Everyday People

We have been walking through since really the end of last year, the Book of Mark, walking with Jesus. And there's something. Something I noticed as we went through the Book of Mark is that he continued to defy people's expectations. And he does it again. Last week, we celebrated his resurrection.

It's beautiful. And one would think this is the moment when he's going to set up his kingdom, when he is going to set it up. And again, defying expectations, what does he do? He leaves. And he leaves it in the hands of the people he trained, including this guy Peter.

If you've been walking through the Book of Mark, you've seen how impulsive he is. Jesus meets him, he's a fisherman. He tells him, come, follow me. Peter moves into Jesus inner circle, and he's there for all the miracles. He's actually there on the mountaintop when Jesus transfigures.

That's a great story. Go back and listen to that sermon. Peter was the first one to actually call Jesus the Messiah, the king, the Christian.

But we also saw Peter be the guy who stepped out to walk on water and sunk like a rock. Ultimately, he's the guy that Jesus called Satan. He's the guy who said, vowed his allegiance to Jesus. And in less than 24 hours, he denied Jesus three times when it mattered most. And this is who Jesus leaves this whole new movement in the hands of.

But there was resurrection and there was restoration. And after Jesus left, he told them, the Holy Spirit will come with power. And when the Spirit came with power, Peter, in partnership with the Holy Spirit, along with his brothers, they helped lead the new movement. And it took off. On the first day, 3,000 people were baptized.

Those are our forefathers and foremothers in the faith. Right. Peter led the church in Jerusalem. And eventually, following Jesus directions, he worked his way out throughout the Roman Empire, going to all nations. And we actually have a couple of letters he wrote later in his life.

They're in our Bible, First Peter and Second Peter. And they were written to everyday Christians at the time. These were people who were living what we would think of as the boondocks. Is that a word that you recognize? Middle of nowhere, right?

The far edges of society. And it's likely most of them moved there because they were being persecuted. The emperor at the time is this guy named Nero. He was famous for persecution. Tradition tells us he's actually the one who eventually executes Peter himself.

And here are these ancient brothers and sisters of ours who are being ostracized for their faith. They're Facing false accusations, name calling, eventually physical violence. And Peter's writing to them and he's reminding them, though the world rejects you, God doesn't. He loves you. He is with you, and he is for you.

And then Peter is giving them instructions on how to follow Jesus in the worst of times. And in our passage today, the one we're going to read, he speaks to their identity. He wants them to know who they are in Christ so they can live out of being rooted in Him. And he uses a couple of weird metaphors to us that have profound meaning for them. First, Peter 2, verse 4.

As you, that's y', all, all y' all brothers and sisters out in the boondocks, as you come to him. Jesus, the living stone, rejected by humans. So you feel rejected. So was Jesus. Jesus was chosen.

But you too are chosen by God and precious to him. You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood using or offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, our King Jesus. Two strange metaphors here. That Jesus is the stone. There's some sort of house that's being built.

And again, he's speaking to our identity as the people of God. And he says every one of us is like a stone in a building. And we all depend on the cornerstone, the keystone, which is our King Jesus, that we're trusting him to hold it all together. And the whole house is put together on him. But every one of us has a place in this house.

This house is no ordinary building. It's a spiritual house. In their day, they would have known he was talking about a temple. This is a temple. Every one of us is a stone in a temple.

We're a shared identity. Together, we are God's temple. So what's a temple? A temple is the place where heaven and earth meet. Think of it as the place that they overlap.

It is a portal into the kingdom of God. And here we are. Right we are. Here we are where the kingdom of heaven meets the kingdom of Earth. Earth is where things are not the way they're supposed to be.

And when I say that, you can start to fill in whatever you right now are experiencing. And you know deep in your bones, it's not the way it's supposed to be. That's earth. Kingdom of heaven is where they're right, where they are the way they're meant to be. Where we can experience life overflowing with meaning and purpose and belonging, inner wholeness and freedom.

