Square One: Pursuing Purposeful Connection

Good morning, Southeast family. How are you? Thank you for joining us here. Live in the room or online. I'm excited about today's sermon just for the record. Literally the worst constructed sermon I've ever written. My homiletics professor would be embarrassed that I have done such things. We only have eight points to cover today – easy. Before we get there, just a couple of quick things, and then we'll jump in. First of all, if you are a volunteer in our church, you should have gotten an email about next Sunday night, we're doing a volunteer appreciation event. And if you were at the last year's volunteer appreciation event, you know that this is kind of a big deal. You are going to want to be there. And if you're like, but I'm not a volunteer, you should fix that. And then you would be welcome. But we are going to blow the doors off of this place. I can neither confirm nor deny all of the incredible things that are going to be going on at this event. It is going to be awesome. And you're going to be treated like a King or a Queen, like you are. So, we really want you to be there. We need you to get registered. For some of you, you got the email and you read it and you registered. Thank you because you help us as we prepare for what we need. Some of you got the email and it went to your junk, so you haven't seen it and that's okay too. If you haven't seen it, let us know and we will resend it to you. So, probably, a lot of you got it and saw it and just didn't read it. Cause that's what we do with our email. Right? I know I do that with my email all the time. Which is why for me, I'm like, look, don't, don't email me. Let's talk, let's have lunch. Like, let's look each other in a hairy eyeball and visit. It's always so much better. And you know, emails have a lot of words in them. I just don't, it's hard for me to, I, I can't pay attention that long. It's hard. So, if you did it, if you got it and you're like, Oh yeah, I got that, but I didn't read it. Let us know. And we'll resend it to you as we really want you to be here. If you're a volunteer, we really want you to be here. This is going to be an outstanding evening. You're going to be glad that you made it a priority. I promise.

Okay. I do want to do a quick plug for Brad gray. He's a personal friend of mine and here's the deal. As far as Bible teachers go, there are none better. And I don't say that lightly. I take the teaching of the Bible very, very seriously. And he's awesome. This will be well worth your investment on November 6th and 7th. Yeah, it'll be great. So make that a priority.

We're going to jump into our series cause we've got a long way to go before the sun sets. So you guys ready to go to work? We’re running at an incredible rate of speed. It's gonna be awesome. So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to tackle pursuing purposeful connections. So we've been in this series called Square One. We're going through kind of the four pillars that our church is kind of built on. And so week one, we talked about living a spiritually disciplined life -- that when we get into our relationship with Jesus, there is a call to live a certain kind of life. Like every relationship has boundaries in it. Every relationship does, it has expectations in it. Like I can't with my wife, for example, I can't get into a relationship with my wife and then go, Hey, I'm going to do this any way I want. Like that, that's an equation for disaster. We have to navigate what the boundaries of our relationship look like together. Same thing with Jesus. Like you don't get to go into a relationship with Jesus and go, I'm going to do this any way I want. God has boundaries for our relationship. And so we want to live in a disciplined way so that we can experience everything that life has to offer. 

Last week, we talked about moving the broken parts of our life to wholeness, and that was awesome. My friend Jeremy was with me and a couple of things happened that were really, really cool. Number one, the life groups had some tremendous conversations this week in the life groups. Some of them were really hard. Some of them were like, Hey, we're not coming this week because that talking about brokenness is gonna be hard. And it is, it's vulnerable, it's exposing it's difficult, but it's better for us as we figure out how we can learn to move the broken places of our life to wholeness so that we can become everything that God's intended us to be. And the other thing that happened that was cool was what I had hoped would happen is that the Southeast counseling center got a pretty good bump in new cases was awesome. That's awesome. Good, good for you guys. And for those of you that are still considering it, I would encourage you, man. It's been so beneficial to my life personally, in my own personal growth. And I want to be always in a growth mindset. I always want to be trying to work on being more of what God wants me to be and whatever that looks like, and in counseling has been a huge piece of that for me.

