The New Community of the Spirit

I was once part of a church where a god at the time in that kairos season was really on the move.

There were people joining the church, people were becoming Christians.

It was a really thrilling time.

And one Sunday night, the youth pastor and a team of young adults from the church and some youth had been up, I think, it was Nambucca Head.

It was the upper north coast of New South Wales.

And they were running a coffee shop outreach ministry, which is like a beach mission.

So it's working with the local churches of that town and doing outreach.

And what had happened on this particular outreach for a couple of weeks was partway through a young man in his early 20s by the name of Sean had rocked up out of the blue.

And he was hitchhiking his way, a rough sleeper, literally, and he was hitchhiking his way homeless to Queensland.

Sort of cut a long story short, he came in to one night late, had a coffee with people and he became a Christian.

He was radically transformed.

And they brought him back.

So he was back with the team on this Sunday night.

They were all tired as, and here he was, Sean.

And he was a pretty rough looking guy.

And I met him and Brad, the youth pastor said, Sean's going to give his testimony tonight.

Can you give his testimony?

He said, Yeah, great.

He gave his testimony and it was really meaningful and encouraging.

And he ended up living with Brad and his bachelor pad.

So there was a youth ministry house.

Sean went and became part of that group.

And as you can imagine, he had lots to learn and he learned about things like hygiene.

And he ultimately found a job and he was helped to hold that job down.

And what I noticed over the next couple of years was surprisingly in a way, how much Sean impacted our church.

He was just an integral part of the life of that new community in Christ.

And then all of a sudden we heard that he was in hospital and he died from an overdose.

He was in a refuge house and someone gave him, he didn't know it, it was a spiked something.

It was criminal and he died, it was a tragedy.

And we had this amazing funeral service, this Thanksgiving service for Sean as a young man taken so early.

And we all recognized that God had done something incredibly powerful in that man's short life.

And he was a blessing to us in our community.

When I look back on those years and the dozens, if not hundreds of people who God brought into that church community and Sean was one of them, I'm struck by the reality of today's message.

The Gospel of jesus in this passage we looked at today that we all read, the Gospel of jesus is a gospel of new beginnings and part of what is new is new community.

A new community of people gets formed when the Spirit of God is at work through the gospel.

And it's his great job, isn't it, to form and fashion a group of people into a community who have a sense of synergy in the Spirit for the glory of jesus.

And I think it's powerful when you get a hold of that as a church.

That we are living in what we might call a kairos season.

And we're not here by accident.

We're a motley crew, as it were.

And not to say who the motley ones are.

I'm certainly motley.

But we're this diverse group of people that God has brought together for a season.

And there is a work that he wants to do in us.

Our passage today teaches us that new community in Christ is spirit formed, spirit prompted, and spirit transformed.

As jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, this potent little passage tells us, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.

Come and follow me, jesus said.

And I will send you out to fish for people.

At once, they left their nets and followed him.

When he had gone a little further, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets.

Without delay, he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Spirit formed.

You might remember if you were here or you got to hear last week's passage, message, it talked about jesus getting baptized and the Spirit descended on him at his baptism like a dove.

And we mentioned the fact that the Spirit is not a dove, but there is a sense that he is like a dove.

And when we think of him being like a dove, it's important to think of the Spirit hovering like a dove.

And the Spirit hovered over the formless mass, the chaos of the waters in Genesis 1 and 2.

That's the great picture of the hovering of the Spirit of God.

And the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit formed creation out of the chaos.

And here we have this powerful image at jesus' baptism of the Spirit again hovering over what will become new humanity and new community in Christ.

jesus is filled with the Spirit after his baptism and then he's taken into the desert to be tempted and he defeats the devil's temptations.

He comes back full of the Spirit and begins to recruit his disciples.

He begins to build his church.

As I just said, the Spirit is hovering and is creating, but this time creating new community.

Isn't it an interesting fact that jesus is not like a lone prophet in the wilderness, a sage rabbi that calls people out to him one at a time.

And you've got to find, where is he, this loner?

What does he do?

He builds community.

He didn't have to build community.

Do you recognise that?

He could have just been a raving, roaming wild man, like some of the prophets of the Old Testament.

Hard to relate to, but it's really powerful to see.

When God walked among us, he said, come close to me.

Let's have community.

Hallelujah.

That's pretty encouraging stuff.

That's the way of the master.

New community.

Verse 16, let me just read again.

As jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon, his brother Andrew, casting a net into the lake.

They were fishermen.

Come follow me, jesus said.

