A Different Kind of People
May 17, 2022
"To be a priest is to set your life aside." In the fourth episode of the series "Robes, Candles, Smells and Bells," Robert talks about the purpose of God's people in the world, the expansive mission of God's kingdom, and our holy, peculiar, passionate, particular calling to be priests, unified by one Spirit.
"To be a priest is to set your life aside." In the fourth episode of the series "Robes, Candles, Smells and Bells," Robert talks about the purpose of God's people in the world, the expansive mission of God's kingdom, and our holy, peculiar, passionate, particular calling to be priests, unified by one Spirit.
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Alright, today we have been in a sermon series about what it means for us to be a royal priesthood in a holy nation and today we're going to dive into the history of basketball who's ready for it. Here we go. Um they're just real quick there. If you look in the 19 sixties, in the N. B. A. There were two players that dominated everybody's imagination. They were the only figures that everybody in the country knew about. Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell wilt Chamberlain, it's probably the greatest pure scorer of all time. He was seven ft one. He had, he had one game, the only game in NBA history where somebody scored 100 points in one game, Kobe Bryant went out to try to do it and he only got to 80 200 is incredibly difficult in 81. Sorry, thank you. Gosh, Getting fact checked real time. Thank you Snopes. Alright, so, Well, chamberlain was just incredible. Um he regularly scored in the 50s and 60s. In fact, in 1961, his scoring average per game Was 50 points. Just to give you some context today. If you average 32 points, you're likely the m. v. p. of the league. He scored 50 points per game that year. But you know who won the league Mvp that year. It was Bill Russell. Bill Russell. He Played for the Boston Celtics. He regularly average about 15 points a game, But he averaged 24 rebounds per game and his team, Even though it was less skilled, it had less star power. He won 11 NBA championships in the 13 years that he was playing basketball. Like just think about that level of excellence and dominance. And when you think about the contrast between the two, Wilt won two titles in a 20 year career. Bill 1 11 and 13 years, what it really came down to is that Bill Russell was the ultimate team player and wilt. Chamberlain played for the name on the back of his jersey instead of the name on the front of his jersey. It was all about stats, it was all about his individual contribution, his endorsements, making money for himself. But what we all know, I think from the history of not just sport but the history of the world is that players can't win on their own. It requires teams to win. Players can contribute, but even in a sport with just five people on the court, If you have the greatest player of all time Playing regularly, 40 minutes a game, The Lakers in 2022, you still can't even get to the playoffs if you don't have a team that's playing with you. And of course I think that this metaphor is what our world needs right now more than ever. You look at our globe and you look at the interconnected ways that we are all affected by something that happens on the other side of the world. And you start to think maybe it's not just about my own individual choices, maybe it's not about who I am or what I'm pursuing. One guy, he goes and just has to have some bat meat in china and millions of people die from Covid. One guy says, I want to invade Ukraine and the entire world is facing grain shortages and oil shortages. All of us are deeply connected with one another and until we recognize that we have responsibility to one another, not just in our families and not just in our community, but in the world. All of us are going to live with the repercussions of the cost of other people's sin on us and God knew that. So he built his people as a relief valve valve. He built the people of Israel and then his people, the kingdom of God as a relief valve. To save us from our individualism, to save us from our nationalism. To save us from thinking about ourselves. He gave them a mission and a reason to exist. This is what it says In. Let's see Genesis chapter 12 I did not get set up. So we're gonna have to go genesis chapter 12 verse one The Lord said to Abram, leave your native country, your relatives and your father's family and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and I will make you famous and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless. Those who bless you and curse those who curse you with contempt. All the family on earth will be blessed by you. This is such a familiar chapter. But this is the beginning, the start of God setting aside for himself a particular people that would be a part of his redemptive plan for history, his people that he held as his own. When you hear chosen. When you hear that God has set aside for himself, a chosen one or a chosen person, it probably evokes one of two responses. I think The first is we think of the chosen one as someone who's given special privilege that makes them exceptional To be envied. The chosen one. We see them as enviable when you think about um, in the basketball world, you look at Wilt chamberlain, the guy was an alien. You look at pictures of the dude and he had like a nine ft wingspan on a seven ft tall body. He literally looked like he didn't belong on our earth. And he was made for one particular thing, better than anything else and anyone else that ever existed. To put a orange piece of leather in a steel hoops, the chosen one, this is the image we have is that they are exceptional. They're different than us and they belong in their own category to be envied and to be admired and looked up to. But then you you probably also here in the chosen one are the narratives of of of story. The chosen one is a gift that's given to people to be a savior. When you think about luke Skywalker and you think about um you think about even harry potter who is just a retelling of Star Wars, let's be clear. Um and you and you think about and you think you think about all the stories where the heroes are the chosen one that's been prophesying from before time when the chosen one shows up, the chosen one is is a relief because there is hope, this hope is reborn in the one that's given to us as a gift to bless us with this special gift that they've been stewarded. They've been given to steward for other people because God's purpose for salvation is to come through people to be bearers and stewards of his kingdom so that the world will experience his presence. Abraham was chosen not because of his righteousness, but because God needed to make for himself a people anyone would have done. And Abraham just happened to be the one who said yes. It's funny that we don't get a sense that God may have asked other people. Here's the thing. I'm betting God has asked you to do some things and you've said no to him, am I right? You don't have to raise your hand. I see your eyes. God has probably asked you to step out in faith and you may have said, not right now and not yet and you wait and you held back, that's happened throughout all of history. But Abraham was the guy who said, I'm in, he uprooted his family and he heard God's voice and he went forward and created for himself the people that God had chosen. He was a steward, not an owner of this call. God called Israel, his people so that they would be his representatives to the world. In an in a sense, they were the ones who would embody. God's presence. Like we're called a nation of priests, a holy nation. The kingdom of Israel was meant to be that he called the Levite priest, not because they were righteous, this special tribe, but because God needed a people who would represent his people in God's presence. If you think about it, the Levi, it's kind of got the short end of the stick, right when they went into the problems, land and what percentage of the land did the Levi's get? 0%. It wasn't a place for them to gather, privilege and position. It was a place for them to be a servant to play a particular role. And that's what we've been talking about throughout this sermon series is that priests are holy in that they're set aside for God's particular purpose. In Chapter three of numbers, it says this, then the Lord said to moses call forward the tribe of Levi, present them to Aaron the priest to services assistance. They will serve Aaron and the whole community performing their sacred duties in and around the Tabernacle. They will also maintain all the furnishings of the sacred tent, serving in the Tabernacle on behalf of all the Israelites assigned to leave fights to Aaron and his sons. They have been given from among all the people of Israel to serve as their assistance. A point Aaron and his sons to carry out the duties of the priesthood. But any unauthorized person who does not go who goes to near to the sanctuary must be put to death like this passage just seems really like straightforward, but there's something like the word serve shows up like four times in it. I I think about this, when the, when the Tabernacle, when they would move camps in the desert wanderings, you know how mom is always the last one to get ready when you're going on a trip. Like at the very end, the whole car is packed and mom has yet to pack her bag, why is that? Mom was packing everybody else? And then dad is sitting there going, honey, are we gonna leave? And she's like, are you kidding me? Are you flipping kidding? Yeah, she's, she's frustrated and