seven rivers, Presbyterian Church, and Lakanto, Florida, sermons by Reverend Ray Cortese. All right, let me invite you to stand. We're going to read God's Word, Luke chapter 6. Community of God is a great and an awesome thing. I love the picture of people being baptized. Others coming around them to hug them and welcome them at the earlier service, baptized a woman, a guest that she's in her 60s, and she embraced me after the baptism, and she said, I have been waiting for this day my whole life. There is something that we have been waiting for that can only be found in Jesus our whole life, and we're going to read about that together even now. The 12th verse, Luke chapter 6, follow along as I read. And it was at this time that he went off to the mountain to pray, and Jesus spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when they came, he called his disciples to him and chose 12 of them, whom he also named as apostles. Simon, whom he also named Peter. Andrew, his brother, James, and John, Philip, and Bartholomew. Matthew and Thomas, James, the son of Altheus, and Simon, who is called the zealot. Judas, the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. And he descended with them and stood on a level place, and there was a great multitude of his disciples, and a great throng of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and the coastal region of Tyre and Siden, who had come to hear him to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured, and all the multitude were trying to touch him for power was coming from him and healing them all. And turning his gaze on his disciples, he began to say, Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you and men hate you and ostracize you, cast insults at you, and spurn your name as evil, all for the sake of the son of man. Be glad in that they leap for joy, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets. Woe to you who are rich, you're receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well fed now, you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, you shall mourn and weep, and woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets. This then is the very word of God you may be seated. We were made for community, we were made for each other. We were not made to do life alone, we were made for a vital connectedness. Father Son and Holy Ghost existed in all eternity past in community with one another. What they had was perfect nourishing, supportive, enjoyable, and Father Son and Holy Spirit said, let us, let us make man in our own image. Let us make man to experience and enjoy the community that we know amongst each other. We were made for a community, we're made as a tree, as a great oak tree, needs soil in which to be rooted and it needs to be rooted for stability in that soil. It needs to be rooted for nourishment in that soil, it will not thrive. In fact, it will not even survive if it's not rooted. So we were made to be rooted in each other. That God's nourishment, God's grace, would flow through that community into each one of us. There's something in our hearts that longs for it for community. Just the other day, I attended a memorial service for a man who grew up as an orphan. And he was orphaned with a brother. They just had each other. The story was told at the funeral that they were in the orphanage, they were separated. They were different ages, so they were quartered in different parts. And yet the older brother would take responsibility for the younger brother, stealing or saving bread, and even climbing up a drain pipe to get to his younger brother's room so that he could get the bread to his brother. Because brothers take care of brothers and the family shared, even at the funeral of this orphan who had nobody created a family that took a responsibility for each other because of this value that was instilled by this older brother's care of his younger brother. That this is what families do, families take care of each other. There's something in our heart that resonates to that. We long for that. To have an older brother would look out for you and fight for you. Now having said all that, and we know that something in our world has gone terribly awry. And so we read every day of car bombings, drive-by shootings, and we have Shiites and Sunis, countrymen, but tribal enemies. And they don't just kill warriors from the other side, they kill children, and students, and blow themselves up amongst the young and the innocent. And we have southern Sudanese preyed on by northern Sudanese, and we have Hutus and Tutsis, and we have Serbs and Croats, and right around the world we go, and we see the hatred, the destruction, the killing that exists in our world. And not only in the world, and not only globally, but we know that this fracture side, this division, lack of family, lack of community, lack of Shalom, lack of peace, lack of being for each other, bears its awful fruit in our own culture, doesn't it? The increasing bulk organization of America, we think of even the strident political discourse of today, where one from one side of the political divide calls the presidential candidate of the other side of Faggot, where other from the other side of the divide publicly wishes that our vice president were assassinated and no longer alive. And so the waters are soiled by this kind of, and it exists in offices, and it exists in neighborhoods, and it exists in schools, and it exists in churches. A couple weeks, I'm driving home from a family celebration with my children, and the cell phone rings, and a good way to drive home, I'm being told about a church where the youth pastor allied himself with the pastor's, senior pastor's life, and they toppled the senior pastor, and now the senior pastor's fired, the youth pastor's fired, the church is splintered in all sorts of directions, there's lawsuits are breaking out, and the phone call was, of course, could you come over here and help us? My answer was, please Lord, no, no, don't ask me to do this, because the culture that we're describing in the Bible is completely absent from this situation. I want to tell you something, I hear about fights like those in churches about every week, so where are we going to create the islands of Shalom in this vast sea of hostility and