WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.660 Well, it is the month of September, and I don't have to tell you, everything is ramping up right 00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:12.280 now. There's a lot going on, a lot launching. School is underway. Sort of feels like the year 00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:18.780 starts for many of us in the D.C. area in September. And so, we treat these weeks in 00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:24.960 September as launch weeks. A lot of our programming kicks off, and we typically use these few weeks 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:30.140 in September as a time to revisit who we are, why we're here as a church. And so, that's what we're 00:00:30.140 --> 00:00:36.280 doing this year. Last week, this week, and the next week, we're looking at who we are, why we're here. 00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:42.320 Church of the Advent exists to join people to God, to join people to one another, and then to join 00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:48.040 people to the ongoing work of Christ's renewal that's happening here in D.C. and through D.C., 00:00:48.039 --> 00:00:56.079 the rest of the world. And last week, we looked at the gospel and how God desires to and makes it 00:00:56.079 --> 00:01:01.420 possible to have a relationship with Him. How do we become joined to God? This week, we're looking 00:01:01.420 --> 00:01:09.379 at the second part of this mission statement, joining people to one another. Now, if you're new 00:01:09.379 --> 00:01:15.400 to our church or unfamiliar with this aspect of our church, it might strike you as odd that one of the 00:01:15.400 --> 00:01:21.000 three things that we say we focus on. One of the three reasons that we're here is to join people 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:26.820 to one another. You might say, well, there's lots of ways that I can join with people. Now, with the 00:01:26.820 --> 00:01:31.840 internet, there's even more ways to join with people. Why would I need a church to help me join 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:37.719 with other people? And why would an institution like the church make that one of the main three things 00:01:37.719 --> 00:01:43.420 that they focus on with all of their time and energy and money and everything else? This is the work 00:01:43.420 --> 00:01:48.960 of community formation, but why is it so important? And why is it so important that we would put it in 00:01:48.960 --> 00:01:55.680 this list of things that we exist to do? And the answer is simply that this vision for community 00:01:55.680 --> 00:02:01.180 formation in the church didn't actually originate with Church of the Advent. It originates with God. 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:08.400 It's God's original vision for humanity. And it was always God's vision for humanity from the very 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:13.840 beginning. And we're going to look at Isaiah chapter 56 this morning, verses 1 through 8. 00:02:14.219 --> 00:02:18.340 And what we're going to see here is God's vision for the kind of community that He's building 00:02:18.340 --> 00:02:23.040 in the world. And we're going to answer two questions. Why does it matter? Why does community 00:02:23.040 --> 00:02:28.640 matter? And then what is it supposed to look like? And these are things that we're going to reflect on 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:34.420 as we think about the church that we are called to be here in the D.C. metro area. Let's pray, 00:02:34.419 --> 00:02:39.659 and then we'll open God's Word. Lord, we thank You for Your Word, and we thank You for 00:02:39.659 --> 00:02:46.179 Your ability to speak through it. And I pray that wherever our hearts may be this morning, 00:02:46.299 --> 00:02:52.279 some of us may feel very close to You. Some of us may feel very far away. Some of us may feel like 00:02:52.279 --> 00:02:57.560 we are in a place where we belong. We have lots of friends and community here. Others may feel lonely 00:02:57.560 --> 00:03:03.659 and feel left out or excluded, Lord. Wherever we're coming from this morning, I pray that You would use 00:03:03.659 --> 00:03:09.199 Your Word to minister to us. Only You can speak to us where we are. Only You know what we need. 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:15.039 We pray that You would do that, and then in ways that only You can, You would use Your written Word 00:03:15.039 --> 00:03:20.519 to bring us into the embrace of Your living Word, Jesus Christ. And it's in His name that we pray. Amen. 00:03:22.659 --> 00:03:30.240 So, community, God's community, why does it matter? Isaiah chapter 56 verse 1 says, 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:36.159 Thus says, Thus says the Lord, thus says Yahweh, Keep justice and do righteousness, 00:03:36.659 --> 00:03:44.640 for soon My salvation will come and My righteousness be revealed. Now, in the book of Isaiah, when He refers 00:03:44.640 --> 00:03:53.140 to…when God refers to My salvation, that's a very loaded, complex term. There's a lot behind it that 00:03:53.140 --> 00:03:59.840 needs to be unpacked. In fact, there's a whole story bound up in this word salvation that has been 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:06.560 unfolding throughout history. This is what theologians call salvation history. So, when God says this, 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:14.439 what He's really saying is the climax of salvation history is soon to be revealed, right? Therefore, 00:04:14.699 --> 00:04:20.420 keep justice and do righteousness. So, what's going on here? Well, we have to go back to the beginning of 00:04:20.420 --> 00:04:27.899 the story to understand what's being said in Isaiah. In the very beginning, God created human beings to bear 00:04:27.899 --> 00:04:31.799 His image in the world. For those who are in the adult Sunday school class this morning, this is 00:04:31.799 --> 00:04:36.839 exactly what we talked about. God created human beings to bear His image in the world, and He tells 00:04:36.839 --> 00:04:42.879 them to be fruitful and to multiply. Because His vision is that human beings would become this great 00:04:42.879 --> 00:04:51.699 family that spans the globe, and that this great family that spans the globe would all reflect His image. 