Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, new life and church 307. We are back. Don't call it a comeback. We've been here at least one other time. Yes, we've been here before. This is episode two of Ecosystem. I'm cj. This is Grant.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Yo. I can't believe on episode two already.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Oh, man. Time flies. Wow. Yeah, it's just. Just. It's crazy. Life comes at you fast. Yep. It starts coming, and it won't stop coming.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: It won't. That should be a song.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: We hit the ground running before we go any farther. I realized something in our last episode is that we talked a lot about acts, but I don't know if I ever actually explained in the last episode why we're doing the Ecosystem podcast system. What are we doing? This. Yeah. What are we doing here? So here's the idea is we're doing sermon series, and in a sermon, we've got 30, 35, 45 minutes, maybe.
Just kidding. We've got, like 30 minutes to preach a specific passage. And there's only so much that we can talk about in a sermon, especially when it comes to themes and overarching narratives in a book. There's only so much we can go into on a Sunday morning. There's only so much we can do in even a series. So we wanted to just kind of open up the behind the scenes of the. The. These books. And what we're planning to do is do one or two episodes per sermon series where we just kind of pull back the curtain and go behind the scenes of the sermon series and do a deep dive either into the book that's being studied in the sermon series or into the biblical topic. Right. So in. In January, we're going to start a series on community. We'll probably do an ecosystem episode on Community as a biblical concept, you know, because it's not in a book, but makes sense.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And so the idea of ecosystem is, as we explained in the trailer, the Bible is complicated, but it's not complicated like a microchip. It's not something you need a degree to understand. The Bible's complicated like an ecosystem. If you go out into the woods, if you go out hunting, if you do it long enough and you ask good questions of people who have been there before, you can understand it. It's complicated. It's alive.
You're going to be constantly learning more things, but it doesn't have to be intimidate, intimidating. You can live in ecosystem of scripture.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: So we're in the second half Of Acts.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: And the first podcast, we talked a lot about the themes of the Book of Acts, the kind of literary tools that go into the Book of Acts, how all of scripture, you look at all of these kind of big stories that kind of collide in the Book of Acts, Right? The we. We are the people of God, the Holy Spirit indwells the church. We are living his mission. Jesus is acting in the Book of Act, Acts, and He is acting through us. We are really still living the continued story of the Book of Acts because the Book of Acts is the body of Christ. Right. Operating in the world. Yeah.
So.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: So now we kind of want to just go, you know, how does. How can we take Acts, read it and apply it to our lives? What are some major stories that, you know, kind of came out of it? And so we kind of want to just dive into those things, Right, like this episode.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to do more of a practical deep dive. We've got the themes now we're going to take those themes and apply them and say, how should I live as an individual and what does this mean for the church collectively, for all Christians, local churches, that type of thing in the modern world? So to start off, we're just going to kind of kick around some of the big stories in. In the Book of Acts. So, Grant, what do you think when you think of the big standout stories in the Book of Acts? What are some of the ones that come to your mind?
[00:03:45] Speaker B: I think, I mean, it's kind of a. A softball. But Pentecost, like, for, I mean, the Holy Spirit coming and dwelling in us, I think, is a huge, huge moment. Sure.
I mean, leading up to it, thousands of years, God's present was not in us. It was seen in, like, you know, fire and stuff like that. But like, actually having the Holy Spirit having God with us, I think is a massive shift in absolutely. How we should live, how we should think.
And. Yeah, I don't know. I just think it's very, very monumental, you know?
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, a way we could describe this, and I'm not the first one to come up with this, but as we could say, in the up until Pentecost, God was near us, right?
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: But in the Holy Spirit, in Pentecost, God is with us. He is in us. We are indwelled with the Holy Spirit. He's not just nearby, but he is in you as a follower of Jesus. Right.
Now, here's one of the things I wrestle with practically is in, obviously Pentecost, there's fire, there's miracles in the book of Acts. There are all of these miracles.
That is not my daily life. Right.
So it seems like there's this tension of I live empowered by the Holy Spirit. Everything the church does is empowered by the Holy Spirit. Right. The Holy Spirit is the activator, the motive, motivator of the church.
But I don't necessarily see miraculous things or interventions happening all the time. So what do you, in your mind, what do you think it looks like to live with this understanding? The Holy Spirit's in me, the Holy Spirit's motivating and animating the church.
What does that mean for you?