The word the Bible uses for this is peace. It's an ancient word. The word is peace. It's connectedness, wholeness. I think Josh has taught you what that ancient word actually is.

The ancient Hebrew word for peace is what? Wow, he's done a good job. Did you guys hear that? Shalom. Shalom.

Kingdom of heaven. And we know far too well what the kingdom of earth is like. Peter goes on and he says, for in scripture. Now he's quoting some Old Testament passages, Isaiah and the Psalms. For in Scripture it says, see, I lay a stone in Zion.

He's saying, hey, this has been true all the way back there. Jesus was in these passages. He's the stone, chosen and precious cornerstone, the one who trusts in him. If we trust in him, we'll never be put to shame. Now, to you who believe the stone is precious, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

And a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. As we walk through Mark, we were holding one question, the question that matters, the one that Jesus asked, who do you say that I am? They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they were destined for. But verse nine, here it is. Here's the good news.

You are. This is your identity. You are a chosen people. A royal priesthood. We're going to zero in right there.

A holy nation. God's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light.

So you and I together are a temple. We are where God is most present on earth. And we're also priests. A royal priesthood. I'm going to zero in on priests for a moment, but let me just remind you that word royal means we're kings and queens.

That language, that idea goes all the way Back to Genesis 1. This is the first time language is used for us, ruling and reigning with God. And you can follow that thread all the way to Revelation 20, the beginning and the end that we get to reign with God. Royal, look at the person next to you and go, that's a king or a queen. That's going to be weird.

Don't do it. So you're sitting next to royalty, right? Royal priesthood. Right. So, okay, we're royal.

What about a priesthood? So here's a thing they both have in common in their day, royalty and priesthood. You couldn't just become those things. You had to be born into it. Just like if you had a kid or a grandkid and you asked them, what do you want to do one day when you grow up?

And they show you a picture of Buckingham palace and go, I'm going to live right there. You're going to be like, let's adjust your expectations. You had to be born into royalty. You had to be born into the right tribe for priesthood. And yet Peter goes, no, no, no, you are, you are.

You are the overlap. You are where God is most present on earth and you're the priest and priestesses of that temple. See, a temple needs a priest in the same way like a restaurant needs a cook. You got a restaurant without a cook, restaurant's no good. It needs people who care for it.

Now think again about these people who are under pressure. They are ordinary, everyday followers of Jesus. And the pressure they're under is so hard, they have moved down to the middle of nowhere. And Peter writes to them and says, hey, you think your story is that you're overlooked, unwanted, hated and rejected. But here's the real story.

Here's what's true about you. And that is you were an orphan for sure, but you were chosen and adopted into a kingdom. You were adopted into a royal family, into a place where royalty and religious hierarchy are linked to together. And as you sit here right now, you are daughters and sons of the king. And you are priests and priestesses who shape the spiritual climate of the kingdom.

And even more, the king has told you, you are his favorite, his special possession.

This is there and it is your true identity. Our identity as priests isn't just something Peter pulls out of the air. Let's follow that thread. Where's the first time we see priests in scripture? Let's go all the way back to the front end of the Bible, to a book called Numbers, where there are priests in God's temple.

And here's their job description. They are to perform duties for him and for the whole community at the tent of meeting. That would be the temple. Eventually, the tabernacle. It was a giant tent.

By doing the. Here's the first verb, work of the tabernacle. And they are to take care. That's the second verb, work and take care of all the furnishings of the tent of meeting, fulfilling the obligations of the Israelites by doing the work of the tabernacle or tent or temple. Two ancient words are the job description, work and take care of.

Their job was to work in alignment with what God wanted and to take care of the temple and the people who enter it. Now we've gone back to numbers, but this is not the first time those two ancient words turn up in the Bible. Where do they turn Up. There's another job description. All the way back in Genesis 2, the Lord God took man, took humans, you and me, and he put us in the Garden of Eden.

To do what? To work and to take care of it. Same words. The job description of priests in God's temple are just what we're meant to live as people. All the way back in the very beginning, before things had gone wrong.

