- Hey, RockPoint family and friends! It is great to see you. My name is Ryan. I get to hang out with our teenagers at RockPoint, and it's a blessing to be with you here right now at this time. You're gonna need a Bible. So go ahead and find a Bible near you, grab it, and I'm gonna be in Revelation, Matthew and Ezra for our time together, so check those out, and that would be great. I wanna start this morning with an announcement. It's a big announcement, and it's kind of difficult actually. It's kind of challenging, and it's serious. I actually wanted my wife to be here with me this morning before I made this announcement, but she was unable to do so. I am not really sure how to say this, and I'ma try not to get emotional, but I drive a minivan now. Yeah, I know. I know. I know some of you just fell over in your living rooms, I'm sorry, from shocked. I drive a minivan, and I've noticed recently that there's some hatred, dare I say persecution, for those of us who drive, proudly drive minivans, and the people that I hear making fun of minivans a lot typically do it because of what they look like, and that makes sense. Can't really argue with you there. However, those of us who proudly own and drive a minivan, we don't do it for what it looks like. We do it for what it does because it is the most practical car on the road. Descent gas mileage, you can haul a bunch of people, you can whole bunch of stuff, it's great. Last week, Roy first did a great job talking about what the church looks like. This week, I wanna talk with you about what does the church do, what should we be doing in the meantime until Jesus comes back? Next week, Roy is gonna talk about Jesus' return. You're not gonna wanna miss that. It's gonna be awesome, but in the meantime, what should the church be doing, what's our practical function? I am also in a life group with some friends, and a couple of my friends in our life group our educators, and so we talked a lot about learning, and we also talked about unlearning, and sometimes before you can learn something, you have to actually unlearn first if you've learned wrongly. And so before we jump into what us as the church should be doing, we need to unlearn some things before we can learn some things, and so let's look at first of all some things to unlearn. What is the church not, what is the church not? I'm gonna give you three things of what the church is not, and I want you to write those down and to take notes. First of all, the church is not a building. The church is not a building. The word ekklesia for church in the original language always refers to a group of people. The word literally means the called out ones. The word synagogue is different, that is a building. The word church always refers to a group of people. Here's a quote from Josh McDowell, he says, "Visiting a building with people attending services "does not necessarily constitute Christ's true church." That's a quote from Josh McDowell in his book, "Unshakable Truth" that we've been going through as a community, and he's absolutely right. Number two, write this down. The church does not all look the same. The church does not all look the same. Go to Revelation, chapter seven, and look at verses nine and 10. This is the Apostle John speaking, and he's having a vision of heaven. Look at this with me: After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our god who sits on the throne and to the lamp. Did you notice in that verse, it says every nation, every tribe, every people? The church does not all look the same. The church is a diverse group of people who are called by God to live differently. If you look around the world, there are big churches, there are small churches, there are outreach-focused churches, there are inward-focused churches, there are gigantic churches in certain parts of the country close to a million people, and there are tiny little underground churches in East Asia that you'll never see or hear about. There are Chinese churches, there are Asian churches, there are Mongolian churches, there are Swedish churches, there are European churches, there are Canadian churches, there are Australian churches. There are black churches, white churches, Hispanic churches, there are churches that all look different. The church does not look the same, the church is diverse. Now in our culture, you know this. In our culture, we value diversity. We value multiculturalism. Unfortunately, our view as a society of diversity has been affected by sin because of total depravity. Because sin has affected every area of life. So we value diversity, but in this text, in Revelation, look at this. There are cultures. There is diversity, but there's no sin. Isn't that gonna be great? Is it gonna be awesome to be in heaven with lots of different cultures, lots of different races of people, but there's gonna be no sin, and we're all gonna lay our crowns down at the feet of Jesus, we're gonna worship him in spirit and in truth, that's gonna be fantastic. The church is a diverse group of people who are called by God to live differently. Number three, write this down. The church is not in the stands, it's on the field. The church is not in the stands, it's on the field. Check out this quote from Josh McDowell in his book "Unshakable Truth": The early church grew through a spiritual formation process of discipleship that reproduced new believers. This was