Flipside Christian Church

If you'll permit me

the opportunity to walk you through

something that will be a benefit to you.

These little devices are good
for very little,

but they are good for something.

And one of the things that are good for

is our communication
with you and your connection to the life

and the activity of this church
in a way that allows you

to stay involved, to stay connected,
and to get involved and connected.

And so I want to walk you through our app

that you can access on your phone
if you go to the App Store.

That's our App Center app.

And you would find Flipside
Christian Church.

It's all there.

You would join the app,

then it's on your phone and that would
walk you through the front page.

The front page of our app

always has the most current message
that we just finished.

So on the app right now
is the message from last week.

It's also down at the bottom.

There's these little buttons.

I highlighted them on this picture.

The first the second button
there on the left is the sermons button.

If you click on the sermons button,
it will take you to

where all of our messages are listed
when we meet together on Sunday morning.

If you go to that part of the app,
there's a place where you can take notes,

and all the scripture that I reference
and use is actually listed on the app,

as well as a way for you

to take notes along with the message
that always stays with you on that app.

And you can find every other message
that we've done on that sermons

tab on the app. You with me so far?

The next

button over is a groups A connect button.

If you want to get connected
with a small group or a ministry area.

This is you go there.

This is actually on my phone.

That's those are the four groups
that I'm most regularly connected to

and a part of.

And so this is how we communicate
with our people in our groups

to give notices and updates,
instructions, invites, all of that.

And so if you want to be
a part of a small group

or get involved in ministry,
you go to that connect button

and it'll walk you through the steps
to do that.

Then over one button is the give button.

And this is for those who choose
to give one time

or recurring to the ministry
and the life of this church.

It's easiest done through the app.

You can do it through the envelopes
we have on the tables or the website,

but it's easiest through the app
and there's options there.

You can choose the amount, of course,
and the to recurring weekly,

monthly or other,
so it helps you keep track of your given.

It helps you keep track of your finances.

There's a thing called a budget,

which is fantastic and helps us help
you keep track of your giving.

So we encourage you to use that as well.

And then all the way over
is this general tab with sign ups.

If you signed up for something

or want to sign up for something,
a calendar, check in for different events

or for activities, it's
all there on the app.

You got it.

So if you haven't made use of that app,
please do so.

It's a great way for you to stay connected
and to be a part of the life

of this church,
and for us to stay connected with you. Now

let's get into Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew chapter 16 is a turning point
in the book of Matthew.

It's a turning point
in Jesus's interaction with his disciples.

There's three sections in Matthew
chapter 16

regarding what it is to be a true
disciple.

Jesus is going to lay out
this is what discipleship means,

just so we're all on the same page.

Discipleship
is someone who's committed to Christ

and to his kingdom, rule
and reign in the world.

And Matthew 16 is the turning point.

Jesus moves from miracle and crowds

to confessions and the cross,

and his people who are with him
aren't ready for this.

It's going to it's
going to be a shock to them.

The question is no longer
what can Jesus do?

Now the question is going to be for them
who is Jesus really?

And what does it mean to follow him?

And so Jesus is going to turn the corner

and say, listen,
I've showed you enough of my power.

I've showed
you enough of what I'm capable of.

That's not the question anymore.

You've seen enough.

Now you need to understand
who I really am.

And based on who I am, what it means.

If you're going to say
you're a follower of me.

And so I have a big idea
for this chapter, here's the big idea.

Jesus's church advances

only through disciples who resist

what corrupts faith, who know who he is,

and who pay the high price
of following him.

Jesus is going to say in this chapter,
I will build my church,

and this is the first place
in all of Scripture that that word

church is used and Jesus claims
authority over it.

He says, I'm
I'm the builder of the church.

First words ever use.

It's a Greek word called ecclesia ekklesia
out of called ones.

And he says, I'm going to do something
unique here.

I'm going to create this thing
that the world has seen yet, and I'm

going to be in charge of building it,
and I'm going to advance it

through my disciples who resist
what's going to corrupt their faith,

who understand who I am

and who pay the high price to follow me.

And so let me let me just read verses
five through 12.

This is the first section
where Jesus unpacks

this big idea

in verse five.

When the disciples reach the other side,
they had forgotten to bring any bread.

Let me just pause right there.

So is there something traveling with Jesus

for a while and two chapters earlier?

