[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Alright, good morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right about two months ago, my job here at Citizens Church changed after almost 30 years in student ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I now started pastoring over groups and our campus stuff, and I still get to work with college people, which is one of my favorite things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but with this change into group ministry life, our home groups, it sent me into a place of meetings, of getting time with people who have a lot more wisdom and experience than I do, and it made me a bit of a more voracious reader than I have been in past days.
[SPEAKER_00]: In one of the books,
[SPEAKER_00]: that I was reading through, they proposed a bit of a thought experiment that I thought would be great for us to start with this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how it started one of the chapters.
[SPEAKER_00]: The author said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said,
[SPEAKER_00]: I had had a strangely difficult time with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, Chairman.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: In my mind, eventually, I roamed back to the year 2000 at P- I heard someone said, whoa, case you missed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the year 2000, I was at Passion One Day where John Piper preached a sermon about college
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, part two of the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: List of five people who have impacted your life the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: August 1st, Mike Fetchner, John Willes, Mike Taylor, my wife, my home group, my mom and dad, the staff here, you,
[SPEAKER_00]: Chances are, if you're like me, the people came to mind almost immediately, almost immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, God most definitely uses the preaching of His Word to fortify and sustain the body of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in and through the family of God, the church, the community of God's people that He does some of His best work.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where His best work is.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is his design for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm now then preaching a sermon, which you'll probably forget at some point, about a need for Christ's inner relationships, which you can't live without.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't live without him.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no lasting transformation in a person's life, in your life, in my life without another person.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no lasting version of that God's design for us is to be an agent of transformation in each other's lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his book when church was a family, Joseph Hellerman said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritual Formation occurs primarily in the context of community, long-term, interpersonal relationships, are the crucible, a genuine progress in the Christian life.
[SPEAKER_00]: People who stay grow, people who leave do not grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a simple but profound biblical reality that we both grow and thrive together or we do not grow much at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the last two Sundays and God's Word together here in this place, Jamie has challenged us to name and expose and repent of our idols and then rejoice in what we have in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week in his sermon, he said, deep change comes through deep repentance and then he challenged us and encouraged us to move towards our community, towards our people that we might work these things out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that kind of gets us to our jumping off place today.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to take off from us this, it's this statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deep-changing repentance happens best in the context of Christ's inner community.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's there in that place where we can name and expose and repent and rejoice in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's there where our lives are fully formed and rightly ordered to love God supremely.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in that place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's there where we truly grow to love like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's pray together, and let's jump into first John.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, I pray this morning, the truth of these things found in first John, God would land on our hearts and our minds today, and affect the way that we live our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So God, as we gather now around your word, we ask that you're a Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: would move in power.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love you, we surrender ourselves to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you make us more like Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in his name we pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me read something to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is first John 1, 1, 3, 4, but it's in the message translation, Eugene Peterson's translation of this passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says this.
[SPEAKER_00]: From the very first day, we were there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Taking it all in, we heard it with our own ears, we sought with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word of life appeared right before our eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw it happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're telling you, and most sober prose, that what we witnessed was incredibly this, the infinite life of God Himself took shape before us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw it, we heard it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're telling you, so you can experience it with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The experience of communion with the Father and the Son Jesus Christ, our motive for writing is simply this, we want you to enjoy this to your joy, will double our joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, John the Apostle who walked with Jesus and experienced lives with Him is writing to churches and Asia Minor a modern day turkey more than likely in and around Ephesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this letter would have circulated around a lot of the churches of the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first few verses what John is doing is he's inviting those churches in that receive this letter to what others like him have tasted and seen and experienced for themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: His invitation is to communion with God and with each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew that life shared around the person in work of Jesus Christ would leave to life and as verse 4 said, joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's joy-had for those whose lives are centered on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what we know and believe to be true is that everybody wants and needs community.
[SPEAKER_00]: 85 years ago, Harvard began a study.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they found probably won't surprise a lot of us around here.
[SPEAKER_00]: They started studying 124 boys from childhood, from a fluent populations and poverty-stricken populations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they started studying this group.
[SPEAKER_00]: And over time, it became a study of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then their wives and subsequent children and grandchildren, totaling over more than 2,000 people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they found two prevailing unsurprising things.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first one is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The clearest message, this is what the new director said.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said good relationships and good community keep us happier and healthier.
