That is such a long dance clip.
Three minutes, he keeps going.
Welcome to Resonate.
My name is Josh Martin, and I'm glad you're here,
because we are in the second part of a four-week series
called React Audaciously Normal.
And here's what that means.
Audacious means daring, bold, reckless.
It means dancing for your friend Pedro
to win senior high school class president when you didn't even
have a dance choreographed.
OK, so normal means every day, ordinary.
Of course I did that, because I had the cassette in my Walkman
right there on me.
So when they say later, Napoleon Dynamite,
did you actually have that figured out beforehand?
He said, no, I just followed my heart.
I had my Walkman put it in.
I can dance.
I'm ready for this.
So Audaciously Normal is the point of that movie clip.
And here's why this is important for us,
because we finished Easter.
And I say finished on purpose, because a lot
of times we act like we finished Easter two weeks ago.
And we treat Easter as an ending instead
of a great beginning for us.
But there was a time in human history
when Easter was a beginning for a group of people.
And because of what happened in the death burial
resurrection of Jesus, you saw an audacious normalcy takeoff
in a group of people called the church.
And so that's what we're doing.
We're looking at the book of Acts
and how they reacted to the resurrection in some ways
that we may call crazy, and they would look back at us
and say, no, that's not crazy.
That's actually really normal.
Real quick, if you're a mom here for Mom's Weekend,
will you wave at me?
Few of you?
Very cool.
All right, welcome, moms.
There's a reason I point that out.
Some of you here are like, I'm not a mom for Mom's Weekend,
but I am a mother.
Can I participate?
Yes, I have something for you.
So students, let me ask you a question.
And mom as the witness, how many of you students
at some point in your life heard this question?
Raise your hand if the answer is yes.
And heard your mom ask you this.
If Jimmy jumped off the bridge, then would you jump off
the bridge?
Right?
That many of you have a friend named Jimmy.
I'm impressed by that.
If Jimmy goes to the party, does that mean
you get to go to the party?
So that's pretty normal.
You may have heard that for a while growing up.
So let me ask you another question.
How many of you ever heard from your parents,
be careful who you hang out with because those people
influence you and you don't want to be around the wrong crowd?
Have you heard that?
OK, any students that just came to school,
and remember when your parents were dropping you off,
they had that last conversation with you that said,
hey, be careful who you pick as your friends.
Be careful who you hang out with because those people
will influence you.
So be careful in who you hang out with.
And have you hear that?
On your way as your parents are on their way out.
Good.
OK, so parents, I want to say to you
this evening, and students listen to this, parents,
I want to say to you that is incredibly biblical.
And there's some great theology in that the book of Proverbs
says bad company corrupts good character.
So if you're a mom in the room, you
can look to your kid and say, I told you so.
Go ahead.
And you can look to him after that and say,
you should listen to me more often.
The guy on the stage said so.
So we should listen to our parents more often
because there is some truth in that.
And I would say this, be careful who your two or three
or four best friends are because you will become them.
Be careful who you hang out with primarily
because you will become very much like your two or three
or four best friends.
So here's the sermon today.
When we look at the book of Acts,
if you have your Bible, grab it and turn to Acts chapter 2.
I'm going to tell you a little bit of why this is important
and why I bring up your mom and what she told you on the way
out of the house when you were younger.
Here's why.
I think we live in a culture that says you and I
should be more concerned with who we are than who we hang out
with.
In other words, you define you, you decide who you are,
you do you, I do me.
We've said this before, right?
And as no one can define you, you define yourself,
you are the identifier, you are a trinity of me, myself,
and I, and you live in that all of the time.
That is incredibly Western, that is incredibly normal,
and we walk in this all of the time.
And we're going to look at the reaction to the resurrection
in Acts chapter 2.
And there's a picture in the book of Acts
that says you don't belong to you,
that you don't identify yourself based on yourself,
but there's a group of people that should identify you.
So think seventh grade science class,
when you would take a bullfrog and drop him
into boiling water, and he would jump out immediately.
And in this other story, you take the same frog
and put him into warm water, and you gradually
turn up the heat on him.
And if you're a morbid thinker, you've already gone there,
right?
So after a certain time, he gets used to that water,
and if you gradually turn up the heat on him,
that frog will never jump out of the water,
but rather will die right there in the water.
So culture is looking at us as individuals,
and they're gradually turning the heat up on us.
Listen, I want to indict us a little bit very lovingly.
