March 18, 2024 • 30 mins
In the climactic episode of our 'Insurgence' series, we start by delving into the book of John Chapter 16, meticulously studying verses 25 to 27. The discussion illuminates the profound framework that Jesus set for our faith, emphasizing the transformative power of a direct dialogue with God, owing to our faith in Christ. Reminding believers that Christianity transcends rituals and behaviors, the core message reiterates the essence of surrendering self to Christ and receiving His Spirit as the true marker of Christian identity.
Over the course of this series, we fervently explored the insightful book 'Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom', extracting profound wisdom it encompasses. The author inherently echoes God's prophetic voice, resonating with our spiritual journey. This series inspires introspection and motivates believers to welcome God's Spirit more fully, experiencing a joy beyond words that comes from complete surrender to Christ.
The stimulating dialogue further extrapolates on the essence of being Christ's embodiment and living out His spirit within us. A compelling metaphor of Christians as radical 'insurgents', challenging societal norms and conventions, is drawn. This perspective urges believers to express their faith audaciously.
Emphasizing on the transformative power of biblical adherence, Pastor Dan fosters a shift in believers' consciousness, inspiring them to create a tremor of positive influence. Pearls and oysters serve as metaphors for the grace and extraordinary love radiated by Christians who dare to be societal irritants.
The series concludes with a call towards realigning to apostolic traditions; embracing the principles established by those deeply transformed by Christ. Stressing the necessity of constant renewal, believers are encouraged to view change as a promise of spiritual growth.
The session culminates with a prayer, seeking wisdom for the discernment of God's teachings to lead a life glorifying His Holy name.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Music.
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The series that we have been on for the entire year so far is based on the book
Insurgents, and today is the last in that series of messages.
And so next week we'll have Palm Sunday celebrating the time when Jesus is both
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uplifted by a sort of false enthusiasm for who he might be and then uplifted
on the cross for who he is.
And so that will be our theme for the next couple of weeks is Palm Sunday and Easter.
And so we'll look forward to that. And then some new things will come in the weeks that follow.
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So we look forward to finishing that series today. day, but first let's start
with this reading from John chapter 16.
So, a reading from John chapter 16, starting at verse 25.
Jesus is speaking. I have said these things to you in figures of speech.
The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech,
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but will tell you plainly about the Father.
In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask
the Father on your behalf,
for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
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I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I'm leaving the
world and going to the Father.
His disciples said, ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech.
Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you.
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This is why we believe that you came from God.
And Jesus answered them, Do you now believe?
Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered each
to his own home and will leave me alone.
Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.
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I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace,
in the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.
The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Before we get into the message of this final installment in this Insurgent series,
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I want to go back to a verse in that reading that, so hopefully you didn't put your Bibles away yet.
If you did, I will hear you trying to open them up quickly again.
But I want you to take a really close look at verse 26 and 27.
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And I think if you look at that very carefully, you'll understand what we're
driving at when we talk about the indwelling of Christ in us as insurgents,
as Christian believers.
So let's look at that again very carefully. In that day, you will ask in my
my name, and then listen to what he says.
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And I do not say that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you.
Because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
Do you see what he's saying there?
He's saying that when you talk to me about what you need, I'm not going to go
before the Father on your behalf.
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You are talking directly to the Father.
And the reason you're able to talk directly to the Father is because you believed in me.
You see that? Jesus is explaining the whole entire framework upon which our faith is based.
We are a people whose faith in Christ is built on that fact right there,
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that we are now able to enter the throne room of God the Father and stand before
him as children of God the Father because of our faith in Christ the Son.
And so Jesus is saying, because of the faith you put in me, you now have a new
life in me that co-heirs with me as sons and daughters of God.
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So with that in mind, we'll go to our final installment here.
So this has been quite a
ride this insurgent series and i have to tell you
that that a little bit of how it happened there's
a relatively new person who came into the life of the shiloh family recently
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a couple of years now and and in that process of discovery this person came
across my my bookshelf outside my office.
It's sort of a library and a bookstore all wrapped up into one,
and it's sort of a collection of books that I've curated with the help of my
daughter, Bethany, who's a book enthusiast and just runs those kinds of things really well.
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She keeps them in the right order because, you know, I'm just not good at that. And.
So this fairly new person in this Shiloh life came across the book Insurgents,
read it, and then said to me, have you read that book?
And I said, well, as a matter of fact, I read the books that I put on those
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shelves, and that's part of why it's the pastor's bookshelf,
because when I read a book that I think is really important or valuable to the
family, then I want to share it with the family.
And it so happens that several years in the making, I've had this experience
of having read the book, The Insurgents, and then became friends with the author
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and actually studied with him.
And he even came here, you know, for a time where we had him teaching and preaching here.
So this relationship that started with me just reading a book that profoundly
impacted me has turned into a friendship
and a mutually beneficial sort of Christian family kind of thing.
