Jesus is Better WK 3
Notes
Transcript
Illustration:
Illustration:
I have a confession to make, its a very controversial confession that may make some of you not like me anymore… I am not a big fan of Disney World… I know, the hype is real but I just don’t really care if I never go to Disney again in the rest of my life- I can live with that! I have been, it was fun, it’s fine, but I could never be the people who go every time they take a vacation and have disney everything on them, on their cars, on their dogs- just not my thing. Disney is overrated- there’s my confession- sorry if we can’t be friends anymore…But I do have to admit that what they have created there is impressive. You really do walk into another world when you go there. And every single aspect of the park contributes to this. I mean it’s intense the standards they set for their park and the workers.
Employees, no matter their role are all called cast members, all of the Characters never break from character- meaning if they are out in costume they cannot break character no matter what situation unfolds in fact, if they see trash on the ground trash has to always be picked up IN CHARACTER, then think about it, have you ever seen an electrical box. or dumpster or something random in a disney park that stands out as not part of the park? No because everything that is seen must be on brand- anything that isn’t part of the attractions like those i mentioned must be painted in either Go away green or blending blue two colors that they came up with that is considered the easiest color for the human eyes to ignore.
Disney has gone all in to make it the happiest place on earth but…
Imagine if the characters showed up and sat down ready to be entertained, instead of doing their jobs. Imagine if trash wasn’t picked up, workers were rude and demanding, and half the decorations were broken and rusty. Imagine if all the guests that entered the park came and didn’t care, they had zero excitement whatsoever. You wouldn’t be able to enjoy that park, it wouldn’t be such a magical experience that it’s meant to be.
That all would be crazy because You don’t show up to Disney half heartedly, you go all in at disney and are immediately captivated by the culture there and the purpose! They set out to create the happiest place on earth, and its very hard to be unhappy when you go in there because they have done such a good job. But it takes the people there showing up ready to work, ready to contribute and be fully bought in to the culture at Disney! Your experience is shaped by how bought in everyone around you there is to the experience of Disney World! Everyone has to come ready to do their part with excellence and even the guests should come excited for it to be the full experience that it’s meant to be.
Now, the church is far from being disney world, that’s obviously not the goal. however, think about it. Sometimes we view church as something we just show up to and expect to be entertained or catered to. Let me just go to church see my friends and do what I want.
We go to church half heartedly, or out of obligation, so we don’t come ready to truly contribute and lead the way.
The problem is, like Disney, the church is only the fullness of what it is meant to be if everyone shows up ready to contribute and be a part of it!
Community is always what you make it.
If we come into this ministry or our church and expect everything to go a certain way, be exactly how we want it, and then we will have a good worship experience and a healthy community of people- we will always be disappointed, and most people with that mindset just end up leaving to go and be disappointed by another church that doesn’t cater to all of their desires.
But if we realize community is what we make it- then we come in and we bring our brokenness and our giftedness and we contribute to making it a place of worship and community.
I believe we see a powerful picture of this approach to being the church in Acts 2. It’s a passage that many of us are probably very familiar with. I know you guys have studied it before here and I have studied and taught through it many times in my life.
Let’s just read it quickly to see the picture of the community they had as the church was just getting started in the New Testament! Acts 2 verse 42 just listen to how they were doing life and ministry together:
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. 44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. 45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
They were locked in. This is a community of people following Jesus who saw themselves as responsible to make the church be the church! There was no communication strategy, or social media campaigns, they had put their faith in Jesus and knew that that meant they were committed to doing life together as Christians now.
They were locked in. A few things they were focused on:
We aren’t studying this passage in depth tonight but a few things stand out.
They were focused on learning and growing as disciples together. They learned from Jesus’ most followers about the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus.
They were eating together and spending time together in worship!
They shared things in common to take care of each others needs!
We see this picture of a radically generous and devoted community of worship forming. That is the Church.
But do you see how NONE of it happened by accident. They showed up, they were devoted, they held all things in common, they worshipped together!
Again, community is always what you make it, so we must be intentional to be the church!
Now, with that picture in mind let’s unpack our last two House Rules.
Hopefully you’ve been with us throughout the series but if now, we have been covering the house rules that help us truly be this kind of church community like we just talked about.
To Review we have said our house rules are:
Jesus is better.
We share like family.
No one sits alone.
All are welcome here.
Now we come to our next house rule, which has 3 parts to it.
5. We are worship leaders, tone setters, and note takers.
I hope you see here the ownership that we have been talking about. Like Acts 2, this is about WHO WE ARE, and that shapes what we do as a ministry.
Let’s break this down piece by piece.
First,
We are worship leaders.
Turn to Hebrews 10, verse 24.
We are worship leaders may sound weird to you because usually we are talking about the guy on stage with a guitar and mic as the worship leader. But listen, in the early church they didn’t have Jonathan Hazel leading worship, they christians just gathered and they would pray and sing together on their own.
They led themselves.
Read these verses in Hebrews with me.
And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
The writer of Hebrews is urging the christians to lead each other, urge each other on as they follow Jesus and gather together for worship.
We’ve talked about this before, but Worship is essentially our response to who God is. Our whole life as an individual is meant to be an act of worship Romans 12:1 “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.”
We lay our life down in response to who God is, this is our personal act of worship. But then when we gather together in this place, we think of those verses in hebrews, urging each other on and gathering together to worship consistently.
I heard this idea explained to me this way- We are worship leaders because our worship impacts the worship of those around us. So the way I am worshipping may encourage the person next to me to worship when they were previously discouraged, checked out or distracted.