This week we're talking about pursuing purposeful connection and here's the deal. We've talked about this a lot over the last 15 months that we've been here. Like, God calls us in the Bible again and again and again to relationship. And if we're going to do that, we have to do it intentionally. We have to have intentionality in our pursuit of connection because if we don't, then it will accidentally not happen. And so we've got to work through that and I've been stuck kind of in the book of 1 John, over the last few weeks, I love it. It's been great. And I, at one level, 1 John is like pretty, surfacey like, it's the love book? It's that. God's been showing me some really amazing stuff out of the book of 1 John. And so here's what I want to do. I want to read a massive chunk of scripture and then I'm going to give you eight points and there'll be a little bit of commentary here and there, but we're going to work through from 1 John 4:7 to 5:21. And it's a chunk, but we're going to make it, we're going to get through it. And this is going to be, I just want to kind of draw some points that he's making that I think are particularly important as we consider what it means to have purposeful or intentional connection with one another. Okay. So here’s where we begin: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God.” That's a profound statement because there's a lot of people that I would say are running out in the name of Jesus to try to be truth tellers and they're not loving well. And here's what he says. “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Now the immediate reaction to that is then, what you're just telling me that people can do whatever they want and we just have to be okay with it. No, God is not blind acceptance. That's not what that says. God is love. And that's a very different space, right? We'll keep reading: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.” What a fun word, propitiation. Here's what he's talking about. First of all, God loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation. God loved us first. This is how we know what love is, that God didn't wait for us to love him. And by the way, if we're going to love the way God does, guess what? We don't get to wait for other people to love us, first. We have to be love. How, what does that look like? Well, the model that we have is how God loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation. Here's what that means. It means that he is the appeasement to God. He's the one that closed the gap between you and me and Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. 

“Beloved, If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” How? The way God loves us, which means before you ever love me back, I'm called by God to love you fully, without reservation to do whatever is needed so that you can become everything that God has called you to be -- before you ever do anything nice. And maybe even if you do things that aren't nice, let's keep reading. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” So here's our first point. God's love is perfected in our church when we love one another well. God's love is perfected in our church when we love one another well. God's love is made known when you and I love each other well. And I know that we live in this independent culture that we have and there's a lot of benefits to that. But one of the things that works against us is that we don't like being obligated to one another. Listen to me, the Bible calls us to love one another. This is the representation of our ability, our connection with God. And if you go well, they're mean I can't love them. Well, that's not a problem in our relationship with that person. That's a problem, fundamentally, in our relationship with the Lord. And again, love, loving someone well doesn't mean that there's no boundaries. That's not what we're talking about. We talked about that last week. That doesn't mean that there's no boundaries. What it means is that the foundation upon which we build all relationship is that we have to understand our call that we're obligated to one another. We're obligated to one another in this room and we're obligated to one another when we leave this room. And when we go to sporting events and the ref makes a call that you don't like-- hypothetically -- and we yell and scream and kick and, or, or maybe even worse is when we're at home and the ref on the TV makes a bad call and we scream and that, and then what do our kids see? And they, and again, I'm not anti sports at all. I love sports. I love playing sports. I love watching sports. I love all that stuff, but I think the problem is it's become an idol in our culture and we don't even know where those lines are anymore. We don't, we don't know where those lines are. And so what happens is we wind up compromising things that are far more important in the name of being too attached to carnal things. Like, at the end of the day, it's a bunch of boys or girls playing a game on a field. Right? And so we gotta figure that out. We've gotta figure that out. Like where do we draw those lines? God's love is perfected in our church when we love one another well. And so when we're out there and we're blowing a gasket in the community, what it's showing us is that we don't love our church family well. It's a disconnection from the Lord, but we also don't love our church family well. This, and here's the deal. Like if you're going to do that at a sporting event, I can't tell you no, right? Like you're your own person. You have your own choices, but don't wear Southeast swag. Cause what I can tell you is, there's a whole lot of people who, have told me over, like I've been in ministry almost 30 years now. It's been a long time. There's -- I get this a lot. Like, I will never go to your church because of that person. And it's not about whether or not that person actually says they believe in Jesus. It's about how they act. God's love is perfected in our church when we love one another well. We have to actually do that. We have to actually do that.

