A Neo-Monastic Life on Mission - The Holy Spirit

Have you ever wondered what it might look like for a church to live as a neo-monastic community—rooted in ancient practices yet fully present in the streets and neighborhoods of our city? In this episode of the Village Church’s sermon podcast, Pastor Eric opens a new series exploring just that.

He lays the foundation for what this kind of life together means: not retreating from the world, but being woven into it with intention and prayer. Along the way, he shows how the Holy Spirit doesn’t simply inspire our mission but actively directs and energizes it—guiding the Village as we learn to walk with one another, embody the gospel, and share life as a people set apart for love.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:13

Hello, my name is Gary, and I am one of the pastors of the Village Church. The following podcast is a ministry of the village church. We hope that it inspires you and it draws you closer to Jesus. And it opens your eyes to the possibilities of living in the kingdom and joy and God bless.

SPEAKER_06: 0:34

I think that's the last announcement. We got Eric on a neo-monastic life on mission.

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

That's right, guys.

SPEAKER_03: 0:45

Check, check. All right, that's right. Father in heaven, thank you for this community and thank you for the opportunity to be with them and to speak about you and to speak about this community and what you might be inviting us into. And ask that as we think through those things, that you would give us courage to um really allow the things to rest on our heart and change us. And so we ask all those things in your name, Jesus. Amen. Um so on Thursday, uh, I was in this place where I was like, I don't think this sermon is working, and I don't think it's gonna happen. And I was having like all this kind of anxiety about it. And so in the evening, and I crawled into bed, Susan and I have been reading through First Peter together and then praying for each other, and so she prayed for me and just kind of prayed for God to do something good, and she prayed for a bunch of stuff, and then I rolled over and I fell asleep, and I had a dream. And in this dream, I um just had this overwhelming sense of peace, and I was kind of processing my sermon, and third person as the dream was happening, it was all very interesting. And I woke up super excited about preaching, and I thought this dream needs to be in the sermon. I have no idea why this dream is in the sermon. So I'm gonna tell you the dream, and then we're gonna jump in. So I uh the dream starts. I'm having dinner with Brennan and Matt. So for some of you who don't know Brennan and Matt, they usually go to the morning service. Um, and Brennan and Matt have a little baby named Lawrence. And so we're I'm eating dinner at their house, and we've just finished dinner, and I have the sense that it's a really good dinner. And right next to the dinner table is this kind of raised crib where Lawrence is sitting, and Lawrence is cooing, and Lawrence is happy. And so then everybody gets up to clear things, and I go over to play with Lawrence, and I'm, you know, tickling Lawrence and cooing at Lawrence, and Lawrence is super happy. And then I think, I want to hold Lawrence. So I pick him up and he's wet. He's just, you know, like he's all wet. And so then I turn to, you know, tell Brennan or Matt, and Brennan shows up right there, like as I turn, and she hands me all these oversized wipes and just every possible thing that you could think of to clean a baby. And so I but she didn't say anything to me. She just hands it to me, and so I put the baby back, and I'm taking off all his clothes and you know, I'm gonna change a diaper, and then there's just like poop everywhere, like poop on his body, poop everywhere. And I'm gonna start cleaning it. Only problem is Lawrence is happy. Lawrence is giggling, and I'm cleaning, and there's poop stuck to Lawrence, and I'm getting it all off of him. And I'm like, this is fun, this is good. Like I have this overwhelming sense of this is all real good. And so I get him cleaned up, and then I take him over somewhere else naked, and I'm bouncing him and shaking him and laughing at him, and we're having a good time, and then Brandon shows up with a onesie and a diaper, and I change Lawrence, and that's it. I wake up and I'm like, I'm excited because this has something to do with my sermon on neo-monastic life on mission. I'm gonna let you figure that one out. So, some of you who've been here at the village for a really long time know where we're going with this neo monastic thing. Some of you are like, I don't know. So let me explain how it all came about. A long time ago, um, we were shifting hosts for the audio of our sermons. And these people, whoever they are, they're called Bud Sprout, they had a landing page for all of our sermons, and it was just like a free website, so to speak. And so I'm like, okay, the village church, and then I'm supposed to have a tagline. And normally the tagline is healing the city, you know, one person at a time. And I'm like, ah, let's describe the village. So I'm like, no one's ever gonna see this. So I wrote a neo-monastic mega house church. Well, if you look around, it's a big house church. That makes sense. There's a living room, a kitchen, a bathtub over there that nobody uses, bathrooms. We have the house part, it's way oversized, it's like 5,000 square feet plus. So that's good. But what's this neo-monastic thing? Well, I I really liked this idea and we'll get to it, but I forgot about it until I got a call from a reporter who said, Hey, I noticed that you guys are a neo-monastic house church, and I'm writing an article on this. And would you guys be willing to be interviewed? And so they came and they interviewed us and they took pictures, and we ended up on the