Beautiful Mess

6 · Establishes the first reason the church is messy: it contains sinners

So why is it so messy? I think we need to understand that. First, the church has sinners inside of it.

Spoiler, if you just walked in and you're like, "This church looks like a bunch of nice people." No, no, it's a bunch of sinners, right? You have that reference to the dividing wall of hostility. You see that one of the things that sin does when sin came into the world is it divides humanity and causes conflict and tension, right? It has— it's full of sinners. Now, redeemed sinners, as we see in Ephesians 2, being changed, transformed by Jesus.

We are not once what we once were, but we still battle this inside of us. When God saves us and gives us a new heart, we begin the process of looking more and more like Jesus, the process of sanctification. And By God's grace, we hope to look a little more like Jesus every year, and yet, this church that had been around for a number of years still has these sin tensions in it. Paul must speak to them.

7 · Catalogs the specific sources of tension in the Ephesian church — religious, ethnic, economic, political, and conscience-based differences

Second thing we see in the church, the reason it's a mess, is it has tension. It has tension. Ephesians 2, again, written in the context of Jewish and Gentile life together in the church was tense. These were people, if you read the letter to the Ephesians, they had different backgrounds.

They used to have, they had an entirely different religious upbringing, an entirely different religious framework. They ate different foods, which caused a number of skirmishes and tensions. They had different cultural practices. I mean, even if you go all the way down to the level of, they probably liked different kinds of music, they probably thought of entertainment as differently, they probably had very different skin colors and facial features. And then add to that the tensions that there were also within those groups, rich people and poor people.

You had Roman citizens and not Roman citizens. You had various political views. There were conscience issues where somebody's conscience might say, okay, I can eat this food offered to idols. Somebody's conscience might say, No, and you throw that together and it is tense. It doesn't just naturally come together and homogenize.

8 · Adds disagreement and external opposition to the catalog of mess

Third, you also see the church has disagreement. There's a reference here to Jesus making peace. He himself is our peace. He's making peace. Why does Paul refer to that?

Because there is not peace naturally.

In Scripture, we see that the people in the stage of the church life were disagreeing about whether Gentiles should fully come into the Jewish church. So, you see Acts 15. Jerusalem Council where this matter has to be decided. And yet, after this great moment of unity in the Jerusalem Council where people are like, "Yes, Jews and Gentiles will be one in Christ, amen," the very next verse is, "And then Paul and Barnabas went out and had a fight about whether they should bring a guy, and they went in separate directions." Right? You think, "Wait, but I thought we're done with this unity.

We're just going to be unified forever." And Paul and Barnabas is like— Paul's like, "I don't like that guy." And Barnabas is like, "This guy's the best." I don't like that guy. This guy's the best. Well, we can't go in the same direction anymore, right? There is disagreement. Later on, we learn that Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul had a major disagreement.

Church, haven't we faced some disagreements over the last year?

Couldn't we just do a flash poll? Let's go through some cultural topics and just do a show of hands of where we are, right? Let's start with— Let's start with masks. Let's do, like, in favor of, against. No, let's not do that.

Don't put your hand up. Let's go with aspects of the phrase "Black Lives Matter" or the organization or they're different or they're not different, right? Or the election, Donald J. Trump. Let's do a poll of, like, hey, who likes him, who doesn't? Let's do that.

We would not walk out of here, ladies and gentlemen. You would forget that I'm preaching from the Bible. We would all forget, right? There is disagreement. And add to that, there is also opposition from the outside.

You see this in the book of Ephesians as well. The early church was not universally loved by outsiders, right? The Jewish people thought that they were— the Christians were heretics. But the Gentile people also thought they were heretics, right? The Jewish people thought that Christianity was dangerous and should be stamped out.

And the Gentile folks, it took them a couple decades, but they got around there as well.

There was political pressure on the church. There was economic pressure on the church. There was social pressure on the church. There was personal, familial pressure within families.

