Cast Your Net part2

Cool. Well, thank you. And don't forget that we've got next week— I want to hold a bit of an extraordinary meeting of the church. I want to talk about 2014, where we're going, what we're doing. It's been a fantastic year. You know, it's just been incredible what God has done in the last 18 months. And I just want to bring you up to speed on where we're up to on a few things. Give you a little bit of a financial update, but also a vision update of where we're heading next year. Don't forget, we've got the 2 weeks off. So we're going to have after our Christmas special, which I believe is December 21st, we're going to be off that week and the next week. And the next time we meet back together is going to be, I don't know, January 11th, I believe, is that next Saturday night. So it'll be a while. Or is it the 7th? I think it's the 11th. Anyway, I don't know. Someone will tell you. We'll get it out to you anyway. But I really want to enjoy and encourage you. To, to go, to go and have a great holiday around Christmas time. You know, let's, let's, let's work hard. Let's worship hard. Let's love God, do church hard. And when it's holiday time, boom, let's enjoy it. Next Saturday, Sunday, I'll let you know about that during the week, too. I'm going to be preaching at Henry Patterson's church. So I invite you to come along to that and we'll do church Saturday night and Sunday morning with Henry. So let's open up your Bible. Turn your phone on. Eli, stop watching ESPN. Good on you, mate. Turn to Matthew 13:47. Ricky, turn off Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, and 4. Good, mate. Thank you. Appreciate it. Matthew 13:47. And I'm pretty sure Scotty did not mow lawns today. Just saying. Hope he's still got the overtime. So Matthew 13, verse 47. We've been talking about the kingdom of God for some time now. This particular verse, our Lord starts with again. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. The last few weeks we've been looking at the times that our Lord has said or used the phrase, the kingdom of God is like. Now, he uses this phrase in particular ways to describe a particular aspect or quality of the kingdom. So the kingdom of God is not an external thing. It's an internal thing. It's not bricks and mortar. It's not a program. It's not a ministry. Now, I personally, and this is personally, I strongly object to the emphasis that some ministries put on phrases like Give to the kingdom. Give to the building program. We're building the kingdom of God here. This is kingdom of God ministries. It implies that what they're building or what they're doing is itself the very kingdom of God. Yeah, in fact, you know, we've talked about it before. There's a there's a movement locally that talks about you know seven mountains theology or dominion theology that teaches that that. That politics, the movie industry needs to be taken, entertainment, the education industry, politics needs to be taken over, law enforcement needs to be taken over. And once we've established ourselves in all of those areas and Christ is then free, which is a huge statement in and of itself, free to return and rule and reign on the planet. Now, the politest way I can possibly put that in the clearest way is I fundamentally believe it's heresy. Yeah. There's nothing doctrinal in that statement. It's saying that if we take over the arts and all these other things, that then we usher in the very kingdom of God. And it's not biblical. And it's just not true. Their definition of their understanding of the kingdom of God is flawed. So the kingdom of God is the establishment of the rule and reign of Jesus Christ in the heart of men and women. Let me say it again. The kingdom of God is the establishment of the rule and reign of Jesus Christ in the heart of men and women. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. The challenge that people have with that is they can't own it. You can't franchise it. You can't build the website for it. You can't package it. You can't sell it. What you can do is proclaim it and encourage and release your people to go about doing it. And most folk don't want to do that because, see, I can't build my building campaign on that. I can't sell that as a one-time love-give offering. I can't do that. If I make the kingdom of God about what's happening inside of your life, about your personal walk with Jesus Christ, about the passionate need to reach and touch the world with the true gospel, if that's what it's about, then I'm really disempowering myself. I'm taking the power out of the pulpit and putting it in the pews. And that was called the Reformation. They took it out of the Roman Catholic Church and said, here folks, go out and do it. And I'm telling you this straight up and down, all we've done is return to pre-Reformation days. We've got the papacy. Have a look at these cathedrals that are currently being built. Now, I've got no problem with huge large buildings being used for useful things, but one day a week is not a useful thing. 2 days a week, I don't care if you've got 20 services, those things need to be hubs of life. It is The height of vanity to have a building so large to basically serve as a single monument to one person's vision of what the thing called the Kingdom of God is. We've got a new one just going up on 1709 here. We don't need that. I wish the guy would have built a movie theater. All he's going to do is beam himself in from Oklahoma anyway. What an absolute waste of time. Put a movie theater in and have a whole bunch of people in the city that we live in, in Enjoying themselves and then turn up to church on Sunday. Well, why don't you turn it into a youth center, a rec center, something in the middle of town that people can use, a retirement village? We've got more, more people retiring in this part of town than anywhere else. You know, they want to build it here because of the money. Then know your audience and reach your audience for Christ. We don't need another monolith, another, another erection to someone's ego and mentality anyway. Sitting in my shed having a rave. So sitting in church no more makes you a Christian than sitting in your garage makes you a car. It's ridiculous. A little saying I've used often is that before you were saved, the gospel was all about you. Now it's all about them. So before you were saved, before you knew Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, it was all about you. But now that you are saved, the point of the gospel is no longer intrinsic. It's no longer introverted. It's extroverted. See, previously it was someone else's extroverted gospel that grabbed