What does it means to be human?

According to the Scriptures, that created purpose is found in the very nature of God. In describing the creation of the first two humans, Genesis 1 tells us this:

God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. — Genesis 1:26-27 (NLT)

We have been created for a particular purpose. You don’t have to live according to that purpose – but that’s like using a lawnmower to wash your dishes: dangerous, difficult, probably painful and just not a great idea. If we want a full, meaningful life, we must embrace the reason we were created. We must learn how to live the way we were created to life.

Genesis 1 tells us that we were created in God’s image. That means that somehow, who we are, our truest Selves, is a reflection of who God is. So the obvious question we need to ask is, Who is God? What is God’s nature?

Once we know that, we’re in a position to determine how we are a reflection of God’s nature. So who is God?

According to the Scriptures and Church tradition, the most basic, essential answer to the question, Who is God? is that God is the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is the defining Christian doctrine. When I talk to my Muslim friends, my Mormon friends, my Hindu or Jewish friends, this is the belief that sets us apart from everyone else. Understanding that God is Trinity is what makes us Christian and not anything else. In fact, for churches all over the world, today is Trinity Sunday, the day we set aside to celebrate and discuss and worship God as Trinity.

Most basically, the doctrine of the Trinity says that God is a single being comprised of three persons (Trinity symbol that we’ll use for all the graphics, then 1=3). Those three persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (which we talked about last week) are all equal and eternal. The Father didn’t create the Son and the Spirit. And the Father doesn’t rule over the Son and the Spirit – as though they’re sidekicks or functionaries who do the Father’s bidding. All three persons are equal and eternal.

What’s true of one Person of the Trinity is true of the other two as well. What one Person does, all three do.

You can see why the Trinity is a doctrine that gets less time than it deserves: it’s really confusing. The way theologians talk about the Trinity can be so intimidating, many Christians just throw up their hands and ignore God-as-Trinity altogether. And that’s truly dangerous because we’re ignoring who God truly is, who the Scriptures reveal God to be.

Ever wonder why so many people have gotten the impression that God’s an angry, vindictive deity? It’s because we’ve forgotten the Trinity. Or why so many today think that God is a distant, unconcerned grandfatherly figure? We forgot the Trinity. Why so many have reduced Jesus to just some good moral teacher whose death was tragic but ultimately meaningless? We forgot the Trinity. And why – as we talked about last week – don’t we have a clue what we’re supposed to believe about the Holy Spirit? We forgot the Trinity.

And we’re made in the image of this triune God! When we forget who God is, we lose the picture of who we really are, who we’re called to be. We know our lives are supposed to mean something. We know deep in our bones that there’s some right way to live, but we can’t figure out what that way is.

So for the sake of the Church, for the sake of our souls, for the sake of humanity, let’s spend a little more time on what it means to say that God is Trinity:

When we hear the story of Pentecost, with everyone speaking in multiple languages and tongues of fire and thousands finding Jesus for the first time, it’s frankly easy to become intimidated.

Because we look around today and think, Where’s all that?

Where are the miracles and the tongues of fire? Where’s the powerful, power-filled Church that’s moving and shaking and changing things?

Asking that question about Pentecost points to a whole set of questions that lie just beneath the surface of what we’ve been talking about throughout this series. Since Easter, we’ve been exploring how we are called to live Between Jesus’ resurrection and his second coming, in this time when the Kingdom is already here and not yet here at the same time.

We claimed that those who follow Jesus are called to be different from the world around us, that we should look like Jesus’ Life. We saw that the best way for us to live that different, holy life is in the Church (which began on Pentecost). That we’re all given – by the Holy Spirit – gifts that should enable us to serve each other. A couple of weeks ago, Keven told us that we gather to celebrate the new life we’re living with God and last week Sheila led us to see our purpose: to invite the rest of the world into this new life we’ve found in Jesus.