[00:05:32] Speaker B: For me, it, I see it in like, little things and like, almost you, like nuances or like you see it after the fact. Like, for me, I think a huge thing that stuck out since even working at a church is we craft a service on a Sunday morning. We plan it out pretty detailed every week.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: And then there's still, there's still some variables that happen on a Sunday morning. Things change. But we can prep and pray and just do all the things to prepare for Sunday morning and not thinking of individuals in the church, but then talk to those injuries afterwards and they, they feel like that this one aspect or this part of the service spoke to them or I would, this whole day I was struggling. This whole week I was struggling through this one thing. And then you talked about it in the service or something like that. It's like, it's, it's just a spirit working through all of us to, as we gather, helping one another and stuff like that. I think that's a huge part of that. Before, I never really noticed that kind of stuff, but now I noticed that or, and it's not even only in the church too. I mean, just like living out your life, like you can start talking about something to somebody and that is something that they needed to hear or needed more explanation about or something like that. So that's where I feel like it plays out most that I see.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah. I mean, it's so cool to see that too. I felt that writing sermons, I write a sermon a long time in advance, and then sometimes a couple days before that sermon, someone, I'll, I'll be talking with someone, and they'll tell me what they're struggling with and I'll think, oh, my gosh. Yeah, I, I, I didn't realize that I've been writing this ser. Sermon. And then sometimes I'll say, hey, just so you know, I didn't write, you're gonna hear this on Sunday. It wasn't about you.
This wasn't pointed. Please don't take this personally. But, like, the Lord's doing this. He's. He's bringing. He's animating the church, just like the book of Acts, right? We might not see the miraculous sign that confirms. No, we do see miracles. I mean, I've experienced miracles. I've seen miracles.
You know, we. We're a very kind of skeptical world, so I think we probably overlook more miracles than we know about in our skepticism. One of the things I've seen is the Holy Spirit creating conversations. Like. Like earlier today, I had a conversation with someone, and I was honestly a little bit nervous about what I needed to talk with this person about.
And I was praying about it. I've been praying about it, you know, for a little while, thinking about this meeting. And about 10 minutes after I started talking to this person, the person brought it up.
Right.
And so I'm nervous about how do I transition to this and have this conversation. But the person actually brings up and introduces the thing. It's one of those. The Lord went before and kind of tilled the soil here. You know, you see this in. In the Book of Acts, as the Holy Spirit is actively working with Paul, with Peter, right? There's a story of Cornelius. Another one of the giant, monumental stories in the Book of Acts to me is Peter and Cornelius. And Peter goes up and has a vision, and then moments later, there's a knock on the door. Like the Lord was preparing. He was tilling the soil for what he was about to do in someone else's life. You know, And I mean, some. So many times I have felt. I felt this. I am a pastor's kid. I have been in church for my whole life, and I felt like all the sermons you hear about, are you sharing the gospel? Are you. You know, who are you leading to? Christ, who's your one? Or, you know, whatever?
And I felt like, how in the. What do I. How do I do that?
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: You know, how do I share the gospel with someone? And it's been so relieving to me to realize the Holy Spirit's in me. The Holy Spirit wants the gospel to go forward. You can see this in the Book of Acts. The Holy Spirit wants the gospel to go forward. The Holy Spirit is creating opportunities for the gospel to go forward. I. I don't have to learn to force it to happen. I have to learn to pay attention.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Pay attention.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I got thinking of like paying attention is God can speak to you, the Holy Spirit is speaking to you. Like I was in a grocery store and I, I felt like there's this person checking out next to me in a self checkout. They didn't have enough money and for some reason I had a nudge of like I should do that. And Lindsay was right next to me and like I was like whatever. And I didn't do it. Went to the car and it's like I was feeling like I should have. We should have paid for that person's gr. Like, but we didn't act. We, we kind of heard it, but we didn't actually take action and like follow what the Spirit was guiding us to do, which is like golly, like sure. So you can, you can, you can hear the, you can hear God speak to you and set up things, but it's still up to you to actually take the action to, to do that.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So this, what we're talking about is a theme in the Book of Acts, right. That we talked about last time. The Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost. But that absolutely is part of our lives. Right. And this is. I'm going to get on a soapbox real quick.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Do it.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: I hear people all the time say stuff like, ah, theology doesn't really matter. I just, it's just me and Jesus, you know, I just love Jesus and like that's great. That's theology. If you think Jesus is worth loving, that's theology. Right. But when we understand the Bible, this is why we call it an ecosystem. The ecosystem of scripture. I can live in it. When I understand it, it actually gives me a way to live. It's not. Understanding the Bible is not just, it's not just nerdy ivory tower knowledge. Right. It's not just an academic pursuit. It, it theology done well changes the way I live. Right. So when I see that the Book of Acts is introducing it's birthing the church of which I'm part and the Holy Spirit animates the church, then I see that as part of the church, what I do. We talked about this in the last episode. Going to Walmart matters because the church is in Walmart when I go there. Right. I. One of my least favorite things that every pastor has is a Somebody got saved on an airplane story.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like I nervous to fly now because I'm like, gosh, I better lead somebody to Christ or I fail as a pastor.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, sure.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: But just like the, the Lord might be moving and he might not, you know, in the person sitting next to me, but if I'm on a flight, the church is on the flight.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: You know, because I am part of the body of Christ. Yeah. And it's this individual and corporate thing because I, as an individual, am responsible to bear the banner of Christ, to be an ambassador. Paul said, we are ambassadors of reconciliation, but also as the church, the church collectively has this mission. So at New Life, when we say that Jesus loves you unconditionally, he died to give you new life and that you can come as you are and become who God created you to be, what we are saying is the Book of Acts is still what we're living. That's our job. We are pursuing that. Right. It's a big claim that says, we didn't stop on the mission.