9 · Pivots from cataloging the mess to diagnosing why the mess is a problem for modern believers: unrealistic expectations

Why go through this? Because I think we need to understand, we need to acknowledge that the church is messy. I think one of the reasons, one of the things that keeps us from wholeheartedly taking up the work of the church is that we are too quickly disappointed and our expectations are that there should never be any issues. And we are surprised, "Oh, I can't believe I disagree with somebody. You mean not everybody who reads their Bible thinks exactly the same way I do about the 2020 election?

Unbelievable, right?" No. The church, this has been the tension of the church from the beginning.

10 · Spurgeon quotation used to humble the listener: the search for a perfect church is futile because the searcher himself is a sinner who would spoil any perfect church he joined

But Spurgeon says something helpful here. Charles Spurgeon, 19th century preacher, says this, "If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all." And the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it. Let's just, you know, say level ground here, right? You might think, well, this is a church of sinners. Well, you are too.

We are too.

11 · Identifies two dangers: (1) disengagement from messy local church life in favor of virtual participation, and (2) preference-driven church shopping where the ideal church (the 'dream') replaces commitment to the actual church

And here's the danger, I think. The danger for us in this moment is for us to see the mess of the church, to see the messy local church and do one of two things and say, one, why even bother in the first place? Right?

As I mentioned that there was a huge cultural sort of pull right now toward, you know what, we all got used to just sitting at home for a while. And when you watch the church on a video screen, it is far less messy, isn't it? I mean, you have a sound problem here or there, but you don't have to sit across from community group with somebody who may disagree with you, her life experience is different from you, and work work it out. You don't have to reconcile with people when you just livestream, do you?

That's my concern. My concern is we'll see the mess and say, "Oh, no, that must be then God's design is for us to have a non-messy church." No, God's design is this, that this mess comes into the church and begins to be sanctified together to look more and more like Jesus. Listen, here's the danger, if I could say it this way. Over the pandemic, my wife and I have gotten used to picking up groceries at Walmart. And now when I go into Walmart, I'm like, why am I physically walking around this place?

I can go, right? And somebody will bring the groceries to my car and they will say good morning and put it in there and I will drive away. And I don't have to deal with a toddler that's licking apples in front of me, right? Whatever, like, let's just do that. And here's my concern, that we in the church have gotten used to being distant.

In some ways it's less messy, and so we think, well, let's just do that.

No, church.

Second, I think, obstacle is that we begin to, over the distance, begin to have stronger and stronger preferences over what the church should be or should feel like to us, right? Maybe it's, "Well, you know what? I wish we could go back to this era of the church or this kind of church that I was in. That was the real church." Or maybe you think, "Okay, if we could fix this and this and this, that will be the church that I could finally love fully. If the church could get its act together in this area, then I'll love it." Listen, I've even— I think there's a danger here, guys, too, where, you know, in the livestream, we all got used to jumping in on other churches' services, right?

All of a sudden you're like, "Oh, man, their band is way better. I mean, look at that guy. I mean, the lighting package that they are rocking. I love what is going on over here. And, you know, and this pastor, he's so relatable, you know.

And look how casually he dresses and look at the tattoo peeking out from under his arm." You know, it's just— or like, "No, no, I hate those kind of people. I want a guy in a suit and tie, and that's the guy I'm YouTubing," right? We begin to sort of accumulate, drift back into, like, "Well, I don't have to love this flesh and blood group of people with all their different quirks and quibbles. I can find the exact worship I love, the exact type of preacher I love, the exact type of Bible study I love, and I can do all of that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says this: "He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and sacrificial.

12 · Signals the structural pivot from 'the church is a mess' to 'the church is beautiful

You have to recognize this is Jesus' design, to bring people of various different cultural, ethnic backgrounds, all this stuff coming together, and it is beautiful. That's the second point: Jesus' church is beautiful.

13 · Establishes the first reason the church is beautiful: it belongs to Jesus

We have to set our expectations that this will be messy, but we must see in Scripture that the church, despite despite the messiness, is unbelievably beautiful, that it is worth sacrificing for and giving ourselves to again and again. In this cultural moment, taking up the work again. Just a few brief reasons the church is beautiful.

