Reset—Made For Community - Jonathan Pickens

0:27 under messages that are around community, I haven't really enjoyed those. And so as a person who's about to preach on community, you just need to get that out there. So I'm not a hypocrite, but I also wanted to say the reason I haven't historically enjoyed those messages are because growing up, for me, I had my normal friends, and then I had my church friends. And my church friends were typically my weird friends. And maybe you're sitting here thinking, me too. I hope not. That would be weird. But maybe you can just nudge your neighbor and be like, you're my weird friend. No, please don't. But we're not just talking about community, because even just for the few people that we feel in our life might be lonely. We're not talking about community because it's a nice option and every now and then we're supposed to talk about community as a church. No, no, no. We're talking about community today because when we look to our factory settings, when we look to the reset at who made us and what he made us for, I believe we are going to see we were made for community.

1:40 Not just as a nice option, but for an essential in your life. I believe what each of us here are going to see today is not just that we were made for community, but we were made for community because we were made by community. Because the God who made us is not some singular individualistic God, but God himself that we worship is the triune God, existing in eternity's past in a community within himself. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, distinct persons and yet unbreakable unity, bound together, and it is in his image that he made you and me. And that's exactly what we see in Genesis 1. Look at how we were made. Genesis 1 verse 26 says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

2:41 They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth. So God, who's God? The us. The image that they were made in. His likeness. God created man in his own image. He created him in the image of God. He created them male and female. So what's that mean? It means that we cannot image God properly until we exist in community. We were made in the image of God. Have you ever thought about what that word actually means? Like think about what an image is. If I were to show you an image of a tree, the image itself would not be a tree, but it would point to a real tree. And in the same way, God says we're made in his image, that when people look at us, we're meant to think of him. Not that we are God, but we lift others' attention up to God by how we exist and love one another. And so we cannot image him properly if we exist apart from community. That's why before sin even enters the picture, everything's perfect.

3:57 God is the only creator, and he made no mistakes. And yet before the fall, he says something is not good. What does he say in verse 18 of chapter 2? He said it is not good for man to be alone. Why is that? Because he couldn't image God individually. He needed community to do that. So what did God do? He made a woman, one that the man would become one with, joined together with by his spirit, and in love would procreate in the same way that the father and the son have existed together in perfect unity by the fellowship of the spirit. And in the father, out of love for the son and the son, out of love for the spirit and the father, essentially rejoice community or the earth into existence. So that when we see the stars, we think about God.

4:50 When we see the sea, we think about God. When we see the sunset, we think about God. When we see trees, we think about God. And when we see people, it's meant to lift our eyes up and say, that's what he's like. It's not just a nice option. It's literally what we were made for. And when we reset to our factory design, we see that you're made for community. And so here's why that's important. If you're here today and you feel alone, and you feel lonely, there's not something wrong with you. It's actually something very right with you. You're longing for something that God designed you for. And what I believe is that the church is where you'll find it. And that's why as the world grows darker, the church has the opportunity to shine even brighter. If you consider the threats that oppose us today, consider AI, apparently, none of us will have jobs in a couple of years.

5:52 Consider division, polarization, hostility that's taking place. Consider the loneliness epidemic. The church is perfectly poised to respond. This is our moment. In fact, just recently, my daughter was given a little gift of a pack of glow sticks, which is a great gift, by the way, really cheap and really entertaining. She opened up these glow sticks. We break them, and she kind of looks at them. We're like, okay. But then, because she wasn't that impressed, we turned off the lights. And when we turned off the lights, my little three-year-old's, whoa. And what was mildly cool became entertaining in a party. Why? Not that the glow stick changed, but when things got darker, it grew brighter. And in the same way, I believe that maybe the lights are getting turned down a little bit in our world today.

6:47 And what an opportunity the church has to shine brighter. I believe that the church is uniquely poised in this day and age to respond to the threats that we face. It was Bill Gates who said recently that only three jobs would survive the AI takeover. And so naturally, I asked ChatGPT for some help. And we came up with this list of things that AI would never be able to replace.

