The Making of a Model Church

As a church planter, Paul was always on the lookout for “foxes” that can ruin the good soil of the Kingdom — things like cynicism, gossip, and bitterness. But when he meets the Thessalonians and the Bereans, he encounters something different. Rather than brushing him off or blindly accepting his message, the Bereans model healthy skepticism. They are students of God’s Word who orient their lives around His truth. Similarly, the church in Thessalonica is later commended by Paul because of their response to the gospel. Rather than simply believing the right things, they commit to living the right way. Today, we can learn from both the Bereans and the Thessalonians. Being students of God’s Word means we have the right theology and the right practice. By reorienting our daily lives in response to the gospel, we too can become a model healthy church free of evil “foxes.”

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

 Hey, we love our Bibles here, and so we’d love for you to open to Acts chapter 17. We have just been kind of faithfully going, faithfully going through this book since the beginning of the year.

And, uh, as Pastor Caleb likes to often mention, we think we’re gonna finish this by the end of the year. We think. Okay, we’re gonna actually just look at the first 15 verses today. So let’s just begin right away, Acts chapter 17, starting In verse one, after they passed through Amphiphilios, you just say with confidence and move quickly, uh, and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.

As usual, Paul went into the synagogue and on three Sabbath days, reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead. Quote, this Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah or the anointed one or long awaited one. Verse four, some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, including a large number of God fearing Greeks, as well as a number of the leading women.

But, the Jews became jealous, and they brought together some wicked men from the marketplace, formed a mob, and started a riot in the city, as you do. Attacking Jason’s house, they searched for them to bring them out to the public assembly. So Jason was actually a host. Paul and Silas and, uh, almost got killed for it.

So make sure you guys continue your hospitality practice. You never know you could get killed for it. Let’s keep going. Verse five, when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city officials shouting, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here too.

And Jason has welcomed them. They are all acting contrary to Caesar’s decrees saying that there is another king. Jesus. The crowd and city officials who heard these things were upset. After taking a security bond from Jason and the others, they released them. As soon as it was night, the brothers and sisters sent Paul and Silas away to Berea, which is about a night’s journey.

Upon arrival, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. The people here were of more noble character, it’s an interesting phrase, it actually just kind of means more open, uh, to knowledge, uh, more receptive, uh, to the preaching, than those in Thessalonica, since they received the word with eagerness, and examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Consequently, many of them believed, including a number of the prominent Greek women, as well as men. But, when the Jews from Thessalonica found out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul at Berea, they came there too, agitating and upsetting the crowds. Then the brothers and sisters immediately sent Paul away to go to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed on there.

Those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving instructions for Silas and Timothy to come to him as quickly as possible. They departed. The title of today’s message is The Making of a Model Church. Let’s pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are so grateful for your word. Thank you.

The way you’ve used Act 17 to form people into your image and to expand the kingdom of God for thousands of years, may you do the same for us. God, specifically, we’re just praying for open hearts like the Thessalonians and the Bereans. Help us be people, God, who receive the implanted word and are forever different as a result.

In Jesus name. Amen. Amen. So Paul, he plants a lot of churches in his day. I’ve done one, and Lord willing, I’m scared to say this, I never want to do this again. This was a lot. It’s quite the headache. But Paul loves to do this. So he goes from town to town, plants a church, and moves on. Now, most of the churches he plants, plants are not nearly as commendable as these two churches here in Acts 17.

To kind of know that the timeline of what’s happening, Paul is on his second missionary journey, uh, with a few more people now. Now he has Silas. Timothy, and now we know Luke, because Luke is saying things like, we, we went here, we went there. So he’s at least rolling with these three people. Now they’ve been blocked.

We learned this a couple weeks ago. Remember, they, they were blocked from the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus to go to Asia. And so instead they visit an, an, a region of Greece called Macedonia. And there you have these three towns, Philippi, which we learned about last week, Thessalonica, Now, as Pastor Caleb covered last week, in Philippi, the gospel does some incredible things.

