The All Nations Family

The All Nations family. This is one of the things that I feel extremely passionate about as a minister, it's infused in almost everything. I do as a minister you some of the things that I say during the sermon you're probably talk about that before. Honestly, I think understanding this is one of the most important things that we can do as a church and hopefully I'll try to make that clear as we go along. I just got three points for us and I'm going to use a lot of maybe not a lot of Bible verses but a lot of what we call service in the academic world, like I'm going to start here and I'm going to go here and going to kind of like write some stuff down for you. Okay, so Hopefully by the end of this lesson, you guys know what the All Nations family means you see it as important in your life. I want to commit to that also and I think we do pretty darn good here. But I have some stuff for us to to think about on the scale of this isn't another like laying the foundation on the scale of like teaching to preaching. This is going to be a little bit more towards the teaching side. Okay, and hopefully the holy spirit will use the teaching to preach to you in your own heart, but I'm not going to be like trying to like super convict you and warn you guys and tell you to repent but you might feel spurred on to do that by the lesson. So my first point is just this God's dream we're going to do a quick survey for verses starting at the beginning of the Bible and going all the way to the end of the Bible. Okay in the Old Testament, we see Josh Todd stepping out of heaven and starting to partner with human beings. He's working with a family specifically the family of Abraham and he starts with this promise. Okay, this is this is Genesis 12 starting verse 1. The Lord had said that Abraham go from your country your people and your father's house full to the land. I will show you I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you. This is about like you know, 2,000 BC. This is like way before Jesus time and a lot of the Hebrew people throughout history. They heard this they saw this and they were like, okay, so that means like the nation of Israel is going to like rule over pretty much everybody. Cuz God is kind of said like we're going to be in charge we're going to we're going to be the ones is going to bless the whole or just some people literally thought that meant like we're going to you know, God's going to bless us and we're going to be in charge of the whole world and that that's not exactly what happened a long time. Later. About 1,500 years later. This isn't Daniel and this is a vision the Daniel gets in my vision at night. I looked in there before me was one like a son of man coming with the Clouds Of Heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence was given Authority glory and Sovereign power All Nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His Dominion is an everlasting Dominion that will not pass away in his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed until you may have picked up on this prophetic vision of Jesus Will Messianic prophecy if you will and it still kind of seems like okay. Well this King whoever this guy is he going to be for our people right? And he's going to rule over everyone. Okay, that still makes sense to me. I still can't grasp how this promise is going to play out. The whole world will be, you know ruled by us and blessed by us. Lots of people interpreted these prophecies this when Jesus comes on the scene and is like not is not how weird this is going to be. Jesus said something some of you may have you maybe have read this before Matthew 28 starting an 18 then Jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me therefore go and make disciples of all Nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything. I have commanded you and surely I Am With You Always to the very end of the kind of the same promise that the God gave Abraham look slightly different now. It's missional now he's saying like now you're going to go and you're going to invite people from every nation around the world. You can invite those to be a disciple of me and we talked about discipleship class Jesus told the Jewish people. This is so important. But your people aren't it anymore. And that's that loves a big shift in thinking because it was kind of like we could go from Abraham and we create this nation and we create this nation and some people thought that maybe the nation make this right Abraham and nation-building nation-building some people at the nation would become the ruling power over the whole world or something problem is every once in awhile. God would just like chop that Nation down and humble it like Horsley humble it and what we didn't read it what they didn't realize it's actually working through that family to one person which is Jesus. Abraham to the nation of Israel down to the genealogy of Jesus and then from Jesus it literally explodes into every single person on the planet.