7:19 One, AI will never be truly human made in the image of God. Two, AI will never have a soul. AI cannot truly pray for you based on their relationship with God. AI cannot rejoice with you AI cannot weep with you AI cannot hold your baby with joy when you get home from the hospital AI cannot visit you when you get sick without asking AI cannot give you a hug at the funeral of a lost loved one AI cannot truly know you and be known by you AI cannot love you with a self-denying and self-sacrificing love and AI cannot worship Jesus with you. But as the lights grow darker, the church can shine brighter. This is what we were made for as a church. Think about loneliness and isolation.

8:14 Gallup just put out a report recently that one in five adults identify as lonely at some point every single day. Not just that, but the Surgeon General in 2023 stated that we were in a loneliness epidemic. Jonathan Haidt, who has done a ton of research on a younger generation wrote an article entitled that the upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community.

8:40 And yet how can the church respond? Because nowhere in the Bible does it say that God takes away our loneliness. But yet what it does say in the Bible in Psalm 68 verse six is that God sets the lonely in families. And all throughout the New Testament, you get the language of brothers and sisters. You get the language of loving one another, sitting with one another, serving one another. The family that the lonely are looking for is the church. The lights are getting darker. We shine brighter. We've got a place for you. Not just that, think about the polarization taking place, the hostility in our day. I just wanna consider this division for a moment because Christ in Ephesians 2 is said to have broken down the hostility wall of division. That there is no reason for a believer to have rightful anger with one another, that hostility has been crushed by the cross.

9:33 We're all messed up. And yet grace has covered all of us. So we love each other when we're wrong, just like Jesus did for us. Not just that, but the church is invited not to center themselves on an earthly kingdom, but on the eternal kingdom. And so as a result, we are given this kind of anti-algorithm. We're given this antidote to the algorithm, if you would, where we come and we rub shoulders with those. We look face to face with those who are seeing different things on their screen and we're given a love with which to love them. Not just them, but even those who are outside of us and apart from us. We even don't attempt to defeat our enemies. Our goal is to love our enemies. Why? Because when we were enemies of God, we have someone who loved us. And it's with that love that we love them. The church doesn't treat people how people treat us. We treat people how Jesus treated us.

10:28 The lights are getting lower and the church will shine brighter. This is our moment. This is our time as a church to rise up. And this is exactly what you see the church doing in Acts chapter 2. They are shining in this community. And so let's do that. The rest of our time, we're going to spend looking at Acts 2, verses 41 through 46. Let's read it together.

10:52 Peter's just preached an amazing message. And almost three, or exactly 3,000 people were added by putting their faith in Jesus that day. Here's what it says about them. Those who accepted his message were baptized. And that day, about 3,000 people were added to them. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers. Everyone was filled with awe. And many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all as any had a need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.

11:50 Every day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. There are at least four things that marked that community that I'm believing must mark ours as well. And the first thing that marked their community was that they were marked by the word. And as a church, we must be marked by the word. Notice that in verse 41, the way that they entered into the community was by accepting the message. That word for message is the word logos. It means word. They accepted the word. And then when they accepted the word, if you read a few sentences earlier, they were filled with the spirit. And yet you'll notice that even though they were filled with the spirit in a significant way at that time, they didn't consider that being filled with the spirit eliminated their need to study the word.

12:44 It wasn't some mysticism that was taking place that was anti-theology, but they were actually filled with the Spirit in such a way that they devoted themselves, it says, first to the apostles' teaching. It was first on their list, and it must be first on our list. I like the way that John Stott says it. Those early disciples did not imagine that. Because they had received the Spirit, He was the only teacher they needed, and they could dispense with human teachers. On the contrary, they sat at the apostles' feet, hungry to receive instruction, and they persevered in it.