that's what the Levite had to do right? When they were, when they would pack up there. You gotta imagine moses shows up and he's like Aaron. So here's the thing we're gonna move again and he's like, are you kidding me? Where you want me to pick up the whole Tabernacle on top of cleaning my own camp and go create something in a new place just because you feel like we're supposed to move when you're called to be a priest, you're called to a life of being set apart for particular duties above and beyond everyday life. That's what it looks like to be a priest is to set your life aside and say it's been set aside for God's purposes, Aaron's families were servants, they had access to moses and Aaron and Miriam, but they were set aside because they were a family of servants. It's not a privilege, but rather this, this sacrifice, They have a different kind of inheritance than the kind that the other tribes had. The other tribes had land to protect them. Their inheritance was from God. It was about God's people pleasing him. It wasn't about making themselves great, but of course the levy, it's didn't really get it and they made a mess of stuff because they thought that their privileged position gave them the right to take what they thought they deserved. So the Levite, it's would use the temple as a way to promote themselves to gain power and influence to take money and to take resource and to take animals and grains and more than they deserved from the people. It was corrupted just like our call as a holy nation, a royal priesthood has been corrupted by us seeking after our own way. And all of this is really about our calling as God's people. We live under these idols of radical individualism where we believe that our lives are our own, that our bodies our own, that our time is our own, that our money is our own and that we can do whatever we want with it. That's the fundamental thesis that America was built on is that you get to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't kill or steal from somebody else or as long as you steal in a way that is okay with our I. R. S. That's the deal radical individuals and that's who we are as a people and so us becoming a nation of royal priests. A holy nation is going to require setting aside our belief that our lives are our own. The church has been full of spiritual abuse because they believe that their places priests gave them a privileged position in the world around us and that the world should honor the things that we do rather than us serving in humility. We have taken on the mantle as americans, calling ourselves the saviors of the world. We've imagined that it's our place to be the ones that were chosen to be a city on a hill. You don't believe that. Look back to what the puritans wrote when they came over to America. They fundamentally believed that they had taken over Israel's place as God's chosen people set aside for his holy purpose. We believe that our country itself is the savior, not God himself. We have corrupted the call of our priesthood by looking around and competing with other priests. Churches compete for people and for money and for resource. We battle over who's right in interpreting scripture. We battle over who's worshiping the best way. We battle over how we think people ought to live. We've corrupted our call as God's people by participating in the evil political parties of our world. Rather than grabbing hold of our call as ambassadors of the kingdom of God. We have corrupted our calls God's people by taking our identity as americans and saying that it allows us to assert privilege over the world. We have corrupted God's call because we have we have saw ourselves as as supreme over all things as God over all things. We've been talking about what it means to be a priest. We've been, we've talked about how the role of priest is one who's a mediator between God and man. We've talked about our role as priests and the ones that offer the sacrifices and that we have shifted from being the butchers to being the lambs who are sacrificed, that our lives are living sacrificed. We've talked about how we as priests, make consecrated places by consecrating people by making places that are set aside for God's presence by our lives being transformed in the way of the kingdom. We've talked about how the kingdom authority we get comes through service and connection with God rather than positions of authority. We've talked about how in the Kingdom of God, there is no special class of priests but that all of us are a part of God's priestly class. We've talked about how as priests, we do a different kind of prayer, one that's filled with authority from the Holy Spirit's presence in us. We do a kind of prayer that's interceding for the world around us. We do a kind of prayer that brings blessing to a world that's lost and broken and today we're gonna be looking a little bit at, let's see, let me get the passage right on this. I don't know why my sermon thing. Does this weird. Alright we are in this is Hebrews chapter three Hebrews chapter three verse five. Here we go. I ask you again does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you? Because you obey the law? Of course not. It's because you believe the message that you heard about christ in the same way Abraham believed God and God counted him as righteous because of his faith. The real Children, Abraham then are those who put their faith in God. What's more the scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago and he said all nations will be blessed through you. So all who put their faith in christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith. You see the movement from the very beginning to the very end as this inclusive work that jesus does to grab hold of people and bring them into his family. He is constantly opening up the door way for people to enter in. He created the people of Israel so that the world would know how to worship and how to be in God's presence. He created the people of Israel so that God could bring his presence through jesus as our Savior. Then he gave the world his people filled with his holy Spirit so that we would then bring the world to his presence by us going out with him, our call and our work as priests is to be a part of the mission of God. That's what today is all about is that priests have a clear mission. We want to connect this holy nation royal priesthood, our new identity as priests with God's mission in the world, which is to be a blessing to all people just like the levi's had no land to call their own. We are going to be a peculiar kind of people who mission with God to bring his presence everywhere we go. So instead of having our own politics, instead of being a part of the politics of this world, we're going to be a peculiar kind of people who say, I'm gonna turn aside from the right and the left and I'm going to follow the way of kingdom instead of claiming America is our home, we're gonna say we're exiles in a lost and broken world and our kingdom is everywhere we go because I myself am loyal to the king of all creation. And so where I go, I bring his authority, I bring his presence and I bring his rule and reign with me into my family into my neighborhood, into my kingdom. The kingdom is like an empire that's working like yeast through the world. Remember when jesus said the kingdom of God is like yeast and that you just put a little tiny bit in the dough and pretty soon it works its way through the whole thing, that's what the kingdom of God is like. And so when we act as priests instead of inviting the world to come into our sanctum instead of saying we're going to create one holy place that the whole world must pilgrimage to God himself, put his presence in his people and then sent them out. In fact, not only did he sent them out, he made it so they couldn't stay in Jerusalem. They got pushed out by the ruling authorities who oversaw the temple and said not here And then what God did 60 or 35 years later was he tore down the temple and never let it be rebuilt so that his kingdom had to go out. Not come back in pilgrimage to Jerusalem because the Holy City of Zion is the presence of Jesus, not a place can I get an amen, we must take hold not only our identity as priests but our identity as missionaries. What are missionaries? Well, there are people who live understanding their purpose and their calling that we are this royal priesthood and a part of an underground eggs Ilic empire moving throughout the world, bringing God's justice, God's peace, God's blessing and God's presence into the world. We are trying to create something different here at redemption hill than most places what happens in this room is good, but this is not the extent of God's Kingdom mission in our lives, that's why we have micro churches, that's why we commission you as missionaries and send you out into your neighborhoods is because we we gather to be built up then were sent out to live on mission as a part of God's Kingdom. We have, we have fought creating a special class of people in our community. Um No one on our staff is full time by design. That's what we've done because we want everybody to have a place in a work outside of the church so that they're connected with people who are far from jesus. It's so that you understand that those people who serve in particular roles in our community, they're not a special kind of super christian, they're just an average everyday person who's taking a little bit of their time to take care of our community so that you can go live as missionaries in our community. We don't think it's wrong for the church to support people and to be full