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Pastor Mark Driscoll preached this sermon at the Exchange conference on June 17th in San Diego, California.
The biggest church planting event we've ever done. September 29-30 in Seattle. Church Planter: A29 National Bootcamp.
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At its simplest, the kingdom of God is the result of God's mission to rescue and renew his sin-marred creation. The kingdom of God is about Jesus our king establishing his rule and reign over all creation, defeating the human and angelic evil powers, bringing order to all, enacting justice, and being worshiped as Lord.
Tragically, there are many erroneous views of the kingdom that misrepresent the glories of God's eternal kingdom. The kingdom is not like the cartoonish inanity that shows heaven as a white cloud upon which we will sit wearing diapers and playing harps with wings far too small to carry us anywhere fun.
The kingdom is not the naive dream of liberalism, that with more education and time sin and its effects will be so eradicated from the earth that utopia will dawn. The kingdom is not the deceptive dream of Christless spirituality where all learn to nurture the spark of divinity within themselves and live out their true good self in harmony. The kingdom is not the political dream that if we simply get the right leaders in office and defeat all the bad guys good will rule the earth.
The kingdom is both a journey and a destination, both a rescue operation in this broken world and a perfect outcome in the new earth to come, both already started and not yet finished.
From Doctrine, Chapter 13. Kingdom: God Reigns (pg. 411). Doctrine is out now.
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From the recent sermon John the Baptizer, Part 2.
Let me explain to you what repentance is and is not. For some of you, this will be completely new, you’ve never heard this. For others of you, this will be information that you’ve got bits and pieces of throughout the course of your life. For some of you, this will be revisiting things that I’ve taught you before, but maybe you still need to do. And for the rest of you, maybe you do know and practice repentance, and this will help clarify your ability to counsel others. I want you to pay attention, this is really important stuff. If you don’t know what to do with sin, you’ll ruin your life, and destroy anyone who is connected to you. It’s that big of a deal.
So, true repentance is not religious repentance. Religious repentance is this: “I see your sin, not my own. I confess your sin, not my own. I’m really unhappy with your sin, but I’m not really troubled by my own.” It’s because religious people tend to think that they are self-righteous, and pious, and holy, and better than everyone else. The result is that they think they are good, and everyone else is bad. And religious people like to busybody, and gossip, and neatnik, and nitpick, and just be a perennial pain in the Levi’s. That’s what religious people do. And the way this works is they’re always glad to talk about all the things you’ve done wrong, but they never say things like, “It was my fault. I’m sorry. I was wrong.” Some of you are married to that person; I apologize.
Jesus gives a story of two people going into the temple, the Old Testament equivalent of the church, and one prays with haughty eyes and head held high, full of pride. “God, thank you that I’m not like other men. Thank you that I’m better than they are. Thank you that I don’t do all these horrible things.” He’s confessing someone else’s sin.
A second man in the story goes in, and he’s not filled with pride, he’s filled with grief. And he looks to the ground. He can’t even raise his eyes, and he simply declares, “God, have mercy on me. I’m a sinner.” He’s dealing with his own sin, not anyone else’s sin. He’s filled with humility and not pride. And Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, this man, and not the other, left justified, declared righteous in the sight of God.” Religious people are notorious for overlooking their own sin, and talking about everyone else’s, sometimes couching it in the form of a prayer request, so that it looks particularly holy when it’s not.
Real repentance is not pagan repentance...
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A steward gladly acknowledges that he or she belongs to the Lord. This is exactly what Paul says in Romans 1:6 when he reminds Christians that they "belong to Jesus Christ." Subsequently, stewards understand that everything they have and are logically belongs to the Lord. . . .
A steward recognizes that everything ultimately belongs to the Lord. The Bible recognizes private property ownership, which explains why it forbids stealing. Above all, though, the Bible repeatedly teaches that God alone is the ultimate owner of everything, because it comes from him and is ruled over by him. God's ownership includes all wealth: "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts." God's ownership extends to the natural resources we cultivate for wealth, as God says in Psalm 50:10: '"For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills." Even the abilities we use to earn a living are gifted to us by God and are to be humbly used, as Deuteronomy 8:17—18 says: "Beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth." . . .
Simply put, stewards know they deserve hell. Everything that they enjoy belongs to God and is gifted to them for enjoyment and service. Practically, this means the air we breathe, the food we eat, and everything else is a gracious gift from our loving God.