13:19 It's like when I first knew I wanted to propose to my wife, I knew I had to get a ring, but I, like many of you maybe, didn't know much about rings. So I can remember walking to the store, the ring store, telling the guy, hey, I'm here, I'm interested in buying a ring. So he looks back, he says, well, great, well, what kind of ring are you looking for? And say, well, a good one. and he says, okay, buddy, we're going to need some help, so he takes me over here. He asks us kind of what we're working with, what I'm looking for, and I'm like, look, man, I just need a ring, and so he gets out this little pamphlet, and it's got the four C's. Anybody know about the four C's? You've got the cut. It's the clarity. I see some of you taking notes. You got the carrot size, and you got the color, and so I'm sitting here, and I'm being enlightened about this new information where I knew I needed a diamond, but I didn't know all that there was to know about the diamond, but this guide was helping me. And so he would get out these different kinds of diamonds and he would take them and put them under light and he would rotate them so I could see them at different angles. And then he would compare them and he'd say, you see this one right here, it's a bit bigger of a carat size, but you can see the clarity isn't quite as strong.

14:36 So this one's actually going to be the same price, even though the carat size is just a little bit lower. But look at this one, the color is amazing on that, especially when you look at it from this angle. Look at it from this. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like looking at it from this angle. And I leave this place and I go up to my friends. I'm like, guys, you're not going to believe the color on this thing. The cut was unbelievable. I like this cut too, but the clarity over here was unbelievable. And I'm telling them about it. And here, listen, I didn't remember too much about the guide, but I knew about the diamond. And the role of us as church leaders is to come and say, we're devoting ourselves here. And our job is to hold it up under the illumination of the Holy Spirit. And we're going to look at it from different angles. And you may have come in here knowing you need the Bible. We're here to show you just as a guide, some different things about the Bible. And our hope is that when you leave, you're going and you're saying, man, I got to tell you about the color of this thing. The clarity is unbelievable. Did you look at it from this angle over here. And it doesn't really matter too much if you remember a lot about the guide. What you need to know is the word. You've got this treasure. And our job as a community, as a church, is this isn't simply a friend group with a like-minded worldview. We are a people in submission to the teaching of the apostles. And so we are devoted first and foremost to this word. It was first on their list and it's first on ours. But second, we must be marked by love, marked by love. This is primarily where we need to spend our time today. I was so convicted as I was reading this that the scripture didn't stop at verse 41. If I were writing this text, man, I would have been so tempted to just end the story of verse 41. Could you imagine a better ending than that?

16:28 He preached the message and 3,000 people got saved. Jesus story of the year. let's tell that one. But it doesn't stop there. There's six more verses. Why? Because God doesn't just care about salvation. He cares about sanctification. He doesn't just care about new births and being born again. He cares about belonging to the family of faith. Jesus did not instruct people to go and make converts. He said to go and make disciples. Our goal is not simply to have people raise their hand at the end of the gathering. The goal given to us by God is to present our people mature in Christ at the day of the Lord. That's the job here. And so if we're gonna be serious about what God's word says, that's first on our list. We've gotta be people who are marked by love.

17:20 Imagine having a baby. And in the hospital room, you're holding this child and you're speaking your love and affection over this little girl. You're beautiful, we love you, we're so proud of you. You take a picture, post it. Here's her name. This is what it means. You're excited. You're speaking over this child. See, you're gonna need to learn how to eat. You're gonna need to learn how to sleep, amen.

17:44 You're gonna need to learn how to walk one day. All right, we'll check in on you in a few months. Just leave. That child's gonna die, right? There's no chance for that child. You told them everything that they needed to know. They were brought to life. so it is with the church it can't be good enough to have people who are born again yes that's where it starts but every person who's been born in the history of the world has been born into a family you cannot be born apart from a family and yes they will need to learn to eat on their own, yes they will need to learn to talk on their own, yes they will need to learn how to walk on their own but they will not learn how to do any of it on their own They must be raised. And it is our job as a church to rally around people and train them in the way of Jesus. We must be people who are marked by love.

18:37 In fact, we cannot obey Jesus fully if we live lives apart from community. When you look to the New Testament, what you are struck with is that full obedience to Jesus is not possible if your faith is individual. There are over 30 unique and distinct claims and commands for the church to love one another. I brought a list with me. You're gonna see it on the screen. I wanna read them together. Most of these come from Paul's letters, but they come from all over the New Testament. The first is to love one another, to be at peace with one another, to wash one another's feet, to love one another deeply as brothers and sisters, to outdo one another in showing honor, to live in harmony with one another. Let us no longer judge one another. Accept one another, just as Christ also accepted you.