time. We support people who are living as missionaries throughout our city and we think that it's valuable but we want to up turn turn the paradigm upside down so that it's not this special class of super christians who are able to preach and teach and lead but that it's everybody has a calling and a purpose outside of sunday mornings. Mhm We are priests and we are missionaries. That's why many of you, the last two years have gone through our training with our we have we're part of a movement called the syndicate here in the valley of 27 micro churches, almost 800 people who are living as missionaries in their context. We have a missionary pathway that trains you how to live as missionaries, how to see yourself as sent, how to participate in God's calling in God's work. You see, priests have a particular kind of kingdom calling. We're called to be kingdom people. So we're set apart for God's presence to be, to be born inside of us. We're kingdom bearers. So everywhere we go, we bring God's kingdom, but we're also consecrated for a kind of holy work that the world can't do. You know what the world can't do. The world can't proclaim the goodness of God because they haven't experienced it. The world can't embody the kind of servant leadership that will bring healing and restoration to families. The world can't be a blessing because it's always transactional in our world. But we as Kingdom people can be a peculiar kind of people because we can take our kingdom callings and live it out in a world where it feels like it sounds like it tastes like the presence of God. We have that calling as priests or people who are called to belong in God's presence by his grace. That is your particular calling as a follower of jesus, is to consecrate your life so that there's nothing that's keeping God's presence and God's power and God's authority from resting on you. That's why we come to the table every week and we participate in christ's death and resurrection so that we can be bearers of his kingdom. It's why we push sin out of our lives so that there's nothing that's holding us back from being consecrated set apart for God's work. We have this particular calling not just to be holy people, but to be people who bring blessing. We talked last week that people who are priests in God's kingdom have a different kind of prayer and that prayer is one that is filled with power because we are God's representatives in the world, but it's also by our presence. So we don't call people to come to church to be prayed for. But we pray for people as we go. We we lay hands on people who are broken and hurting. We talked about how that we are as priests set aside for a particular purpose. Now, this is where I want to end up today, is that you have been given particular purposes that God wants to take your lifestyle and turn it into a holy, peculiar passionate kind of lifestyle. There are people among us who are living that out day in and day out, transformed lives. People living in their calling. I one of the things I think about when we talk about a set apart or a peculiar kind of calling. Um when when we decided to plant what has become Redemption Hill. We were living in boston and we called uh for five of the families who are here with us still and we had a phone call with them and said, would you come and would you set aside your life that you're in right now and join in with this kingdom mission? One of those was Matt and Katie Takata at the time. They were living in Portland and I called them and asked them to help us plant a church in Boise knowing full well that that was an unlikely ask. I don't know if you ever ask your friends to move from the city they're living in. It's awkward. You're like, hey, so I know your life is good and everything but um like that's that's an awkward conversation. But you know what their peculiar kind of people because their kingdom people and they listened to the father and they did what he said. That's the kind of peculiar calling we have as we listen to the father and we obey even when it's, it feels weird and feels wrong, we step into what he's called us to. I think about the kind of peculiar calling that we have. Um, there's, there's some weird people who live in my neighborhood. It's joe and amy publish, they live in our neighborhood and you know what they do. They live their lives connected with their neighbors. They share their stuff, They share their time. They invite their friends to come into their house and experience God's love. They just have bible studies and invite their neighbors who don't know, jesus, their peculiar kind of people who have been set apart because God's called them as missionaries and that's how they live. We're also called to not just be wholly or peculiar, but we're called to be passionate kind of priests not just going through the motions but doing it because God has called us to it. I think about Amy Hyatt who has a very peculiar kind of calling. Her calling is to sit with our relatives while they're dying in hospice and you know what she does, She loves it because she gets to live out her particular calling being a blessing of God's presence in holy moments of transition where the veil between this world and the next is really thin holy peculiar passionate people. We have this collective calling to be holy peculiar and passionate in the mission. God has given us, but we also have unique particular callings that God has given us Ephesians four, we read God gave some the people to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers for the building up of the church. Is that up there. Okay, I was like, I don't even have that in my notes, there was no God gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers, God gave the people to be gifts to the church so that the church would be built up some of you have those particular kinds of callings to be leaders among the church to lead your micro church because maybe you're an apostle like me and you have this entrepreneurial passion to see new things started, you are looking outside and saying, how can I participate in God's kingdom, advancing some of your profits and God has particularly gifted you to see what's wrong with the world. It seems hard. I'm sorry if God called you to be a prophet seems like a hard job, you're not gonna lie. Um, but I need you, I need you to listen to the father and to tell me what he's saying. Some of you are gifted as evangelists where God has everywhere you look, you see people that you know need jesus and you passionately pray for them and you share your lives with them because that's who you are. Some of you are shepherd pastors where you look at people and you bring them along and care for them and you're, you're slow and compassionate and filled with love for them. I don't get it. I'm not, I'm not a pastor in that kind of classic way. I love pastors because they care for people way better than I ever could. That's why that's why we don't use the title pastor here because I'm not like gifted as a pastor. I'm gifted and as an apostle and an evangelist. And so we need a team of people. That's why we also have teachers, people who know God's word and care about saying it the right way. I need those people. I need your emails on monday mornings Selling me that no Kobe Bryant only scored 81 points to make sure that we get it right. It's important that we get these things right. Not only that, but we also see in 1st Corinthians chapter 12, that there in verse four, there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same spirit as the source of them all. There's different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord God works in different ways ways, but it's the same God who does the work in all of us. A spiritual gift is given to each of us. Now, before, in Ephesians four, God gave some the people to be the apostles as a gift to the church. Now, here we see, God gives gives each of us a gift from the spirit. Okay, to another, to one person, the spirit gives the ability to give wise advice to another. The same spirit gives a message of special wisdom. The same spirit gives great faith to another 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 power to discern whether a messages from the spirit of God or from another spirit, he's still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages while another is given the ability to interpret was being said, it's the one and only spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. And I'm gonna tell you our church is much better off when you're all bringing all of your gifts to the table and stewarding them for the kingdom. Many of those things are not happening in our community because some of you have been holding out on us, I know who you are, No, just some of you are holding out God gave you spiritual gifts for our community and we need you to come fully alive in the way of jesus so that we all experienced the power and presence of God so that we can participate in the mission he has called us to, so we're given certain gifts, we're also given certain passions. Um I've got some friends, they run what's called the boston project ministries and They graduated from Gordon Gordon College, which is the college kind of connected to the seminary, went to the graduate in 1995 and they had this vision to mobilize teenagers in Christian service throughout Boston and so what they did was in 1996 2 of the founders paul and Glenn um Alchemists, they relocated and they moved into Southie and Southie was the roughest neighborhood in the nineties. You've probably seen several movies about the gang wars that were built out of south boston. This, this is