The scary thing about all that we’ve been talking about is how easily this new life with Jesus turns into a self-improvement program. If we’re not careful, we reduce Christianity to ‘just try harder’ or ‘just be better’. This powerful, world-altering, life-resurrecting faith ends up being sort of like the Atkins diet or P90X or the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You just try, develop some new habits. And some people nail it and some people don’t and that’s that.

Then we hear the story of Pentecost and think, Woah I’m missing something big. But even then, we get caught up in the spectacle – the languages and the fire and the wind. It’s easy for us to miss the true importance of Pentecost for all the spectacle of the day.

What actually matters on Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit creates a people who will show the world who God is.

That’s it. That’s the bottom line on Pentecost. Behind all the flash and truly awesome, miraculous stuff, God has called a people together to become the light of the world. The Holy Spirit is the heartbeat, the lifeblood of the Church.

That might sounds odd to some of us. Of the three persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is certainly the most confusing, least understood. We can imagine the Father, in Heaven, ruling the world. And we really like Jesus, the Son who became human, who lived, died and was raised to rescue us from Sin and reclaim God’s good creation.

But the Spirit? We’re fuzzy on her. Many of us grew up hearing her called the Holy Ghost (and you still hear that on TV and in movies today). The term “ghost” is unfortunate because even though back in ole King James’ day, ghost and spirit were synonymous, today ‘ghost’ conjures images of departed loved ones and wronged, vengeful dead.

For many Christians, the Holy Spirit is sort of like a ghost – haunting the edges of our faith, lingering like a specter we don’t quite know what to do with.

But the Holy Spirit is vital to our faith! She’s the third person of the Trinity (again, more about next week). The Spirit is as fully God as is the Father or the Son. Everything that’s true of the Father or the Son is true of the Spirit (and vice versa). The Spirit is coequal and coeternal with both the Father and the Son.

In short, the Spirit is God, living and active in the world.

Join us Sunday as we celebrate the Holy Spirit and explore what she does in our lives!

Church happens best when small groups of people who love Jesus get together and live out the Gospel together. This can be through serving, through studying, through celebrating.

This is where I want to hang out with you today. Let’s ask more specifically about how we do Church together. Not what we’re doing right now, where I am up here talking and you’re out there listening and taking notes and considering. But how do you do Church?

In other words, what do you bring to the table? Why are you essential?

The great news, the exciting news, is that if you are following Jesus, then the Holy Spirit has given you particular abilities that make you unique and necessary to the Church. Your Church needs you. You are vital to what God is doing in your local church.

We can see that in 1 Corinthians 12. The Christians in Corinth had written to Paul to ask him several questions. One of their questions was about how they were supposed to do Church when they got together. Paul had apparently taught them about what he called “Spiritual Gifts” or “Gifts of the Holy Spirit”, and they asked for some clarification about them. Here’s what he said:

Now, dear brothers and sisters, regarding your question about the special abilities the Spirit gives us. I don’t want you to misunderstand this… There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.

Paul says, There are lots of different kinds of gifts, but they’re all from the same Spirit. We all serve in different ways, but we’re all serving the same God. We’re all different, but all the same. He goes on:

A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said.

It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. – 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 (NLT)

Why do we have Spiritual gifts? To help each other. Then Paul goes on to list a pretty nice variety of gifts, and reminds us that they all come from the Holy Spirit. [my gift goes out to everyone else]

This idea that we all have particular gifts and talents can be tough to get our minds around, especially if you’re more familiar with this “big room” model of church. So let me show you something that may help get your brain around what Paul’s talking about.

Do you know why The Avengers worked so well as a movie, why it’s the third highest grossing film of all time? Because every single character was needed for the story to work. If you had taken out any one of those characters, the team would’ve lost (yes, even Hawkeye!).

A super team is only super if each of them is necessary. And believe it or not, God designed the Church to function the same way.

Yes, I’m saying that Church is like The Avengers.

Which may not help matters much if you’re sitting there thinking, Okay, I definitely don’t have any “superpowers”. I definitely don’t have any special gifts from the Spirit.

But the Scriptures tell us that if you follow Jesus, if you have turned from sin and embraced the new life God offers, then God the Holy Spirit has given you some unique abilities.