front of the Tucson Daily Star. Then Charisma magazine picked up that article and wrote an article about us, and then the denomination that Rod and I and Mark are all connected to wrote a couple more articles about us. So from this little thing where I just was sort of throwing it out there, not really thinking that it was going to have a lot of meaning, and people were gonna see a God was like, no, it actually means something. And yes, it does mean something. And when you think about monastic, you might think about monks and nuns, and you think about people who go to monasteries and they leave their regular life and they dedicate their life to Jesus and they live in rhythms, so they have morning and evening and afternoon prayers and scripture readings, and they often do lots of different kinds of practices, and sometimes these monasteries are monasteries of silence, so they don't even talk to each other. Um, but they are dedicating themselves to Jesus. Well, I think that's who we are, it's who what is really exciting to me. And so when we call ourselves a Neo or a new monastic community, what are we saying? What am I trying to say? Well, first, as I've been saying, we're rooted in an ancient faith. So there's sort of an inspiration that comes from the monasticism where people are praying regularly, fellowshipping, service, and hospitality, and they do it in a disciplined manner. So if you come to the village, you're gonna notice that we do things over and over and over again, right? We eat dinner together, we have our confessions, and we do things like this belonging project. There isn't a lot of churches who say every year we're gonna have a membership, and every year we all have to do an art project together, right? This is a monastic, this is a practice, it's a discipline, it's shaping us in some way, right? So we get an inspiration from the early monastic movement. But as monastic movements, they withdrew from society. We don't want to withdraw from society, we would like to take this and move into society because we're more influenced as a community by Saint Patrick and a particular book called The Celtic Way of Evangelism. And so we believe that rhythms shape people into Christ-likeness, and then as we enter into the world, we will help shape the world. The other thing is about St. Patrick is he took the monastery from outside of the city and put it in the middle of the city and made it porous so people could come in and out and experience the rhythms of the monks, and that's kind of what we want because we want to be a witness to the city. So, when we say we're neo-monastic, that's kind of what we're saying. Now, if you know anything about monasteries and monks, they have to do something, they have to take a vow. And if you've been at the village, morning or evening service for any length of time, and you sit down and begin to talk to people, you will hear that there's a certain set of us who've been here a really long time. And we really believe in this thing that we're doing. And though we may not have all gotten together and said this vow, it is the vow that we tend to live by. It influences who we are and what we do. So let me just read it to you. We live together, pray together, work together, relax together. We give up the temptation to move from place to place in search of an ideal situation. Ultimately, there is no escape from oneself, and the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion. And when interpersonal conflicts arise, we have great incentive to work things out and restore peace. This means learning to practice love, acknowledge one's offensive behavior, giving up one's preference, and forgiving. That's a mouthful. But I will argue to you that this is what I have vowed, and many people in this community have, this influences who we are and what we think about being in community together. Now, when you say that you have a vow of stability and you need to be together and you need to live together and you need to practice the rhythms of life together and be pointed toward Jesus together, when you say all of that, that means you're gonna have to be anchored somewhere. But if you're gonna be anchored somewhere and you're gonna say you're in a neo-monastic community, you also have to deal with Matthew 28. You see, Matthew 28, Jesus comes to his disciples at the very end. He's risen from the dead, he's spent time with them, he's gonna ascend into heaven, and he gives them a commission, the eleven of them. And it says in verse 18 of Matthew 28, then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And sure, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. There is a key word there, a lot of key words, but the one that I want you to think about for a second is go. Being a follower of Jesus, being a community of a follower of Jesus, is that you are a sent people. So your entire identity and the way that you relate to everyone is outward-faced and sent. We are all sent somewhere, even in the place of stability and being together, we are ascend people into the city and the rest of the world. The apostles were given this commission. So let me give you, though, what happens when one of those apostles gets sent and how what he plants and what his instructions are on being a community of God. So Paul went to Thessalonica and he planted a church, and in chapter four, he gives them all of these instructions about living a holy life and talking about abstaining from sexual immorality and all this kind of stuff. And then he says in verse 11, and to make it your ambition, and this word ambition is the most honorable thing that you can do, to make it the most honorable thing you can do to lead a quiet life. Now, this word quiet life, these words, do not mean that you are just not going to tell anybody about Jesus and you're just gonna be quiet all the time. But he does kind of lay out what a quiet