where they moved into a 1996 and they relocated to what has become the boston project there at Talbot Norfolk Triangle in a neighborhood in Dorchester, their apartment became the headquarters and they literally moved out and became a kingdom outpost in a neighborhood that was bereft of God's Kingdom's presence. God has given some of you a passion for the poor God has given some of you a passion for a particular people, for a geography, for a neighborhood, for a group that's been affected by a particular kind of sin, for an injustice in our world that needs to be set right, God has given you that passion and only you that passion, he's entrusted it to you to steward it. And so your particular calling is going to be to take the gifts you've been given and the passions you've been given and find a team to work alongside of you to see that come to life. Um, I've got a picture here, we were a partner with the Tampa underground, which is a micro church network in Tampa that has over 200 micro churches, but this is just a, a taste of what they're doing. Um you can't read that, I'm realizing. So I'm gonna pull up the website. Oh thank you. Okay, there you go. So you got uh, ladies restoration for God rest toward women by God. This is like a women's ministry for when four and from Puerto rico, you got Newhart's outreach for sexually broken people. I couldn't quite read the last word and I didn't want to get that one wrong. Uh, you got praise in the park where they literally go do music in the park and and connect with homeless people. You've got micro churches for single moms, you have micro churches, uh, for women who are for people who are providing transitional housing for women. You've got people who are having movies and dinner together. That's my passion, movies and dinner. Um, you've got Soma 813 for young adults and 813 area and they have 200 of these things that are built around the passions. God has called them to and that's the kind of movement we want to see is where we're living out our particular passions around the colleagues for justice and blessing in the world. Your story might have a particular calling. You've got your gifts and you've got your passion, but your story how you have been shaped and crafted by God might have a particular thing that God wants to use. Maybe you have come through recovery or addiction and you can help someone in that way that I will never be able to because I have not gone through what you've gone through some of you are survivors of sexual abuse of trauma and you have a particular part of your story where you can offer it as a gift to the world around you, some of you are passionate or live within a certain industry and I'm I do business and I do church and I I do not understand certain industries, I don't live in them, you guys live in them, you live in education, you live in the medical field, you live in your workplace and God puts you there for you to steward your gifts and your passion and only you are there to see the kingdom come to life. Some of you have been given some sort of your story might be particularly impacted by a certain place and God put you in a place so that your story would then intersect with people who are different than you, Maybe it's a country, maybe it's a neighborhood, maybe it's an area of our country, whatever that looks like, God may have a particular thing for you. God has been preparing you through your story to take the gifts and the passion and the story that you have and shape it into kingdom impact. We are called to be priests who are on mission now, like the catholic church has messed up the word priest. So I don't like using stories about the catholic church particularly because of that, but there's kind of two kinds of priests in the catholic church, there's priests or a parish priest who are set to a particular place and then there's Jesuit priests who are part of the society of jesus who go live as missionaries to the places God calls them to, you're called to be Jesuits. You're a part of the missionary priesthood who sent out to be a part of what God is doing. I just threw a lot of stuff at you. There's probably some stirring in you. There's probably something, there's, there's maybe right now God has given you some some idea of what he's called you to and I don't want you to ignore that. I want you to sit with it. Take a moment right now and write down the thing that's on your heart, take out your phones, take out your apple notes right down. The thing that got hit the person in the place, the story, whatever God is bringing up in you, that's something that he's speaking to you about. Okay, I want you to take this moment, I want you to remember that God's voice is constantly calling you to. The thing that he has set aside for you and we want to help you discover that one thing that you can do is over the next six weeks is we've we've helped um bring what we call the Gps. Um, it's gifts passion stories as a it's a process for you to discover God's calling in your life and there's a link behind me there it is um Redemption Boise dot org slash gps. If you sign up for it, it's going to require something of you. You're gonna have to process your gifts, your passions, and your story, and you're gonna do that alongside me or somebody else on our leadership team, and then we're gonna help you discern together what God's particular calling for you is, and so if you're in a season where you're wondering what God has called you to, this is the next step, do this assessment alongside of us. You can fill out the form online and we'll start working through that with you now. Um we're with the band to come up because we're at the end of our time for the sermon and the kids are here, we don't want to let them in on what a great sermon this was. They have their own no, just kidding. Um the church, the church has been a lot like Wilt chamberlain. There's a lot to be said there, and it's probably all true, unfortunately, but the church has been a lot more like Wilt chamberlain, where we have been a team of individuals going out on the court and pretending like what each other does doesn't matter. We've been thinking that our own individual stats and our own personal impact is much more important than the team that we're called to. And so we have to do some work of repenting of our individualism. Repenting of our particularity. Repenting of our selfish ambition to do what we want rather than what God wants. And we started have started asking what has God entrusted to us to steward for impact in his kingdom. We need to start asking God to show us the calling that he's given us as different people and then committing to serve others for the blessing of the world. Today we're gonna do something a little bit different with communion. Um So if I could have now, I did not choose anybody to do this. And so if you're, you know, I'm just gonna ask, what could we have? Three or four people come serve communion to everybody in the room. Just come on up. You don't have to be a special person. Just step on up and we're going to hand one of those out to everybody who wants one, take community, we're gonna all take it at the same time, which is what we we don't normally do that, we normally come up one at a time. It's somewhat individualistic, right? You do your preparation and you come forward when you're ready. Yeah, you can grab it and start handing out. Um Those boards are heavy by the way, I think they're Oak. Um but but today we're going to take it together, so hold on to the elements as you're as you're being served, grab hold of them and if you um need individual service, like the the elements. We can go grab some of those as well. But communion is meant to be something that unites us around the table. And too often it's seen as a personal devotion. It's me and God setting things right. But communion is meant to be literally together us breaking bread and partaking together being united in christ through his death through his body broken and his blood shed for us. And so today I'm going to invite you. We're all gonna take it together after he's passed out. But right now we're gonna have a moment of prayer while we're preparing. Okay, so so bow your heads. Mhm. Lord God. Mm hmm. We know and we see that you have called us as your your holy nation. Royal priests set aside for the calling you've given us as missionaries. But Lord God, there's so many things in our life that are tearing us away from your calling while we're taking the gifts that you've given us and we're using them for our own gain. We're not stewarding them well and giving them away to the family and the team that you've entrusted to us. And so Lord God, we pray and we repent that we have seen ourselves as individuals, not as a part of your family, that we've thought more about the impact others have on us than the impact that we have on others. Wow, We repent that we have demanded to be the star rather than allowing you to be the king, We repent of the ways that we have sought after selfish ambition and vain conceit rather than considering others and serving them. And so God we ask you show us clarify to us are calling it to steward the gifts that you've given us. The gifts that you have turned us into for the world and for your people And Lord God we commit as we receive communion to take the blessing that you've given us and steward it to be a blessing to the world. Mm hmm mm hmm. And jesus took the bread and he broke it and he said this bread is my body broken for you. And every time every single time you eat of this particular bread. Do So remembering me and my sacrifice. This is the body of the Lord broken for you. Mm hmm And then at the table in the same way he took the cup and he said this cup. This cup is the new wine. It's a new covenant between God and you. The new covenant in my blood shed on your behalf. And every time you drink of it. Remember me remember how my blood flowed for you. Lord jesus make us into your people.
