Contribute To The Community.

It is so good to be back with you. I'm really excited. A lot of us were able to be a part of Kingdom Justice Summit this weekend. Raise your hand if you guys were there for Friday or Saturday. Yeah, there's a good chunk of us.

It was incredible. I think the coolest part of it was a lot of the things that we talked about were things that we've been feeling and sensing and hearing from God as a church. What is that invitation for us to see his kingdom come, his kingdom justice and our place in our city? God's timing is always so perfect. We are talking about today, contributing to the community. What does it look like for us to contribute and to do our part in seeing kingdom come right here in Madison and the places that God has placed you.

So before we get started, turn to the person next to you and say, you have value. You have value. And then turn to that same person or somebody else and say, but it's not just about you. Welcome to church, everybody. It's not about you, but you have value.

So today we're talking about this idea of contributing, which means to add value. Each and every one of us has unique value, value that God has given you, that he wants you to contribute, to add to the people and the places around you. But it's not just about you. It's about seeing his kingdom here and his glory on display.

So the so what for today is you have immense value, so much value. And then now what? What do we do with that? Contribute. We give it away. We add value to the people around us, to the places around us.

So we are going to be back in Acts chapter 2 today. I wanted to continue to just kind of sit there. I wasn't planning on teaching on this originally, but the past few weeks, it just keeps coming up. Pastor Chris talked about it last week. I encourage you to listen to that message if you missed it on the podcast.

At the end of Acts chapter 2, we read about how all the believers were gathering together. They were praying together, they were having fellowship together, sharing meals together. They were taking care of each other's needs. They were so present with one another. They had these rhythms in place.

But how did they get there? What led to that? What led to the first kind of church that we see on display there in Acts? I want to read earlier in Acts chapter 2, in verse 14.

Right after the Holy Spirit fell and there was tongues of fire and all these people came rushing in because they were hearing their language, Peter, who is one of Jesus' disciples, stands up with the 11 and raised his voice and addressed the crowd:

Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. In the last days, God said, I will pour my spirit out on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour my spirit out in those days. And they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Acts 2:14-21

Right there, a few things that I want to point out. He's going to pour out his spirit on all people in a culture that didn't always accept women, in a culture that didn't always respect people. There were servants, and there were slaves, and all of that was happening. He's saying, I'm going to pour out my spirit on those people. All people have value. All people were created in my image. And then he says that they call on my name, all people will be saved.

Verse 22:

Fellow Israelites, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through him as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him to the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

Acts 2:22-24

Let's pray together today. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word today. God, I thank you for the ways that you continue to speak to us, that you continue to pursue relationship with us. I thank you for every single person that's in this room, and for the ways that you have even ordained this moment for us to encounter your presence through worship, through your word, through your Holy Spirit. We just ask God that you would have your way, that you would continue to have your way in our hearts, in our minds. We just surrender these times to you and just say once again that we are open, God, to hear from you. Would you speak, Holy Spirit? We ask this in your name. Amen.

From prayer to presence

One of the things that we see here is a pattern. The people there were in a rhythm of prayer. They were praying together and that's when the Holy Spirit fell. So if you're taking notes today, just kind of this quick outline of what we see is we see that there was prayer and all of a sudden the presence of God came in a powerful way.

What did that lead to? Peter proclaiming the name of Jesus. He's proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, that he died, that he was raised back to life. Peter's proclaiming the good news. He's confessing Jesus as Lord. And then it led to them gathering together, praying, breaking bread, fellowship, listening to the apostles teaching. It led to them being present with each other.

It's from there that we see the church expand, that we see the gospel expand, the good news of Jesus expand. It went from a place of presence with God to having the ability to be present with one another. So what does that look like for us? To stay in a posture of being so present with God that we are then present with the people around us and know the invitation that God is giving to us.