We're still doing what the Book of Acts is doing. Right. And that becomes really an evaluation tool for. For a church, is to say, am I doing this because I like doing it? Am I doing this because it's cool?
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Am I doing this because, I don't know, it'll be cute to take a picture of my kid doing this? Or am I doing this because the Holy Spirit is living in me and in this body? And we have a mission, which is to preach the gospel and to be Christ everywhere we are, you know, and that's. It becomes a decision maker.
We talked about this a minute ago. The story of Cornelius, Peter and Cornelius is one of the other kind of monumental stories for me.
And for me, the application of that story is I preached about this a while back, but it's. You've got Peter and Cornelius who should not like each other. Right. They are. They're opposites. There's opposite as you can get.
And for his entire life, Peter would have thought a Christian means being Jewish.
Right. But in this point, he's learning that a Christian. No, it's not a Jewish follower of Jesus. It's a follower of Jesus, Jewish or not.
So Peter receiving this vision in Acts, chapter 10, that God makes people clean.
He goes to Cornelius, he goes into his house, and he crosses this uncrossable cultural dividend. And that, for me, is incredibly practical and incredibly uncomfortable because there are people that I don't want to be with.
I mean, like, there. There are. There are beliefs, there are political beliefs, there are religious beliefs. There are cultural practices that I am not interested in being part of. Right. But this story directly challenges that. And you see this play out all throughout the rest of the New Testament. You know, you can See, kind of the Book of Acts becoming this story that applies all the rest of the teachings of the New Testament. So Paul writes, you know, in Ephesians about Christ destroying the barrier that divides and out of the two Jews and Gentiles making one humanity in Christ. And then you see Peter and Cornelius living this out. And then you see Paul going all over the known world preaching to Jews and Gentiles. Everywhere he goes, he's cr. Like, he's destroying the barrier that divides.
So I think the Book of Acts, one of the things that forces us to ask is, where's my barrier that I'm trying to build, but Jesus is trying to destroy.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: You know.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: And that sucks, honestly, that I don't like to think about that at all. Yeah.
But it's. I can't. I don't think I can wrestle with Acts without wrestling with that.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah. For sure.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: You know?
[00:15:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Talking about that story, I remember I was listening to some interview with John Tyson, and he was saying that it's signed. Like, it's still hard, but it's pretty easy to love someone that you like. Like your spouse. It's pretty easy to love that person.
It's much harder to actually practice love with someone that you don't agree with, you don't like.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Like. But that's actually what it means to love one another. Like.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: It's not just pick and choose you want to love. It is love everyone. So, like, that rings through my head all the time. Like, no, you can't just pick who you want to love. It's not okay.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. And it's.
And there's no place where we find a justification. There's no point where it's like, okay, but that's too far. True. Because if you look at, like, I think I said this in the last podcast, you know, corinth was a slang word for someone who was being sexually promiscuous. Right.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: So whatever demographic of people that we're like, they are too. You know, like, they're too out there. They're too liberal, they're too left. You know, we can't.
