We're Going to Hell | Follower | Week 5

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:08] Speaker A: Church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlifegeillette.com Here is this week's teaching. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Well, good morning. Welcome to those of you who are watching on church307.com to the guys over at the prison, to our friends at the jail, and those of you who are here in the room. I want you to know that if you call yourself a Christian, you are a member of a pretty special group of people. Like an eternal group of people. Your life is not just this temporary thing that we're experiencing now. It is eternal. You know, when Jesus came to Earth, they tried from the very beginning to kill him, to stop the movement. There was a king that when Jesus was two years old, a king tried to kill him. But that king couldn't stop the movement. As Jesus grew up, the religious leaders of the day tried to shut him up and tried to argue with him, but they couldn't stop the movement. At one point, a group of people tried to shove Jesus off a cliff, but they couldn't stop the movement. Finally, they did kill Jesus. Thought he was dead, he came back to life. They couldn't stop the movement. And Jesus ascends to heaven. And you assume that all that has stopped, that hasn't stopped because he handed off the authority of his church to his followers. And his followers began to be persecuted one after another. But no matter what they tried to do to the followers of Jesus, they couldn't stop the movement. At one point, they started feeding Christians to lions, but they couldn't stop the movement. And Nero lit Christians on fire, tied them to a stake, lit them on fire to provide light for his evening parties. But he couldn't stop the movement. No matter what the enemy tries, they cannot stop the movement. You know, almost every single one of Jesus apostles were killed. [00:02:17] Speaker A: But they weren't killed because of what they believed. They were killed because they wouldn't shut up about it. Like people would be okay if you just believed some crazy things. Because if you read the history of the day, all kinds of people believed crazy things. It was not just that they believed crazy things. It was that they wouldn't shut up about it. They wanted to tell the world about the good news that they had heard from Jesus Christ. They wanted to tell the world that Jesus died on the cross and raised from the dead, ascended to heaven. And because of his sacrifice, because of his power, he wants to come and establish his kingdom. In this world. And they wouldn't stop talking about it, so they killed them. But even killing Jesus's apostles didn't stop the movement. [00:03:04] Speaker A: So finally the, the enemy, the Satan, has come to the conclusion he can't stop the movement. God will win. God is victorious. So his strategy has changed from trying to stop the movement to trying to stop you from being a part of the movement. If he can't stop the big movement, maybe he can stop the movement in you. [00:03:30] Speaker A: So how will you respond? [00:03:32] Speaker A: Will we cower in fear? Or will we boldly step in and become the people that God created us to be? [00:03:42] Speaker A: The title of my sermon today is we're going to Hell. [00:03:47] Speaker A: That's a very sad title. It should have been, we're storming the gates of hell. We're going to hell in the way Jesus went to hell when he died on the cross. [00:04:01] Speaker A: In the way Jesus descended to begin the process of establishing his kingdom in this world. [00:04:10] Speaker A: The kingdom cannot be stopped. And I don't want persecution to come. But if you look throughout history, the times when the church has grown the most, it's the times when the church was persecuted. You know, a lot of times we like to claim persecution. We just, it's. We like to feel bad for ourselves, right? Oh, no. They changed the. What's the restaurant? They changed the logo and everybody freaked out. Cracker Barrel. They changed the. Like. It's fun to think about the reasons why we're persecuted. They're taking away our liberties compared to the Christians of the past. Got it pretty easy. And maybe the fact that we've got it so easy is part of the reason why we take it so easy. That we just avoid risk. We like to just build a bubble and stay safe, keep those outsiders away. [00:05:07] Speaker A: So Wes was up here earlier and he talked about the fact that we are a part of a denomination called the Wesleyan Church. The Wesleyan Church follows the teachings of a guy named John Wesley. I am passionately Wesleyan. I love our denomination. I love the teachings of the leader that we follow. The problem is sometimes our denomination in the past has fallen into this habit of being an inward focused country club where we just kind of focus on perfecting our individual lives. And I got to become as morally good as I possibly can. And if I can be morally good, then that's all that really matters. But if you actually follow the life of John Wesley, you realize that is just a teeny tiny part of what he taught. Actually, John Wesley was a little bit crazy in the way he interacted with our world in the Way he went out and would do crazy things to try to bring people to Jesus. One time, John Wesley said this. He said, catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn. [00:06:14] Speaker A: This is the kind of guy that sparked our movement, our denomination, and I wonder, do we still have that kind of enthusiasm for the kingdom? Nero isn't setting us on fire anymore, so maybe it's time for us to set ourselves on fire, to have that kind of passion. [00:06:38] Speaker A: To be so. [00:06:42] Speaker A: Excited about and passionate about the church that we're willing to sacrifice to grow it, to bring God's kingdom to this world. John Wesley also said, give me 100 preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw. Whether they are clergymen or laymen, whether they're pastors or church attenders, such alone will shake the gates of hell. [00:07:12] Speaker A: And set up the kingdom of heaven on earth. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Today I want to tell a story about a time that Jesus took his young male disciples to a terrible town called Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi was a city built for one primary purpose, and it was for false God worship, to worship their idols. When they built the city of Caesarea Philippi, to establish these temples and all these different synagogues to these false gods, they built the city on a giant rock. Because this rock was at the base of a hill that had a big cave in it. And out of this cave flowed water. It's actually the starting point of the Jordan River. If you go to Israel today, you'll see the Jordan river just kind of flows all the way through Israel. Well, it starts. Starts in Caesarea Philippi, and it flows out of this cave. And the cave is where Caesarea Philippi is. I took this picture of that cave the first time I went to Caesarea Philippi. This is the cave over here. There used to be a lot of water pouring out of this. Over the years, settling and changes have caused the actual. The water comes out of a spring down here now, but in Jesus's day, it would have come out of this place up here. And in Jesus day. We talked about last week how they thought the sea or really any body of water that they couldn't see the bottom of it had some kind of portal to hell. And this was their. The like, main door to hell. They believed. They believed that this cave with all this water coming out of it must be coming from the depths of the earth. And the depths of the earth is where hell is. And so they believed that they needed that. If you wanted to access hell, you had to go through this cave. In their day, the primary false God that they would worship was a God named Baal or Baal. But in about 300 or 200 BC, the Greeks kind of changed the purpose of this worshiping location. To worship the Greek God Pan. [00:09:21] Speaker A: Pan was their God of fertility. And I Googled to try to find you a picture of the God Pan and just let you know, you should not Google that, because Pan was an evil creature in their mythology. In fact, all of the statues of him that they created were incredibly disgusting, incredibly vulgar. I did find one statue that I felt like was okay to show you. Pan in their mythology was this half man, half goat, Tumnus character, right? And Pan, in order to worship him, they would perform the rituals that you would perform in order to worship the fertility God. Right? And so in order to worship him, it really just turned into this disgusting orgy where there would be sex acts done in display for everybody, and then everybody else would join in. There were goats involved, There were statues involved. This is where it was disgusting, horrible. This, in fact, this is where we get the word pandemonium. It was a description of the worship of the false God Pan. It was a terrible place. In fact, it gets even worse. They would actually take their babies and they would sacrifice their babies to these false gods. Some of them would throw their babies into the waters in this cave because they believed that if they could please the God Pan, then he would descend through the gates of hell in this cave, and then he would ascend to the heavens. And when he ascended to the heavens, he would rain down his fertility on their crops. And so they needed to please this God so that they could have a good harvest. [00:11:17] Speaker A: Why do I tell you all this? Because I think it's important for you to know where Jesus was when he taught the lesson we're going to learn today. You see, Jesus took his followers to Caesarea Philippi, which is 30 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Thirty miles back then is a much larger distance than it is today. And so Jesus, we talked about last week, grew up here in Capernaum. He avoided Tiberius. We talked about. This is the kind of political center of the day. He would often, often travel around there. But we don't have any story of him going to Tiberius, but we do have a story of him traveling all the way up here to the north to go to Caesarea Philippi. Why? [00:12:05] Speaker A: Why did Jesus go? I mean, Caesarea Philippi is on the way to nowhere. There is nothing you don't Just pass through there. The only reason you get all the way up here to the north where the Jordan river starts is if you went there on purpose. So Jesus on purpose took his disciples to Caesarea Philippi to say this. [00:12:30] Speaker A: When Jesus. Let's go into the verse. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is? This is what Jesus called himself. Who do people say that I am? And it says that he was took his disciples here. We actually don't know how many of his disciples. When we think about the disciples, we usually think of the 12 apostles. But he actually had many more disciples than that at this time in his ministry. This might have been the 70 disciples that are referenced once, or a larger group of people. But Jesus has taken his students to this town. And just imagine this rabbi, this teacher and his students are hanging out in the middle of this terrible pandemonium scene. And I wonder how the people worshiping Pan are responding. What do they think about these guys listening to Jesus teach? Are they mocking Jesus followers? Are they trying to get Jesus followers to join in the fun? [00:13:38] Speaker A: What does this scene look like? Imagine that in your head. Jesus followers respond, well, they replied. Some say, you're John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. Then Jesus asked them, but who do you say that I am. [00:13:57] Speaker A: Simon? Peter answered, Simon always answers, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. Jesus replied, you are blessed, Simon, son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. Remember, Jesus is complimenting Peter for listening to God. This is important for later in the story. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter, which means rock. And upon this rock, I will build my church. There is a lot here that we don't have time to unpack. But I first want to point out that Jesus did not say this part in parentheses. That was added later by the translators. Why? Because Peter's name is rock. Like in their original language, they would not have to clarify rock means rock. They just read the word Peter. We just don't translate Peter to English because if we just translated Peter to English, it would say rock. So the translators are having to tell us. Just so you know, Jesus is talking about building his church on a rock. Well, Peter's name means rock. The translators are making the connections for us. So why is Jesus saying that he's going to build his church upon a rock? Well, I think he's trying to Convey a couple things. He's using the metaphor of a rock for a couple reasons. One is he's saying that what you've just said about me being Lord, that's the foundation, the truth that you just proclaimed. That is the rock upon we will build our church. I think he's also talking about Peter. We are the body of Christ, we are the bride of Christ. So he will build his church upon his followers, upon his disciples, and that will be a solid foundation. But I think there's one more reference that Jesus is trying to make here when he uses the phrase rock. Let's go back to that picture of Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi is literally built on a giant rock. Jesus is literally teaching this message while standing on a rock. And I believe that Jesus is not just talking about Peter building the church on Peter or his followers. He's not just talking about building the church on His Lordship. I think he is also making reference to the idea that we should build the church on this rock. And where is this rock? At the gates of hell. [00:16:27] Speaker A: That's not what we think of when we think of the church. I think often when we think about the church, we think of this place of sanctuary, this retreat, not advance this retreat. We're going to come, we're going to make ourselves comfortable. We're going to enjoy the music. I'm going to feel good. I hope I get to sit in my same seat every Sunday and nobody makes me feel uncomfortable. I hope I don't have to talk to the annoying people. I can only talk to the people I like. [00:16:56] Speaker A: We are church consumers. We just want it the way that feels good, right? [00:17:03] Speaker A: That's not what it looks like. If you're building the church at the gates of hell. [00:17:09] Speaker A: If you are building the church at the gates of hell, expect to fight some battles and not fight battles amongst ourselves. Because we're a team. Not fight battles with people we disagree with their theology on. Because we are a team, we all play different roles. We all fight together against the enemy. [00:17:31] Speaker A: The church is not a sanctuary. The church is a battlefield. [00:17:38] Speaker A: The sanctuary, the veil was torn. A sanctuary is a place where you go for retreat. That is not the purpose of the church that Jesus came to establish. [00:17:49] Speaker A: We are on offense. But that's scary. [00:17:55] Speaker A: I don't want to fight a battle in church. I just want to come enjoy myself. This is why John Wesley had to leave the walls of the church. He was an Anglican priest. [00:18:08] Speaker A: He preached in a church every Sunday. And he decided this country club isn't getting It I'm going to have to leave the church, which is totally unheard of in his day. I'm going to have to leave the church and go out to the fields and start preaching, because this is not at the gates of hell. [00:18:26] Speaker A: Our strategy here is to bring people who are far from God into the church. And sometimes that's uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to answer awkward questions, sometimes you have to confront some challenges. [00:18:39] Speaker A: That's why we say, come as you are. John Wesley left the walls of the church to go preach in the fields. And do you know who he was preaching to? Coal miners. That was his strategy. [00:18:53] Speaker A: That's dangerous. It's easier in the walls of the church. Here's the good news. The church is a battlefield, but the church will win. We cannot lose. [00:19:06] Speaker A: Jesus said it this way. He said, upon this rock I will build my church and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. That's a promise. [00:19:20] Speaker A: I actually think this is a weak translation of this verse. I like the new living translation, but if you've read it in the new international version, a better translation of this verse says, the gates of hell will not conquer it or will not overcome it. When is the last time you saw gates attacking someone? That would be an awkward scene. That's not what gates do. I grew up thinking that this verse was about, when the Satan attacks, he can't defeat us. That's not what this verse is about. This verse is