When you look at this, and specifically in Acts 2:42, when you see that they were caring for each other's needs, that they were meeting together, they were praying together. If we're going to truly meet people's needs and contribute to the people around us, we're going to need to know the people around us. We talk about sometimes of like, what does it look like to love our neighbors? Well, oftentimes the first invitation for many of us is getting to know our neighbors. Not just physically, like the person that lives in the house next to you, but knowing the people that you work with beyond just a name. Knowing them to the point of them expressing needs or you knowing their needs before they even ask for it.

If we look and say, okay, we feel that there's this invitation for us to be people that don't just consume, but we contribute, we need to first know people and be present with them in order to help them learn to be present with Jesus.

Jesus was preparing his disciples

What I love about all of this that took place in Acts is that Jesus was preparing his disciples for this. In the same way, for the situations that you're walking through, whether you've been able to recognize it or not, Jesus has been preparing you. There might be things that you're facing that it might feel a little bit overwhelming, but we're talking about and singing about the same God. That same God has gone before you, and he's with you in these moments. He's been preparing you.

Jesus prepared his disciples for this day. We're going to read in Mark chapter 8, in verse 27:

Jesus went out along with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on his way, he questioned his disciples saying to them, who do people say that I am? They told him saying John the Baptist and others say Elijah and others one of the prophets. And he continued questioning them, but who do you say I am? And then Peter, the same one that gave that sermon and proclaimed him in Acts, said, you are the Christ. And then Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise from the dead. And he was stating the matter plainly, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning around and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on God's purposes, but on man's.

Mark 8:27-33

Jesus was trying to tell them in this moment that they needed to confess him as king, as Savior, and that they need to accept fully what it meant to follow him. Peter wasn't fully understanding in this moment what it meant to receive Jesus as Lord and king and to follow him.

Peter was saying that yes, you are the Christ. But Peter wasn't able to fully receive the idea that following Jesus means following him in all ways, not just the easy ways. In the same way that Christ suffered and he gave up everything to seek and save the lost, to seek and save me and you and invite us into relationship. The same invitation is for us to give up everything, to say yes to Jesus and to say yes to that suffering at times and yes to continuing laying down our lives.

Jesus is stopping them here in this moment, like I care about you enough that I want you to get this. I want you to understand what this truly means. And then in verse 34:

He summoned the crowd together and his disciples said to them, if anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. For what does it benefit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what could a person give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the son of man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his father with holy angels.

Mark 8:34-38

Jesus is making so sure that they understand that the best thing that we can do in following Jesus is forfeiting everything else. And why is that? It's so that we can have room to receive Jesus fully in all different ways. Jesus invites us to play a part in seeing his kingdom come. This is one of the greatest honors that we have, is following Jesus.

When you talk about this, of what does it mean to be a Christian? You're saying yes to following Jesus, to following his ways. This is why we have things as a church, like a rule of life, a set of rhythms that we look at the life of Jesus and say, what was Jesus doing when he was here on earth? That's what we should be doing. We should be doing those things. He invites us to play a part.

Pastor Chris talked about last week how he said, we're God's plan A. There's no plan B for making disciples and seeing his kingdom come. We're it. As we look around these rooms, when you think about the coworkers that you have, when you think about the people you sit next to in class, you are God's plan A for them coming to have relationship with him. That is an honor that we get to carry as followers of Jesus.

But that also means that we're going to have to constantly be evaluating in our lives. What do we have to lay down in order to make room for Jesus? What do we have to set aside so that we can stay centered on what Jesus is asking us to do? How do we need to be present with him so that we can be present with the people around us?

Jesus is Lord

Something happens when we confess Christ as Lord that is so beautiful. But when we confess him as the Lord of our lives, we are saying that everything else in our lives is not. We accept him as king over our life, then we're accepting that everything else is not. We're saying it's you, Jesus, only you, nothing else.