not a strategy of professional preachers drawing new attenders to a building. It was a multiplication process of lay people who as disciples reproduced other disciples that reproduced others. That's absolutely true. That's absolutely right on. Check out this next quote from Robert Webber, quote: Discipleship is not a vocation prescribed only for full-time staff members at a church building. Discipleship is the full-time spiritual vocation of all God's people. So let me ask you a question. Use your imagination. If you got a window near you, look out the window. I want you to dream for a second. What if, what if the pastors at your church spent less time doing things and spent more time actually equipping you to do things for God? What if you went on a mission trip, but you couldn't actually take a flight? That'd be crazy. What if you went on a mission trip to your street? What if you saw yourself as the pastor of your next-door neighbors? What could God do through you? I think he could do some amazing things, and I think he wants to. How would your life look different if you got out of the stands and you got into the field? Last week, Roy Fruits talked about the Great Commandment, and he talks about the Great Commission. The Great Commandment is to love God is to love others. The Great Commission is to make disciples. Now if you put those two things together, they make a really cool math equation. So just think about it like that. If you love God and you're loving others, you will make disciples, that's how it works. They fit together really really well, but as you focus on the loving others part, because we talked about loving God at length the last several months, but if you focus on the loving others part, that's what I want us to focus on together today. How do we love others? How is God calling you and I as the church, the people of God, to love others? I think there's two ways, write these down. Number one, there's meeting human needs, and then number two, there's meeting spiritual needs. The church of God is called to love others. How do we do that? Through meeting human needs, and also through meeting spiritual needs. So meeting human needs, let's start with that. Look at Matthew 9:35-37: And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them. Underlined that word compassion. Because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a Shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, and the laborers are few." Now when you look at that verse, you can see Jesus went to all the different cities and villages. He didn't stay in one place, he moved around. You can also see, yes, he did some teaching. He did meet people spiritual needs, absolutely, but it also says what, it says he healed every what? Disease and every affliction, he met human needs. He met needs for food, for water. He met financial needs, and he met relationship needs. He met needs for friendship and community. You think about what he did with the disciples. He took 12 guys, spent three years with them. He built community, he built friendships together that resulted in discipleship. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them. He met their human needs, he also met their spiritual needs, but he felt compassion towards them. Francis Schaeffer is one of the smartest Christian thinkers of all time. I have read most of his books, not all of them, most of them, and as I was looking back at some quotes from some of his books that I've read, he said this, and it really struck me. I want you to take a screenshot of this quote. Go ahead, take a screenshot of this quote. Francis Schaeffer said, "Biblical orthodoxy "without compassion," there's that word again, "is surely the ugliest thing in the world." Man, I don't know about you, but I mean that's just struck me, and I'll be honest, that convicted me when I read that a couple weeks ago because I love biblical orthodoxy. That's what I strive towards. I love good Biblical teaching. I love good theology, I love doctrine, and that's my bread and butter, baby. I am all about that, okay? But if you and I have right beliefs, if we have good theology, but it does not result in compassion towards other people, we are a walking contradiction, and that is ugly, and I don't think any of us want that. I don't have the quote on the screen, but just listen to this. This is from Steve Bond in the book "Unshakable Truth." He said: Proclaiming the Christian message isn't about just reading some scripture verses to people. When your house is on fire, who do you want in your driveway? Someone reading versus or a fireman with a water hose? That's a great point, and he goes on to say: Deeply hurting people simply can't hear your words over the roar of their life going up in flames. They need a hose that gushes hope, love, and compassion in action. There's that word again, compassion. Friends, you and I are called to meet the human needs of the people around us, that's basic needs like food, water, shelter, toilet paper maybe , that also includes financial needs, and that also includes the need for friendship and community. Hey, if you're a kid, hi, kids! How's it going? Thanks for hanging out with us. Hey, kids, on that piece of paper that you're drawing that neighbor's house on that Wendy talked about earlier, I want you to draw a tic-tac-toe box, okay? So line, line, line, line, just like you did on the bus, you