19:31 Instruct one another. Greet one another with a holy kiss. We'll skip that one. When you come together to eat, welcome one another. Have the same concern for one another. Carry one another's burdens with patience, bearing with one another in love. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. In humility, consider one another as more important than yourselves. Do not lie to one another, admonishing one another, increasing and overflow with love for one another. Encourage one another, build up one another, watch out for one another to provoke love and good works. Do not criticize one another. Do not complain about one another. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another. Be hospitable to one another without complaining.

20:24 And the parents said, amen. Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another. Clothe yourselves with humility towards one another. We cannot obey this list if we buy into an individualized, privatized, personalized version of following Jesus. You cannot obey God fully if you're living life individually. You must belong to a community. It's insisted on in scripture, but it's also what you were made for. That's why they didn't just devote themselves to the apostles' teaching. It says, it doubles it. It says they devoted themselves both to the fellowship in verse 42 and to the breaking of bread. What does that mean? The fellowship is the same word used later when it says they had all things in common. It's the same root word. Meaning that when they had all things in common, it says that they were giving generously, caring for one another's needs.

21:20 they knew each other well enough to know what their needs were, and they loved each other deep enough to meet those needs. It means that their love for one another did not step at their bank accounts, but it moved through it. And not just that, but it talks about breaking of bread, and that's not probably just at least talking about communion. That wording was not used for communion until later in the second century. But what it probably meant was these gatherings around tables that Christians held. They did life together. They spent every day together. They were constant community together talking about what the Lord did. And what this text is showing us is that you need the church, and the church needs you. We are incomplete without the one another that God calls us to.

22:16 I like the way that Tony Evans says it. A disconnected Christian is a disobedient and unfruitful Christian. We need you and you need us. We need the young believer whose faith is ablaze and yet are a bit naive. We need the older believer who's established and secure and who's not naive. We need the tired mom and her dependence on the Lord. and we need the older woman who's able to bless and encourage. We need the rich to give and to be rich in good works and we need the poor to be rich in faith and receive God's provision. We need the single in your time, joy, friendship and contentment in the Lord. And we need the married in your embodiment of Christ's church. We need those with a broken past to testify to God's grace and we need those with strong families to care for the wounded. We need those from different backgrounds and from different places.

23:09 And we need those from different races and we need those of different ages. We need one another to love one another. We need you and you need us. This is church. This is church. God's plan for your godliness is God's people. You will not grow in sanctification individually. You will grow in sanctification in God's community. If you're serious about obeying God, if you're serious about knowing God, if you're serious about the presence of God, then devote your life to the people of God. That's what God is inviting us to. We must be marked by love, but not just internally, also externally. I was reminded of one of the disciples of the Apostle John. The Apostle John discipled a man named Ignatius. He went by Ignatius of Antioch. And as this man began following Jesus, he was soon persecuted for his faith.

24:06 And at about the age of 70 years old, he was arrested and taken to be killed for his faith. And as he was traveling in chains on the way to his martyrdom, he wrote seven letters to the church. and in those letters, the primary emphasis that he was writing about was unity, humility, and love. And specifically, as he wrote to the church at Ephesus on how to respond to a world that was hostile towards their faith, listen to what Ignatius says. Pray continually for the rest of humankind as well that they may find God for there is in them hope for repentance Therefore, allow them to be instructed by you, or at least by your deeds. In response to their anger, be gentle. In response to their boasts, be humble.

25:01 In response to their slander, offer prayers. In response to their errors, be steadfast in the face. In response to their cruelty, be civilized. Do not be eager to imitate them. we have a love from a God who loved us when we were his enemies and with that love it moves us to love our enemies we do not treat people like people treat us we treat people like Jesus has treated us this is true of the church and it's true for those who oppose it we must be marked by love third we must be marked by God's presence this was no mere friend group that had similar ideas surrounding one another. This was a people, when they showed up, they knew God was going to be there and anything could happen. Shortly after, it says that the apostles were performing signs and wonders because the works that they were doing was supporting the word that they were preaching. But God was on the move here. And as he was on the move here, it says that they devoted themselves forth to prayer, specifically to the prayers. They were committed to the presence of God in both the large gathering and in the small.