He picked them out.

I'll send you out to fish for people.

At once they left their nets and followed him.

He didn't put up a sign and say, disciples needed, apply within.

Like pizza drivers or something.

He didn't do that.

And again, that is significant.

He chose them.

John's account of the calling of the first disciples has more detail and Luke's account has more detail.

But for Mark, who has done this process of redaction, he's taken information and given it to us in a summary form for a purpose.

What is the purpose of this very succinct account of the calling of these first disciples?

Isn't it to say, the one who called them had an extraordinary, if not indescribable, force?

There was a power to this messianic figure that was beyond what anyone could imagine.

It's, it's reminiscent of Psalm 33, 6 and 9.

Let me, 6 to 9, let me read it.

By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made their starry host.

By the breath of his mouth, he gathers the waters of the sea into jars.

He puts the deep into store houses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord.

Let all the people of the world revere him, for he spoke and it came to be.

He commanded and it stood firm.

jesus spoke and worlds came to be, the Psalm tells us.

Throughout Mark, if you know Mark, you'll remember some of these sayings.

jesus said, be quiet, come out of him and the demons obey.

Be quiet, be still, and the storm in the heavens stops.

jesus says, tabitha, caeum in Aramaic, and the girl is raised from the dead.

jesus says, be opened and the deaf hear.

jesus says, come follow me, and the disciples drop everything and follow him.

New community is spirit formed.

jesus knew who he wanted in his discipleship team.

There were always going to be 12 significant team members.

There were others, but those 12 really were important because they matched the 12 tribes, the new Israel.

I want to believe that God is doing the same here at NorthernLife, as I just mentioned.

Some of us are only here for a very short period of time, but that doesn't mean we can't be used.

Others are just visiting, and we will never see you again because God has other things for you to do in different places.

But for a lot of us, what do you reckon?

Is it possible that the Spirit of God is at work among us and we are actually his new community?

That over time, we will look back with hindsight, the hindsight you only get after living into the future that God is already living in, and we find out with hindsight, oh, that's why God brought that person into new community, because God had a plan, amen?

It's important for us to keep remembering Go24, every 24 hours it makes up the year 2024, is an opportunity for us to stop and remember what is true.

Our God is at work and his grace has gone before us, and he's prepared good works in advance for us to do, and he wants to do that sometimes by ourselves, out there in our world where we live, but often through us together in a body life synergy.

He is at work, and it's thrilling when we see it.

Last week, I received a letter from a prisoner who was reading through the New Testament with five other men, and a chaplain who goes to Malling College.

Last September, Abby, who was one of the young women who got baptised on that video, Abby came to me and said, I have a friend called AJ, and he works in the prison system, and he's discipling a bunch of men.

And I reckon that that book you wrote a few years ago called 6260, and some of us have used it, it's just a local church commentary written in a lay fashion.

It's nothing highfalutin and overly theological, but it's from a local church pastor, writing a simple commentary for people to follow the whole New Testament in 60 days.

And so we call it 6260.

So she said, can I take those little green books?

Would you give me some for free that I could take to these prisoners?

And I just said, yeah, go for it.

And then in fact, AJ, it's been lovely, he's texted me and emailed me, he's the guy that Ross Clifford mentioned last year in his message in Easter, that there's a guy from Malling College working with prisoners.

And it's just a great thing.

AJ's been in touch and we've talked a little bit about understanding the Bible, and that's been just a wonderful thing.

Anyway, I knew this was happening from last September, and I was given a letter from Abby, whose mate's with AJ, the chaplain, last Sunday night, and he passed me a letter.

And I thought, oh, I wonder what this is all about.

And it wasn't until Monday morning that I got to read it, and I was so moved as I read, I'll call him Pete.

This is from a prisoner through AJ to Abby to me, and it just basically says, thank you so much.

Last September, I was with AJ and we were praying, God, how are we on earth going to lead these brand new five prisoners, who are brand new Christians, we've led to the Lord.

We'd love to teach them about what the New Testament teaches, but we're not that equipped.

Would you help us?

The next day, Abby had given AJ seven or eight of these 62, 60 books.

Now, I was moved because in 2020, I felt led to put together a little simple podcast to help people understand the New Testament in 60 days' worth of reading.

And Mike, who's been at the church, I just say that because God is forming his community, the Spirit's working, for maybe five or six years, Mike said to me, I'll back $3,000 for you to find a publisher and turn that into a book.

And he said, if you make one book, it'll open up multiple books.