life looks like, like what a people of Jesus look like. And the first thing he says is you should mind your own business. That living a quiet life is minding your own business. Again, this does not mean that you don't share the gospel with people. Here's what I think it means: you have to stop believing for some reason that you are the arbiter of everything. And you have to become someone who is actually more concerned with other people's business without letting your business invade their business. Here's what I mean by that. I was listening to Jimmy Fallon interview, um, I think it's a guy from the diary of a CEO, and he does long-form interviews on a podcast. And he said that most people in the world don't have anyone listen to them attentively for more than 10 minutes. They've never had that experience. And so when people who are famous get onto this podcast and are listened to for three hours, and he's asking exploratory questions, they have spiritual experiences. Right? They're transformed because all of a sudden, for three hours, they're listened to and given dignity without him ever really telling them what they need to know or fixing anything for them. So when I think about living a quiet life, minding your own business, I do not think it means that you don't pay attention to what's going on. In fact, I think you become someone who is a good listener. And in fact, this is why at the village we stress over and over again one of our monastic practices is to be people who ask really good questions and listen well. Meaning, we ask questions like, that sounds like that was really hard for you. Tell me a little more about what it's like to be on the top of a mountain in a rainstorm. That sounds really interesting. Like you are willing to just allow a person to talk about who they are and the struggles that they have and the things that they are excited about and the things that they're confused about without you saying, and here's how you could fix that. And here's how we could fix everything else, too, while we're at it. So part of living a quiet life and minding your own business is becoming someone who knows how to call people out and listen well. The second part here is that you work with your hands. Now, the reason he's saying this, and you'll see the not be dependent on anybody, is that the Thessalonians were like, oh, Jesus is coming back right now. So they sold everything and sat around waiting. So they were very idle people and they weren't getting things done. And so Paul's saying, hey, part of living the quiet life is not, you know, becoming a burden on society. But I also think part of being a community of God in a place is creating beautiful things so that other people can experience them. Providing for yourself and providing for others. And so I think both literally and figuratively, we are called as a people to live a quiet life by creating and providing space for people to experience God by working with our hands, putting our minds to developing or taking care of ourselves and taking care of the people around us. Why? Well, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders, and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. So the way that you end up as a neo-monassic community offering the gospel to people is becoming people who live quiet lives deeply interested in their neighbors and creating space for their neighbors to be known and to experience God's love. Like that's what happens when we are sent out to build community. And that is what we hope the village is. Now when you hear all of those things, if you're like me, and maybe you're not like me, but if you're like me, it does actually kind of sound really exciting and at the same time stupidly impossible. Right? Because I'm sitting up here and I'm excited here and I'm I'm really I'm kind of working this a little bit. I'm trying to get you excited about it, but at the same time, I am the worst of eeors. I am someone who is always concerned about how people are experiencing things, right? And experiencing me, and am I doing what I need to be doing? And I say stupid things to people. I don't think before my mouth opens up and says stuff. And so living in community with a bunch of us seems kind of eh, right? Seems kind of eh a little meh, so to speak. But the question becomes, then how did we get here? How do we get here where we're talking about this? How do we get here where we might even be excited about this? How did 120 people 2,000 years ago transform the world so that now one third of the world is following Jesus, claims to be Christians? How did we get here? Well, that was the question that my freshman in college humanities class asked, how do we get here? And the answer happens in Luke, chapter one. We get how this all happens. And so I want to stop here and think about okay, if we are this kind of community and we're hoping to be this, then how do we get there? And I think Luke answers this question in Acts. So, Luke, who wrote the book of Acts and the Gospel of Luke, he says, In my former book, Theopolis, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up into heaven. After giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles, he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. So he's saying, here's Jesus' short story, like here's where it is, and guess what? Once he died and rose from the dead, he gave them a lot of convincing proofs. He wants just like Jesus appeared a lot, hung out a lot, ate a lot, and he spoke, not just once, because this word spoke is he did it continually, he spoke about the kingdom of God. So, from the moment that he rose from the dead to the moment he ascended in heaven, Jesus speaks about the kingdom of God with his disciples over and over and over again. He keeps saying to them, I suspect, guys, it is about the kingdom of God. Now, before we get to this next section, I don't know how you would feel, but if before Jesus died, and you're like, man, this guy's saying he's Messiah, maybe he's God, he's gonna overthrow the Romans, and then all of a sudden he's captured by the Romans, crucified by the Romans, and dies. And then three days later he raises from the dead and he's hanging out with you all the time. You're probably going, like, okay, this is the moment, man. Like, we have resurrection. Messiah, things are going to be awesome. Right? And you're excited. And then this little next section, the next section, the one after, is kind of like this parenting thing that Jesus does. So you imagine that the disciples are excited, you know, nine, ten-year-olds. They're like, oh, okay, let's do this. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna do this. And Jesus is, while they were eating with him, he gave them a command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gifts my father, the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. Okay. When Ashton was really little, because she had allergies, going to the um zoo was not necessarily an option for very long. So I would take her to the pet store almost every week. And we would go through the whole pet store for an hour and a half. And I would say things like, look, don't touch, and she would look and not touch. And then she would go to the fish tank and she would point at me, look and don't touch. Wait, wait, wait for me, wait, wait, wait. Right. Then Elliot came along and I thought, hey, the pet store, this works. It's like an hour and a half of great time with my kid. No, there is no wait. There was no don't touch, look with your eyes. Like that lasted, you know, twice. And then I was like, we're not doing this, and the employees don't want us to do this. Um, but this is what Jesus, you can catch this here. He's like, okay, we are not rushing anywhere, everybody. Wait, wait for this gift. Now, this gift is the Spirit of God coming on them. So it says, For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Okay. I'm going to stop here and talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, because this is key to the movement of the church. And I think it's key to you and I. So, first, almost all of Christianity believes that when you accept Jesus, when you embrace him as your Lord and Savior, that the Holy Spirit comes in you to transform you into the likeness of Jesus and mark you as his son or daughter. And most Christian traditions believe at that same time that gifts are bestowed on you through the Spirit. Other communities of God believe that first the Spirit comes in you to transform you, mark you, but then you must also be baptized in the Holy Spirit. And usually this baptism of the Holy Spirit is marked by a speaking in a tongue that people don't understand, so it's called speaking in tongues, and prophetic utterances, right? These are evidences that you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit. I personally, and you don't have to sign this belief in the covenant, it's not there. Well, we believe, you know, you can have your own understanding of salvation, um, or at least the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but I do lean more to the traditional view that yes, the Spirit of God comes in you to transform you, mark you, and call you his child, and that he comes on you to give you spiritual gifts. But when it comes to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I would say that I believe not in a second baptism, not in a third baptism, I believe in a hundred baptisms. I believe that the Holy Spirit baptizes us over and over and over again to give us the power to do the things that we are not able to do. And in fact, I repeatedly will pray to God, I don't know how to do this. Will you come on me and give me the power? So let me give you an illustration of this, and it's very helpful for me, my walk with Jesus. And Frank Lloyd, or Frank Lloyd Jones, I always want to say that. Lloyd Jones, Pastor Lloyd Jones, is dead now, but he is a famous pastor, and he created this illustration, and then a bunch of other pastors took it and they started messing with it, and I also did that. And so it's really not his. So if you look him up, it's not you're gonna be like, well, is that really what he said? It is influenced by him. But let's just look at it this way. So if you could imagine yourself as a little kid and God as the big parent, the father. Now, when you decide to follow Jesus, God, the Father, grabs hold of your hand and offers you eternal life. Now, I want you to think about this: that when a little kid is walking with a parent, who's actually holding the hand? Unless they're super muscular, it's the parent holding the hand. The parent gives identity to the child. The very fact that the parent is holding the child's son, or the child's hand is giving identity. This is my kid, right? So the father gives us eternal life. And so walking with God, so this being, the Spirit coming in us and to transform us, or the theological word is to sanctify us, or go through this sanctifying process, is the Father holding our hands. Now, little kids have small legs, adults have big legs. So I don't know if you've ever experienced walking with God, but it does feel a lot of times when he's developing things in you like you're a little kid and he's dragging you along, right? But that's the experience of having God transform you and mark you as his child, is that you are walking down a path and sometimes you're pulling and you want to go down through the forest and you want to look at this. Sometimes God has a stop and look at flowers. Sometimes you wander off on the beaten path and he brings you back. But that is the sanctifying process. And that process is where you get to know God and learn who God is. It is a knowing that gets developed more and more, and you become more familiar with the pace of