Joy + Christmas Dinner

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

I don't know about you, but this Christmas, at some point in some time, I'm gonna have Christmas dinner or some form of Christmas dinner. It's gonna be mostly family around the table, but it's gonna be a lot of people maybe for you that's also like a company dinner. I know a couple of you had a Christmas party at your house last night. I see you, I see how tired you are, it's all right.

When do you have that family Christmas dinner? When you've got something like that going on, I wanna challenge you just to think about, kinda maybe think about that moment or think about who's gonna be around that table. And in particular, I want you to think about family. What if your whole family was sitting around the table? And I want you to ask the question, what do all of you have in common?

What do you have in common? Is it political affiliation? Is it shopping habits? Are all of you just writing the same algorithm, right? Or is it something deeper? Is it a commitment to one another that is more than just simple human compassion? Is it an allegiance, a loyalty to these people? Will you fight for them? Will you cheer for them as they struggle? Will you argue with them? Will you clash with them because you actually care what they think?

Who are these people? Because it's more than just blood relations. This is also, this would include step parents, step kids. This would include in-laws. This would include adoption. This is not just about blood. What is there? This is something deeper. This is something really that we take for granted if we don't think about it. This is family. We kinda throw that word around family. It kind of means a lot of things in a lot of different contexts. Family, I wanna talk about family just this morning. We're gonna be talking about joy today. The pink candle is the joy candle. I don't really know why. I think I should, but I don't know why. We have three purple candles and one pink, and the pink one's joy. So, brownie points to whoever wants to research that, but not during the sermon. You heard me. All right.

Family is something a little bit deeper. Family is something that is more powerful, very, it's very profound, and it's very strange, because it does have this huge effect on us. It shapes who we are, and yet, and yet, for the most part, we didn't get to choose that family. It shapes who we are, but we didn't really get to choose that family or that situation that we are born into. So, it shapes you in a couple of different ways. It shapes you kind of with these common joys, with things that you enjoy together, or things that you have enjoyed together. So, this would be something like a really great vacation that you go on. I know, Osters, you guys are legendary for the sweet vacations, okay? I'm so jealous in a good way. Like, I'm really happy when you guys are able to get away, because I'm like, they're gonna kill it. It's gonna be a great vacation. That's a common joy that you all share.

In 30 years, you'll be able to remember, as you're sitting around Christmas dinner, and you've got children and grandchildren. Children, there, I'm not trying to speak it too much. Okay, sorry. You're gonna be able to think about, you're like, hey, remember when we went to that national park? Remember whenever that happened? It was so great. And for some of you, you know, it was like, remember when we would always go to grandma's house this summer? I got the joy of taking my mom to the house that she grew up in, in New Orleans, Louisiana. And boy, that was a, that knocked me back, man, because this was the house that I grew up going to Christmas at. And so I step in that house, man, I look around, I'm like, this place is tiny. How did I think this was so big? This was just, I mean, I think it was literally, I think it was like 1,500 square foot home in just New Orleans, Louisiana.

But when I was a kid, I mean, that place was amazing, and it was so big. All these memories, right, these are things that we can cherish, these are things that we can talk about, these common joys, you know? I remember whenever I was at the New Orleans house, I said, that's the corner where the kids' table was. How did four kids fit that little tiny table with this other big dining table here in this little tiny room?

This is not just big things, it's also little things, maybe hunting and fishing together, maybe doing these, maybe cooking together in the kitchen, right, they're your family in part because you share this common joy. There's things that you do together, and you share that. And the family, by sharing that, it shapes you. Family also shapes you by common struggles, okay? Shapes you by common struggles. This might be financial hardship, this might be unexpected loss, this might be substance abuse, this might be a big job relocation, this might be the loss of friends, this might be an arrest, right? Not fun things to think about, but things you actually have to struggle through together. Part of the reason my brother and I, my brother and my mother and I are so close is because we went through a divorce together, right? And it's not some banner I wave all the time,

but it is part of who I am. Those struggles, those common struggles. And it didn't have to be, you know, like just a big death blow or something, I mean, it didn't have to be this huge thing, but you went through these struggles together, and the people that you went through the struggles with, they were your family. Those struggles kind of made that. Another way of family, this is kind of a funny thing, this works for most of us, another way of family shapes us is literally, right? You might hear that you have your mother's eyes, or you might hear that you have your grandpa's nose, or something like that, and our family, the most intriguing one is that my brother and my youngest daughter have the same nose, exact same nose, it's uncanny, it doesn't look like mine or my wife's, but my brother's spot on. Your family literally is written all over your face, literally, you look like these people.