We are addicted to connection, and we
are dying for community.
We are addicted to approval, and we are dying for identity.
We are addicted to the shallow, and we
are longing for the deep.
We go to Starbucks to be around everyone,
but we put on $300 headphones that says,
everyone leave me alone.
I'm not really here, but I'm here
because I am lonely, but don't talk to me, none of you.
OK, I have a great idea.
Let's all get together in a party,
and let's look at our phones the whole time.
None of you have ever done that?
That's just me.
So we are this group of people that says,
I want to be together alone.
I want to be with you and not with you.
By proxy, I'll do community, but don't talk to me,
and don't ask me how I'm really doing,
because all of us have finitis.
How are you?
Fine.
How are you?
Fine.
Glad we talked.
See you next week.
You'll be fine then too, I'm sure.
I'll be fine too, luckily, so we won't
have to talk about anything.
The culture is turning up the heat on us, saying,
you define you.
But what we're going to look at in Acts chapter 2
is this starting of this group of people called the church.
And the first time the word church is used in the scriptures
is when Peter and Jesus are having a conversation.
And Jesus says, who do you say that I am?
And Peter looks back at Jesus, and he says,
I believe you're the Son of God.
I believe you're the Christ.
I believe that you're the one that's coming to the world
to save us all.
And Jesus looks back at Peter and says,
blessed are you, Simon Peter, because God revealed that to you.
And on the profession of your, what you just said,
on that profession, on the foundation of that truth,
I will build my church, my ecclesia,
this word in the Greek in the New Testament, the first time
it shows up, I will build my church,
and the forces of darkness will never overcome it.
And some translations say the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it.
So the first time Jesus talks about the church,
he says to Peter, what you just said, I'm the Christ.
I'm the Lord.
That will be the very foundation of the church.
And no darkness will ever overcome this group of people
that you guys are going to start.
So last week, Acts chapter 1, verse 8,
Jesus looks at the apostles and says,
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,
to the ends of the earth.
I have saved you, to send you, and that has always
been the strategy.
And then it actually starts to happen.
Peter preaches a sermon based on that same thing
he told Jesus.
Jesus is the Christ.
He's the Son of God.
Believe in him, repent, and listen, it works.
The Holy Spirit shows up, and people become believers in Christ.
And in Acts chapter 2, you get another story
that tells our culture, though it's
turning the heat up on us.
There's this other story that we're invited into that way,
way, way back when men and women started living in community
and not camaraderie.
And those people changed the history of the world.
So in Acts chapter 2, if you're there,
we're going to look at verse 42, and it's
going to be on the screen.
But Acts chapter 2, verse 42 says this.
And they, so we're two words in, and I've got to stop.
And they devoted themselves.
But who in the world is they?
If you have an actual copy of scripture, look to your left.
Acts chapter 2, verse 8, it says,
all of these people were here from all different countries
and all different languages.
And they were the Perithians and the Midians and the Elomites.
And if you've been to Bible study,
you just start reading really fast when you can't explain it.
Elomites and Mesopotamia and Judea and Pontius and Asia
got that one.
Libya also got that one.
So there's a lot of people, 15 to 20 different nation
groups represented here.
They are there when Peter preaches that sermon,
and they become the believers.
So in Acts chapter 2, verse 42, and they devoted themselves,
we're talking about a group of people who primarily had
no connection point before verse 42.
There were these varying groups of people
from all different nations and all different backgrounds
and all different understandings of the world.
And verse 42, it says, and they devoted themselves
to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship
and to the breaking of bread and to prayers.
And all came upon every soul.
And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
And all who believed were together
and had all things in common.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings
and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
And day by day, attending the temple together
and breaking bread in their homes,
they received their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favor with all the people.
And the Lord added to their number day by day,
those who were being saved.
So something happens in Acts chapter 2, post-resurrection,
that officially affects everyone.
And before we get into the breakdown of what that means,
we've got to start way up high and say,
what in the world happened to these people
that affected them so much
that they started to live life together
in a very, very powerful way?
And here's what I got to say first.
The first thing that you see in Acts chapter 2
is they, this picture of they,
they were a group of people that primarily understood
their identity was not I define me,
but rather Christ defines me.
So the first thing in Acts chapter 2
that you see from verse 42 following
is there's a group of people that began
to identify themselves primarily as men and women in Christ.