know, when you breathe on the window, and you do a tic-tac-toe, draw a tic-tac-toe box, okay? All right, now I want you to put an X right in the middle of that tic-tac-toe box, okay? That X right in the middle, that's your house. Picture your house in the middle of a tic-tac-toe box, and I want you to think, all those boxes around the outside of your house in the middle, who are those people? Your neighbors. I'm talking literally your next-door neighbors, people whose property touches your property whether you live in an apartment, whether you live in a single-family home, or whether you live in an assisted-living facility, and you're in an apartment there, wherever you live, think about the people who are right touching on the outside of your property, and let me ask you a question, kids and parents and adults, let me ask you this. Those people whose property borders your property, do you know their names? Do you know their phone numbers? Do they have your phone numbers? See, if we're gonna show kindness like our kids are studying this week, the fruit of the spirit, if we're gonna show kindness, we need to know our neighbors, we need to know their names. We need to be able to communicate and contact them. So I would challenge each and every one of you, kids, it's your job to make sure your parents do this, okay? Say mom and dad, as soon as this is over, we're gonna put our jackets on, we're gonna go outside, we're gonna do that. I want you to actually today go outside of your home, walk down the street, knock on someone's door, stand six feet away, but I want you to ask them. Hey, it's a crazy world, a lot of things going on, I just wanna see, are you okay, are you doing all right? Is there anything I can do to meet any of your needs. Here's my phone number. Let me know when you do have some needs. I wanna challenge you to do that today 'cause I think our world needs that. Your next-door neighbors need that, and this is a great opportunity for us to be the hands and feet of Jesus and to meet human needs around us. Did you know that a priest had two jobs in the Old Testament? A priest, think about a priest. A priest did two things. First of all, a priest think of people down here and God up there. A priest represented people to God. So we would make prayers, they would make intercessions, sacrifices, a priest represents people to God. A priest also represents God to people. So a priest would be God's hands and feet to people. That's what a priest in the Old Testament does. And you know what? In the book of First Peter, the Bible says that you are a priest. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, look it up. Fact check me. First Peter, it says we are part of the priesthood of all believers, and you know what? I wanna show you one of my favorite books in the Bible in the book of Ezra in chapter seven. Ezra was a priest, and it says this, look at this, it says: Ezra set his heart to study the law of the Lord, to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. Look at that again. Ezra set his heart to do three things, to study the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel, isn't that great? At RockPoint, we have a discipleship model. Our discipleship model is know Jesus, grow in Jesus, and then go and help others do the same, but that's based on the Bible. That's not new or crazy or progressive or out of the box. That's old biblical truth, that's old good stuff. We wanna meet the spiritual needs of the people around us in addition to meeting their human needs. We wanna help people know Jesus as their savior. We wanna help people grow in their relationship with Jesus, and we wanna help people go and help other people do the same. So let's look at each one of those one at a time. First of all, know, okay? We want to meet the spiritual needs of the people around us by helping them know Jesus, and think sequentially about this. How do most people come to know Jesus? First, you have to hear the gospel. Then you have to consider it and wrestle with it, and then you have to accept Jesus and make a decision. So who do you know who has the spiritual needs to know Jesus as their savior? They need to hear about Jesus first. They need you to actually share the gospel, the good news of Jesus with them, and then they need to consider the gospel. They need to wrestle with it. They need to ask hard questions. They need you to walk them through it in person or through a Zoom call or through FaceTime, however you can do that. To ask questions about science and about faith and about real life stuff, they need to consider the gospel, and then they need to accept Jesus as their savior. They need to actually make a decision. Now you don't need to force or pressure them to do this, but you do wanna regularly encourage them to make a decision. Hey, have you made a decision yet? Because guess what? Jesus is coming back, and you need to make a decision as soon as you can. Friends, who do you know that needs to hear about Jesus, consider Jesus, or accept him as their savior, and how can you meet their spiritual needs to push them to the next step? Second of all, after you know Jesus as your savior, you need to grow in your relationship with Jesus, and sequentially the way that you grow for the most part for most people is this way. You attended, and then you study, and then you obey. When I say attend, I mean hearing good Biblical