And it's a unique situation because in our culture, I don't know if you've noticed this, in our culture, we celebrate choice, right? We like having our own profile on our own Netflix account. Okay, we like, I mean, in my wife's car, there's two buttons, there's a one and a two, and it's a seat setting. So all I do is I sit in my wife's driver's seat whenever I'm driving, I hit number two, and that seat adjusts and the steering wheel moves and all this stuff, that's great, okay, that's choice. That's what our culture celebrates. If you wanna drink made a particular way at Sonic, okay, that is like an expression of preference, of who you are, right? We celebrate this as a culture, we want to give people choices, and we want them to express themselves in those choices. That is prevalent, and yet, and yet, one of the most, if not the most powerful thing in our whole lives that will shape us

is not determined by our choice. We don't get to choose our family. And it's instructive, it's very instructive, because today we're gonna be talking a little bit about spiritual family. And it works a lot of the same way. In fact, whenever we're talking about following Jesus, Jesus uses this kind of illustration to talk about it. He says that we are reborn into a new family. I wanna just take a quick excerpt from John three, and I wanna look at Jesus talking to a Pharisee named Nicodemus. And this Pharisee didn't, he wasn't sure if he could talk to Jesus kind of out in the open, so he meets Jesus at night, and they're having a conversation, and this is what they say. This is John chapter three, verses two and three. If you don't have a Bible with you, we're gonna have it on the screen.

And you can also power it up on your phone, either way. This man, Nicodemus, this man came to Jesus by night and said to him, rabbi, teacher, we know that you are a teacher, come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. And this is, Jesus doesn't say, well, thank you very much. He doesn't, what's his immediate response? Jesus answered, he said, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So it's kind of a strange response, but you can tell Jesus has something on his mind. He wants to tell Nicodemus this thing. And it's not just Jesus, that's actually much of the New Testament. It uses that phrase in particular, born again. Listen to Jesus as he continues. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can you enter a second time? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb

and be born? Which is a great question. I mean, just take a second. That's actually a really good question by Nicodemus. He's like, how am I gonna make the choice to be born again? Am I gonna go into my mother's womb? That's creepy and weird. Why are you saying that, Jesus? Like, that's, and then Jesus doubles down. Verse five, it says, Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. So he's kinda giving us a little bit of, he's saying, unless you are born again, unless you get new eyes, unless you get a new mind through being born again in spiritual birth, Jesus is talking about,

then you're not a part of the kingdom. Following Jesus means being born into something. Look at 1 Peter 1, verse three, it says, it says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy, listen to this, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He has caused us to be born again into a living hope. This is a mysterious thing when it comes to following Jesus. When you're following Jesus,

it is both true that you choose to follow him, and it's true that he chose you first. Let me say that again. In following Jesus, it is true that you have chosen to follow Jesus, okay? So if you follow Jesus today, it's because you made a choice to follow Jesus. And at the same time, the only reason you're following Jesus is because Jesus called you. It's because Jesus had you picked out, actually, which is strange to us. It's very difficult to reconcile those things for us. Scripture is actually super plain on this. If you look in Romans 10, it says that when somebody believes with their heart and confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord, that we're saved, period. Clearly, clearly that's a choice we make, right? We are confessing something with our mouth, we are believing something in our heart, that's a choice that we're making. It's also plain that Jesus has chosen us

before the foundation of the world. This is in Ephesians chapter one. And that in Ephesians two also, the events of our lives are directly, they're directed by God personally. Ephesians 2:10 says that there are good works, that are laid out for us to do so that we will do them. How are both true? That is a mystery. You wanna grab coffee this week? I'll be glad to talk to you about it. But it is both true that God is in complete control of everything and it's true that we make real choices in real time with real consequences. Today, we're gonna completely side-set that discussion, but I didn't wanna just leave it alone. We're just gonna look at one side of it. We're just gonna look at the side where it says that Jesus caused us to be born again.

