Anyhow, thank you very much Andy for praying for our neighborhood. If I haven't said it yet, my name is Greg.
I don't always remember. My name is Greg. I'm one of the lead pastors here at the church.
And today we're going to be starting a nine-week series that we call
The Blueprints. The Blueprint. This is a series that we actually do about every four years.
And part of the reason we do that is because it is kind of an essential
discipleship plan that we developed and wrote so that we would have ways to offer people,
okay, this is how you can continue to grow. Nine years ago when we were laying the groundwork for planting this church,
like most people that would be planting in church, we asked a lot of questions. And one of the questions was, what plan do we have for
discipling people? In other words, how will we help people
be like
Jesus? Now some could say, well, just tell them to read their Bibles and come to church. Yeah, that sounds like a simple plan.
And that's part of it. Reading the scriptures is actually the fourth part of the
blueprint and coming to a church community is the second part of that blueprint. But there is
far more to it. And so over the next nine weeks and eight spiritual themes,
I think that you'll see that discipleship is far, far more than just
going to a church. Just walking through the door and showing up, that's part of it. But it's not the whole
thing. We think that it's helpful to have a plan that you can actually go back to more than one time because
we want a plan that is more than one dimension.
Because life is more than one dimension. Life is not just one thing all the time. Life is many things happening all at
once. And then I think that it's important to have this kind of plan that you can kind of go back to multiple times. It has multi dimensions.
Because some of us just need basic instructions that we can go back to and remind ourselves
how we are being shaped and how we're being put together. So show of hands,
how many of you have moved and you had to take things apart to get those things through the door?
Okay. Now, how many of you ended up putting some of those things into storage?
Okay, a handful of us ended up taking something apart
and putting it into storage.
When you were finally able to get that thing out of storage, did you remember how to put it back together again?
No, no show of hands. But how many of you were just like, I'm just gonna buy a new one.
Yeah, there's value in having the kind of discipleship plan that you could go back in a different season of life
and have just enough instruction to help you put things back together when you need to.
And I actually think that this is particularly relevant these days in
2022 because while some of you have probably never heard the phrase spiritual deconstruction,
we're living in an era of spiritual deconstruction where people are taking apart what they believe.
And many of them either don't know how to put it back together or because of how they're being put together,
or because of how it was built in the first place,
it feels like rebuilding it would be an exercise in futility or trauma.
Right?
Because they had hurtful dogma or painful doctrine built into their spirituality.
So when they start to feel like parts of this thing built around them just doesn't
fit or feel right or reflect the person of Jesus, they take it apart and they should.
They should.
I think there is value in making space for that.
Because the problem that seems to be so prevalent in Christianity is that along the way people's questions get treated like
confrontation instead of curiosity.
Last week I said that too often curiosity is confused for rebellion.
So I'd only tweak that slightly for today and say that too often curiosity and questions are confused for confrontation.
And that is a bad idea.
It's foolish to turn away questions because questions don't actually go away.
Questions are like tools of curiosity and like any tool they're meant to be used.
Churches should be teaching people how to ask great questions
instead of crushing them with answers that don't really answer the question they're asking.
Because I imagine that for some of you or maybe even most of you that one time you had a big question about God and someone told you not to ask,
that question didn't go away.
That question didn't go away. It's still there. You didn't lose it. It's just a tool that got stored somewhere for later.
And we, this church, at least myself, I would rather you use that curiosity and those questions to build something healthy now
instead of needing to use those questions like tools that will be used later to tear something down.
Build it to be as healthy as it can be now.
Because later you will have to take parts apart still. You probably will.
If we build it healthy now, it'll be easier to fix the things that need to be fixed later.
Because you will, at least I think, you will inevitably need to take something apart.
I don't know if any of this makes sense. But I think the truth is as a pastor, as quote unquote the lead pastor of this church,
I want to make sure that we just understand that this church, not just the walls are sitting in, but the people, this congregation,
we need to be able to build something healthy.
I want to make sure that we just understand that this church, this church, not just the walls are sitting in, but the people, this congregation,
we should not be foolish enough to think that people that spend years here will never feel like they need to rework something that they were taught.
Because they will. Because we don't have everything right. We're trying, but we do not have everything right.