It reaches a successful businesswoman, it reaches a slave girl, and even a jailer. Now they’re being run out of town and they make their way to Thessalonica and you’d think he would keep it low. No, immediately he goes to preach the gospel even more. Now, Paul isn’t always successful in creating incredible churches.

Literally, just read 1st you’ll quickly learn Oh wow, there’s such a thing as a pretty messed up church, and Paul had quite a few of those, specifically the church in Corinth. But again, there’s something special about Thessalonica. There’s something special about Berea. It’s so special, that Paul goes to great lengths to make sure That this wonderful church isn’t spoiled that it’s not ruined In fact, we see in his letter to first thessalonians He sends timothy, uh, and he sends them two letters to the church at thessalonica To make sure they continue to be this model church look with me first thessalonians on the screen Chapter three verse five for this reason what I could no longer stand it I also sent him being timothy to find out about your faith fearing That the tempter had tempted you and that our labor might be for nothing.

I said fearing, and my Siri turned on and I’m trying to figure out how to turn it off. It’s just receiving all of it. I don’t know what’s about to happen, but just get ready now. Paul, it’s still recording. Paul knows. Can you transcribe this sermon for me? All right, so Paul knows a principle. Still going, folks.

I’m done. Paul knows a principle. Every successful leader knows Song of songs. Chapter two, verse 15 says. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards for our vineyards are in bloom. What does that mean? Even business people understand this principle to a degree. Whenever you establish a culture or an organization, it doesn’t take much for it to be ruined.

And so much of it is by what you celebrate, but also what you don’t tolerate. And so business people understand this, pastors must understand this as well. In the spiritual harvest, there’s these little foxes that’s hard to spot. You don’t notice them unless you’re looking. That can honestly ruin the entire vineyard.

These are subtle things like gossip, apathy. We talked about last month, greed, Unforgiveness and bitterness. And so pastors, this is why they’re often called shepherds, what they’re called to do, part of their job is to protect the sheep from the wolves and to protect the vineyards from the foxes. And so the language here of foxes and wolves are really pointing to the work of Satan.

Paul says such again in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 18. So we wanted to come to you, even I, Paul, time and again, but Satan hindered us. And so, it’s uncomfortable giving Satan credit, especially in our day, but we cannot, brothers and sisters, ignore his schemes, and if we do, it is to our detriment. Now, specifically, in Acts 17, I think Satan has a bunch of different tools, a bunch of different weapons to throw at us, but specifically in Acts chapter 17, Satan seeks to sabotage the kingdom through cynicism and syncretism.

Now, we’re gonna cover syncretism next week as we finish the rest of Acts chapter 17. Essentially, quickly, like the pagan world, many of us have fallen for the lie that we can kind of have a amalgamation of spirituality, and so we follow Jesus where we like him, but then we add some Buddha and some other Mormon theology and other things to kind of cook up our own way of living.

We would call this syncretism, and it is not the way of life Jesus warns against time and time again. So come next week to cover that. But here, in the beginning of 17, I think we The major fox in the vineyard is the subtlety of cynicism. Now, cynicism is celebrated like never before. Philip Reif, he was a sociologist in the 1900s, he actually describes our age as the very first, in all civilization, the very first anti culture, which means we celebrate the rejection of sacred order, we celebrate the rejection of moral order.

And so if something is passed down, specifically institutionally or religiously, we are initially, just within our gut, because we’re born in this moment, we want to think it’s wrong. Mm hmm. We think it’s oppressive. We are just cynical. We don’t believe just because you told me to do this, this doesn’t mean I have to.

And so we’re one of the first generations to be known more about what we are against than rather what we are for. And to quote my favorite author, does anybody know? It’s actually six weeks in a row. It’s getting bad. I promise next Sunday it won’t, I won’t say his name. Who is it? Dallas Willard. That’s discipleship, folks.

All right. Says the following, we live in a culture that has for centuries now cultivated the idea that the cynical person is always smarter than the one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. Now, I believe there’s actually room for doubt, and I think under his category, I would agree, but there’s also a healthy doubt, and we’re going to get through that in this message today.