Stewards seek to faithfully oversee all that God has entrusted to their oversight. Because they see that they and all that has been entrusted to their care belong to God alone, they aspire to manage everything in their life in a God-glorifying way. Additionally, they do not want to be guilty of robbing God by failing to manage his resources according to his wishes.
From Doctrine, Chapter 12. Stewardship: God Gives (pgs. 373–374). Doctrine is out now.
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In one year, we’re going to Turkey.
This isn’t just a place on the map: It’s the Bible in three dimensions. It’s one thing to read about Paul going to Ephesus in chapter 19 of the book of Acts; it’s another to think about going into the thick of a riot in the 93-degree heat in July, and walk through the ruins of the pagan Temple of Artemis—one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World—which the ancient Ephesians so vehemently defended.
We’re taking this trip to educate leaders and others who want to experience these places first-hand and those who want to learn alongside a global fellowship. This is our first expedition trip since we took a group last year to Israel. The itinerary is structured around biblical teaching by myself at key historical sites. For a taste, the Hagia Sofia, featured above, is part of the four-day extension trip to Istanbul. Yes, the trip is over a year away, but there are only 65 spots left in early registration, and there’s an early-bird discount if you sign up by tomorrow.
If you’re a congregation, send your pastor to the heartland of the early church. If you’re a parent, make it a legacy trip for your family. If you’ve read about the places the disciples went, send yourself to retrace their steps as you grow in your own discipleship. You’ll join myself and the Mars Hill team, along with Christians from all over the world. (One in five people currently registered are from outside the U.S.)
This trip will lead into a big endeavor, something I’ve never seen done before:
We’re going to study a book of the Bible together with churches from around the world, all at the same time.
After wrapping up the Luke series at the end of 2011, we’re going to take the book of Ephesians and go through it together with churches from around the world. And we’re going to have a whole global church community and set of content set up before we even start the series.
This is how it’s gonna happen: I’m going to write a book of commentary on Ephesians before I preach the series, and then we’ll publish the book during the fall of 2011.
Then, we’re going to invite churches from around the world to go through Ephesians with us and use all of our community group content together starting in early 2012. Mars Hill Pastor Brad House will write not only community group discussion questions for each chapter, but also family questions, and even content for kids in community groups who are meeting separately from the parents so they can study Ephesians as well.
Those pastors who sign up are going to get additional information, commentaries, reference material, and preaching tips on how to preach Ephesians. This way, we’ll help other churches go through Ephesians with us around the world.
As an added bonus, for some of the sermons, we’ll live-record in Ephesus next July on the tour. We’re then going to throw the names of the churches that are going through Ephesians with us in a hat, and on the Sunday when the recorded service is playing at the Mars Hill campuses, I’ll pick one name out of the hat and then fly out to that church and preach there live.
All of this to say, we’re working hard to do this study series very differently. Let’s come together, as local churches from all over the world, to study the Bible alongside each other. Send your pastors, your leaders, your family, yourself to Turkey.
Originally posted on the Mars Hill Blog.
The current Mars Hill sermon series traces the life of Jesus through the Gospel of Luke. Watch the preview.
From the recent sermon John the Baptizer, Part 2.
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The mutual indwelling that God's people enjoy in corporate worship is essential to our growth personally, joy collectively, and witness culturally. God's people gather because, in the depths of their regenerated nature, the Holy Spirit gives them deep desires to worship God with his people. We want to see God's people, we want to hear of God's work in their lives, we want to know of ways we can lovingly serve them, and we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves that reaches beyond the mundane details of life and connects us all together despite our differences in age, race, gender, and income to seek and celebrate evidences of God's grace.
Regarding how God is to be worshiped, God must be worshiped as he wishes, not as we wish. The Bible is clear that God is to be worshiped in ways and forms that he deems acceptable. This explains why God judges those who seek to worship him with either sinful forms externally or sinful hearts internally. This is incredibly important. Some churches care more about what is in people's hearts than about what they do in their lives, whereas others are more concerned about doing things the 'right' way and care little about the motivations behind those actions. When it comes to worship, which is all of life, the God of the Bible cares about both what we do and why we do it.
From Doctrine, Chapter 11. Worship: God Transforms (pg. 351). Doctrine is out now.