[SPEAKER_00]: No kidding, but the second message, bit more somber, loneliness kills, loneliness is toxic.
[SPEAKER_00]: The director said this in his TED Talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Community is protective and providential.
[SPEAKER_00]: Satisfying and close relationships buffer us and build this up even in pain and loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: Community protects the body and the brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sustains our spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because our society feels this so deeply, we see our need for community literally everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's evidence all around us, it's in the gaming community.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a high school son, and he plans parts of his days around when he and his friends will get together and play games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Online, that's part of their community.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's offered in the type of car that you drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you guys seen the ducks and Jeeplandas?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not picking on Jeep Drivers.
[SPEAKER_00]: and either should you, but in case you didn't know, I had to teach a first service as so, join me.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a symbol of their community.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's receiving a duck signifies being recognized and appreciated by another fellow Jeep enthusiast, following a sense of camaraderie and shared experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how they let each other know, as a friend of mine who drives a Jeep.
[SPEAKER_00]: She literally said, it's how I let others know that I see them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's offered some of the left.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's offered by Apple through our phones, the modern day culture creator thrives on offering apps that give us community.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm not on social media anymore, but I did download recently an app called Strava, where I log like my runs, and I can see other people's runs, and really all that app has done is served to show me how slow I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: The presence of all of these community options speaks to our need for one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not wrong, but friends, they're not enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just not enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's not enough about them?
[SPEAKER_00]: I personally need more from my relationships than shared interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need more than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shared interest is not enough for me to change.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not enough to be there for me on my darkest day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, I think this comes, none of this comes as any surprise to any of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are hardwired for community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are made to belong and just about any form of it is offered in 2025.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they provide levels of happiness, levels of satisfaction and belonging.
[SPEAKER_00]: They lead to real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they real to lead to real lasting change in satisfaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the longing of your heart like mine is for deep change, that requires another person, it requires community.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what kind of community is it that you belong to?
[SPEAKER_00]: What have you given yourself to?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is it that we get to love and be loved and see the love of Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have gone through group connect in the last couple of years, it's more than likely you've sat under Mike M or Aubrey Norman's teaching about the types of community that exist in our culture currently.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's different types, there's two predominant ones that we see.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's casual communities, comfortable, surround shared interests and goals, passions or pleasures.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels cozy but little changes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while there's nothing wrong with these communities, based on our shared interests, go maps, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, little changes, they can become shallow and even frustrating and feel empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's versions of this in Christianity too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a group of guys and college that got together with grand intentions.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can call it accountability group if you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: Start off with breakfast at fancy places like I Hop and Denies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we brought our bibles, and we prayed occasionally, we'd share struggles occasionally, but over time it devolved into bad coffee and complaining and sports and whatever the day was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It devolved into something that led to zero change in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was casual, even condoning sin at times, and it eventually fell apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also cancel or condemning community.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is just a state of the culture that everybody in here lives in.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is part of something that we all experience on a regular basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: We live in this kind of community where people seek to destroy those who don't agree with them, eliminating them from your life, even.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's see it my way or see it our way or you can go.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've all seen this happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's even Christian versions of this too.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're parenting choices are openly judged or mocked, where political stances can divide even places like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: or forgiveness is, withheld from one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: In seminary, I was in a required formation group.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we were guys, we just kind of met to talk about the things that we were learning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that group, one of the upper classmen, he was a leader of the group, confess to a lifelong struggle of sin, which led some in the group to request a new leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this condemning culture graces lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: So this, do you change doesn't happen in this casual or this condemning community?
[SPEAKER_00]: But where does it happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where does it happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where does this life change happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: First John describes it so well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It happens in this third and better way.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Christ-centered community.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's here where we get to enjoy life together, where we have shared identity and shared purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's why most of you are here today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gathering around the person and work of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's sons and daughters, gathering to remember Jesus and repeat the truth of Jesus and rejoice in what He's done for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you think back to those five people again, the ones who've impacted you, the most, their significance on your life, wasn't just simply because they hung out with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It definitely wasn't because they condemned you or criticized you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was more than likely because they showed you the love of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then talk to you how to show it to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's offered in Christ-centered community.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's offered here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are the marks in this Christ-centered community?
