0 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:08,000 The first set of questions has to do with the background. 1 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:16,000 Where do you come from, and how did all this get started? 2 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:23,000 In the church here, I think you'll find people from every conceivable denomination... 3 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:30,000 ...together with others who have never been inside a church building in their lives to this day. 4 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:37,000 We don't represent any particular denomination or any particular way of thinking. 5 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:50,000 Various eschatologies and views of God's sovereignty--and all those other issues--have all been woven into our life together as contributors into our life together. 6 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:55,000 Doctrines like that have not been a test of fellowship. 7 00:00:55,000 --> 00:01:00,000 The entrance exam has never been, "Do you believe like we believe?" 8 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:05,000 The entrance exam is basically, "Will you sacrifice everything for the sake of Jesus?... 9 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:09,000 ...Will you forsake all to be Jesus' disciple?" 10 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:11,000 I probably should clear up this point. 11 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:19,000 There's a misconception in the Christian world that it's possible to be a Christian without being a disciple. 12 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:26,000 Some teach that to become a Christian today you accept Him as Savior and then retain an option to make Him Lord later on and become His disciple. 13 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:30,000 One quick look at the scriptures should dispel that thought. 14 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:35,000 In Acts 13 Luke says that "the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." 15 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:48,000 So for ten years of biblical history involving tens of thousands of believers, followers of Jesus had simply been called His disciples. These Christians in Antioch had been disciples all along. 16 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:53,000 A Christian is a disciple. 17 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:56,000 I want you to understand that for you own life, too. 18 00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:03,000 Understanding Jesus' concept of "disciple" is imperative for our lives. He told us, "Unless you forsake all, you cannot be My disciple." 19 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:09,000 Well, according to Acts 13, that is exactly the same thing as saying, "Unless you forsake all, you cannot be a Christian." 20 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:15,000 That doesn't mean that when we're saved all our problems and temptations instantly go away. 21 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:20,000 But we start from a place of saying, "Jesus, you have anything you want." 22 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:26,000 I have to work that decision out in my life day by day, and I need help doing it. 23 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:28,000 But it's not a new decision each time. 24 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:30,000 "Will I give up this?... 25 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:32,000 ...Will I obey that command?... 26 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:34,000 ...Will I do things the way God wants me to?... 27 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:44,000 Will I make this decision about my relationship with the church, or my relationship with an unsaved relative, or with a whole group of unbelieving friends? 28 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:47,000 How will I respond at work to a situation?" 29 00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:49,000 Those are not new, unrelated decisions. 30 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:59,000 Once I've given my life to Jesus and put my life on the altar and become a living sacrifice and forsaken all... 31 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:05,000 ...the rest of my walk is not a matter of making new decisions but instead is simply the working out of my life decision with as much help as I can get. 32 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:14,000 One of the essential issues about the church really being the church is that most people have never had the help they've needed to overcome sin. 33 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:23,000 A big percentage of the membership in most churches desire to do God's will, but are never able to get there, because they don't have the help. 34 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:29,000 Why don’t they? Because we’re not "members of one another," we’re not "bearing one another’s burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ." 35 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:35,000 Confessing sins to one another is such an incredibly foreign idea most places, and it sounds so frightening. 36 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:39,000 It probably is something to be afraid of, the way many people have practiced the thing. 37 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:46,000 Confession has not been out of relationship, but out of some form or position of authority or in a black box with a screen pulled back. 38 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:51,000 Confession has become an entirely different thing than what God meant when He said for us to do it. 39 00:03:51,000 --> 00:04:00,000 But if we really were members of one another, then "growing up into the Head," "being compacted together," and "growing into the full measure of the stature of Christ"... 40 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:04,000 ...would come along as part of the process. 41 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:06,000 We wouldn't even need Bible classes to do it! 42 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:12,000 We wouldn't need discipleship partners or any form or organization or systematic teaching. 43 00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:17,000 You don't need any of those things, provided that people are truly devoted one to another... 