Spiritual Growth

[0:00] Praise God for good weather. Man, I've been needing it. I know you have too. I'm glad we can be here together.

[0:13] My name's Tommy, if I haven't met you. I'm glad that we can be worshiping tonight in this space. Very thankful for that. Thankful for the series that we've been doing over the last couple of weeks. It's been a great encouragement to me.

[0:24] We decided to take a few weeks and explore a theme that at least I personally have not spent much time thinking about up until now. We were looking at the state of our society, the state of culture, the, frankly, I think, enormous amount of unrest and anxiety and tension, and really sensing that we as a community need hope and comfort and a vision for life moving forward.

[0:52] And we've found that by looking at John chapter 17 and reflecting on this interesting truth. Often when we think about Jesus and his ministry, we think about the things that Jesus did in his earthly ministry.

[1:07] We think about Jesus living the life that we should have lived, a perfect life. And we think about Jesus dying the death that we deserve to die on our behalf on the cross. And we talk about Jesus' resurrection and the new life that he brings.

[1:20] And yet there's an aspect of Jesus' ministry that, as I said before, I haven't thought much about. And that's what Jesus has been doing ever since that time. And quite simply, Jesus at this very moment, as he has been doing for the last 2,000 years, prays for us.

[1:38] He intercedes on our behalf. And I find it tremendously comforting to think of Jesus praying on behalf of his church. And so in John chapter 17, we get a unique window into the kinds of things that Jesus prays for his church.

[1:55] What is his desire for us, his people? Those of us who are here who are Christians, what does he desire from us? And what would he like to see in our midst? And so that's what we're looking at.

[2:06] And we looked a couple of weeks ago at the fact that Jesus prays for our protection. And then last week, Dan preached on the fact that Jesus also prays for our unity. And then tonight, the last week of this series, it all comes together in the third theme that we see in this prayer.

[2:22] And that is that Jesus prays for our sanctification. Which is a word in the Bible that essentially means to be set apart for a wholly specific purpose.

[2:33] And so as we think about spiritual growth as Christians, what spiritual growth really means for us is growing in our set-apartness. Growing in our ability to be aligned with and devoted to the unique purposes that God has for us.

[2:53] And so that's what we're going to be looking at, the process of spiritual growth, of sanctification as Jesus prays for us to experience. And we see three things about it. First, we'll see the means of sanctification, the means of spiritual growth.

[3:07] How does it happen? Then we'll see the evidence of spiritual growth. How do we know that we're actually growing? And then third, and most important, we'll see the purpose. What's it all for?

[3:17] Why does it matter whether or not we grow in our set-apartness? So with that in mind, let's pray as we get started. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you for setting us apart, for setting this time apart, and this space apart.

[3:33] For us to encounter you, Lord. As we prayed earlier, we pray that your Holy Spirit would come and empower these words to be your voice into our hearts.

[3:44] And we pray that because we need it. And we pray it for your glory. In your Son's name. Amen. So as we're looking at John chapter 17, first of all, we're going to reflect on the means of spiritual growth.

[3:56] How does growth actually happen? And it's important to point out that this is where we see the distinction between the Christian understanding of spiritual growth and what you might think of as the self-improvement culture in our society.

[4:11] The self-help world or the self-improvement world. You know, I did a little research, and the self-help market is an $11 billion market. So tons of money spent on self-help books and videos and speakers and conferences.

[4:29] It's a big world. A lot of money. And yet it makes you wonder, is there anything to this? Are people actually being helped? And there's some research on this. Steve Salerno wrote a book called Sham, How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

[4:46] And in his book, Salerno refers to the 18-month rule. Well, what's that? Well, research shows who are the most likely people to buy self-help materials?

[5:01] People who bought self-help materials sometime in the last 18 months. And what that shows you is that people buy again and again and again and again looking for that promise of help.

[5:13] Right? And the formula is very clear and very effective. The formula essentially plays on our sense of discontentment. Our sense of inadequacy.

[5:24] That sense that pretty much everybody in the world has. And then it promises that the life that you've been dreaming of, the life that you've been longing for, is right here.

[5:34] It's just around that corner. And this book or these techniques or these steps are going to get you just around that corner. You're going to turn that corner and everything's going to be different. So words like breakthrough.

[5:46] Right? You're going to have a breakthrough. It's a very effective formula. It's essentially peddling hope. But the thing is, it's a scam. And more than that, it's promising a kind of quick fix that really doesn't exist.