brokenness? We'll take your sermon outline, and we'll study that together from Luke chapter six, because what we see in Luke chapter six is the creation of a community, and you may not notice that when you first sort of read this passage, that the heart of this passage is all about the creation of community, it is about the creation of a new people of God, a new community, the family of God, the nation of God. Why do I say that? Well the passage begins in verse 12, it says Jesus went up on the mountain and he spent time alone, a long time alone with God, and then he came down from the mountain and appointed what? Apostles, 12 of them. Why would he appoint 12 apostles? The church isn't, his followers aren't that many. Why do they need 12? And then he sits them all down and he gives them the law. Now if you're a Bible, have Bible knowledge at all, you should immediately be thinking of who in the Old Testament. This is Moses. Moses leads the people, the slaves out of 400 plus years of Egyptian bondage, and now they are going to be congregated as the new nation of Israel with their own land and in their own place. Moses goes up on Mount Sinai, he meets with God, he comes down, he constitutes the nation and he delivers the one, the law to them. And so when Jesus comes off that mountain and he chooses 12, he's choosing a new Israel, there were 12 tribal leaders in Israel, there were 12 tribes. Now there will be 12 apostles and Jesus is making it clear. I am establishing a new people, a new nation in our midst. Now you'd say what happened? What happened to God's design? Well the Bible says that when we were created for this rich fellowship with God and with each other, when our relationship with God was severed, then our relationship with each other immediately came apart. The minute that Adam and Eve defy God and walk away from God and decide that they're better off doing life their way than God's way, the minute that happens, and God comes and confronts them. What does Adam say? Who's fault is it? Does he follow on his knees and say, God I have not protected the garden, I have not been faithful to your word. It's me, I'm the one in fault here, but what does Adam say? It's the woman, it's the woman, and not only is it the woman, but you're the one who gave me the woman. It's her fault, it's your fault, it's not my fault, and we see the fracturing begin immediately and it's only one turnover in the Bible. The next chapter, the book of Genesis, and we read that brother who are made to love each other, are you your brother's keeper? That's the ideal, right? Are you the one who would snuggle bread to your brother to keep him alive and well fed and loves even those who use an orphan? No, I'll go out in the field and kill my brother. The human kind disintegrates. Before chapter 4 of the book of Genesis is over, we have polygamy, we have people taking multiple lives, we have the abuse of women, we have vengeful, revenge killing that breaks out, and every ill that's visited on the world today is right there at the very beginning, and we still see the fruits of it. But Jesus comes into the world and says, this broken world will not stay that way, there will be a new people, there will be a new community, and I will create it at the shedding of my own blood, what Adam and Abraham failed to do, I will not fail. What do we learn about this new community from this passage in Luke chapter 6? There's much to learn about it all throughout the New Testament, this new community, but even in this little passage, we start to get some idea of the characteristics of this new community of Jesus. And the first we would say is, it will be a community of diversity. Why do we say it's diverse? Well, if you look at verse 17, if you have a Bible, one thing you'll notice is that it says that the crowd who was gathering as followers of Jesus included people from all Judea and Jerusalem, well that would have been expected. It says, there's also people from Tyre and Sidon, these are Gentiles, these are pagan areas, these are not Jewish people, it tells you right away that this community that Jesus is gathering is going to be a people of every tribe and tongue and nation, people with diverse religious backgrounds, people who look different, people who are socio-economically, well, not only the fact that people in Tyre and Sidon are included, but just look at the makeup of the 12 apostles themselves. There's no way these 12 people would be united in the same cause if it weren't for the power of the gospel of Jesus. Just look at them. Look at them. It says that one, a Matthew was a what? What was Matthew's vocation? He was a tax collector. One of the apostles was called Simon the Zealot. Matthew was a tax collector. What's a zealot? A zealot is someone who hated Rome and liked to kill tax collectors. They were in the same little family right away. Imagine what those session meetings were like, people who would naturally hate each other, love each other, I mean literally to the death are now the original company of the apostolic band who are going to live together, work together and create this family together. This is what I mean. There's a beautiful diversity drawn together by the power of the gospel that is an indication that a church is indeed the family of the living God. It's like the fabric. It's like a tapestry. One little piece of thread is easily broken. But many pieces of thread woven together create a tapestry that cannot be ripped. And if those threads come from many different colors, then you have a beautiful, huge, beautiful tapestry. My daughter came back from Harlem in New York City where she was last week and she said that I love the worship at Newsom Community Church in Harlem because there's many people of color there. And because there's Hispanic folk there and there's Caribbean folk there. There's white folk there. And there's people who have degrees from Harvard and Yale law school. And there's people who didn't finish high school. And there's people there who have no jobs or people there who work in sort of drudgery work. And there's people there who are artists and there's people there who are community civic and business titans of industry in Manhattan. And there they are all together completely different. There's no reason that any of those people