First, the church is beautiful because of who it belongs to.

In Matthew 16:18, when Jesus says, "On this rock," he says, "On this rock I will build my church." "my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Now, we often look at that verse and think, okay, the part we focus on, "the gates of hell will not prevail against it," we get all wrapped up in spiritual warfare. No, the most important part of that verse, the most important word in that verse, I think, is the word "my." Jesus says, "I will build my church," not the church, not your church. It's not as though the apostles tried to come up with something after Jesus left. This is his design. This is his church.

And if you know Jesus, you know a few things about Jesus. You know that his person and work are of infinite beauty. You know that what Jesus creates is beautiful. And you know that if Jesus sets his hand to make something, he will make something beautiful.

14 · Extends the ownership argument into relational intimacy: Jesus does not merely own the church; He loves it as a groom loves his bride

And there is a relational closeness in Scripture that is not— Jesus' relationship to the church is defined by relational closeness.

That's the way I want to say that. Jesus calls the church his bride, right? And you think, "But what about all the messiness?" He still calls her his bride.

Still calls her his bride. In Isaiah 54, he calls her his bride. In Ephesians 5, he called Jesus relationship to the church is husband and bride. In Revelation 21, it's pictured as a bride coming to her groom. Consider that for a moment.

Jesus calls the church his bride. He sets his love on her. He commits to her. He commits to her so far that he will lay down his life for her.

Church, hear me on this. If You love Jesus, you must love what he loves.

There is no loving Jesus and saying, "I refuse to love the bride." We can't do it.

15 · Personal story illustrating the claim about loving what Jesus loves

Listen, when my wife and I got married, she spent her summers in Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and I'd never been up there. I'm from Texas, and so I don't have like a great initial view of people from Cape Cod. Like, oh, these people in their little polo shirts and their little khaki shorts walking around, you know, or boat shoes, you know. You're on the land, why are you wearing boat shoes?

And initially, I'm not inclined to be like, oh, great, you know. Like, this is where the Kennedys are, as if people are telling you that as if it's like a positive thing. And I'm from Texas, I'm like, yeah. I'm not going over there, right? And I'm just saying culturally, you know, there's not a disposition.

And yet, I'm there with my wife, and this is like her place. She grew up there with her grandmother. I'm staying in her grandmother's house. She's showing me parts of her grandmother's house, the little lake that's next door to her grandmother's, the little rowboat, the walking trails that she would take, the ice cream place she would ride her bike to. And because I love my wife, something crazy happened.

Because I loved her, her love for this place began to rub off on me.

And I realized very quickly there was no loving my wife without loving this place. But very quickly I also realized because she loved it, I did too. So it is with the church.

16 · Returns to the primary text's cornerstone imagery

Second, it is beautiful. The church is beautiful because of who it is built on.

Right, Jesus calls himself— Jesus is called the cornerstone in this passage. The cornerstone. Now, the cornerstone, it wasn't a ceremonial thing like it is today, right? It's sometimes you'll have a groundbreaking or a cornerstone-laying ceremony today. Usually, if they lay a ceremonial cornerstone, they just, like, wait for everybody to leave and dig it back out so the real foundation could go in.

But that was not the way it was in the ancient world. The stone The first stone set the pattern and the direction for the whole building, right? The way the stone faced, that was the way the building would face. The pattern of the stone set the pattern of the building. And what we see in this is that because the church is built on Jesus, it is, despite seeming weak, despite seeming unstable, it is the most stable thing in our world today.

You might think, "Man, the church doesn't look very strong. You know what looks stronger? Like, the government, or this, or business, or whatever. All these other things look stronger than this. Your church seems so weak." But if you look under at the foundation at the church, you see that everything is built— everything else is built on something else, but the church is built on the cornerstone of Jesus.