The promise that was given to Abraham promise that was kind of hinted at in Daniel is now available to everyone and it don't have to be part of this family. You don't have to be Jewish. You don't have to convert to this. We're going to start something brand new. So that's our New Testament Church and yet at the very end. We started at the beginning of the Bible. This is the last book of the Bible. This is the Revelation Vision. I love this so much after this. I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation. Tribe people in language standing Before the Throne in before the lamb. They were wearing white robes and we're holding palm branches in their hands and they cried out and allowed voice salvation Belongs To Our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb And so this is that idea that the church will we call the church is the God's chosen people will Encompass Every Nation on the planet every tribe. Every people every language. This is God's dream of what success will look like.

and the question though is is it when we try to imagine what that'll look like here. Not here on Earth, but here like in Grand Rapids and every disciple wherever they're at at the moment has to try to figure out what that mean. Some people struggle with that. So here's a question I have for you guys. Do I dream God's dream? And and I want to be clear not just around the world, but like here. Because I've talked to several people that are like, yeah. I know I do want every tribe and every language in every I want a church in every nation and I want I want everybody around the world to be able to access the gospel juice. I might guess that's great. But what about our town? Is our town going to look like the All Nations family because if you go to some towns, they look different than other towns in America. We always end up talking about diversity. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit later, but when we go to India guess how many is just how many white people are at church not a lot. This is not. What the church does end up looking kind of like the town it's in it looks like the city and when you go to different places the church should look like the town's shirts should look like the people that live there and yeah. What we usually find here. I'm not. I'm not accusing you guys of this cuz I I really appreciate this about our church, but what but we have to be on the phone. The different types of people decide to worship separately and away from each other and that's why no, Martin Luther King famously said that Sunday morning was the most segregated time in America, which is very sad.

Until there's a plague that's been sweeping across Christianity and it's the idea of my people.

In Ann Arbor, I would I would say this in Ann Arbor is not that much more diverse in Grand Rapids. Probably not but you know what, you know, what our church should look like. Our church should look like the grocery store because if you go grocery shopping, you'll see lots of different people and I was super convicted cuz I go to the grocery store and I'd see like lots of lots of nationalities that were not represented at all in our church. Now we just left that like cut my heart a little bit man. Why why does someone from this culture? Not not feel welcome in our church, or why have they not been invited to our church or wide like, what's the what's the what's the drawback? So again, this isn't like I'm not trying to rub you cuss. I'm just trying to get us to see that I want us to dream God's dreams. Not just Jesus In All Nations, but I want our church to look like all the nations tribes people's and language that live around here. And so there's a verse that I'm going to dissect here in a little bit and it's a first that a lot of people love and I love it to don't get me wrong if it's going to sound like I don't love it, but it's it's act 242. Okay. In fact, the whole next point of my sermon is called 242. And what's funny is because when we were in Becky stretch at a church called 242 and I get it and that's a very popular thing and and there's like small groups called 242 groups and all the stuff. But what I want to do is I want to look at this verse in a slightly different way and maybe get us to to feel differently about what the what this versus actually represented. You can still use this in a welcome. It's okay. I'm not trying to ruin this verse for you, but let's read it. Okay. Whose Acts 2 4247 they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread into prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and signs performed by the apostles. All the Believers were together and had everything in common, they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need every day. They continued to meet together in the temple courts. They put bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere Hearts praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people in the Lord added to their number daily. Those who were being saved. Is anyone ever heard that voice before? Didn't think so. Here's a here's a scary or question has anyone ever heard that verse used as a way to describe how we could get daily baptism. I see a couple nods. All right. This is a very awesome verse and an I don't want to ruin this for you, but I wanted to put this into some proper context for us. This verse is not a recipe for the most awesome church in the world. Meaning it's a list of things and then there's a result. And I don't want us to think that if we do these things will get the result at the end of the verse if we you know each other and me together and pray together and do the teaching the other and if we don't have Gladys is your heart then God will bless us with you. No adding to our number. And so we're going to try to dig into this versus a little bit what what I'm actually going to argue tonight this morning. Is this afternoon, is that the time that this versus describing maybe over? And it doesn't mean that we can't experience this but we might never see it the way this was again, and I hope that's not scary. But here's here's how we're going to break this down. There are some Shortcuts To The Acts 2 42 Church and I want us to make sure we don't fall for these shortcuts. When I talked about recipe. Here's a here's another way to say that there's a difference between the portions of something and the ingredients of something like let's take a chocolate cake. Okay, if I said Hey, how do I get how do I get a delicious chocolate cake? And if you said well that's easy just go find like 10 pieces of chocolate cake and put them together. And now you have a chocolate cake. UTech you be technically correct, but you be skipping a whole lot of steps, right? Because you're you're talkin about the portions of a hole and then presenting that as a whole but that's not the same as the actual ingredients of a chocolate cake. It's okay for the Acts 2 42 Church what we see there and asked to do those are pieces of a beautiful Fellowship. But the ingredients are not what is listed there the ingredients or other things like lordship and humility and love and if something else we're going to talk about here in a little bit. But we have to be careful when we're trying to create our church that were skipping over all the ingredients and we're just trying to like manufacture these portions and and say another way to say this is it act two is descriptive but it's not proscriptive know what I mean by that like describing what it was like at that time. It's not saying do this and do this and do this and do that. Okay, cuz we could do that in America to we could describe a Time in America and it could be good or bad but it doesn't necessarily mean we should go back and do all those things that make sense. There's a couple more things. I want to just talk about this verse Acts 2. Biggest one. Everyone was Jewish in this time. This is very big. Because culturally they were they it doesn't say they were all the same because they loved each other. It's like they were literally all the same like they were all there in Jerusalem at the time. It was very easy for them to be similar to one another. And think about this like when when we talked about like meeting in the temple courts, there were people who were not allowed to meet in the temple courts. This is kind of like almost like a little first century civil rights lesson till later. There are people that we're going to read this verse and they're going to think back and well that was good for them. I wasn't allowed to meet with them in the temple Courts at the time. I would have been kicked out of the temple courts. Does that make sense? And even the same as like we met in our homes, we broke bread and we ate together as beautiful, but the reality is at that time if you weren't Jewish you weren't invited in break bread with another person.