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And then someone comes along after all of that kind of went down and says, look at this.
This is a great book. Have you looked at this?
And my answer was, yeah, I'm really glad you're excited about it.
And then I got challenged to present it as a sermon series.
And I thought, all right, why not?
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Let's do that. I'm very familiar with this book. I've read through it a few
times. I've studied it with a few different people.
I got to know the guy who wrote it pretty well. And so I understood where he was coming from.
And I understand, too, that, I mean, I don't know that anybody feels this way,
but I've been tempted to think that the reason that I've been doing this is
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because I like Frank and I just like helping him sell books,
but I know better than that.
I know better than that. I know that the real reason that I've been doing this
is because Frank is a prophetic voice for our times.
He really is, and there are lots of them out there.
See, you can't expect that God God would always do certain things the same way
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throughout recorded history of God's relationship with God's chosen people.
So, in other words, you can't expect God to always do things the same way and
then not do them the same way now, right?
The thing about God is God never changes. God does things the same way because God is always present.
God's not in the past. God's not in the future. God's in the now.
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And so if God worked through prophetic voices in the past, he's working through
prophetic voices in the present,
that the kinds of relationships that God had with people we read about in the
Bible still exist because this is who God is.
This is just God's eternal nature being expressed through the eternal purpose
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that God has, which involves the intimate indwelling Christ in us, the very spirit of God.
And so, the fact that I've discovered a voice that seems fitting to my context
and to our shared journey together here is great.
Someone asked me just yesterday about a particular prophetic statement,
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and I just said, well, the one thing you'll notice of God is whenever God is
making a prophetic statement through a single source, there will be a series of other sources.
Look at the Bible for your example. The Lord communicates consistently throughout
Scripture, and it never relies altogether on one person or one message or one
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particular messenger or voice.
It always is a sort of synchronized, consistent message that comes through a
series of prophetic voices.
So to put that in perspective, it means that we may be hearing truth that transforms
our lives so that we become more faithful followers of Christ,
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even in dwelling our hearts for the first time ever, because I happen to reference
a book by a friend who is the author of that book.
But in reality, the same thing could happen somewhere else, even somewhere else
here in town, with people reading a different book or hearing the voice of a different prophet. it.
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And so prophetic voices consistently put the message that God has for God's
people in front of people.
And here's how you know it's of God. The message is always the same.
See, what I can't get over is how often we experience the presence of the Holy
Spirit, and we don't even know it.
Because the Holy Spirit speaks, and we say what we hear, And then we find out
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that somewhere, even right here in this building, down the hall,
unknown to some person or some people in that room down there,
they're speaking the same message.
And then they'll say something like, it's like you knew what we were going to
be talking about, Pastor Dan, or vice versa.
You know, they'll say, you know, how did we decide to do this when you were doing that?
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And it's like, because the synchronicity comes from the Holy Spirit.
The thing that binds it all together is the Holy Spirit. And so when the prophets
speak, they say the same things because it's the voice of God.
And so just want to drive that home because as we've gone through this series,
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I've seen a lot of different responses to this series of messages,
and most all of them have been positive.
And I know why, because it's the voice of God.
And what God is trying to say to you is really not that complicated.
He simply wants you to welcome him in and let him take over your being,
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not to make who you are go away, but to make who you are more complete,
to make you a better version of yourself.
And so when you invite God to indwell you, when you invite the Holy Spirit to
take over your life, when you welcome the new birth in Christ that makes you
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a son or a daughter daughter of God,
you are inviting an opportunity to be better than you could have been in and of yourself.
So one of the key messages of the Insurgents series has been to understand that
the harder you try to be a good Christian, the more likely you are to fail.
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Because trying to to be a good Christian doesn't get you there.
Trying to behave a certain way or to a certain series of disciplines isn't what
it means to be a Christian.
Practicing a particular tradition
that is part of your faith story doesn't make you more of a Christian.
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It's the indwelling of Christ's Spirit in you that makes you a Christian.
You've heard the saying, I'm sure if you haven't, among preachers, this one's a classic,
you know, being a Christian because you go to church doesn't make you any more
Christian than if you decide that you're standing in your garage and therefore you're a car, right?
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Like, it isn't how it works.
The way it works is what is in you defines you as a Christian,
not where you find yourself or who you find yourself with.
Until you make that transformative step of surrendering self to Christ,
which is to take up your own cross, you are not a Christian.
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You are a Christian when you surrender yourself to Christ. I just quoted that
passage for you. Jesus said it himself.
You approach the Father now as a son or a daughter because you put your faith in me.
And to put your faith in Christ is to not put your faith in yourself or your
religion or your disciplines.
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You know, you don't solve your problems in and of your own strength all the
time, no matter what they are.
There's always certain parts of your life that are dependent on things that
are beyond your control. all.