We will overemphasize certain things and underemphasize other things.
So what we hope is for you to have the kind of discipleship plan that is helpful now and in the future, if you decide to take anything apart,
without it being legalistic and getting in the way of a healthy faith.
So the kind of plan we're going to talk about, it has shape. It even has a suggested first time format, first time through format.
This is how it might make most sense the first time, a kind of one, two, three, ABC kind of thing.
But we do understand that discipleship does not stick to ABC one, two, three, because that's not how life works.
Life sometimes skip steps and suddenly you're like, well, I wasn't taught how to skip steps.
So keep that in mind as we as we get more specific over the next two months, as we talk about specific ideas in a specific order.
Remember, there is freedom. There is room for creativity. You are not being told you have to do it a certain way.
You're just being handed tools that you can use to build your relationship with God.
OK, so in lieu of reading one passage today, what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to pray and then I'm going to be reading a few passages over the course of this, the rest of the sermon.
And so I'm going to go ahead and pray now if you'll if you'll join me in giving your attention to God.
God of every tribe, every tongue, every color, every nation.
We thank you for the scriptures that we're going to read, but we thank you for your presence here in this place.
I pray that your spirit would be working in our hearts and assuring us that you are kind.
And that you know how to create a way for us to know you, for us to be close to you, to know that we are loved by you.
To love you in return, whatever you have for us to learn today, I pray that it would stick, that it would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our faith would become stronger, that we would become more like your son, Jesus.
Amen. Amen.
So there's probably one big question that I want to answer today, because the next eight weeks we're going to talk about different themes of discipleship.
But today is kind of like a one big question. Why do I need a plan?
Why do I need a plan? Why do I need something like this at all?
And this is an important question, not just in general, but for me personally.
Because I am the definition of the kind of person that does not want you to give me your plan.
I don't. I'm sorry.
If you invite me to come help with something, by the time I've gotten there I've already decided the best way to do it.
I will still, I'll still follow you because it's your thing.
But just know, I've already decided there's a better way.
It is not something I can turn off, it is only something I've learned to control.
Okay?
I can actually define for you the reason that I'm this way, at least the way I think I'm this way, in one sentence.
And it is this. I am a Gen Xer.
Can anyone relate? Any Gen Xers in the room that can relate a bit?
For those of a different generation, let me explain exactly what that means by reading from the wisdom of a Facebook meme.
The premise of this meme is that it was posted by a millennial describing a Gen Xer.
But in my view it was probably actually written by a Gen Xer that was just wanting millennials to leave them alone.
Okay? So here we go. It says this.
I saw this on a millennial's post.
That's a sure sign that it wasn't written by a millennial.
But here we go. I don't mess around with anyone over 42.
Okay? That's basically saying anyone that's in Gen X, they built different.
Their families had them formally trained in something by the time they were two.
They had keys to the house by age five, could cook full meals at seven, and pretty much were self-sufficient at age nine.
They left their house at dawn every summer morning and didn't come back till nightfall and survived all day long on water from garden hoses.
They might get a sandwich on the off chance that someone else's parents had been, went shopping.
They spent three quarters of their lives by themselves with the parent maybe checking in on them twice a month.
Most of them have evaded at least one kidnapping attempt and they know 15 different ways to remove blood stains from clothing.
Now this doesn't describe me perfectly or to a T, but it is close enough.
My generation, when we were kids, our parents gave us an instruction manual for life.
And on the first page it said, figure it out yourself.
And the rest of the pages were blank.
So when I open something that has to be put together, my instinct is to do it without the instructions.
100%. I bristle at a multi-step plan.
Because there is only one step for a Gen Xer. Do it. Just do it.
The Nike phrase, just do it, was created in 1987.
To market to kids that were nine years old, like me, that were at the tail end of the Gen Xers, to the 24 year olds at the front end.
That was basically they said, what will motivate this generation to buy my stuff? Just do it? Yep, that's it.
They've seen that enough already in their lives. I bet they'll buy our sneakers if we say that.
I do not want a plan. I do not want green eggs and ham. I just don't, Sam, I am.
I do not want a plan. I don't know what to do about that.
But I know that deep down, I need a plan.
