The King Jesus Gospel
If you've ever heard of sermon on act 17, I guarantee it's everything that I just read onward. It's where I stopped onward and it's gonna be really good. And just as a a teaser, when we do get to the book of acts after our vision series, a friend of mine, a friend of ours, of this community named bill will be.
Preaching the message on the good part of act 17 today, I get the other part, which is also, it turns out really good. It just doesn't have a whole lot of detail in it, right? It feels like it's just moving from place to place. They went to this city and some, they preached the gospel and some bad stuff happened.
That's a pattern now we're starting to see over and over again. Paul and Silas, Paul and Barnabus, whoever Paul and whoever show up in a city. They preach the gospel in a synagogue. Some people are really into it. Other peoples really aren't and then pretty soon a riot starts in the city and they get kicked out.
They get chased out, they get beat and thrown in prison, whatever it is. And then they move on to the next city. And I think we missed this. This is not in my notes. This is not the point of today, but I think we miss along the way when it says things like they went from list to Alon and so on, so forth, we're talking like hundreds of miles on.
I, I just wanna make that really clear, like over mountains, like we're not talking about simple stuff when they hop in a boat, we're talking little wooden boats on the Mediterranean in the middle of like stormy seasons. We'll see that later in the story, we're talking about people who are entirely committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, like to the fo to the point where they will walk hundreds of miles, knowing that at the end of this road is probably another town where the same thing is gonna happen over and over again.
But we have to tell the story. We have to tell the story. And so we hear this over and over again, and I read acts 17, the beginning of it. And I was so excited to preach from verse 16 onward. And I felt like the holy spirit was saying slow down and there's other stuff there. And I said, I know, but we've heard it before.
I wanna get to the original stuff. Cuz see, I have a confession to make. I wanna be innovative. I wanna come up with a new idea, say something in a way that has never been said before make things like, make sense in a way that's never been said before. And the word that the holy spirit put on my heart for today through this text is one we've talked about here before many times.
As a matter of fact, I woke up this morning, even feeling like I have nothing new to say today. Not that I don't have anything to say. It's just, you've heard it before, but that's what the story gives us. Doesn't. Over and over again, it gives us people who are committed to the simple gospel, so committed that they will walk town to town saying the same things, getting the same responses, because why?
Because it's true. That's it, as simple as that, the reason they are sold out committed to this, the reason they give their lives to the same message at any cost is because it's. So today, I'm gonna tell you what you've heard in here before, because it's true. That's simply this, the gospel that we talk about so often in Christian circles is a very simple thing.
I can sum up the gospel for you in one short sentence. Jesus is Lord. That's all we have here. That's all we have. But I think it's something we have to fight for. As a matter of fact, as I was thinking about the fact that we've talked through this before in this church and saying, God, isn't there something new, isn't there something edgy or innovative?
You want me to share with him? He said, look, this is what I felt. I keep saying. He said, like he said it directly, but this is what I'm feeling in my gut. And maybe you can part of being communities we affirm or confirm this. And so if you're feeling it too, maybe we can talk about it. But I felt like he said to me, this message is the reason canopy.
This is the piece of ground that I want you to hold as a community for as long as you exist, you fight for the kingship of Jesus in a world that has forgotten entirely who its king is simple as that. That's why we exist as a church. Everything that we do flows out of that and flows back into it.
That's the point? That's the origin, the headwaters that's also where we're headed. That's all of it. Jesus is king cuz not everybody knows that. We have two groups of people. We have groups of people like Paul encounters in the synagogue and nikica that are very religious people that have some understanding of the story of scripture, but the lens is wrong.
And I think we have that so often in the Western church. And this is the part you guys have heard me say before our paradigm for what the gospel is in most of the Western church is this. Jesus came to die for our sins so that if you accept him as your personal savior, you will go to heaven when you die.