So rather than be frustrated by that, and rather than fight it and resist it
with all your being, welcome the Lord's presence inside you.
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This idea of the indwelling of Christ is to have allowed him to be expressed through you.
And the beautiful thing is, is that he has a uncanny kind ability to create
the harmony that makes you better than you are because he is in you and you are in him.
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And together you are synchronized to greater potential than you could have imagined.
Obviously, this process is incomplete, but it's a journey of sanctification,
which is a big word we use in church to say being a better Christian today than
you were yesterday, but not as good a Christian as you will be tomorrow.
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That's really all sanctification means. It's a journey of maturity.
And maturing in that relationship with the indwelling Christ means that every
day there's more of him and less of me.
Every day when they see me, they see him. And when Jesus calls us the body of
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Christ, that's what he means.
He means that you are me.
You are my presence. When he says wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I'm there.
He means you are me.
You are the presence of Christ in the room.
You are Christ in the room. And that drives us to the final part of this message,
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which is basically how we are to be the body of Christ as a church,
as a group of people who worship in this particular context and serve the Lord
in this particular place,
how do we live out the indwelling Christ within and thus?
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Just because we can't help it, we end up being like insurgents.
You know, the whole sort of play on words that's been going on throughout this
series is that this will make you an insurgent because the world is made up
of a whole lot of people who are in it for themselves, who are all about me.
And they're born that way. You know, that's a whole theological concept we can
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do on a different occasion.
But the idea is that you can't help but be a radical in the crowd because you've
decided to let Christ live in you and to be expressed through you.
And that puts you at odds with the vast majority of people in your sphere because they don't.
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Because the world doesn't. You know, our government is established on certain
Judeo-Christian principles, but those things are degrading and eroding away
little by little every day,
and it's easier to be an insurgent now than it's ever been,
because all you have to do is say, I still pray,
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and you become an insurgent, you know?
When you still uphold certain moral values because you know where they come
from, you're an insurgent.
When you decide that marriage is still basically a relationship between one
man and one woman, you are an insurgent.
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You are a radical who is upsetting what the status quo has become.
And so that's really all we've been talking about throughout this series is
that if you embrace the indwelling Christ and you let him guide and lead your
life, you won't be morally superior to anybody, but you will be different.
Different you will be different it isn't
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about upholding a certain list of moral standards or
about being a certain kind of person or known for
where you go to church or who you associate with or
who you don't associate with that's what the pharisees did rather it will be
because you associate most readily with christ jesus himself and you invite
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him daily to enter in and to govern all of your thoughts and all of your words and deeds,
and you seek that more every day.
And when you begin to see the world and each other through his eyes, who are,
you know, his eyes are within you, his eyes are incorporated into your vision,
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then you begin to see with a clarity that will put you at odds with other people.
It's why we call ourselves insurgents, because we can't help but be an irritant in society.
Just keep in mind this old and faithful analogy, you know, what makes a pearl an irritant, right?
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You know, there's a little irritant in the mouth of the oyster that causes it
to make a pearl, which is a very precious thing.
It's no wonder that pearls come up regularly in Scripture. Scripture.
Now, there is a whole other kind of train of thought that's in my sermon notes,
and I urge you to read those.
There's also a worksheet associated with those notes that I wrote.
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So, if you go out the door today, pick up paper copies of the sermon notes and
the worksheet, and there are things that I'm not going to talk about this morning,
but they are in the notes.
The main thing that I want to kind of drive home as we finish this series is
how important it is for us as a church family to recalibrate according to the apostolic tradition.
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And again, I'm not talking about religious tradition. I'm talking about the
traditions that were established by the people who were radically changed by
their personal relationship with Jesus Christ in the flesh.
And they gave us guidance so that we could follow their practices and their
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beliefs throughout our journey.
And so the apostolic tradition is not about a creed or a set of words that we
say, but it's about doing as they did, which is to embrace the very spirit of Christ,
of Pentecost, that opens the soul and makes room for Jesus to always dwell within
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you and to always speak through you and to govern your lives.
Your life's not your own anymore.
He owns you, and you do that willingly.
It's like marriage. You know, when I get people up here for a wedding ceremony.
They're making a covenant commitment to each other before God because they want
to, because they want to share the journey with each other for the rest of their lives.
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Till death do us part, they say. and this is the kind of relationship that you're
meant to have with Christ that is in mirroring of the apostolic tradition.
The apostles committed themselves to Christ so much so that one of the greatest
testimonies for the efficacy and the truth of the scriptures is the fact that
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they're still here to this day,
that we're still talking about the apostles,
and we're still marveling at the things they did because of their complete and
utter devotion to Christ.
If they really didn't believe it in their hearts, they would not have done what they did.
They would not have embraced the violent deaths that most of them experienced.
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They would not have embraced the hardships and the challenges that they faced.
They would not have embraced separation from family and home and loved ones.
