about blaming this or that but there's something underneath it all like like how will they hear without a teacher how will they know without a preacher you you've been given to this task as you go make disciples now um because of our you've heard me talk about this a lot the western plausibility structure like what seems normal to us and here's where i want to just gently lean i love you i know we're coming off a stressful season maybe you're still super stressed um i i never want to add to your stress i'm happy to be used by god for conviction never guilt or shame in fact if it's guilt or shame that's demonic and you need to rebuke that god never lavishes guilt and shame on his people ever now he convicts them as an invitation into a richer fuller life you and i in our western plausibility structure define discipleship almost exclusively as intellectual growth like think about discipleship pathways and projects like we define it with three components right because we think all three have to be present for there to actually be real discipleship knowledge of god himself community and mission and we're aiming right at the overlap of those three circles right that's discipleship but by and large if you've grown up in church and you've heard discipleships let's read this book together let's do but in the bible discipleship is following jesus right in the bible discipleship is following jesus not just knowledge of who jesus is although i would say there's don't either or me i'm both anne and you right yes it's important for us to understand the word of god know who jesus is understand the nature of our god and his commands on our lives but if we are not following jesus growth in knowledge does not equate discipleship gosh you can know almost everything about god and not actually be a disciple i think the bible actually says the demons are a little bit like that so does it mean to be a disciple and make disciples it means to follow jesus now what did jesus come for well he told us what he came for he came to seek and save the lost and what did he do with his disciples before he was crucified and resurrected and ascended well did he not send out the 70 to what to proclaim the good news to who to the sinners and to the poor and then as he's heading ascending into glory what's the command the same command seek and save the lost and how did you and i get here somebody seeked and saved our lost self maybe it was mom and dad maybe in like in my case a friend maybe a co-worker but somebody stepped into this story now now here's here's my encouragement and then two questions are going to come here from other churches thank god i'm not 28 anymore we need that we need to welcome that rejoice in that be grateful for that if they're mature lovers of it yes let's do it but you and i are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people that are open to have conversations uh about the person and work of jesus christ about who god is about what life is about what would it look like for us to embrace that and step into it here's what's crazy i actually met two people this morning who've become christians in the last couple of weeks you know how that happened no not because of my awesome preaching you know how that happened people in their lives took them to lunch took them to dinner opened up their home and just started having spiritual kind and just were prayerful about them praying for them circling back around going how's that going now beginning to give them counsel in this area of their life or this area of life to do what to practice the law of love we have received the grace and mercy of jesus therefore we will be um extenders of that grace and mercy and so here's just a couple of questions for you uh one's a statement one's a question if you have ever by the grace of god been able to share your hope in jesus christ with another i want you to remember back on the energy that floods into your spirit the joy that floods into your heart the gladness and worship that is stirred up in your heart in that moment like to be used by god like that that's unbelievable like you want a spiritual steroid shop into your affections for jesus pray for people and share the gospel with them the the second thing and this would be my question for us before we um before we end this morning who has god put in your orbit that you might begin to actively pray for and seek out a spiritual conversation with so so that's not kind of like an ethereal question right that's like like what's their name in your mind like is it a neighbor is it a co-worker like who's in your orbit and you're like well man i don't even know how to broach a spiritual conversation i got you hey these are weird days right like how can i pray for you how are things at home man can i can i pray for you pray for your family uh man things at work are a little crazy i'm praying how can i pray for you i'm just going to say this i think i say this to you i'm going to say it again i do that all the time and no one has ever freaked out on me for that not a a barista not a man in a skirt not a like literally no one has ever gone how dare you sir they've always gone oh wow yeah like this and and then i write it out and then here's what's crazy i actually actually do that you just actually pray and then now you're living in the law of love so so who is that who is in your orbit right now so if you've got that name i'm going to give you here in just a moment give you a second to pray for that name and and pray for the opportunity this week to ask them how you might pray for them ask them how you might serve them and look for that opportunity to practice the law of love and to get on with the mission of god as the world over here in the peripheral finishes working out the election and everything else all right let me do this why don't you bow your heads and close your eyes even if you're at home bow your heads and close your eyes so if god's giving you that name giving you that face that person in your orbit won't you right now just say a little prayer for them just ask that the spirit of god might grant salvation that he might use you to help them understand see the beauty of the gospel ask that god might grow your affection for that person even more father we praise you that while we were dead in our trespasses and sins you saved us you made us alive you transferred us out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of your beloved son you you do not condemn us but rather save us from condemnation that you have put a new song in our heart a hymn of praise that you have transformed our lives that you have saved us out of sin and death we praise you for the beautiful feat that you sent into our lives as heralds of the good news of the gospel we thank you for our parents where that was our parents we thank you for our friend in college where it was our friend in college we thank you for uh our co-worker we thank you for those that were used by you to draw us to yourself now we ask that we might become that person for others i think you that right now in this very moment there are men and women in denton county you're like man i'm praying but i don't know who i'm praying to i think the church is a good thing i do think there's someone out there i just don't know what that is or who that is let's pray that we begin to boldly step into those questions boldly step in and answer those questions in a way that's loving and patient and kind pray that we would take advantage at every turn of the the little space that we get in a person's journey towards you i thank you for jeff and jimmy and carl and on and on bless your name i pray that you would hear the prayers of my brothers and sisters right now they've got specific faces in mind you know the story of that person you know wherever they're from you know where they're struggling right now you know where their hopes are right now so i just asked spirit of the living god that you would grant salvation to these men and women that are represented in the minds of these brothers and sisters of mine in this place pray that we would embrace all the more your call on our lives i i just pray against a reshuffling of the deck and another reshuffling of the deck and then another reshuffling of the deck not when the fields are this white with harvest help us we need you it's for your beautiful name i pray amen

Channel: The Village Church Resources

Views: 9,233

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Keywords: Matt Chandler, The Village Church

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Length: 36min 37sec (2197 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020