But oftentimes, if we’re honest, we are kind of set within our hearts to be against something before we even give it a try. And that’s what makes Thessalonica and Berea so different, such a model, because they don’t give in to that little fox of cynicism. But again, it’s hard for us. It’s easy. It’s kind of fun to be cynical.

For several years now, I’ve been married to my bride for eleven and a half years. I had to look it up before this message, and, uh, but my wife has subtly been asking me to watch the Gilmore Girls. Anybody, any men in the house seen the Gilmore Girls? Awesome. The few, the proud. The Marines. Uh, so, uh, as a man I’ve said no for years, I’m thinking, and, and, and honestly, she’s never really pushed it.

Like she just kind of like has it on when I’m around and she’s very attentive if I’m paying attention to the show and she goes, you like it, huh? And I go, no, of course not. And I go to the other room. I mean, they’re talking a million miles an hour, kind of like I do. So you think I would like it, but I was like, no, literally three weeks ago.

I was on YouTube and it was a title that said why every man should watch Gilmore girls. So I clicked and six minutes later, I said, Hey babe, you want to watch Gilmore girls tonight? And so I reached out to her, but then I realized this is not the right move. Like this is, I’m still a man. And so I told her I’m committing to you the first season, but I’m not going to guarantee I’m going to watch the whole thing.

And very much. So the first six episodes, I was very cynical. There was times where I wanted to laugh, but I made sure not to because I knew it would make her way too happy and I’d have to commit to the whole thing, right? And so I’ve just been sitting there just kind of doling my emotions, thinking this is a dumb show, right?

And just staying cynical. And then on Friday, me and her went to TJ Maxx to look for the Gilmore Girls blanket for us to put on while we’re watching the show. I’m all in, folks. We’re on season two, episode three. It’s amazing, alright? Now life is actually better when you’re not cynical. Just let it in, you know, open your heart.

Um, and I just lost half the minute. It’s fine. I’ll do something manly later. Now. We must not be cynical. And this doesn’t mean that we just accept everything in blind faith. And I think that’s where a lot of us get it wrong, especially in the Christian faith. We just say, oh, don’t be cynical, just receive it.

And I love the example of the Thessalonians and the Bereans, because they don’t just model just dumb blind faith. They do hard work of studying and listening and watching a full season of Gilmore Girls before declaring. Okay, look at verse 2, chapter 17, says, As usual, Paul went into the synagogues and on three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead.

This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah. And some of them were persuaded. And join Paul and Silas. Now let’s go down to verse 11. So now this is how the Bereans were understanding and receiving this message. The people here were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica. Now this is easy for us to assume.

This means the Thessalonians aren’t very good. I think he’s also talking about the Jewish crowd who was against Thessalonica. And I also think we’re about to prove, because we’re going to look at first Thessalonians, the Thessalonians become just as much of a good character as the Bereans, but in this moment.

Bereans were even more receptive. And then it says, since they received the word with eagerness and examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Consequently, many of them believed, including a number of the prominent Greek women as well as men. What is happening here? This church modeled skepticism, not cynicism.

And there is a difference. Cynics, they maintain this posture of distrust. You’ll never convince them to change. They want to hear you out, but they’re already going to come with a no. Now skeptics, the good skeptic, I understand we all have different definitions here. The definition I am using is skeptics, they have a, a healthy, open mind.

They’re skeptical at first. You need to prove, you need to examine, but then if it’s true, if you’re persuaded, you’re dead. You’re all in, okay? I won’t make another Gilmore Girl reference for the rest of today, I promise. The same way, this is what’s happening here at this church. Notice the work that Paul has to do.

In Acts chapter 2, uh, sorry, 17 verse 2, it says that he reasoned. This word reason implies dialogue. It’s actually an exchange of questions and answers. He explains, which literally means to open the minds of the hearers, and so many believe he was pointing to passages in the Old Testament, like Isaiah 53, with that wonderful line that talks about the Messiah, who we believe is Jesus, was pierced because of our rebellion and crushed because of our iniquities.

It’s likely he also pointed to passages like Psalm 22, just pointing to the person and work of Jesus and how the Messiah was fulfilled. This is the Messiah. It was very clear on the cross and the resurrection of Christ. So he reasoned, he explained. It also says here in this chapter that he proved that Jesus is the Messiah.