your attention, that challenged your mind, that, that God used to get into your heart. It was that that got you. But now it's your turn to turn around and give it away. Before you were saved, before you came to the full understanding of grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as it pertains to salvation, everything was about you. Now it's got to be reversed. It should have been about you. Every Christian that came along your path should have been focused on somehow reaching your heart and life for the gospel. Every church program that should ever have run should have somehow been passionately focused on reaching you with the gospel. That's how it should have been. But in reality, it's not. Most Christians are self-focused. They're just like everybody else. We're all human. I get that. But just like everybody else, we're focused on our needs, our wants, our desires, our prayers. We're not focused on our neighbors and our friends and our family that don't know Christ. We've got Christ and we spend more time praying about the stuff that we don't have as opposed to thanking God for him that we do have. Most churches are focused on their programs, their ministries, and their outreaches. In other words, if you come to me to hear me preaching, to come to my church or event, you may possibly be blessed with an opportunity to hear the gospel. Unfortunately, most likely you won't be. Why is that? Because people don't want to offend you. We won't tell you that, that this guilt, this fear, these phobias that you're wrapped up in Are all there because of sin, and you can get rid of it. We don't want to mention the word sin. We want to talk about God. We want to talk about God who loves you as opposed to the wrath of God. You can't understand the love of God without the wrath of God. You cannot understand forgiveness of sin and grace without an acknowledgment of sin. Yeah, we want to talk about the grace and the love of God, and we will never ever want to challenge someone that they're not living a way in a lifestyle that brings God glory. Yet that's what the whole thing's about. Adam and Eve didn't did not do what they were supposed to do. They did not walk in continual fellowship with God, and as a result of that, God said, "Whoa! That's not what I made this covenant for. That's what not this relationship's about. You have broken our relationship." Now our Lord Jesus Christ restored that relationship, but if we don't take time to point out to people that the relationship is fundamentally broken, that is fundamentally flawed. Then they don't know how to restore it. And if they don't understand what sin is— and this is the thing people say, well, you couldn't preach, you shouldn't preach about sin. You can preach about sin all you want. You just got to tell them there's an answer for sin. You got to tell them that there's an answer for being disenfranchised and removed from God. But people don't want to do any of that. They want to be the seeker-friendly, the happy-clappy, the every day is a Friday smiley church. And the reality, that's not life and that's not God. Amen. It's not sound theology. See, out there, this entire world is in desperate need of Jesus Christ, and no one's doing anything about it. The church, by and large in the West, is large and introverted. Now, if that's the case, then we have to ask ourselves what it is, is it that the church is actually teaching? Because We've seen from the teaching of Jesus that the kingdom of God is this tiny seed. It's this, this tiny yeast. It's this tiny substance that he predicts will go out and impact all of the community. But we're not seeing that in the church. We're not seeing the church influence the world. We're seeing the world influence the church. We're not seeing this tiny mustard seed grow up and flower and cover the entire world. We're not seeing this tiny bit of yeast impregnate The flower with such a degree that it fills and overflows and touches all its community. And you just have a look at what happens in Texas. We've got more churches per capita in Texas than any, any state, any place in the world. Dallas-Fort Worth, more than any city in the world. Yet we have more teen pregnancies. We have more second-term, second abortions. We have more second divorces. Our poverty and crime are about the same as the rest of the nation. Racism is rampant. And I've been called a cracker by a black fella. And I've been called a nigger by a white fella. Me, I just thought I was a guy. It's been in about the last 6, 7 months. See, I'm Australian. Second Fleet. Convict. Sent over for striking a superior officer. Can you believe it? Anyway, there were 2 things for that group of fellas when they arrived. There were Aboriginal women and kangaroos. They were the only marriage possibilities. The kangaroos were too fast. So here I am. I've got a little bit of that blackfella blood in me. Get my afro on. And I'm just surprised at how, how redundant people are in their thinking for no reason. I mean, when my head was shaved, it was never an issue one way or the other. But now I'm some sort of Oreo. You know, I think that's the phrase. I don't know. It's kind of new for me. That sort of racism anywhere in my life, let alone in America. So here we are in Texas, covenanting churches, and nothing has changed. There's no light on a hill here. We're a candle that's diminishing. I've honestly never met more disillusioned, despondent, desperate people sick of going to church. And that's just the pastors that I have met here in Texas. See, our target market in Texas, listen to me, is not, I repeat, not those that have never heard the gospel, because I don't know if there is one. You drive down 114 or 35 and there's a billboard everywhere. You turn on any radio station, you walk into any mall, you hop into any elevator and they've Muzacked anything that was once reasonable and turned it into background dribble. No, no, our target market is those that have not heard the true gospel, the pure gospel, the real gospel. I spoke to a police chief a couple of years ago, and he wanted us to come into the local high schools and do some work. He was desperate for us to build a portable boxing ring at the time and go in there and do self-defense classes and use it as a motivational thing for the kids. You see, his biggest problem was these kids had too much money and too much time on their hands. Too much access to Daddy's liquor cabinet and Mummy's Valium. So they get together and have a pharma party. They throw in a little bit of Adderall, a little bit of Ritalin, a little bit of Vicodin, a little bit of Valium, a whole bunch of screw-ups.