We were designed to work and to take care of the world God gave us. What does a priest do? Priests work in allegiance to Jesus to simply do this, to take care of the world God gave us and the people in it. We stand in the overlap of the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth, one foot planted firmly in one and one in the other. We stand in that gap.

We're like a bridge. How do the people in the world experience the presence of God? We get to be a bridge for that, for them. It's a strange metaphor that we're sitting here going, well, we are. A royal priesthood recognize this would have blown their minds back then.

No one ever thought this way before. Nobody ever relocated the presence of God to a people. It was always in a building. Where do you go to get to the presence of God? You go to a temple, you go to a building.

And instead, now, in Christ, where do people encounter God? Through his people, through you and me. We are where God is most present on earth. A temple. And we are where people get access to his presence.

Now, so many churches like ours have this great space we can gather in, right? We actually have a building, and it's a gift. The danger is we can think of this building as the temple, and it reinforces this wrong idea that this is the place where Christian stuff happens.

I watched one of you this week. We were in a training. One of our training sessions, and I watched one of you this week. I watched the light go on and simply say, oh, it. And by it, she meant the stuff that Jesus does.

She's like, it happens everywhere.

This is why Peter says, live such good lives among the pagans that even though they're persecuting you, but they will see how good your life is and be moved by it. That where do people encounter the presence of God? Through you and me. When we're here for sure. But even when we're not here, when we are, wherever we are, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, at work, school, the golf course, the pta, at the game, out for lunch this afternoon, wherever we are, the things that Jesus did can happen through us.

Living such good lives among the pagans, that's not about what we don't do, it's about what we do. It's about who we are. People putting the life of Jesus on display, being like him, doing what he does, everything we saw him do in the book of Mark, praying for people, helping them heal, experience freedom from spiritual oppression, baptizing them, guiding them as they follow Jesus, reading scripture with them, helping them study Jesus and practice his ways. There are real consequences to reverting to this old way of thinking that the place where we get God's presence is in a building. Because if that's true, if this is the place where heaven meets earth, then you really need priests like me.

You need experts, spiritual experts, right? People with formal training and titles. And if that's true, knowing that the vast majority of us, as we gather together, don't have that kind of expertise, think of the expert with the training and the title and think of everyday followers of Jesus. But if this is the temple, you all really need people like me, you really need us because you can't access God without us, right? You can't have access to his presence without us.

And so we get to be really, really important.

And you all are like, well, I have to know everything somebody like Russ knows. Even though you know people who know seemingly all there is to know about God, Bible and Christian life, and they're still a dirty rotten so and so.

So somehow that doesn't make them more like Jesus.

If it's true that this is where you meet God and you need people like me, you are secondhand citizens in the kingdom of God.

You get to show up and get fed and you don't get the joy of getting in the kitchen and making your own meal.

You just get to consume and passively receive whatever we think you should get. And I gotta tell you, if that's true, people like me are in real trouble. Cause if that's true, the totality of your spiritual life and your eternal destiny depends on me.

And if people like me are humble enough to recognize we're not enough for that, it will crush us. Worse yet, we think we can do that. Wanna ruin a church? Make us think we're special?

It is such a good thing that this is not who we're meant to be. Not just in First Peter, but all the way back to creation. Your job description is to work and to care for the world. God gave you that he's put you in and the people in it, to be a bridge to cultivate the kingdom of God wherever you are. So what's the point of people like me?

That's a good question. There's an answer. Hopefully, that's good. Ephesians 4. So Christ our King himself gave us.

And these are the kind of people who are spiritual leaders, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. What is their job to what's the next word? Equip who? His people for works of service. To what end?

So that the Body of Christ, that's us again, all of us together. The body of Christ may be built up until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God. And it results in what? Becoming mature, Attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. I don't know what that means, but I want it.

Our job here is to equip you, to inspire and train and support you as you go out building bridges, connecting people to the presence of God, where you live, work and play. We're like Home Depot. You can do it. We can help.