The problem isn’t that you don’t have gifts. It’s usually trying to figure out what those abilities are.

Join us Sunday as we explore what it means to have Gifts from the Spirit!

I’ve been a pastor for almost a decade, and in that time, I’ve learned to be ashamed of calling myself a pastor.

Not always. In fact, sometimes it comes in handy. But particularly when I’m meeting for the first time people who don’t go to church, I usually try to wait as long as possible in a conversation before bringing up that old conversational standby, “So what do you do for a living?”

Because (and you know this) Christians are weird. We’ve cultivated a reputation in our culture for being against a lot of stuff, for being sticks in the mud, for complaining and petitioning against whatever we disagree with.

So when I’m in conversation with a new friend (I’m an extrovert, so everyone I meet is a new friend; I skip the ‘acquaintance’ stage), and they find out I’m not only a Christian but a pastor, it usually gets awkward quickly. They’re trying to figure out what I’m going to start condemning them for and I’m trying to tell them, Look, I’m not like those Christians, I just really love Jesus!

I shouldn’t give those Christians too hard a time, though. Because I’ve been one of those Christians, too. I grew up in Church, and when I was in seventh grade, I was really struggling with lustful thoughts (as an adolescent boy? Big surprise, right?). I prayed to God to help me control my thought life, to help me to have thoughts that were more pure. And I distinctly felt God tell me to quit listening to secular music.

Now, you need to understand that when I was 13, I wasn’t listening to good music. I went to bed every night with the Top 40 station playing, so I was getting a steady stream of music that painted pretty awful pictures of sexuality, of both men and women. In retrospect, it’s no wonder I was struggling so hard to keep my thoughts pure.

But of course 13-year-old me didn’t know this, so when I felt God tell me to shut off the radio, I did. And practically overnight, my thoughts got a lot easier to control. It was really cool.

I wish I could tell you that story ended there, but remember: this is a story about how I was a weird Christian. What happened next is that I became a righteous crusader against secular music. I imagined myself as Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with an 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Listen to Secular Music!

I became a micro-prophet, proclaiming the evils of secular music to all my friends (who were pretty much my youth group at Church). I started arguments. I won a few converts. I made a lot of enemies. I was one of those weird Christians.

All because I took something that was very good for me, something that was helping me to look more like Jesus, and tried to force it on everyone else.
Because I’ve been there, here’s what I know about those weird Christians: they are trying to live out a core Scriptural truth, a doctrine that is fundamental to our particular denomination and a truth that – when we get it right – is beautiful and powerful and freeing.

It’s called Holiness. And it’s not supposed to make us weird. We’re supposed to be different, but not weird. Not mean, cruel or judgmental. So why is it so easy to get wrong?

What does it mean to be Holy?

Holiness is a church word, but it actually just means different. Specifically, the world Holy recognizes that there are two ways to be in the world: with God and without God. Like we’ve been talking about since January: God’s Way, and everything else. The stuff that’s set apart, the stuff that’s dedicated to God (like temples, priests, holy days, etc) are considered sacred – another word for holy. And if you take something ordinary and dedicate it to God, if you make it holy, you’re sanctifying it.

Holy, sacred, sanctification. All these Church words basically just mean “like God, different from the world”.

So how do we be Holy? Join us Sunday as we discuss it!

Most of the time, we live one day to the next. And most of the time, one day is more or less like the last. But occasionally, we enter seasons of life that are transitional.

Once in a while, we’re between two realities.

My wife Amanda and I got engaged the day after I turned 28. (you can watch the video here) She had a big party planned for me, and I laid all these secret counter-plans that turned my birthday party into our engagement party. So both of us were making all these plans and then all those plans culminated in an Engagement! And it felt like this big moment, but it was only the beginning. Because of course you don’t stay engaged. Engaged is a Between: you’re between single and married. It ends when you get married.