But for the sake of this good news of the indwelling Christ,
this good news that Jesus himself explained in that passage we just read,
You will see people doing things that are extraordinary, and that's because
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it's more than just their will.
It's more than just their gifts or talents.
It's the very Spirit of God that is energizing and in sync with their gifts
and their talents and their natural human being that creates this sort of superhuman
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expression of devotion to Christ.
But it's not superhuman like a Marvel movie.
It's superhuman because it's this extraordinary love, this radical grace,
this willingness to embrace paradigms that don't make any sense to the rest of the world.
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It's a willingness to be an insurgent or an irritant, even at great personal cost.
And so recalibrating so that we are in line with the apostolic tradition has
been a big part of who Shiloh has been over the last few years, really.
We've made clear declarative statements that we want to be in alignment with
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the apostolic tradition and not with the world and the way the world recalibrates
and respins what it means to be a Christian regularly in order to accommodate feelings and flesh.
Not so with us, we say.
Not so with us, even though it will cause discomfort, even among this family's brothers and sisters.
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But we cling to that vision, this pure gospel of the kingdom of Christ.
Nevertheless, we say, thou, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
And Jesus says that, not as a hope, but a command.
He says, when you pray, pray like
this. this, thy kingdom come as it is in heaven, so shall it be on earth.
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That's not a wish.
Jesus is saying that is an entirely possible, even probable outcome of giving
your life entirely to the Father.
And so our goal then as a family of faith is to be the body of Christ so that
that his kingdom might be visible here in this place among these people.
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And what will that look like? Well, there will be peace. There will be justice.
There will be love. There will be grace.
There will be self-sacrifice. And much of that self-sacrifice will come in giving
up your old ideas for the sake of a new paradigm.
That's what it means to be born again. And the truth is, is we experience rebirth
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all the time with our Lord.
We call it revival in our traditional speak of the church.
But in reality, what we're saying is, Lord, I was born again once,
but I'm regularly being reborn into whatever the next phase of my relationship with you looks like.
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And in that respect, there are some who can remember that day when they accepted
Christ and they really felt born again.
But at least all of us who follow Christ with devotion and love for him will
be able to confess that there have been moments where our paradigms were shifted.
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I use that word paradigm a lot, and that's a word for perspective. Right.
It just means that your paradigm shift is like always seeing something the same
way all the time, and then something changes, and now you see it in a way you never saw it before.
A few months ago, I used the illustration of having a couple of trees cut down
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in my backyard, and all of a sudden, my view is different.
It's a paradigm shift, right? That's what I mean by paradigm shift.
Well, it turns out that the Lord of new birth gives you paradigm shifts on a regular basis.
So it's okay if you've heard me say things that make you uncomfortable,
but you're beginning to come around. That's good.
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It's also understandable if you're a little uncomfortable with the fact that
nothing seems the same as you remember it from a few years ago or 20 years ago or 50 years ago.
It's understandable that this constant change is a little exciting, but mostly unnerving.
That makes you normal, makes you human, but this is the nature of your relationship
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with Christ, to embrace constant renewal.
We're supposed to recognize God in the creation, and it doesn't seem to surprise
us then that spring has come yet again.
I don't know if any of you have noticed that I've been on this planet for 62
years, and I've noticed that that thing that happens every spring is really consistent. then?
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It seems like every year in the springtime, everything that looked dead is starting
to come back to life, right?
It's amazingly consistent. The Lord wants us to understand, even as we look
out the windows of our shelters and see ourselves, you know,
kind of hiding from the world, that the world's still out there changing constantly.
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The weather changes constantly. The seasons change change constantly.
We change constantly, whether we like it or not.
We look in the mirror, and as you remember from last week's message and last
week's newsletter, we see a guy who used to have hair on the top of his head
now with hair on the bottom of his head, right?
And we recognize that whether we like it or not.
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Clyde, Sue, do you look the same as you did 70 years ago when when you were married?
No, change came, whether you like it or not.
And so embrace the change, welcome the fact that the Lord is timeless,
eternal, and unchanging.
And that's the security that you have even while you are regularly unnerved and rattled by change.
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Because he wants you to have faith in him.
Have faith in the unchanging God and trust that while you grow and change and
mature into a more radical expression of devotion to Christ.
The world is changing, you're changing, weather is changing, seasons are changing,
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music styles are changing, worship styles are changing,
people that used to be in the pews aren't there anymore, and people that are
unknown to us one day are now sitting all around us,
and there's just this constant turnover that is like the seasons,
and the thing we embrace as insurgents is our unchanging Lord.
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That's why we're vision-driven around here, because we have to say, I'm going there.
And it doesn't matter how many times you get blown off course or how many the
obstacles fall in your path, you remain fixed on where you're going.
And for us, where we're going is wherever Christ is going.
For us, it's follow Him wherever He goes, and that's what will make us an active
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part of whatever it is He's doing in this community, even in this house of worship. Let us pray.