I thought I came up with that. I said it to somebody. I was like, I'm gonna preach this. And they said, that's Home Depot, man. They got there before you.

Holy Spirit inspired Home Depot. Who knew?

I hope there's a part of you that gets fired up by this, realizing how good the good news is that God doesn't just want you in life with him. He wants you to participate fully, to get in on the good that he's doing, to be his junior partners in what he's doing, to bring the kingdom into your little piece of earth. I hope you get pumped by that. And I expect that you probably think that feels like a lot. I'm not enough.

I'm not good enough. I don't know enough. And what I'm here to tell you, it is simpler than you ever imagined. I've just lost, learned this. It can be as simple as paying attention and acting on what you see.

It's as simple as practice. It's as simple as being a junior partner in what God is already doing in the lives of people around you. It's as simple as dialing up your intentionality as you go about the business of your life. The kingdom comes in the thousands and thousands of little interactions you have every day. That comes when you're changing diapers, when you're prepping meals for the week, when you're on the green, when you sit down for first bell of the day, when you get on the treadmill, and when your grandkid takes the field.

And if you're afraid of a Failing. I gotta tell you, in some ways, there is nothing better than failing in the kingdom of God. Cause that's when he does his best work and when he grows us. And you can take that from somebody who's failed over and over again. And if you still feel like you're not enough, that's good too.

Because you aren't.

None of us are. You don't have to be. It's not actually your job. That's why I said you're a junior partner. Remember?

3,000 in one day. What started that day, power from the Holy Spirit. He gets to do the work. You join in and you get the fun of collaborating with them. And if you want to know more about the Holy Spirit and how to collaborate with them, great.

Come back next week or spend the next couple of months hanging out with the Holy Spirit. Every step you take is an opportunity to wake up a little bit more to the love God has for you and the love he has for the people around you. I ache for us to be a body, because I'm just beginning to taste this. To be a people who are awake and who won't settle for a little, but want it all. And you don't need to take my word for all of this.

Let me introduce you to Michelle, expert everyday person telling her story. That's fun.

I remember. Hey. Gosh, you look wonderful. You feeling good? How you doing, Stacy?

Good. Oh, that's good. Okay, good. Okay. I took a phone call from a lady who was in a nursing home, and she wanted somebody to come and visit.

And I told Russ, I'll do it. I'll go and see her. She's right next door. Makes sense. I said, how hard can it be to go in, say hello, let's talk about what's going on with you, and say goodbye, and hopefully I'll see you at church soon.

And he said, well, you have to pray. And I said, what do you mean? Well, you have to pray with them. And I went, oh, no. Oh, no, I'm out.

No, I can't do it. No, I can't do it. And within a couple of minutes, Russ was praying with me in the. The lobby of the church and talking to me about how to do it and just talk to God. And I found that after that, I did pray with her, probably longer than they wanted because I was trying to make sure I got everything right.

But it was great. It was just great. They were just so happy and. Yeah. And now it's not so hard.

I grew up in a situation where we didn't pray outside of church. And there was a lot of conversation about other people and what they're doing, and it's not, you know, more gossipy. I just thought, that's the way people are. That's what we do. And then Julie had gotten sick, And I thought, this is awful.

This is just awful. And I could have easily slipped into a really bad place with God. But I found myself the night before Thanksgiving when the folks were all coming over for dinner, being thankful. I don't know why, because I was so sad and so angry. But sitting there feeling thankful.

Through my life, pivotal moments have brought me to Christ.

And then when everything's good, I'll pull back a little bit. Not on purpose. It just happens. And I think it happens to many of us. Later in life, things got a little tougher and I found myself relying on God a lot.

So. But that last pivotal moment really pulled me to God. And Russ was instrumental in that, seeing that something was going on with me. And he picked up on it and invited me to a dinner table is what we called it back then, where we sat around with just normal people. We were all so different.