Jesus keeps the building's foundation stable. In Him, the sins of His people were paid, and in Christ, the church will never come undone. In Him, we were raised to new life, and in Him, our new life will never be taken away. As Jesus said, "The gates of hell itself will not prevail against the church." The building cannot be— hear me, church, the building cannot fail. If Christ is the cornerstone.

All else is dust and air except what Christ commits himself to.

17 · Illustration of Cape Cod houses with eroding foundations

In Cape Cod, there is an interesting phenomenon happening where people built some of their houses near the water, and some of them did the extra work of kind of doing all the foundation work and making sure it was stable and solid and building up kind of putting a lot— I mean, millions of dollars really— into these foundations that will stand the test of time. And others back in the '50s or '60s were sort of just built and hoping for the best. And we saw this beautiful house, like, out on the edge of, you know, the inlet there, and it's beautiful, gleaming white. And the person on the boat tour said, "Oh, you see that beautiful house?" And we're like, "Wow." They're like, yeah, that house is probably a tenth of what all— you could buy that house right now for a tenth of all these other houses.

And some of us are looking at each other like, really? Like, where do we sign up? And he said, there's only one problem with it. Its foundation is getting eroded, and it has maybe 10 years left. Right?

So much of the world looks beautiful. You think, oh, that looks impressive. No, its foundation is being eroded. Look to the church, look to what Christ builds. Christ Himself also sets the pattern for this building.

It is His building. He laid out the pattern of what the church would be, and there is beauty and perfection in that.

18 · Direct address to Cross of Grace Church

And so, I want to say to you today, Cross of Grace Church, you have a beautiful foundation, and it is the only explanation for the existence of this place.

Over the last 40 years, the waves have come and pounded, the walls have even fallen down at times in this place. There's been leaks in the roof, as it were, but it has not fallen yet, and I believe that is because wisely our founding pastors laid our foundation in Christ. So, when the waves come and the wind blows, the foundation is secure. It is beautiful, church.

19 · Establishes that the church is beautiful because of who it is built with — people made precious by Christ's blood

Next, it is beautiful because of who it is built with.

In Acts 20, Paul calls the Ephesians elders together and charges them to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood, right? That the people that are used to build the church, the living stones forming the walls of the church, are precious to God. And they are precious not because we are the most lovable people around, as though God went through humanity and was like, "Oh, that's a lovable one. That's a great one. You know, I'm going to take that one.

I'm going to take this one. Oh, these are all the best living stones." No.

The church is precious because he himself has shed his blood for us, making us precious. We didn't start out beautiful. We have become beautiful in the sight of God through the love of Christ.

Jesus builds his church full of miraculous people. When I say miraculous, I mean that because Ephesians 2 says that we were once dead in our sins, but God made us alive together with Christ. Christ has literally brought dead people to life, changed their hearts, and brought them into his building. Think of the miracle of the Christian, that they were headed to separation and to justice, but God stopped them. God took out their heart of stone and gave them a heart of flesh.

God opened their eyes to the gospel of Jesus. God perfectly paid for every last one of their sins. And Jesus He takes that precious work and says, "This is what I will use to build my church."

20 · Story of visiting pastors who 'saw the church' without seeing the building

You know, this week when we had the Antioch Project pastors in town, we did prayer time with Chuck and my dad for a couple mornings, and Chuck kept saying, "You've got to take them by the church. You've got to take these pastors by the church." And we were, you know, doing different things and having meetings and stuff, and it was We were staying offsite, and so I was like, well, if we get a chance— and it was kind of like the schedule just kept not working to bring people by the church. And so at the end, we had to go to lunch, and we never got by— I never took everybody by the church, right?

And yet one of the guys, as he was leaving, said, oh, man, you know what? It was great being around your church this week. And I thought, but you never saw it. And then I realized, no, but they met Chuck and they heard the stories of the last 40 years of the church. They met my dad and saw God's faithfulness in him.