[6:02] And what we see in Jesus' prayer is that the means of true growth and transformation. Steve says here. I mean, I'm sorry. Jesus says here.

[6:13] Steve. Steve Salerno. Sorry. Still talking about Steve's book. Now let's look at Jesus' book. He says in verse 17, Sanctify them in the truth.

[6:25] Your word is truth. And what he's talking about there is that sanctification, the process of becoming more set apart, more aligned with God's purposes, that happens when we put God's truth into practice.

[6:39] And by truth, he clarifies he means God's word. When that becomes worked into our life. Right? So plants grow by taking sunlight and they convert sunlight into what they need to grow.

[6:58] They work it into themselves and it's converted into growth. And in the same way, Christians are called to take the light of God's truth and convert that into growth. In other words, it's not automatic.

[7:10] It's a process that happens over the course of a lifetime. And in John's pastoral letter, so we just looked at, the gospel reading was from his gospel. The other reading that we had was from 1 John, which is his pastoral letter to the church.

[7:25] And in that letter, he tells us a little more about what spiritual growth actually looks like. And he has this kind of poem that Diana read. And it addresses three groups of people.

[7:36] Little children, young men, and then fathers or elders. And what's important to note about this poem is, these are symbolic categories. He's not literally talking to kids and young men and dads.

[7:49] He's essentially saying that there are different phases of growth for Christians. Different stages of maturity. So what constitutes the first stage of growth?

[8:02] What is a basic baby Christian? Well, here's what he says. Little children are people who have heard and now believe the gospel.

[8:14] They know that they're forgiven through the grace of Jesus and that they're children of God. So little children are those people who know the basic, core gospel message.

[8:25] Through Jesus, you receive grace and you become adopted as a child of God. And that's what makes you a Christian. It's the foundation of our faith. So then the question becomes, well, what is it that takes you from that first phase of the Christian life?

[8:44] What is it that makes the difference between people who grow and people remain spiritually children? And if you look, here's what he says. Here's how he describes the next phase of growth.

[8:56] You, meaning young men, are strong. And the word of God abides in you. And you have overcome the evil one. So what he's saying is this. Here's the difference between people who remain spiritual infants and people who grow.

[9:10] It's people who take God's word and work it into their lives and immerse themselves in it. So that it begins to abide in them. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And then they use it in an active struggle against sin in their life.

[9:25] Right? Right? Right? So they're actively fighting against sin. And they're striving for holiness. And God's word is their instrument of battle. This is how maturity begins to happen.

[9:39] Right? And so there are a lot of implications as we think about this as the means of spiritual growth. But essentially this is saying that apart from God's word, spiritual maturity is not possible.

[9:51] Apart from God's word, we remain spiritual infants. You can come to faith and receive the gospel. But you will remain a child in the faith.

[10:03] Our decisions, our priorities, our dating relationships, our marriages, our kids, all of it has to be worked through the grid of the gospel. Right? We learn to see our celebration through the lens of the gospel.

[10:16] We learn to lament through the lens of God's word. Everything becomes framed by God's word. And you know, over the years I've seen people in our church who have faced enormous tragedy.

[10:29] Enormous struggle. Enormous heartache. Enormous heartache. And I've seen what happens when people take all of that struggle and they open God's word and they allow God's word to shape and to frame and to direct all of those feelings.

[10:45] Right? They use God's word to make sense of that struggle. And I've seen the depth and the maturity that comes from that. There's really no other way to get it. And Advent, by the way, is an Anglican church.

[10:56] For those of you who don't know, an Anglican spirituality, all the liturgy and all the book of common prayer and all that that we use, it may feel odd to some of you. But the whole theory behind that is this idea.

[11:07] That we want to immerse ourselves in scripture. And so all of the common prayer that we use is essentially scripture that's been reformatted to allow us to use it in gathered worship.

[11:18] That's all it is. But it's based on this idea. Total immersion. And one other point I want to make. This also says that part of maturity means developing sound doctrine.

[11:30] In other words, doctrine that aligns with God's word accurately. And there are a lot of different opinions on the role of doctrine in the Christian life.

[11:42] But it's interesting to look at what Paul says in Ephesians 4. He says, be no longer children. He's exhorting the Ephesians to grow. Well, what's the mark of a child?

[11:55] Well, if you look on, he says, a child is someone who is tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. Right? So that's a mark of being a spiritual infant.

[12:08] Right? Is that you don't have any sound doctrine. So people who say, well, you know, I follow Jesus and I believe in Jesus. But the whole idea of doctrine, I just really, I reject that because doctrine just divides people and I just want to follow Jesus.