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Alright, today we have been in a sermon series about what it means for us to be a royal priesthood in a holy nation and today we're going to dive into the history of basketball who's ready for it. Here we go. Um they're just real quick there. If you look in the 19 sixties, in the N. B. A. There were two players that dominated everybody's imagination. They were the only figures that everybody in the country knew about. Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell wilt Chamberlain, it's probably the greatest pure scorer of all time. He was seven ft one. He had, he had one game, the only game in NBA history where somebody scored 100 points in one game, Kobe Bryant went out to try to do it and he only got to 80 200 is incredibly difficult in 81. Sorry, thank you. Gosh, Getting fact checked real time. Thank you Snopes. Alright, so, Well, chamberlain was just incredible. Um he regularly scored in the 50s and 60s. In fact, in 1961, his scoring average per game Was 50 points. Just to give you some context today. If you average 32 points, you're likely the m. v. p. of the league. He scored 50 points per game that year. But you know who won the league Mvp that year. It was Bill Russell. Bill Russell. He Played for the Boston Celtics. He regularly average about 15 points a game, But he averaged 24 rebounds per game and his team, Even though it was less skilled, it had less star power. He won 11 NBA championships in the 13 years that he was playing basketball. Like just think about that level of excellence and dominance. And when you think about the contrast between the two, Wilt won two titles in a 20 year career. Bill 1 11 and 13 years, what it really came down to is that Bill Russell was the ultimate team player and wilt. Chamberlain played for the name on the back of his jersey instead of the name on the front of his jersey. It was all about stats, it was all about his individual contribution, his endorsements, making money for himself. But what we all know, I think from the history of not just sport but the history of the world is that players can't win on their own. It requires teams to win. Players can contribute, but even in a sport with just five people on the court, If you have the greatest player of all time Playing regularly, 40 minutes a game, The Lakers in 2022, you still can't even get to the playoffs if you don't have a team that's playing with you. And of course I think that this metaphor is what our world needs right now more than ever. You look at our globe and you look at the interconnected ways that we are all affected by something that happens on the other side of the world. And you start to think maybe it's not just about my own individual choices, maybe it's not about who I am or what I'm pursuing. One guy, he goes and just has to have some bat meat in china and millions of people die from Covid. One guy says, I want to invade Ukraine and the entire world is facing grain shortages and oil shortages. All of us are deeply connected with one another and until we recognize that we have responsibility to one another, not just in our families and not just in our community, but in the world. All of us are going to live with the repercussions of the cost of other people's sin on us and God knew that. So he built his people as a relief valve valve. He built the people of Israel and then his people, the kingdom of God as a relief valve. To save us from our individualism, to save us from our nationalism. To save us from thinking about ourselves. He gave them a mission and a reason to exist. This is what it says In. Let's see Genesis chapter 12 I did not get set up. So we're gonna have to go genesis chapter 12 verse one The Lord said to Abram, leave your native country, your relatives and your father's family and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and I will make you famous and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless. Those who bless you and curse those who curse you with contempt. All the family on earth will be blessed by you. This is such a familiar chapter. But this is the beginning, the start of God setting aside for himself a particular people that would be a part of his redemptive plan for history, his people that he held as his own. When you hear chosen. When you hear that God has set aside for himself, a chosen one or a chosen person, it probably evokes one of two responses. I think The first is we think of the chosen one as someone who's given special privilege that makes them exceptional To be envied. The chosen one. We see them as enviable when you think about um, in the basketball world, you look at Wilt chamberlain, the guy was an alien. You look at pictures of the dude and he had like a nine ft wingspan on a seven ft tall body. He literally looked like he didn't belong on our earth. And he was made for one particular thing, better than anything else and anyone else that ever existed. To put a orange piece of leather in a steel hoops, the chosen one, this is the image we have is that they are exceptional. They're different than us and they belong in their own category to be envied and to be admired and looked up to. But then you you probably also here in the chosen one are the narratives of of of story. The chosen one is a gift that's given to people to be a savior. When you think about luke Skywalker and you think about um you think about even harry potter who is just a retelling of Star Wars, let's be clear. Um and you and you think about and you think you think about all the stories where the heroes are the chosen one that's been prophesying from before time when the chosen one shows up, the chosen one is is a relief because there is hope, this hope is reborn in the one that's given to us as a gift to bless us with this special gift that they've been stewarded. They've been given to steward for other people because God's purpose for salvation is to come through people to be bearers and stewards of his kingdom so that the world will experience his presence. Abraham was chosen not because of his righteousness, but because God needed to make for himself a people anyone would have done. And Abraham just happened to be the one who said yes. It's funny that we don't get a sense that God may have asked other people. Here's the thing. I'm betting God has asked you to do some things and you've said no to him, am I right? You don't have to raise your hand. I see your eyes. God has probably asked you to step out in faith and you may have said, not right now and not yet and you wait and you held back, that's happened throughout all of history. But Abraham was the guy who said, I'm in, he uprooted his family and he heard God's voice and he went forward and created for himself the people that God had chosen. He was a steward, not an owner of this call. God called Israel, his people so that they would be his representatives to the world. In an in a sense, they were the ones who would embody. God's presence. Like we're called a nation of priests, a holy nation. The kingdom of Israel was meant to be that he called the Levite priest, not because they were righteous, this special tribe, but because God needed a people who would represent his people in God's presence. If you think about it, the Levi, it's kind of got the short end of the stick, right when they went into the problems, land and what percentage of the land did the Levi's get? 0%. It wasn't a place for them to gather, privilege and position. It was a place for them to be a servant to play a particular role. And that's what we've been talking about throughout this sermon series is that priests are holy in that they're set aside for God's particular purpose. In Chapter three of numbers, it says this, then the Lord said to moses call forward the tribe of Levi, present them to Aaron the priest to services assistance. They will serve Aaron and the whole community performing their sacred duties in and around the Tabernacle. They will also maintain all the furnishings of the sacred tent, serving in the Tabernacle on behalf of all the Israelites assigned to leave fights to Aaron and his sons. They have been given from among all the people of Israel to serve as their assistance. A point Aaron and his sons to carry out the duties of the priesthood. But any unauthorized person who does not go who goes to near to the sanctuary must be put to death like this passage just seems really like straightforward, but there's something like the word serve shows up like four times in it. I I think about this, when the, when the Tabernacle, when they would move camps in the desert wanderings, you know how mom is always the last one to get ready when you're going on a trip. Like at the very end, the whole car is packed and mom has yet to pack her bag, why is that? Mom was packing everybody else? And then dad is sitting there going, honey, are we gonna leave? And she's like, are you kidding me? Are you flipping kidding? Yeah, she's, she's frustrated and that's what the Levite had to do right? When they were, when they would pack up there. You gotta imagine moses shows up and he's like Aaron. So here's the thing we're gonna move again and he's like, are you kidding me? Where you want me to pick up the whole Tabernacle on top of cleaning my own camp and go create something in a