There's a lot of things that I need a plan for.
One of those things is spiritual development.
Especially when I've forgotten or lost myself.
Or my heart has been stored away in a storage unit and needs to be put back together again.
Makes me think of the Israelites.
When you go back to the Older Testament, to the Hebrew scriptures, in the years after God delivers the Israelites from Egypt,
they're given just a slew of rules.
Just an onslaught of guidelines.
Just a rolodex of plans that they're supposed to follow.
And this isn't because God wanted to be controlling.
Hear this, okay? It isn't because God wanted to be controlling.
But because for 400 years they had been controlled.
In that time, they had been systematically convinced that they were not who they were, that their God was not who their God was.
They'd been enslaved and in the process they'd forgotten much of who they were.
And so he gives them very specific instructions on how to piece their lives and identity back together again.
How to shed their slavery and pick up their identity in Yahweh, in Elohim, in Immanuel, the God that saves.
It starts with the Ten Commandments, but it expands out to 613 laws for living.
Say the God had some plans.
The God can be pretty specific at specific times about specific things and that that should inform our openness to a plan.
So just a practical example. Let me read something from Exodus.
This passage is in Exodus 26.
While the Israelites are living in the wilderness and God wants them to have a tabernacle.
The tabernacle was basically like a portable church.
So they could put it up and they could take it down as they moved around and this is what God asked for in that tabernacle.
Make the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn with cherubim woven into them by a skilled worker.
All the curtains are to be the same size, 28 cubits long and 4 cubits wide.
Join five of the curtains together and do the same with the other five.
Make loops of blue material along the edge of the end curtain in one set and do the same with the end curtain in the other set.
Make 50 loops on one curtain and 50 loops on the end curtain of the other set with the loops opposite each other.
Then make 50 gold clasps and use them to fasten the curtains together so that the tabernacle is a unit.
That was six verses.
This description goes on for 92 more verses.
I'm not exaggerating.
98 verses on what he wanted this part of the tabernacle to look like.
God could be really specific but it was not without purpose.
It was so that he could give them something that would reflect him.
When God builds things, when God gives instruction, it has a purpose to give us rest, to give us life, to show us how to work in a way that is ultimately meaningful.
So think about when many of us first believed in Jesus.
Like some of us were kids so we can't really think back that far.
We have a men's Bible study on Tuesday night and half the people around the table didn't believe in Jesus until they were adults.
Think about, for some of us, we had been living radically different lives before we met Jesus than what we are living right now.
And we had no idea how to be different.
None whatsoever.
And so for some of us in that position, having a list of things that we could change or to do differently was probably comforting.
For someone like me, you hand me a list of things of exactly how I'm supposed to do, I'm not crazy about that.
But for some of us, it was comfort to be told, here, do A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.
For some of us being handed a step-by-step plan for how to grow was a bastion of protection from our old self.
A lot of the laws that God is giving his people in the Old Testament are exactly that.
I need you to do this because it will guard you from becoming what they told you that you were.
This is part of the context of God's specificity and why we believe today that a specific and purposeful plan can be life-giving.
So that's the Older Scriptures, that's the Old Testament.
But what did Jesus say about a plan, right?
So if you were to open the Bible to the book of Matthew chapter 5, you will find Jesus is the only one who is alive.
In Matthew chapter 5, you will find Jesus' longest sermon, it's called the Sermon on the Mount.
Many people have heard of it even if they haven't read it.
And in it, Jesus talks about prayer, justice, lust, murder, divorce, judging others, loving your enemies, not worrying, fasting, caring for the poor, avoiding earthly wealth, his views on different religious laws, and more.
And then at the end of all of that, Jesus says this,
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who builds his house on the rock.
The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundations on the rock.
But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
This is Jesus giving this sermon where he's taking many of the concepts, many of the large subjects,
many of the things that are found in those 613 laws of the Torah, and he's stripping the varnish down to the grain of the original wood.
He's deconstructing how they understood the rules so that they can see how God actually wants them to live these things now.
He doesn't, listen, he doesn't tell them not to have a plan.
He doesn't throw out all of the rules, he doesn't eliminate them.
He wants them to know the rules but see the life instead of the legalism.