Thank you, Lord, for this series of messages that I hope have come mostly from you.
As I always pray, Lord, let whatever has come from you be burned into the memory banks of your people,
and let whatever is not from you just be brushed away like chaff,
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so that what we have is sustenance that gives our spirits new life every day.
We pray this for your glory and your namesake. Amen.
Music.
Music.
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The series that we have been on for the entire year so far is based on the book
Insurgents, and today is the last in that series of messages.
And so next week we'll have Palm Sunday celebrating the time when Jesus is both
(00:27):
uplifted by a sort of false enthusiasm for who he might be and then uplifted
on the cross for who he is.
And so that will be our theme for the next couple of weeks is Palm Sunday and Easter.
And so we'll look forward to that. And then some new things will come in the weeks that follow.
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So we look forward to finishing that series today. day, but first let's start
with this reading from John chapter 16.
So, a reading from John chapter 16, starting at verse 25.
Jesus is speaking. I have said these things to you in figures of speech.
The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech,
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but will tell you plainly about the Father.
In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask
the Father on your behalf,
for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
(01:38):
I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I'm leaving the
world and going to the Father.
His disciples said, ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech.
Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you.
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This is why we believe that you came from God.
And Jesus answered them, Do you now believe?
Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered each
to his own home and will leave me alone.
Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.
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I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace,
in the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.
The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Before we get into the message of this final installment in this Insurgent series,
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I want to go back to a verse in that reading that, so hopefully you didn't put your Bibles away yet.
If you did, I will hear you trying to open them up quickly again.
But I want you to take a really close look at verse 26 and 27.
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And I think if you look at that very carefully, you'll understand what we're
driving at when we talk about the indwelling of Christ in us as insurgents,
as Christian believers.
So let's look at that again very carefully. In that day, you will ask in my
my name, and then listen to what he says.
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And I do not say that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you.
Because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
Do you see what he's saying there?
He's saying that when you talk to me about what you need, I'm not going to go
before the Father on your behalf.
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You are talking directly to the Father.
And the reason you're able to talk directly to the Father is because you believed in me.
You see that? Jesus is explaining the whole entire framework upon which our faith is based.
We are a people whose faith in Christ is built on that fact right there,
(04:14):
that we are now able to enter the throne room of God the Father and stand before
him as children of God the Father because of our faith in Christ the Son.
And so Jesus is saying, because of the faith you put in me, you now have a new
life in me that co-heirs with me as sons and daughters of God.
(04:38):
So with that in mind, we'll go to our final installment here.
So this has been quite a
ride this insurgent series and i have to tell you
that that a little bit of how it happened there's
a relatively new person who came into the life of the shiloh family recently
(05:01):
a couple of years now and and in that process of discovery this person came
across my my bookshelf outside my office.
It's sort of a library and a bookstore all wrapped up into one,
and it's sort of a collection of books that I've curated with the help of my
daughter, Bethany, who's a book enthusiast and just runs those kinds of things really well.
(05:27):
She keeps them in the right order because, you know, I'm just not good at that. And.
So this fairly new person in this Shiloh life came across the book Insurgents,
read it, and then said to me, have you read that book?
And I said, well, as a matter of fact, I read the books that I put on those
(05:48):
shelves, and that's part of why it's the pastor's bookshelf,
because when I read a book that I think is really important or valuable to the
family, then I want to share it with the family.
And it so happens that several years in the making, I've had this experience
of having read the book, The Insurgents, and then became friends with the author
(06:11):
and actually studied with him.
And he even came here, you know, for a time where we had him teaching and preaching here.
So this relationship that started with me just reading a book that profoundly
impacted me has turned into a friendship
and a mutually beneficial sort of Christian family kind of thing.
(06:34):
And then someone comes along after all of that kind of went down and says, look at this.
This is a great book. Have you looked at this?
And my answer was, yeah, I'm really glad you're excited about it.
And then I got challenged to present it as a sermon series.
And I thought, all right, why not?
(06:55):
Let's do that. I'm very familiar with this book. I've read through it a few
times. I've studied it with a few different people.
I got to know the guy who wrote it pretty well. And so I understood where he was coming from.
And I understand, too, that, I mean, I don't know that anybody feels this way,
but I've been tempted to think that the reason that I've been doing this is
(07:17):
because I like Frank and I just like helping him sell books,
but I know better than that.
I know better than that. I know that the real reason that I've been doing this
is because Frank is a prophetic voice for our times.
He really is, and there are lots of them out there.
See, you can't expect that God God would always do certain things the same way
(07:40):
throughout recorded history of God's relationship with God's chosen people.
So, in other words, you can't expect God to always do things the same way and
then not do them the same way now, right?
The thing about God is God never changes. God does things the same way because God is always present.
God's not in the past. God's not in the future. God's in the now.