We can do this because we know that Jesus changes things. I love the story of the rich young ruler when Jesus says that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. I have a picture of a needle because sometimes we read that. But do you realize how small that is? If you've ever sewn or especially like little embroidery needles, it is so tiny. Jesus is saying that it is easier for a camel to go through that than a rich man to get into heaven. Let that sink in for a minute.

It's because he knows that the things of this world, the pleasures of this world, the desires of this world, they are fighting for our time. They are fighting for our attention, fighting for us to get our eyes away from Jesus and his mission. They're fighting to lead us into living a life that is focused on just this life and not eternity.

Because the reason that we can lay everything down for Jesus and do that every single day is because we were not created for just this life, but we were created for eternity. We were created to spend our lives and our eternity in the presence of Jesus. So we don't have to worry about just storing up things here on earth because this isn't our home. This isn't what we were made for.

When we truly start to live in that way of saying yes to following Jesus, we can say, yes, Jesus, I'm going to follow you and we trust him with our eternity. That's what we're doing when we're saying I surrender my life to you and I'm going to follow you. We're trusting him with our eternity.

But for some of us then it can be really hard to trust him with our every single day. I want you to think about that in this room. If you're here and you've said yes to following Jesus, you've said yes to surrendering your eternity and trusting him with your eternity. If we keep that in our mind, then it should be easy for us to give everything else away on this side of heaven. It should be easy for us to live radically generous, sacrificial lives on this side of eternity.

When Jesus is Lord, we can give generously, we can live generously, because we recognize that we belong to a family of God. I think even this weekend was such a beautiful picture of churches in Madison coming together. That reminder that we as New Culture Church play a part, not the part, a part in what God is doing in this city. Our role is to not try and do every single thing and meet every single need in the city. But our job is to continue to discern, God, what are you asking us to do as a church? God, what are you asking me to do as an individual? What are the things that the people that you have surrounded me with? Where are the places that only I am in?

We all have a role to play. When we truly understand that Jesus is Lord and we've surrendered to him in that way, then we can walk in that way. Recognizing that we have value, but there's no value for us in holding on to it. There's none. There's no value in us just holding on to the things that God is speaking to us. There's no value in us just holding on to the good news of Jesus Christ.

I think back to when I was growing up, I had a lot of siblings and we were kind of in this community of other families that had a lot of kids. Whenever there was something free happening, everybody knew. There was this one time there was a new TGI Fridays in town. If you sign up, every family can come. The servers need to practice. You get a free meal. We show up to TGI Fridays and literally knew almost everybody in the place. Word spreads fast when something good is happening.

Another time there was a new BP gas station. For whatever reason, for the first three weeks, every single day you could go in and get like a free sub for lunch or a free cookie for lunch. So you better believe that our family took all the kids there every single day to the gas station for lunch. It spreads fast and there's no reason to hold that to yourself. If you know, like if I knew every single one of you could come get a free sub with me at BP down the street, why would I hold that to myself? Why wouldn't I share that with you?

That's the thing. When we recognize that we have something valuable, there's no reason for us to hold it. But then the question is, what makes me valuable?

You have immense value because you are created in God's image

This is where I'm going to kind of switch gears here. I think to an extent, you all can probably understand that there's things that are probably not great in the world around us. There's probably some good things that we could do about it. We can understand that we should help people, we should feed people, we should clothe people. But sometimes what happens is we don't feel like we have something to offer. We don't recognize the value that we have to give to people. We don't recognize our role.

My hope for these next few moments is to not just share with you this vision of like, hey, we should contribute to our city and our neighbors and the people around us. But I want you to be compelled from a place and encouraged and empowered to recognize that God has made no mistake in creating you. God looks at you and he has insane purpose for your life as an individual to contribute to the world around you.

The first thing is that you have value because you were created in the image of God. Look around this room at the people that are sitting here. Turn your head a little bit. Every single person, no matter how different we look, we were created in the image of God, the creator of the universe. That makes us worth something. We see that in Genesis 1:26-27.