God plants a church there, you know, and he doesn't affirm the behaviors. Right. But he still plants a church there.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: And he's not like, change your mind. Act differently before you come hang out. He's like, come hang out, and the Lord will transform. Because when you read the Book of First Corinthians, which Paul wrote. Right. Paul wrote it. While the book of Acts is happening, Paul's writing First Corinthians, and you realize they've got, like. In the church, they've got stuff that is just wild. You know, there's a guy literally sleeping with his stepmom, and the church is just cool with it.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: And Paul's like, no, you got to stop.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: You can't do that.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: You know what I mean? But. But the church didn't. Paul didn't say, like, get all this worked out and then you can come together and be unified. No, they. They're unified, and it's made a mess. So now Paul's cleaning up the mess. You know, and this is how the church works. It's like, we'll figure out how to clean up the mess, because unity is going to be messy, but we got to do the unity anyway.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: You know, and it's like, you know, Jesus on the cross. So Luke, right. Luke was. Is part one of the book of Acts. In Luke, chapter 23 or 24. I never remember which one. Jesus is dying. He says, father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Present tense. They are murdering him. He is forgiving them.
And then the church plays out Jesus on the cross, Right. With Paul. Like Mike talked about this past Sunday, Paul getting stoned and beaten and then walking back into town.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Right. It's just over and over and over again. These things happen where the church, Jews and Gentiles can't stand each other, but they forgive each other. Right. The Romans worship Caesar. You know, they are antithetical to the gospel, but they learn to forgive under Christ and become unified again. It's like the church.
You know, Peter goes to jail and God just walks him out. Peter doesn't get revenge. You know, Peter keeps preaching.
They. They literally live out this Jesus. Jesus saying, father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Actually, in. In chapter six or seven. Man, I'm getting my chapters messed up. Stephen is dying. Stephen quotes Jesus because he says, father, forgive them. They don't know what they are murdering him.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Y.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: And he quotes that. You know, you were quoted Tyson earlier. Andy Stanley said a long time ago, we don't have time to. Not like anyone.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Which I. There are a lot of people I don't like.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: I know.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: I. Yeah, but I think that's. That's such. I mean, it's so clear in the Book of Acts that we. It's not.
We cannot uphold the mission of Jesus and have people that we don't like and we don't want to be around.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Those Two things just can't go together. And I always, I always feel like I should give this caveat of if, if you are in an abusive relationship, if someone is doing harm to you, the gospel doesn't say you have to subject yourself to harm. Right. The gospel doesn't say that, you know, a wife has to stay with an abusive husband. You are made in the image of God. Get safe. Right. That. That's not what this is talking about, but it is talking about loving as we have become whole and healed in Christ, learning to love our enemies and taking the strength that Christ gives us and using that to love people that would be our enemies. So this is never a justification for staying in an abusive situation, but it is a motivation for me to say, who do I not like? Who do I.
Who would not feel, who would I not feel comfortable around? You know, and how do I build a bridge to that person?
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Yeah. What other stories seem like big ones for you, man?
[00:19:50] Speaker B: I don't, I don't, I don't necessarily. It's not like necessarily, I guess, a specific story, but you kind of touched on a little bit of like Paul getting just persecuted. Like, I mean, he even, like, it's. I think Mike talked about a couple months ago, but he's not. He came in at some point in his life, he can't even write a letter because he's so mangled up and just been stoned so many times. Almost dying so many times.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Different kind of stoned. Not the Colorado.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: True, true, true.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: No. If you do that too often, you might not be able to write a letter.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: You might not be able to.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: This is a different kind of stone.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: But just like his perseverance of just living out that mission, regardless of what is happening, like just continuing to move forward and just see, reading that, seeing that it's like inspirational and like, I don't know, it's just powerful.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And persecution is obviously a theme. Yeah. You cannot get around that. They are getting persecuted day in and day out, individuals and Christians in general. You know, it happens collectively. It happens individually. There's a, A section where all of the Christians have to leave Rome. I believe it's Rome. They have to leave a city because they're being like, chased out. And you got Paul as an individual who's getting singled out, or Peter and John who get sent to jail, or James who gets killed. So it's collective church and it's individual.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: And I think that's really important to talk about because modern American Christians can Have a persecution complex.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: You know, like, I'm. I'm being persecuted, I'm being oppressed. And the persecution being talked about in acts is rocks hurled at your head with the intent of death. Yes, exactly. You know, it's not. I got put in Facebook jail.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah. That's not. That's not persecution.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: It's not persecution. It might not. It might be unjust.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: But it's not the same thing. Right.
And sometimes we can use this persecution language as. As an excuse to justify our bad behavior.
I remember seeing this video a long time ago of some. This is not a famous pastor or anything like that, just a random guy who got a big YouTube following.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: But he got arrested trying to come into the US And I don't remember what all he had. He was coming in from Canada. He was an American guy, but he's coming in from Canada. And I think he had a bunch of guns in his car or something like that. Just like. Like he was being sketchy.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: But he made a video of, like, how he was being persecuted by the border patrol and stuff. And that. But that was this whole thing. Most people aren't being that extreme.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: But there can be a sense of, like. Like I'm gonna say something on. On social media, and it's gonna be what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna call it truth. But it was actually mean.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah. It's just me.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: And then people are gonna react poorly and I'm gonna call it persecution, you know, or. Or I'm gonna boycott something or I'm going to, you know, try to, like, bring negative.