They're in this in kind of springtime.

It's beautiful outside.

All these people come to listen to Jesus,
and they're with the travel a long way to

to listen to them teach.

And they find themselves in a position
where nobody has any food.

And it's getting late in the day
and they're hungry.

Jesus says, feed themselves
like we don't have any food.

There's 5000 men.

There's probably 20,000 total.
Where are we going to get all this food?

Jesus says, what have you got?

They stole some little kids lunch.

They had five loaves and two fish

and he multiplied it
so there were 12 baskets left over.

That just happened.

And then in the last chapter,
they're in the same general,

different time of year,
kind of the hot summer.

The grasses died.

There's now
4000 people that have followed, plus

women and children, and they're
in the exact same position, he says.

Take care of them the like.

We don't have anything.

And they said, don't worry about it.

He multiplies
a little bit that somebody had

and they got seven baskets
left over a food. So.

So they've seen Jesus power, okay.

They've seen what he can do.

And now they cross back over the lake

and they forgot to bring bread.

I'm going to come back to that
in a minute.

Jesus said to them, watch him.

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees
and Sadducees.

And they began discussing it
amongst themselves, saying,

we forgot to bring bread.

But Jesus, aware of this, said, oh,
you have little faith.

Why are you discussing among yourselves
the fact that you don't have any bread?

Do you not perceive?

Do you not remember
the five loaves for the 5000?

And how many baskets you gathered,
or the seven loaves for the 4000?

How many baskets you gathered?

How is it that you fail to understand
that I did not speak about bread?

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees
and Sadducees.

Then they understood

that he did not tell them
to beware of the leaven of bread,

but of the teaching of the Pharisees
and Sadducees.

So they're in this scenario again, where
they're where they were there without.

Why, why did they

just come from this time
with seven baskets left over?

Why are they in now, this position? Where?

Where did that go?

Where did they lose it along the way?

They obviously didn't
bring the seven baskets with them.

What happened?

I want to suggest to you this.

Jesus is going to get very pointed
by the end of this chapter.

He's going to start softer,
and he's going to get progressively

deeper and more demanding.

And he starts with this idea that,

listen, I'm going to build my church,
but it's going to happen through disciples

who protect themselves
from what could corrupt their faith.

And and so he's going to deal

with the teaching of the Pharisees
and Sadducees in the context of bread.

Now the disciples
think he's worried about food.

Jesus didn't worry about food.

The disciples
think he's worried about resources.

Jesus isn't worried about resources,

I think,
and I can't prove this in the Bible.

It's just my holy imagination.

I think they didn't
bring any food with them. Why?

Because they just saw Jesus multiply food
over and over again.

And so I honestly think they're like,
why we carry these baskets around?

Let's give them to everybody else.

Because if we get hungry,
just going to make more, you understand?

So that's why I didn't have any.

I think they gave it all away

because at this point they're not worried
about their resources. Why?

Because they're with Jesus.

Here's what I know.

It's easy to give other people stuff away.

Right?

It's harder to give your own stuff away.

But they understood that what they had
wasn't theirs.

It came from the gracious hand of God.

And it's easy to give away.

What Jesus
is going to press into this whole idea

that the cross is costly,

but missing discipleship is costlier.

If discipleship.

Please understand this.

If discipleship is not tangible,
it's only theory.

To be a disciple means God.

I understand that everything you've given

me comes from your hand graciously,
and so I hold it very loosely.

I can give my baskets away.

Do you follow so far?

And Jesus says, I want you to be careful.

The level of the Pharisees.

I'm not worried about bread.

I want you to be careful
of their teaching.

And when he says the 11th, their teaching,
the literal word is is their doctrine.

And he says, here's
what's going to happen.

Their doctrine is going to seep in.

And if you're not careful, you're going
to let bad doctrines seep into your faith,

and it's going to make you get Jesus off
center of your life.

The doctrine of the Pharisees.

The doctrine of the Pharisees
was the Pharisees believed the scriptures.

They just added a lot
to how to obey the scriptures.

And so they ended up elevating
their teaching more than Scripture.

So you had to do everything their way
and prove your righteousness

and earn a right standing with God.

The. For the
Pharisees, it was about looking righteous

and measuring their spirituality
by their externality.

The Sadducees

had their own separate doctrine
or leaven or teaching.