That's if you ask most Christians today to give you the gospel, that's what they'll give you. And there's a lot of true stuff in there. Please don't miss the point. I'm not demeaning or dismissing any of this, but that's only part of the story that's wrapped up in a much bigger story. The bigger story is that Jesus is king like of the real world, not just of the heavens, whatever that means, not just of our spiritual lives, but of the real world.
And we have to fight for that. Cuz the fact of the matter is that gospel that I just shared, that we hear often in the Western church, Jesus died for your sins, except him as personal savior. Go to heaven when you die, actually has very little bearing on my day to day. It doesn't mean a whole lot in the real world.
Yes. I'm supposed to be a nicer person. I'll wrestle with sin and temptation until the day I, whatever it is, but why be a nicer person? Why be a better version of yourself? So you don't ruin your witness so you can tell other people that Jesus came and died for their sins, and then they can go to heaven when they die.
And again, life just becomes this sort of trial by existence. All of this is meaningless, pointless. And everything else is banking on that day, where Jesus is king over that place. See the problem is that's not what the Bible says. That's not what the Bible says. Nowhere in the Bible. Does the Bible ever command us to accept Jesus as our personal savior?
Nowhere in fact, are those words ever used personal savior now is Jesus a personal savior? It depends on what you mean by that. If you mean, can you know him as a. Personally, you can talk to him and he can know you and you can be in relationship then. Absolutely. And if you mean that, that person, that, that loves you, came to save you, then absolutely.
He's a personal savior, but be very careful though, because I think what we often mean is personal savior is a savior who came to me personally in my story, which is also true. But you see what just happened is I just made the whole thing about. He came to save me in my story so that I can go to heaven when I die and have everything that I've ever wanted to have my health, wealth and prosperity.
And suddenly the entire gospel is about me. The personal savior gospel. If we're not careful is a me centered gospel. When the story that they preach here, it's, this is the shortest version of it of all time. It's only two verses listen to this as was his custom. Paul went into the synagogue and on three Sabbath days, he reasoned to them from scripture explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead.
This Jesus Emper claiming to you is the Messiah. That's the whole gospel. He walked them through. The scripture, showed that the Messiah, the king, the anointed one. Was going to be very different than everybody expected and that he had in fact shown up and his name is Jesus. That's the whole gospel.
The king has shown up and his name is Jesus. I just think we have to fight for this. I know it's simple, but this is it. The gospel of the kingdom is based on the whole of scripture. It's about a king for the real world who doesn't look like we expect him to look. And whose name is. We fight for that.
We work hard for that because anything less actually does damage to the cause of Christ in the world. If we insist on this sort of disembodied gospel, that's vaguely spiritual thing that doesn't have a whole lot to do with the real world and is mostly about me and therefore is deeply personal.
My faith is my faith. I don't, it doesn't ever really make its way out of the internal. There are parts of my lives that are dedicated to Jesus. Another part, I, this just struck me today as a matter of fact, that we call buildings like this, the house of the Lord. And we think we're being very generous by giving God a whole house, or we call things like Sundays, the Lord's day, how kind of us to give him one out of seven or this 10% of my income, this belongs to the Lord or 2% or whatever it is.
This is the Lord. Wait, hold on. No, the gospel is he's the king and it's all his, and how generous that he gives you these days and these spaces and this finance and this talent and this resource, it reframes the whole thing, the way Paul and Barnabas preach it. And the reason that I'm fighting for this is cuz that actually makes sense of the story that makes sense of why people are always so offended and throwing him out of.
Because that sort of vaguely personal Jesus gospel doesn't offend anybody does it. If they came into a Roman town that was polytheistic that was used to having all sorts of gods and goddesses and all this sort of stuff. And they said, look, there's another one. And he's really great. And he loves you a lot and he came to die for you so that you can get everything you ever wanted, because that's what heaven means to a lot of people.
Everything you ever.
I'll sign up for that. That's not offensive at all. Oh. And by the way he's, don't worry. He is not gonna affect your life in any meaningful way. Like he's not gonna, he's not gonna bother you or trouble you too much give you what you want without asking too much of you. And if it's not for you, then it's great.