We are not born into a situation, to put it in a different way, we're not born into a situation that we carefully picked out while shopping. This wasn't according to our Amazon preferences. This didn't pop up on a screen, we're like, that's what I wanna be born into. Even spiritually, right? So we know it for family, we know it for physical family, we get that. But in spiritual family, it is still just as true. We don't get to pick our spiritual family. In fact, when we look around, sometimes the spiritual family that we are born into, the things that happen in our lives, the people that come around us as we follow the Lord, it seems quite random to us. We're not curating the people that the Lord is bringing around us. So like a physical family, we don't get to choose, but also like a physical family, followers of Jesus share a common joy and a common struggle.

Common joy, common struggle, just like you do with your family. Just like you did growing up, just like you still do to this day. You share joy, you share struggle, and spiritually, it is true of your spiritual family. This is where I wanna dig in this morning, because this dives pretty deep into the reality of being a church. And when we talk about joy, there's a way that we can talk about it that is simplistic or surface level, where it's just being happy. Joy is just being happy, right? But really, when we're talking about joy, we're talking about something earned, something fought for, something that we have, because we have gone through these things together. Something that we have because we have worked together, because we have fought alongside one another, because the Lord has brought us together. Common joy, common struggle. And when we are clear on this,

when we are clear on how this affects us as a church, these common joys and common struggles, it helps us, it brings clarity on what a church should be, and it brings clarity on our part in that, okay? So I'm gonna dive into that quickly. And to do that, we're gonna be in Ephesians chapter two. We're gonna look through a couple verses in Ephesians chapter two. We're gonna start in verse one and go all the way through verse six, and then hit a couple at the end of Ephesians two. I wanna look first at Ephesians two verses one and two. It's gonna be talking about coming out of a shared struggle. Listen to what it says. It says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins and once you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Okay, you were dead. Not the worst of us, all of us.

We were all dead in our sins. It is foolish to pretend otherwise. We're gonna talk more about that in just a minute. Look at verse three. It goes on. Among whom, sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and we're by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. All right? If everybody shares this common past, if we're all dead, if we're all, at one time, if we were all following this enemy, if we were following the passions of our minds, the passions of our flesh, that gives us two things that we really need to kind of key on. The first thing is that that eliminates competition. Okay? If everybody's dead in their sin before Jesus, we don't need to have an argument about who was more dead. Okay? You and I, just as dead in our sin before Jesus. Okay? Just as dead. The other thing that really should help us understand

is that it really should motivate us to confide in one another. In other words, it should eliminate shame. So if somebody says, man, I am dealing with some of this old life stuff, I am dealing with some of this sin, some of this stuff that I'm really, I was dead in before. Jesus has made me alive and brought me out of that, but I'm still in it, I'm kind of mired in it. Sins are trying to haunt me, I need help. What's your response to that? Your response should not be, well, you should be past that. You're not dead anymore, and you're saying, you just should totally ignore that. No, no. We should say, the response should be every time, really without exception, should be, I have been there. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've had the exact same struggle that you're having. Now, the details might change, but we all deal with that past, all of us.

Nobody's different. We all deal with that. So, same struggle, also same joy. This is the flip side. Look at verses four through six. It says, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This living hope that we are born into, like it talks about in 1 Peter 1:3, born into a living hope, this is what that living hope, we are loved beyond our wildest dreams.