They were religious people
who subtracted from Scripture.

They read the Bible, they read Scripture,
they just subtracted from it.

So the Pharisees added to it,
the Sadducees subtracted from it.

And the sad
to see subtracted from Scripture

everything that was supernatural,
everything that was spiritual about God.

It was just a simple, moralistic

political system for them.

And so what you had is, is, is you had one

who added to the Word of God
because for them it was just too simple.

Mercy and grace.

That's too simple.

Yes, God loves you, but you got to add,
you got to be right.

You got to do some stuff.

The Sadducees,

they subtracted from God's Word
because his word was just too much.

And if we're not careful,
we're going to take

the simplicity of the gospel.

Right with the father through the son,

because of his mercy and grace,
not because of what we do.

Then being indwelt with the Holy Spirit
in power and in strength to obey,

we're going to take the simplicity of it,
and we're going to get pushed off center.

We're going to add stuff to it.

Well, it is bleak,
but you better do stuff right now,

or we're going to take stuff away from it
and say, well, honestly, it's,

you know,

if you just look like a good moral person,
like, don't worry about the whole Spirit

of God stuff.

And Jesus is saying it.

When you get off center of Scripture,
the little that creeps in

is going to spread like leaven or yeast.

That's what leaven is in dough.

You put a little bit of yeast in
and it just spreads this.

You got to be very careful because it's
the little stuff spreads quickly

and it spreads pervasively.

A little bit of legalism

spreads a little bit of skepticism,

spreads a little bit of doubt,

a little bit of worldliness
spreads a little bit of materialism

spreads a little bit of greed,
a little bit of unbelief.

It all spreads.

And Jesus is going to get to this place
of saying, look,

I'm going to build my church,
but if you're going to be my disciple,

there's some demands I want to make of
you, and it's going to be costly.

And he's going to

press into this entire idea
of his provision in our lives.

He says, you're going to be tempted
to think that what you have,

you've provided for yourself
and your for going to forget

that I'm at the center of it
and I provided it for you.

And because of that, you're this, this
leaven of the culture is going to seep in.

And that leaven.

Is fear based scarcity,

that we're going to get so fearful

of losing what we've gained.

It's going to choke out

the realization that God is our provider,

that everything that we have comes
from his hands.

See, the disciples

had to be very careful

of the leaven of belief
that their security is

came in what they kept
rather than who they followed.

And we got to

be very careful at the same thing.

This 11 of the culture will seep into us
and believe

that our security resides
in what we keep rather than who we follow.

And I think this is one of the areas where
disciples started to get stuff right.

They just gave everything away

that they'd gotten from Jesus
because they were with Jesus.

Listen,

when you're walking with Jesus,

you don't have to hoard.

Does that make sense? Why?

Because everything I have comes from
his gracious hand anyway.

And when I'm walking with him,
I don't have to hoard it.

You know, for me, there's an incredible
theological statement

that as I as I remember,
every time I drive down Avenue 12,

when I drive by
the new Daryl's mini storage,

for me,

it's a theological and doctrinal statement
that a little bit

11 of materialism and greed

has seeped into people's lives.

And people live with this, this,
this doctrine, this fear of scarcity.

So I have to keep it all.
I have to keep so much.

So I gotta go pay money to store it all.

See, the fact is,

when you have Jesus,
you don't need to hoard.

That false

doctrine C in order for this
to kind of false, this false

to creep in you,
we don't have to deny God completely.

We just got to move Jesus off of center
a little bit.

Like,

we don't have to say for bad doctrine
to seep through my life.

I don't have to say I reject God.

I just got to take Jesus
and move him off the side

and put something else in the center.

And it happens so easily and so quickly,

and it gets so pervasive

pretty soon.

My life, my schedule, my money, my

everything is all about all this other
stuff.

And Jesus is over here and he gets some,
no doubt.

But he's not center anymore.

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees

of the culture.

And so Jesus is going to deal with
this whole idea of generosity.

And we have to understand that
generosity begins when fear loses its grip

because faith remembers
the faithfulness of God.

That's where generosity begins.

I can begin to understand
the joy of generosity

when my fear of scarcity loses
its grip on my life, because my faith

remembers the faithfulness of God,
the one who makes baskets out of

a few fish and loaves.

So Jesus says, look,
I'm gonna build my church.