Well, we've done other books and we call them Bible Loop.

And I just am so humbled and blessed to think the Spirit of God wanted to provide simple teaching to a bunch of relatively powerless men in prison.

And for them to realize that God is a God who answers prayer.

So he prompts me to do that, prompts another guy who he fashioned and formed to be part of the community to back it, it only cost about 500 bucks, but he was willing to put three grand it.

And we put that together, and then he brought Abby along to church, and AJ to go to the prison.

And can you see how the Spirit works?

Isn't it wonderful?

Isn't it wonderful to remember that God is above and beyond our days?

And it takes faith for us each day to wake up and say, God, you are sovereign, and I am finding my way in your sovereign will.

Have your way in my life.

I want to be in that zone of your blessing and not to miss the good works you want me to do.

So praise God and be in prayer for those five men.

He said to me the other day, he said, well, give me some tips on Genesis, because we've finished the New Testament, now we're into Genesis.

And so they were reading Genesis in the prison.

New community is spirit formed, and it is spirit prompted.

At once they left their nets and followed him.

Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Simon, who now, later was called Peter, and Andrew, James and John, they don't hesitate.

They just follow.

And it's the prompting of the Spirit of God.

And as I was preparing this week, this message, I was reminded by the Spirit, I think, of Proverbs 7 and another opportunity that people have to respond all at once.

In fact, it's the Hebrew version of this same word in Greek without hesitation.

And we find it in Proverbs 7, verse 19 and following.

My husband is not home, the wayward woman says.

He has gone on a long journey.

He took his purse filled with money and will not be home till full moon.

With persuasive words, she led him astray.

She seduced him with her smooth talk.

All at once, immediately, all at once, he followed her like an ox going to the slaughter, like a deer stepping into a noose, till an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it will cost him his life.

Verse 22, all at once, without delay, without delay.

Have you noticed that through habituation, learned habits, learned practices, we can respond without waiting, without delay, but it's to wrong callings.

We can respond with the same exciting immediacy, but so often it's when sin calls, not the Lord.

All at once, without delay, anger, greed, lust, offence.

All at once, without delay, incident, response, no time at all.

But Christian maturity spaces that out and changes the response, doesn't it?

Spiritual disciplines help us to see the incident that is wanting a flesh response, and it spaces that out and gives us a different way of responding.

But we have to learn it.

New community in Christ is formed around spirit promptings, promptings of obedience, of yes and no to the call of jesus.

These first disciples were prompted to respond and they chose correctly.

Discipleship always involves an activation of the will, doesn't it?

It involves saying no to some things and yes to others.

James and John said no to Zebedee Incorporated, Zebedee and Sons, the fishing business.

They said no.

That's a really challenging and difficult thing for young men to do in this society in the first century.

They said no, so that they could say yes to the promptings of the Spirit, the call of the Master.

jesus said go.

In fact, he said come.

And that's an important thing.

jesus is normally where he wants us to go.

And he's saying come over here rather than go out there to the dark, challenging space.

He's normally out there.

And the go of discipleship is really a listening to the come follow me from jesus.

New community is built around faith response, isn't it?

It really is.

Go 24 is an obvious thing that we have to deal with.

jesus says, please obey.

And we have an opportunity to say yes or no.

Last week, we opened up the Baptist tree here and revealed that it was full.

And we had two people, Ash and Maddie, said yes.

It was a courageous step.

We had bought clothing, and so we had all the clothes ready to go.

So no one was ready for those eight baptisms last week.

It was a spontaneous response.

It was a, okay, there's an opportunity.

We talked last week about the fact that jesus commands his disciples to baptize new disciples.

jesus set an example himself.

We talked about the fact that baptism itself is this mime of the gospel.

You go under the water, death to the old life, come out in Christ.

As he rose from the grave, baptism signifies that I, too, will come out in new life.

And I was baptized as an infant, but that was my parents' faith.

It's not that it wasn't meaningful, but there is a strong argument to say in the New Testament, there are no baptisms of people that weren't expressing their own faith.

And so that's the challenge that we sat in.

And I mentioned last week, and I'd like to read it again, in Acts chapter eight, the Spirit is planning on building his church in Ethiopia many years later, and so the Spirit decides to prompt Philip, an early disciple, to respond to his promptings and play a role.

It's a fascinating go.

So let me just read quite quickly from Acts chapter eight, verse 26.

An angel of the Lord said to Philip, go, the go in the first century is the same, you have to respond.

Go to the south to the road, the desert road that goes down from jerusalem to Gaza.