The Messiah is this anointed one. The long awaited one, the hero that the Jews were looking for, and he was arguing and proving that this Messiah had to suffer in order to bring us redemption. And this is a beautiful picture of the gospel. See, we believe the God man had to come down in the flesh, live a perfect life, life of a servant, in fact, as it says in Isaiah 53, and suffer on behalf of the sins of mankind because sin must be dealt with.

It must be punished. So, Jesus on the cross. Took the payment of sin and then rose again in victory now conquering sin, Satan, and death, and offering it to everybody who is willing to not be cynical and to believe in the saving work of Christ. And Paul for three Sabbath days, labored and persuading and proving.

And then it says that they were persuaded some of the Jews, the Greeks, and the prominent women, and took a lot of work, but they got there. They opened their hearts. Were these churches cynical? Or were they skeptical? Initially, they were skeptical. And they proved that by then being persuaded. Again, I love that line.

The Bereans, quote, received the word with eagerness and examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were true. So it would be easy for me to actually finish this sermon here. The takeaway is be a person of the word. Do the hard work of studying the scriptures, allow it to be formed in your heart, and awesome, we’ll see you next week.

But, if you turn to 1 Thessalonians, we learn even more about how great this church is. So go ahead and turn there to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. It’s not just that their minds were open to the word, but their whole lives. Now, remember, Paul, he’s seeking to run off these foxes that might ruin the vineyards.

But it’s interesting, because as he writes this letter to Thessalonica, he actually has a lot of positive things to say about them. Chapter 1, verse 1, Paul, Silvanus, which is also another word for Silas, and Timothy, so these are the ones writing, they’re represented in this letter, to the church of the Thessalonians and the church of the Thessalonians.

We always thank God for all of you, making mention of you constantly in our prayers. Underline this verse, it’s becoming one of my favorites. We recall in the presence of our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, And you are endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

For we know brothers and sisters loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power.

So these people even knew, they knew that they were loved by God after they received the gospel. You know how we lived among you for your benefit, and you yourselves became imitators of us and of the Lord when, in spite of severe persecution, you welcomed the message with joy from the Holy Spirit. This is what I love about Acts.

We know the context of that severe persecution. There was a mob, they’re trying to kill Paul because of the gospel. Verse 7, As a result, you became an example. This word example is typos. This, if you understand like Old Testament theology, typology is this, like, it’s a type, it’s a model. So we say Abraham is a type.

Pointing to Jesus, right? David is a king, that’s a type that is pointing to Jesus. So it just means model. This is why the title of the message is The Making of a Model Church. So, as a result, you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. For the word of the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place that your faith in God has gone out.

So the church, so far, modeled. skepticism, not cynicism. But also, oh, yeah, I need to read one more. Chapter 2, verse 13. Let’s jump there and then I’ll give you the point, okay? Chapter 2, verse 13 is another emphasis on how good this church was. This is why we constantly thank God, because when you receive the word of God that you heard from us, you welcomed it, not as a human message, but as it truly is, the word of God, which also works Effectively in you, who believe.

The church, this church, models whole person discipleship, not left brain discipleship. Let me explain. Since Rene Descartes and the Enlightenment and the modernist movement, we’ve been influenced to believe that human beings are generally just brains on sticks. This is, you may hear this phrase in school, I think, therefore I am.

I am. I just, it’s 915. I get it. All right. So I think therefore I am. And it’s this whole idea that’s actually infiltrated the church. All we need is the right thoughts. And if we change our thoughts, we’ll change our life, which is partially true. Right? But, what this has done is misit’s really kind of warped our understanding of the Scriptures.

It’s warped our understanding of discipleship. We think everything is just left brain. For example, with this phrase, when it says that you receive the Word of God, or when you welcomed the Word of Godthis is a phrase Paul uses time and time again, referencing these churches in this regionwe misinterpret it as thinking, oh, they welcomed, they believed the Bible as a set of facts that they mentally assent to.