Let's keep reading: “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.” Now, second point: when we love well, we prove that we believe that God is who he says he is. It's our second point: when we love well, we prove that we believe that God is who he says he is. When we don't love well, what we're saying is I'm not sure that God actually is who he says he is. Because if God is a God of abundance, if God is a provider, if God is a God of all things, if God is whatever, whatever, if God is all the things that he says he is, then why would I get shook? And why would that happen? Let's keep reading: “God is love, and whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he also, as he is so also are we in this world.”  Now, here's the deal. If you're like, I don't have confidence for judgment. Like, I have tremendous news for you. You can fix that before you leave the room today. Like, at the end of the service, there'll be people up here to pray with you and you can come up and talk with them about that. And they'll pray with you so that you can walk out of here confident where your salvation is. You don't have to wait for that. Like, let's just pull that one off the table. If you're like, I'm insecure about my relationship with the Lord, we can fix that. We can fix it. 

Here's what it says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love, casts out fear. And I just wonder if sometimes the churches -- and I'm talking about the capital C Church, the capital C church’s attempt to present the gospel isn't rooted in you’re a sinner and you're in danger of hell and you better fix that. But there's no fear in love. And then if we keep reading: “For fear has to do with punishment.” If that's our gospel, then I'm not sure that we're promoting the gospel that Jesus wanted his guys to promote. “Whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” It's not about fear. Listen, I don't follow Jesus because of a fear of hell. I'll just be straight with you. I follow Jesus because his program is way better than anything else I can come up with. And I've tried. I'm just up here trying to save you the effort. Like, you can try, but you won't find anything better because God's love for you -- he wants to maximize what he created you to become. 

Let's keep reading. “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he's a liar.” So that's a thing. That's the scriptures talkin. “If anyone says, I love God, but hates his brother, he's a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this is commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” Now, again, let me say this clearly, that is not about blind acceptance. Love, loving someone well, isn't about blind acceptance. It's about fighting for connection, but here's the other side of that. If we choose to fight for connection, we gotta be willing to hang in there with the messiness. 

Here's the third point that I want to make. How we act in the world is a display of how well we love our church family. How we act out there is a display of how well we love each other. Let's keep reading: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” Listen to what he said. Here's how we know that we love the children of God. It’s that we love God and we obey his commandments. So we act out there as a Christian should, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” Now here's what he's not saying -- what he's not saying there is, we're going to, when we love God, we obey him and it's not hard.

Here's what he's saying. Point number four, we know that we love God when we obey him and it is not a burden to do it. It doesn't make it easy.  Sometimes it's really complex. Sometimes it's really a difficult decision to make, but it's not a burden to make those difficult decisions because I love God. So I will do what he's called me to do, regardless. Let's keep reading: “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God? This is he who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the spirit is the one who testifies; because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater.” Like, if you're willing to accept what other people say, you should certainly be willing to accept what God says. “Because this testimony is greater, for his is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.” There's so many things I'd love to say about that, but we're not going to take the time to do it because we don't have the time. So that's another sermon for another day. “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Number five point. The only way to have eternal life is through Jesus. Listen, if you want to have eternal life, you can. It is a gift of God because of what he did to show us how much he loved us through Jesus. And again, you don't even have to wait for it. You don't have to wait till tomorrow. Like you can walk out of this room today saying that I have eternal life. And you can know with confidence that you have eternal life. Let's keep reading: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” God's not trying to be elusive. He wants you to know it. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we have asked of him. 

Here's the great news. Point number six, when we have life in Christ, we have access to God the father through prayer. Prayer makes our heart like God's heart, which is so critical. Just think about just the simple context of the world that we're in today with all the crazies that are going on right now. And it just feels so unsettling. Like we know theoretically that none of this surprised God, God knows how it's going to end. He knows the journey. He knows the process that we're going to be a part of to get to the end. He knows what all of that is going to look like. He knows that today. And so, God's not afraid of what's coming tomorrow or a week from now or a month from now. God's not worried about November 3rd. God's not worried about any of it because he already knows. And the great thing about prayer is, I don't know, but what I can have through prayer, because I have access to God the father through Jesus, is it can make my heart like God's. So I don't have to be afraid or insecure or concerned or uneasy or anxious or depressed or any of those things. I don't have to be that because I can have the heart of God through prayer. Prayer makes my heart like God's heart. 