[12:24] You know, frankly, honestly, the New Testament writers would say that that's very childish. You know? And we're called to have a childlike faith. But not a childish faith.

[12:35] Growing in Christ requires the developing of a sound, comprehensive, integrated theology that aligns with God's word. All Christians in this room are amateur theologians.

[12:49] We're all called to develop a coherent theology that's reflective of scripture. So one more way to think about immersing ourselves in God's word before we move on is an illustration that I use from time to time because I think it's so great.

[13:03] And it comes from the Chicago Shakespeare Improv Company. If you're familiar with this group, every night they do, and if you've been around, you've heard me talk about this before, but I really can't find any better illustration of what we're trying to get at here.

[13:15] So forgive me for the redundancy. But it's essentially a troupe. Every night they perform two 90-minute performances. And they stand up and they say, okay, give me a topic.

[13:26] Give me character names. Give me a plot. And people just shout out ideas. You know, they shout out things, you know. And they say, okay, okay. And then right then, with no preparation, they just begin to improvise an hour and a half of a Shakespearean play.

[13:40] And people watch this and they say, this is magic. This has got to be rigged. How could they possibly do it? No, it's real. But the way they do it is they immerse themselves in Shakespeare. They study it.

[13:50] They learn it. They analyze it. They memorize it. They recite it. They immerse themselves in it. And over time, they develop a kind of Shakespearean instinct. So that you give them a topic and they can improvise in Shakespearean verse.

[14:04] And in the same way, we're called to do that with God's word. Immerse ourselves in it so that it becomes worked into the marrow of our bones and our DNA and it's coursing through our veins.

[14:16] And so when all of these circumstances arise in life, many of the circumstances in life are never addressed in the Bible. Right? Because that's not the purpose of the Bible. But the goal is that we're so immersed in God's word that we develop a kind of word instinct.

[14:32] And we're able to improvise in a word-shaped way in all of the various circumstances of our lives. The only way to do it is the long, hard obedience of immersing ourselves in Scripture.

[14:44] So the means of spiritual growth is God's truth, his word, when we not only learn it but put our lives under it. And then that leads us to the next question. How do we know we're growing?

[14:55] What's the evidence of spiritual growth? And we see three things in John 17. And the first may surprise you. The first evidence of spiritual maturity is joy.

[15:08] It's joy. There are a lot of people who know a lot about the Christian faith but they lack joy. And one of the great examples, one of the great evidences of a maturing Christian is the presence of joy despite circumstance.

[15:24] People who are joyful regardless of what's happening. Right? And joy for Jesus isn't just feeling good. It's the joy that comes from putting the glory of his father above everything else.

[15:35] It's that unique kind of glory. As long as my father is glorified, I'm joyful. Right? And so mature Christians more and more and more put the glory of God above everything else.

[15:46] They can rest in that glory regardless of what's happening down here. Regardless of what's happening in their lives. So that's the first mark of maturity.

[15:56] Joy. So Christian maturity isn't about doing our Christian duty and kind of dogmatic obedience and just doing what we're supposed to do. It's none of that. It's learning how to drink deeply from that well of joy.

[16:09] Of the glory of God. Regardless of what's happening. And of course the more we find joy in God's glory, the more we're going to be drawn together. And so not surprisingly, the next mark of maturity is unity.

[16:22] It's people who are unified. Christians who are unified. Jesus says, I do not ask for these only, but also for all of those who will believe in me through their word. That's us.

[16:33] That they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you. Now Dan preached on this last week, so I don't want to say too much about it. But I do want to point this out. A lot of communities these days, a lot of churches, pursue unity by doing away with doctrine.

[16:50] And they say, in order for us all to get along and to have a cohesive group and to have a unified community, we need to relativize doctrine. So you believe what you want and you believe what you want and you believe what you want.

[17:01] And we'll all agree to disagree on all those things so that we can preserve unity. And if we're reading John 17 correctly, Jesus would say that that's a false unity.

[17:12] It's not a real unity. And the reason that it's false is because it's unity at the expense of truth. But Jesus is not praying for that. He's praying for the opposite of that.

[17:22] He's praying for unity through truth. Unity in the truth. Unity that is derived from the truth. He's praying that we would be unified in the truth of who Jesus is.

[17:35] The truth represented in scripture. The truth of what we're called to be. The truth of the gospel. So unity does not come by saying let's agree to disagree. As tempting as that might be. True unity is when believers are striving together to understand who Jesus really is and what that really means.