It's for me, it'll be for me. And. I'll worship him in my own way. And you worship him your own way and it's all gonna be fine. That's, I know I'm being over overly simplistic and I'm characterizing the message out there, but take into the extreme, that's what you're hearing in the world.
Personal savior. Jesus. If he's for you, great. Try it out. See if you like it. We talked about this before. Jesus is not a matter of if you like him or not. Is he true? See who he says he was then if he is, whether you like it or not, he's the king. Why are they so offended? They're offended. And they make it very clear when they take Jason this guy that we won't see again in the story before the magistrates, cuz he just opened up his house to Paul in silences, take him before the magistrates and say he's causing all these problems.
What's at the heart of their problem. They're announcing a new.
See, the people in SLO Nira were very clear on what was happening here. This was not a personal savior. This was not some vague spiritual thing. He's saying they're walking into a Roman city and announcing a king other than Caesar. And that my friends in the mouse of SLO kin Jews and Gentiles who don't believe the gospel, who may have never believed the gospel is the clearest representation of what the gospel actually.
They're announcing a king, other than Caesar. If Paul had been there, he would've said yes, I am. Yes I am. And here's why, cuz that's what the Bible teaches us. So you notice he starts with scripture. Paul starts with a scripture and he leads them through scripture to this king. Jesus, we gotta start there.
My. We have to build our lives on the foundation of the word of God. We just must, because if we don't know the story if we don't invest ourselves into it, if we don't apply ourselves to it, then we can baptize all sorts of things and make them seem Christian. And that's what happens in the world today.
This kind of personal savior Jesus gospel. This go to heaven when we die, this the body is going to burn and all of the world with it. And the soul, this disembodied itself is gonna float in the clouds, this, all of this that we treat as if it is the gospel as if it is the Bible is actually not in the Bible anywhere, you have to understand that as human beings we're shaped by all sorts of inputs and all sorts of traditions.
The fact of the matter is what I just described to you. This notion that a human being is made up of a physical self and a spiritual self, and those two parts are separate. And the goal is to be more spiritual and less physical. That's actually not anywhere in scripture. You'll find it in the writings of a guy named Plato it's Greek philosophy that was popular at the time of Jesus.
You'll find it in the writings of these guys called nos sticks and stoic, who talked about the fact that the body was evil and corrupt, but it was a reflection of an ideal self, this sort of spiritualized self that was created by the gods and our goal then was to be less physical and to be more spiritual, to try to attain to higher and higher levels of enlightenment, to be less on earth, to be more detached, perhaps.
Less physical, more spiritual, and that has made its way into Christianity. A matter of fact, if you read the letters that Paul and others would write, that's exactly what they were battling against over and over again, was this sort of spiritual world only. Jesus. No. You don't understand.
He's king of the real world. In this place and he made the body and he made the world and he so loves the world that he came into the world and is in process of redeeming and restoring. And so Paul would walk through the whole of scripture and show how Jesus is not just for another place. He's not just some spiritual guru, but he's actually this promised Messiah that if you go all the way back to Genesis three, He's this one, who's gonna come through the pain of childbirth.
Who's going to step on the head of the serpent once. And for all, if you go to Genesis 12, he is the promised blessing to the nations that God told Abraham. He would give him. If you move through the scripture over and over again, he's in the process of redeeming and restoring all things. That's what Paul would show over and over again, we have become so much students of Plato and SOC.
And Aristot. And the reason is because we're Westerners, our world was shaped by a guy that you never met called Alexander. The great our world was shaped by him, Greek philosophy, spread all around the world. And today to this very day, our education systems, our health systems, everything else we know has been informed by Alexander the great general.
Great man. Good king, but not Jesus. Now we have to fight instead for the kingship of Jesus, which is to say, okay, now what does the Bible say about the world about the meaning of life? Because you real that's, what's at stake here. Look, I if what we're talking about is this disembodied existence and our goal is to be less present on earth and more heavenly minded, more.