And and it's going to be built
by disciples who understand

who the necessity
to push back against all the stuff

that's going to corrupt your faith.

And I'm going to build
my church on disciples who know who I am.

Watch this verse 13.

Now when Jesus came into the district

of Caesarea Philippi,
everybody say, Caesarea Philippi.

I'm gonna tell you
that about that place in just a minute.

He asked his disciples,
who do people say that the Son of Man is?

And they said, some say John
the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others

Jeremiah,
and one of the or one of the prophets.

He said that question that Jesus asked
that question doesn't matter.

That question.

Who do people say that doesn't matter?

That wasn't even the question.

That was the question
to get to the question.

And so Jesus asked,

he said to them, but who do you say I'm?

That's the question.

Doesn't matter what everybody else
says, doesn't matter

what coach is a doesn't matter
what says doesn't matter.

What are you. Who do you say that I am?

Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ,
the son of the living God.

And Jesus answered
him, blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah.

That means son of Jonah.

That was his daddy's name for flesh
and blood, if not revealed that to you,

but my father who is in heaven,
and I tell you, you are Peter.

And on this rock I will

build my church in the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it.

I will give you the keys
of the kingdom of heaven,

and whatever you bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven,

or whatever you loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.

Then he strictly charged his disciples
to tell no one that he was a Christ.

He pulled him aside.

Philippi shall, and I have been there.

When we went to Israel.

Sassari of Philippi was a pagan,

super like gentile area.

There were 14 temples
in Cicero of Philippi.

To all these gods Bale worship
Zeus, worship Pan, the Greek god,

worship all the.

And so it was a hotbed for all these
beliefs and religious systems.

Everybody had their idea
of what their God was like.

And Jesus takes the disciples

in the middle of all this stuff
says, listen, who does everybody say I'm

because they've got all these thoughts
about who God is.

And despite some say, John the Baptist,

who else is Elijah?

Jeremiah?

Those were admirable responses.

They're just insufficient.

They're admirable, but insufficient.

Jesus says, who?

Who do you say I am?

You know why
they responded with these ideas?

Like like John the Baptist.

Elijah. Jeremiah.

Because Jesus, like all those people,

embodied part of who
Jesus was in his in his ministry.

John the Baptist was super hardcore
and demanding.

And he was
he was like, he didn't pull punches.

Guess what? Neither did Jesus.

You get down to who
Jesus was in this theology

and what he demanded of his disciples
in very demanding.

Elijah was.

He was called the the man of God,
of the prophets and the called down.

And Jesus was the man of power.

Jeremiah was the weeping prophet.

He wore emotions on his sleeve
and he wept over the people.

This incredible emotive emotion.

And that was Jesus as well.

So they
all had great ideas and they admired him.

That was just completely insufficient
of who Jesus was.

And out of Peter's mouth
he blurts out, you are the Christ,

the son of the living God.

That was a declarative statement
that Jesus was

God in the flesh, the Messiah
that they had been waiting for.

It was a profound statement.

Nobody had ever made that statement
about this man before.

This was the declarative statement
and Jesus is responses.

Blessed are you,

for flesh and blood didn't reveal it
to you, the Spirit of God.

Peter was speaking by the Spirit of God.

He wasn't even aware of it,
like the Spirit of God

just came upon him
and he blurted this out and he was right.

He is the Christ,
the son of the living God.

And Jesus said, I will build
my church on disciples who know who I am.

Who is Jesus to you?

Those.

If you know who Jesus is according
to Scripture, you are the one that Jesus

will use to build his church
and he's going to do it.

He has been, and he still is through
people who know who he is, because those

who know who he is will not allow him
to get pushed off of center

and will pay the high cost
of following him

because he's worthy of it
and will count it

a joy to do so.

And Jesus says this thing.

He says, you are now Peter,
and on this rock I will build my church.

I want you to stand what he's saying.

His name was Simon bar. Jonah.

Simon, son of Jonah.

Jesus, you are now called Peter.

That word Peter is Petrus,
which means little pebble,

part of a bigger rock.

This is on this rock.

I will build my church.

That's Petra, a huge jutting rock cliff.

And he's saying, Peter, great confession
didn't come from you.

Don't get cocky.

You're a chip off the old block.

You're a pebble.

And on this confession,
it wasn't on Peter.