Not men and women from this country,
or from this background,
or from this socioeconomic status,
or from this job, or from this family group,
they began to identify themselves
as men and women in Christ,
that they were connected by a connection with Jesus
and everything else did not matter
because their primary connection was in Christ.
And so here's why I'm going to press this on you
because there's an understanding in our world
about what it means to be a part of the church.
And there's an understanding in our world
that says I became a Christian
and then maybe I go to church as a support group
similar to a person who struggles with alcoholism
goes to AA as a support group.
So I don't really need the church.
I just go to the church as a support group
to kind of add on to my many good things
I'm doing in my moral life.
Well, last week we said you didn't just get saved
to just go to heaven to just be moral.
And so you look at this picture
and it's even becoming trendy in our culture to say,
yeah, I like Jesus, but I don't like the church.
I love Christ, I love being in Christ,
but I don't want to be in the church.
And the troubling picture of that
is that Christ is married, is the bride, is his church.
And so I have a bride named Amy.
And I love her and scripture tells me
that I should give my life for her.
And that's what Christ did for his bride.
And that's the picture of what it means to be married.
Jesus in the church, me and Amy.
And that's a beautiful thing.
So be similar to you saying, man, Josh, I love you.
You are awesome.
You're incredible.
I want to be around you all the time.
Nothing compares to hanging out with you.
But hey, could you never bring Amy around?
She is a hypocritical, awful person and I hate her.
It would get weird at that point because I would have to say
to you, I don't think you know me and you certainly don't love
me because you can't say you love me and hate Amy.
It just doesn't work that way.
Yet all too often we go, yeah, I'm in Christ,
but I can't be in the church because I don't like the church.
And listen, I get it.
There's some times where the church has been harsh
and we need to fix some of that.
And we need to be more loving in some places
where we've been judgmental.
But in general, you can't say I've been in Christ,
but I don't want to hear the rest of your sermon, Josh.
I like the in Christ part.
We get the in Christ part and now all the rest of this
is deeply connected to us being in Christ.
So here's the view of culture.
We have a slide that I'm going to show you
that you and I are men and women.
Do you like he's kind of like hipster, young professional
with a bow tie and the suspenders?
Very cool, right?
So I am a person who juggles many things in my life,
such as my schedule, my money, my social life,
the thing on the right, we're going to pretend
that's a church.
It's a trendy new church that looks like a building
without a steeple.
Okay, so that's the church.
And on the far left, you see coffee dates and hangout times.
And so I'm a person that juggles these things.
And if we're not careful from time to time,
the pressures of life will overwhelm us.
And something that we're juggling has to go by the wayside.
So something that we're juggling in our busy lives
because we have classes and we have schedules
and we have family stuff going on.
We are, or someone gets pregnant or someone loses the job
or someone gets sick and needs something.
We say, I'm juggling all these things in me,
but my primary identity is me
and all this stuff I juggle can all go away.
And the scary thing about that is a lot of times
we ask church to the things that we juggle.
But listen, there's this other picture
that I want you to see.
And this is where we've got to start
if we're going to move forward in this.
That you and I look, you see the guy on the left,
super hipster right there.
He kind of looks homeless,
but that's part of the thing that hipsters are going forward.
It's like, I look homeless and I pull out a MacBook Pro.
And then I'm like, oh, you're not homeless, you're hipster.
Okay.
So this understanding is that I do not live
at the center of my universe.
I have a community that I live life with
and they are primary to me.
So I cannot juggle all of these other things.
So now let's pretend that that's not a church anymore.
That's a job and everybody in the center
is the church.
And so all these things that I juggle
are no longer things that are primary to me.
What is primary to me is my community.
So we understand this.
This is point number one, if you're taking notes,
that by becoming a Christian,
I belong to God and I belong to my brothers
and sisters in Christ.
In Acts chapter two, the primary understanding
is that I belong to God
and now I belong to my brothers and sisters in Christ.
Verse 44 in Acts chapter two says,
and all that who were believed, they were together
and they had many things in common.
So if we see church as just things that we juggle,
we're never gonna get the picture
of the mandate Jesus has for us as we move forward.
So in light of that, if we are in Christ
and we can't say we're not in community,
so step one is I am in Christ and I am in community.
So I belong to God and I belong to my brothers
and sisters in Christ.
If we believe that, there's three things
that that affects for us and number one,
that affects based on verse 44,
is that affects our decisions.