Now with that on talking about the next section of scripture, we have to love one another. And how we love one another is a direct reflection of how well we're loving God. Okay? And we can get access to God's heart through prayer. It makes my heart like God's heart. With that in mind, I want to talk about the next section. “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life -- to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.” Don't pray for that. “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.” Now there's this thing in the church where they say, “all sins are equal.” All sins are the same. Yes, in the sense that all sins equally separate us from God, but not all sins are equal. There are sins that lead to death. And then there are sins that don't, there are, Paul says that sexual sin is worse than other sin because it's the one sin that you commit against your own body. Like, there are sins that lead to death and we need to deal with those. But if you see someone committing a sin that doesn't lead to death, don't go put them on blast, pray for them. And then God will help deal with them. That's what he's saying. Now the tension is, what's a sin that leads to death and what isn't a sin that leads to death. And that's the conversation that as a community, we got to, we have to have that conversation. And how are we standing or not standing on those things, right? There are some sins that end in death, right? Like drug addiction ends in death. It's kind of like if  my child runs out into the street, I don't pray to God to put it on their heart to come back. Right? No! That potentially ends in death, right? So I'm going to run out there and grab them so that, that doesn't end in death. That's how we deal with sins that lead to death. But with sins that don't lead to death, what we do is we pray for them and it does two things: Number one, it opens up the power of God to work in their life. And number two, it makes my heart like God's heart for that person. And that's actually really, really significant because, that means that I treat them better when I have God's heart for that person.

So, here's the seventh point: when we call one another to a higher standard and we should, we should call one another to a higher standard. We must be careful how we treat each other. By the way, both directions in, in the calling out and in the receiving of being called out, we need to be careful how we treat each other. 
Let's keep reading. “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning”. So there's that. Here's the reason why he needs to say that. Because if I'm going to be gentle in the confrontation of sin, I have to be able to trust that whoever is being confronted, understands that their goal is to not sin, not to justify why it's okay to keep sinning. Like our goal is that we actually walk away from sin and more towards righteousness. That's what a relationship with God is; that I obey his commands and it's not a burden to do it. That's why that has to come first. So that all of us, when we get caught in a moment where we didn't do that, that we can go that you're right. I'm going to stop that rather than going, who are you to tell me who I am? And you're not perfect. And you, and what about this? And what about that? And what about this? And what about as soon as you're playing that game, you're justifying your sin and that's rebellion, which leads to death. That's a different category. Now, all of a sudden, it's not even about that sin that you committed. Now it's about this whole other ball game. “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning”. Like, we choose righteousness. Now that doesn't mean we do it perfectly. But if we're really trying to walk with the Lord, then when somebody calls us out on something, we're like, thank you. We don't try to justify it. “But he who was born of God protects him.” So yes, we're called to righteousness. And when we fall short, those of us that are born of God have to manage that relationship really carefully because it's not about putting them on blast. It's not about making them pay. It's about calling them up. “And the evil one does not touch him.” By the way. Here's a great measure of whether or not the evil one’s got a foothold in my own heart, is when someone confronts me, I get into justify mode. Well, you don't understand. And you, who are you? And while you're not perfect either, and you don't know about it. And what about this? And what about that? That's the, that's the foothold of Satan in my heart. Call it what it is so that I don't play. I don't become a victim to it. We know. Let's keep reading. “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children keep yourselves from idols.”

Here's my eighth point. When we have the spirit, we know we step outside of the boundaries. The spirit lets us know.That's called illumination. The Holy spirit lets us know when we step out of bounds, we know it. What we need from each other is a loving invitation back to the path. That's what we need. Like, yes, you blew it. Just get back on the path. Like we've got a, we've got a journey to walk together with the Lord and it's going to be amazing, but I've really, yes you have. Yes you did. You blew it. Like I get it. You, you are a first class mess up first class. Like you get an, a plus for blowing things. Get back on the path. Let's go. Like we don't need to. Punishment is about making them pay. How dare you.Let's get back on the path and walk it. The problem is, for too many of us, we're like, no, I don't care what you say. I'm gonna do what I want. Well, that's rebellion.