(08:01):
And so if God worked through prophetic voices in the past, he's working through
prophetic voices in the present,
that the kinds of relationships that God had with people we read about in the
Bible still exist because this is who God is.
This is just God's eternal nature being expressed through the eternal purpose
(08:22):
that God has, which involves the intimate indwelling Christ in us, the very spirit of God.
And so, the fact that I've discovered a voice that seems fitting to my context
and to our shared journey together here is great.
Someone asked me just yesterday about a particular prophetic statement,
(08:44):
and I just said, well, the one thing you'll notice of God is whenever God is
making a prophetic statement through a single source, there will be a series of other sources.
Look at the Bible for your example. The Lord communicates consistently throughout
Scripture, and it never relies altogether on one person or one message or one
(09:08):
particular messenger or voice.
It always is a sort of synchronized, consistent message that comes through a
series of prophetic voices.
So to put that in perspective, it means that we may be hearing truth that transforms
our lives so that we become more faithful followers of Christ,
(09:30):
even in dwelling our hearts for the first time ever, because I happen to reference
a book by a friend who is the author of that book.
But in reality, the same thing could happen somewhere else, even somewhere else
here in town, with people reading a different book or hearing the voice of a different prophet. it.
(09:52):
And so prophetic voices consistently put the message that God has for God's
people in front of people.
And here's how you know it's of God. The message is always the same.
See, what I can't get over is how often we experience the presence of the Holy
Spirit, and we don't even know it.
Because the Holy Spirit speaks, and we say what we hear, And then we find out
(10:19):
that somewhere, even right here in this building, down the hall,
unknown to some person or some people in that room down there,
they're speaking the same message.
And then they'll say something like, it's like you knew what we were going to
be talking about, Pastor Dan, or vice versa.
You know, they'll say, you know, how did we decide to do this when you were doing that?
(10:44):
And it's like, because the synchronicity comes from the Holy Spirit.
The thing that binds it all together is the Holy Spirit. And so when the prophets
speak, they say the same things because it's the voice of God.
And so just want to drive that home because as we've gone through this series,
(11:06):
I've seen a lot of different responses to this series of messages,
and most all of them have been positive.
And I know why, because it's the voice of God.
And what God is trying to say to you is really not that complicated.
He simply wants you to welcome him in and let him take over your being,
(11:27):
not to make who you are go away, but to make who you are more complete,
to make you a better version of yourself.
And so when you invite God to indwell you, when you invite the Holy Spirit to
take over your life, when you welcome the new birth in Christ that makes you
(11:47):
a son or a daughter daughter of God,
you are inviting an opportunity to be better than you could have been in and of yourself.
So one of the key messages of the Insurgents series has been to understand that
the harder you try to be a good Christian, the more likely you are to fail.
(12:12):
Because trying to to be a good Christian doesn't get you there.
Trying to behave a certain way or to a certain series of disciplines isn't what
it means to be a Christian.
Practicing a particular tradition
that is part of your faith story doesn't make you more of a Christian.
(12:33):
It's the indwelling of Christ's Spirit in you that makes you a Christian.
You've heard the saying, I'm sure if you haven't, among preachers, this one's a classic,
you know, being a Christian because you go to church doesn't make you any more
Christian than if you decide that you're standing in your garage and therefore you're a car, right?
(12:56):
Like, it isn't how it works.
The way it works is what is in you defines you as a Christian,
not where you find yourself or who you find yourself with.
Until you make that transformative step of surrendering self to Christ,
which is to take up your own cross, you are not a Christian.
(13:21):
You are a Christian when you surrender yourself to Christ. I just quoted that
passage for you. Jesus said it himself.
You approach the Father now as a son or a daughter because you put your faith in me.
And to put your faith in Christ is to not put your faith in yourself or your
religion or your disciplines.
(13:44):
You know, you don't solve your problems in and of your own strength all the
time, no matter what they are.
There's always certain parts of your life that are dependent on things that
are beyond your control. all.
So rather than be frustrated by that, and rather than fight it and resist it
with all your being, welcome the Lord's presence inside you.
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This idea of the indwelling of Christ is to have allowed him to be expressed through you.
And the beautiful thing is, is that he has a uncanny kind ability to create
the harmony that makes you better than you are because he is in you and you are in him.
(14:32):
And together you are synchronized to greater potential than you could have imagined.
Obviously, this process is incomplete, but it's a journey of sanctification,
which is a big word we use in church to say being a better Christian today than
you were yesterday, but not as good a Christian as you will be tomorrow.
(14:55):
That's really all sanctification means. It's a journey of maturity.
And maturing in that relationship with the indwelling Christ means that every
day there's more of him and less of me.
Every day when they see me, they see him. And when Jesus calls us the body of
(15:16):
Christ, that's what he means.
He means that you are me.
You are my presence. When he says wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I'm there.
He means you are me.
