Christ Unleashed – To Build A New City

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A sermon by Matt Fitzpatrick

May 26 2019

Hey everyone, good to see you. Good morning. Thanks for making it on Memorial weekend. Let’s start off with prayer. ” Dear heavenly Father, we ask you to be with us right now. He responds, ‘Yes, of course. I’m here.’ Lord, allow us to anchor into your presence today, this morning. As we receive from you, take away all our distractions and our anxieties. Allow us to rest in your piece today. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our first reading for today is found in John 16, verses 23 through 33. The context for this reading, Jesus is with his apostles in the upper room, and they’re about to eat Lord’s Supper. And this is one of the conversations that he’s having with them before he gives them the meal. Verse 23

John 16:23-33“In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

This ends the reading of our Gospel for today.

The thing I want for us to connect to from this reading is, “You can ask anything in my name and the Father will give it to you.”

I want us to ask for forgiveness in the name of Jesus. We can ask for that, and he will give it to us. If you can turn to page D in our little booklets and confess with me, in the name of Jesus, our sins and be assured that God hears you and is granting this request.

Let’s pray together. “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against thee in thought word and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone.”

As an ordained minister, I get to announce to you, “Almighty God in His mercy has given His son to die for you and for His sake, forgives you all your sins in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Now we’ll turn to our second reading for the day. Revelation 21 verse 9 through 14 and then we’ll jump to verses 20 and 27.

Revelation 21:9-14Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed— on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Revelation 21:22-27And 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 glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

This ends the reading of God’s Word.

We have these two readings. In Revelation, we have this image of a beautiful new city. And then in John, we have this conversation with Jesus and his 12 apostles. Jesus was saying to them, “I’m with you right now, But I’m not going to be with you for awhile. I’m going back to the Father.” And he says, “I’m saying these things so you can have peace.” But then he says two following things that are hard to comprehend. He says, “In this world, you will have tribulation, but fear not, for I’ve overcome the world.” We have this new city and this in between time of Jesus being with the Father which he promises there’ll be tribulation. There is going to be a waiting period.

Have you ever had someone ask you to do a project with them or for them, and you know, you just know this is going to take way more time and energy then this person can even imagine? I think of when Doug helped us put in the disposal next door. And of course every time you think, oh, this will be at most a couple of hours it never is. He shows up ready, but we don’t have the right tools. We don’t have the right putty. He goes under the sink, and it isn’t plumbed for a disposal. It was going to take way more than time and effort than he could have possibly imagined.

I spent the evening with the Niederhisers yesterday, and I remembered the first time I met Thomas’s dad. It was in the parking lot of Lowes, because his dad was helping Thomas install flooring in their new house. And of course that project’s going to take way more time than any of them could have possibly imagined. Get there. Oh, we need a saw. Hey Matt, can we borrow your saw? Oh yeah. They’re doing the project. The saw falls off a table and shatters. Oh no! We have to buy a saw. And so I meet them at Lowe’s as they’re buying the new saw. Projects take way more time than we could imagine.

The Wimberly are in an apartment and water is dripping from their bathroom ceiling from the apartment above them. The landlord and maintenance guys say, “Oh no, everything’s fine. Fixed it. It’s all good.” But it was real quick. And you know, if the fix was so fast, he barely looked at it. There’s no way he fixed it. They had the maintence man go back in this Friday and really assess the problem, because the ceiling was still leaking. And what do they realize? Oh no, this is a way bigger project than we could have possibly imagined. The entire piping for the toilet above is rotted out. Oh no, we have to fix this and it’s going to take all day if not longer.

Whenever we encounter these projects, there’s this innate frustration that we feel. Why can’t we just snap our fingers and everything just be made right? I think we’ve been conditioned to think that things should have a quick fix. We should be able to just do things correctly really fast. It should just be a button, or pill, or number. We have had a full decade of Marvel films building up to a snap that restores everything. So the question that we end up with is, “If God is all powerful and all loving, why can’t He just snap his fingers and make everything right? Why does there have to be a wait time between Jesus and this beautiful new city? Why can’t we just have that new city now?

If you’ve ever engaged one of these projects, you recognize to do anything right you have to take your time. I think we forget that we’re more broken than we can imagine. The damage done to creation is way more than we can possibly imagine. It doesn’t deserve to be dismissed. It needs to be attended to in tedious detail in a way that only a loving creator can do, and He’s willing to take the time to do it right.

We’re talking about restoring all of creation, a big topic that is difficult for us to connect to. So I’m want to reduce it down to something a little more familiar, a household, a home, the home of three people.

One of the projects that Adam and I get asked to do that is always going to take more time than the people asking can imagine is the blessing of a home. It is one of the things that we do as people who recognize that God cares about creation. He doesn’t just care about people. He cares about the earth and the things that He’s given us. And we’ve learned of this really ancient Christian tradition of pastors going into their parishioner’s homes and praying through the house and blessing the house and identifying it as a house where God’s people Live. This is a gift of God that He’s given to us. And we want to say, “God’s name is on this house. This is a house of peace and love and joy and we want to put that mark over our house.” We’ve done this for quite a few of you in here, and it’s been a really great experience. We actually counted the other day and realized we’ve done 30 places. That’s a lot. And it’s gotten to the point when other pastors in our network come across homes that aren’t as nice and orderly as your houses, they call us.