00:04:51.699 --> 00:04:57.539 And God's vision for humanity is that we would, as this great family, do three things. We would bear 00:04:57.539 --> 00:05:03.599 His image in the world, we would love God and one another, and we would take care of the world that 00:05:03.599 --> 00:05:10.060 God made through the various vocations that He had given us. We would create culture and make stuff out 00:05:10.060 --> 00:05:14.300 of the stuff that God has made. That was God's vision, and then we would do that as a community. 00:05:14.300 --> 00:05:21.300 But you get to chapter 3 of Genesis, and you realize human beings decided that we had a better plan in 00:05:21.300 --> 00:05:26.040 mind. We no longer wanted to live for God's purposes. We wanted to live for ourselves. 00:05:26.960 --> 00:05:33.319 We wanted to choose autonomy. Autonomos. We wanted to be a law unto ourselves. 00:05:34.540 --> 00:05:38.780 Now, living in the postmodern West, we're highly individualistic here in our country and in our 00:05:38.780 --> 00:05:43.980 society, and you hear that, and I hear that, and we might be inclined to think, well, that's not so bad. 00:05:43.980 --> 00:05:49.900 You know, living for ourselves, deciding for ourselves right from wrong, that doesn't really 00:05:49.900 --> 00:05:56.460 seem… nobody's died or anything. And then we begin to reflect on the reality of what's happening 00:05:56.460 --> 00:06:01.340 here. What we need to understand is that God actually created us to live and to work together, 00:06:02.300 --> 00:06:06.480 that that was God's design from the very beginning, was that we would live and work together with Him 00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:11.700 and one another in community. And a great analogy is to think of a symphony orchestra. 00:06:11.699 --> 00:06:22.339 How is it that an orchestra is able to create such beautiful music? How is it that an orchestra 00:06:22.339 --> 00:06:30.779 is able to play a symphony together? On the one hand, each musician has their own instrument. 00:06:31.860 --> 00:06:38.459 They play their own part. They have a kind of individual identity. But in order to make this 00:06:38.459 --> 00:06:44.859 beautiful music, they all need to do two things, they need to play their part with their eyes fixed 00:06:44.859 --> 00:06:53.099 on the conductor, who is God. And they all need to play according to the same sheet music. Everybody 00:06:53.099 --> 00:07:00.620 has the same sheet music. And so, God's vision was a lot like a symphony orchestra. We all play our 00:07:00.620 --> 00:07:06.539 individual part in life depending on how God has made us and wired us and the vocation that He's given us. 00:07:06.540 --> 00:07:11.879 But we are all meant to live out that vocation with our eyes fixed on the great conductor, 00:07:12.080 --> 00:07:19.260 who is God. And we live our lives according to the sheet music of God's purposes for us and for the 00:07:19.260 --> 00:07:25.160 world. And the Bible says that when we all do that, when all human beings are playing their part, 00:07:25.340 --> 00:07:31.220 looking to the same conductor, playing the same sheet music, we are capable of extraordinary beauty 00:07:31.220 --> 00:07:36.720 and harmony. And the Bible actually says that all of creation flourishes. This is what the Bible calls 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:43.480 shalom. Everybody playing their part and it creates this wholeness, this fullness where creation is doing 00:07:43.480 --> 00:07:50.080 what it's supposed to do. So, when human beings decide that we want to live for ourselves, 00:07:50.500 --> 00:07:56.160 that would be like musicians. Imagine these musicians over here. That would be like musicians ignoring the 00:07:56.160 --> 00:08:03.300 conductor, rejecting the authority of the conductor, tearing up their sheet music, throwing it out, 00:08:03.439 --> 00:08:10.000 and then starting to make whatever noise they want. So, now if you look at the world, instead of an 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:18.540 orchestra, the world is full of solo performers. It's an almost… it's an ever-growing number of billions 00:08:18.540 --> 00:08:26.100 and billions of solo performances. Everyone performing on their own tiny little stage for 00:08:26.100 --> 00:08:32.320 their own tiny little audience. And the result is that everything starts to come apart. The relationship 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:37.440 between God and humanity starts to come apart. The relationships between people start to break down. 00:08:37.899 --> 00:08:44.440 Nations have to be established, and national borders have to be secured and protected, and nations war 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:50.740 against other nations over limited resources, and societies are riven by injustice and exploitation and 00:08:50.740 --> 00:08:57.240 violence and racism and classism and all of the other isms that cause such misery. And we even see this in 00:08:57.240 --> 00:09:06.980 our closest personal relationships as the song, as the symphony gives way to discord and chaos. We see that in 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:14.220 our most treasured relationships. We all want people in our lives who know us and love us, 00:09:14.220 --> 00:09:20.899 and yet think about your closest relationships, the people that you most love. The path of least 00:09:20.899 --> 00:09:28.300 resistance in any relationship is to come apart. In other words, if you don't pour time and energy and 00:09:28.300 --> 00:09:33.100 effort into your relationships, the path of least resistance is that they will come apart. 