And so, we misinterpret it as thinking, oh, they welcomed, they believed the Bible as a set of facts that they mentally assent to. But it’s much, much more than that. Western logic says you need to become a disciple by just learning what the Bible says. If you learn it, you’ll become it. How’s that working for you?

Let me give you an example. Don’t raise your hand, but are you a bad husband? Okay? All you need to do is just read Ephesians 5. Again, will you still possibly be a bad husband after you read Ephesians 5 and learn that you should be a sacrificial husband who loves their wife? Is there a possibility that you still might be a bad husband?

Yeah, how about a worry wart? Any worry warts in the room? Yeah, a lot of us are anxious. As a pastor, it’d be so easy if my job was like, just read Matthew 6. Jesus says, don’t worry. Just read it again. dummy, you know, like stop worrying. How is that working for you? It works to a point. In fact, you can’t get around that.

You have to understand Ephesians five. This is why we go through that in premarital counseling. You have to understand Matthew six and the goodness of God and his generosity and his abundance. And it is what helps us understand how to get towards the path of not being a worry ward. But biblically speaking, when Paul here says, welcome the word or receive the word, he’s implying not just a mental ascent, but a re radical reorientation of our entire lives.

So yes, it means we change our minds, but also Paul is saying this church is incredible because they’ve changed their calendars. They’ve changed their priorities. They’ve changed their careers. They’ve changed their way of life. And this is hard because this takes community, takes humility. It takes time, it takes the grace of Jesus.

The question I want to ask is, is that the discipleship we are pursuing? At least not at large. I’d like to say our church is truly trying to be different, but it’s hard because of the air that we breathe. A few years ago, I was so excited to learn about Sabbath because I was exhausted. Again, planted a church.

Way too young. Uh, Aaron, you were there. Shout out to you, brother. Yeah, I was 23 years old. Just rough, right? But, I was exhausted because, like, church planting is the worst. And so, I remember thinking, oh, I heard about this thing called Sabbath. Let me read a few books. So, I remember I went away. I went to a cabin.

This was like year three into our church planting journey. And I just went and I read ten books on Sabbath. And I was like, wow. I feel so rested because I’ve learned about Sabbath. This is incredible. God is actually calling our people to become Sabbath people. And go to formedbyjesus. com sabbath if you’re interested in that whole series.

And then two weeks later, I realized I was still exhausted. Why? Because I gave my mental assent to Sabbath, but I never actually Sabbathed. And for some reason in my upbringing of discipleship, I thought all I needed It was to read 10 books on Sabbath and then thought I would feel rest. The problem is my left brain loved it, but my whole body wasn’t engaged with it yet.

I was following the Western logic. I thought I welcomed the word, I received the word because I gave mental assent to the idea that I should probably Sabbath one day. This doesn’t lead to change. Paul knows that. When Paul is saying you received the word, he’s not saying you received, you understood the facts.

He’s saying you, in faith, changed your entire life. And so ironically, I’ve learned the last few years, it takes a lot of effort to train my mind, my body, and my heart to truly rest in the love, grace, and sufficiency of Jesus. I intentionally. Once a week set aside 24 hours and I’m not perfect at it, but I’m learning the rhythm of rest that is whole life discipleship.

That’s why one verse, chapter one, verse three is so crucial. In fact, if you just want to have any takeaway, I would encourage you to memorize chapter one, verse three, because then it says, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope. In our lord jesus christ, this is actually the first time paul introduces this triad Anybody like have faith hope you’ve seen this everywhere right like faith hope and love it’s probably in your home, right?

This was the first time this is paul’s thing He came up with that and uh, he uses this triad time and time again specifically in first corinthians 13 but this actually is pretty fascinating because Oh, let me get there. Let me explain, actually, because most of us don’t even know. We see it on a screen.

Cool. Faith, hope, and love. Here’s what faith, love, and hope actually mean. Faith, biblically speaking, is confidence and trust in Christ and his kingdom. Love is putting the good of another ahead of your own. And so that agape love actually means a whole lot more about sacrifice than just sentimental love and hope, which I love the biblical definition of patient fortitude in the face of opposition.