new place just because you feel like we're supposed to move when you're called to be a priest, you're called to a life of being set apart for particular duties above and beyond everyday life. That's what it looks like to be a priest is to set your life aside and say it's been set aside for God's purposes, Aaron's families were servants, they had access to moses and Aaron and Miriam, but they were set aside because they were a family of servants. It's not a privilege, but rather this, this sacrifice, They have a different kind of inheritance than the kind that the other tribes had. The other tribes had land to protect them. Their inheritance was from God. It was about God's people pleasing him. It wasn't about making themselves great, but of course the levy, it's didn't really get it and they made a mess of stuff because they thought that their privileged position gave them the right to take what they thought they deserved. So the Levite, it's would use the temple as a way to promote themselves to gain power and influence to take money and to take resource and to take animals and grains and more than they deserved from the people. It was corrupted just like our call as a holy nation, a royal priesthood has been corrupted by us seeking after our own way. And all of this is really about our calling as God's people. We live under these idols of radical individualism where we believe that our lives are our own, that our bodies our own, that our time is our own, that our money is our own and that we can do whatever we want with it. That's the fundamental thesis that America was built on is that you get to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't kill or steal from somebody else or as long as you steal in a way that is okay with our I. R. S. That's the deal radical individuals and that's who we are as a people and so us becoming a nation of royal priests. A holy nation is going to require setting aside our belief that our lives are our own. The church has been full of spiritual abuse because they believe that their places priests gave them a privileged position in the world around us and that the world should honor the things that we do rather than us serving in humility. We have taken on the mantle as americans, calling ourselves the saviors of the world. We've imagined that it's our place to be the ones that were chosen to be a city on a hill. You don't believe that. Look back to what the puritans wrote when they came over to America. They fundamentally believed that they had taken over Israel's place as God's chosen people set aside for his holy purpose. We believe that our country itself is the savior, not God himself. We have corrupted the call of our priesthood by looking around and competing with other priests. Churches compete for people and for money and for resource. We battle over who's right in interpreting scripture. We battle over who's worshiping the best way. We battle over how we think people ought to live. We've corrupted our call as God's people by participating in the evil political parties of our world. Rather than grabbing hold of our call as ambassadors of the kingdom of God. We have corrupted our calls God's people by taking our identity as americans and saying that it allows us to assert privilege over the world. We have corrupted God's call because we have we have saw ourselves as as supreme over all things as God over all things. We've been talking about what it means to be a priest. We've been, we've talked about how the role of priest is one who's a mediator between God and man. We've talked about our role as priests and the ones that offer the sacrifices and that we have shifted from being the butchers to being the lambs who are sacrificed, that our lives are living sacrificed. We've talked about how we as priests, make consecrated places by consecrating people by making places that are set aside for God's presence by our lives being transformed in the way of the kingdom. We've talked about how the kingdom authority we get comes through service and connection with God rather than positions of authority. We've talked about how in the Kingdom of God, there is no special class of priests but that all of us are a part of God's priestly class. We've talked about how as priests, we do a different kind of prayer, one that's filled with authority from the Holy Spirit's presence in us. We do a kind of prayer that's interceding for the world around us. We do a kind of prayer that brings blessing to a world that's lost and broken and today we're gonna be looking a little bit at, let's see, let me get the passage right on this. I don't know why my sermon thing. Does this weird. Alright we are in this is Hebrews chapter three Hebrews chapter three verse five. Here we go. I ask you again does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you? Because you obey the law? Of course not. It's because you believe the message that you heard about christ in the same way Abraham believed God and God counted him as righteous because of his faith. The real Children, Abraham then are those who put their faith in God. What's more the scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago and he said all nations will be blessed through you. So all who put their faith in christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith. You see the movement from the very beginning to the very end as this inclusive work that jesus does to grab hold of people and bring them into his family. He is constantly opening up the door way for people to enter in. He created the people of Israel so that the world would know how to worship and how to be in God's presence. He created the people of Israel so that God could bring his presence through jesus as our Savior. Then he gave the world his people filled with his holy Spirit so that we would then bring the world to his presence by us going out with him, our call and our work as priests is to be a part of the mission of God. That's what today is all about is that priests have a clear mission. We want to connect this holy nation royal priesthood, our new identity as priests with God's mission in the world, which is to be a blessing to all people just like the levi's had no land to call their own. We are going to be a peculiar kind of people who mission with God to bring his presence everywhere we go. So instead of having our own politics, instead of being a part of the politics of this world, we're going to be a peculiar kind of people who say, I'm gonna turn aside from the right and the left and I'm going to follow the way of kingdom instead of claiming America is our home, we're gonna say we're exiles in a lost and broken world and our kingdom is everywhere we go because I myself am loyal to the king of all creation. And so where I go, I bring his authority, I bring his presence and I bring his rule and reign with me into my family into my neighborhood, into my kingdom. The kingdom is like an empire that's working like yeast through the world. Remember when jesus said the kingdom of God is like yeast and that you just put a little tiny bit in the dough and pretty soon it works its way through the whole thing, that's what the kingdom of God is like. And so when we act as priests instead of inviting the world to come into our sanctum instead of saying we're going to create one holy place that the whole world must pilgrimage to God himself, put his presence in his people and then sent them out. In fact, not only did he sent them out, he made it so they couldn't stay in Jerusalem. They got pushed out by the ruling authorities who oversaw the temple and said not here And then what God did 60 or 35 years later was he tore down the temple and never let it be rebuilt so that his kingdom had to go out. Not come back in pilgrimage to Jerusalem because the Holy City of Zion is the presence of Jesus, not a place can I get an amen, we must take hold not only our identity as priests but our identity as missionaries. What are missionaries? Well, there are people who live understanding their purpose and their calling that we are this royal priesthood and a part of an underground eggs Ilic empire moving throughout the world, bringing God's justice, God's peace, God's blessing and God's presence into the world. We are trying to create something different here at redemption hill than most places what happens in this room is good, but this is not the extent of God's Kingdom mission in our lives, that's why we have micro churches, that's why we commission you as missionaries and send you out into your neighborhoods is because we we gather to be built up then were sent out to live on mission as a part of God's Kingdom. We have, we have fought creating a special class of people in our community. Um No one on our staff is full time by design. That's what we've done because we want everybody to have a place in a work outside of the church so that they're connected with people who are far from jesus. It's so that you understand that those people who serve in particular roles in our community, they're not a special kind of super christian, they're just an average everyday person who's taking a little bit of their time to take care of our community so that you can go live as missionaries in our community. We don't think it's wrong for the church to support people and to be full time. We support people who are living as missionaries throughout our city and we think that it's valuable but we want to up turn turn the paradigm upside down so that it's not this special class of super christians who are able to preach and teach and lead but that it's everybody has a calling and a purpose outside of sunday