God and what he's doing, and you can kind of sort of jog along with him and figure out where he's going, and you're a little bit more intuitive, it's the more you learned about the things that he's teaching you. But eventually in life, you and I end up at huge, gigantic streets full of cars and no crosswalk. And immediately, as little kids, we look across the street and we think, I don't know how I'm gonna get across this. I don't know how to do this. And so what we do is we look at God and we say, up, up, up, right? We ask for a Holy Spirit hug. We ask God to do that, and sometimes God picks us up, empowers us, so to speak, affirms who we are, and walks us across the street. Now, there's an intimacy that's very different in that hug and in that power than when we're walking along with the handheld. So, what does this look like in real life? It can be as simple as you are not a person who's very good at administration and you have to are sitting in front of a computer and you've got to get the budget done, and you have no idea how to get this budget done, and you're like up, up, up, and the Holy Spirit comes on you in power and baptize you, and all of a sudden numbers make sense, and columns make sense, and Excel makes sense to you for that moment, right? Because God has empowered you to do something that you cannot do. Or it could be like stories that my mom would tell about her OM days, about her boss stopping a car while they're driving through Germany or other places, so that he could get out and preach the gospel to a person on the corner of a street, and when he got back in the car, it turns out he didn't even know the language he was speaking. Right? He's just the Holy Spirit baptized him, told him what to do, and he went and was a missionary and he was empowered. Right? So these are ways that you and I are baptized to bring forward the message of God and to transform community. So, what Jesus is telling the disciples is that if things are gonna happen the way they're going to happen, right, the things that they need to happen, then we're gonna they're gonna be baptized in the Holy Spirit. They're gonna have to be empowered to do this. So look at how they react to this instruction. They act like Eliot did when I told them, don't touch things. Then they gathered around him and asked, Lord, are you at this time going to restore what? The kingdom of God? No, the kingdom of Israel. Right? So God tells them, Hey, this is the exciting stuff, wake for the power, and they're like, When are we going to get the kingdom of Israel back? When is Rome going to be defeated? When are we the rulers? And Jesus continues his parenting journey. And I have done this so many times for my kids when they were younger. He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the dates the Father has set by his own authority. I don't know how many times when my kids were younger, I would be having a serious conversation between Sue and I, and I would have to say to them, This is not your conversation. This is a conversation between me and mom. Right? This is what kind of what Jesus is saying. It's not your business to know what's going on. This is, you don't get to know any of that. But what's really good parenting is that you just don't send a child off. It's got his nose where he's not supposed to be. You tell him what he is going to get or she is going to get. So he says, but you will receive power. So you don't need to know when everything's happening, but you will receive power when what? The Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses. By the way, the word witness is where we get the word martyr in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the word earth. Your job, and a good parenting thing, Jesus says to his disciples, your job is to be my witnesses, my proclaimers. So we skip forward then. We skip past, if you are a reader of Acts, all the lot casting to make decisions, which is interesting. The beginning of chapter 2. And it says, When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Okay. So Jesus is ascended into heaven, and ten days after that, they are all assembled in one place, and it's the day of Pentecost. Now, the day of Pentecost is 50 days after Passover, it's the feast of weeks, it's where they celebrate God's provision. And during this celebration, historically, what's kind of happened is the giving of the law on Mount Sinai has become part of the celebration. So it's a celebration of the provision God brings through food and also the provision of the law. So here they are at this moment when something happens. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. Now the Holy Spirit has two symbolic things. When we talk about what symbols represent the Holy Spirit, wind and fire. And so a wind comes violently flowing into the room. Now, we sang a song earlier, and we kept singing over and over again, Holy Spirit come. And the invitation in that is that the Holy Spirit will come on us. But do you know what you were singing for? Have you ever wrestled with a kite in a violent wind? What you are saying is come and whisk me away and take my control away. It comes suddenly, it comes violently, it comes from heaven, it fills things up. There's this tree branch sitting over my and Keith's garage carport. And it's a big branch, and I've been looking at it, and I haven't necessarily this year had all the motivation I should have in life, and so we have not trimmed the trees the way we normally do. And I'm looking at this branch, and it's huge, and it's sitting, and it seems to be getting closer and closer to the carport roof. And I'm pretty sure that a violent wind is going to come and knock it over and it's going to land on the carport. But what I realized when I was looking at it a couple days ago was, oh, well, that's what I am. When I am saying, Holy Spirit, come up, up, I don't really know what I'm