When Jesus was in the gospels, there's this confrontation he has where people come to him and they're like, Who are your mothers and your brothers and your sisters and your fathers? And he says, whoever does the will of my father, that's my family. And in John 1:12-13:

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God.

John 1:12-13

We are all children of God. We were made in the image of God. When we choose to follow Jesus and surrender our lives to Jesus, when we receive him as Lord of our lives, then he says, not only are you made in my image, but you're my child now. You're a part of my family now.

But here's the great thing too. Every single person that we encounter, whether or not they are following Jesus and a child of God, they were made in his image too. That means that we can see the reflection of God in the people that we interact with. When we talk about this idea of we have something to contribute, we also have to recognize that the people that we interact with have something to contribute to us.

That coworker that is so far from the Lord that you don't think you will ever see them in church, they still were made in the image of God. When you interact with them and you encounter them, you too can learn more about who God is through their character and the things that he's doing. Everybody that we encounter was made in God's image.

Going back to that simplicity of that we're God's plan A for the world. When he says in Matthew 28, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I love that going back to Acts, when the Holy Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost, the day of Pentecost would have been a day where people from all nations were gathered to pray. I think it's no mistake that he fell on just one people group. Of all nations and all these different languages were represented at that time. When he's saying now you and all your languages, I want you to go and I want you to preach the gospel to all nations and all languages.

All people have value and we need to give that away freely because it says that we have the keys to the kingdom. I want to go back in Matthew, the same story, so the same gospel account that we read in Mark, but now in Matthew. After Peter declares Jesus as Christ, he confesses him as Lord. Matthew 16:18:

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Matthew 16:18-19

He says, I'm going to give you the kingdom, the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I love it when it's saying on that rock, what did Peter just do? He confessed Jesus as Lord. As we confess Jesus as Lord, that's how he builds his church.

That's the beautiful part for us as followers of Jesus. Part of us contributing and looking to the people around us and saying, Okay, what is it that God has given me that I need to give away freely? What are the gifts? What are the talents? What do I have in my hands that I can surrender to the Lord? It's like part of us being able to do that is trusting that it is his church, his mission. We're not here to build the kingdom of heaven. We're not here to build the church. We're here to simply make way for it. We're here to step aside and say, God, what are you going to do through me as I continue to lay down everything else?

There's some questions that I want us to process. If we know and we recognize that we have value, that God created you in his image, and when you decide to say yes to Jesus, you become a child of God, you are now a new creation and you have unique value. Then what do we do with that value?

Three things. Contribute what you have, contribute where you are, and do it for the sake of Christ. It really comes down to being that simple. What do you have? Where are you? And why are you going to do it? Do it for the sake of Christ.

There's a lot of incredible things that people do. A lot of incredible justice work and people that clothes people and feed people and do all of these things. We need to do that. But if that's not then leading and doing it for the cause of Christ, then we're doing it for nothing. Everything should be for the sake of Christ and people knowing him.

Maybe you're here today and you don't think you have any value or anything to offer. I wanted to just talk for a minute about Moses, who led the people out of Egypt, out of captivity. He was someone that he stuttered. He had a speech problem. Yet God chose him to use his words to set captives free.

We look at people like Rahab, who was a prostitute. She would not have been coming from a great family situation, yet she's in the lineage of Jesus. We think about Peter, who denied Christ. He was known as kind of like the hothead, had a temper. And then he was the one that preached that first sermon and the one that really helped give birth to the church as a disciple of Jesus.

I often see this common thread with people like Moses. His speech was once a weakness. God said that thing that the enemy is trying to grab hold of, I'm actually going to take that. I'm going to use that. Now it's going to be that tongue that used to stutter that now is going to proclaim my goodness and set captives free.

Could it be that the things in your life that you're looking at and you're saying this is a weakness could simply be confessing Jesus is Lord of that and surrendering it to him. Could that be the difference from it being that thing that keeps you from God to the thing that God is going to use to bring people to him? Could it be that as we even lay things down at the feet of Jesus, we're able and empowered to contribute more value around us? Because God knew what he was doing when he created you.