mornings. Mhm We are priests and we are missionaries. That's why many of you, the last two years have gone through our training with our we have we're part of a movement called the syndicate here in the valley of 27 micro churches, almost 800 people who are living as missionaries in their context. We have a missionary pathway that trains you how to live as missionaries, how to see yourself as sent, how to participate in God's calling in God's work. You see, priests have a particular kind of kingdom calling. We're called to be kingdom people. So we're set apart for God's presence to be, to be born inside of us. We're kingdom bearers. So everywhere we go, we bring God's kingdom, but we're also consecrated for a kind of holy work that the world can't do. You know what the world can't do. The world can't proclaim the goodness of God because they haven't experienced it. The world can't embody the kind of servant leadership that will bring healing and restoration to families. The world can't be a blessing because it's always transactional in our world. But we as Kingdom people can be a peculiar kind of people because we can take our kingdom callings and live it out in a world where it feels like it sounds like it tastes like the presence of God. We have that calling as priests or people who are called to belong in God's presence by his grace. That is your particular calling as a follower of jesus, is to consecrate your life so that there's nothing that's keeping God's presence and God's power and God's authority from resting on you. That's why we come to the table every week and we participate in christ's death and resurrection so that we can be bearers of his kingdom. It's why we push sin out of our lives so that there's nothing that's holding us back from being consecrated set apart for God's work. We have this particular calling not just to be holy people, but to be people who bring blessing. We talked last week that people who are priests in God's kingdom have a different kind of prayer and that prayer is one that is filled with power because we are God's representatives in the world, but it's also by our presence. So we don't call people to come to church to be prayed for. But we pray for people as we go. We we lay hands on people who are broken and hurting. We talked about how that we are as priests set aside for a particular purpose. Now, this is where I want to end up today, is that you have been given particular purposes that God wants to take your lifestyle and turn it into a holy, peculiar passionate kind of lifestyle. There are people among us who are living that out day in and day out, transformed lives. People living in their calling. I one of the things I think about when we talk about a set apart or a peculiar kind of calling. Um when when we decided to plant what has become Redemption Hill. We were living in boston and we called uh for five of the families who are here with us still and we had a phone call with them and said, would you come and would you set aside your life that you're in right now and join in with this kingdom mission? One of those was Matt and Katie Takata at the time. They were living in Portland and I called them and asked them to help us plant a church in Boise knowing full well that that was an unlikely ask. I don't know if you ever ask your friends to move from the city they're living in. It's awkward. You're like, hey, so I know your life is good and everything but um like that's that's an awkward conversation. But you know what their peculiar kind of people because their kingdom people and they listened to the father and they did what he said. That's the kind of peculiar calling we have as we listen to the father and we obey even when it's, it feels weird and feels wrong, we step into what he's called us to. I think about the kind of peculiar calling that we have. Um, there's, there's some weird people who live in my neighborhood. It's joe and amy publish, they live in our neighborhood and you know what they do. They live their lives connected with their neighbors. They share their stuff, They share their time. They invite their friends to come into their house and experience God's love. They just have bible studies and invite their neighbors who don't know, jesus, their peculiar kind of people who have been set apart because God's called them as missionaries and that's how they live. We're also called to not just be wholly or peculiar, but we're called to be passionate kind of priests not just going through the motions but doing it because God has called us to it. I think about Amy Hyatt who has a very peculiar kind of calling. Her calling is to sit with our relatives while they're dying in hospice and you know what she does, She loves it because she gets to live out her particular calling being a blessing of God's presence in holy moments of transition where the veil between this world and the next is really thin holy peculiar passionate people. We have this collective calling to be holy peculiar and passionate in the mission. God has given us, but we also have unique particular callings that God has given us Ephesians four, we read God gave some the people to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers for the building up of the church. Is that up there. Okay, I was like, I don't even have that in my notes, there was no God gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers, God gave the people to be gifts to the church so that the church would be built up some of you have those particular kinds of callings to be leaders among the church to lead your micro church because maybe you're an apostle like me and you have this entrepreneurial passion to see new things started, you are looking outside and saying, how can I participate in God's kingdom, advancing some of your profits and God has particularly gifted you to see what's wrong with the world. It seems hard. I'm sorry if God called you to be a prophet seems like a hard job, you're not gonna lie. Um, but I need you, I need you to listen to the father and to tell me what he's saying. Some of you are gifted as evangelists where God has everywhere you look, you see people that you know need jesus and you passionately pray for them and you share your lives with them because that's who you are. Some of you are shepherd pastors where you look at people and you bring them along and care for them and you're, you're slow and compassionate and filled with love for them. I don't get it. I'm not, I'm not a pastor in that kind of classic way. I love pastors because they care for people way better than I ever could. That's why that's why we don't use the title pastor here because I'm not like gifted as a pastor. I'm gifted and as an apostle and an evangelist. And so we need a team of people. That's why we also have teachers, people who know God's word and care about saying it the right way. I need those people. I need your emails on monday mornings Selling me that no Kobe Bryant only scored 81 points to make sure that we get it right. It's important that we get these things right. Not only that, but we also see in 1st Corinthians chapter 12, that there in verse four, there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same spirit as the source of them all. There's different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord God works in different ways ways, but it's the same God who does the work in all of us. A spiritual gift is given to each of us. Now, before, in Ephesians four, God gave some the people to be the apostles as a gift to the church. Now, here we see, God gives gives each of us a gift from the spirit. Okay, to another, to one person, the spirit gives the ability to give wise advice to another. The same spirit gives a message of special wisdom. The same spirit gives great faith to another 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 power to discern whether a messages from the spirit of God or from another spirit, he's still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages while another is given the ability to interpret was being said, it's the one and only spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. And I'm gonna tell you our church is much better off when you're all bringing all of your gifts to the table and stewarding them for the kingdom. Many of those things are not happening in our community because some of you have been holding out on us, I know who you are, No, just some of you are holding out God gave you spiritual gifts for our community and we need you to come fully alive in the way of jesus so that we all experienced the power and presence of God so that we can participate in the mission he has called us to, so we're given certain gifts, we're also given certain passions. Um I've got some friends, they run what's called the boston project ministries and They graduated from Gordon Gordon College, which is the college kind of connected to the seminary, went to the graduate in 1995 and they had this vision to mobilize teenagers in Christian service throughout Boston and so what they did was in 1996 2 of the founders paul and Glenn um Alchemists, they relocated and they moved into Southie and Southie was the roughest neighborhood in the nineties. You've probably seen several movies about the gang wars that were built out of south boston. This, this is where they moved into a 1996 and they relocated to what has become the boston project there at Talbot Norfolk Triangle in a neighborhood in Dorchester, their apartment became the headquarters and they literally moved out and became a kingdom outpost in a neighborhood that was bereft of God's Kingdom's presence. God has given