So if you're taking notes, Christians make decisions
with regard to God and to the community.
Romans chapter 12, verse five says we are in Christ,
we who are many, we form one body
and each member belongs to all the others.
So the first century church understood this,
that they were in Christ and they were in community
and they had to make decisions with regard to the community,
similar to how a husband makes decisions
with regard to the family that he loves and cares about
and is in communion and connection with.
So we make decisions based on one another.
There is an understanding in the church
that we are supposed to love each other so much
that there's an invitation into each other's lives.
There's an invitation into each other's homes.
There's an invitation to say, hey, come and be near to me
and let's figure out this thing together.
So what does that mean for us?
How do we practically walk through this?
Here's what this means.
There need to be people in your life
who know who you want to be.
There need to be people in your life.
Men, there need to be men around you in your life
who you have told them the vision
that you have for your life.
If you do not have a vision for your life,
you need men to get together around you and say,
hey, can you help me figure out a vision for my life?
Women, you need to be around women
who you know that they know who you want to be.
So they can tell you back,
hey, here's what you've told me you want to be.
And then that's not enough.
That's just step one.
Secondly, you have given them expressed permission
and consent to hold you to who you want to be.
So that your decisions in life are not made in isolation
where you yourself and I get together and figure this thing out.
But rather you have men and women in your life
who make decisions together.
So there is an aspect of this
that is incredibly encouraging,
that there are people in your life that speak for you
and encourage you in times where you are completely down
and out and you are not being who you want to be.
And there's this other side of that
where there's an intrusiveness to it.
Where you invite men and women into your life,
men, you invite men to come against you lovingly
when they know that you're not being who you want to be.
So when it talk about decisions,
in other words, you should never buy a house in isolation.
You should have men who come around you and go,
hey, is this a good deal?
Hey, how's this house going to help me further the gospel?
Hey, how's the community in our church
going to be able to get around this house
and have parties?
Women, when you have situations in your life come up,
you should never make decisions on how to do this
or how to do that in isolation.
You notice I don't have any illustrations for women.
I'm like, what do I got? I don't know.
But women get together with other women and decide,
how is it that I can invite people into this
and invite people into the decisions that I have
in front of me?
Now, there's some harshness to this too.
There's some aspects of this that say,
when you're down and out,
I want to pull you back into community.
When people miss my village two times in a row,
we're calling them,
we're pulling them back into community.
We're encouraging them.
We're saying, hey, come back, come back.
And there's this other aspect
that when people are intentionally running from community,
that we are able to lovingly go after them
and grab them and say, hey, that's not who you want to be.
We've talked about this.
So in some ways, I am able to speak into your life
with boldness and truth,
just like Christ would because I've prayed for you.
And I've wept with you over that.
And I've rejoiced with you when you've won that.
And I submitted to you that I would walk with you
through this whole process.
So in light of all of that relationship,
all of the connection we have,
I'm going to lovingly judge you
and tell you that's not who you want to be.
So come back into the community
and I've invited you to do that to me.
The book of Proverbs says, faithful is the wounds
of a brother, faithful is the wounds of a brother.
Faithful is it when that man says,
I love you too much to let you go down that road.
So in college, I had men in my life
who I told them who I wanted to be.
And they told me who they wanted to be.
And we were dreaming about the men God wanted us to be,
wanted to be men of character,
wanted to be men of purity,
wanted to be men who loved our future wives well,
wanted to do all this stuff.
And in 2003, 2004, this is the dawn of the laptop era.
So before this year, your computer lived in your room
and you couldn't like move it without unplugging stuff
and bringing a backpack or two to move this thing.
And the box was huge and the screen was tiny.
And so in 2003, we have laptops
and I'm living with these four other men
who are my brothers in the faith.
This is the equivalent of an ethos group in Resonate Church.
And we wanna grow in our faith
and we wanna become godly men.
We don't really know how to do this.
So we're just trying to figure this out.
So we say, we're gonna memorize a verse a week.
And every Monday we would get together
and we would say, okay, what verse are we gonna memorize?
And we would put it on an index card
and I would carry that card around with me everywhere.
So if you ran into me waiting in line,
that junior, senior year of college,
I would have had an index card reading.
You say, what are you reading?
And maybe hide it and put it on.
I'm reading a Bible verse.
I'm trying to memorize the verse
with my brothers who I live with.