Have you ever gotten a new job and had to put your two weeks in? You officially quit/resign/leave when you turn in your two weeks, but then you’re still there for the next two weeks. Your Two Week Notice is a Between: you’re between one job and the next. And your old job doesn’t end when you put in your notice. It ends when you walk out the door for the last time.

Or consider getting pregnant. When you find out you’re having a kid, you celebrate and get all excited, but getting pregnant is only the beginning. Pregnancy is Between: you’re between not having a kid and having a kid. Being pregnant is going to end.

This first week after Easter marks a spiritual ‘between time’. Easter is the day we celebrate Jesus’ victory over sin and death. And in any good story, after the hero wins, the story’s over. After Luke blows up the Death Star, they celebrate. Roll credits. After Jack kills the giant and returns home with the treasure, they all live happily ever after. After Boy gets Girl back, they get married and live happily ever after.

Easter feels like the End of the Story that began in Genesis 1. We celebrated Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We talked about the Resurrection as God’s victory over Sin, over Death. We claimed that Jesus’ resurrection frees us to follow God, to chase after the life God created us to live. The Resurrection is what makes it possible for us to become children of God.

Is Easter only The End of the story? Or does something come next? Continue Reading…

My sophomore year of college, several friends and I heard about a cliff overlooking a lake about 20 minutes away from our little town. So of course, we did what any college kids would do: immediately hopped in our cars and set off for the cliff.

The only slightly weird thing was that it was about 9:00pm when we left. Which meant that, by the time we got to the site, got a little campfire going and were ready to jump, it was a little after 10 pm.

Which means we were jumping by moonlight. You could see the ground just fine, all the way to the edge of the cliff. But past that? Just blackness. The cliff was allegedly about 25 feet above the water, but we couldn’t see any water down there.

One guy had thoughtfully brought his giant maglite flashlight, so standing at the edge of the cliff, shining the thin flashlight beam into the darkness, we could tell that there was, in fact, water down there. Probably.

Just kidding. There was definitely water.

It’s not very hard to talk me into a stupid idea, so the maglite guy and I volunteered to jump first, along with one other guy. We took our shoes and shirts off, got about 5 yards back from the edge, sprinted to the edge of the cliff and then jumped!

Have you ever jumped when you couldn’t see where you’re going? It’s thrilling and terrifying – thrillifying. Falling 25 feet actually seems to take quite a long time when you can’t see the bottom, and then all of a sudden, you’re slamming into the water and all that thrillification turns into exhilaration because YOU DID IT! You took the plunge, you make the jump and you were scared out of your mind but you did it and you MADE IT!

What makes the rush so amazing is the terror we feel when confronted with the risk.

The scariest part isn’t the fall, it’s just before the jump. Because before the jump, you’re safe. You’re where you know, on firm ground, where everything’s predictable.

And you’re looking into an abyss. The unknown. By its very nature, it’s unpredictable. And the jump represents risk. You’re abandoning what makes you comfortable and trusting something that may not be trustworthy.

We all face risk in our lives. Particularly when we choose to follow God. Because choosing to follow God means abandoning the ground we’ve always known, the ground where we’re safe, where we feel comfortable.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, I don’t want to give my life to God because I don’t want to get called to move to Africa. I’ve said it myself! That’s risk-aversion. Here is comfortable. There is unknown. And if I surrender to God, if I jump in with both feet, I don’t know what will happen!

We’re afraid of all kinds of things. If I jump in, I’ll have to forgive that person. If I jump in, I’ll have to give up that habit. If I jump in, I’ll have to start acting like a weird church person. If I jump in, I’ll have to do what God wants, not what I want.

Always, at the heart of that aversion to jump, what keeps us from risking is fear.

I’m afraid that the life God will give me isn’t as good as the life I have now. I’m afraid that if I jump in, if I leave the things that make me comfortable, it’ll cost too much.

Here’s what I know about you: If you’re here today, then God is calling you forward. Maybe you’ve never followed God before. Maybe you’ve been following God for a long time. Either way, here’s what you need to know:

Jesus’ resurrection is proof that God’s Way is better.