He knew what he was doing when he brought you to this city. He knew what he was doing when he placed you in the job that you're in. He knew what he was doing when you had to share an office with the person you share an office with. Or when you have to cross paths with the people you cross paths with. He knew what he was doing. He placed you in that room. He placed you in this room.

I believe that God wants to empower us to start to recognize that we have value as children of God, made in his image, that we need to share and we need to proclaim to the people around us.

In my own life, I spent a lot of years asking God, and even up until recently, like, are you sure? Are you sure you want me to do this? Because I'm not really, I don't feel like I'm qualified. I don't feel like I'm equipped. I don't always wake up feeling like I have what it takes.

But most days I wake up going, God, are you sure? I think I could name at least 20 other people that would do way better at doing what you've asked me to do and what's in front of me today. As far as big vision for New Culture and Madison and all that, and then even just like the day-to-day, sometimes I wake up and I'm like, are you sure?

But I feel like something changed for me recently when instead of asking God are you sure? I started asking God why me? What are the unique things that you have given me? What's the unique value in the family that I've come from, the background, and how you've wired me and how I think and how I speak? Why did you place me here? Would you give me eyes to see so that I can then be empowered to use those things in the way that you want me to?

When you look at the Old Testament, you know that God used different people. Whether we're talking about Jacob or Moses or Abraham, the heroes of faith, or you're talking about the disciples, they all have different communication styles, different ways that they heard from God and interacted with God. Maybe you have thought and you said, well, I don't really hear from God like the way others talk. So maybe I don't hear from God. You were created in the image of God.

Each and every one of us represents his heart and his image in different ways. You have value. So what would it look like to say, God, why this place? Instead of saying, are you sure I'm supposed to be here? Why am I here? Would you show me? Why these people? Would you show me?

So what does this look like practically? How can we contribute? How can we add value to the places around us? Practical ways that people talk about this in the church world is your time, your talent, your treasure. Looking at the hours in your week, how can you contribute? How can you serve? When you're talking about your finances, that's why we tithe our ten percent is to continue to form ourselves into people of saying, I'm surrendered, God. It's yours before it's anything else. It is yours. And I'm reminding myself of that.

Everything we do has to be from a place of presence. Presence with God will lead us to being present with people. This is why all of these things from the rule of life, they start to kind of play together, these rhythms that we have, because they form us. The things that we do, they do something to us.

I wish that we're all people that we hear this like in church and we're like, all right, I have value. I'm going to add value. And then we're just going to naturally do it. Tomorrow you're going to wake up and you're going to want to serve the people around you. You're going to look at that person that annoyed you yesterday and be reminded, wow, they're in the image of God.

But we're just not like that. We are being formed and we get the choice today. Are we going to intentionally form ourselves into the likeness of Jesus? Or are we just going to be complacent and wake up one day and say, how did I get here?

So today I want to give you time to think a little bit about where are you? What place am I at? Who are the people I interact with? And God, like, how can I contribute to that? So that we can create intentional rhythms of contributing to the people around us.

We live in a city that has a lot of people. We're not going to be able to interact with every single person. But it'd probably be safe to say like maybe six, seven hundred people this week we're going to interact with. In this room, with the different jobs we have, the places we go, the restaurants we eat in, the gyms we work out in, like probably five, six, seven hundred people we are going to interact with this week.

Instead of thinking, okay, how do we reach all these people and share the good news of Jesus with them? What if you looked at, God, where am I going to be tomorrow? God, who are the people that I'm going to see or interact with tomorrow? How can I contribute and add value there? Create a rhythm.

If you have been starting to develop that kind of rule of life, I want to invite you to do that this week. Start to say, how am I going to intentionally contribute my time, my talent, and my treasures? How am I intentionally going to contribute those things?

