Ekklesia: You Are the Church Jesus Builds

That cave right there that everybody is so superstitious about and everything it represents about the power of darkness, it won't overcome it, it won't stand up. Gates are stationary, my church is going to be on the move. I will build my church, people won't build my church, I will build my church. And in that moment Jesus is saying to his followers, Pan isn't king. Chaos isn't king. Death isn't king. Jesus, Jesus is king and it's on that truth that the church will be built. [00:58:06] (42 seconds)  #ChurchOnTheMove

Two, you are a walking, talking temple. The spirit of God, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you. And that means that we have an opportunity for number three, at the tone and the approach and the posture of Jesus should characterize the tone, the approach and the posture of his followers. That we can represent Jesus. [01:01:49] (36 seconds)  #YouAreTheTemple

The spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead, do you believe this, lives in you. And just as God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by the same spirit living in you. So here's what I need you to know as we kick off this series. One, you are part of something big. You're part of something really big that has been going on for two thousand years but it's something that Jesus Christ himself instituted. [01:00:44] (38 seconds)  #SpiritGivesLife

So here's what I need you to know as we kick off this series. One, you are part of something big. You're part of something really big that has been going on for two thousand years but it's something that Jesus Christ himself instituted. And the goal for you is not to get something out of it. The evaluation metric for you is not what did you get out of it, although I think you can get a tremendous amount out of it. The goal is to give something to it, to contribute to this ongoing movement because we are the stewards of this movement for our generation and it is so important that we get it right. [01:01:05] (44 seconds)  #StewardsNotConsumers

We are the stewards of our faith in this generation. And the way that we steward our faith in this generation will affect the view that our kids will have on the church and the way that they will steward this faith for their generation. And so we as a group, we, those of us who wear crosses around our necks or wear Christian t shirts or come to church on Sunday morning or in whatever way identify publicly as followers of Jesus Christ. We determine what Christianity acts like and perhaps most importantly what it reacts like. [00:36:31] (40 seconds)  #WeShapeChristianity

So very early, about sixty, seventy years after the resurrection, have this documentation from extra biblical sources that Christians believed that Jesus Christ was God. Now, March, Constantine becomes a Christian and now Christians can come out of hiding for the first time since the resurrection. For the first time in more than three hundred years, you can publicly be a Christian without risking your life, without worrying that you would be tarred and feathered and lit on fire to be the torch that lit Nero's garden, without worrying that you would have an animal skin put on you and put into the Colosseum for the entertainment of others while you were mauled to death. [00:45:02] (40 seconds)  #FaithOutOfHiding

The reformers are the people in each generation who call us back to true north. The reformers are the ones that we can look to who say, we've got to come back to Jesus. We've got to come back to the tone of Jesus. We've got to come back to the approach of Jesus. We've got to come back to the way that Jesus acted and reacted because we are the stewards. We are the stewards of our faith in this generation. [00:36:09] (25 seconds)  #ReturnToTrueNorth

Because that's our hope today and because we believe that there is so much at stake if we get it right. Because the reality is that when the church loses its way, the church loses its influence. And that's tragic. And if you don't think that that's tragic, you don't fully understand the impact that the church has had on the culture in which you grew up. Because if you have any appreciation or any value for human life, you got that from the church, you got that from the teachings of Jesus. [00:34:07] (34 seconds)  #ChurchInfluenceMatters