teaching on a regular basis. I also mean, and that's through a worship service in person or online, however you can do it, and I also mean being part of a life group, having a group of people that you know, that they know you, that you can grow together with spiritually. That's what I mean by attend. Attend good teaching and attend a group of people that you can do life with. Nobody was ever meant to try to follow Jesus by themselves. That's impossible. There's always groups and teams in the Bible of people following Jesus together, and that's what we should be doing too. So first you attend. So the way you're gonna meet the spiritual needs of the people around you is to help them grow in their relationship with Jesus, and you're gonna help them attend your good teaching, be part of life group. You're also gonna help them study, and when I say study, I mean daily time reading the Bible by yourself and/or with others, and when I read scripture, when I study the Bible, I can't really read scripture without praying, and I can't really read scripture and pray without worshiping, and I can't really worship and pray without scripture being involved. Those are all kind of fluid and together as you spend time with God on your own every day, and then the third step is obey. So as you help people around you grow spiritually and grow in their relationship with Jesus in his word, you wanna help them attend a life group and hear good Biblical teaching on a regular basis, you wanna help them study and spend time with God everyday in his word, and then you also wanna help people obey. There comes a time after you know Jesus as your savior and you grow in your relationship with Jesus that you have to make hard decisions, and you have to say yes to God when he's tugging on your heart and telling you to do something. When you read scripture, after a little while you realize, wow, God's telling me through this scripture I need to treat my spouse differently. God's telling me through this scripture I need to love my kids better and be more intentional with them. This scripture's telling me that I need to give financially. Whether our economy is doing great or doing terrible, scripture always tells us, God always tells us to be generous to our local church and also to the people around us. Generosity is always an obedience thing for us. The Great Commission says go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you to. Part of growing in relationship with Jesus and meeting the spiritual needs of other people around you and helping them grow spiritually is helping them and teaching them to obey, and that happens through relationship. Now if you have a pre-teen or child at home who has a smartphone or tablet, there's a game that you can play with them, the game is called "Clash Royale." I play this game with middle school boys regularly, and I'm gonna be totally honest with you, I absolutely destroy them, okay, to the glory of God, of course, and with love in my heart, but I destroy them in this game, okay? "Clash Royale," it's a pretty age-appropriate game. Let me show you a screenshot of what the game looks like. So when you play this game with your kid and you should, it's fun, you can download it, play it, you're on the bottom. You've got three buildings on the bottom, that's you. On the top, there's three buildings, that's your enemy, and there's kind of that line in between, and your job is to use your elixir, which is basically your currency, you're gonna use that money and you're gonna make warriors, and your warriors are gonna try to destroy the buildings of your enemy, and whoever wins wins. Now let me tell you how you can destroy your middle school son or daughter in this game. The next picture's a screenshot from my phone of me destroying lovingly a middle school boy in this game. Now as you can see, all his buildings are gone. I have overwhelmed him with warriors, the match is over. Winning, 'cause that's what I do with middle school boys. I teach them humility, and I destroy them in games, and as you can see, look at that picture. See on the bottom right there? This is how you win "Clash Royale." You don't spend all of your money on just warriors. That's how you lose, and that's how I destroy middle school boys. You spend your money on warrior makers. See those little huts right there? Those are warrior makers. You win this game by making warrior makers, not by just making warriors, and, friends, when you follow Jesus and you help people know Jesus as your savior and you help people grow in their relationship with Jesus, you also need to help people go and help others do the same. We don't just make other Christians. We make disciple makers of Jesus who help others who help others. 