If you were to come into our apartment,
the dawn of the laptop era,
you could not because of the things
that are accessible on laptops,
not healthy things,
not gonna help your godly character kind of things,
things that are not gonna help you
love your future wife well.
So in light of all this stuff,
you could not in our apartment,
sleep with your laptop in your bedroom.
Your laptop had to be on the kitchen table
when you went to bed.
And if you went to bed with your laptop,
we knocked on the door and said,
hey, give us your laptop.
And you said, I have homework.
And we said, you do your homework at the kitchen table.
Because I don't want that for you.
I don't even want you to be tempted by that.
And some of you may say, that sounds like rules, Josh,
to which I would say, I don't care.
I needed it.
Say what you want.
I was walking around with a note card
and my laptop was on the kitchen table
because I had some dreams for my future.
And I had brothers in my life that said,
hey, I wanna fight for you, not with you.
I wanna fight for you.
So there should be people in your life
who are able to fight for you, not with you.
And listen, some of this may feel like, okay, wow, Josh,
you're coming at me,
but I submit to you that you desire this.
I submit to you that all of you
really do want this in your life.
There's a term that's come up,
and I think this is hilarious, and I hope you do too.
But there's a term that's come up for Facebook.
There's a term called vague booking,
which means I post vague things on Facebook.
Have you heard of this?
I will give you some illustrations.
I don't know why I even try.
I'm wondering if it's all worth it.
Ugg, U-G-H exclamation point.
I really should have known better.
Why do I always feel these feelings?
Well, now I know who my true friends are.
So you're vague booking, right?
So you've gotta call your friend Jimmy
and go, Jimmy, why are you vague booking?
But he doesn't pick up the phone.
So you text Jimmy and you say, Jimmy, why are you vague booking?
And he sends you back a frowny face emoticon.
Really, Jimmy, we jumped off a bridge together.
You gonna do this to me?
Why are you vague booking?
Because you want someone to care.
Because you're longing for someone to call you or text you
or post on there, hey, what's going on?
Even though you're not gonna tell them,
you just want to know that somebody loves you.
You are intrinsically wired by a God who loves you
to want to be loved.
There's no doubt about this.
You were created for community.
You were created to be in Christ,
created to be in community, and you long for that.
And so every time you don't do that,
it's difficult because you want it.
And so then you vague book.
If you're not laughing, you're a vague booker, stop.
We know who you are, we're friends.
We've tried to hide your timeline because you're depressing.
But we've called and we've tried, we text, you don't listen.
I know, everybody hates voicemail, it's fine.
So decisions are a significant part of people
who live in Christ and community.
And you need those people in your life.
You need to eat those in your life.
This is significant for us.
Secondly, when you start living this out,
what's gonna happen is the way you view possessions changes.
In verse 45, they sold their possessions and belongings
and they distributed them to those who had need.
That is a crazy big Bible verse
that we can breeze right over.
But the scripture just said, people sold stuff
because other people had need.
So and so has a need.
I'll sell something, get the money and bring it to them
because no one has need in this community
who's in Christ, in community.
So there's an understanding of this,
that Christians value community over possessions.
Generosity says I have and I give.
Christian community says we have so you can have.
In the New Testament, these words go back and forth.
It would say they would take up offerings,
not as an act of generosity,
but they would take up offerings as an act of community,
as an act of koinonia is the New Testament word for this.
They did this all of the time.
In the first century, they realized
that everything they had was from God.
Therefore giving it away was not hard
because it was from God
and it was never theirs in the first place.
The book of James says every good and perfect gift
comes from the Father above.
This means, friends, that we are entitled to nothing,
that we deserve nothing, that we have earned nothing,
the truth is, and this may sound harsh,
but we deserve to die yesterday.
But by the grace of God, we're alive today and breathing
and God has invited us to live out his story today.
And you say, well, I have a job and I work hard,
to which I say you have breath because God gave you breath.
And you have a body that works and a mind that works
because God gave you that stuff.
We're entitled to nothing, but we were born entitled.
So parents who are here,
how many of you ever, when you had a young kid,
age five or under,
how many of you moms ever ran up to dad,
pulled something away from him that he had,
bit him on the arm and yelled, mine, that's mine.
None of you, right?
How many of you have seen a three-year-old
come up to you, grab something from you,
bite you on the arm and yell, mine.
They didn't have to learn that.
No one had to teach them that.
No one modeled that to them.
They came out yelling mine
because all of us are entitled.
Becoming a Christian means that we kill entitlement.