This morning, as we pray, so we pray every Sunday morning at 10, and this morning, I was talking to everybody, and I said, hey, sometimes, when you're doing this kind of meeting, kind of beforehand, sometimes you wanna just say like, hey, let's be great today. Hey, let's really shoot for the moon today. Let's really be our best selves today. Let's really, whatever, let's really focus up, okay? As a way to kinda get motivated, get focused, right? It's not like that's a bad thing. If you do that at work, great. If you do that as a family, awesome. If you do that as a family, please tell me about it. I wanna be there next time. What we do as a church though, what we do as a church, whenever I was there this morning at 10, I said, here's what we need to say. Here's what we need to remember, that the God of the universe has a plan to love and redeem people and wants to use us to do that.

That's our hope. That's our joy. Not that we're so great that we're never going to encounter any problems. Not that we're so great that we're never gonna fight and be frustrated with one another. No, our hope, our joy, our deep sense of joy comes from gratitude. Not accomplishment. From gratitude. From what has been done for us in the same way that we cannot make ourselves be born into a living hope. That's the same way that we just, our biggest accomplishment as a believer is to receive something. That should inspire gratitude and humility in us, spiritually speaking, we are all lottery winners. That's a good thing. That's exciting. That's a joy. And it should show us our common purpose and our common power, right? We are made alive with Jesus. We are imitating Jesus in the power of Jesus. That's all really good. That's something that should, it shouldn't just wake you up in the morning.

That's a fact that needs to empower your entire Christian life. You need to write Ephesians 2, 4 through 6 on a card and put it on your mirror. You need to put it on your card dashboard. Don't put it over the speedometer. Just put it down there in your dashboard so that you can see it, so that you can remember that. That is something that will fuel the rest of your life. If you can grab hold and take hold of the joy, man, there is nothing that extinguishes that joy.

It doesn't mean you're happy all the time, but it does mean ultimately that you have hope. It means that ultimately you're not lost to whatever circumstances that you have right now. It means that ultimately you know that you're going to overcome that, not because you're so great, or because you have all this skill set, or because you're cute. You're gonna overcome it because Jesus overcame it and he gave that to you. Joy.

That's our source of joy. It shows us that we should be gracious, we should be humble, we should be full of gratitude. We have this common power and purpose. And I'll say if that's true, and it is, all that I just said is true. If that's all true, then what gets in the way? What stops us from investing in each other's lives? What stops us from caring for one another? What stops us from airing out if there's anything between us? What stops churches from acting like spiritual families? What gets in the way, what's the barrier? I wanna give you three things this morning. I wanna give you three ways that we can let things get in the way. And then I wanna show you how the gospel of Jesus Christ beats that back. Three different kind of occasions.

In the gospel, and we need to know this, in the gospel, Jesus brings us into a new family and a new grace and in that grace, we never outgrow that, right? It's not like the sweater you got last year that doesn't fit this year, okay, for whatever reason. It's not like that, you never outgrow it. It always extends beyond whatever struggle, whatever joy, whatever family you're in. The grace of Jesus Christ always extends beyond that. So how do we miss that? How do we miss that? Three key ways, and I just want you, there's way more than this, I'm positive. I'm just trying to articulate it a particular way this morning and I want you to just hear it. The first thing that we do that we forget, that makes us forget, is that we minimize the struggle. We minimize the struggle. Sometimes whenever we are sharing our testimony, or we're just talking about our Christian life,

we minimize it by making it sound like it was so long ago. So long ago, way back when, when I was a kid, way back when I was dumb, way back so long ago, I realized I needed a savior. And the implication that you are communicating is that you are way past that now. You would never, ever dip into that mentality that you're your own savior, that you don't need the gospel as much. I would never, no, it was so long ago. We minimize the struggle. Or we minimize it this way.

We minimize it by saying, part of our testimony will say something like, you know, I was a good kid, I grew up, I was a good person. And really, the way you talk about it, Jesus just needed to give you a little nudge, right? You were most of the way there on your own. I got Susie laughing, I'm winning. Jesus just had to nudge you, right? Jesus just had to get you a little bit past so that you would cross the finish line. Part of the problem with that is that it, we'll talk about that in just a minute, but we minimize the struggle. We minimize it in those ways, okay? How does the gospel reach past that, right?