[17:52] Resolving our differences. And of course, the more we're devoted to the glory of God and the more that we're unified in the truth of his son Jesus, the more love is going to come to define our relationships.

[18:06] And not just any love, but his love. So the third mark of maturity. We have joy. We have unity. And the third mark is love. Probably the most important. At the end of the prayer, Jesus says, Jesus prays that we would be so consumed with love for God that that love would begin to shape and define all of our relationships.

[18:38] Now there's something that I want to point out about all of these three. Joy, unity, and love. What do they all share? They are all communal measures of spiritual maturity.

[18:51] Not individual. Right? So yes, I want to become more patient. Yes, I want to become more kind. Yes, I want all these things. And all of those things are marks of spiritual growth.

[19:01] But he's emphasizing what? The communal aspects. Which tells us what? An essential aspect of spiritual growth, your spiritual growth, your personal growth, an essential aspect of that is found in a community.

[19:17] That that's how you know. Okay, how do you know you're growing? What are your relationships like? That's how you know that you're growing. Right? So this is one of the main reasons why it's important to be involved in a local church, wherever you live.

[19:31] To be involved in a local church. Listen, you know, there are a lot of people around here who say, well, my church, I have a group of friends, and we get together regularly, and we pray, and we read scripture, and we worship God, and that's my church.

[19:43] And I would say, I'm so glad that you have that, but that is not a church. I mean, self-selecting a group of people that you already like, and already get along with, that's great.

[19:54] But the kind of love that we're looking at here, the kind of joy, the kind of unity, it's really found when you're in a room full of people that you didn't pick, and you look around, and you realize that God has said, that person is your brother, that person is your sister.

[20:14] You may not even like that person, you have nothing in common, and yet somehow you have to figure out how to share joy with them, how to be unified with them, and how to love them sacrificially. And that's when you're going to grow.

[20:26] I'm glad that you have friends, but we're talking about something much deeper, much harder than that. If you really want to spiritually grow, find a local church, does not have to be Advent, find a local church that's centered on the gospel, and pour your life into it.

[20:44] Pour your life into it. It will change your life. Mark my words. It's one of the best ways to grow. One of the last things I'll say about growth, and evidence of growth, comes from the Chronicles of Narnia.

[21:01] I think it's the second book, and Lucy sees Aslan, and Aslan is the lion who represents God in Narnia. It's been a long time since Lucy has seen Aslan, and they're reunited.

[21:13] And it says this. The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and touched her nose with his tongue.

[21:24] His warm breath came all around her, and she gazed up into the large, wise face. Welcome, child, he said. Aslan, said Lucy. You're bigger.

[21:36] That's because you're older, little one, answered he. Not because you are. I'm not. But each year you grow, you'll find me bigger.

[21:48] That's what spiritual growth is. The more mature we become, the bigger God gets, and the smaller everything else becomes, including us.

[22:00] The bigger God gets, right? So the more we grow, the bigger God gets, the more joy that's found in God's glory eclipses everything else, right?

[22:11] The more we grow, the more God becomes bigger, the more we strive for unity and work through our differences, right? The more we grow, and the bigger that God gets, the more his love comes to define our relationships, even above our own preferences and priorities.

[22:29] This is how we know we're growing. Okay, so the means of spiritual growth, God's word. Empowered by the spirit, worked into our lives, right? The measures of growth, joy, unity, love, God getting bigger.

[22:47] Now what's it all for? What's the purpose of spiritual growth as we look at this passage together? Verse 18, Jesus says, As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world, meaning us.

[23:02] And for their sake, I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.

[23:15] Now remember, in John's writing, I just want to clarify, when he says world, he's not talking about geography. World, whenever John writes world, you need to, when you're reading John or any of John's letters, you need to mentally translate.

[23:27] When he says world, what he means is a mentality, a worldview that is set against God, that rejects or ignores God. So the world is the community of people.

[23:39] It's all people everywhere who collectively reject or ignore God in the world that he made. Right? And so Jesus says, just as God sent him into the world, into the midst of people who reject and hate him, so he has sent us into the world.

[23:55] He sent the church. Here's all the people in the world who reject God and God takes his church and plunks it right down in the middle. And he says, that's where I want you to be. That's where I want you to stay. I'm not going to take you out.

[24:05] I want you to stay there. Now why? Why? And this gets to the very heart of what it means to be the church. Some of you are not Christians and this may sound irrelevant to you.