[SPEAKER_00]: What makes it different than other communities?
[SPEAKER_00]: What does the community of people look like that John was inviting people into?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's four things there if you're writing stuff down.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's centered on Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's committed to the ways of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's confession and repentance of sin and then there's celebration.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, it's centered on Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It remembers the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse John 1, 133, says that which is from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and was made manifest made physically known to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That which we have seen and heard in his letter, John is inviting the readers into a life focused on the good news of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel of Jesus Christ is central to the life and health of the community of believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It declares what God has done for us through salvation, in the life and death, in burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it revolves around that.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Jesus who lived a perfect life of obedience on our behalf died in the cross for your sins and mine rose from the death of the third day.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's central to our community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those who trust in Christ work on their behalf are gloriously and eternally forgiven.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's the center.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are the saved, the redeemed, the adopted children of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is at the center.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pastor Annond, New City Church and Mumbai said like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul says in Romans 116, the gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is the power of God that saves us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is the power of God that sanctifies us.
[SPEAKER_00]: To live a gospel-centered life is to live in presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Continuous remembrance, celebration, and experience of the power of the gospel in every aspect of our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can leave it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is the basis, Christ is the means, and Christ is the goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or as we say around here, really regularly, Jesus is the hero of this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's at the center of this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no other foundation that can sustain a life change.
[SPEAKER_00]: None.
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter demographic, money, location, politics, curriculum, shared causes, interests that create deep and transformative community other than Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what John was calling the churches to Christ-centered community.
[SPEAKER_00]: But secondly,
[SPEAKER_00]: He was calling him to commit their ways to that of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were practicing the gospel with one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: John opens his letter by pointing to the things that he had seen and experienced with and from Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not abstract things.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're tangible realities that get lived out right in front of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we're called by Jesus to commit to these ways of the clearest, most concise way I know, to kind of sum up all of those things is the one and others in Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's about 59 and one and others in the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I want to do for just a moment is I want to read some of these over us, and my hope is just to allow them to kind of seep in to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that as you hear them, you might consider the people that are around you.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 13.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Galatians five.
[SPEAKER_00]: Serve one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Galatians six.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bear one another's burdens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Forgive one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians five.
[SPEAKER_00]: Submit to one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: James five.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pray for one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Peter four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Show hospitality to one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: James five, do not grumble against one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 12, 16, live in harmony with one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 15, welcome one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 15, again, instruct one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Colossians three, forgive one another again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians four, be kind to one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse Lassonians, five, encourage one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me ask you something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you hear anything on that list?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're just like, nah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you'd rather have the opposite of those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll take bitterness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I prefer my friends to be unkind, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely not of course not.
[SPEAKER_00]: This describes what we all long for, what we're all made for.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know then, you know then friends that your life is starting to change when you're as eager to be these things of the people to show them to other people as you are to receive them.
[SPEAKER_00]: that they've become things that you long for in your life and you are excited to show to the people that are around you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people want to be on their receiving end of love and encouragement for goodness and hospitality.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all want the benefits of these one and others.
[SPEAKER_00]: But deep change happens when we both experience and express God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's both of those together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we get to know and love others, has Christ's known and loved us, it is such a beautiful thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, I think a lot of you know, but it's been about seven years since my family moved back to America from living in England for three years as missionaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of our time, there to be really honest, we were exhausted.
[SPEAKER_00]: looking our wounds from three years of ministering to the country trying to raise three very young children, had us tired and lonely and desperate for community and ready to be back in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I got a phone call, she's got him, Jayman Roller, asking if I would be prayerfully interested in a youth ministry position at the Village Church Plano.