00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:39.759 Right? So, we have to pour energy into sustaining them. And even the best relationships 00:09:39.759 --> 00:09:48.580 include conflict and strife, right? This is all because of the discord of the fall. And so, 00:09:48.620 --> 00:09:55.980 the Bible tells us that this is where it all originates. And it says that this is all a result 00:09:55.980 --> 00:10:00.340 of the fact that we've chosen to live for ourselves instead of God. Right? That's the fall. 00:10:00.340 --> 00:10:08.780 But the story didn't end there. God didn't abandon His plan for this great community. Instead, 00:10:08.980 --> 00:10:14.080 He begins to build a new community. He comes to Abraham and He says, I'm going to start the creation 00:10:14.080 --> 00:10:18.980 project over with you. I'm going to bless you. You're going to have a lot of descendants. I'm going 00:10:18.980 --> 00:10:24.200 to turn them into a great nation. They're going to be my people. And I'm going to bless all of the 00:10:24.200 --> 00:10:28.519 nations of the earth through this community. This is going to be my community in the world. It's going 00:10:28.519 --> 00:10:33.639 to be what failed to happen. The first go-around with Adam and Eve, I'm going to start over with 00:10:33.639 --> 00:10:39.600 you. And yet, we all know the story. If you read again and again, this new community is formed. 00:10:39.860 --> 00:10:43.919 They're called Israel, but they fail to be the kind of community that God called them to be. 00:10:44.019 --> 00:10:48.039 And they fail again and again and again. Instead of blessing the nations, they become like the nations. 00:10:49.079 --> 00:10:54.399 So, by the time we get to the prophet Isaiah, it all seems pretty hopeless. In the first few 00:10:54.399 --> 00:11:00.340 chapters of Isaiah, we see that God is looking to this community to be a place of peace and justice, 00:11:00.959 --> 00:11:07.259 but instead He sees violence and bloodshed and injustice. And He brings judgment on His people. 00:11:07.819 --> 00:11:15.939 He allows Jerusalem to be destroyed. And it looks as though the story is going to end in failure. 00:11:15.940 --> 00:11:24.340 But, as we often see in Scripture, the story doesn't end here, and God doesn't abandon His plan for 00:11:24.340 --> 00:11:32.200 humanity. So, in the book of Isaiah, God begins to describe this servant, capital S, servant. 00:11:33.060 --> 00:11:37.860 This servant who's going to come and do what no other human being has ever been able to do, 00:11:37.980 --> 00:11:44.500 what no other society has ever been able to do, what Adam failed to do. Isaiah 55 says, 00:11:44.500 --> 00:11:50.879 this servant is going to establish a new community. This is going to be a community of people who have 00:11:50.879 --> 00:11:56.559 been forgiven and set free by God's grace. This is going to be a community of people who pick up the 00:11:56.559 --> 00:12:02.539 song of creation again. They pick up their instruments, and they begin to play while looking 00:12:02.539 --> 00:12:09.379 to the conductor. They begin to play the sheet music of God's purposes. They begin to live a life where 00:12:09.379 --> 00:12:13.980 they love God, and they love one another, and they begin to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth 00:12:13.980 --> 00:12:17.980 by drawing them into relationship with God. And you're reading this, and you're thinking, well, 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:24.340 this is amazing. Who is this servant? When's this community going to be established? And for centuries, 00:12:25.460 --> 00:12:31.180 religious leaders debated and wondered, who is this servant? When is the servant coming? 00:12:31.860 --> 00:12:35.519 What is this community going to look like? And everybody had their idea of when it was going 00:12:35.519 --> 00:12:43.679 to happen and what it was going to be like. Until one day, a young man enters a synagogue in Nazareth, 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:51.980 and as was his custom, he takes the scroll of Isaiah, and he unrolls the scroll, and he finds the place 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:57.579 where it talks about this community. And he finds the place where it talks about this servant who is going 00:12:57.579 --> 00:13:04.139 to make this community possible, and the salvation that this servant is going to bring to the whole world. 00:13:04.139 --> 00:13:10.480 And he reads these verses aloud in the synagogue, and then he rolls up the scroll, and he hands it back 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:15.539 to the attendant, and everybody is waiting to hear what he's going to say, and he preaches the shortest 00:13:15.539 --> 00:13:25.539 sermon in history. Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, and everybody's amazed, 00:13:25.539 --> 00:13:33.399 and they know exactly what he's saying. Jesus Christ is that servant Isaiah promised would come, 00:13:33.399 --> 00:13:40.259 which means what about the church? The church, the community that Jesus is establishing, 00:13:41.459 --> 00:13:48.459 the church is the fulfillment of this prophecy in Isaiah. This is the new community described in 00:13:48.459 --> 00:13:56.100 Isaiah chapter 56, which we heard read a moment ago. We are the Jesus community, the one that Isaiah 00:13:56.100 --> 00:14:02.299 promised would come. But the story doesn't end there, right? If you keep reading in Isaiah, 00:14:02.299 --> 00:14:07.319 the final few chapters of Isaiah, you see that this community is established. But ultimately, 00:14:07.319 --> 00:14:12.199 this isn't just about blessing this community. God's salvation and blessing extends through this 00:14:12.199 --> 00:14:18.799 community to the whole world. And the vision gets so big that it can only point to one thing, 00:14:20.159 --> 00:14:27.879 the consummation of all of history, the new creation. So, if you keep reading Isaiah, 00:14:27.879 --> 00:14:32.700 you see that we as the church have a part to play in the coming of this new creation. 00:14:34.059 --> 00:14:40.960 So, we take all of that and we come back to the first verse, right? Do justice and righteousness 00:14:40.960 --> 00:14:46.639 because my salvation is hand. What's God saying? We're approaching the climax when I'm going to bless 00:14:46.639 --> 00:14:52.299 the whole world. Now this community has been established. Keep justice and do righteousness and 00:14:52.299 --> 00:14:57.000 do all of these things that I'm telling you. Why? Because you as the church are meant to be a living 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:03.120 preview of the new creation that I'm bringing into the world. When people look at you, they are meant 00:15:03.120 --> 00:15:10.460 to see a shadow, a hint, a glimpse of what will ultimately be true of the whole world. So, that's 00:15:10.460 --> 00:15:15.600 why he's saying, do these things, be this kind of community. I want to show the world what I'm doing. 00:15:17.679 --> 00:15:24.139 So, that's why our community matters so much. That's why the church is so unique, is the church alone 00:15:24.139 --> 00:15:31.259 is the only institution that is meant to be a living preview of all that God is doing in the world, 00:15:31.259 --> 00:15:39.360 right? So, this is why, you know, in the postmodern West, we're so individualistic that we tend to 00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:45.019 think of salvation as kind of a personal thing. You know, I come, I say the right words to God, 00:15:45.379 --> 00:15:50.799 God forgives me, and then I get right with God. But the Bible simply doesn't have that category. 00:15:50.799 --> 00:15:57.779 The Bible deals with it entirely in terms of community formation. Jesus dies on the cross 00:15:57.779 --> 00:16:06.519 so that we can be joined into this new community. God is bringing salvation through this new community. 00:16:07.399 --> 00:16:15.159 So, the point is this, if you want to experience this kind of inward renewal, the impact of God's 00:16:15.159 --> 00:16:20.639 saving presence in the world, if you want to be taken up in the story of salvation, you have to 00:16:20.639 --> 00:16:27.919 immerse yourself in this new community, which is the church. And, you know, on a very practical level, 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:33.139 that doesn't just mean listening to sermon podcasts and worship music in your car or on your headphones. 00:16:33.259 --> 00:16:39.399 It means pouring yourself into this community that God is establishing. It means serving and investing 00:16:39.399 --> 00:16:44.919 time and energy because this is how God works in the lives of His people, right? If you want to 00:16:44.919 --> 00:16:50.439 experience God's saving presence in your life, it happens through this community that we read about 00:16:50.439 --> 00:16:58.299 in Isaiah chapter 56. So, that's why it matters so much. What's this community supposed to look like? 00:16:59.179 --> 00:17:05.900 What is our community called to look like in the world? This community is meant to present the world, 00:17:05.900 --> 00:17:11.160 as we said, with an alternative to what they see everywhere else. And God's vision in Isaiah is 00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:14.759 that people would look at this nation and that nation and these people and those people, and then 00:17:14.759 --> 00:17:20.259 they would look at His people, and they would see something markedly distinct and different, something 00:17:20.259 --> 00:17:25.140 that they haven't seen anywhere else, and that they would be drawn in like mauls to a flame, 00:17:25.759 --> 00:17:31.060 right? They would be drawn in. They would be captivated by the beauty of what they see 00:17:31.059 --> 00:17:36.799 among God's people. So, what is it supposed to look like? Well, here's some of the marks of this 00:17:36.799 --> 00:17:43.179 new community. Isaiah 56, 1 through 8 is almost like a charter, right? Here are the qualities that 00:17:43.179 --> 00:17:50.539 mark this community as distinct. Number one, in the rest of the world, it may be normal for there to be 00:17:50.539 --> 00:17:56.179 immorality, injustice, and oppression. In the rest of the world, it may be normal for the strong to trample 00:17:56.180 --> 00:18:02.820 the weak. Not so in my community, God says. He says, when people look at my community, 00:18:03.080 --> 00:18:09.700 I want them to see justice and righteousness. You know, these two words translated justice and 00:18:09.700 --> 00:18:15.720 righteousness, they're paired together dozens of times in Scripture. And together, they call for two 00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:24.880 things that we don't often see held together these days, personal holiness and social justice. 