Simply Irresistible
Expedition Groups • Sermon • Submitted
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· 3 viewsOur expedition groups will have a mission point. Not only will they be serving some group/community but they will be a front door for people in our community.
Notes
Transcript
Big Idea: Communicate the need for our expedition groups to be on mission. Our mission involvement (whatever that may be) should be leading people towards a community that is irresistible. Talk about how the small view of the Gospel has led us to our justification being the pinnacle of our faith and this in turn leading towards an individualistic view of our faith expression (namely in the Sunday gathering). Our love for one another and love for our neighbors is meant to create an irresistible kingdom into which we are inviting people into. On mission, we move outwards with intentionality to take that Kingdom into the world.
Brief intro into expedition groups - 2 hours - undergirded by Scripture bit...
Why the name expedition groups - Doesn’t roll off the tongue easy and that’s on purpose…it reminds me of the real reason they are called expedition groups...
Do “I went on an expedition” bit...
An EXPEDITION has a purpose and focused intentionality.
Purpose of The Outpost = equip & send and rest & refuge…we equip you to go on an expedition every week...
Explain that means our groups have a mission they are going after. This is the purpose and focus of our expedition groups.
But in order to understand that, we need to go back and retrace our steps from the last two weeks for a second.
If we are going to understand the purpose and focus of our expedition groups, we have to understand how the full view of the Gospel and loving our neighbors as ourselves work together.
Here is the deal…I have told you a sort of half-truth over the past two weeks and if I don’t come in with the rest of the information, it will be a lie.
In week one of this study we looked at the cultural value of rugged individualism and how we have conflated that with our faith. I talked about how we were created for community but have settled for this very personal expression of our faith. Personal Bible study and quiet time, prayer done alone by ourselves, and the Sunday gathering is now the highest expression of our faith because honestly, its really easy to come in here and view this as a personal activity even though we are in a room full of other people.
What I didn’t tell you, however, is how we got to that place. How we got to that place really ties into where we are headed today so let’s go there really quickly.
Give the two pictures of the Gospel on the blackboard:
First the gap and the flying to heaven - that has produced what we have come to call the Me & Jesus view of salvation.
Me & Jesus view of the Gospel
I want to read something to you about Paul’s view of the Gospel from the book of Colossians:
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,
in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,
and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
STRESS THE “RECONCILE ALL THINGS TO HIMSELF” PORTION...
DO THE KINGDOM OF GOD INVADING ALL OF CREATION ON THE BLACKBOARD
This is what Jesus was talking about on any given day…it wasn’t ‘just’ (key word being just) about personal salvation…Jesus primarily saw things in much grander kingdom terms where all of creation is being reconciled back to Him.
When the Romans began persecuting early Christians do you know why they did that? It wasn’t their practices. Roman’s incorporated sex into just about everything so there wasn’t much off limits. They also didn’t care what god you served either. Here is a perfect example of what got Christians in hot water with the Romans:
When they did not find them, they began dragging Jason and some brethren before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have upset the world have come here also;
and Jason has welcomed them, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”
The Romans didn’t care who we believe absolves our sins or justifies us before God. The early Christians had a loyalty to Jesus that came before any allegiance to Caesar. They weren’t disobedient to Rome, in fact, they were ideal citizens. They were simultaneously, however, leading a worldwide uprising against the world system in a way. . .
They were caring for the sick and the poor. They were meeting each others needs. There are stories of Roman provinces where the orphan crisis was solved by Christians getting involved. The Roman empire did a study one time to see what it would cost to pay the pagan priests to replicate how the Christians were caring for the poor naturally and they quickly decided it would completely bankrupt the empire. That was the reality of the early church, and yet, we have somehow reduced the Gospel down to just what it means about my own justification and sins.
We didn’t get to this view of the Gospel overnight or even alone.
The problem is that this whole Me-and-Jesus theology is all around us.
Author Amy Sherman did a study of the top 127 most popular Contemporary Christian Songs sung in churches across America on any given Sunday. Her team rated the theology of all of the songs giving a 1 to the Me-and-Jesus leaning songs and a 4 to the whole Kingdom Gospel songs. They averaged all of the numbers together and guess what the average number was: 1.57 skewed towards the me-and-Jesus theology. Listen to this quote from her book and then we’ll move on to last weeks content:
“CCM assiduously avoids…telling the full truth about life, the human condition, and our fallen-ness…If we fail to tell the truth about our human condition, which requires nastiness and messiness to convey and is not all that inspirational, we will be unable to fully explore the riches and depth of the gospel, which is about restoring all that unraveled in the Fall.”