44 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:26,000 ...and that the gifts and callings in Christ's body are invested in people who are all members of one another. Blue jeans and t-shirts members of one another in Christ. 45 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:32,000 If that's really the way we live, then God works out the part of our growing into maturity in Christ. 46 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:43,000 Back to the original question: The entrance exam is, "Do you want to follow Jesus with all your heart, soul, mind and strength?" 47 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:53,000 There's no way you could biblically make a case for a person being a Christian who answers, "Well, I don't know" to that question. 48 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:59,000 So of course, a non-Christian is not going to be part of the church here. 49 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:06,000 So the key issue isn't a person's eschatology, previous church background, or lack of church background. 50 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:12,000 The question is whether he truly calls on the name of the Lord and chooses to give his life to Him, to live for and love and serve Him,... 51 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:18,000 ...and whether he's lost his life to take hold of Jesus' life and salvation. 52 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:26,000 If so, then we're all going to be able to work together, and everyone's going to contribute to our understanding of life in Christ. 53 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:40,000 In Acts 15, you see a bunch of men, many of whom were apostles, hand-picked by Jesus. With them are James, the half brother of Jesus, and the elders of the Jerusalem church. 54 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:44,000 Here are a lot of great men of God! And they don't have all the doctrine figured out. 55 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:50,000 They still don't even know what to do with circumcision--and it's a decade or more after Pentecost! 56 00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:55,000 They may not have all the answers, but it is clear they are devoted one to another, and they are going to be unified. 57 00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:01,000 They expect Jesus to be in their midst as they gather in His name. And they expect Him to answer their questions! That's exactly what Jesus does. 58 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:08,000 He brings something from Amos, then a testimony of the miraculous hand that has confirmed His word. 59 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:16,000 He brings the reasoning and devotedness and the submission to one another so obvious in that setting. 60 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:20,000 And the believers come out with something that seems both "good to them and to the Holy Spirit." 61 00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:27,000 If we're united, of one accord, in our "upper room" as they were, we're going to see Pentecost. 62 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:36,000 If we come--as in Acts 15--devoted to hearing God's voice, submitting and deferring one to another, we're going to hear Him. 63 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:40,000 So it really doesn't matter what background we come from. 64 00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:45,000 We have found a unity in Christ and consecration to Him. 65 00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:53,000 The only foreign object in a true church of Jesus would be someone who doesn't really want to live for Jesus. 66 00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:56,000 "So, how are you treating your children?" 67 00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:59,000 "Well, none of your business." 68 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:06,000 "How are things in your workplace? Are you sure that's an ethical sort of job to hold or a way to treat your employees?" 69 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:16,000 "Well, that's what I learned at a leadership conference. That's just the way I do it. Separation of church and job or state, you know." 70 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:21,000 If that's the way a person lives, then he or she is a foreign object! 71 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:26,000 The house of God is for those who have a revelation of Jesus being "high and lifted up." 72 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:36,000 You can't be part of the church that Jesus is building, that the gates of hell can't prevail against, unless you have a revelation of Jesus that flesh and blood haven't revealed to you. 73 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:41,000 Jesus told Peter that the whole church was contingent upon the revelation of Jesus. 74 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:53,000 The ekklesia that Jesus is building is totally dependent on having a revelation of Jesus as the Son of God and the Son of Man,... 75 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:57,000 ...as the King of all the kings whom the Father Himself has revealed. 76 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:02,000 That revelation isn't something we learned growing up in bible class with a flannel graph and lullabies,... 77 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:06,000 ...but something we've seen from heaven, and therefore we've responded from the heart. 78 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:18,000 Jesus can take living stones who have seen Him and possess a revelation of the Son of God, and He can build them into a house that the gates of hell cannot prevail against. 79 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:23,000 So that's what we're looking for. And that's the history. 80 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:28,000 As I said, we've been here about eight years, but really I don't even think that's significant. 81 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:32,000 I don't think it matters if we've been here five minutes or fifty years. 82 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:38,000 The real issue is being on a foundation that Jesus can work with--and that's true where you are, as well as where we are. 83