You are the presence of Christ in the room.
You are Christ in the room. And that drives us to the final part of this message,
(15:39):
which is basically how we are to be the body of Christ as a church,
as a group of people who worship in this particular context and serve the Lord
in this particular place,
how do we live out the indwelling Christ within and thus?
(16:02):
Just because we can't help it, we end up being like insurgents.
You know, the whole sort of play on words that's been going on throughout this
series is that this will make you an insurgent because the world is made up
of a whole lot of people who are in it for themselves, who are all about me.
And they're born that way. You know, that's a whole theological concept we can
(16:26):
do on a different occasion.
But the idea is that you can't help but be a radical in the crowd because you've
decided to let Christ live in you and to be expressed through you.
And that puts you at odds with the vast majority of people in your sphere because they don't.
(16:49):
Because the world doesn't. You know, our government is established on certain
Judeo-Christian principles, but those things are degrading and eroding away
little by little every day,
and it's easier to be an insurgent now than it's ever been,
because all you have to do is say, I still pray,
(17:10):
and you become an insurgent, you know?
When you still uphold certain moral values because you know where they come
from, you're an insurgent.
When you decide that marriage is still basically a relationship between one
man and one woman, you are an insurgent.
(17:31):
You are a radical who is upsetting what the status quo has become.
And so that's really all we've been talking about throughout this series is
that if you embrace the indwelling Christ and you let him guide and lead your
life, you won't be morally superior to anybody, but you will be different.
Different you will be different it isn't
(17:53):
about upholding a certain list of moral standards or
about being a certain kind of person or known for
where you go to church or who you associate with or
who you don't associate with that's what the pharisees did rather it will be
because you associate most readily with christ jesus himself and you invite
(18:14):
him daily to enter in and to govern all of your thoughts and all of your words and deeds,
and you seek that more every day.
And when you begin to see the world and each other through his eyes, who are,
you know, his eyes are within you, his eyes are incorporated into your vision,
(18:38):
then you begin to see with a clarity that will put you at odds with other people.
It's why we call ourselves insurgents, because we can't help but be an irritant in society.
Just keep in mind this old and faithful analogy, you know, what makes a pearl an irritant, right?
(19:03):
You know, there's a little irritant in the mouth of the oyster that causes it
to make a pearl, which is a very precious thing.
It's no wonder that pearls come up regularly in Scripture. Scripture.
Now, there is a whole other kind of train of thought that's in my sermon notes,
and I urge you to read those.
There's also a worksheet associated with those notes that I wrote.
(19:29):
So, if you go out the door today, pick up paper copies of the sermon notes and
the worksheet, and there are things that I'm not going to talk about this morning,
but they are in the notes.
The main thing that I want to kind of drive home as we finish this series is
how important it is for us as a church family to recalibrate according to the apostolic tradition.
(19:53):
And again, I'm not talking about religious tradition. I'm talking about the
traditions that were established by the people who were radically changed by
their personal relationship with Jesus Christ in the flesh.
And they gave us guidance so that we could follow their practices and their
(20:13):
beliefs throughout our journey.
And so the apostolic tradition is not about a creed or a set of words that we
say, but it's about doing as they did, which is to embrace the very spirit of Christ,
of Pentecost, that opens the soul and makes room for Jesus to always dwell within
(20:36):
you and to always speak through you and to govern your lives.
Your life's not your own anymore.
He owns you, and you do that willingly.
It's like marriage. You know, when I get people up here for a wedding ceremony.
They're making a covenant commitment to each other before God because they want
to, because they want to share the journey with each other for the rest of their lives.
(21:03):
Till death do us part, they say. and this is the kind of relationship that you're
meant to have with Christ that is in mirroring of the apostolic tradition.
The apostles committed themselves to Christ so much so that one of the greatest
testimonies for the efficacy and the truth of the scriptures is the fact that
(21:26):
they're still here to this day,
that we're still talking about the apostles,
and we're still marveling at the things they did because of their complete and
utter devotion to Christ.
If they really didn't believe it in their hearts, they would not have done what they did.
They would not have embraced the violent deaths that most of them experienced.
(21:49):
They would not have embraced the hardships and the challenges that they faced.
They would not have embraced separation from family and home and loved ones.
But for the sake of this good news of the indwelling Christ,
this good news that Jesus himself explained in that passage we just read,
You will see people doing things that are extraordinary, and that's because
(22:13):
it's more than just their will.
It's more than just their gifts or talents.
It's the very Spirit of God that is energizing and in sync with their gifts
and their talents and their natural human being that creates this sort of superhuman
(22:35):
expression of devotion to Christ.
But it's not superhuman like a Marvel movie.
It's superhuman because it's this extraordinary love, this radical grace,
this willingness to embrace paradigms that don't make any sense to the rest of the world.
(22:55):
It's a willingness to be an insurgent or an irritant, even at great personal cost.