2nd Timothy 2:2, great verse: These things that I've taught you in the presence of many witnesses teach to others who will teach others who will teach others. That's exponential growth, it's multiplication. Your calling on your life and my calling is the same, to help people know Jesus, to help them grow in Jesus, and to go and help others help others do the same, and if you think again sequentially about this, to go is to just like Jesus did, Jesus had the masses, he had the 12, and then he had the three. So for you and I as we are going and helping other people do the same, we need to go to the masses, large groups of people, and then we need to go to smaller groups of people to disciple them, and then we drill down and we go small, and we pick one or two people, and we really disciple them and invest in them and challenge them to grow spiritually to know Jesus, to grow in Jesus and his word, but then also to go at to help them help others do the same. Christianity gets really fun when you make disciples who make disciples. In student ministry, we have a phrase, and one of the phrases we use a lot is you have to earn the right to be heard. You have to earn the right to be heard. Friends, if you are gonna do all three of those things, if you're gonna help people know Jesus as your savior, if you're gonna meet human needs around you, and you're also gonna meet the spiritual needs around you, if you're gonna meet those spiritual needs, you need to earn the right to be heard. So who do you know that doesn't know Jesus that you wanna help on that first step to know Jesus? You got to build a relationship with them. You got to earn the right to be heard. Most people are not gonna wanna listen to what you think or believe spiritually if you haven't earned the right to be heard by them. That's just the world we live in. Not saying it's right, I'm just saying that's what it is. If you know someone who has accepted Jesus in their heart, and you wanna help them grow spiritually, just like I talked about, if you wanna help them join into a community of believers, if you wanna help them study the word on their own, and if you wanna help them start obeying God, you got to earn the right to be heard. You got to build a relationship with them before you can help them grow, and then thirdly, as you go and help others do the same, you got to earn the right to be heard. I wanna wrap up and close with this, and I think this will make sense to you. I think you'll get this right away. I don't think I'll have to explain this too much, but this picture right here, this is the Stillwater Public Library. That is the Stillwater Public Library. By the way, I love the Stillwater Public Library. I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and I take them there all the time. You know why I loved the Stillwater Public Library that's right down the street from my house? 'Cause it's a big building, and there's a lot of books in there, and there's truth in those books, and I love taking my kids to the big building, to the library, but you know what? Somebody one day recently had a thought, and they looked around themselves and they realized something. Someone who cares deeply about the library and loves the library and loves the books, someone said to themselves, hm, people aren't really going to the library much anymore so what are we gonna do, and in addition to trying to get people to come to the library more, you know what somebody had an idea to do recently, they said let's bring the library to them. Let's bring the books to them. Look at this picture. If you've taken a walk, this next picture, if you're taking a walk in your neighborhood and maybe you've seen one of these, you know what these are? These are called My Little Libraries. These are little libraries. Someone decided to make people's homes libraries, and someone said, okay, if people can't get to the library, I'm gonna bring the library to them. I'm gonna bring the book and the truth to them. Friends, we're living in a crazy time right now as you well know, and guess what? I want you to think about your home as the church because guess what? We need to bring the book and we need to bring the truth to the people, we need to bring it to them. God wants to use all of us to do that because guess what? The building is closed. Let's bring the truth to people. Let's help the people around us by being the church, by getting out of the stands and by getting onto the field, by accepting the priesthood of all believers, by meeting human needs around us for food, water, shelter, financial needs, friendship needs. Let's also meet people's spiritual needs to help people know Jesus, to help people grow in their relationship with Jesus, and to help other people go and help other people do the same. Let's be the church to our neighbors. I wanna challenge you this week specifically to actually go out of your house, put your jacket on, take a walk, knock on someone's door, and just say, hey, crazy time going on, stand six feet back, but ask them, are you okay, do you have any needs that I can help you with, and here's my phone number for when you do have some. Friends, let's be the hands and feet of Jesus to our neighbors. It's funny in the scriptures people got all philosophical about this. What do you mean our neighbors? What do you mean our neighbors, Jesus? No, I mean literally our neighbors, like literally your next-door neighbors. Kids, take your tic-tac-toe box, and try to see if your parents and you can figure out who are the names of everybody around you. Let's go be the hands and feet of Jesus. Let me pray for you. Jesus, thank you for my friends. God, I pray that you would give them courage, that you would give them wisdom, that they would choose to bring the book to the people, that they would choose to see their role as a missionary and a pastor to their street, that they, God, would have the courage to meet the human needs and the spiritual needs of the people around them today, and, God, would you give them courage as they do that? In Jesus' name, amen.