When it says that they had everything in common. Because they actually had everything in, for the most part. It wasn't necessarily because of love and tolerance and all that sort of stuff.

So what I'm trying to say is that Acts 2:42 is great. It wasn't great if you weren't Jewish at the time.

There's another way I described Acts 2:42 Acts. 2:42 is the honeymoon of the church. So it's like Pentecost was the wedding day Pentecost is the day that is not coming up Pentecost with the wedding day. And Acts 2:42 is like the honeymoon phase. I know I may need you to do this, And so it was like dreaming and it was like beautiful and we had no problems and everything was like fancy and great.

But that is different all of us married to know this honeymoon is different than the marriage. So, can you go to the club? This is me and Jen on our honeymoon. And this is me and Jen just in Gatlinburg. So there's like a 20-year difference between those two pictures. And man, when we look at the picture of us on our honeymoon, we're like man who is great. We're like Jen was just describing to someone today like we were in Hawaii and it was like, there's no problem. We had we're just giving all this money and we had if you do a stack full of presents waiting for us when we got home and we were both young and likes no problems and like it's just fun to be alive and we're in this beautiful place and then fast forward 20 years and life is very different. Life is drastically different than it was on our honeymoon. We've got like 20 years of. being hurt by people hurting each other financial crisis all kinds of problems that we've had to overcome many sleepless nights many tears shed.

and yet despite the fact that there was so much between this in this so much pain and all every Mary's like between these two pictures that were so much pain. And yet I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I wouldn't go back to that now. It's great to remember that. Sometimes we just like having fun in Hawaii. It's great to think that way but our marriage means infinitely more than the honeymoon. Okay. Let's keep going Conner.

So what does the marriage look like? The marriage looks like what I'm going to call a culture Clash not in our family but in the church.