00:18:25.600 --> 00:18:31.380 And the relationship between these two is explained by the Bible scholar Alec Mateer. He says it this way, 00:18:31.839 --> 00:18:39.000 he says, righteousness means being in right relationship with God and therefore being committed 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:46.720 to putting right all other relationships in life. My vertical relationship is put right, 00:18:47.140 --> 00:18:53.000 and I am therefore, as a part of that, I am compelled to put right all horizontal relationships 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:59.140 in my life, in my family, in my friendships, in my neighborhood, in my city, in the world. 00:19:00.539 --> 00:19:05.859 And it's important to note that because typically these days in our society, churches tend to 00:19:05.859 --> 00:19:11.299 emphasize one over the other, which is very easy to do. It's, you know, there are some churches that 00:19:11.299 --> 00:19:17.339 tend to emphasize personal holiness and the need for preaching the gospel and seeing people put in 00:19:17.339 --> 00:19:23.039 right relationship with God and then living righteous lives as a result. But those same churches tend to 00:19:23.039 --> 00:19:28.819 get pretty uncomfortable when we talk about social justice, because the word justice can mean so many 00:19:28.819 --> 00:19:34.619 different things and not all of them biblical. And so, it's easier to avoid that language. 00:19:34.619 --> 00:19:39.779 On the other hand, there are churches that tend to emphasize social justice, and they tend to get 00:19:39.779 --> 00:19:45.959 uncomfortable with the language of personal holiness, because it can often sound pious and 00:19:45.959 --> 00:19:50.679 judgmental, and so it's easier to avoid it. And so, I think what we need to understand when we read 00:19:50.679 --> 00:19:57.739 passages like Isaiah 56 is that justice and righteousness, if we understand what these two 00:19:57.739 --> 00:20:03.799 words mean together, we realize that we can't have one without the other, right? We can't have a right 00:20:03.799 --> 00:20:11.579 relationship with God unless we're seeking justice and caring for the fatherless and the widow and the 00:20:11.579 --> 00:20:17.919 immigrant in our midst. You can't seek true justice if you're not devoted to God's definition of justice 00:20:17.919 --> 00:20:23.099 and His desire for holiness among His people. They need each other. They're mutually dependent 00:20:23.099 --> 00:20:29.899 on one another, and so we need both. So, that's the first thing. God says, injustice and oppression may be 00:20:29.900 --> 00:20:33.600 normative out here, not so in my community. I want people to see justice and righteousness. 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:40.780 Number two, God says, in the rest of the world, it may be normal for people to be slaves. 00:20:42.100 --> 00:20:46.540 And you say, I'm not a slave. I know that there are slaves, but I'm not a slave. Well, 00:20:46.780 --> 00:20:53.100 it may be normal for people to work all the time, to be slaves to money or career or productivity, 00:20:53.099 --> 00:21:00.519 to be tyrannized by our taskmasters in our pockets. But God says, when people look at my community, 00:21:00.519 --> 00:21:08.019 I want them to see people who live in freedom. When people look at my community, I want them to 00:21:08.019 --> 00:21:13.679 see people who keep my Sabbath. And you say, well, that's kind of a weird thing to focus on. Of all 00:21:13.679 --> 00:21:18.119 the things that you could say, keep my Sabbath, what we need to understand is keeping the Sabbath is a 00:21:18.119 --> 00:21:24.859 shorthand way of talking about a lifestyle of covenant faithfulness, right? So, here is a Sabbath 00:21:24.859 --> 00:21:32.059 keeping lifestyle. People who place their highest priority on worshiping God on the Sabbath, and then 00:21:32.059 --> 00:21:39.419 they structure the rest of their week around that. People who are willing to make less money, who are 00:21:39.419 --> 00:21:45.879 willing to be less productive, who are willing to risk being passed over for promotions because their 00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:51.760 priority is on their relationship with God and their family and their kids and their friends. 00:21:53.620 --> 00:22:01.080 A Sabbath keeping lifestyle means rejecting the breakneck speed, the fast-paced lifestyle. 00:22:01.500 --> 00:22:08.560 It means ruthlessly eliminating hurry, to quote the title of that book. It means a lifestyle that 00:22:08.559 --> 00:22:17.039 God prioritizes rest and spiritual health and comes out of a place of rest. And you say, well, that sounds 00:22:17.039 --> 00:22:21.899 entirely unrealistic. You don't know anything about my life. God is saying, yeah, it is unrealistic because 00:22:21.899 --> 00:22:29.519 it's normative to do the opposite. That's the thing that sets this community apart. And by the way, this 00:22:29.519 --> 00:22:34.940 doesn't just mean doing this for ourselves in our own lives. It means ensuring part of Sabbath observance 00:22:34.940 --> 00:22:39.420 in the Old Testament is making sure that the people around you are able to live this way as well. 00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:44.019 It particularly talks about servants and hired hands. Make sure they're not working either. 00:22:45.620 --> 00:22:51.059 You know, so a number of you are in leadership positions in your organizations. You know, 00:22:51.120 --> 00:22:54.340 entrepreneurs, you have people working for you, you started businesses, you're working, 00:22:54.740 --> 00:22:57.539 you're leading and managing teams, and you have direct reports. 