I have some implications for us today. And I just want to offer us this too, to be contemplative. I like that word because I think that we all have a long way to go in really stewarding our Christian relationships well and stewarding our family, our church, family relationships well. Like, we have a long, we've got to grow in this. We all have to grow in this. Here's some implications for it. Number one, how we conduct ourselves in the world is a reflection of our love for God and his people. So if I get cut off in traffic and as your pastor, I fly the one fingered salute. That's not just a reflection of me. And it's not just a reflection of my relationship with the Lord. That's a reflection of how much I care about representing you and your faith well. Or if I come in here and I'm all spiritual, but I run out there and I have an anger problem or, or I can't keep a tight reign on my tongue. And so I say all kinds of things, whether that's crass or swearing or gossip or any of the number of things that my tongue gets me in trouble with. If I don't respect you enough to go out there and keep things in check, it's a reflection of how, of my love for God. But it's also a reflection of how much I love you. Like I don't want you to look bad.

Implication number two, obedience is the evidence of our relationship with God. Remember what Jesus said? If you love me, you'll obey me. It's not complicated. Remember the five love languages, right? Physical touch. And I don't remember the rest cause they don't matter. That was funny. That was funny. That was funny. I don't care who you are. That's funny. Quality time receiving gifts, acts of service and words of affirmation. There's five love languages. Here's the thing. If you think about what is God's love language? Obedience is. God's love language -- if you love me, you'll obey me -- simple. It's how we tell God that we love him. 

Implication number three, the Holy spirit makes us aware of how we should act when we don't know how to handle a situation. And by the way, we should really be pressing into that truth right now. Cause there's so many questions about how we're supposed to handle, not even just the decisions that we make about where we stand in our own convictions, but in how we talk to other people about it. Cause it feels like you're walking on eggshells to bring anything up or to listen to someone else. And how do we respect them and yet not get caught off guard in all the, like the crazy emotional tension that gets into all of that stuff. Like this is a, it's a crazy time that we're living in -- what a cool time to be a good example of Jesus in our culture. What an opportunity for the gospel to take root because these people live differently. Like I'm not scared of that. I'm excited if we can take our faith seriously and walk, walk out into the world with a serious understanding of loving these people with God's heart that I access through my own protect. Like, wow. I think if we could do that, if we could do that, we couldn't beat people out of this place with a stick. If we could do that, we couldn't keep people from coming to church because I think the culture is starved for it. And if there was ever a place where God's people should be able to step in and fill that gap…

Number four, how we treat people while confronting them is a direct reflection of how we see God's heart for them. And by the way, it doesn't mean you shouldn't confront. You should confront. I should confront. We should address sin in one another's lives. We should. But how we do that is a direct reflection of how I see God's heart for that person. And so we’ve got to walk that tension well.

I just love moving into communion time on the heels of that reality because Jesus gave us a real clean model of how we should treat one another in reconciling relationship. And he said, go ahead and go ahead and lay your life down, go ahead and represent God the way that he asks you to represent him. Don't try to come up with a better way, just do it the way that God asked us to do it and watch how the Holy spirit can move in and transform. And so Jesus in the space of what we remember and communion laid his life down so that you and I could have life. And the good news is you can have that promise this morning at the end of the service, you can pray with somebody up here and they can help. You know where you're going for eternity. Let's take a minute and just like wrestle with this.

As we prepare our hearts for communion, like, is there a space that I have slacked in my loving of people? Are there some places where I've let idols creep in or I have drawn, unfair lines or I have demanded that people pay for things that they've done wrong, where it wasn't mine -- that wasn't my space. Let's, let's take a minute. And talk of the Lord about that as we prepare our hearts for communion.

On the night, Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body, which was given for you. So, whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me. And then after the dinner he took a cup and he said, this cup, this is a new covenant of my blood, which is shed for you. So, whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. Let's pray, Lord, thank you for this call to community. Thank you for the tension of having to figure out how we love one another well and then in the process of that, it drives us closer to your heart and it drives us also to really wrestle with all the things in my life that would get in the way of me loving you up. Lord, I pray for wisdom. As we try to navigate this crazy crazy world, Lord, may we be a people who represent you? Not just well, but better, better than what the world has to offer, better than, than maybe what we've even done in the past better than what we've known, that you would give us ways to show up in the world that help us to represent you better. Thank you God, for your grace, as we figure out how to do this well in your name. Amen. 

My hope for us is that we walk out of here committed to really intentionally being people who connect well with the world in a way that represents God. And that represents our church family well so that we can put him on display because Jesus says that when we lift him up, he'll draw the whole world to himself and I'm ready to be a part of that. So may you live in the, in the life, the path, the dream that God has for your life. Thanks for coming. Thanks for watching. Have a great week.