I'll build my church. It was this Petra.

The confession
that Christ is the son of the living God.

That's what the church is built
on, is not built on a man.

And I have a lot of Catholic friends.

Let me say this as gently as I can,
and maybe not so gently.

Peter was not the first pope.

Peter wasn't a pope at all.

Peter couldn't lead anything.

Peter didn't even leave the lead.

The first church, James
led the first church.

And then Peter was corrected by Paul.

And so there's no such thing
in the biblical record

or standard or church record
or standard biblically, where Peter

was the Pope and passed down to another
pope during the Pope John the Pope.

That is hogwash.

The church was built on Peter's,
built on the confession of Peter.

That didn't come from Peter,
came from the Holy Spirit.

Do you understand that?

And he will build.

His church grew. People
understand that confession of who he is.

He is the Christ, the Son of living God.

And I will not allow him to get pushed off
sinner in my life.

That's what he's saying.

If Jesus is the Christ,

his mission outranks my comfort.

That's
what he's saying about being a disciple.

The church is not built on vague
admiration to Jesus.

It's built on the true confession

that he is the Christ,
the Son of living God, and deserves

preeminence and priority and center
in my world.

A foggy Christian creates a failed church,

and this has got to be our confession.

He deserves it all.

See, the scope of the details of my life

must agree with my confession of who
Jesus is,

the scope and the details of my life,

of my schedule, of my agenda,
of my goals, of my priorities, of my time,

of my, of my trust, of how I handle worry,
what I do with my finances.

It all must align
with what I confess about Christ.

That he is the Christ,
the son of the living God.

He is center and will not be moved off.

Sinner.

Let me read verse 21 through 23.

From that time
Jesus began to show his disciples

that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer
many things from the elders and the chief

priests and scribes, and be killed,
and on the third day be raised.

And Peter took him aside
and began to rebuke him, saying,

far be it from you, Lord,
this shall never happen to you.

But he turned and said to Peter,
get behind me, Satan,

you're a hindrance to me, for
you are not setting your mind

on the things of God,
but on things of man.

What a change.

I want you to know something.

Jesus starts talking to them.
And what does he tell him?

He said, this is my future.

What's he tell him?

I just read it for you.

You got it in your Bibles. What's.

What's he tell him.

Listen, most of us are like Peter.

What did you say?

So it's going to suffer and be killed.

What else did he say?

I'm going to be raised.

And this is what we do.

We're just like Peter.

All we hear is the bad.

All we hear is the negative.

All we hear is the tough.

All we hear is what it costs.

What Peter should have
said is no big deal.

You're going to raise.

What are we worried about?

Why did I get so?

Have you ever had someone, like,

do a little speech or whatever,
and they get this

big blank piece of paper,
they draw one black dot in the middle and

say, what do you see?

And what's your response?

The black dot

is what Peter did.

He saw the black dot.

Just like I got all this resurrection
that's waiting.

All that is going to cost is worth it.

Peter, why do you get so stuck on the cost

and miss the joy of the result?

C Peter wants

Jesus's kingdom without Jesus's suffering.

And we're the same.

We want Jesus's mission,
but without personal cost.

And if we're going to be disciples,

Jesus is going to say this.

It's going to touch our comfort.

And if following

Jesus never touches my comfort

and my schedule and my wallet, it hasn't

touched my life.

Listen,

the devil doesn't mind confessing Christ
as long as he can

keep us from confessing the cross.

Because discipleship involves the cross.

Let me say this.

I'm going to say it bluntly.

Across list.

Christianity is not a safe version
of Christianity.

It's a satanic distortion of Christianity.

Across list.

Christianity is not a safe version
of Christianity.

It's a satanic distortion of Christianity.

This is the temptation of Jesus
in the wilderness by Satan himself.

You can have the worship

as long as you don't go to the cross.

A discipleship
that is not cost cross costly

is no version of Christianity all.

It's a satanic distortion of it.

Jesus will say, you want to follow me?

Take up your cross

to follow Jesus without the cross.

Is this a distortion of what

it means to be a disciple?

Following

Jesus in principle, but not in
practice isn't discipleship it's branding.

24 through 28

Then Jesus told his disciples,
if anybody would come after me,

let him deny himself, take up his cross,
and follow me forever, would save

his life, will lose it, and whoever loses
his life for my sake will find it.