Bring something negative onto someone else, and they're not going to like it. Yeah, but I'm going to call that persecution.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: And that's not what happens in.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Yeah. You don't see Paul, like, instigating, like, egging it on or like trying to get a reaction out of them. He is just doing. He's being a Christ follower. He's being like Jesus. And it's just kind of. It's counterculture to them and it may offend them.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: And he gets persecuted because of it. But yeah, I. I've.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: It.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: It seems the Western world that we.
We go more on the attack, and then when they respond back, when culture responds back to us, then it. We yell out persecution. And that is not what Paul was doing.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely not. It's not what any of the apostles or the early church was doing. They weren't going out trying to get persecuted.
And that's, you know, Just worth noting, like, they didn't want persecution, you know?
Now we need to give this caveat again, this counter caveat, I guess, that if you follow Jesus faithfully, persecution is going to be part of your experience. But we need to look at why there. So an example of this comes in Acts, Acts 16 and Acts 19. Okay.
In Acts, chapter 16, Paul is followed, followed around by this demon possessed girl. And it almost seems like in the story, Paul kind of gets annoyed.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: She's like, she constantly says, like, these people are Christians. She's making a stink about it. And he casts the demon out.
But we learn in the context of the story that she's in effect a slave girl.
And he and the people who owned her were using her, her demon possession as like a, like divination as a way to make money. Right. So Paul, he. Yes. Maybe he gets annoyed because she's following. He's following or she's following him around. Yeah. But what he does is he frees someone from the oppression of a demon.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: And from being used by someone else for monetary gain. And he gets in big trouble for that.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Right. Like he. I believe that's one of the times where he's beaten, but it's because he's actually defending someone who's helpless. Right. Like, he is halting the work of the enemy and he is freeing someone from oppression.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: In this and that. Like, it's literally causing a financial problem for the world around him. Right. But it's because it's. It's not because he's like, I refuse to shop at your store. Because whatever. It's. He's saying, no, I can't. You're oppressing someone. You know what I mean?
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Which I think this is. Maybe this is just a me thing. This might get me in trouble saying this, but, like, as Christians, we will boycott for social issues. Right. We'll boycott because of a political issue. But we all know that a lot of the stores we shop at use, like, oppressive labor.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Like, we know a lot of our clothes get made by basically slaves, and we don't boycott those companies, but we will boycott someone who's too liberal or too conservative or to something like that. You know, it's an interesting thing. It's like, it's just. I think the Book of Acts would ask us to wrestle with that.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Like, so another story is Acts, chapter 19. There's a riot in Ephesus because Paul's gone there. He's planted a church, bunch of Christians, Ephesus, a lot of the economy is built around Artemis and the worship of the goddess Artemis.
And Christians won't worship Artemis. So it's bad for business. Right. But so the idol makers are, are losing money. Right. But once again, it's not like it's not some big boycott or something like that. It's just that the Christians lives are different enough that it's disruptive to the people around them, you know, so there are things as Christians we shouldn't put our money towards. Right. I shouldn't knowingly put my money to the worship of a different God. Right. I also shouldn't knowingly put my money towards the oppression of someone made in the image of God. God. Right.
But it, it's, it's those decisions that cause persecution. A riot breaks out and they're trying to run the Christians out and trying to, you know, get Paul to come out and, and, but they're rioting because the lifestyle of honoring, literally honoring God first and valuing other people is causing a problem.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: You know what I mean? It's running against the cultural gravitational force around them.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah. It's messing up the their economy somewhat like. So that's gonna anger some people who.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Expecting their pocketbooks, you know.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and, but it's their faithfulness to Jesus. It's not like they're not just angry, you know, and you know, they're, they're not just on social media calling for boycotts, but their lives are different.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: You know, so that's, that kind of leads me to this like, question. We talked last week about our last time about the gravitational pull. John Mark Comer talks about the gravitational pull of culture.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: What do you think are some of the gravitational pulls of our world? That if we are still the church, like the book of Acts, that it might cause some persecution, but that we, our lives should pull us, you know, should pull us away they. From that gravitational pull. We, we should be drawn apart from the world around us.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it, I'm not great at it, but like culture. Yeah. Culture is so good at discipling us that gravitational pull towards what the norm is of the time. And I think, I mean I love Hollywood movies and I don't think there's a great alternative currently, but sure.