And the beautiful picture of this,
when we start to live this stuff out,
and in scripture, this is not a mandate for us.
This should be joyful for us.
Paul later talks about this in 2 Corinthians.
He says, each man and woman should give out
of the overflow of their heart,
and it should be a joyful, cheerful thing to be generous.
It should be a joyful, cheerful thing
to have a group of people that you serve
and love with your possessions.
That's why we call them joy boxes in the back,
in case you were wondering.
Because this should be your joy to say,
this isn't mine anyways, it's on loan.
I'm just stewarding it.
So God, take back what was already yours,
and I would love to worship you more,
by being more generous.
It's always intended to be that way.
And I submit to you that the book of Acts chapter two,
and this one specific thing,
the way they viewed each other in possessions,
was the reason by which they stood out in culture,
like stars in the night.
That this group of people,
because of the way they took care of each other,
because of the immense amount of love that they had,
they gave away their possessions,
they gave away so much and sold stuff
to give away more stuff,
this made them stand out like nothing else.
And it's challenging to me,
because I wonder sometimes,
do we stand out like they stood out?
Because the church was always intended to stand out.
And a primary way to stand out,
in a generation of me, my, entitlement,
I can have the shiny things,
is to live as a group of people
that don't function like that.
So I wanna read you a quote by a guy named John Piper,
and it says this, it'll be on the screen.
It says, churches are dying today,
because they are not doing anything
which the world should look at and say,
this is evidence that God is real,
and that he is glorious.
Many churches have forgotten why they exist,
namely to do good deeds in the name of Jesus,
so that people will be moved to give God glory.
All of these sellings of their possessions,
all these actions always turned into giving God glory,
which reminds me of something Jesus said,
that live out these good deeds,
and men and women will look at that,
and they will praise your Father in heaven.
So when a church starts to forget
that it exists for others and for God,
it becomes ingrown and self-satisfying,
and they can go on year after year
like a social club with a religious veneer,
but its life is ebbing away.
And people are no longer saying,
look at all their good deeds,
and their humble spirit
in which they have done all these things,
their God must be a glorious God of encouragement.
The world is supposed to look in on us,
and see evidence of something otherworldly.
They're supposed to say that type of community
does not exist here,
and I'm incredibly intrigued by that type of community.
Those type of possessions should lead us
to make people wonder what we are doing,
and why we are like who we are like.
So we are in Christ, we are in community,
and we are in culture.
So this leads us to our last point,
which is the point of evangelism.
So verse 47 of this text says,
people were added to their number every single day.
So they broke bread together,
they shared their possessions,
they made decisions together,
they took care of each other,
and in light of all that,
in that same grouping,
people were saved daily.
People were believing daily.
So Christians,
if you're still taking notes,
Christians share the gospel in a community,
where the gospel is being shown.
Christians share the gospel in a community,
where the gospel is being shown.
I have another slide for us.
You ready for this?
This slide shows rope
that has three different strands of rope,
and primarily speaking,
we have used this middle strand of rope,
which says share the gospel,
and a lot of times this has been done in isolation.
And I'm not saying this is broken,
but I am saying it's incomplete.
So that we go out into the world,
and we say I'm gonna share the gospel with someone,
cold turkey in isolation,
which we should do that,
but that's the only thing I'm ever gonna do,
is just go out and do that.
When a lot of times, some of you who are nervous
about sharing the gospel,
I wanna relieve some pressure here today.
When you live in Christ,
and you live in community,
and you live in culture,
sharing the gospel no longer turns into,
hey, if you were to die right now,
would you go to heaven or hell,
a person I don't even know your last name?
But it rather turns into,
hey, would you ever wanna hang out with me and my friends?
Starbucks Barista, who I come in here every day.
I don't know what you do on Thursday nights,
but the only thing to do in Pullman
is this place called Zepo's.
And if I had anywhere else to go, I probably would,
but that's the only place I can go.
So not casino area of Zepo's,
but bowling and arcade, if that's what you're into.
So, hey, Starbucks Barista, some friends of mine,
and we're gonna go to Zepo's,
and we're gonna go bowling.
Would you ever wanna do that?
And you invite them in
to this building relationship world
that you've already done,
and you invite them into a community.
I submit to you, people have rejected the gospel word.
The gospel presentation has been rejected
because they have never been exposed
to a credible gospel community.