For what will a profit a man to gain
the whole world and and forfeit his soul?

Or what
will a man give in return for his soul?

For the Son of Man is going to come with
his angels in the glory of his father,

and then he will repay each person
according to what he has done.

Truly I say to you,
there are some standing here

who will not taste death until they see
the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

That phrase right
there is going to be fleshed out

a little bit in this next
chapter of chapter 17.

You'll see it next week,
so I'm not going to deal with that.

We'll do it that next week.

I want to go back up to verse 24.

You want to come after me,
you want to be my disciple.

Take up your cross.

I'm going to give you two tough truths.

You ready?

Across list.

Christianity always protects self first.

It always protects my safety,

my comfort, my future,
my resources first because it's cross

less.

And money is one of the clearest places

where discipleship gets tested.

Jesus is going to press into this

and said, listen,
the reason why this is so difficult,

why denial of self is so difficult,

and please understand.

That Jesus isn't calling us to less life.

He's calling us out of a lesser life.

He says, I want you to deny yourself.

I'm not calling you to less life.

If you don't deny yourself,
you're going to live

in a lesser life.

You're going to forfeit that

which is most important.

And Jesus knows that the reason
why this is so difficult for us

is because our resources
and our money represent things

that we are very important to us
our safety, our comfort, our success,

our control, our self-preservation.

We think that all comes from our hand.

And so we want to hoard it all. See,

and this is this is so touchy
because it hits every one of us.

We can say finances is a place
where we can say, Lord with our lips,

but claim mine with my wallet.

See discipleship
that never rearranges our schedule,

our agendas, our resources.

It is a discipleship
that hasn't reached our heart yet.

So Matthew 16.

Is about what surrendered discipleship
looks like.

I'm going to protect myself

from everything that's going to crowd in
just to move Jesus off.

Sinner.

I'm going to protect myself

and make sure that I understand who he is
the Christ,

the son of the living God.

And because of who he is, he demands

first place in everything, sacrificially.

And generosity is one of the most
evident places that surrender.

Discipleship actually is visible.

Said.

What's it going to do for you to gain
and fund all your hobbies

and not my kingdom?

What value is it

in you to rearrange your schedules
around your children's whatever,

and not rearrange your children's
schedules around my church?

I want to invite you
into this opportunity,

and I want to start
that invitation with this.

Thank you for your incredible generosity.

I did a lot of research this week

nationally and worldwide,
and I want you to understand,

as far as missions and church planting

giving is concerned nationally,

your church flip side is in the top 1

to 2% of every church
in the nation, in the percentage

we give of all of our income
that goes to church planning emissions.

Yeah, you can clap for that.

That's all right. That's about you.

We've not diverged from that.

We've never robbed from that
to pay other stuff.

We won't do that.

There's a lot of churches
that claim to give a lot.

They might in their minds do that.

We actually do.

I'm not even talking about benevolent
stuff and community outreach stuff

and others.

I'm talking just missions and church
planning, the top 1 to 2%.

And then there's when I say there's
no other church who gives like we do,

to missions and church planning,
I mean it.

We sell the time you don't give to us,
you give through us.

That's not changing.

So thank you.

A lot of you have been very, very,
very generous for a long time.

Some of you are just beginning
to be generous.

Thank you. It's going to other people.

Jesus. I'm gonna build my church.

I'm gonna do it through these disciples.

You're part of the disciples
that are doing it.

It's incredible.

And I've asked Tom.

He takes
care of our financial record keeping,

and I've asked him to send out
the end of this month.

Your six month statement.

Just let you know where you are
in your generosity of funding this church

that Jesus is building around the world.

I want you to see
and I want you to be thankful.

Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity

to be gracious and generous,
to not live with the fear of scarcity,

to understand that all you've given
me comes from your hand.

I can give it all away
because you're going to replace it anyway.

I want you to see that and take joy
in what you've been able to do.

And I want you to see where does
that compare to where you were last year?

The year before, year before.

But I want to invite you into this.

Jesus is built in his church
as he said he would.

And this is part of the church
that he's building right here,

right in the Maywood Center.

We got a great opportunity.

I talked to you a few weeks ago about
the new entryway we want to do there.

That's still on the table.

We want to get that done.

But there's other stuff
that we need to do as well.

We've had.