Even going to that, like I've, I've heard pastors who say like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not ashamed to just get up in the middle of the movie and walk out. Like if it's, if it's bad, if it's Bad intake, it's not gonna probably produce good fruit. Like, so being conscious that I'm still not great, that I go watch movies and I partake in that, but so much of what the storyline is. Is probably not best thing that we should.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: And I wish there was other Christian artists that produced better content, but sure, you know.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, that kind of being. Being just passive, being receivers of the.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: World around becomes more normal, especially the more we participate in it.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: If they just. If in acts they just kept. They were. Became Christ follower, but they still made idols to other gods, that. That. That's not actually sure. Like, that's not changing. That's not shifting enough, being counterculture enough. And I think it's very easy, at least for me in culture to watch movies, listen to music, and that can just be numb. And it's not. Oh, it's not that big of a deal, actually. What they're doing in that. That scene is probably not that big.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Yeah, but really. Sure, sure. Yeah. And then we react to that and we create, like, hyper Christianized stuff, which is not a whole lot better.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: You know, um. Yeah, I think sometimes it has more to do with, like, what's. What's the. What's the. The overarching story that I'm promoting? Or what's the. Like, what am I knowingly participating in? You know what I mean? Am I like. When I. When I listen to this song, am I like, actually celebrating gratuitous sexuality? You know what I mean? Or am I. Am I promoting an artist that, like, is harming people? You know, that's. Music is celebrating harm.
Yeah, yeah. I think materialism is another thing, you know, in our culture.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: It's just.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: We get pulled in that all the time. Have more, buy more, wear better clothes, buy a better car, have a bigger house.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Consume, consume, consume.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then Paul says in Philippians, while he's in prison, I have learned the secret of being content in all things. Whereas we're like, you know what? The trucks are 2018, about time to upgrade. You know, Paul's like, you know, dictating a. A letter while his hands are broken and probably in chains. You learned the secret of being content in all things. That's one of those things that just. It tells a different story to the world around us. You know, when the world around us is constantly chasing the next level of achievement. It's not that we shouldn't be ambitious, but they're chasing the outward expression of that, and we are content where we are. We are. We are happy with what we have and not driven to prove our worth in our possessions or our bank accounts, man. Does that tell a different story to the world around us? And it's uncomfortable.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: It is.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: It can be uncomfortable in the world around us. It can create a degree of persecution, you know, not, you know, not getting stoned.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Not that kind of persecution. But it can create a little bit of a distrust or make us feel like outliers. We're not pursuing the same things. Yeah. Something I think about too is rest.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: You know, the Sabbath is the only ten commandments I've ever heard a Christian brag about breaking.
I've bragged about breaking it.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: You know, you'll hear people say, like, yeah, work's just going so good. I had to work all seven days this week, man. Praise the Lord. God's blessing me. Things are just going so great. It's like, yeah, well, you know, that's right next to don't cheat on your wife or have an idol.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: You know.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I think even I'll spin off of that. Which culture? I think church culture somewhat is the pendulum swinging to be more like focusing on the Sabbath. But also it's like a three day Sabbath instead of like working six days, like being fruitful. It's like some of them are like swinging it like. No, you're not even putting in a quality six days of like, sure, fruitful. But I mean, that's very minimal right now.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: It's funny to see that the church culture.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's, that's what the. Like, that's. Sorry, I messed with my mic. That's what the gravitational pull does.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Is it like it will pull us to. One of the things I think is if. If Satan can't kill you with the sin, he'll kill you with the rule. Right. So try to get us to be lazy, which is a sin.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Right. Like, or, or he'll try to get us to never rest, which is also sin. Right. But then he'll react to that with hyper legalism and he'll try to get us so driven by following the rule that it's also killing our joy and our, our.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Our.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Our witness of Christ to the world around us.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: And it's that balance of. You know, Rich Velotus talks about how in his book the Deeply Formed Life, how we don't Sabbath so that we can work hard and we don't Sabbath because we earned a day off. We Sabbath because our value Comes in the Lord. Right? Six days we are given to work.
One day we are given to be reminded that the Lord makes the grass grow, the Lord makes the water come. The Lord keeps me alive. The Lord is in control and my value. If I never worked a day in my life, I would still be in his image. Yes, it's because of his image that I do work hard, because he's given me good work to do. You know, so it's that balance of.
There. But all of these. These things, you know, when we live faithfully to Jesus, when we refuse to objectify another person, we live in a hypersexualized culture. When we refuse to objectify another person, we pull against the gravitational pull around us, and it, like, it will create some degree of tension.