The gospel maximizes the struggle, actually. The gospel says that your problem was insurmountable, okay? And if you remember in Ephesians 2:1, how did Ephesians 2:1 start? You were dead. You were dead and gone. You were in the grave. The gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't start with, I was drowning in the pool and I needed Jesus the lifeguard to come and rescue me. The gospel of Jesus Christ says that you were dead at the bottom, gone. You didn't have any air left in your lungs. You weren't savable by any stretch of the imagination. You weren't flailing at the top. You weren't nothing. You were dead and at the bottom. You didn't need a nudge. You needed life. Maximize the struggle. And this isn't some mind game I'm asking you to play. This is the reality. I mean, I'm bringing up scripture to show you this was your life. You were dead.

And you being made alive is a work in progress. We see this all over the New Testament, but it is easy to think that we were made alive once in the past and now it's all done. It's all settled. And that is true in some sense. So I'm not gonna get too deep into this, but I will tell you when the Bible talks about salvation, when it uses the word salvation in the Greek, that word is sotzo, just so you know what I'm talking about. There are three synonyms to that. One synonym is justification, okay? Means that you have been declared righteous at a point in time. I'm declared righteous. So when somebody says I'm saved, they are referring back to the moment that Jesus saved them at that point in time, okay? And the Bible talks about salvation that way. That is one way the Bible talks about salvation. The Bible also talks about salvation in something called sanctification, okay?

Sanctification is a 25 cent word that means being made more holy, okay? It's getting holified, all right? That's how we can say it here. Getting holified, it means that you are in the process of becoming more like Jesus your entire life. When the Bible talks about salvation, it also is talking about sanctification. So it is a point in time. It is also something that continues your entire life, okay?

The third synonym for salvation is something we call glorification. And that means that when you have translated from this life, when you have passed on from life to death, you are made, glorified, like Jesus in heaven, okay? So when we talk about salvation, do I have the time to do this? Yes, when we talk about salvation, we can think of it like a road trip. This is one of my favorite illustrations about salvation. You can think of it like a road trip, okay? So when you say salvation, you say, we're talking about the entire road trip. Well, let's break a road trip down into three parts, okay? So let's just pretend you're on a road trip with Jesus. All right, start getting the playlist in your head, okay? What are you listening to? So you're on a road trip with Jesus. On the first part of that, right, justification, the very first part of that, Jesus pulls up with the car and it's like,

hey, pack your bags, let's go, okay? And for the purposes of this illustration, the road trip is gonna be from Seattle, Washington to Disney World in Florida, okay? You're traveling across the country. No hate on Seattle, but it's cold and rainy. And it's not always happy there, okay? But in Disney World, everything's happy. Okay, so we just called Disney World heaven. We're still just gonna push on, okay.

So you're in Seattle, Washington. You have no way to get to Disney World. You don't even have a plan to get to Disney World. You're not trying to get to Disney World. And all of a sudden, Jesus pulls up, he's got a sweet ride. He says, get in, we are going to Disney. And you're like, okay, I'll go to Disney. Sure, I'll go to Disney, I'm not doing much. You get in the car, you get your bags, you go in the car. That moment in time is justification. That is Jesus initiating making things happen in your life. Okay, are you with, this illustration is not perfect, okay? There's a ton of holes in it, but we're just gonna roll hard. Now, you think about the drive from Seattle, Washington to Disney World, Florida. That's a long drive. That's a lot of Swedish fish in the car. Any Swedish fish fans, Swedish fish, okay? Anybody hate Swedish fish? Okay, all right, all right.

I'm not crazy. Okay, all right. I didn't know we were gonna hate on Swedish fish right now. When you were on that ride, you and Jesus are talking. You're relating, you're becoming more like him. Like you're essentially getting closer to the destination. Not like getting closer to death, but becoming more like Jesus, right? And in Disney World, Florida, okay? In Disney World, Florida, that is the destination. That is you and Jesus kind of coming together in person and you guys are gonna be, your faith is gonna be made side. You're gonna see Jesus and you're gonna be just like Jesus. All of your sins gonna be gone. It's gonna be a great day, okay? And so on that car ride, you might get like some pamphlets about Disney World. You might start making plans for Disney World. You might just like, we're gonna stay in Disney World. There's nothing wrong with that, but you're on the car ride.