These are the second group of chairs
that we've bought in 20 years.

You don't look too closely at them.

One I want and I want to get

I want to couple inches narrower too,
because

we need to fit
a little bit more people in here.

It'll be a good reminder for us maybe.

There's all kinds of stuff we got to do.

We just we got the new office over there
for our staff.

It's fantastic.

The guys are doing great.

We're finding a lot of issues
once we open up walls.

The air conditioner
unit up there just died.

We're ready to move in this week.
It just died.

But that unit was manufactured in 1990.

We got 36 years out of it.

That ain't bad,

but there's a lot of those
in this building, in this whole property.

So a lot of parking lots.

Don't forget,
there's a lot of stuff that we have to do

and he's going to keep building.

There's a lot of people
coming to our church.

There's a lot of people, I love you,

I love your invitations,
but it's going to require more.

And so here's, here's here's
our opportunity.

Here's what it looks like
150,000 more dollars of what we have

normally been been giving, and 50,000
more dollars as a church.

That's pretty easy.

Might sound easy on the front end,
but let me tell you how easy that is.

It's already
been front loaded with $28,000.

And so what?

That means a couple different options
is this if you're a giving you

in this church 1200 more dollars,

that's what it means over
and above your regular ties and offerings.

If we just start with there's
more than 100 giving us.

But if we start with 100,

giving units 1200 more dollars
over the course of whatever,

we're there.

Now, some of you
let me just tell you, some of you,

you could
you could take care of that right now.

Matter of fact, you could take care of
that about five times over right now.

Some of you can.

And if that's that's great.

Others of you are like 1200

like maybe over a year I could spend.

Fantastic. Here's the thing.

I would rather us
give recurring a little bit

than one time a whole bunch, because
we're not doing a funding campaign.

We're building disciples.

And discipleship is about regular,
recurring discipleship.

Does that make sense?

Some of you are thinking, 1200 bucks,
that's no problem.

Others you're thinking 200 bucks.

You're out of your mind.

You're out of your mind.

I get it. I'm
not asking that of everybody.

I'm asking it
for those who are willing to.

But if you can't buy your chair,

it's a $60 chair.

That's how much this is going to cost.

$60 a chair.

Set aside a little bit every month
just by your chair,

and they commit to buy someone else.

This year you got a high school.
Do you know how to a high school kid?

Make them go.

Most of them longs to buy their chair
to be really good for them.

Invest in the kingdom a little bit.

Do you follow?

You understand what I'm.

I've been struggling.

We're going to move forward
as if this is a done deal,

because I believe it is.

Because God's

name is still,
still Jehovah Jireh, our provider.

He hasn't changed his name yet.

He's not going to

because I trust who he is
and I trust who his disciples are.

Men and women, young and old,

who understand I'm not going to let Jesus
get pushed off center in my world,

and I'm going to protect myself
from everything that's creeping in on it.

And I am going to be one of the ones

who denies myself

because I believe God's going to continue

building his church through this church,

and the sacrifice is worth it.

And I'll do it with joy.

Jobe disciples.

You ready?

So, disciples,

you ready?

Take up your cross.

Deny yourself.

Let's follow him.

Father. Thank you.

You are a good God.

Thank you that you love us.

There's nothing that we could do
to make you love us less.

There's nothing we can do to make
you love us more.

Think that you've called us
into a lofty calling,

a great calling.

Thank you that you.

You guide. You provide.

Thank you for the disciples in this church

that are not going to allow you
to get pushed off center of their life,

that are going to protect themselves

from all those things
that are going to creep in on it,

and that are going to choose
to deny themselves, to take up their cross

in costly ways and follow you with

wholehearted, unashamed obedience.

God do that in us.

It's our privilege
and our honor to be about your world, work

in this community and around the world.

What an honor.

Jesus, you are the Christ,
the son of the living God.

You deserve it all.

In your name I pray. Amen.

Listen, I would love to blame me
going over on a six minute video.

That's part of it.

The other part of it is
there's just a lot for us to talk through.

Thank you. You did well.

I asked Jeff to wrap up the service
in a certain way during this week

that has gone out the window
because of the time.

And so we're going to do a little bit.

You guys are going to wrap it up.
However you're going to wrap it up.

Thank you.

Im glad you're guitars work in and

I want you to stand up
Jeff Alley Band, take it away.