Every now and then there are people who are calling because they’re desperate. Things are really wrong in the house. And they call their pastor and their pastor, after hearing their story, says, “Ooh, I need to use a lifeline. I need to see if anyone else has run into something like this.” And so eventually they make their way to Adam and I just because we’ve become experts by default of experience, not because we actually know what we’re doing. These families are not members of this church, so I can loosely talk about them. I won’t name any names. Things are going wrong in the house. There’s a general sense of unease. Family members are having constant nightmares. Things don’t seem right. They don’t feel safe in their own house. They hear strange sounds at night, things move. They see weird things. And that’s when we usually get called to go visit. And when we arrive there’s the classic snake guarding the door. That’s weird. Open the door, and there’s a beckoning cat, the little Japanese golden cat. It is sitting at the door waving in spirits because that’s what it’s supposed to do. There’s a little shrine to Buddha on the mantle over the fireplace.

And then the family is hovering at the entry way. Always. Everyone at the house, they’re always right at the entryway. All of them gathered up. They’re hovering, because their expectation is they’re going to have to convince us that they’re crazy. They are nervous that we won’t believe them. They begin with, “We don’t know what this is. We don’t want to believe in this stuff. But you know, things are weird, and oh God, don’t think we’re crazy.” We let them tell us their story and then reassure them, “Don’t worry. We believe you. We will pray through they house.” As they talk with us, the expectations shift once they realize that we don’t think there’re crazy. The new expectations is, “So you can just pray through our house and everything will be okay, right?

Wrong. Because as they’re talking to us and trying to convince us that their house is possessed, they end up revealing deeper demons at work in the home. By that I mean there’s miscommunication between the family members, deep animosity towards one another, harmful, destructive lifelong habits, that they just casually reveal in the conversation with us and talk like it’s nothing. That’s when we realize the brokenness in this home is way deeper and way more concerning than the new age crystals scattered across the carpet, the painting of Vishnu on the wall, orthe giant native American dream catcher above the bed. Sure, that stuff is not helping. But that’s easy to handle. You can just get rid of that stuff. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is the deep brokenness in that family between three people. It’s not going to be fixed in a three hour prayer session with Matt and Adam. That takes a life long relationship, rehabilitation with the Creator of the universe. Adam and I can pray through that place. We’ve prayed these houses, and we could pretty confidently cast out anything unclean in the name of Jesus. We can ask anything in Jesus’ name. We can cast it out. We’ve done that. Whatever. It’s not a big deal.

But it will not matter, because the minute we leave, they’re letting whatever we cast out right back in. It doesn’t matter. The reason God doesn’t just snap His fingers and create the new city is because we wouldn’t be ready to live there yet.

God’s not just interested in restoring the earth, restoring all creation. He’s also interested in training us on how to actually live there. He says, “Being in this new city, it requires being able to love me, being able to receive good things from me, and then loving one another, and you’re just not there yet. That’s going to take some time, but that’s okay, because I have the time to take. I’m willing to work with you and turn you into something beautiful.” That’s the reason our church’s name is New City. Because the way God is doing this, the way He’s training us is through Church. The name, New City, not only connects us and reminds us of the hope of this beautiful community that we’re one day going to be a part of, but also connects us to the reality that God’s creating that in this room right now. He’s doing that right now.

The Church is God’s immigration school for the future citizens of New City. That’s what God’s doing. This is the training ground. This is where we get to practice receiving love from Him. We actually get to show up to a place and receive the Words of the father. We’re fed by the meal of the Son. We’re cleansed by the washing of the Holy Spirit. We actually receive things from Him here. This is where we learn to receive, because we can’t even receive good things. We don’t even know how to do that, but we get to practice that here. Then once we receive the things from God, now we can practice giving what we received from God and giving it to one another. Now we’re in a community and we have to learn how to actually like one another, live with one another, figure things out. And as I look at you, I know God’s been doing that. I look out at this amazing community. I realize God has been restoring us. It’s been slow. It has been, at least for us, nine years in the making. But God is slowly teaching us how to receive from Him and then love one another.

The change that God is doing is slow and it takes time. But I think every now and then we need to be reminded that God is doing something new here. It’s not going to be immediate. The demand perfection is not on you. It’s an invitation to practice, to practice this new community, this new life that He’s calling us into. So when he establishes the new city, it won’t feel strange or foreign to us. It will feel like coming home, and we’ll be ready for it then.

Heavenly Father, I thank you. I thank you for taking on the task that none of us want to take on which is spending the time and the effort o fix the problem, not just cover it up. Not just whitewash it, but to strip it down to its foundation and say, “Okay, I want to fix this, and I’m going to take my time to do it right. So I ask that you’d be patient with us, because we get impatient. I ask that you anchor us to the reality that you are fixing things. That you are changing things. That you are in it for the long run. Give us glimpses of where you’ve already restored community and relationships. Give us those glimpses, Lord. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

God is retraining us in our relationship to money. He says, “I’m giving you everything. I will provide for you.” Through offering, He is teaching us how to be generous people, the people will always wanted to be. Right now we’re going to take time to engage that. During this time, if you feel the need to offer up your request to God in Jesus’ name, you can have confidence that it will be heard. You can write it down. We have prayer cards in the back, and you can post them on our magnet board back there. And Adam and I will pray over them during the week.

Lord, We thank you for providing for us as you prepare our hearts now to receive even more from you. God says, “This new city, it’s built on the foundation of the body and blood of my son. I’ve sacrificed my own son to create this new city to turn you into something beautiful.” He says, “I invite you to my table to receive my forgiveness to be restored to me, to be under my protection.”

The Lord sets up this meal for us. The Lord Jesus Christ on the night when he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, “Take and eat. This is my body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup after the supper and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, “Drink of it. All of you. This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins. This do as often as you drink of it in remembrance of me.”

This is the meal of our new city, the Son of God.

Receive the blessing of God. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. That His way may be known on earth. That His saving power among all the nations. Let the peoples praise you. Oh God, let the peoples praise you. But the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth. The peoples praise you. Oh God, the earth has yielded its increase. God, our God shall bless us. God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear him. Amen. Go in peace and serve the Lord.