asking for. I may be broken off the tree and land on the carport. There's what I'm trying to say is when we invite the Holy Spirit to pick us up, to carry us, to enter into his mission, to have him come on us, expect to be blown around in ways you don't want to be, taken places you do not want to go. But I will say, I think it'll be really exciting and transformative. So then they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. So the second symbol of the Holy Spirit is fire, and fire purifies. I know not everybody knows this story, so I'm just gonna reference it and you can ask somebody about it. But you know, I almost burnt down Mount Lemon. I've told that story a lot. Fire can destroy a lot of things, right? I talked about a couple weeks ago how the Chicago fire, like it burned for eight days and it burned the whole city down. This was in the 1800s. But the new city that you that Chicago is now was built after that fire and it was made better. Fire is a purifying thing. So when you say, Holy Spirit come, when you step into relationship with Jesus, you will be purified. And purifying is having things burned off. But also, what the Holy Spirit does, we know from John 14, is that He illuminates, He directs us towards Jesus. Fire lights things up and points towards something. You can see things. The Holy Spirit shows us who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing and reminds us of where we should be. But the result of that is always declaring. People who have the Holy Spirit come on them become people who declare. And here, all of these people began to speak in tongues as the Spirit enabled them. What we found out when we were listening to Keith Reed is that these people heard these things in their own tongue. Verse 5. Now, there were staying in Jerusalem, God fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard the sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked, Aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? First, what I think is funny is I suspect every single, I think there are 17 languages maybe here that got spoken. Every single one of them had a Galilean accent. That's why you're saying, Aren't all these guys Galileans? All right, so in Genesis chapter 11, so at the very beginning of the Bible, there's this thing called the Tower of Babel, right? Everybody spoke the same language, and they were building a tower to God, and God says, This isn't a good idea. You're coming so much about you and not about me, and you're trying to become the center of things. So he's he disperses all of us and he sends out people with different languages because they then they become confused. And when you have a different language and you can't communicate to someone, then you don't have unity. Now, what's interesting is that in the tabernacle and in Solomon's temple, so this is the Old Testament, the places where God reside, when that's oriented, it's filled with smoke and fire. Now, these disciples, wind comes in, fire rests on their head. We know in 1 Corinthians that Paul tells us we are the temples of God. So you and I are people of wind and fire. And we are people who have the capacity now to go out into the world and reverse Babel through the gospel. We can bring unity, right? Because we become people who declare that Jesus can make all things right between God and between us. Right? Or as Ron said in his sermon a couple weeks ago, we get to understand the Jesus sandwich, right? Jesus is in the middle, mediating everything. Now, we ended in that humorous spot when Keith read, everybody thought they were drunk. Right? I wanted to end there for the humor, but also for this. Peter stands up to explain to everybody what's going on. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It is only nine o'clock in the morning. So I'm not even commenting on that. That's a really interesting defense for why they're not drunk. Instead, this is what the prophet Jewel spoke about. This is what I will do in the last days, God says. I will pour out my spirit on everyone. Your sons and daughters will proclaim my message. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will have dreams. Yes, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will proclaim my message. Couple things. But one that I want you to hold on to. You at this very moment live in the last days, in the days of Joel. The Holy Spirit has been poured out on you. If you are someone who says, Jesus is my Lord and Savior, the Spirit is in you, and the Spirit is coming on you, and you will see visions and have dreams and proclaim the message. That is what we were about. When you ask for the Holy Spirit to give you a Holy Spirit hug, pick you up to do the things, it is to bring the message of God forward to the people who you live with and spend time with and the community around you. You live in these last days, you live in the days of Joel when the spirit that Joel prophesied about. Now, in that humanities class, they could not really figure out why. In fact, we really don't, people don't understand why Christianity moved so fast. Makes no sense to them because the answer can't be the Holy Spirit, right? So there is actually a famous religious sociologist from Notre Dame who set out to explain exactly why the church grew from 120 people to taking over the Roman Empire. How did the Roman Empire by 300 become a Christian? Nation and it just took over. How'd this happen? Well, he broke it down into a couple categories, and here they are. So I just wanted to go over them. His name is Rodney Stark. Just type his name in. You will find his book. It is a fabulous and amazing book. But he says, compassion and crisis is the first thing. Christians cared about the sick during the plague. And it's well documented that during the plagues of the couple hundred years after Jesus' ascended to heaven, like the rich would leave the cities when the