26:09 Verse 46 talks about how they met daily in the temple and also in homes. They were committed to the presence of God. And I love as a response to this, you see in verse 43, it talks about how everyone was filled with awe. It's the word fear. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Awe. But simultaneously, if you look down at verse 46, you see that they ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts. That word for joy isn't the normal word used for joy. It's a word that is defined as a piercing exclamation, giddy, exultation. It's kind of like if you've ever been around a friend who started dating somebody that everybody knew was way out of their league. There is this sense of awe and joy. There is this sense of, oh my gosh, how am I dating them?

27:08 And then when they hang up the phone, it's, oh my gosh, how am I dating them? It is awe and it is joy. And let me tell you, we are in a relationship with someone we have no business being in a relationship with. And it's meant to lead us to awe. Like right now, you and I, we believe by the blood of Christ are standing in the presence of a holy God. All. We should not do that. We can't just casually approach the throne of God as if it was nothing. We are coming by grace, made possible by God's blood, expressed through his son, that he's activated in us by his spirit. All. And yet we know him. The unapproachable one has approached us that leads to joy, a shriek.

27:59 and it's this giddy exaltation it's why we start every gathering with singing we can't we can't get a hold of this is insane and when you're understanding that you're marked by his presence it leads you to the sense in our church of this this sincere fear before the lord and yet this unbound joy among his people so when you're getting across the table it's dude i gotta tell you, man. What God has been doing in my life through this word is unbelievable. And what you don't want is just someone across the table with a distant admiration. Oh, that's so nice. God bless you. Be with you in your soul. I'm glad that's working for you. No, no. We want not a distant admiration, but a common inflammation. And so when they hear, it's, are you serious? That's insane. I gotta look at that text all over again.

28:56 But let me tell you this. Look, just two chapters earlier. You guys, this is what God's been doing in my life. Can I tell you about it? Look at the way that verse 46 says that. This is the big and the small. It's blowing my heart up. Are you kidding me? Why? Because you've never seen a large fire burning on one log. Every large fire you've seen has had multiple logs thrown in. And you have never seen a burning Christian apart from community. every kind of Christian who burns for the Lord has people that are throwing logs on the fire because if you're trying to burn alone you will fizzle out and fade but if you want to burn you will get around God's people and you will get inflamed for the things of God we must be people who are marked by his presence but then lastly just as we close we must be a people marked by God's mission. I think we look past verse 47 when he says that every day the Lord was adding to their number of people who are being saved. Every day. One, note who was adding the people. Who was doing the saving? Was it the preacher? Was it the message? Was it the apostles?

30:11 was it the disciples? It was the Lord. The Lord does that. But second, I love that we are part of a church where almost every time we gather, there are people who put their faith in Jesus. It's amazing. And yet, could you imagine being part of a church where more people were putting their faith in Jesus on Monday to Saturday than they were on Sunday? could you imagine walking into church on a Sunday morning and seeing a line at the Jesus's life wall because so many people wanted to put their light bulb in the wall that every day people were being added to our number how's that happen? well certainly in this time it was definitely because of the word that was preached you need to hear the word in order to believe the word but it wasn't just that I believe it wasn't just the love that was expressed.

31:09 I believe there was the love that was embodied. That's exactly what Jesus prays for when he prays for you and he prays for me. In John 17, the future believers, this is what he prays for us. I have given them the glory that you have given me so that they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me so that they may be completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me. and have loved them as you have loved me. That as we love one another with a love that does not make sense to the world, the world looks on and says, wow, there must really be a God that you say is love because the way that you love each other is impossible apart from him. And daily they were added to their number when they saw a love that was embodied, that matched a love that was expressed.