Hear the heart of the Father. Jesus is saying, look at all these plans, all these rules you've been building on.
You think your rigid understanding of these things will be like a foundation of rock.
He says, unless you follow me in my way, you're using these rules to build a house that's actually on sand.
Will not stand. So he says, so listen to what I'm saying. Follow me. Sounds like a plan.
He says, let me be your foundation, let me be your way, let me show you how to understand the rules so that what you build is solid.
Not just so that it looks good but that it will actually stand up to the challenges of life.
So your house, this spiritual life will have the strength that it needs to withstand whatever life throws at it.
Because life will throw storms your way.
It's true. Most of us could probably stand up and tell some story about how in the last two weeks something happened that feels like it's challenging our identity or challenging our finances or challenging our family or challenging what we believe.
It matters how we build this house, guys.
Jesus is good with having a plan. As long as that plan is built on him, on the way of Jesus.
So what is that? Is it the blueprint? Have we cracked the code? I don't think I'd say that.
I like to be as real as possible. Here's the reality. The blueprint is just one idea on how to do that.
It's just one idea. It's just one discipleship plan in a sea of discipleship plans.
But we think that there is value in it. It's something that we can follow humbly knowing there's always room for improvement.
This will be the third time that we've been through this sermon series. We did it at the beginning. We did it at year four. We're doing it at, we're going to be nine in January.
If you were to listen to the sermons from the first time around and then listen to the third time we're doing it, it's going to be different.
Because along the way we've gone, you know, let's put a little emphasis on that. Actually, it used one of the steps used to be obey the word.
And I've changed that to read the scriptures because of our understanding of some people look at the Bible and they go, that's the word.
But the Bible actually teaches us that Jesus is the word. So we can read the scriptures.
And this is the word. So we wanted to put an emphasis on the concept here is to read scripture.
To read scripture and start to get it into your heart and get it into your mind without tripping over the word obey, without turning the Bible into the fourth part of the Trinity.
So we've already, we're making changes along the way.
And turn and let me just give you a little background of where it comes from. Because when you turn to John 13 through 17, whereas the Sermon on the Mount is his longest sermon, when you get here, this is his last sermon.
He's talking to his disciples just hours, the day, the night before he's going to be crucified, before he's going to be arrested and handed over.
Throughout these five chapters in this last time of lessons and teaching with his disciples, there's a number of themes that come up.
Themes of trusting him, resting as he serves, themes of living life together, themes of prayer and obeying his teachings as we read them in the scriptures.
Things, themes of listening to the Spirit and stepping out in faith, themes of forgiveness and working with God. And so for us, we take those themes and we've developed the blueprint.
Next week, we start with rest as the first page of that blueprint. Rest is one of our deeply held values and it's the first page of that blueprint because rest is deeply important in the Bible.
I don't want to give too much away, but rest is all the way back at the beginning of the story. From beginning to end, it's there.
And then we live at the table. Community and fellowship are critical pieces of what creates a culture of healthy discipleship. Then we abide in prayer.
Jesus teaches us how to pray and specifically says that we're meant to abide in him. And prayer is a place for us to learn to do that, to be present to Jesus.
Then we read the scriptures. Jesus reads the scriptures. We ought to read the scriptures. And he consistently points to the scriptures in his ministry.
And so we learn to consistently point to the scriptures in our lives. Then we listen to the Spirit. We're a church, you heard it, in the midst of these songs.
We are a church that believes that the Holy Spirit is still involved in the church today. The Holy Spirit is still involved in the world because Jesus told his disciples that he would send the Holy Spirit.
I will not leave you as an orphan, but I will send one that will be a comfort to you. When we practice our faith, part of growing in our discipleship is taking risks and acting on what we've been leaning on and what we've been learning.
What we believe. And the seventh step or page of the blueprint is to forgive as we've been forgiven. There is no way to be like Jesus without extending forgiveness to the people who have been forgiven.
There is no way to be like Jesus without extending forgiveness the way Jesus forgives. That's difficult. There's a reason that in the pattern we've created that it's almost all the way at the end.
Because all of these other things are beginning to shape us and prepare our hearts for how to forgive and how to understand forgiveness in its context.