And so recalibrating so that we are in line with the apostolic tradition has
been a big part of who Shiloh has been over the last few years, really.
We've made clear declarative statements that we want to be in alignment with
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the apostolic tradition and not with the world and the way the world recalibrates
and respins what it means to be a Christian regularly in order to accommodate feelings and flesh.
Not so with us, we say.
Not so with us, even though it will cause discomfort, even among this family's brothers and sisters.
(23:46):
But we cling to that vision, this pure gospel of the kingdom of Christ.
Nevertheless, we say, thou, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
And Jesus says that, not as a hope, but a command.
He says, when you pray, pray like
this. this, thy kingdom come as it is in heaven, so shall it be on earth.
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That's not a wish.
Jesus is saying that is an entirely possible, even probable outcome of giving
your life entirely to the Father.
And so our goal then as a family of faith is to be the body of Christ so that
that his kingdom might be visible here in this place among these people.
(24:35):
And what will that look like? Well, there will be peace. There will be justice.
There will be love. There will be grace.
There will be self-sacrifice. And much of that self-sacrifice will come in giving
up your old ideas for the sake of a new paradigm.
That's what it means to be born again. And the truth is, is we experience rebirth
(24:57):
all the time with our Lord.
We call it revival in our traditional speak of the church.
But in reality, what we're saying is, Lord, I was born again once,
but I'm regularly being reborn into whatever the next phase of my relationship with you looks like.
(25:18):
And in that respect, there are some who can remember that day when they accepted
Christ and they really felt born again.
But at least all of us who follow Christ with devotion and love for him will
be able to confess that there have been moments where our paradigms were shifted.
(25:38):
I use that word paradigm a lot, and that's a word for perspective. Right.
It just means that your paradigm shift is like always seeing something the same
way all the time, and then something changes, and now you see it in a way you never saw it before.
A few months ago, I used the illustration of having a couple of trees cut down
(25:58):
in my backyard, and all of a sudden, my view is different.
It's a paradigm shift, right? That's what I mean by paradigm shift.
Well, it turns out that the Lord of new birth gives you paradigm shifts on a regular basis.
So it's okay if you've heard me say things that make you uncomfortable,
but you're beginning to come around. That's good.
(26:20):
It's also understandable if you're a little uncomfortable with the fact that
nothing seems the same as you remember it from a few years ago or 20 years ago or 50 years ago.
It's understandable that this constant change is a little exciting, but mostly unnerving.
That makes you normal, makes you human, but this is the nature of your relationship
(26:45):
with Christ, to embrace constant renewal.
We're supposed to recognize God in the creation, and it doesn't seem to surprise
us then that spring has come yet again.
I don't know if any of you have noticed that I've been on this planet for 62
years, and I've noticed that that thing that happens every spring is really consistent. then?
(27:08):
It seems like every year in the springtime, everything that looked dead is starting
to come back to life, right?
It's amazingly consistent. The Lord wants us to understand, even as we look
out the windows of our shelters and see ourselves, you know,
kind of hiding from the world, that the world's still out there changing constantly.
(27:30):
The weather changes constantly. The seasons change change constantly.
We change constantly, whether we like it or not.
We look in the mirror, and as you remember from last week's message and last
week's newsletter, we see a guy who used to have hair on the top of his head
now with hair on the bottom of his head, right?
And we recognize that whether we like it or not.
(27:54):
Clyde, Sue, do you look the same as you did 70 years ago when when you were married?
No, change came, whether you like it or not.
And so embrace the change, welcome the fact that the Lord is timeless,
eternal, and unchanging.
And that's the security that you have even while you are regularly unnerved and rattled by change.
(28:21):
Because he wants you to have faith in him.
Have faith in the unchanging God and trust that while you grow and change and
mature into a more radical expression of devotion to Christ.
The world is changing, you're changing, weather is changing, seasons are changing,
(28:42):
music styles are changing, worship styles are changing,
people that used to be in the pews aren't there anymore, and people that are
unknown to us one day are now sitting all around us,
and there's just this constant turnover that is like the seasons,
and the thing we embrace as insurgents is our unchanging Lord.
(29:05):
That's why we're vision-driven around here, because we have to say, I'm going there.
And it doesn't matter how many times you get blown off course or how many the
obstacles fall in your path, you remain fixed on where you're going.
And for us, where we're going is wherever Christ is going.
For us, it's follow Him wherever He goes, and that's what will make us an active
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part of whatever it is He's doing in this community, even in this house of worship. Let us pray.
Thank you, Lord, for this series of messages that I hope have come mostly from you.
As I always pray, Lord, let whatever has come from you be burned into the memory banks of your people,
and let whatever is not from you just be brushed away like chaff,
(29:59):
so that what we have is sustenance that gives our spirits new life every day.
We pray this for your glory and your namesake. Amen.
Music.
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