God isn’t just working an act of redemption for our souls. God is also working redemption for relationships, work, rest, justice, the physical space around us, and ultimately anything that is broken.
As such, our mission, as agents of redemption, isn’t just geared towards the souls of men but is worked out in all the ways in which God’s Kingdom is invading earth.
It is with this full picture of the Gospel in hand that we are most effective at engaging in the mission of Jesus to make disciples of all the nations. Let me show you what I mean:
You guys have heard my example about the ENVIRONMENTALIST right...
Last week we talked about the great commandment and how we live that out:
And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
“This is the great and foremost commandment.
“The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
“On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
We said that love isn’t just a feeling or emotion we have about someone but is an action. We took a brief survey of some of the One Another statements in the Bible that are geared towards giving us tangible ways to live that commandment out. But we said that just knowing practical ways to actually love one another well isn’t enough.
I gave you the example of...
9 Be hospitable to one another without complaint.
Do the I don’t care how hard you try, you can’t do that by just gritting your teeth. Without complain sort of makes that impossible...
And so I said that we have to go back to the first part of the Great Commandment… to love God. It is only when Gods love towards us and our love for Him overflows out of the abundance of our hearts that we can actually begin to love one another the way Jesus calls us to. Without first experiencing the love of Jesus through the Gospel of the resurrection we have no hope of growing the type of love that He has commanded us in the great commandment.
So I am going to take a bit of a left turn on you really quick but we are going to quickly mesh things together.
Let’s talk about Israel for just a moment because God originally spoke those great commandments about loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves to the people of Israel. But that isn’t all that He gave them. No…God actually gave them 613 commands and some of them are pretty weird.
Like how you weren’t able to process the crops at the edges of your field or go back and pick up what you dropped when you were bundling your crops together.
Like how justice was meant to be dealt with if your ox got out and gored your neighbor.
Like an entire chapter on mold and infectious skin diseases.
What in the world?!?
Here is what God was doing in all of those commands:
God was making Israel different from all of the other nations around her.
Explain:
Crops at the edge of the field = poor, orphan, widow, and foreigner were taken care of. Gods Kingdom is a place where all people have dignity and all are cared for.
No other nation would care to uphold justice over something like that…or they were deeply skewed towards favoring the rich. God’s Kingdom is where both retributive and restorative justice is practices.
Mold = God cares for you. In any pagan religion skin diseases and infectious molds were seen as a punishment from the gods because you did something wrong. God is saying that He actually cares for you. Do quarantine bit...
We see the big idea explained in Isaiah 42:6
“I am the Lord, I have called You in righteousness, I will also hold You by the hand and watch over You, And I will appoint You as a covenant to the people, As a light to the nations,
And again in Isaiah 49:6
He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Here is what Jesus said to his followers in Matthew 5:14-16
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden;
nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.
“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Do the people are drawn to the light on a hill when all there is around is darkness bit…
Do you know how the early church was so effective at making disciples? Do you know what their evangelism strategy was?
They were irresistible.
The early church was a church defined by their love for one another and for others. The early church had the full picture of the Gospel in hand and marched into the world to make a difference. In fact, that has always been our heritage. Who started most hospitals, colleges, foreign aid societies. Any of the good ones still around today have Christian roots and ethics driving them to do what they do.
Do you know why we have most of our new testament? Its because people were failing to love one another or love God well. Do the “do you think Paul cared about love and unity for love and unities sake” bit...
They were advancing the kingdom of God forward with the full picture of the gospel in hand and with real love for their neighbor bit...
You see:
We aren’t just delivering a truth for people to believe in. We are displaying the reality of God’s irresistible Kingdom available now. We do this by loving our neighbor with a love that can only from a heart transformed by Jesus’ love for us in the Gospel.
We are inviting people into this irresistible kingdom that we are creating. This is ultimately the point of our Expedition Groups.
We do this in three ways:
Seeing the full Gospel…not merely the parts that deal with our justification
Developing communities of love as we practice the One Another’s of scripture.