This is what happens when we put our faith, love, and hope in Christ. But what’s interesting Is Paul, just here in this passage, pairs this triad with another triad. Did you notice those other three words? Faith, love, and hope, but also work, labor, and endurance. John Calvin, which I know half of this room hates, the other half loves, and I don’t care.

He says the following, he gives a brief, he says the, quote, this, these two triads together are, quote, a brief definition of true Christianity. You want the real thing? It’s faith, love, and hope that overflows into work, labor, and endurance. But this is hard for us as left brain people. See, left brain discipleship is about learning how faith, love, and hope is defined on paper.

But whole person discipleship is about how faith, love, and hope can define you as a person. Do you see the difference there? So Paul isn’t all excited about this church. You understand the definition of faith, love, and hope. He’s saying, no, this has actually defined you as a person. It’s more than just something you put on paper.

This left brain discipleship can learn faith, love, and hope in an afternoon. But whole person discipleship. This is why we often use the word practice. This is why we say training. It is a lifetime of you becoming more and more into a person of love, faith, and hope. And it’s evident through your work, labor, and endurance for the kingdom.

And so, we’ve been after a whole person discipleship at Passion Creek. In fact, I got excited. I did a little dance this week. It’s because of Gilmore Girls. It’s just infecting my whole life. Pray for me. But I got excited because I was looking at work produced by faith. And I think that’s a wonderful way to summarize what our church did in 2023.

Not to say that we’re done with that, but that was the focus. It takes a lot of work and a lot of faith, a lot of trust in the person of Jesus to constantly practice Sabbath, Scripture, and simplicity. We were really rubbed the wrong way at times. There’s a lot of tension in the room. This is a really, all three of those practices are hard.

Some of them we think are daily, some are weekly and monthly. It’s up to you. Go back to all of those series at formedbyjesus. com. But all that to say, it was so beautiful to see our people. Because of our faith in the personal work of Jesus Christ, we kept pursuing these practices and it led to a lot of work.

But brothers and sisters, we’ve been doing the work and the fruit is becoming more and more evident. I think for 2024, you can summarize how to make friends and love of the people. What we’ve been doing as a church all year is we’ve been at the heartbeat of it is labor motivated by love. It takes a lot of sweat and effort to seek the good of another ahead of your own.

It’s really hard to love people, especially if you want to do it more than once, right? To love them time and time and again and to forgive them over and over. And we’ve been doing that through the three practices of hospitality, peacemaking, and generosity. Hospitality is great until it’s not. Then it becomes labor.

But we do it because we love people, because God loves us. Peacemaking is so humbling, hard conversations, forgiving people that you feel like they don’t deserve it. But we do it and we labor and toil because of the love of Christ Jesus within us. The same goes for generosity. And if we don’t love, some of us are finding out all three of those practices are way too hard and we quit pretty soon because love needs to be the engine.

And lastly, next year, hope you’re all still there, in 2025, we’re going to be seeking after endurance. Endurance that inspired, that is inspired by hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the three practices we’re going to do in 2025, we’re all excited about it. Fasting, praying, and witnessing. But let me make sure before I move on, our faith, our love, and our hope are grounded in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It’s not just vague faith. No, He is the rock. He is our firm foundation. It’s not blind faith. It’s faith in the personal work of Christ. It’s not sentimental love. Let’s just love everybody. It’s rooted in the love of Christ who sacrificed Himself for everybody. It’s not random hope. It’s not just like, Oh, just, just think that everything’s gonna be better.

Then everything will be better. No, our hope is grounded in the fact that Christ came and an adventwe’ll talk about this a lot, uh, this Christmas and He is coming again. And so we look forward to that, and that’s what gives us hope in this world. Now, can you imagine this type of church? I know I can. A church that consistently works at Sabbath, scripture, and simplicity, because they just trust in King Jesus more than anything else.

Can you imagine a church that does the difficult task, the toil, the labor of extending hospitality of making peace with those around them and being generous for the sake of the kingdom because God’s love has so captured our souls. We have received the word and let it do its work. Can you imagine if we became a church who sought the kingdom so much they, we wanted the kingdom to come down on earth as it is in heaven and so we persistently endured through the practices of fasting, praying, and witnessing.