Often the clouds that we're just passing through this place as Christians are so used to saying that we're not a body or we're how's, what's the saying go, we're not a soul with a Bo no, we're not a body with a soul. We're a soul with a Bo how's that go? You guys know what I'm saying? If that, if all that stuff is true, then that fundamentally shaping, I don't even know what I just said.
This idea that the body's just this shell. Yeah. That doesn't matter. And that it goes away. And that, that the soul then the most real part of a person is what lasts and endures. If all that's true, it shapes this world and it shapes the way we think about life. Doesn't it? Yeah. Why worry about things like justice?
Cause it's just, that's just about a body. Why worrying about worried about feelings as long as we give them the gospel, it doesn't matter how we treat people. How we treat the planet, how we treat ourselves. It doesn't matter if we create things of beauty or not, they're just temporary. They're gonna burn it.
Doesn't it doesn't matter. See, so these philosophies have real world consequences, but if we read the story and read Jesus in the story from start to finish, we see something entirely different happening that Jesus actually cares about the world. He loves. He created it. He created it good. He's in the process of redeeming and restoring it, all this stuff matters.
It matters that we build our lives on the basis of the story of God. Really simple. I could have said that a long time ago, it matters that we know our Bibles and read them and apply them to our lives as Jesus comes alive through it.
I just. I'm just so struck by the fact that and this is me too, this is my own confession time by the fact that we often don't do that, that when it comes to just the stuff of life, we're often shaped by so many other inputs by so many other influences. You know what I mean? What Paul did is he lays out this biblical worldview.
Here's the biblical worldview. Here's what God is up to in the world. And the. He's up to that with his named Jesus and now live like it that's essentially what he's saying, but so often we look at the world around us and we've got all these other things that shape our mindsets. And we don't ever challenge those things on the basis of scripture.
Because you see if scripture reveals this king, Jesus who's come to set the world. Then now everything else runs through him. The reason people are so offended by the gospel is that Jesus messes with everything. He comes into our lives and he changes everything about us because it wasn't working.
The lives that we were building on our own the mindsets, the traditions that we've inherited, the worldview that we bought into, it's all going a different direction than the kingdom he would build. And so he comes in and if he's king of all of it, and he says, all right, let's talk about all of it.
King of the real world. Let's talk about what we do with our money. because Kings get to do that. They get to have a say over what we do with our money. Cuz it turns out in a kingdom, it's all his money anyway. And so he talks about that. He says, let's talk about priorities. Let's rethink your financial strategies on the basis of who I am and what I'm doing in the world.
He comes into our relationships and says, Hey, let's re let's rethink relationships in the way it works. Whether those are romantic relationships or friendships or family, let's rethink all the dynamics here because I'm up to something different entirely. And it could be that this relationship is an idol to you that has to die, or it could be that you're engaging in this in a way that's wildly unhealthy for yourself or for another person.
Let's talk about this. Let's talk about forgiveness and how forgiveness operates and changes things. The king gets to come in and he gets to talk about your politics. That's the statement that Paul was making here was a political statement. That's what they were accusing him of. He is undermining the political system of the Roman empire by advocating a king, other than Caesar for so often or for so long.
Now the Western church has avoided talking about politics or has talked about politics. Like everybody else. Most churches that I've been around have just said, you keep politics out of the pulpit because we don't want to offend or ruffle any feathers. And Jesus is what the gospel's not about that stuff.
I'm sorry if the gospel's not about that, then what's it about if the gospel doesn't speak his cuz politics, it seems to me is about everyday lives of people. It's about the stuff that concern us on a daily basis. Jesus loves people and he loves the world. And it's not just about what happens someday in heaven.
When we die, it's about what happens here. It matters. And so we have to apply the kingship of Jesus to our political lives. And we do that by reading the Bible and being thoroughly shaped by what we find there. And then thinking through things in community, in light of the kingship of Jesus, I just don't see it happening enough.