When we see what the church had to go through after Acts 2:42, sometimes it's amazing the church even survived like a wonder that the church is even still around today. And so but what I want to do is just take a quick look at all the times in the church that we had to adjust in the biblical account that we had to like deal with some stuff. Okay around culture. So this is actually not working at all anymore. So if you could help me out, that would be awesome. So this is going to be a timeline and the first thing is Pentecost. Okay. So this is the wedding of the church. This is why Jesus and his bride, you know, the Holy Spirit came down and fire and you know, this is kind of like the birthday of the church. This is when you know she Peter preach and it was awesome act one if you take a note and then we get to see and it's beautiful and everyone's loving each other and everyone is getting along and they're like, oh come over to my house and give you all my stuff and I'll take your stuff. beautiful

Guess what almost immediately it stops being like that until then an axe 6 we have the widows food dispute where there's already two groups of people that do the sharing is not equal. The Grecian widows and they don't get the same amount of stuff and it's like wait a second. Why are we being treated unfairly and the apostles a credit? They actually do a good job of dealing with this but there was a culture clash and they were like a we got to fix this so they appointed some people to take care of it. But then write as soon as that little speed bump is over when we got in at 8, I think is the Samaritans are accepted. Samaritans are the like half-breed like dirty.

Stepchild still stepchildren of the nation of Israel like but but God is like hey guys, these people are going to be part of my family, too. And there's quite a few people that were like unacceptable. They can't they can't be loved the way that we're loved and it doesn't stop there because then is when the Gentiles are accepted and this was the big one. This was the one where they're like, hey. We can't even I can't even I can't even wrap my brain around how Gentiles could be part of God's family so much so that it cause fights because I mean they had a whole meeting. I think that's the next point that the Jerusalem Council. Nope, but close the judaizers actually started coming out. There are a group of Jews who were like, hey, if those guys think they can be Christians. They're going to have to convert to Judaism. First or laws are going to have to be circumcised or going to be fully Jewish and then we'll start the conversation as to whether or not they can be Christians. And so then that comes the Jerusalem Council where they had to like actually have a meeting and decide can we even do this? How do we figure this out?

So that took a lot of that was not a not a simple you no easy decision that came to really struggled and worked it out. And then we see Paul and Peter duke it out. I think that's in Galatians 2 is the collections Peter is like hey, I don't think Peter was just okay, but what happened was he decided to eat separately. It's just too darn hard to get along. We've got to church with Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, and we do things so different that you know, what we're going to do. We're going to split just for males. But when we eat you guys eat over there and we eat over here and it wasn't because he was like inherently evil. It was just hard and Paul shows up and he's like, hey guys, what what what are you doing? You can't do this. You have to eat together. You can't do this. We have to eat together this whole thing depends on if we can make this happen we have to eat together.

And it was with a battle and the battle kept going until the last thing on here is the trouble in Rome. And if you remember my Romans 14 sermon a midweek or broke down like what happened in Rome where all because of the persecution of the Jews were kicked out a room and so for a while the whole church was just Gentile and they're like sweet we can do things. However, we want to do them. This is like freedom in Christ. But then guess what the Jews came back and the church the church just didn't look weird. The church didn't just look different the church looked Wicked to them the church look evil the church looked Pagan. And so there's there's a really strong chance that the entire book of Romans is not written about how people become Christian that is not the point of Roman The Book of Romans is written to this church because you have two groups of people hate each other and if they're both Christians, I'm trying to figure out how do we do this?

and so The the question then comes like what will what next I want it. I want to do something real quick. I want to Overlay the beginning of this slide in green and this represents when the church was in his honeymoon. And this is when it was fun to be a Christian and there was all got along and we shared our possession. We had a great time. And then from right before the Widow's dispute on has we have literally just been living in a state of conflict.

and so you may say you want to be a New Testament Church. You may say you want to be a bible-based new testament Christian and yet what that means is not that we figure out how to get along like we pay everything is fine. What that means is that we learn how to deal with all of this.

And you may even be thinking about time cuz we're still in this guy's I'm going to come to go out on a limb and say that but the chart never got green again. We were still living in this red era where we have to learn how to deal with conflict and maybe just do an exercise. Like I want you guys to think about the last year or so last two years. Have you guys had any conflict maybe even culture clashes with another disciple of Jesus? Are you love you love each other you love Jesus. I love Jesus, but man, we're just so different. It's just so hard to get along. Sometimes we just do things differently.

Congratulations, if you said yes, congratulations, you're in a New Testament Church, you're part of Christianity because what I want to put out there is that we read Acts 2:42, and we're like man, this is how it should be.