So Philip started out and on his way, he met an Ethiopian eunuch that the Spirit knew was there, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandakei, which means queen of the Ethiopians.

This man had gone to jerusalem, the Ethiopian, gone there to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah, the prophet.

So the Spirit told Philip, go.

Remember, he's always prompting, he's always fashioning and forming.

Go to that chariot and stay near it.

Then Philip ran to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet, which I mentioned on Sunday night.

It's an odd thing if you think about the story, is that he's running up beside the chariot.

It doesn't say the chariot has stopped.

He's sort of running alongside somehow and hears him reading.

And he says, do you understand what you're reading, Philip asked?

How can I, he said, unless someone explains it to me?

So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

And this is the passage of scripture that Eunuch was reading.

He was led like a sheep to the slaughter.

This is the famous Isaiah passage talking about jesus.

And as a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

In his humiliation, he was deprived of justice.

Who can speak of his descendants, for his life was taken from the earth.

It's a mirror of Philippians 2, 5 to 11, really.

The eunuch asked Philipp, tell me please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?

Then Philipp began with that very passage of scripture and told him the good news about jesus.

Exciting stuff, isn't it?

And as part of the package of the good news of jesus in this short period of time, Philipp just happens to tell him about baptism.

because baptism is a sign of followship, not discipleship.

Baptism is a sign of, I've given my life to jesus, I died with him, I've been washed in him, and I've got new life.

It's not, I've worked it all out and I've studied enough theology.

It's about, I'm a follower of jesus.

As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, look, here is water.

What can stand in the way of me being baptised?

All at once, immediacy.

I'm in, let me be baptised.

And so he gave orders to stop the chariot, then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptised him.

I'm fortunate, I've been to Ethiopia many times and when you talk to the Christians in Ethiopia, they see that this moment is the beginning of the Christian church in Ethiopia.

They're just like, that's where it came from.

Philip the evangelist and that first Ethiopian, who was in the court of the queen, brought Christianity to Ethiopia.

Now, there are millions and millions of Christians in Ethiopia.

So, if you have a body of water ready to go, you should always be ready to get baptized.

And so, we do have a body of water.

There's less faith involved this time in filling it, because we have someone, Zach Lamb, is getting baptized tonight.

So, rather than only fill it up this afternoon, we thought, well, we'll do the same thing and make it available.

So, it's fair.

Lovely temperature.

And this idea we have of GO24 is really based in Mark's Gospel, where Lord willing, hoping to be there most of the year.

The Gospel of New Beginnings is a gospel of what chances?

Second chances.

And I think it's a powerful thing for us.

I wanted to fill that baptistry again, because if you were here or you heard about last week and you thought, drats, Lord, they'll never fill that again and do it spontaneously.

Well, they did.

You've got a second chance.

If you weren't able to do it last week, there were eight people that went out there.

There's clothing and undies and towels in all sizes.

It's all there.

You don't have to give a testimony other than, I believe that jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour.

We will baptise you.

If you'd like to give a more full account of your conversion, we would love to hear that in the weeks to come, and we're waiting on people to let us know.

So, it's the Gospel of Second Chances, and the Gospel involves being prompted by the Spirit, and so I honestly have been praying, Lord, if there's anyone here who has faith in Christ and wants to declare that faith by going through the waters of baptism, you can do it today.

And Leanne and Virginia will be over there, and they will sort out the clothing.

So, after the sermon, we will pray, I'm going to go and get changed.

And if you want to be baptized, just head over to that corner, and we'll make it happen.

The last point I'd like to highlight is that this new community fashioned by the Spirit for the glory of jesus is Spirit transformed.

The disciples who responded this day to the call of jesus on their lives, they left everything, and they were never the same again.

You might remember when Peter later on in the Gospel says, Lord jesus, we've left everything to follow you.

He really did.

But who else could we turn to?

because you've got the words of eternal life, but it's hard, it's confusing, it's a bit of a mystery, Lord, but we've left everything.

They were transformed men, their past, their present, their future.

Utterly transformed, and it began with yes.

It began with go.

God had said go to Abram, hadn't he?

Back in Genesis 12, it was a command, importantly, with a promise.

Go, leave everything, Abram, and I will bless you to bless the entire world.

So it's this go with a promise, a reward, and that's a model that we often find in the way the Spirit works.

Go, obey, be blessed.

It's the call that jesus gave to these disciples.

Come, follow me.

It will require obedience to do it.

And what will happen?

I will make you fishers of men.