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The church obeys the Great Commission to evangelize and make disciples. The church is an evangelistic community where the gospel of Jesus is constantly made visible through its proclamation of the gospel, the witness of the members' lives, and its Spirit-empowered life of love. From the first day, 'the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved' because they took Jesus' command seriously: 'You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.'
The church is to be an evangelistic people on mission in the world, passionate to see lost people meet Jesus Christ as Savior, God, and Lord. Any church submitting to the Holy Spirit and obedient to Scripture wants fewer divorces, addictions, thefts, and abuses and knows the only way to see that happen is to make more disciples. The church loves people and is continually and painfully aware of the devastation that is wrought in this life and in the life to come for those who are not reconciled to God. Therefore, while not imposing religion on anyone, the church of Jesus Christ is to constantly be proposing reconciliation with God to everyone.
As local churches implement these characteristics of the church, it is vital that the distinction between principle and method be retained. These eight characteristics give us timeless biblical principles that are unchanging regardless of culture. Nevertheless, they also require church leaders to use timely biblical methods that are changing depending upon culture. This is the essence of what it means to be a missional church that contextualizes its ministry. Paul demonstrated this by not changing his doctrine or principles but often changing his methods, depending upon his audience.
From Doctrine, Chapter 10. Church: God Sends (pgs. 312–313). Doctrine is out now.
Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe is available now. Read a free chapter and find out more.
This is a series on 11 Leadership Lessons from 12 Disciples, based on the recent sermon Jesus Calls the Twelve, on Luke 6:12-16.
You're either going to go out like Judas or Jesus—that's how your life is going to end. You're going to go out like Jesus, faithful to the end, whatever the cost, or you're going to go out like Judas, prematurely, tragically, rebelliously, shamefully. I want you to keep your boots on, finish strong, run your race, see it through to the end, be a completer, a finisher, a closer of the things God has given you to do.
As you read this, maybe you're like me, you may wonder, "What happened to these guys?" We know in the Bible, they went forward. Some of them were cowards, but they toughened up. The resurrection put some steel in their spine. They preached, they taught, they planted churches. John wrote five books of the Bible, Peter wrote two. These guys did get some stuff done, but the Bible doesn't tell us how they finished—for that we've got to go to history. Did they die with their boots on? Here are some of their stories from Foxe's Book of Martyrs. It was first written in 1559, and it's fantastic. Gotta love the Puritans.
Wonder how James died?
James had a critic who wanted him murdered. He had a Judas, and on the way to be crucified, apparently he had some conversation with his Judas, and his Judas repented and said, "I'm sorry. Let's get beheaded together for Jesus," and they did. James is a bad man—in a good way.
"Thomas preached to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Carmenians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and Margians. He was killed in Calamina, India." Most of these men died murderous martyrdom. You know what? Mars Hill Church would be much smaller but much holier, more effective, more fruitful, I think, if we had a little bit of suffering. Can't make it happen, I've tried. But what happens is when people start giving their life for the cause of the gospel, all of a sudden those who are playing church stop playing. They either step up for Jesus, and go from "come and see" to "go and die," or like Judas, they just walk away and go do something else.
"Simon, brother of Jude and James the younger who were all the sons of Mary Cleophas and Alphaeus, was bishop of Jerusalem after James," Jesus' brother. "He was crucified in Egypt." Crucified. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it well: "When Christ calls a man, he calls him to come and die." Come and die. When Jesus says, "Pick up your cross and follow me," that's what it means to be a disciple, that you go the way of Jesus. You give your life for what he gave his life to, the glory of God and the good of others for the church. "The other Simon, the apostle, he was also crucified."
"Bartholomew is said to have preached in India and translated the Gospel of Matthew into their tongue. He was beaten, crucified, and beheaded."
If you were going to get crucified, would you stop calling yourself a Christian?
"You boys want to crucify me? There's a good spot, go for it. I belong to Jesus."
"Matthew wrote his Gospel to the Jews in the Hebrew tongue after he had converted Ethiopia and all Egypt. Hircanius, the king, sent someone to kill him with a spear."
"After years of preaching to the barbarous nations, Philip was stoned, crucified, and buried with his daughter."