some of you a passion for the poor God has given some of you a passion for a particular people, for a geography, for a neighborhood, for a group that's been affected by a particular kind of sin, for an injustice in our world that needs to be set right, God has given you that passion and only you that passion, he's entrusted it to you to steward it. And so your particular calling is going to be to take the gifts you've been given and the passions you've been given and find a team to work alongside of you to see that come to life. Um, I've got a picture here, we were a partner with the Tampa underground, which is a micro church network in Tampa that has over 200 micro churches, but this is just a, a taste of what they're doing. Um you can't read that, I'm realizing. So I'm gonna pull up the website. Oh thank you. Okay, there you go. So you got uh, ladies restoration for God rest toward women by God. This is like a women's ministry for when four and from Puerto rico, you got Newhart's outreach for sexually broken people. I couldn't quite read the last word and I didn't want to get that one wrong. Uh, you got praise in the park where they literally go do music in the park and and connect with homeless people. You've got micro churches for single moms, you have micro churches, uh, for women who are for people who are providing transitional housing for women. You've got people who are having movies and dinner together. That's my passion, movies and dinner. Um, you've got Soma 813 for young adults and 813 area and they have 200 of these things that are built around the passions. God has called them to and that's the kind of movement we want to see is where we're living out our particular passions around the colleagues for justice and blessing in the world. Your story might have a particular calling. You've got your gifts and you've got your passion, but your story how you have been shaped and crafted by God might have a particular thing that God wants to use. Maybe you have come through recovery or addiction and you can help someone in that way that I will never be able to because I have not gone through what you've gone through some of you are survivors of sexual abuse of trauma and you have a particular part of your story where you can offer it as a gift to the world around you, some of you are passionate or live within a certain industry and I'm I do business and I do church and I I do not understand certain industries, I don't live in them, you guys live in them, you live in education, you live in the medical field, you live in your workplace and God puts you there for you to steward your gifts and your passion and only you are there to see the kingdom come to life. Some of you have been given some sort of your story might be particularly impacted by a certain place and God put you in a place so that your story would then intersect with people who are different than you, Maybe it's a country, maybe it's a neighborhood, maybe it's an area of our country, whatever that looks like, God may have a particular thing for you. God has been preparing you through your story to take the gifts and the passion and the story that you have and shape it into kingdom impact. We are called to be priests who are on mission now, like the catholic church has messed up the word priest. So I don't like using stories about the catholic church particularly because of that, but there's kind of two kinds of priests in the catholic church, there's priests or a parish priest who are set to a particular place and then there's Jesuit priests who are part of the society of jesus who go live as missionaries to the places God calls them to, you're called to be Jesuits. You're a part of the missionary priesthood who sent out to be a part of what God is doing. I just threw a lot of stuff at you. There's probably some stirring in you. There's probably something, there's, there's maybe right now God has given you some some idea of what he's called you to and I don't want you to ignore that. I want you to sit with it. Take a moment right now and write down the thing that's on your heart, take out your phones, take out your apple notes right down. The thing that got hit the person in the place, the story, whatever God is bringing up in you, that's something that he's speaking to you about. Okay, I want you to take this moment, I want you to remember that God's voice is constantly calling you to. The thing that he has set aside for you and we want to help you discover that one thing that you can do is over the next six weeks is we've we've helped um bring what we call the Gps. Um, it's gifts passion stories as a it's a process for you to discover God's calling in your life and there's a link behind me there it is um Redemption Boise dot org slash gps. If you sign up for it, it's going to require something of you. You're gonna have to process your gifts, your passions, and your story, and you're gonna do that alongside me or somebody else on our leadership team, and then we're gonna help you discern together what God's particular calling for you is, and so if you're in a season where you're wondering what God has called you to, this is the next step, do this assessment alongside of us. You can fill out the form online and we'll start working through that with you now. Um we're with the band to come up because we're at the end of our time for the sermon and the kids are here, we don't want to let them in on what a great sermon this was. They have their own no, just kidding. Um the church, the church has been a lot like Wilt chamberlain. There's a lot to be said there, and it's probably all true, unfortunately, but the church has been a lot more like Wilt chamberlain, where we have been a team of individuals going out on the court and pretending like what each other does doesn't matter. We've been thinking that our own individual stats and our own personal impact is much more important than the team that we're called to. And so we have to do some work of repenting of our individualism. Repenting of our particularity. Repenting of our selfish ambition to do what we want rather than what God wants. And we started have started asking what has God entrusted to us to steward for impact in his kingdom. We need to start asking God to show us the calling that he's given us as different people and then committing to serve others for the blessing of the world. Today we're gonna do something a little bit different with communion. Um So if I could have now, I did not choose anybody to do this. And so if you're, you know, I'm just gonna ask, what could we have? Three or four people come serve communion to everybody in the room. Just come on up. You don't have to be a special person. Just step on up and we're going to hand one of those out to everybody who wants one, take community, we're gonna all take it at the same time, which is what we we don't normally do that, we normally come up one at a time. It's somewhat individualistic, right? You do your preparation and you come forward when you're ready. Yeah, you can grab it and start handing out. Um Those boards are heavy by the way, I think they're Oak. Um but but today we're going to take it together, so hold on to the elements as you're as you're being served, grab hold of them and if you um need individual service, like the the elements. We can go grab some of those as well. But communion is meant to be something that unites us around the table. And too often it's seen as a personal devotion. It's me and God setting things right. But communion is meant to be literally together us breaking bread and partaking together being united in christ through his death through his body broken and his blood shed for us. And so today I'm going to invite you. We're all gonna take it together after he's passed out. But right now we're gonna have a moment of prayer while we're preparing. Okay, so so bow your heads. Mhm. Lord God. Mm hmm. We know and we see that you have called us as your your holy nation. Royal priests set aside for the calling you've given us as missionaries. But Lord God, there's so many things in our life that are tearing us away from your calling while we're taking the gifts that you've given us and we're using them for our own gain. We're not stewarding them well and giving them away to the family and the team that you've entrusted to us. And so Lord God, we pray and we repent that we have seen ourselves as individuals, not as a part of your family, that we've thought more about the impact others have on us than the impact that we have on others. Wow, We repent that we have demanded to be the star rather than allowing you to be the king, We repent of the ways that we have sought after selfish ambition and vain conceit rather than considering others and serving them. And so God we ask you show us clarify to us are calling it to steward the gifts that you've given us. The gifts that you have turned us into for the world and for your people And Lord God we commit as we receive communion to take the blessing that you've given us and steward it to be a blessing to the world. Mm hmm mm hmm. And jesus took the bread and he broke it and he said this bread is my body broken for you. And every time every single time you eat of this particular bread. Do So remembering me and my sacrifice. This is the body of the Lord broken for you. Mm hmm And then at the table in the same way he took the cup and he said this cup. This cup is the new wine. It's a new covenant between God and you. The new covenant in my blood shed on your behalf. And every time you drink of it. Remember me remember how my blood flowed for you. Lord jesus make us into your people.