would have anything to do with each other except for what the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ ties together place of diversity. When we had our global outreach conference a couple weeks ago, there were people said the best part of that whole weekend experience was when we had people each service get up and read the scriptures in their native tongue. Because what? Because it's a picture of heaven. This is God's family. This is the way he constituted it. It's a taste of what he intended it to be when he created the world that we're just getting to taste a little bit now as he puts together this new community. People bound together by Jesus in Jesus alone. I went to the ACC basketball tournament games in Tampa on Thursday and had an experience like that. The unique thing about this tournament is they take the arena and they divide the tickets up by 12. There's 12 different schools. Each school gets one 12 of the tickets. So when a game is going on, only two of the 12 teams are playing, much of the arena could care less. So it's a little different than any other sporting event. But one of the games I was at pitted Duke against North Carolina State. If you know anything about college basketball, you'll know what I'm about to say. As the game came to the very end, North Carolina State took the lead and when it became apparent that they were going to win the entire arena, everyone wearing their different colors, Florida State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Boston College, all those schools, all decked in their distinct identities, having no interest in each other, all rose up in one accord. The entire arena began to roar, united by a common dislike of Duke, the Church of Jesus Christ, diverse as diverse as we could be, is united by a common experience, the common experience of the affection and the pursuit of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have united by what? We have the same older brother. And that makes us all what? Family. Listen, I want you to see in this passage that the family is not only diverse, it's restorative. People came to be healed and they were touched by Jesus and they got around Jesus and they were healed and they were restored and what was broken about them was made well. And this is what God intends a heart-healing, life-restoring connectedness. That's what a church to be, the place where Jesus says, the disconnection of this world will not stand. I want you to see and I want you to get a taste of what it is when I form this new community and this new family. Now this runs counter to North American individualism. In North American people go to church and they say, I choose where I want to go and it's about me and if I like it and if I just want to go for services and hear somebody preach and somebody what and immediately when the service is over a walk out and get in my car, then that's my choice. I'll tell you, you're perfectly free to do that but that's not church. And that's not what Jesus, don't even say you went to church if you did that because you had an experience very akin to what you could experience by listening to a cassette tape. What Jesus had in mind was entirely different. Dietrich Bonhopper said, many people love the concept of Christian community but they never actually love the community. They never actually love each other. That's much harder but that's what the church is to be, a place of doing life together. I saw it so beautifully, we have the pastor's class, it's an initiation, an information for people who are new here and when people come to that class we put them in small groups. Nobody knows anybody else. And this last class, we'd only been together a couple weeks and came in one Wednesday night and there was a small group sitting around and they were having a baby shower for a girl in the group who was pregnant. And my heart just warmed because you say what, they're the newest people here and they what, they already get it. They already get the fact that this is what this is the culture here. We do not do life alone, we celebrate with each other, we support each other, we pull for each other, we fight for each other. That's what it means to be the family of the living God. This is the culture that Jesus created and let me tell you something, it's absent in the world and people are desperately hungry for it, a family. And if you think they're hungry for it all over the world and all over America, what kind of community do you think they're most hungry for it in? But a place like Citrus County, Florida where children don't have their grandparents and where grandparents don't have their grandchildren and people who live here are displaced from all over the place and don't have lifelong friends that live near them or any sort of, and they're all thrown together in this community. In this community, to be the new community of the Lord Jesus Christ is the most powerful apologetic of the gospel possible. There's a habitat family that attends our church and they're trying to build a home for themselves to own a home through habitat for humanity. Did you see in the bulletin? Did you read that? They have to bank so many hours of sweat equity. That's what it would look like, wouldn't it, to be family? It's to say it's not just about providing a home for me, it's about providing a home for each other because each person counts when I hold Carson to beer and I baptize him, do you know what I'm saying? This is my son. This is your son. I will die for this child. I will fight to provide a Christian education for this child. I will fight for this child's soul. I will fight to bring this child before the Lord Jesus Christ. I will fight for their eternal destiny. This is my child. Now admit it. That's not the way we often think of churches. But that's the way Jesus thinks of it. That's what he created. A new community. People here have done that for my children. We have experienced that. That's what God would have us to be. It's an old old church story. A little country, Pastor John Fossett. He got hired young. He didn't know what he was doing and the church loved him. A little country parish. They loved him. He stayed eight or ten years and had a thriving ministry and then what happens? He got the call from the big city church. And