saying, when you attack the Satan, you will win. When you attack the enemy, you cannot be defeated. If we have a conflict with Gates, that means we are on offense. [00:20:08] Speaker A: So rather than sitting back in our bunkers complaining about our religious liberties, we're out doing the mission. We're out finding the people that are far from God and bringing them into the community. [00:20:25] Speaker A: And this is just the reality of who we are created to be. Because Jesus took his twenty something disciples to the gates of hell and said, this is where we do battle. This is who we are called to be. In fact, he said this. He said, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven. Then he sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. [00:21:02] Speaker A: From then on, Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders. [00:21:14] Speaker A: The leading priests and the teachers of the religious law. He would be killed. But on the third day, he would be Raised from the dead. [00:21:24] Speaker A: But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. [00:21:30] Speaker A: No, Jesus, remember, we're supposed to, like, be rich and powerful. No, we're at Caesarea Philippi, not Tiberius Peter. Heaven forbid, Lord, he said, this will never happen to you. Jesus turned to Peter and said, get away from me, Satan. You are a dangerous trap to me. Satan, that means the tempter. That's not a person's name. This is a description of a person who's tempting us or deceiving us. You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's. Then Jesus said to the disciples, in Mark's version of this story. So Mark also tells this story in his version. He clarifies Jesus didn't just say to the disciples. Mark's version says Jesus began shouting to the crowd. That's what makes me think this was not just the 12 disciples, that it was a larger group of disciples. So picture this. Jesus is standing in this pandemonium, terrible scene, and he begins to shout to Caesarea Philippi. He says, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way. Peter wanted Jesus to go his way. No Jesus, no suffering. Only victory. Military might. That's our plan, Jesus, right? Jesus says, no, Give up your way. Go my way. Take up your cross and follow me. If you try to hang on to your own life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. [00:23:09] Speaker A: What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? For the Son of Man will come with his angels and the glory of his Father and imagine him saying this to Caesarea Philippi. The Son of Man. Jesus will come with his angels in the glory of his Father and will judge all people according to their deeds. Judgment is coming, and he's shouting this on the streets of Sin City. And their Sin City was way more evil than Vegas. [00:23:49] Speaker A: You will be judged for your deeds. You better hope that you have the blood of Christ purchasing your salvation. [00:24:01] Speaker A: And I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. In other words, the kingdom began when Jesus was crucified. His resurrection began the process of establishing, of building his kingdom in this world. And we are that kingdom. [00:24:28] Speaker A: Now go hide from the Satan. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Now go build a bubble. Protect yourselves. Complain. No. [00:24:38] Speaker A: Fight the battle that you were created to fight. [00:24:43] Speaker A: The movement cannot be stopped. The question is, will it ever get started in your life? Will you live life on mission? Will you risk it all for the kingdom? Because if you try to protect it, if you try to hang on to your life. [00:25:00] Speaker A: Then you will lose it. But if you surrender it to Christ. [00:25:05] Speaker A: Then you will be saved. So I want to get real practical. [00:25:10] Speaker A: Next the Sunday after Christmas. This year we've decided not to gather together in this building. Instead, we are asking all of our life groups to gather together and have a meal, do some kind of Christmas party or New Year's party or some kind of study or group gathering of some kind. Plan something to come together as your life group. And here's the big ask. Leave a seat empty and invite somebody to fill it. Who's somebody you know that is far from God, that needs to meet Jesus. Love them well, feed them well, have fun with them. Invite them into your community and show them what it looks like to be a member of of the Kingdom of God. Like that's the kind of living life on mission that Jesus created us to live. That's how we defeat the Satan, because he's recruiting too. You got two options. You can be an ambassador of the Satan or you can be an ambassador of Christ. That's your two options. You're either with him or you're against him. So be an ambassador of Christ. Represent him well. [00:26:21] Speaker A: Be an ambassador for Christ. Live your life on mission. Invite a struggling family over for dinner. Invite someone that doesn't have a family to come over to have Christmas dinner with your family. We got Christmas Eve services coming up. Invite somebody to come with you to your Christmas Eve service. [00:26:45] Speaker A: Because that is the mission. That is how we do the things that God created us to do. Be an ambassador of Christ. God, I thank you that you accomplished everything necessary for us to live life with you, to be your hands and feet, to be your bride. God, I pray that you will give us the courage to do the things you created us to do. [00:27:11] Speaker A: God, don't let us be lulled to sleep with comfort. Instead, remind us that this life is short. We've got a big mission. We love you and thank you in Jesus name, amen.