[SPEAKER_00]: And part of our conversation, I asked him, would you give my number?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, I talk to a guy here, it says he knows you, he says you're old, but pretty good at your job.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was through that moment that my community led me to this place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I sat down in this place, it is this community.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw a two buoy my soul and see to the healing that I needed, and that for my wife, and for my children, it's been through the community of citizen shirts that God has used for a fresh and heal and changed so much in my life, and it continues to be the thing that God uses as an anchor for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this place where I get to love like Jesus and then offer what I've received.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the community believers we know the experience, this love of Jesus for ourselves we get to tangibly express it to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Third, cry-centered community practices confession and repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the hallmarks of cry-centered community is the practice of confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both of our service sins and the idols that lie underneath them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look back at the passage, the Auburn Redforce earlier in 1 John chapter 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 5 says this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light, and in him there's no darkness at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk into darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son cleanses us from all sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we confess our sins, he is faithful in just to forgive us, our sins, and cleanse us from all in righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we say we have not sin, we may come a liar and his word is not in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's rare or hardly ever that you or I would ever say I have no sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: But where there have been seasons in my life without confession, I'm functionally doing so.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's basically what I'm doing, whether my time alone with God and the dark hours of the morning that I covet or a moment's with my bride or with my kids are gathering with my home group.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lack of confession is dangerous and destructive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It tears at the fabric of my wife and our community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And John would call the lack of it a self-deceit that steals our from our fellowship from one another and effectively as he says in the last verse, makes Jesus a liar.
[SPEAKER_00]: strong words.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Christ's shared community built on grace and truth, we don't have to pretend we can walk in the light of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 7 says that it changes our fellowship with one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the point of the confession of sin, relationships actually become real.
[SPEAKER_00]: They become real genuine relationships to actually get closer and deeper because the gospel is proclaimed at the center of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Contrast this with other types of community.
[SPEAKER_00]: The casual community where there is no confession or guarding our comfort, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Avoid being fully known.
[SPEAKER_00]: It stays around small talk and weather and sports and strange and maybe politics, but nothing really changes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And casual community keeps a heart cold and since state comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: and little changes, or consider condemning community, where confession is a scary endeavor, because we aren't sure what we're gonna be met with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confession is often met with judgment or impatience, where we still believe we're sinners, but we don't know if we're loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Condemation is a great yard for honesty and transparency, but confession, for instance, confession is not condemation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's liberation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a young man that grew up in the church, they didn't see this practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have this encouraged.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a hard thing for me to believe for a really long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a really, really, really long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to continue to fight for it to this day in my heart and mind in the community that I lived in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Friends in Christ's inner community, our greatest need gets met by Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: John says this, he says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful in just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all in righteousness beloved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's why we practice confession in our community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not forgiven because we confess, we confess because we're already forgiven in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's already their praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're bringing sin into light in communities that great grace and truth can heal it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so notice what John doesn't say.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't say that God forgives because he's merciful, though he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says it here, he offers forgiveness because he's just, look at that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the debt for you and for me has already been paid by Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God to not forgive the confessing sinner would be unjust.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus has paid it all for you and for me already.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is why we can drag our sin into the light.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't crush it, actually, freeze.
[SPEAKER_00]: It cleanses because Jesus bore our filth on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we can confess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, without the cross, I agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confession will be terrifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just would because there would be no life in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But because the good news of Jesus, confession is liberating and we can walk in the light together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's how that can look in real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: a couple of years that I was in my current home group.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confession was rarely practiced.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was inconsistent at best.
[SPEAKER_00]: And usually if it was there, it was around some type of really serious moment in our home group.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is real love from one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is true friendship.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is true community around Jesus, but transparency just wasn't super common.
[SPEAKER_00]: But fast forward to present day, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: We are now we have a regular rhythm in our home group where we confess our sins to one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then someone speaks a scripture to remind us of our trueest identity in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then someone prays for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's follow-up after that to continue to see that sin put to death.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is in that group or deeper penance happens and I get to tangibly experience things like James 516.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it's working and it's led to deeper relationships and the community that I belong to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Better conversations, real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about our idols that are underneath our service sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: True, cry center community doesn't cover sin because praise God, it doesn't have to.
[SPEAKER_00]: just don't have to, friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: It confesses it that we might receive healing in Christ's inner community when no longer minimize sin or pretend it's not there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We confess and we repent, turning back to life in Christ together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these things, community centered on Jesus, committed to His ways, confessing and repenting of sin together leads to something really beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the fourth thing in its celebration.