They drove around in the Gales minivan, which I know that they believe in the sovereignty of God because they gave their keys to a guy from Philadelphia. For, like, 2.5 days, right? I mean, the van they're driving, they had gift bags put together for them. They got notes from the kids' ministry that the kids' ministry prayed for them last week. They met Vince and heard some of his testimony.

They saw the church. The church is not this place.

And we learned that preaching to empty seats for 6 weeks, that wasn't the church. This is the church, and it is precious and beautiful in the sight of God because of who it is built with, brothers and sisters.

21 · Establishes the fourth reason the church is beautiful: its mission

All right, one more. It is beautiful because of what its mission is.

In an insane act of grace, Jesus decides to make the church, this church, this mess, this growing and changing mess that is yet beautiful, He makes the church His chosen vehicle for mission to seek and save the lost. When He comes in Luke 19, He says He came to seek to seek and save the lost. But when He ascends, He gives His disciples, those He sought and saved, He gives them a mission to go therefore and go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all I've commanded. What He's saying is, now you, now you go and seek the lost and introduce them to the Savior.

The church is beautiful because it carries with it the mission to introduce sinners to the Savior. What more precious, what more profound mission could there be?

22 · Addresses the generational characteristic of millennials and Gen Z — their demand for mission clarity and their skepticism of institutions

I've done some research recently and I've seen that millennials and Gen Z in particular are more value-driven than previous generations, right? Previous generations may have had kind of a default to say, like, well, I'll just do it 'cause that's what we do. And millennials and Gen Z are like, uh-uh.

Why? Why should I do it, right? In some ways, that's good, you know. I'm not just gonna do this. You tell me why I'm doing it.

Some ways, that's good. And they're actually, it's interesting, statistically, they're far less likely to commit and give to institutions, but are far more likely than other people to commit and give to specific things. So like, if there's an offering for like a fund, like millennials are like, nope. But if we're like, there's a village here in Africa that needs $200, they're like, sure. Right?

They want to see that there is a specific mission being accomplished.

And here's what I want to say to you: there is no mission greater than the mission given to the local church to build the church and reach the lost.

23 · Contrasts the church's mission with other good missions — social good, marriage restoration, practical care, peace on earth

We want to see people live better lives, don't we? But the church's mission is to give people the one person that can truly change their life for eternity. We want to see social good done. We want to see marriages and families and relationships made whole, but the church's mission is unique. It is to transform those things from the inside out in a lasting way with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We want to see people secured and cared for in practical ways, but the church's mission is not just to do that. It is to see people secured and cared for for all eternity. We want to see peace on earth, don't we? We want to see unity on earth, but the church's mission is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, which brings peace for all eternity, right? All of the social good, all of the good things happening in our world today, I thank God for, but none of them have the mission of the church because none of them have the power of Christ through the gospel.

The gospel to change lives for all eternity.

If we love and believe in the beauty of the church's mission, we must love and believe in the church.

24 · Direct pastoral address to the congregation

Cross of Grace, your mission is beautiful. What God has used you to do is beautiful. If you are sitting here right now enjoying the good fruit of the church in some way, it is only because people in decade after decade have committed themselves to the mission of building the church. If anybody's ever helped you in your marriage, if you've been introduced to Jesus here, if you were baptized here, if you heard the gospel through somebody here or through a ministry here, that is because the church has again and again taken up the of the work, of the mission of the church.

25 · Establishes the fifth reason the church is beautiful: what it will become

All right, I lied, one more, really quick.

The church is beautiful because of what it will become. That's where the beauty and the mess get resolved. In Ephesians 2, it says, "We are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit," right? But one day— so in other words, it is being built, it is in progress, like the kids' ministry wing for the last 5 5 years of the church. It's not really 5 years, it just felt like that.

We're being built together, but one day it will be complete. And Revelation 21 and 22 show us where this is going. Right now we're living in a sea of blueprints and walls being knocked down and carpeting going in. And sometimes we can look down a hallway and think, that looks pretty good. And other times we'll look down a classroom and think, that's a mess, right?