This is a picture, this is the model church that we are after, and I hope you will join me in pursuing that. Having a model to look at. It’s sometimes healthy and helpful, and I’m so grateful we have that in the church at Thessalonica. It’s fall break. Any other parents just like exhausted from fall break because we’re watching kids 24 7?

It’s like, oh, wow, I love school. Go, you know, but I love the kids. They’re in there. They didn’t hear me. They won’t listen to this. I love them. I promise. Now, it’s fall break, and so my wife actually works at the school that my kids go to, and so, um, She normally just doesn’t have time to do a lot of what she wants to do.

And so we’ve been doing that all week. And so Monday, very first day of fall break, she says, get up. We’re going to visit model homes. And I thought, Oh no. So we, I’m like, I can do Gilmore girls, but model homes too far. So we go to model homes and I’ve never seen my kids get along so well. Like they immediately within five seconds, this is my room.

This is yours. This is theirs. They understood the whole thing. I mean, they were in unity and harmony. I’m thinking, is this the work of the Holy spirit? Are we supposed to move here? I’ve never seen them not fight. And so they just knew the right rooms. They got all excited. They were even talking about like which friends to invite over.

And I was like, calm down guys. We’re just walking in this. This isn’t ours. They don’t even know my name yet. Like, what is going on? And they were just so excited, and I had to stop and remind them, Even if we got this house, it’s not with this furniture, right? It’s not with that nice door, or that cool fridge.

We would just be buying a floor plan, you know? It would be empty. Okay. So quit freaking out. And literally the next morning they got together, had breakfast. So that piano in the corner, do you think we should keep that there? And like, I really liked my room, but it was a little bit too sporty and theme.

Can we repaint it? And I’m like, we’ve ruined our kids. No, this is a model home that I’m a pastor. So I’ll never afford this. Let’s just. I don’t know if you can see this, move along, but I do think it’s sometimes helpful and it’s healthy to get a picture of what a home could look like, to go to a model home and to get some ideas, and that’s what I want us to do here in this.

You see that tie in? Ah, so cheesy, right? We are having a picture here of a model church, and sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming. I know for me as a pastor, I’m thinking, I am no Paul. I can’t pastor like he does. But I think it’s supposed to set our horizons. It’s supposed to raise our imagination that I honestly believe Christ is doing a great work in this church Just go ahead and look at our hospitality display.

It is almost full Don’t count the ping pongs because I measured it wrong. It’s not 734, but it’s full. So I don’t know if we’re going to add another bucket on the side so that we get, don’t worry about it, it’s almost full guys. And if you’re new here, that represents meals that our church is having with other church members or with neighbors or with lost people.

It’s incredible to see our people. We receive the word here and we do it. Generosity. I’m so excited to show you an update on how we’re doing this month and spoiler alert. I won’t give that because this will be fun later. But I want you to guess how much was given. Now, we’re not, again, the biggest thing we’re celebrating is that we’re taking next steps of generosity.

And a lot of this is too private, but I’m overjoyed at our people who are doing the hard work of peacemaking still. They’re working through their past. They’re meeting with counselors and Christian therapists and offering forgiveness to people who don’t even want it. It’s incredible. And so, I just want to encourage you, because we’re in a great movement within the life of our church.

I just feel compelled, after reading this, especially this week, I want to give you this simple challenge. Don’t get bored with the basics. As God continues to grow our church, but more importantly, continues to grow our souls, It’s really tempting because left brain discipleship says we need more programs and we need something new and we need to run after the next shiny object and we’ll be that much better.

But the reality is whole life discipleship is doing the same thing over and over again. Faith that leads to work, love that leads to labor and hope. That leads to endurance. And so, brothers and sisters, let us not get tired or grow weary of being hospitable. That wasn’t just for February. Let’s not grow tired and weary of peacemaking.

That wasn’t just for the month of May. And of course, let us not grow tired of being generous to our neighbors, to our loved ones, to those who are poor, and to the church and its efforts, because that wasn’t just for August. Let’s faithfully and slowly engage in this whole person discipleship. Let’s pray.