Ate food and talked about God, read the Bible and really had great relationships. And I did that, I think, for about a year and felt like, I think I can do this. I want to do this with other people. I learned quickly that I don't have to have a degree in theology or have studied the Bible my whole life. I really didn't feel like I knew that much yet.

I was going through a rough time when Tom and I met. And then shortly after that, we got married. And he's just been an incredible person in my life. He is very faithful and has taught me so many things about. About God and the church and just life in general.

So we started our own group, which together has been amazing. It's fun to do something like that together, share that. And in our group that we go to on Wednesday evenings, we had a lady who came one night and she brought her niece with her. And her niece was young. She's just a teenager.

I think at the time she was 14 maybe. And when group was over, they went home and we thought, we're never going to see that youngster again. And the next week she came without her aunt and she brought her sister. Her sister was 16, I believe. And ever since then, they've come every group to every Wednesday night group.

They've not missed in November, they said they wanted to get baptized.

I want so much more for the people in our church than just coming in the doors, being welcomed, going into church, singing wonderful praise and worship songs, getting communion and just leaving. Because you're really missing out. You're missing out on so many other good parts, so many other good people. And I want them to have the change that I had. If we love Jesus and he wants us to be like him, it's that easy.

Jesus was as normal as we are. He ate with his friends, he spent time with his friends, and he was off by himself, praying. He did all the things we're supposed to do, pull people in. I think Russ says ordinary. I think he said uneducated to me.

But then he changed it. It's just ordinary, everyday people. Anyone can do this. And that is so, so true.

Praying for people, you can do it. In fact, if you walk over one of these sides of the room in a few minutes to pray, have somebody pray for you, it's an everyday person baptized people. That was Mandy that gave her allegiance to Jesus earlier, and that was Debbie who walked her into the water.

Everyday person, you want a spiritual guidance for people, you can do it. We can help you. Studying Jesus, practicing his ways. You can do it. We can help you.

Helping people heal. You can do it. We can help you. How do we do that? We do it in the way that Jesus did.

He trained his disciples. We train. We want to weave that into everything we do. In fact, we're going to do a practice in just a minute. But there are two specific training experiences coming up this month and next that I want to let you know about, or at least this month in the beginning of June.

First one is something we're calling Growth Track. It's a primer to learn what it looks like to follow Jesus. And by learn, I mean we get to practice. We get tangible ways, taking biblical principles and engaging with them, simply processing them and putting them into practice. And so check that out.

It's on our website in the events. It's called Growth Track. It's four weeks on Sunday mornings. Love to have you participate. The second one is this.

This summer in June, we're headed on a mission trip. And when you hear that, we tend to think Sri Lanka, somewhere around the world. We're actually taking a mission trip all the way to the urban core of Cincinnati, to Price Hill.

Because you know what? Price Hill, right. God loves Price Hill. And so our friends. I live there.

I can say that our friends, partners here, Block Ministries specifically, is focused on reaching and loving that neighborhood. And we're gonna go spend a few days serve alongside of them. And as we do that, we're gonna bring some of us there to help train those of us on that trip to begin to put into practice what it looks like to think and live the way they do for the people in our own lives. And so, again, you can get on the events page, look for Go Trip. And that Go Trip, you can drop into the first learning information meeting to find out more about that trip.

Love to invite you into those experiences, but let's practice right now, just for a moment, because Holy Spirit, we've already invited you. You're at work in this room. And so right now, ask the spirit. Spirit, who is somebody in my life that I could encourage right now that I can stand in the gap for? Think of somebody in your life in this moment.

You may have many. Identify one and out. Decide one simple thing you can do. I will. And if you want to pull your phone out and text them right now and remind them that you love them, and if it's appropriate, remind them that God does too.

I trust that you're not on the insta. Right. You're just responding to the person in your life God's brought to mind in this moment for you to stand in the gap for King Jesus.

Thank you for being present in us and thank you for the gift of getting to help those in our lives come into your presence as well. Amen.