When we refuse to define ourselves by our work or try to get out of work, then it creates tension in the world around us, you know, and it leads to persecution. But it doesn't lead to persecution because we're being mean on the Internet. It leads to persecution because the way we live is in some way threatening or destabilizing to the pull of the culture around us. You know, if. If a world. If the world around us wants us to be constantly working and constantly buying, because that's how it makes money. When we don't feel like we have to constantly buy, then all of a sudden we become, you know, the outlier.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So we see this book of Acts, all of these themes of, like, our. Our lives are to be different, where they're pulled differently in the culture around us. There's one more story that I think really stands out. It's Acts 15. You see this council happen where Paul is out on his missionary journeys, but they have to go back to Jerusalem to get with all the leaders of the church and basically have a debate about Gentiles and rules and all that kind of stuff. And I bring that up just to say, like, every millennial I know is annoyed at church politics and church structures and bureaucracy, but we're humans, so we have it.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: You know, like they had it in acts in chapter 15. That's not to say that getting too bureaucratic and moving slow and, you know, is. Is good, but it's just to say that, like, life is messy. The church is messy. Making faithful God, honoring decisions for a community is messy. And we should resist the urge to be angry at how messy it is. You know, we need to just. If we can embrace that. We need to be as efficient. As efficient as we can, as faithful to the Mission as we can. And also it's messy.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: And just acknowledge. Yeah, we just have to be aware or just know and acknowledge that it's messy.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: Involved and. Yeah, but structure, I think is still necessary.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Absolutely. Some decisions are going to take time. Some decisions are going to be fast.
Some. Yeah, some things are just going to be messy and complicated and unclear. And we navigate it together. You know, I don't Lone ranger, you know, and go figure it out on my own and make it happen. No, I stay in the community and stay in the mess because I as part of God's people and part of this community, you know, the church is the body of Christ. I am an ambassador of that as part of the church. But if I start doing everything on my own, then I'm disconnecting myself from the body up, you know.
So here's the last question that I think leave leaves at least in my mind from the Book of Acts.
And it's. The church has a mission. The church has this. We are still living out the story of the book of Acts.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: And there, there are two groups of people in the book of Acts, largely. There's the apostles. You got your Peter, Paul, James Phillips. Then you've got everybody else who's just in the churches.
How do I know what my calling is? You know, we read the story of the Book of Acts and we think, well, I'm supposed to be like Paul. Yeah, right. But there weren't. There's only one Paul.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Like, you know, so, you know, do I. How do I know? Am I supposed to plant a church? Am I supposed to be a missionary? Am I supposed to keep being faithful in my neighborhood? You know, like what. How do I know what my purpose is? I think every Christian who reads the Book of Acts should at least wrestle with that. Like, if I'm part of this story, what part do I play in the story?
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. That is. That.
That is, I think, a. Probably a common. For most people to read it and want like maybe feel like they're feeling because they're not doing exactly what Paul did or just. I feel like they, they should be better or something like that. But like they forget about all the other people that are part of the churches that he plant that are still doing whatever job, occupation they had at the time, still living like Christ and discipling people around them. But sure, finding that. I mean, that's a lot of, I think, community, like being with people who are. Who know you can see, like, oh, you're gifted in this area and just can see into like your life maybe instead of just internal people see around you, but also just resting in like the Holy Spirit is in you and it's going to be guiding you towards that, what you're called to be. Sure, it might feel like you're not where you need to be, but most likely you are.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: Right where you need to be.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: And not that you shouldn't like have goals and seek other things, but I think sometimes we get too distant and we don't focus on the now. What's happening right now.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So Jen and I were missionaries for a while and while we were missionaries, we would be asked to go speak at churches and we'd do like the missionary thing, which is always the, like give or go somewhere or do something sort of sermon. You know, it's what people wanted us to preach. Something I noticed is that you preach that kind of sermon and it's never, pardon my broad stereotypes here, but it's Never the like 28 year old dude playing tons of video games and like not doing anything with his life that comes out after that sermon and is like, sign me up, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to, you know, overseas. It's always like the mom who's like president of the PTA and her house is always full of kids in the neighborhood and she volunteers in the kids ministry and the youth ministry and you know, leads five small groups. You know, like it's already doing everything.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: And she shows up feeling guilty that she should be doing more.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Is God calling me to do more? I know I can do more. I want to do more.