You're not to Disney World yet. You're not totally made like Jesus yet. You're on the way. Now you're still in the car with Jesus. That still happened, but you're not totally like him yet. This is the tension that we see in scripture. This is what Ephesians is talking about a little bit here and it goes on to talk about further on in Ephesians two. This is the living hope that we are born into. It's that we are becoming like Jesus as we go, okay?

This struggle, this being made alive, right, is a work in progress. Look at what Hebrews 10 24 says. It says, for by a single offering, he, Jesus, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified, those who are being made holy. So Jesus was the perfect gift to make everybody holy in the process of being holy. You're being sanctified. You're continually being made alive in your hearts, in your marriages, in your church. Right? We don't minimize the struggle

because you're not to Disney World yet. And in fact, many times it probably feels like you're veering way off course. Probably feels like you went into Canada for a couple of weeks and you're like, why are we in Canada? We're going, we're trying to go somewhere else. It just, it feels like a really topsy turvy time. You can have a whole years. You can have a whole decades that just feel lost. You're in the car with Jesus, but you still feel a little lost. Jesus is still making you alive.

Don't minimize that struggle. Maximize that struggle. Embrace that struggle. When you do, good things happen. We'll talk about it in just a minute. When you do, good things happen. Second, what do we do? We minimize the struggle, but we also draw lines to put people each in a different category than us. This is also really a byproduct of our culture that celebrates choices and preferences, right? You who have these preferences are over in this camp. I have this preference. I'm over in this camp. Those people have other preferences. They're in that camp. So we build different categories where you live, how you vote, how you run your family, how you dress. All of these things happen. All these categories happen because they are easily identifiable from afar. I don't have to look very hard or very deep to see how you dress, where you live, how you vote, or how you run your family.

And it really has nothing to do with who a person is. You could say that it's just lazy, actually. It's lazy to judge people that way by how they look or how they dress or where they live or how they vote. What the gospel does to reach past that is the gospel puts everybody in the same category. It still values the individual, but it highlights the commonality of it all, okay? You are all, all of us, if you are in Christ, you are a sinner saved by grace. You have God as a father, you have Christ as a brother, and you have the Holy Spirit inside of you. You share a destiny of abundant life that starts now and never ends. You're in the car with Jesus, headed to Disney World. You all have been promised to Jesus. You have promised together as a covenant family to be a family through thick and thin. You are all on a mission of redemption together. When we minimize the struggle,

when we celebrate, or excuse me, when we separate people into different categories, we quickly find the haves and the have nots, and we have disunity, and that is not of the Lord. To have the joy as a family, we need to understand that we are different, but that ultimately, when it comes down to it, we are all on the same category. We're all on the same plane. We're all equal before our creator. That's one of the things our founding fathers got right. We are all equal before God. And even in knowing that, and here's kind of where I wanna end this morning, even when we know all of that, even whenever you just say, okay, Caperton, I hear you, yeah, great. I don't forget that stuff, and like, no, I'm really, sometimes, especially in the middle of hustle and bustle, you forget to rejoice. You forget to rejoice in it. You forget to actually read Ephesians 2, 4 through 6,

and do a little mini fist bump in your mind, like, yes, okay, good. This is still true. I'm still saved. I'm still walking with Jesus. Things don't look great now. I'm frustrated with somebody right now, but you know what, Jesus is still on his throne. I have a good friend. I had a good friend in college. His name was Byron Townsend, and anytime something weird would happen, he would always say, well, hey, man, Jesus is still on his throne.

Anything, anything that would happen, well, you know what, man, Jesus is still on his throne. I don't say that, but I probably should. I say something like, well, it's not the end of the world. Okay, well, then nothing is terrible if nothing is as bad as the end of the world, right? But maybe it's more Christian and more joy-inducing to say Jesus is still on the throne. Stuff didn't work out today. I was talking with one of you.