And we have to fight for. As we're heading into another. You guys, I'm not going to get all crazy political here, but we're heading into another election cycle and they've been brutal. They've been getting worse and worse. And what we need now is to be the light of the world in political conversations, to be thoughtful, prayerful, biblically informed, committed to Jesus, knee bowed to Jesus, we're engaging in the process in ways that are about the redemption of all things and not about our own preferences or biases or where we came from or our family of origin. You know what I mean? And that's gonna take some work though. It doesn't take a whole lot of work to consume the news it's out there right now.
It's just everywhere. But if you want to think through that news in a way that's helpful in a way that is salt and light, you're gonna have to apply yourself to this. In community with a lot of prayer, just seeing it happen. I do it too, please don't get me wrong. Everything I'm saying here I fail at routinely.
Jesus offends me often. I'll just very clear in so many ways on a regular basis, Jesus offends me cuz he comes into my life and he says, that's not the way I want you to be.
And the good evangelical Western Jesus's personal savior, Christian rises up in me and says with all due respect, get to Sunday morning
this is my, whatever, this is my life. This is my money. This is my time. This is my, I don't get to do that in a king, in a kingdom. Does that make sense? Kingdom is defined by the will of the king. What he wants is what goes, and he comes in and he says, I want to talk to you about this and we don't get to say no, I wanna talk to you about your prejudices.
I wanna talk to you about your preconceived beliefs about other people that you might not even see. That's the thing we hear this often in this day and age where people. People will say, Christians will say don't have these prejudices against a certain type of people. And when people challenge, we push back immediately.
We say I'm not racist. I'm not, I'm not elitist. I'm not whatever else whatever area of life we're trying to push back. I'm not stingy with my money. I'm not unforgiving, whatever else. And we don't get to do that. What we get to do instead as citizens of a kingdom is humbly say, I could very well be wrong.
and on the off chance that my king is trying to talk to me about something I should listen,
I should listen.
Jesus comes in and he has stuff to say about all of our lives and that stuff is not everything we're gonna want to hear. Cause he's not a king who plays by our rules. It's gospel of his, it changes stuff.
They were offended at the culture. Jesus came to bring, they were offended. I think too, by Jesus timing. You know what I mean? The Jewish people, they wanted Messiah to come it's crazy. Cuz some of them accept it with joy. They believe that this Jesus is the Messiah. Who's come to redeem all things.
They want the Messiah to come. But then when Paul announces it, they say that can't possibly be him. Why? Because they're not sitting high on the hog in Jeru. Because the Romans are still in power. This clearly demonstrates this guy that you're talking about was crucified and he died. And we're not back in Jerusalem celebrating this new kingdom of God.
We're still where we were oppressed by the Romans in a fairly difficult spot. What they're not understanding is this thing that Jesus came to do, which is to provide an overlap between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God. See the Jewish idea of the time was that the king would show up.
And when he showed up, he would break off the wicked age that existed and then would move the world into a new kingdom that was defined by his will and his reign and all of the old. All the wicked stuff would be judged and would go away and everything would be made new. And we look at that and we say, yes, come Lord Jesus.
But when Jesus showed up, he didn't do that fully. He started the process and what nobody understood until Paul and others come along and start explaining is that the kingdom of God is here and now realized in Jesus by the presence of the king. And yet. This present wicked age is still continuing. And what we have is this overlapping season.
This time that we call the already, but not yet. And that's where the Jewish people, they just tune out. Why would he do that? Why would he make us wait? Why didn't he just come and judge the earth and bring the renewal of all thingss answer is because he loves the world. In this overlapping time, he's extending compassion even to his enemies.
And if the overlapping time didn't exist, we wouldn't be here. You understand that, right? If Messiah showed up 2000 years ago and judged the earth and brought about the full kingdom of God, then none of us would know him, whether we'd exist or not as another question, but we. As outsiders as Gentiles. And this is what Paul would say to the Greek audiences that would just bring them to their knees.