Displaying the Kingdom of God through our mission work and inviting people to join the irresistible kingdom with us.
Because we have already talked about the first two, I want to spend a few minutes talking about that last one and then we are going to close out with some really practical stuff.
Acts 19 story...
A couple of things from this story:
Their community was better than what was offered through magic and the temple to Artemis. They made real money from that, and yet, the Kingdom of God was better. It wasn’t just a bunch of truths that this group all held in common (though that is what many people believe the church is)…it was real community rooted in love.
The Ephesian story is ultimately about how the kingdom of God is breaking through to push back the darkness.
We see this happen as a specific group of believers begin targeting a specific need. (Spend the rest of the time on these two concepts)
Because it can be easy to miss the beauty of what happened here because it is based on witchcraft and that’s not super common in our day and age… Let’s set this story in the 21st century to help us see the beauty of what transpired here at Ephesus.
SOMA Network - Do the football team care (fatherless football players stepping up to be a father to the Tacoma team). Show how they displayed a full picture of the Gospel of Gods kingdom and love for their neighbors by creating an irresistible community to invite others into.
Get practical with our groups - Can we do some visioneering together?
Our groups will have a mission point.
At least once a month, put the questions down and go out on mission together.
Things we have done in the past.
Pumpkin carving contest - we have families here at the church today because of that who have now brought in families who have brought in families (we need to do baptisms for some of these families now who have followed Jesus).
November is coming up - we fed people last year through another agency. Perhaps we can display the reality that needs are met in God’s kingdom by providing food for those who don’t have any…there must be a link back to community though.
Christmas last year, our church adopted a family and spent close to a thousand dollars giving the best Christmas ever to that family.
Easter egg hunt (both of these are reflections of our families dynamics - seeking fun, safe, sober environment for our children). Our church doubled in size because of this.
End of school nerf night...
Summer movie nights in the park
Jazz in the park
Things we can do in the future:
Month of October is coming up - Halloween - our neighborhood (block party & the best candy & a giveaway & a movie & ULTIMATELY ITS AN OPPORTUNITY TO TALK WITH PEOPLE WHO LITERALLY COME TO YOUR DOORSTEP!)
SRO will be putting on shows - does a group want to partner with them?
Traveling dinner parties
Get to know your neighbors dinners?
Whatever you do, tie it back to the full Gospel of the Kingdom of God
Justice
Needs
Joy & Celebration
Physical space
Work
Explain the vision that if we are doing this right, a year from now our groups will look completely different as they are aligned around the missions that each of our hearts beat for.
Explain that we haven’t always gotten that part right. Some things we have done have failed to connect people back to opportunities to join that irresistible kingdom. We don’t view that as a failure because we still brought God’s Kingdom goodness into all of those situations but we have learned a thing or two and so we will adjust and do better at that next time. Its part of growing as a disciple of Jesus.
We think that discipleship happens best in the classroom but it doesn’t. We don’t need more classes because for many of us, we didn’t put into practice what we learned at the last class we attended. We need opportunities to learn as we go on mission together.
Wrap it all together -
The full picture of the Gospel + Irresistible community + On mission together = Great commission success.
In order for that formula to work, however, we need people committed to the Gospel of Jesus, and committed to loving their neighbor as themselves focused on mission.
I think that leads us to one of three places today.
First, have you settled for an individual faith with the Sunday gathering as the fullest expression of your faith?
If yes, I would encourage you to take a very real and tangible first step by getting involved with an expedition group before you leave this morning.
Second, have you been transformed by the Gospel?
Perhaps you don’t know Jesus. The good news is you can choose to follow Him in His kingdom right now where you are sitting. We will never be able to love one another in a way that can change the world if we haven’t first been transformed by the love of God. Maybe you’ve just gotten off track and need to re-commit yourself this morning…invite them to do that.
Third, what mission point has God placed on your heart?
Explain…maybe you are a cook…maybe you have a heart for widows and orphans or football teams…maybe you are like me and just look at the hatred and anger in our world and long for the beauty of God’s Kingdom to break through in peace and joy and community. That can come when God’s kingdom citizens, His agents of redemption come together to shine the light of His kingdom in the dark places by bringing opportunities for people to have joy and peace together.