[24:17] But a lot of times, those of us who are in the church lose sight of why we're here. What is all this about? And this reminds us. And simply put, we are meant to be a preview.

[24:29] A preview. Right? A coming attraction. Right? This is what's going to happen everywhere. We're meant to be an embodiment of the new creation, to use the theological language.

[24:43] Right? A vision of the future, here and now. So imagine a big, imagine a big housing building that is just crumbling and decrepit and rotting and the wiring doesn't work and the water doesn't work and it smells like urine and imagine that everybody who lives there is up to their neck in debt and it's rat infested and there's crime and the whole thing is falling apart.

[25:10] And imagine that somebody comes and they say, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to raise this building to the ground. I'm going to scrape it clean. There's going to be nothing left. But then, in its place, I'm going to build a work of art.

[25:26] You can't even imagine it. It's going to be a work of art. It's going to be the greatest, the greatest thing ever built. It's going to put everything else to shame. And instead of driving up the cost of housing and kicking all the people that were here out, I'm actually going to issue an invitation.

[25:42] Because this structure is going to have enough housing to fit everybody. And so I'm going to send out an invitation and anybody who wants to come and live here, they can come. And all they have to do is come and talk to me.

[25:55] And by the way, those people who are in debt, I'm going to pay off all that debt. And not only that, I will cover the full cost for them to live here and have everything they need for all of eternity.

[26:07] And all they have to do is come to me. And imagine that this promise is made to the world and people say, well, what is it going to look like? What's it going to be like? And imagine then this person brings out a scale model and puts it on the table and says, well, this will give you some idea.

[26:23] That scale model, that's the church. That's what the church is meant to be. Right? There's no comparison between this model and the reality. It's just a glimmer. It's just a shadow. Just a foretaste.

[26:34] But it's something and when you look at it, you say, yeah, I get that. And the more you look at it, the more you realize, I want to be a part of this. Sign me up. Who do I talk to? Right?

[26:44] Where's the leasing office? Right? How do I get in? That's what the church is meant to be. Right? When people look at the relationships and the priorities and the values and the unity and the joy and they look at all this and they say, I want that.

[26:59] What do they have? That's the church. That's what we're called to be. I'll give you one example of what this looks like in practice before we close because I think it's important to kind of make this tangible.

[27:12] It comes from the early days of the church when the church was only around about a thousand people. It was around 40 or 50 A.D. Not long after the resurrection and as the first aspects, the first gospels are starting to be conceived of and beginning to be written down.

[27:30] You have about a thousand people. And Rodney Stark, who's a historical sociologist, so this book isn't like some piece of Christian propaganda. This is just an academic who's trying to figure out how did the church grow so quickly over just a few centuries.

[27:44] And he wrote a book called The Rise of Christianity. He talks about the state of the Roman Empire at the birth of the church. And quite frankly, the empire was crumbling. It was crumbling. And you know, we have these images of the barbarian hordes invading Rome.

[27:59] No, that didn't happen. You know what the biggest problem in the Roman Empire was? It was low fertility. They couldn't birth enough children to replace the population that was dying out.

[28:11] And so the barbarians didn't conquer. They just moved in because there were more and more and more abandoned homesteads. So they just came in and just picked up where they left off.

[28:23] And the reason for the low fertility, there's a lot of reasons and Stark goes in depth into all of them, but essentially Rome was a very male-dominated society. And so, and sex and power were very closely linked.

[28:37] And so men felt a lot of freedom to have sex with other men or other women or children as much as they desired. And there were really no checks on that.

[28:50] And because of that, and because of the sort of free widespread availability of sex with whom ever you might prefer, marriage was seen, even by the philosophers, in a really low light.

[29:03] Marriage was seen as a burden and a bother and something that almost we wish we could just do away with it. So men didn't like marriage. They didn't prefer marriage. And even when they did get married, they would often marry a 12-year-old girl or younger.

[29:19] And then often that girl wouldn't survive very long and so then they would marry another 12-year-old girl. And you see how that goes. And along with that, the practices of infanticide, which is, you know, exposing a child and letting it die, or abortion, both of those things were very widespread and actually also encouraged by the philosophers.

[29:38] Abortion back then was very dangerous. A lot of times it resulted either in death or infertility. And most often, the vast majority of the time, abortion and infanticide, those were performed on female children because women didn't really figure very highly in the societal value system.

[29:53] So as a result, Stark estimates that in Rome, the ratio of men to women was 131 men for every 100 women.

[30:05] Imagine that ratio. Out in the suburbs, 140 men for every 100 women. That ratio is insane. So no marriageable women anywhere, right?