We, as outsiders are now included because of his compassion, because of his timing, they're offended at the timing of this king. I'm often offended at the timing of Jesus. He doesn't do things when I want them to be done. I also had that experience before. Sometimes he doesn't do the things I want him to do at all, but often it takes some time.
And in that time, that space what's he up to, it seems like it's most often compassion. It seems that most often when the king delays it's about compassion for you or for somebody else, we're living this overlapping season where we wait for the king to come and fully bring the kingdom. We're offended by his methodologies.
This is a king who doesn't do what anybody expects him to do. The reason they're frustrated is cuz he died. How can you worship a king who died? He's supposed to kill. That's how this works. That's how Alexander took over the world. That's how every other king has done it. You conquer by killing you, go in and if you kill enough people, then everybody else will be afraid of you and will do whatever you say.
This king comes in and instead he dies. His strategy for greatness is sacrifice. He descends into greatness where every other king looks to ascend higher and higher gain, more and more territory conquer more and more people. This king descends below his station at every point, hangs out with the poor and the needy dies.
A criminal's death extends forgiveness to those who have hurt him and brings outsiders into the kingdom of. This is his strategy and that's offensive. The community he builds is offensive because it's made up then therefore, because of his strategy, it's made up of the wrong people. People that we ought not be hanging out with people that don't look like us or act like us, or think like us, people from different political parties, people from different walks of life, socioeconomic cultural, he brings in all sorts of.
His famous parable in the Bible of the wedding banquet, where the master of the banquet goes out and he invites all the right kind of people. And they say, no, thanks. And eventually he says to the servants, just go out and find whoever will come. And so he goes out and finds the beggars and the outcast and the oppressed, and he invites them to the banquet and that becomes the community of the king.
And we see that Jewish people, despite the fact that they're using Gentiles in this context to get their way are offended by the fact that Gentiles are now being invited in without having to do what they're supposed to. Without having to be circumcised without having to obey the law of Moses. He offends them by the community he builds.
And I guess I'm just saying all of this to say, he gets to do that. Cuz he's the king. He gets to say something about every area of our life, whether we like it or not, we have to listen. He gets to do things when he wants to do them in his time. When it's best. And when it's right for what he's up to in the world, he gets to use his strategies and his methodologies and call us to do the same thing rather than walk the way of power and conquest and independence to walk the way of sacrifice and humility.
And Philippians. Paul says the most crazy thing he says in your attitudes with one. Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature. God did not consider equality with God, something to be used to his own advantage. Instead he emptied himself.
He goes on to say becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him. The message of the gospel is that the humble will be exalted. This king invites us. No. Commands us to walk the way of humility. And in this way, we show ourselves to be his citizens, his people, I just don't see it often enough in the church.
Do you,
I hear a lot of talk in this part of the world in particular about our freedoms and our rights. I get it. I believe so much in your rights.
I just don't know about mine. I don't know that's a thing that I need to worry about
because I'm pretty sure that the king tells me that I get to lay down my rights and my freedoms and my liberties for the sake of you and for the sake of what he's up to in the world.
You don't win this thing by fighting you win this thing by dying to yourself. That's how he did it.
And he brings us into this community full of people that we wouldn't be with otherwise. That maybe he is different than us. And maybe when we get to know him enough is really frustrating cuz they do things differently and they act differently and they think differently. And they're made up of people from all walks of life, as opposed to our normal, this is the group of people I'm comfortable with that are like me.
No, he brings us into it. And that's how he actually helps us figure this stuff out. That's how we learn to walk the way of sacrifices by having to sacrifice. Cuz if you're just around people that are like you, that you like, you don't have to give up anything. . But if you find yourself in a community of diversity challenge,
sacrifice, like I said, little all over the place today, the basic idea is this though Jesus is king and we don't accept a king. It's not how this works. It's not a matter of, do you accept this or not? Do you accept him as your personal savior? No. No. You either bow to a king or you don't, you either bow and enter his kingdom humbly on his terms
or you just live in a rebellion to the way the world is going. I don't know how else to put it. The kingdom of God is breaking out. The king has arrived. He has inaugurated his kingdom. His will be done. We can either live in alignment to that by surrendering ourselves, our right to ourselves and everything else to him on a daily, regular case by case minute by minute basis, applying the Bible, all of it to every area of our lives, humbly submitting ourselves to his reign and his rule, learning his values, relearning life from him.