the big city church that could provide him with far more appeal to him to come and he agreed to come and be a greater ministry, more influence, bigger place, more important than that little country parish. And so he told the big city church he would come. But the people there were so heartbroken. They actually gathered together and the day he was to leave, they surrounded his house and they held hands and they prayed. And his heart was so broken by their affection for him and his family that he changed his mind and he declined the big appointment and he stayed in that rural community the rest of his life and he wrote a little song. The less the tie that binds our hearts in Christian wealth. And so it is. This is the community of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus came to create a new community and that community has radically different values. That's the second point. Radically different values. It is an upside down value system. What are the values of our culture? These are not hard to identify. What are the values of our culture? Well, physical appearance, fame, recognition, success, comfort. We want to have a nice house. We want to have nice cars. We want to have the freedom to travel. We want to be able to go to the restaurants. We want to have plenty of stocked away for retirement. We want to be healthy. We do not want to have anything impinge on our comfort. Those are our values. Listen to what Jesus says about the values of the new kingdom. We are at verse 24. What do you who are rich? What do you who are well fed? What do you who are celebrating? What do you when men speak well of you? Jesus is saying, what do you, North America, what do you? Because the values of our culture are not the values of the new community of God. What does he say are the values of the new community? What does he say? In the new community, poverty, weakness, persecution, hardship. Now, who wants to join? He said, pastor, come on, honestly, doesn't everybody want to improve their lot in life? Doesn't everybody want to be rich and prosperous and comfortable? Isn't it only natural? Absolutely. It's utterly natural. Something completely unnatural has to happen to you to embrace a life of hardship and difficulty and suffering with joy. Jesus literally says, so blessed are you if you are persecuted. You ought to, what is it saying in the passage of memory ought to leap for joy? The values of this kingdom are so radically contrary to the values in the culture we live. What the world prizes we're going to be suspect about. And what the world pities, we will embrace. Now, what does this mean? It means in God's community, we will not fear, want and hardship and suffering and illness and discomfort. Now, hear me clearly, it's not good to be poor, it's not good that there's hunger, it's not good that there's disease, it's not good that people are persecuted because they belong to Jesus. But the church of Jesus Christ and the family of God recognizes that personal peace, affluence and comfort are not what brings satisfaction to the soul and that it is good to be in need and that it is good to have nothing in this world but Jesus and that it is good to get up in the morning and have to pray, give us this day our daily bread. It is good to be dependent, it is good to know that what our souls really thirst and hunger for is Jesus himself, that all these things are good and that whom the Lord loves He disciplines. It's even good to have adversity because that's when we grow spiritually. I've been in ministry for 25, 30 years, nobody said to me yet, you know, the day I won the lottery, that's the day my life changed. The day that I got that big promotion and that big raise, that's the day, substance of change happened in my life but you know what people have told me over and over? The day my son got diagnosed with leukemia, that's the day my life took him for the good, completely for eternal things. And the day my wife walked out on me and the day that I had to confess my sexual addiction. And the day that my partner broke up the partnership and I lost the entire investment, that day changed my life for good because it made me run to Jesus because I had nothing else. I've never once heard a person say in prosperity my life was transformed. I have heard legions say when I hit rock bottom, I ran to Jesus. It's a whole different value system in the family of God. You know, on TV a couple weeks ago they told the story of an American TV star. It was incredibly generous and philanthropic to go to Africa and build a very large home school for girls. Incredible generosity. And I have to admit that sitting on a couch watching the story, the tears roll down my, but I have to also admit that watching it I had terribly mixed feelings because these 300 or so girls that were plucked from poverty were all chosen because they had extraordinary perseverance and character. And they're put now in a private boarding school where they have new dresses, new shoes, new beds, complete safety, beautiful food, nutrition, classes where every possible need they have and more is taken care of. And I thought what forged the character of every one of these young girls what? The very things they're being removed from them. I had to watch the show and I said you know what they're doing to those girls? They're making them the worst thing that could happen to them. They're making them Americans. They're giving them the values of America. And you know what? Every one of those girls said when they interviewed them, they said when I get up in the morning and I have to walk to my bus stop, I pray to Jesus every step of the way or they would say, you know when I get up in the morning I pray to Jesus all day long but he'll feed my family. You know what? When I get up in the morning I have nothing so I pray to Jesus all day long. All I heard were the most beautiful testimonies of lives, of dependence on Jesus and I thought, oh no. What is it profit a man if he gains the whole world? But what? Loses is so the last thing we want to do for this world is make it like us where we are domesticated. We've lost our sense of deep hunger and need for the eternal. That's why Jesus said, Blessed are you if you're poor. Blessed are you if you're hungry. Blessed are you if you weep. Blessed