People have rejected the gospel word
because they look at you and say,
I've never seen that played out, so no thanks.
If there are people in your life who you've shared
and you've started building relationships with them,
and they have expressed non-interest,
or they have expressed a little bit of adversity to that,
I submit to you, if you invite them
into a community of people that love each other
and take care of each other,
and they see that, that there is no greater weapon
in all the world than inviting someone into a community.
I bet you, people will fall in love
with the Christian community
before they fall in love with the Christian God,
because I believe that God set it up that way.
For far too long, we have lived under this code
of if you wanna be a Christian, here are the rules.
Rule number one, behave first.
Clean it up.
Rule number one, if you want in, is behave.
Rule number two, believe everything I'm about to tell you,
don't question anything.
So act right, the gospel of don't.
Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
Get all that together,
then believe everything I'm about to tell you.
And then next, if all that works, you can belong.
Which by the way, is borderline cult language.
If you don't behave the way we say,
and believe the way we say, then you never get to be in.
That is cultish, that primarily we exclude people
instead of include people,
which by the way has nothing to do with Jesus.
Because if this starts to work,
and we are in Christ, in community, in the culture,
influencing the culture, and that's primarily our identity,
that we're in Christ, in community, in culture,
and that's our identity.
If we get that and buy into that,
then we can flip this model upside down,
and we can tell all of the city of Pullman,
hey, why don't you come belong to us?
Why don't you come and hang out with us?
Why don't you be introduced to a network of relationships
of these people who love each other recklessly,
and give to each other generously,
as an active community, and make decisions together,
and we look otherworldly.
So why don't you come into that, and belong to us,
and hang out with us?
And if that works,
I believe that people will start believing.
If they belong, they will believe,
and trust me, if they belong,
and they believe something internally will change,
and their entire behavior patterns will change.
So let's flip this and say,
I have friends that go to Zeppos,
and you should come hang out with us.
And after they hang out with you,
here's the trick, you ready for this?
This is where we've gotta be straight with each other.
We can't just go to Zeppos,
we can't just watch movies, we can't just go hang out.
We have to be a group of people
that naturally, intrinsically talk about Jesus.
That when you invite them into the community,
they're gonna hear God talk,
and it's gonna be normal talk.
And at some point, they get interested in that,
and we can explain to them the gospel,
and we explain to them the good news about Jesus
in the context of community that's living out
the story of Jesus.
We can't just speak it, we have to show it.
These people understood that.
So we have got to invite people to believe
by inviting them to belong.
So here's how I wanna close.
I wanna say you're in Christ.
That's your primary identity, in community.
And you've been invited to be in culture,
influencing culture, and that's your identity.
And if we get this, and that's gonna affect how we live.
So in closing, I wanna say that all of us
have seen the Discovery Channel.
During Shark Week or Tiger Week,
or any other big cat week they have on Discovery Channel,
all of which I love dearly, by the way.
And every episode starts like this.
It's that one sea lion swimming by himself.
And the music starts to change,
and all of a sudden you see the fin,
and I grab the remote, and go ahead and turn up the volume,
because this is about to get awesome.
Or if it's that other week,
it's that one gazelle hanging out under the tree
when everyone else has ran off,
and you're like, it won't be long until I see the tail.
Oh, there he is, there's the lion.
And again, you turn it up,
and you kinda stand up and get closer to the TV.
But what happens in this is people in isolation,
the sea lion in isolation, the gazelle in isolation
is the very one that the enemy goes at and attacks
and kills, and that is the picture in Acts chapter two,
that we are never meant to be in isolation,
because those in isolation are attacked and accused,
and overtaken and devoured.
Christ never sent people out one at a time.
He sent them out two by two.
He had 12 guys that he hung out with.
There's an urgency to this message,
because there's an immense danger if you don't believe it.
And the timeliness of this, as we were looking at,
you know, we have three weeks left to school,
and many of you are gonna be gone for the summer.
And in the last six years of being
a pastor of Resonate Church,
I have seen so many students come back from the summer,
jaded, apathetic, and filled with regret,
because they went off for the summer,
like the gazelle under the tree by themselves.
They went off in the summer, like the sea lion,
by themselves, and they had no connection to community.
And so we want this for you,
because there need to be men and women in your life
who know who you wanna be, and they will fight for you.
And they will look at the enemy who's coming at you
and say, you're not gonna be able to get close enough,
because there's a lot of us.
So we wanna invite you into a community.