Maybe the invitation for some of you today is saying, okay, I want to be formed into a person that really doesn't just surrender my eternity to Jesus, but my every day. It's going to be your finances. Maybe it's tithing for the first time. For some of you, it might be looking at the time that you have and saying, okay, how can I create rhythms of like volunteering in places in our city and in our neighborhood? Or even just how can I create a rhythm of walking around my neighborhood and trying to pay attention to what I see and praying for the people in my neighborhood? The invitation is like, what is that next step for you in that?

So what we're going to do today is I'm just going to give you a minute. If you guys have a pen and paper with you, or if you have your phone, I do want to give you just a minute to take some of those notes and to just answer those questions. Think about maybe one day this week. Pick a day of the week. Some people work from home, different things. Pick a day of the week.

Then answer the questions. Where am I? What do I have? And then that final one is, am I willing to count the cost? Jesus, when he gathered his disciples and told them all of those things and he told them they declared him as Christ, he then went in. He wanted to make sure they counted the cost.

Recognizing that sometimes we think, okay, well, if I start giving or if I start serving, it's going to be like this automatic, I feel incredible now that I did this. But sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it means sacrifice. Sacrifice literally means to do one thing, you can't do the other.

So it might hurt a little bit. So to answer honestly, like, are you willing to count the cost? Do you understand what that means? If you do start looking to be more intentional with your neighbors and make time to have dinner with your neighbors, then you might not have time to have dinner with other people that you see and interact with. We have to count the cost.

I'm going to give you just probably like thirty, forty-five seconds to just think of a day of the week. Where am I? What do I have? Am I willing to count the cost? Under the where am I, you can also maybe think of like, who are the people you're going to see that day?

I'm going to invite you to stand with me whenever you're ready. I just want to remind you of that reality that you were created in the image of God and that you have value. You have value, but it's not just about you. It's about Jesus. It's all about his kingdom come.

As we start to even move and start to say, okay, how can I create rhythms in my life where I'm intentionally like giving things away, holding things loosely, contributing, it's going to need to come from a place of presence with God, of continuing to center our lives around him so that we can be present with the people around us.

If we are going to know how God is speaking to us and what to say to somebody we encounter, we're going to need to know his word and spend time in scripture. We're going to need to be really present with God.

Sometimes we don't know how to give value away freely because we haven't received it, or maybe we have, but there's areas in our life where we just need Jesus to remind us that we're valuable in a way that no words I could ever say could do justice.

That's why we have these moments where we come together and we just pray and we say, okay, Lord, would you show me? So we're going to sing this song. As we do that, I just want to invite you that if there's things that you're saying, God, I need to receive value from you in this way, would you just pray? Would you just ask God to show you?

If you're like, I still don't know what I have to offer or what I don't think I'm gifted, I don't think I have anything unique about me, would you just talk to Jesus as we worship together?

If you're here and you're like, I have these things that I feel, or maybe there's already people that come to mind or neighbors you've been praying for, start to even pray for them. Declare that Jesus is at the center of being like, yes, Jesus, come be the center of their lives and my life.

God, we just thank you for your word. We thank you that you speak to us through your scriptures and through your Holy Spirit. God, I just do pray for people that are here today. Maybe they are struggling to see the value or struggling to feel like they really were created in your image and are a child of God.

Would you begin to just come and to just speak life? God, would you just speak encouragement? God, would you begin to show them the things that maybe they thought were a weakness or maybe in this moment they are a weakness? Would you be able to come in and transform those areas of their lives to use it as something that can connect people to your kingdom and your love and your presence, God?

I just pray then also for those of us that maybe we are feeling challenged of ways that we can contribute and surrender more to you. As we sing this, would this just be a declaration for you to truly come be at the center, to recognize that it's not just about us, but it's about your kingdom, your glory, God? Who are we to hold back the presence that you have given us, the relationship that you have given up?

So we just surrender to you, Jesus. We ask this in your name. Amen.