are you if you suffer. God's community we will not be controlled by lust for wealth and comfort and success. We will not idolize personal peace and affluence. We will voluntarily choose to be poor. We will give our money away radically and we will give our lives and our hearts away in the same. There's an old movie called A Long Walk Home. It's about the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 when black southerners in that city said that they would no longer ride this buses in the segregated system and so they began to walk to work. In this movie depicts the white home owner and her black housekeeper and her housekeeper is now having to walk nine miles to come to work at her house. This woman convicted by that begins to drive and pick her up so she doesn't have to walk. And then as she's driving her they're driving by all these other African Americans who are all having to walk and she says why don't why don't I just start picking up all them too. Why don't we just start carpooling and I'll pick up a lot of them and bring them and her little black maid says you'd be better off right in the check. You do not want to be seen doing that. Don't you see the police watching? Don't you see the citizens council watching? If you join our side it will cost you everything. It will never be forgotten. You will be hated and you will be paid a terrible that's what it means in this world. If you are guided by the values of this world what do you do you write a check you stay at arm's distance you do not enter the Fred. But if you adopt the values of the new community where you do not love yourself you do not love your safety you do not love your security you enter the Fred whatever it cost you fight for the widow you fight for the orphan you fight injustice because it's a completely different value system in the community of God. Nobody in this room will ever do that except for a transformation. What happened to form that new community if you look in verse 19 what does it say that the people came to Jesus because power was going out from him until you are touched by Jesus and transformed by the power of the gospel you will never be set free. To live by the values of the new community to consider each other brothers and sisters in love one another. There has to be a powerful transformation in which you realize that you are an orphan and you are alone in this world until you're older brother left heaven. He left wealth he left riches he left a claim to become poor and hungry and hated your older brother did that so that he could get you bread. He could get you the bread of the life you have an older brother and he fights for you and when you own that you become a part of the family and a part of the culture that says in the family of God. We fight for each other we're going to pray together we're going to receive that bread that our older brother has provided for us. So bow your head and as you do our servers are going to come and take their place and prepare themselves to serve us would you just bow your head and be reminded that Jesus is the older brother who came to seek him to save you and make you a part of his eternal family. Once we did not belong to him and we were orphans but no more now as we prepare our hearts to receive the supper we're going to pray the words that are found in your worship order on the screen would you respond to them as we pray this prayer together the Lord be with you. Oh lift up your hearts let us give thanks to the Lord our God. Oh with joy we praise you gracious God for you created heaven and earth you made us in your image and kept covenant with us even when we fell into sin. We give you thanks for Jesus Christ our Lord who by his life death and resurrection opened to us the way of everlasting life. Therefore we join our voices with all the saints and angels in the whole creation to proclaim the glory of your name. But we give thanks to God the Father that our Savior Jesus Christ before he suffered gave us this memorial of his sacrifice until he comes again. At his last supper the Lord Jesus took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he took the cup after supper and said this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this in remembrance of me. For whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes praise to you Lord Jesus and now we pray together in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Now as the servers are served by our elders let me say to you that if you are in the family of God if you are in this new community, if you have come to see your sin and your need for Jesus and you have received to Jesus as your Savior and trust in Him alone. And be baptized into his church then as this meal is served then you come and eat of it. If you are a great sinner and Jesus is your great Savior then you come. If you're the place spiritually where you just haven't done that yet you're kind of checking Christianity out you're not sure you don't believe yet you haven't made that commitment. Then one thing you could do is turn to a tributary that insert in your bulletin over and there's information about how we take communion here included there are some prayers that you might even consider praying if God's brought you to that place and your life where you're ready to say yes I have run away from God as my father. I'm an orphan it's time for me to join the family of God you pray that prayer you make that commitment you pursue baptism in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's also important to say the children who haven't reached an age where they've been instructed by the officers of the church and met with them in profess faith they should not take the sacrament until they've been prepared to do so in that way. The ushers are going to come now and dismiss us row by row to receive the sacrament even as the Josh and the others lead us to worship.
One thing in them to lie one to lie so Jesus I come to be shameful out of my shame fulfill Jesus I come Jesus I come into the Jesus side into the city the soul. Councilor come for the people. Would you stand with us and let's sing the song we learn as children Jesus loves me the sign of others and sisters we were God's own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Hindu his marvelous light.