32:04 This is what was happening in the early church there were two big plagues early on. In 1865 AD and in 250 AD, there were two plagues that most scholars estimate wiped out a quarter of the population of Rome, every plague that was had. And in these plagues, naturally, could you imagine a quarter of our population dying? There were people fleeing, people trying to get away from the city. But you can read messages from Christian pastors preaching to their people that this is our moment to stay. This is our moment to care for the sick. This is our moment to care for the plagued, that we might happily die with them. And it was amidst a love like that in these plagues that Tertullian says of what the world was saying about Christians was, look at how they love each other.

33:01 See how ready they are to die for one another. And in view of a love like that, the scholar Peter Brown, a church historian, says it this way, the appeal of Christianity laid in its radical sense of community. It absorbed people because the individual could drop from an impersonal world into a miniature community. And what if at Passion City Church, our story was, we were absorbing people because as the lights of the world grew darker, the light of the church was shining brighter and they could see they can move from an impersonal world into a miniature community of love. We must be a people that is marked by the mission, but that mission will become possible when you see that we first have received the mission that Jesus went on himself.

33:56 To know and to love us so that we might know and love him. And we have been invited into fellowship with him. And so at Passion City Church, what's that look like practically just as we're wrapping up? First, I love that in verse 46, there was the big and the small. Every day they were meeting in the temple, thousands of people, big church. And yet every day it says just after that in the same verse, they were meeting in homes, eating food together. Big church made small day one. Don't you love it? Not the small church, not the big church, the Bothan church. It was structured. They had a time to meet at the temple and it was spontaneous. Who's home we go into today? And that's what I want for us as a church. I like the way Tim Keller describes it. He says, we are meant to be an organized organism. There's structure, but there's life. And so the way that we do that here is you've already made it to one of the primary ways, Sunday mornings, yes and amen.

34:55 But a Sunday morning exclusive church makes obedience to Jesus incompletion incompatible. We've gotta have more than this. It's gonna be hard to obey the one another's in this gathering because somebody like me is talking way too long. We need more. So we also offer connect groups here and I just wanna share briefly on how those function. In our connect groups here, we focus on three things. Accountability, affections, and action. Accountability. Hey, how was the last week for you? Where'd you feed your flesh? Is there anything that you need to confess? You said you were gonna share the gospel with this person. How did that go? Can we pray for you? And then affections, you're stirring your affections. Tell me what you've been learning. What's the Lord been teaching you? What have you been listening to in church lately? And then action, those things that you've been learning, how are you putting those into practice? How are you gonna obey that this week? Who can you share that with?

35:49 And then when you meet in a week or two from then, you come back and you start with accountability. Hey, last week you said that you were going to share with that person. How did that go? Oh, you didn't do it? That's okay. Let's pray to you. You fell in this area? Great. Oh, your victory in this area? That's amazing. This is where the love one and others become possible. This is where gifts are expressed. This is where you grow in sanctification, is in the church. And then as that's happening, inevitably, as love's expanding, people are joining you, identifying new leaders, and their groups will multiply. This is what you see here in this book, and this is what we're meant to see and experience in this church, the big and the small, so that we might be a church to the praise of his glory, that from the love of God, we love other people. And so my invitation for us today is that every person here would consider what step would God have you take to step into the reset of community that you were made for. Three possible steps would be either to join a group.

36:43 Maybe you're not in one. Simple and straightforward. You can scan the QR code. We made it easy for you. Join a group. We've got several online. Second, you can register a group. And I would encourage you, I know a lot of us probably already have these connect groups. You just may not have an official connect group. We've already got people you're meeting with. I would encourage you to register that if it's through Passion City Church. Why? So that we could equip you, so that we could be aware when care needs happen and can come around you, so that we can train you, and so that we could make sure that this is all happening under the authority and accountability of the church. And then lastly, I'd encourage you, maybe you're in a season right now and you've been a believer for a long time, but there's not somebody in your life you're actively discipling or pouring into. I'd consider you to prayerfully look into what it would look like to lead a group. Maybe you wanna apply to lead a group. All of those steps are possible for us as a church.

37:38 But my prayer is that as we take these steps, we would be a church whose love shines bright in a dark world. And that people would know that here, the love is both expressed and embodied through how we love one another. obedience is made possible and we experience the reset of saying yes to what we were made for in the community of God.