plagues came. The senators would leave, all the rulers would leave. And just the sick people would be in the cities, and the Christians would stay. Now you do not stay with people who have the plague and risk getting the plague yourself unless you are hugged by the Holy Spirit. Right? Unless it's God's mission and not yours. The second thing is a dignity for women and strong families. And this is, I think, in the 21st century, really hard for us when we read Paul and even maybe when we read Jesus to think that there was a good view of women. But Jesus and Paul are the most, they are the women's lib. They are as women's lib as you're going to get. They are the ones who started the movement. For women to have equality. So think about this. Women had nothing, no authority or anything. And Paul in particular says, oh, hey, by the way, submission is a choice. It's not mandatory. And all the other way, men, you don't get to rule over your wives. You have to serve them like Jesus. Oh, by the way, slaves, you get to choose to obey and love your masters. Oh, by the way, masters, you don't get to rule over your slaves. You need to love them. All of a sudden, he's changing all the structures, and so suddenly women have a voice. They can learn, they can be educated, they can speak, they can go be missionaries, they have agency. And so the church begins to grow. But not only that, is that the church began to comb through the garbage dumps and the forests and take all the discarded children. So what happens? Bigger families. Christians have bigger families in the early couple centuries. And so, well, you have more kids, you have more people, and you get bigger church, right? That's how that works. But again, it's counter-cultural. You need to be hugged by the Holy Spirit down to happen. For people to even buy into that. Tight-knit communities. It gives people a place to belong, mutual care, support through every relationship. But here's the one that I think is most powerful: hope and coherent belief system. Because really, all of the pagan religions and philosophies weren't all that coherent, and they were at the whim of the gods, and suffering never made any sense. But when Christians come and say suffering is at the center of our faith, and Jesus is God and He suffered for us, your suffering makes sense now. Your suffering has meaning and dignity. And so that was transformative. And then last, it's just steady relational growth, healing the city one person at a time. It's relationship, right? This is how the Holy Spirit empowered God's people to take over the world and how we ended up here in the place that we are, saying we're a neo-monastic community. But we're still on mission and we're still in that Joel moment and we're still called to bring the gospel to bear in the world around us, in a world where the government comes out to tell us that there's a loneliness epidemic, that loneliness is more dangerous than getting cancer, right? So we're in a culture that deeply needs stable communities who are willing to love and preach the gospel and act out the gospel. So how do we get there? How do we become people of wind and fire? Well, I think so um Tim Keller, who was a pastor of a church called Redeemer in New York and passed away recently, um, I could not find where he said this. I hunted everywhere, but I heard him say it, so I'm pretty sure it was him. But he basically said, look, there is no kind of dance, there's no kind of special incantation, no special prayers, no nothing to get the Holy Spirit to come on your community to transform you. But you can be ready for the Holy Spirit to come and blow. Like you can be ready, and you can be a community that longs for it. And I think there's a couple ways to begin that. And one way of being ready for the Holy Spirit to come on us is to begin to think about whose kingdom. Is it God's kingdom or my kingdom? Is it the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Eric, kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of your name, put it in there? And I think what's we need to kind of understand is that we're going to experience the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit, it comes down to us making a decision to put our kingdom aside in every little aspect of our life. Because my kingdom invades my life all the time. And it wants prominence and it wants to rule and it wants to tell me what to do, and I want it to work because then it makes me feel good about myself. And yet, in order to experience a deep and intimate relationship with God and have his spirit fall on me, then I have to have his values and his way of being in the forefront. Second, though you have an individual relationship with God and you have to decide how you stand with God, when you read the Old Testament and the New Testament, you learn that it's really not about the individual. For the most part, everything is spoken to the community. And God doesn't necessarily just fall on one person. The Holy Spirit doesn't just hug one person, He hugs all of us. And togetherness is important because togetherness gives us an opportunity to push each other into uncomfortable places and actually be willing, as someone said this morning, that the thing that needed to be added to this is to ask for the Holy Spirit to come on us, to be a community that is consistently saying, I need you, Spirit, to come on me so that I might do this thing that is impossible for me to do, in order that the message of the gospel might go forward. And that could simply be in parenting your crazy child to dealing with your neighbor that you are struggling with, to loving your husband in a new way. Like all these things are things that we need the Holy Spirit to come on us in power. So I do have time for one or two questions. I know Mark will glare at me, but he did this morning. If you don't have questions, then we're good.