And we're being built. And yet one day this is the the final trajectory of what is occurring right now, where Revelation says, "I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the Lord gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. And its gates will never shut by day, and there will be no night there." This church is what God is building. A beautiful array of people from every tribe and tongue and nation dwelling in the presence of God for all eternity.

That is where we're going. That is where we're going.

26 · Signals the shift from exposition to application

So how do we respond? What's the application today? My application is simple. Let's do it again. Let's do it again.

27 · Direct application to newer members and younger generations

Some of you may have come in the last 5, 10 years, and you've been the beneficiary of of people in previous generations taking up the work of the church in their generation, saying, "Let's do it again." This is our moment, right? If you're in your 30s or 20s or teens, if you've come recently, this is our moment to say, "Let's do this again."

28 · Climactic illustration

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of seeing Richard Moreno before he was transferred into the other hospital where visits were not allowed as easily. I happen to be wearing, as I sometimes do visiting people in the hospital, my Cross of Grace polo shirt, which Vince made us make, 'cause he said, "When you seem more official, people will let you into places." And so I knew that, like, I wasn't sure what the rules were, but I figured, man, if I show up with, like, a Bible and a church polo shirt, I probably can get in. And so it worked, Vince. And so I show up with the Bible and the polo shirt, And I walk in and the person's like, "Oh, okay, you're a pastor, you know, you can go back and visit him." And I go and I see Richard and it was the last time I saw him alive.

And he wasn't able to speak because of the ventilator. And I read some Scripture over him and, you know, he's kind of in and out a little bit.

He perked up as I was reading Scripture and he looked at me, like, just, like, you could tell whatever fuzziness was there just cleared and he looked at me and he pointed at the shirt that said "Cross of Grace." He pointed at the shirt and then he pointed at himself and he pointed back at the shirt.

And he couldn't speak.

He couldn't speak, but I asked him, "Richard, are you saying this is your place?" And he nodded.

I said, "Are you saying you want to be there again?" And he nodded.

At that moment I realized, Church is beautiful, not because of the walls here, not because of any animals that go into the kids ministry, not because our band is cool, because of this: because the church is built on a precious foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ with precious people. Who are doing something precious and taking the gospel to the world around them, just like somebody took the gospel to Richard all those years ago.

29 · Eschatological close

And one day our multi-site church will be one. Did you know we're a multi-site church? Uh, we didn't announce that, we forgot.

We are.

This is one site.

The other one is with Richard and Danny and Lydia and Morris with his navy cap and Bill Russell yelling out, "Preach that!" And one day we will be whole.

And one day we will see the beauty undimmed and unfiltered. But until that day, church, let's take up the work. Amen. Would you stand? Let's pray.

30 · Closing prayer recapitulating the sermon's argument in prayer form

Father, I thank you for what you've done in the life of each and every person here in this room.

God, you interrupted each of us who who follow Christ. When we were only a mess, unqualified, when we were only a mess, God, you came to seek and save us. And for so many of us, that seeking and saving came through a local church, maybe this one, maybe another one, maybe a Christian connected to one, but through the church, the vast majority of our stories Ephesians 4:6, you sought and saved us through the church. How precious, God. And you didn't stop there.

Then you began to work on us, and people who were only a mess became beautiful in the sight of God. The friend of sinners came to sinners and began to transform and shape us. And not only did your grace— your grace didn't stop there, God. You then brought us together with others so that we might be cared for and walk along inside them and display the beautiful diversity that you've created in the world. And not only— you didn't stop there.

Then you gave us the mission, the grace gift of a mission to reach others, to seek and save the lost, just like the Savior. So I pray that we would take up the work again, see the beauty of what you've built again. And as we sing this song, God, as we exalt you as King, As we exalt you as King, may we in this moment lay aside some of the things of the last year and saying, listen, there may be people in this room I disagree with politically. There may be people in this room I disagreed about Mass with. There may be people in this room I disagreed about a cultural issue with, but we agree on one thing: the Lord our Savior is our King, and we follow him, and we are built on him.

Do that in our hearts as we sing, Jesus.