I will radically, fundamentally change your vocational status.

No longer is your primary identity going to be fisherman.

You will be disciples, evangelists, leaders, shepherds.

Come, follow me.

Abandon everything in absolute and total surrender, and I will change your world.

I will blow you away with what you will be part of.

And this doesn't mean that God no longer uses fishermen, does it?

Some will be called to go back and be fundamentally changed, but their identity will be different underneath the surface, even though they're still catching fish.

But jesus calls these men to come and fish for people.

Fish for people.

It's something we often don't think about.

Normally that metaphor is they don't fish for fish anymore, they fish for people.

Isn't that great?

Evangelism.

What happens to fish when they're caught in the net?

Yeah, not many of them live.

So what is jesus saying?

I'm going to turn you into people that cast nets for human beings.

It's a picture of baptism.

You will tell them that to live forever, they must die like the fish dies.

They must die to their old life, but I'm going to give you new life.

You'll find out how it happens later.

I'm going to die on the cross.

I'll rise from the grave.

The Spirit's going to come fill you with God.

And though you die to your old life, you will live, fishes of men.

And this is the picture of baptism.

Did you notice in the short reading today that the disciples had no special preparation?

They may have.

If you dig in deep enough, you'd go, oh, they needed this, this, this, the tax collector, all the, yeah, there is a nuance and a brilliance to the way God collects his team.

jesus collects his team.

The spirit forms the team.

But Mark doesn't tell us that.

What does Mark tell us?

There's nothing special about these people.

jesus just picks people.

People hear the good news, come follow me, and they say yes.

And another thing that could be lost on us is, he says, come follow me because I'm going somewhere.

It's not just come follow me and let's hide in the desert.

It's come follow me.

I'm on a mission, and then I'm gonna leave, you don't know it all, but I'm gonna leave pretty soon, and I'm gonna give you my spirit.

I'll be with you always until the ends of the age.

But we're going somewhere.

Go 24.

To be a Christian is to go.

To be a Christian is not to keep going from community to community, uprooting all the time.

You may do that, but it's not the norm.

The norm is you put your roots down in a community and get to know it and work there and become part of it, isn't it?

So go is not this idea of the endless horizon escaping.

Go is as you are going.

jesus said to his disciples, go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

So we are called to be part of that.

Sean, the young man I got to know in the south of Sydney, he did not live a long life, but I do remember the powerful day that we had a Thanksgiving service for him, and we flanked the car as it went off, and we felt the impact of God's grace in his life.

We felt the impact of his unsaved family testifying to how Sean's life was different.

God changed that man.

And he's doing a similar work in us.

He has you with all your brokenness and all my brokenness.

We bring it all.

It's a chaotic mess.

Remember Genesis 1, 2.

The Spirit hovers over the chaos of community and says, I can do something here.

just trust me.

It'll never happen if you don't say yes when I prompt you.

Amen?

The key is call of jesus.

Obey.

Blessing.

New Community is us.

It's the church.

New Community in Christ is Spirit-formed, Spirit-prompted, Spirit-transformed.

May we enjoy the journey of following, of following the go of jesus.

I'd like to pray and just thank the Lord for our time in the Word.

And as I said, I'm just going to go out there and go and get changed.

And if you would like to respond to the opportunity to testify in the mime of the Gospel, baptism, as the Church has done for the last 2,000 years, just head over to that corner immediately after I pray, find some clothes and we will do the baptism.

Lord jesus, I give you all the praise on behalf of my brothers and sisters here for what you're doing amongst us.

And we just want to say thank you so much for the privilege of inviting us into your work.

That we get to do the work literally of the disciples, of the apostles.

They ministered in the name of jesus, in the power of the Spirit, and they proclaimed the Gospel, and that's exactly what we get to do.

What a privilege.

I pray that you'd give us, you'd illuminate the eyes of our hearts that we might know the truth.

And today, we're thinking about the truth of your work in community.

The richness of diversity, the complimentary gifting that you have given us as a church.

I pray, Lord, you'd help us find those giftings, that we would do our best to allow you to mobilize and bless and empower.

And that you might do a work that is absolutely indistinguishable from or distinguishable from a work that we would do, but absolutely undeniable that it's all of you.

That's what we're asking, Lord God.

Do a work that only you can do in our midst.

Revive us, O Lord.

Would you tear open heaven as happened above your baptism and just be unleashed, Lord God.

Stir in us a holy fear of you and a holy love of you and a holy joy in the journey.

In the name of jesus, I pray.

Amen.

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