Accepting his timing, even when we don't like it, investing ourselves in his body, even when it's inconvenient or we're just in rebellion against the kingdom of God.
I just felt so strongly that I just needed to push back on the acceptance thing today. We don't just accept this. I, yeah, I can accept that. I like that. I like that that, that works for me.
This is not a personal savior. Jesus gospel. This is a king Jesus gospel.
And I just want to be known as a church that bows
just holistically. I want to. I wanna be known as a person who bows just everything in my life is yours. Whether I like it or not. I know some of it's gonna hurt. Some of it's gonna cost. This is yours. Do what you want. I want to be the kind of person who's gonna walk a hundred miles to the next city and say it over again because it's.
Person who gives what's asked lives, sold out radically committed to the king. My life is not my own. I've been bought with a price.
Do whatever you want. You wanna be that person. You wanna be that kind of a church. Here's the thing. I'm hitting hard, the cost of all of this, the obedience part of all of this, but you guys know, that at the end of the day, when you do this, you get to be a part of the kingdom of God, right?
Like you get to be a part of God's restoration of the world. You get to be on the front lines of resurrection in yourself and in others, you get to see things. You would've never. Meet people love people. You would've never loved. You get to experience the power of God.
And oh, by the way, when he does come and redeem all of this once, and for all, you get to rise with him into a resurrected world, made new.
Yeah costs it's worth it. You pray with me.
King Jesus Lord. We bow to you. Now
we know you're here, which is just crazy to think. , it's just crazy that the king showed up here today.
It's crazy to think that you are personal to us, that you've sent your spirit to each of us, individually, to all of us together as a community to be with us. So now in your presence, we bow,
our bowing is not a sign of acceptance. Our bowing is a sign of surrender,
acknowledging the real power in the room
and offering ourselves.
To you do whatever you want in this space, in our lives, do whatever you want in our church, in our world, whatever you want. Jesus.
If that means that there's stuff that we gotta lay down, help us, it's hard for us.
So often when Jesus preached the gospel, he said he started with repent.
Is there stuff that's out of alignment? So Lord, our bowed knees in this, moment's a symbol of surrender. If there's anything out of alignment, search us and know us change.
Our knees. Bow is also availability. We're here.
Everything we have is here for you. Our time, our talent, our resources, our lives are your disposal. God would you, in this moment, give visions to your people of what you're doing in their lives of where you're sending us. God.
Our bow knees are also hunger. We wanna be a part of what you're up to. We want to experience your kingdom breaking out in our lives in our world.
So here we are,
king Jesus. We worship you. We adore.
I could show the stand as we worship together. Or Neil, it's up to you. We're just gonna worship. I'm not gonna overly program a time of prayer. If you wanna pray about something, of course, we always wanna pray with you, but. Look, this is real. Like this stuff is real. He really is the king and he really is here. And I just want you to get this visual for a second.
And if you have to close your eyes just get this visual of what that means. Just think about having spiritualized to see right now as the roof just gets ripped off of this place.
And an entourage of angels enters the room, blowing trumpets in preparation for the coming of this king,
by whom everything was created in whom everything holds together for whom everything exists. And then he walks into the room, the lion of the tribe of Jude to the lamb who was slain, the one who was worthy of everything in heaven and earth. He walks into the. What do we do in that moment? We fall, face down.
We give everything we have. And that's what we're talking about. That's happening right now. He's walking up to you right now and saying, let's talk about your life and what I want to give you what I want to do for you. What I want you to do with me, that's happening right now. He's really the king you guys.
And he is really here. Let's respond now together. Like it's true.