[30:18] growing number of men. And into this society, and because of the plummeting fertility rates, the population was beginning to shrink and they couldn't afford all of the elderly people who needed care.

[30:31] They couldn't afford, there were nobody to take care of them, right? And so right into this crumbling society, the Christian church is born. And the Christian church was radically countercultural. They prohibited abortion and infanticide in their own communities.

[30:46] They didn't even try to change policies, right? They had no power. But they just said, okay, in our midst, that's not going to happen. We'll take care of them. Right? They had a high view of marriage.

[30:58] And they talked about how marriage was actually connected to this great story of God loving and giving himself for his beloved. And that marriage is actually something that points to the union of Christ and his church.

[31:09] the bridegroom and the bride. And they said that even that the act of sex has this transcendent power to it. And everybody who heard that, it was mind-blowing. And they thought it was the most beautiful thing they'd ever heard.

[31:21] Right? They also applied the same standards of fidelity to men as were applied to women. And they enforced that. Right?

[31:32] And they gave women a much higher social status than they found anywhere else in society. So not surprisingly, what happened? Well, women flocked to Christianity. Women said, oh, this is the best thing I've ever seen.

[31:44] And so many women came and they brought their unbelieving husbands and then over time their unbelieving husbands came to faith. Right? And because of these practices they began to have more and more and more babies and very soon there was actually in the Christian church, well, the ratio that I said, 140 to 100 men to women, in the church there was actually a surplus of marriageable women.

[32:06] just like Church of the Advent. A surplus of beautiful, highly educated, incredibly eligible women and all they want to do is get married.

[32:17] Right? And they're all in the church. They're the best kept secret in the world. Right there. And as a result there was this explosive growth in the church and in addition to this, one other thing I'll say, when the plagues would sweep through and begin to ravage and people were getting sick all over the place, the pagans would flee.

[32:40] They would run as far as they could away from it and people would abandon their own family members. But the Christians, because of what they believed, because of their counter-cultural values, because of the parable of the Good Samaritan, they stayed and they cared for people.

[32:54] And what happened is amazing. A lot of times all these people needed was nursing care. They didn't need medication, they just needed nursing care. And so estimates say that that kind of care provided probably saved two-thirds of the people who were sick, got better.

[33:09] Because they were cared for by Christians. And then what would happen? Well, then two things. One, they would become Christians. And two, they would then be immune to the illness. And so then they would go and care for other people who would then get better and become Christians and then be immune.

[33:24] And you see how that happened. And so even as Rome fell apart, Stark calculates that Christianity grew at a rate of 40% per decade between the years 40 and 350 A.D.

[33:35] from perhaps 1,000 believers in 40 A.D. to nearly 34 million believers a few centuries later. If you want to know how it happened, that's how it happened.

[33:46] Why? Because Christians were a radically counter-cultural movement. They used things like sex and money and power in radically different ways.

[33:57] ways that didn't reinforce existing structures of power and oppression but ways that actually pointed to a higher way, a greater hope. They lived in a way that provoked questions only the gospel can answer.

[34:13] I want to note that they weren't trying to change policy. They weren't trying to get people into office. They didn't dream of that kind of influence. They were simply being the church.

[34:23] And I think that this is relevant because I think that a lot of the factors that you see that were present in Rome, I think that there's a lot of parallels with our society today.

[34:35] Even the dropping fertility rates among a number of countries in the West. So as we look at this and as we think about the implications of this, as we think about the means and the evidence and the purpose of our holiness, this is what it's all for so that we can be that scale model of new creation.

[34:55] So in a culture of moral relativism and despair and confusion, we could be united in a joy that comes from the glory of God. In a society that is literally being torn apart by racial, socioeconomic, religious conflict, political conflict, that we could be unified in Jesus Christ.

[35:17] And in a society of weaponized shame and hurt and trauma, that we would be a people of love. Not just romantic love, sacrificial love, not only for one another, but for all of those in the community around us.

[35:33] Pouring ourselves out to see them flourish. That's what we're called to be as the church. That's the purpose of our sanctification. So even as we know that Jesus is praying this for us right now, let's join together and pray.

[35:44] soak it up. So, yeah, if you kind of may I shed a challenge that because of this blessing in dismay somewhere, because of how it can be filled up, but for you should or may I shed about you to the future and may have a little bit of not just the fear.

[36:02] It's time. You're going to to be as an aspect. You're going to to be FR because you're right away. If you attract them dark and you