But from the time but different people started getting together and trying to love Jesus. In each other's company, man. It's been hard guys. It's never been as easy as it was during the honeymoon. So again, I don't want to ruin don't want to ruin Acts 2:42. The easiest way this might be I hope this isn't the most controversial thing I say, but it might be the easiest way to get back to an Acts 2:42 church is if you only worshipped with people that were exactly like you. Like if we all made the same amount of money, we all look the same. We're all the same age because you know old people are weird and young people are weird and we all voted the same and if everything was the same magically would be very easy to get along with each other. Like magic, I would have no problem sharing my stuff with you because I like you and you like me and we're like each other. That's not the New Testament Church is what I'm trying to put out there. So, what's the next one? I'm going to read Romans 15. Going to read Romans 15 starting at verse 1.

Because when you see through the lens of like disciples, I love Jesus you love Jesus, but we're so different. It's hard for me to love you. But look at what Paul says to the church in Rome.

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the week and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good to build them up for even Christ did not please himself but as it is written the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through the endurance taught in the scriptures and the encouragement. They provide we might have hope May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of Mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ accept one another in order to bring praise to God and a powerful scripture gun. Is a powerful scripture begging people who like don't get along can't see eye-to-eye like we got to figure this out. Got to learn how to look at each other the way Jesus looked at you.

so What's the next line? Yes, I want the marriage of the honeymoon. Do I want the marriage of you know cross culture messiness in the church, or do I just want the honeymoon where it's easy and where we get along and we Overlook all of our problems and we have a great time. You may say like yeah, I know. I know the answer is I want them supposed to want the marriage. But I got some very real conversations with people. Like some scary real conversations with people in multiple churches with a like it's just too hard. I just want to go to a church with people like me.

Here's what it takes. Its hard work requires love humility and building relationships.

Just like you do you say you want to be a part of a New Testament Church? This is what it mean.

One of the most important things you could do is learn about another brother or sister about them. What was life like when you grew up, how did how did you get here? How has it been here? Like what's what have you? What are you saying? Where is your life experience been very different than my life experience.

I'll give you an example. I remember last summer. We were going to do a lesson on something something political and I called I called. I just wanted to know like Botha. I want to know you want to hear your life experience when it comes to the newest from Philly. Like what was your experience as as a young black man growing up in Philadelphia with the police? Cuz I don't know. He might have said like was great. We had a great time. Like we love the police and the police told us there was no problem. I didn't have an agenda. I just wanted to know what his experience was. And I would encourage you to ask him if the what is experience was I won't tell you if you're but just asking like each other like wait, what was your experience? Like? Ask John what it was like to live in Columbia Simon what it was like to live in India No Agenda just ask what it's like to live in other places. That is the messy messy work of. Trying to get across all of our crazy cultures. and so if Yeah, that's what car do a scary I'm to Angie. Oh my gosh. Angie have amazing life stories with so much amazing life experience right here. It spans Bill literally the whole globe. Don't waste that that opportunity to learn from one another.

It so you can be totally honest. I don't remember what my note said at this point, but I'm just going to say like it would be so easy for us to be able to pay lip service to diversity like oh, yeah. I want to be a part of a diverse Church guys. That should scare us. Like there's times where I'm like where people be like, yeah, you know, I hear you have a diverse church. I'm like, I don't know if you could cut it. It's hard work. Like it's not it's not a marketing campaign like Crossing cultural barriers is scary. You got to bring your A game. You got to you got to like you got to be ready. If you're going to come into a church where there's so many different people all trying to love each other. It's not it's not like I'm not going to hand out business cards like we're a diverse church and be like, hey, maybe you can do this. Maybe you can't but but the goal at my point of all this is I love Jesus. And he is Lord of my life and I trust that you love Jesus and he is Lord of your life. And because I trust your lordship like I'm going to do the hard work of seeing the world through your eyes and helping you understand the world through my eyes cuz I want our church to look like all nations All Peoples all tribes all languages. I love you guys are visitors from Chicago are going to come up and do our communion today. So come on out.