00:22:57.539 --> 00:23:04.259 This means being the kind of community where if you're in a position of influence and you're over 00:23:04.259 --> 00:23:08.879 managing other people or leading other people, it means that you don't push them to work all the time. 00:23:09.379 --> 00:23:13.159 You don't squeeze every drop of productivity out of them that you can. 00:23:14.519 --> 00:23:20.599 You don't create a culture in your workplace that rewards people who work seven days a week, 00:23:21.079 --> 00:23:26.799 nights and weekends. It means that you actually create a culture in your workplace that allows 00:23:26.799 --> 00:23:33.119 people to rest and spend time outside of work. You allow them to take the time off they need to be 00:23:33.119 --> 00:23:38.079 with their family, to be with their kids, right? If somebody's sick, you give them the flexibility to do 00:23:38.079 --> 00:23:44.819 that. All of that is implied. God says, when the world looks at my community, I want them to see 00:23:44.819 --> 00:23:50.740 those kind of people, those kind of workplace cultures. Number three, in the rest of the world, 00:23:50.740 --> 00:23:56.619 it may be normal for communities to exclude others for all kinds of reasons. 00:23:56.799 --> 00:24:05.259 But God says, I want my community to be a radically inclusive community to all who desire a 00:24:05.259 --> 00:24:13.539 relationship with me. You know, there's a lot of talk about inclusion, but God says the only way we 00:24:13.539 --> 00:24:21.779 can be truly inclusive is if it's people who are completely devoted to me. The only way we can truly 00:24:21.779 --> 00:24:26.859 welcome in the nations is if those nations allow me to welcome them into my presence first. 00:24:27.420 --> 00:24:32.480 And He gives two examples of people who would have been treated like outsiders at the time this was 00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:38.180 written, two sort of primary examples of people who would have been excluded, eunuchs and foreigners. 00:24:39.819 --> 00:24:45.639 Eunuch is a kind of catch-all term for people who are not called to marriage and family for a variety 00:24:45.640 --> 00:24:51.840 of reasons. Jesus in Matthew chapter 19 actually refers to different kinds of eunuchs. Some are eunuchs 00:24:51.840 --> 00:24:57.960 by choice. They have chosen essentially career over family. They've said, I want to focus on my career. 00:24:58.860 --> 00:25:03.480 I don't have time for marriage and kids. I'm going to focus on my career. So, in the ancient days, 00:25:03.540 --> 00:25:08.560 there were certain positions in the highest positions of power that you could only attain if 00:25:08.560 --> 00:25:13.120 you allowed yourself to be castrated as a man. And so, people would say, okay, I'm going to do that. 00:25:13.119 --> 00:25:17.799 Sometimes it was forced upon them, but many other times they did it by choice because they wanted 00:25:17.799 --> 00:25:22.479 to attain those highest positions of power. So, this would be people who have chosen family, 00:25:23.019 --> 00:25:26.439 chosen career over family. Some are unmarried even though they really want to be married. 00:25:27.479 --> 00:25:33.279 You know, some live in kind of unwanted singleness. Some have been born with certain conditions 00:25:33.279 --> 00:25:39.099 that mean they're not going to get married or they can't have kids. And then others, Jesus says, 00:25:39.099 --> 00:25:43.679 they're actually single by choice. They're single like Jesus was single. They're single like Paul, 00:25:43.779 --> 00:25:47.419 the apostle Paul was single. They're single because they want to devote themselves exclusively 00:25:47.419 --> 00:25:53.619 to the work of the kingdom of God. And so, God is saying to all of these people, to all of these 00:25:53.619 --> 00:25:56.859 who lived in a world, by the way, where if you didn't have a nuclear family, you were thought of 00:25:56.859 --> 00:26:02.919 as a total failure. It was like a death sentence. Your only legacy, your only way of having significance 00:26:02.920 --> 00:26:07.019 was your children, your offspring. That's where all of your meaning was to be found. 00:26:07.740 --> 00:26:14.759 But God is saying to all of these people, this is the place for you, right? If you fall in any of 00:26:14.759 --> 00:26:21.160 those categories, this is the community for you. If you don't have a nuclear family, in the church, 00:26:21.259 --> 00:26:25.320 you're going to find spiritual moms. You're going to find spiritual dads. You're going to find spiritual 00:26:25.320 --> 00:26:30.120 brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. You're going to 00:26:30.119 --> 00:26:36.439 find all of the family members you could ever want. If you feel like your life is meaningless because 00:26:36.439 --> 00:26:42.299 you've not been able to have kids for whatever reason, God says, I can give you a name better than 00:26:42.299 --> 00:26:47.299 sons and daughters. What He means by that is, I can give you a source of significance. I can give your 00:26:47.299 --> 00:26:57.259 life meaning in a way that goes way beyond sons and daughters in this community. You know, there are many 00:26:57.259 --> 00:27:05.940 in our culture these days who increasingly see the nuclear family as an outmoded way of doing life. 00:27:06.039 --> 00:27:12.079 And so, there's a push now, a growing push, to sort of abolish the nuclear family as normative. 