"The second persecution began during the reign of Domitian, the brother of Titus. Domitian exiled John to the island of Patmos." It's an actual spot and I've been there. "But on Domitian's death, John was allowed to return to Ephesus in the year A.D. 70. He remained there until the reign of Trajan, governing the churches of Asia, and writing his Gospel until he died at about the age of one hundred."
But at a hundred, he may have had a lot of scars on his body, because before they exiled him, they tried to kill him. They boiled him alive, and he lived through it, so they exiled him for a while. He got out and wrote books of the Bible, as a boiled old man.
We're glad you come and see. You need to go and die.
Father God, I pray for us as a people. We're in a day where we get a lot of come-and-see. There are free sermons on the Internet, classes, training, Christian music, radio stations, radio preachers, church events, mass crusades, services, small groups. It seems, Lord God, like there are more come-and-see opportunities than any people have ever been offered in the history of the world. And God, we rejoice in the come-and-see opportunities. We rejoice that people come to hear the Bible and see lives change through Jesus.
But God, I pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit and the hearts and minds and the lives of our people, that they would respond to your call to become Christians, that they would respond to your call to persevere as Christians, that they would give like Christians should give, that they would serve like Christians should serve, that they would suffer like Christians should suffer, that they would testify like Christians should testify, and Lord God, I pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit on us as a people that we wouldn't just be a come-and-see people, that we'd be a go-and-die people. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Note: This has been a series on 11 Leadership Lessons from 12 Disciples, based on the recent sermon Jesus Calls the Twelve, on Luke 6:12-16.
Music from the Mars Hill band Red Letter. Pay what you want and download the full album now from Re:Sound.
This is a series on 11 Leadership Lessons from 12 Disciples, based on the recent sermon Jesus Calls the Twelve, on Luke 6:12-16.
Diotrephes is a guy who's only mentioned once in the Bible in one of the epistles written by John, and it says this: "Diotrephes always wanted to be first." If they're going to put your name in the Bible for one thing, that's pretty sad. He was really proud, and he always wanted to have all the attention.
Now, the truth is some leaders will get attention. Some of us, more than we like, at least certain kinds of attention. But the sin of Diotrephes is, "I don't want to be on the team, I've got to be the face of the team. I don't want to just humbly serve, I want my name to be famous." And we live in that sort of celebrity-addicted culture where people get famous who don't even do anything. Isn't that weird? You ever watch TMZ or pick up a People magazine? You're like, "All these people are famous and they didn't do anything." Some people are just famous—there's their dog in their handbag, and what did they do? Nothing. Why are they famous? Because we're desperate to talk about somebody. And the sin of Diotrephes is, "I want them to talk about me, not Jesus."
Jesus chooses twelve apostles, but they all don't get the same press. If you read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and if you read Acts together, Peter is mentioned 189 times. John, 50. Philip, 17. Andrew, 13. Thomas, 11. Matthew, also called Levi (some of these guys have two names) 9. James the son of Alphaeus, 7. Thaddeus or Judas, he had two names and you know why. There were two disciples with the name Judas; the other guy was really bummed, right? "So what do you do?" "I'm an apostle." "What's your name?" "Judas." "Oh, I heard about you." "No, I'm the other Judas, call me Thaddeus. I'm not rolling with Judas anymore." Simon the Zealot, four times. Bartholomew, also called Nathaniel, same man, is mentioned once. Judas Iscariot, 22.
Some of these people, like Peter, get mentioned a lot; others, hardly at all. If you want do a really simple Bible study, do one on Bartholomew. You could tweet his whole life story because that's all we know. His name is Bartholomew, he was an apostle. I don't even need all the characters. That's all I got. We don't know much. Peter we know: he's impetuous. Cut a guy's ear. We know lots about Peter. Thomas, he's the doubter. Thomas has one bad day. That's the one day he made the press. It's like "Come on, man, I finished well." He had a bad day, so we're just going to keep talking about that one. And other people, we don't know anything about.
On a team, especially a good diverse weird team, some people are going to be real prominent, others less prominent. Some are going to get a lot of press time, others not so much. Be okay with that. Some of you, God's called you to be up front. Don't be cowards. Some of you, God's called to lead, visibly, publicly. Don't be cowards. Others of you, that's not you. Be number two, be behind the scenes. Be number three, help it happen, get it done. The truth is these guys were all doing important stuff, some of them we just don't know what it was because they weren't up front, they were behind the scenes. That's important too. I say that with all sincerity.
To be continued.
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