And there's that comparison, you know, that's so it's worth just acknowledging, I think that none of us are Paul. None of us are Peter. I'm not Paul.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Paul.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: You're not Paul. Pastor Mike is not Paul. Like, none of us, none of us have that responsibility. We can learn to model the way those people interact with people. But we are not the apostles establishing the early church. That's not our calling. God might call some of us to plant churches, to go into ministries, to start businesses, be missionaries. Absolutely.
But sometimes I need to lower the pressure on myself and in general. One of my mentors, Phil Vanderplo, says this fairly often. He says if, if you want to, if you want to be in God's will, you are that. It's like God's not tricking you.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: This isn't National Treasure. He didn't hide it on the back of the Bible and you hold it up to a black light and you see the mission like, God is not tricking you. If you want to follow him, he's going to make it clear. Sure. So if he hasn't told you to do something else, then keep doing what you're doing. You know, if you're called to plant a church, God will put that burden on you. If you're called to go overseas, he's going to make that clear. Most people who wind up being missionaries weren't like, yeah, I just had no idea, you know what I mean? Like, they were like, yeah, I wrestled with it for like a year and I just knew I was what I was supposed to do, but I was resistant. And finally, you know, I decided to obey. It's like, it's not, you know, it's not that there was some mystery they solved.
So if you want, like you're saying, like, keep doing what you're doing. If you want to be in God's will, you are. Now there are some of us that, yes, we do need to get off our couch and into the game. Right? There's some of us who are like, yeah, I'm waiting for God to call me and tell me the big thing. Like, no, God already called you to be a missionary to your neighbors.
You might think maybe he's going to call you someday to plant a church, but he hasn't yet. Absolutely well practiced.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Volunteer in the church.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Serve in the youth ministry. Like, do something, go. I mean, gosh, I don't think I came up with this. Somebody else I'm sure said this. Like, why in the world would you think God would call you to go across overseas if you won't go across your street? You know what I mean? Like, why in the world would you think, what would God want you to plant a church if you won't serve in a church?
So sometimes our grandiose ideas of purpose are actually keeping us from actually fulfilling our purpose because God called us to just go to work and pray for our co workers or, you know, pray around town or serve in the church or something like that. You know, it's just like the purpose is not that complicated. The purpose is not. We are continuing to live this. Most of the people in the Book of Acts were the people who were just in the churches just going to church, giving, serving, living life together. Sometimes God calls an individual or a community to get up and leave everything and go somewhere else. If God calls you to do that, obey. If he didn't call you to do that. Keep doing the right thing. Living the way of Jesus, wherever you are. And if you're doing that, then you're doing what he called you to do. You know, it's just a free plug for what we do here at New Life.
We call it life on mission. Yeah, right. Like, we believe everyone. The basic. The basic requirements are not requirements. That's the wrong word.
Salvation comes through Christ. But if you want to actually grow, to pursue growth and to find purpose, then really, there are five things that come from scripture that we should be doing. And you can see them clearly in the Book of Acts. Gathering. Yeah, Gathering on purpose. Connecting deeply with other believers, giving generously. The early church was so generous. The Book of Acts. The people are so generous.
Giving generously, serving other people, serving sacrificially, and then influencing the world around us. We do those five things. That's living life on mission. You want to continue the story of the Book of Acts? Ask yourself, are those five things part of your life? If they are, you're probably living your purpose. And if God hasn't told you anything else, just keep doing those things.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:44:25] Speaker B: That's good. I do. Yeah. I do think it is a. Maybe. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a lot of people will. Will read Acts and.
And feel that tension. And not. It's not necessarily bad to have that tension, but I love what you're. What you quoted your mentor saying that. Yeah.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Just.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: It's good stuff.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: I love what you said.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: I don't even know what I said now.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: No, it was great.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: But yeah.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: All right.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: I think that. I think that kind of sums it up.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: I think so. I mean, I'm sure there's more. Oh, we could talk about Acts for a long time.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: But the biggest thing, most important thing is we are still living out the story of the Book of Acts. If you don't get anything out of the Book of Acts besides this, the Book of Acts doesn't end at chapter 28. If you're a follower of Jesus, you are in the story of the Book of Acts. We are still doing it. Yeah. So let's. Let's get in the game. Let's be on mission. The Holy Spirit's in us. Let's learn to pay attention and see the kingdom come and the will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So, sure. Yeah.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: It's great.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Sweet. Yeah.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: And we'll be back in the next series most likely to do just a little overview behind the scenes of what our next series. What's our next series called?
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Y'all.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Y'all.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: Man, that's a nice ring.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. Christian community.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: Talking about community.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So we'll come back and do just an overview of what. What the ecosystem of scripture tells us about living life with other people.
Yeah.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: All right, Cool.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: Peace.