00:27:12.599 --> 00:27:16.960 So, for some… and I've heard some people in our church have sort of said, you know, when I go to work, 00:27:17.539 --> 00:27:24.940 being married with kids feels archaic. I feel like I'm old-fashioned because I'm married and have kids. 00:27:24.940 --> 00:27:32.080 And it feels like an outmoded way of life. But then also, in churches, there can be this swing 00:27:32.080 --> 00:27:37.539 way far in the other direction where there's this overemphasis on marriage and family as the only 00:27:37.539 --> 00:27:43.740 viable way to be a fully formed adult, right? Where if you're single, then you're sort of treated… 00:27:43.740 --> 00:27:49.259 you're kind of not a kid, but you're not treated like a fully formed adult. You're sort of in a… 00:27:49.259 --> 00:27:54.640 you're on deck for adulthood, but you've got to find somebody to marry, right? Now, nobody would say 00:27:54.640 --> 00:28:00.299 that, but I think in a lot of churches, that can be the implicit message. And I think this is saying 00:28:00.299 --> 00:28:06.200 that in the church, we need to push against both errors. We need to be a community, on the one hand, 00:28:06.259 --> 00:28:13.740 where marriages are supported and strengthened, where godly parenting is promoted and encouraged, 00:28:13.740 --> 00:28:20.960 right? But on the other hand, we need to be a church where singleness is upheld as a complementary 00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:26.839 and, in fact, necessary, and if you were to ask the Apostle Paul, maybe even preferable calling 00:28:26.839 --> 00:28:34.359 that exists alongside marriage, that it's not just a step on the way to adulthood, that it's its own 00:28:34.359 --> 00:28:40.000 calling, whether for a season of life or for all of life, and that the church needs to operate in a way 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.720 that recognizes that. And the church needs to have a vision of community that says, actually, we need 00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:50.460 each other. We need to be in one another's lives. We need to be involved in one another's day in, day 00:28:50.460 --> 00:28:56.640 out, right? Married people with kids benefit from having single people in their lives and around their 00:28:56.640 --> 00:29:00.900 dinner tables. Single people benefit from having married people in their lives. You know, I'm somebody, 00:29:00.980 --> 00:29:06.119 if you know anything about me, I got married when I was 30, and for much of my kind of late teens, 00:29:06.180 --> 00:29:09.980 early 20s, I had this deep fear of getting married because of some of the experiences 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:15.920 I had growing up and my sense of marriage from that. And the thing that God used to heal that 00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:22.319 in me and to give me a vision for what marriage could be was several married couples who I became 00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:28.259 friends with through church and seminary who just opened their doors to me. And so, for several years, 00:29:28.380 --> 00:29:33.160 I just got a front seat to these marriages. I got to see fights. I got to see squabbling with kids. 00:29:33.220 --> 00:29:37.660 I got to see parenting. I got to see people who love each other and live life together. I got a vision 00:29:37.660 --> 00:29:43.180 for what it could be like, and that deeply healed my whole sense of things. I overcame my fear of 00:29:43.180 --> 00:29:48.640 marriage and commitment, and I think that's how God prepared me to enter into marriage with my wife 00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:54.420 and parenting with my kids. God used those married couples in my life. And so, I've personally 00:29:54.420 --> 00:29:59.040 experienced the benefits of that, and I see again and again and again in our community the beauty of 00:29:59.040 --> 00:30:04.759 people, regardless of whether you're grandparents, parents with young kids, married with no kids, 00:30:04.759 --> 00:30:09.680 single by choice, single not by choice, that all the different people in the different lifestyles, 00:30:09.740 --> 00:30:13.619 the more we are intermingling, the more we are sharing our tables and our lives with one another, 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:20.599 the richer and the deeper and the more, I think, like the Isaiah 56 community we will be. 00:30:22.059 --> 00:30:27.160 And then we have this final category of foreigners. Just a couple of minutes left, but we've got to talk 00:30:27.160 --> 00:30:33.600 about this category, this example. You know, at one point in history, Israel was an ethnic group. 00:30:33.820 --> 00:30:40.759 They were a nation state. But God is saying that was just one point in history. The ultimate purpose 00:30:40.759 --> 00:30:46.480 of Israel, as salvation history unfolds, all of the racial and ethnic barriers are going to come down. 00:30:47.580 --> 00:30:51.259 This new community that God's building in the world is a multiracial, multicultural, 00:30:51.259 --> 00:30:57.279 in fact, if you look at Revelation, even multilingual community of people who are all devoted to Him 00:30:57.279 --> 00:31:02.900 from every tribe, tongue, and nation. And God is saying when people look at the church, when they 00:31:02.900 --> 00:31:09.220 look elsewhere, when they look elsewhere, they may see racial division and people sorting into smaller 00:31:09.220 --> 00:31:14.039 groups based on class or ethnicity. But when they look at the church, I want them to see a beautiful 00:31:14.039 --> 00:31:17.700 community. I want them to see a community unlike any they've ever seen anywhere else. 00:31:17.700 --> 00:31:23.500 I want the church to inspire imaginations and to give people a vision of what race relations 00:31:23.500 --> 00:31:31.200 can look like. Now, that doesn't just mean a culturally white church becoming more diverse 00:31:31.200 --> 00:31:37.080 by attracting a certain percentage of non-white attenders. That's not the vision that's in Isaiah 56. 00:31:38.140 --> 00:31:45.840 This is a vision of deep integration, of deep community, where there's profound equality. 