The fact that Jesus came back to life and walked out of his tomb is all the assurance you need to jump with both feet into the life God is calling you to.

When The Matrix was released in 1999, it became an instant classic. That scene we just watched in particular became an instant classic because it resonates with all of us at a deep, primal level. Neo is all of us who know deep down that there’s something wrong with the world. He goes through his life every day sensing something is… off. Something is just not quite right. During this series, we’ve been talking about that Something. In the Church, we call it Sin. Even though we can’t articulate it, we know deep in our bones that we’re off. That’s because God created the world with a certain Order, a Way. But we’ve reject that Way. We’ve chosen to impose our own order, to follow our own ideas about what counts as Good and True. We’ve walked away from God, away from Life. Obviously, that poisons our relationship with God. But it also – as we’ve discussed – poisons our relationships with each other. And even more than that, as the Matrix hints, Sin has set our whole world off-kilter. To paraphrase Morpheus, Sin is the world that’s been pulled over our eyes to blind us to the truth: that we’re slaves. Born into a prison we can’t see, taste or touch. A prison for our souls. That’s exactly how we’ve discussed the power of Sin in this series.

Sin is a prison we’re all born into, a prison that blinds us to God’s Truth.

But. Last week we talked about the Good News of the Atonement. That even though we were trapped in Sin, even though Death had claimed us, God broke into our world, into our prison, to set us free. God came to us in our brokenness and offers us healing. God removed every barrier between us and God. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God makes it possible for us to be at one with God again, like we were supposed to be. The bottom line when it comes to the Atonement is that God has done everything for us. We were helpless, hopeless in our Sin and God did it all. God has removed every barrier between God and us. So the question I want to consider with you this morning is: So what now? What do we do next? That matters, because when we talk about Sin and Atonement, how we couldn’t do anything and God did everything, we can quickly end up in a passive place.

If I couldn’t do anything, and God did everything, then… what? I just hang out?

No. God’s rescue requires a response from us. Jesus’ death is an invitation. He told his disciples as much in Matthew 16:

Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” – Matthew 16:24-26 (NLT)

Jesus stands before his disciples and offers them a choice – much like Morpheus did for Neo: you can stay here, in the life you know, in the life that’s comfortable. Or you can follow me into the unknown. You can lay all this down. You can die to it. The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

Do you stay here, where you’re comfortable, where you know how to get along, or do you follow God?

Join us Sunday as we explore what Repentance looks like.

In moments like we talked about last week, those moments when we come face-to-face with the reality of evil, we’re confronted with our own helplessness.

Maybe its when we experience crippling, systemic poverty for the first time. Or some especially heinous crime like a school shooting. Maybe it’s a devastating natural disaster. Or something more intimate, personal: a massive moral failure that wrecks your life and the lives of those you love. The fall of a respected mentor or leader. The death of a loved one. A destructive habit you can’t quit.

It’s different for everyone, but there are these moments when you come face-to-face with the terrible power of Sin and our utter helplessness in its face. In those moments, we understand the words Paul wrote in Romans 7:

I have discovered this principle of life– that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? – Romans 7:21-24 (NLT)

Paul says, Sin is too big! Too much! No matter how hard I try, I can’t get away from it. I can’t conquer it. I can’t overcome it. In other words, I can’t choose God’s Way.

Who can rescue me? Theologians call this question the Atonement. That’s the $20 word for what we’ve been building towards during this whole series. Essentially, Atonement asks, How are we made one with God again? Since we strayed from God, since we’re now trapped in Sin and Death, how do we get back?

And he gives us his answer in the next verse:

Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. — Romans 7:25 (NLT)

Talking about Sin is good because then we get to talk about Jesus. Paul tells us that Jesus rescues us from Sin. Jesus saves us from Death. I assume that surprised exactly no one in here. Everyone knows more or less that Jesus’ death is important to Christians. Most of us even know that we say Jesus’ death is how we are saved.

But… how? How did a guy dying 2,000 years ago rescue us from something? Continue Reading…