So, when you come in here remember, you are a worship leader. You must lead yourself in your life to worship God as He is worthy, and you can lead others to worship God by the way you engage with God while you are here!
We are worship leaders.
Next,
We are tone setters.
Turn to Romans 15 with me.
Whats the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat? A Thermometer simply rises to the temperature of the room around it. A Thermostat changes the temperature in the room to it’s level.
Many times we view ourselves as thermometers. We enter a setting and just match what’s there. Oh its awkward, there aren’t many people, no one is talking or playing games, I’ll just go sit and join the awkwardness in the corner. I believe we aren’t called to be match the temperature, but to set it. No matter if you are older or younger in here, or if you are outgoing or more quiet, you need to at least realize that God can use you to impact every setting you go into if you let him.
But we have to have the right attitude here. Look at Romans 15, in verse 13
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Man, look at those words- our God is a God of HOPE, he will fill us with all JOY and PEACE and we will overflow with HOPE in the power of the Holy Spirit. Is that the tone in the room- this place should always be hopping with Joy and peace because of the hope we have in Jesus! Because the Spirit of the Lord is Here so of course we rejoice of course we play hard, of course we have fun!
WE get to set the tone both here and in a world that is dark and broken and is not normally characterized by this positive words because the Holy Spirit of God lives with in us and fills us wiht these things.
So, We are tone-setters.
Finally for this house rule-
We are note takers.
Turn to Proverbs 7. This may seem random or not very spiritual compared to others. But this is actually a big deal. I need to be honest with you, I am not a natural reader, journaler, or note taker. Younger Evan never would’ve done any of that. But when I got serious about following Jesus- I learned from many other Christians the value of studying and writing things down. There’s science to back up the value of note taking too.
• You remember 5% of what you hear, 10% of what you read, but up to 40% of what you write down. (Learning Pyramid Model, National Training Laboratories)
• Writing engages more of the brain because it forces you to process and summarize information, leading to deeper learning. (Journal of Educational Psychology, 2021)
So, in every sermon I sit in now, and any time I open the Bible I try to take notes, write something down.
. Look at Proverbs 7:1-3 with me.
My son, obey my words,
and treasure my commands.
Keep my commands and live,
and guard my instructions
as you would the pupil of your eye.
Tie them to your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
We see the Father Speaking to his son here about taking His word seriously. If we take God’s Word seriously, if we really believe that it has the words of Life in it. that it is God’s Word for us to know Him, love him and follow Him- we better be serious about learning it and growing in it. That’s the heart of being note takers- we want to learn from the sermons we hear and the time we spend studying the Bible.
This is why we have a whole resource table in the back of the room. Every week when you come in you can stop there and grab a pen and paper to take notes, if you need a Bible you can take one, if you need a bible reading plan with bible study resources you can grab that too.
Being note takers isn’t just about writing—it’s about engaging, processing, and remembering what God is teaching us!
So, we are Worship leaders, tone setters and note takers.
And that brings us to our final house rule here at Shandon Students.
We love deeply and speak highly.
You can turn to Romans 12 as we wrap up.
We won’t spend much time on this last one because this is really a statement of who are are as we follow Jesus together and live out these others house rules.
At our core we are people who love deeply and speak highly.
Look at verse 10.
Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.
1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”
We’ve talked about this a lot but when we understand God’s love for us, our natural response is to love one another deeply. We are now brothers and sisters in christ, we have all sinned, but we ahve all been forgiven as Christians and so we don’t hold sin against each other, we don’t hold grudges or treat each other harshly. We love deeply because we realize the Love of God that we have been shown on the cross.
Our last passage tonight- look at Ephesians 4. When we love one another, of course we speak highly of each other. Our words are powerful and yet we often use them carelessly. Proverbs speaks so much about how much we can hurt and cause damage with our words. But look at this verse
No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear.
Our goal, like leading one another to worship is to build one another up with our words. Not using fould language, or make careless comments- but loving one another so deeply that our every word is covered in grace and builds those up around us.
Ultimately, we are taken back to Acts 2. Those believers had been so impacted by the love of God that they came to know through Jesus that they became a radically different community than the world had ever known. And that community became the fasted growing, most diverse and widespread movement in all of human history to this day! Nothing has ever grown faster or farther than the early church did!
We are a part of that same church. IN Christ we are the Church. We must show up intentionally to BE the church consistently.
We are worship leaders, tone setters, and note takers.
We love deeply and speak highly.
We are the church.
When we live like this in these walls and outside of these walls- we will see the world around us take notice and we will see the lost drawn to Jesus as we show them this same love, as we set the tone in our schools as we lead everyone we know to worship through the way we love them and speak to them!
We are Shandon Students, we are the church.
Let’s be the church together.
Let’s bow our heads and respond:
Be honest, how have you been a little passive and unintentional when you come into this place? How is God calling you to truly step up, lead and contribute to this ministry. Maybe it’s just coming in and being a tone setter rather than a thermometer, maybe it’s speaking highly of everyone you encounter. What is it for you, ask God to show you and help you start being the church here.
How is God calling you to live this out in your lives? Ask God to show you how you can live this radical love and life of worship out at school and work and home.
Maybe you’re here and your first step from this is to finally say yes to following Jesus and step into the family of God! You’ve never received Jesus as Lord and you need to. Can I tell you God loves you so much and He sent Jesus to save you so you could experience His life in his family! Come talk to me or Brandon tonight about following Jesus!
PRAY