00:31:45.839 --> 00:31:52.119 This means doing the hard work of understanding the dynamics of race in our community. It means 00:31:52.119 --> 00:31:58.019 understanding the history and the way that this continues to impact lives today. You know, 00:31:58.039 --> 00:32:02.159 it means the willingness to enter into really hard, difficult relationships where we're going to be 00:32:02.159 --> 00:32:07.259 challenged to reflect on things that are highly uncomfortable. It means a willingness to share power. 00:32:08.139 --> 00:32:12.939 It means a willingness to build relationships across lines of difference. It means willing to do a whole 00:32:12.940 --> 00:32:19.500 lot of listening. It means a whole lot of self-reflection. But this is the vision that 00:32:19.500 --> 00:32:25.019 God is painting for the world. When you look at my community, I want you to see something you don't see 00:32:25.019 --> 00:32:31.820 anywhere else. So, in all of these ways, God is calling His new community to present the world with 00:32:31.820 --> 00:32:36.799 this alternative to what they see in the rest of the world. And you ask, okay, well, what's the application 00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:43.899 here? Well, does this mean that we just need to get to work? Well, there's more. There's more than that. 00:32:44.740 --> 00:32:50.099 This is not something that we can do in our own strength. That's the point, right? This vision 00:32:50.099 --> 00:32:54.799 feels unrealistic, and that's because if we rely only on ourselves, it is unrealistic. 00:32:56.379 --> 00:33:04.839 In Acts chapter 8, there's a man who is both a foreigner and a eunuch, the ultimate outcast, 00:33:04.839 --> 00:33:11.619 according to Hebrew culture. And this man's going along. He's an official. He's high up. He works in 00:33:11.619 --> 00:33:17.579 the halls of power. He's from Ethiopia. And he's reading this part of Isaiah, and he's reading this 00:33:17.579 --> 00:33:23.480 description of this community, this beautiful community. And he wants to know who is this servant 00:33:23.480 --> 00:33:28.099 who is making this kind of community possible, the kind of community where a person like me, 00:33:28.179 --> 00:33:33.179 who desires to worship the Lord, would be welcomed in instead of having the door slammed in my face. 00:33:33.180 --> 00:33:38.660 Who's the person who's going to make all of this possible? And so, the Holy Spirit brings Philip 00:33:38.660 --> 00:33:43.160 to this man as he's going down the road, and Philip tells this man about Jesus. 00:33:44.759 --> 00:33:49.519 Tells him about the servant, Jesus Christ. And the man says, what do I need to do to be a part of this 00:33:49.519 --> 00:33:56.200 community? And Philip says, well, you need to be baptized. And so, right then and there, he's baptized. 00:33:56.200 --> 00:34:02.460 Now, we think of baptism as just maybe a kind of ceremony that we do, but baptism has a profound 00:34:02.460 --> 00:34:09.900 meaning. Baptism means that this Ethiopian eunuch is willing to let go of his old identity, 00:34:11.519 --> 00:34:16.920 right? He's an Ethiopian, not an Israelite, right? He's a eunuch, not married with kids. That's where 00:34:16.920 --> 00:34:23.699 the dividing lines are drawn. But he's willing to put off the Ethiopian-ness. He's willing to put off 00:34:23.699 --> 00:34:30.159 the works in the halls of power-ness. He's willing to put off the eunuch-ness of his old identity. 00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:34.639 And he's willing to allow those things to be subsumed into this new identity that he gains 00:34:34.639 --> 00:34:41.299 through baptism, this identity that's rooted in the identity of Jesus Christ. And what we see here is 00:34:41.299 --> 00:34:46.539 that this kind of community, the kind of community that Isaiah is describing, it's only possible if 00:34:46.539 --> 00:34:52.900 people are willing to allow those old identities to be subsumed into the identity of Jesus Christ. 00:34:53.639 --> 00:34:58.139 All those things continue to define us. They continue to exert an influence on our lives. 00:34:58.519 --> 00:35:04.820 But the main thing that defines us, the main thing is that I'm in Christ, and you're in Christ, 00:35:04.920 --> 00:35:09.039 and you're in Christ, and you're in Christ, and you're in Christ, and we're all in Christ. 00:35:09.599 --> 00:35:14.420 And that is how this community is actually attained if we allow Jesus to redefine us. 00:35:14.420 --> 00:35:21.119 So, this is what this is saying to us this morning. The world is full of solo performers 00:35:21.119 --> 00:35:28.340 performing on their tiny little stages, everyone living for themselves. But God's vision for the 00:35:28.340 --> 00:35:34.980 church is that we would take up the great symphony of creation and new creation, that we would turn our 00:35:34.980 --> 00:35:40.780 eyes to Jesus, the great conductor, and that we would join the music that is already echoing 00:35:40.780 --> 00:35:48.880 in the halls of heaven. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this community. 00:35:51.160 --> 00:35:56.340 It would be easy for our eyes to be drawn to ways that we feel like we might fall short of this. 00:35:57.280 --> 00:36:03.560 I pray that that would only kindle us, kindle in us a greater hunger and thirst for you. 00:36:03.559 --> 00:36:09.259 Lord, I pray that it would, it would whet our appetite and make us hungry to come to this table, 00:36:09.639 --> 00:36:16.139 that we would receive you in this meal and be strengthened to live out this vision that you 00:36:16.139 --> 00:36:22.880 have for us in the D.C. area, Lord. And I pray that we would do this with the power of your Holy Spirit, 00:36:23.139 --> 00:36:28.400 Lord, for our good, but ultimately for your great glory. In Jesus' name, amen. 00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:28.519 Amen.