And finally, the eighth thing is that we work with the Father. We look around, we see what God is doing, and we join in and we do it too. That's the blueprint. Those eight things.
So here's that wrap up. We often, when we get to this part of the sermon, we ask how do we participate with any of this? How do we practice anything that we just heard?
Back in the day, some of us had spent some years coming up through Herod's Wesleyan. John Bray was one of my first spiritual overseers here. I got to see him the summer before last down in Florida.
And at the end of his sermons, he always got to the point of, if you were there, you know what I'm about to say, he'd go, so what? He'd preach. He said that his father, when he asked him how to preach, his dad said, preach about God and preach about 20 minutes.
And then he figured out for him in his context that he needed to get to the end and say, alright, I've preached about God and for about 20 minutes, but so what?
For us, we say, how do we participate with this? I just have one thing. Aside from encouraging you to be here as many of those eight Sundays as possible so that you can kind of hear those messages.
Jen is going to be preaching on forgiveness. Chris is preaching on living at the table. The only thing I can encourage you to do is to join one of the community tables.
We have three community tables. One at Chris, the Britton's house and the Hodges. They're going to be shared. They live on the same block. One at the McConnell's on Wednesdays, over in Bettendorf, and one at our house on Sunday nights.
It's not just because, oh, hey, Greg's trying to get people into the small groups. It's because starting next week for those eight weeks, our community tables will focus on the same theme that night as the Sunday sermon from that week.
So sometimes you go to church on a Sunday morning and you listen a lot. You sit in a row and you listen.
And a community table is a place if you didn't get to talk to someone about something on Sunday morning, you go to that on Sunday night or on Wednesday night.
And it's the same theme. And you go, you know, I remember Pastor Jen said this on Sunday morning and I didn't know what that meant or I had thought on it or I had a story about it or this.
It's a great opportunity for community to be part of what shapes you in addition to just hearing things.
It's the last thing that I think that I need to point out here is that discipleship is not a singular endeavor.
Discipleship is not something that really we're meant to do alone.
You can look at the life of Jesus. You look at the ministry in Jesus and see that he was always taking disciples with him to the places that he went to do the things that he was doing.
That he actually, we looked at this in the men's Bible study this last week, he sends his disciples out two by two to go try this stuff.
Paul reminds us over and over again how important it is that we live life together.
So I just want to encourage you. Sign up for a community table. Give it a shot. They last 90 minutes every week.
There's a different menu item that you're going to put together like the fish and the fish and the fish and the fish.
There's a different menu item that you're going to put together like the first week I think is almost always breakfast. I love breakfast.
So everyone brings their favorite breakfast item. The next week I think is appetizer. Everyone brings their favorite appetizer.
Just come for the food. Alright? Come for the food for nothing else and God will do something with it. Alright?
So you can sign up for those out there or we'll send out another email and you can sign up online.
But they're eight weeks, small commitment, 90 minutes each week. You bring something to share, to eat, and you'll have great conversations.
And you'll start relationships that will continue to help you develop your discipleship.
And just to reinforce that, let me read one last passage.
This is actually the passage that we've chosen that's on the banner out in the lobby.
Many of us have probably seen it a bunch of times and we've walked past it, we've never stood there and just read the whole thing.
But this is the message version of Ephesians 2, 19 through 22 says this.
That's plain enough, isn't it? That you are no longer wandering exiles.
The kingdom of faith is now your home country.
You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here with as much right to the name Christian as anyone.
God is building a home. He's using us all irrespective of how we got here and what he is building.
He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.
And we see it taking shape day after day, a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
God's building something. God has some plans. It's okay sometimes to take a plan and work it for all it's worth.
And trust that God is in it because we are all being built into something. He has a place for every single one of us.
Let's continue to grow. Amen? Alright, let's pray.
Father God, I thank you for plans, for systems. I don't like them all the time. I know that they hold value.
And I know, I believe that you are specific and that you care.
And that often you will give us one, two, three steps to do to help us get to where it is you'd like us to be, even as you are present to where we are right now.
So I pray that as we use this tool, we would get the most out of it.
That over the years, if we ever have to go back to it, that we will.
That you'll show us how to ask good questions, to build healthy houses, to have strong faith that is more like your son, Jesus.
Amen.