Oh, it was the fries. You guys had a tent, like, go crazy, right? You got it, yeah, it's like, just totally, yeah, blew up, just totally frustrating, right? In the middle of that, you're like, that big party tent we just got is blown over and jacked up. That is so frustrating. Jesus is still on the throne, right? And even just beyond kind of, you know, middle-y important things, even something like a really terrible diagnosis, Jesus is still on the throne.

And that's not just something that you can kind of just say and it just kind of covers everything and makes everything right. No, it's something that you can hold fast to, that you can remember, that you can have joy in. And that's something that your spiritual family can look you in the eyes and say, hey, Jesus is still on his throne. You still have reason to hope. All is not lost. You still have reason to rejoice. Jesus is still on his throne. You are still born into a living hope. And this is what it is in the gospel. The gospel, and I said it before, the gospel of Jesus Christ continues to give us new reasons to rejoice. I wanna leave you with a few more, here we go. It's at the end of Ephesians two, near the end, verses 18 and 19. It says, for through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints

and members of the household of God. When you are in Christ, you have reason to rejoice. And when you read Ephesians two, four through six, you can say, yes, I can rejoice in that. But when you read verses 18 and 19, you can remember that you are not alone in this struggle. You are not alone in this joy, that you have a family. And the thing that makes us family is something that doesn't depend on us. The thing that makes us family is that we have common access to the Father, through the Spirit. In other words, God doesn't play favorites. You might feel that way sometimes. You might feel like the favorite or not the favorite, but God doesn't do that. You have a common citizenship in heaven. Citizenship in that day was a really big deal. It meant that no one could ever,

no one could ever take that away from you. It was actually a monetary value. People would buy into citizenship. We didn't pay a thing, we were given it. And also, we are members of the household of God. Listen, I want you to know two things. First, I want you to know that as we, when we talk about being a family here at South Burleson, that is not just a cute word that we throw around. We had a family meeting this morning to vote on a budget. We call it family meeting instead of business meeting because even though we are conducting some business, we are a family first. We are a covenant family first. It hurts when people leave.

It's a joy as people embrace that commitment to one another. To be a part of a church family is not something where when things get hard, you run. Being a part of a church family means that despite the fact that you might be fighting with somebody, despite the fact that you might not agree, or you might, honestly, you might feel like you don't have a whole lot of reason to rejoice. Your church family is still here. And I can look at your faces, you can look at mine, we can remember, we can remember times in our lives when all we wanted to do was run and hide. All we felt was shame.

All we wanted to do was just to say, everybody, leave me alone. I'm just gonna have a pity party all over by myself. And for one reason or another, you didn't run. You stayed with our church family. What the Lord wants to do through our church family is be a part of redeeming this whole area. The Lord God in heaven wants to see marriages healed. He wants to see addictions broken. He wants to see people saved. People be born again into a living hope. The way that Jesus wants to do that in our community is us being a family together. The Lord wants to use us as a family to minister and love other people. I know some of you, whenever you started coming here, you didn't know, really, you didn't know much of anybody. And over time, what's happening is you're getting to know people. You're starting to figure out, oh, okay, here's kind of who I am in this community.

And in that process, the Lord is bringing healing. In that process, the Lord is actually pulling you closer into his plan for redemption, not just in your life, but in the lives of people that are around you. This Christmas season, we talk about joy. And we need to talk about joy in the fact that it's earned. And we need to rest on that joy, not just personally what the Lord has done for us, but collectively what the Lord is doing in us and wants to do through us. Would you pray with me? Jesus, you are our brother.

You call us your brothers and sisters. Scripture says that you are the firstborn from the dead, that you being raised to life wasn't just something that you wanted to do, it was something that you wanted to do in all of us too. And that you were the start of all of it. Lord, we thank you for making us alive. We thank you for the reason, for the joy that we have.

And we pray that as a church family, we would lean into that joy even further. That's your name that we pray, amen. During our time of response, we're just gonna sing. We're gonna sing a little bit. I'm gonna be back there where those, that couch and those chairs are. If you wanna come talk, if you need prayer, man, I'll be there and I would love to see you. Let's stand as we sing.