[SPEAKER_00]: that natural result of a Christ's inner community is rejoicing, delighting in the goodness of Jesus together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what Tim Keller said about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, rejoicing and repenting must go together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, it's when we rejoice over Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: for us most fully that paradoxically, we're most truly convicted of our sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we rejoice over God's sacrificial, suffering love for us, seeing what it costs him to save us from sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: We learn to hate the sin for what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see what the sin costs God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Church, we of all people have much to celebrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have so much to celebrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Celebration is the fruit of a community rooted in and centered in on a greater love, the love of God breast and Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, and here's just a few of the things that we celebrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should be celebrating regularly.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is another list of scriptures.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like 12 long, but it's just three.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's much reason to celebrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm 103, 12 says, for as far as the east is from the west.
[SPEAKER_00]: So far has he removed our transgressions from us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Much to celebrate, friends, so much, or Isaiah 4325, I, even I, and he who blots out your transgression for my own sake, and remembers your sin no more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gosh, that's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Micah 719, you will again have compassion on us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will tread our sins under foot and hurl our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
[SPEAKER_00]: how good these truths set our hearts and minds on a greater and more powerful love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what makes our community different.
[SPEAKER_00]: We celebrate the forgiveness of God through Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: This celebration, for instance, happens every time we gather together.
[SPEAKER_00]: The celebration should happen when you're with God's people and literally any setting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just a few moments, we'll take the cup of the juice and the bread and we'll have a quiet moment to remember what Jesus has done and to celebrate the forgiveness that we have in him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That which we did not earn that we get to enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: This can happen in your apartment with your roommates when they confesses unto you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's much celebration to be had in that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: This happens when a friend surrenders to Jesus and is saved and becomes a son or a daughter of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's much celebration to be had there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there is much cause for celebration in the community of God's people always.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, in Christ's inner community, we practice these ways of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: We confess our sin that leads to repentance and we repent and it leads to rejoicing and that rejoicing strengthings our love for Jesus and each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the rhythm of our Christ's inner community.
[SPEAKER_00]: Friends, if you were here last week,
[SPEAKER_00]: Jayman asked a question, regarding deep change and deep repentance, he asked the question he said, are you open to this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And this week I have a bit of a different question and closing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to this Christ center, community my question is, do you have this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have Christ-centered community in your life?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if you made that list of the five people again?
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, you make that list of the five people who are impacting your relationship with God right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you make that list?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have life and time and space with these people, if you're answered to the question is, yeah, I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I hope my challenge for you is that you would practice
[SPEAKER_00]: You would practice these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would practice the ways of Jesus, the one and others together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confess, sin, and celebrate that you would love others, and allow them to love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have it, move towards it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that you would do what John did in the first four verses that you would invite others to be a part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: that gospel-centered, cry-centered community that you get to enjoy, that you would ask others to come and be a part of it with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: that you might love them the way that Jesus is loved to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And friends, if you're answer to the question is, you don't have that community of a people centered on Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps you're frustrated that it's not there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps you're longing for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps it's been difficult to find in your grasping for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please hear me say this as I close.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are invited into this community here at Citizen Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are wanted here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be long here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can belong here in this place, because friends, what we're doing here and now is a part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not less than this, but friends, it can be so much more.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can move towards each other in this place in a way from this place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's available to you, a deep, life-changing community where you can flourish and grow and learn to love others, the way that Jesus has loved you.
[SPEAKER_00]: May pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh God, we love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are thankful for this truth, the truth of Jesus, that He has invited us into community with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: How beautiful it is to be invited into relationship with you, O God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, I pray now for this room of 800 or so people
[SPEAKER_00]: Look out for those that have this Christ-centered community.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got to pray that you would bring flourishing in their lives and the lives of others around them because of that community.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look out would you grant them the grace and the steadfast spirit to continue to lean into that people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got help them by your grace to offer the one and others of Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to pray for those in this room that their heart in mind and even life is weary like mine was coming into this place.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to, would you grant them the courage to move towards this body of believers?
[SPEAKER_00]: Grant them a holy desire, God to move towards maybe a home group or a de-group or a
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps your cover, God, would you grant courage and strength to move towards these things that you made us to walk in?
[SPEAKER_00]: God, loneliness is toxic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at how I pray that we have moved towards one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I have a Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love you, God, praise things in Jesus name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.