We wanna know, we want you to be known.
We've said from the outset that at Resonate Church,
it's okay to not be okay, so come on in with all of us.
The only other thing about that is,
we're gonna invite you not to stay where you are.
It's okay not to be okay, it's just not okay to stay there.
So we're all broken, we're all struggling,
but let's do that together.
And if we do that well, there will be a beautiful story
of that, making its way all throughout the Northwest.
Friends, we do not wanna send students to Ellensburg
to plant worship services where they sing songs.
We do not wanna send students to Missoula
to go find a venue to gather everyone
and put up cool lights.
We wanna send communities of people living out the gospel
in the context of I'm in Christ, I'm in community,
I'm in culture, I'm in culture, and that's my identity.
And in light of that, let's send those groups of people
all over the Northwest.
Let's send those people to Ellensburg and to Missoula
and to Stevenson Hall on campus and to Greek houses.
Let's send gathered church people all throughout the city,
because that's the strategy.
God saved you to send you, and that was always the strategy.
Well, He sends you as a community.
Last week's sermon was incredibly lacking in that regard,
that you were not sent to be a Lone Ranger hero,
you were sent to be in community,
because that's the greatest weapon of the church.
That we stand together and the world looks at us
and says, you guys are different, I'm intrigued.
So this evening, the response as the band comes out,
is we wanna invite you guys, specifically guys
that are leaving for the summer.
There's a board in the back.
We have regional villages all throughout the Northwest,
and here's all we want.
I want you to write your name and your phone number,
and if you would be interested,
and we're doing this as an act of worship,
because we feel like you've got to take a step
towards community.
You've got to say to people, okay, I'm willing to let you in.
And so you put your name and your phone number
on this little piece of paper back there,
and you put it around the pen that says,
I'm gonna be in Coeur d'Alene, I'm gonna be in Spokane,
I'm gonna be in Tacoma, I'm gonna be in Tri-Cities,
wherever you're gonna be this summer.
And all we want is your name and your phone number,
because you never check your email anyways,
are we honest, right?
So we're gonna text you, receive that text message,
respond to that text message,
recognizing that you don't need to be the sea lion
hanging out there in Shark Week.
It's not gonna go well for you.
And for the rest of you who are here,
I want you to know that if you're gonna be here this summer,
this is our community service.
The summer is a time where even some of us who live here,
we just say, I'm gonna call a big time out
from the God that I'm juggling.
Well, Acts chapter two says that's not possible,
because you're in community, and you're in Christ,
and that's your identity.
So you don't get to call a time out.
So I want you to ask yourselves, are you in community?
Are you able to invite people into your lives,
or do you not even know people to invite?
Or are some of you sitting here this evening saying,
man, I'm the gazelle by themselves.
Man, I think I'm the sea lion all by himself.
I want you to know that's not what God wants for you.
And I believe that that's not what you want for you.
And so that means tonight you write on a connection card,
hey, I would love an ethos group,
hey, I would love a village.
That's step one, but that's step you've got to initiate that.
I'm a pretty awkward guy, and I could introduce myself
and pressure myself into a conversation,
but in general, you've got to take that step,
or it resonates always gonna be the back of the head church,
where you come in and look at someone's back of the head
and you leave and you don't care.
That's fine for a little while,
but ultimately that's gonna lead to you being pursued
and devoured, and we hate that for you.
And God hates that for you.
We've always been passionate about community,
so we invite you into that tonight.
Because that's God's strategy for reaching the world,
is more gospel-centered communities
all over the Northwest, all over our city.
So as we sing, and we're gonna stand and sing,
if you wanna go to the back and put your name
and your phone number, we welcome that.
If you wanna just think through some of this,
we welcome that, but what we don't welcome
is that you walk out going,
oh, that's just another sermon,
I don't have to have friends, I don't have to have community.
Because we love you enough to tell you
that's not gonna work, and we want you to be connected.
Because that's what you were created for.
So Father, I prayed tonight that we would believe this.
I pray that we would be men and women that love community,
because we are in Christ and we're in community.
God, I pray that those two things would never be separate.
Father, there's so many things that you have said
you will not do for us,
because the church is gonna do that for us.
That you cannot hug us, but the church can hug us,
you cannot sit with us physically,
but the church can sit with us.
So God, I pray that we would be in community tonight.
Press us, encourage us, make us be men and women
who are willing to take the first step towards community.
I pray, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