SPEAKER_01: 47:40

All right. Oh, Rod wants to say something.

SPEAKER_00: 47:48

I just want to say that in Denver, Colorado, quite a few years ago, I asked the Spirit to come on me in power to do that which I could not do. And it was life-changing in the best of ways. And I really, really urge us all to plead with God to send his spirit on us in power. It will it will it will bring pain and suffering, sure, but it will bring great delight and great joy as you see God at work in and around you.

SPEAKER_01: 48:25

Thank you, Emily.

SPEAKER_04: 48:39

Just kind of implied in what you were talking about and even some of the words are there, but just you know, being ready for the spirit to move, I think. Um just to kind of is to not turn away from the the busy street. Don't turn away from the thing that seems impossible. Because if you keep hiding from that, you know, you won't be ready.

SPEAKER_01: 49:16

Jessica.

SPEAKER_05: 49:17

Uh just a quick question. As um I like that the word togetherness is on there. I think it's come up a few times that it's really important to be in community when you're asking for the Holy Spirit to move because there are cases where people are like, oh, I heard this from the Holy Spirit, and it's you know, it's no one else is talking about it. No God's not told anyone else that same thing. And so um it can just be really I don't want to say the word dangerous, but just um not not tested, not vetted by other people who are also listening to the Holy Spirit. So if if you could speak on that, um, sure.

SPEAKER_03: 50:01

And I I mean I think that the beauty of what I was talking about in the beginning of things, of a community that is continually practicing rhythms together, of that is shaping you into Christ-likeness, it does create boundaries for those things because you are creating a common language and a common understanding, and you are learning about what is and isn't the voice of God together. And when you do that by yourself, it can get very confusing. Yeah, so I would say that. And I should probably wrap it up because it's already almost 6 30. So let's pray. Father, thank you for this community, thank you for the good things that you're doing, and I just ask that you would bless it and um give us courage to step in what you're inviting us into. Ask that in your name. Amen. There's a couple ways to respond. One offering is in the entryway. There's a black box, you can put your offering in there, there's a white chair.