Be The Church Wherever You Go | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Brad Wilkerson

two. I wanna have a conversation with you and in particular, being that we are celebrating our nation's two hundred and fiftieth birthday this weekend. I think this conversation is timely. I think it's timely because we live in a culture right now that is more divided than any other time that I can remember in my lifetime.

We live in a nation that seems like we cannot have a conversation unless we agree on everything. And so this message, this timely message to us today is particularly to the church.

Now, if you don't know the Lord as your savior today, we're gonna give you an opportunity to become a part of the family of God, but but what we're gonna talk about today is what would it look like for the church to actually be the church, not just go to church. You

understand that the church isn't the brick and mortar. The church isn't the purple chair, the carpet, the sound system, the lights, that's not the church. The church isn't a building you come and sit in, it's a movement. In fact, the church is you and the church is me, which means this, you didn't come to church today.

You came to worship, you came to celebrate your resurrected savior, but that also means that wherever you go, the church goes. That means the church goes to Costco. That means the church at 7AM tomorrow morning will be on the 02/2002, can I get a witness?

And the conversation I wanna have with you is what would it look like if you being the church, that culture would would change in the rooms you walk into because when you walk in, Jesus walks in. And

I wanna just start with this thought or this question and I know when I when I give this thought or this question, it's gonna be a challenging one, it's gonna stretch some of you. But don't hear what I'm not saying. Understand the core of this.

What if being the church is more about what we show and less about what we know? Now I'm not anti bible studies. I'm not anti knowing the word of God. But what good is it to read your bible if the bible never reads you? What good is it to know your bible from cover to cover intellectually,

but it never manifest to your hands and your feet. It's not about what we know, it's what we show. Now I know this isn't the case in Arizona, it's only in Texas and it's probably only at the church that I pastor there but I know a lot of people who know a lot of bible but don't live as if they know the bible. And

I know a lot of people in my area who know just about this much bible that look like Jesus every day. I think it's a crucial conversation that needs to be had, that it would move beyond just what we know and manifest into what we show. In 2020, I know when I say that, it just makes you cringe. That was six years ago guys.

In 2020, we were all hit with a pandemic that we didn't see coming, thrust into environments that we didn't quite comprehend. We all became overnight televangelist in the church world, as we went to online only services. Now, live in Texas, so you've gotta give me a little bit of grace,

but our governor reopened our state on May 3 and when he reopened the state on May 3, his proclamation was that restaurants could be at 25% capacity, gyms could be at 25% capacity. And so I took the bold leadership step as a pastor and I said, they can go to Chili's and they can go to the gym, they can come back to church.

And so we reopened our facility on Memorial Day weekend. We were only shut down ten weeks. Now I got emails, trust me. I got emails telling me I was a hero and I got emails telling me I was a killer. I'm like, where do I land on this and I just decided to follow Jesus and let everybody else figure it out.

We went back into in person worship on Memorial Day weekend of twenty twenty. The last time we met together, we were running about 1,400 and when we came back, we had three twenty five and I'm like, okay, Lord, this isn't gonna work. And he said, just be faithful, just keep showing up. Finally,

fall season came, our kids went back to school and we began to trend up into the right again. But in that season, one of the things that we experienced in 2020 was our teenagers were scheduled to go to New Mexico to Glorieta, New Mexico for youth camp and the governor of New Mexico shut down all of the Baptist

and other denominational youth camps that were located there. No camps in New Mexico because of the pandemic. Again, took the bold leadership step, felt like our teenagers had been isolated too long. I felt like their isolation was more devastating to them than the pandemic was

and so we decided to have our own camp in our facility where they would come in the mornings and then we'd send them home to their homes at night. But immediately as we began to set the wheels into motion to host camp at our facility, the first thing we had to identify was who's gonna be the camp speaker.

And everybody's like, well it can't be you pastor, they hear you every week, we need somebody they're not used to hearing and so I called a dear friend of mine, one of my closest friends in all of the world that actually lives in Maricopa.

Some of you know him, his name is Josh Barity, Pastors Church of Celebration, it was on the list. I called Josh and said, Josh, we're gonna do day camp, would you come and speak for me and speak to the teens and here's what Josh said, bro, I'll do anything to get out of my house. I have three children.

I'll wear 10 mask, I don't care. Fly me in, I'm all in. So we did, he flew in on a Sunday afternoon, Monday evening was the first session he preached, Tuesday morning he preached, Tuesday night he preached, Wednesday morning he preached and then that afternoon everything changed because that afternoon my friend Josh

decided to have a heart attack in my living room. So I call my sister who's a nurse practitioner and I tell her his symptoms and what he's experiencing and she's like, get him in your car as fast as possible and get him to the closest ER.

Well, closest one from my doorstep to the ER was about an eight minute drive. Everybody lean in. Josh and I've known each other for for many years, since 1996. We talked about everything, But those eight minutes, we talked about things we had never talked about. It was a crucial conversation

when he was telling me things like this, if I don't make it, tell my wife this. If I don't make it, tell my kids this. If I don't make it, tell my church this and I'm like, yeah, that's all good. Tell me where the money is bro. Yeah. I get him to the ER, it's COVID, I can't go in.

I literally drop him off at the door and say, text me, let me know how it goes. When they get him in there and they run tests, they're like, we need to take you to a cardiac specialist. Put him in an ambulance, take him a little bit further south into a place called Plano, Texas.

They do a stent in his widow maker artery the next day because it was 99% blocked. He was a walking time bomb.

I'm telling you that story not only just so you know about it, but also to celebrate that he's preaching right now in Maricopa.

But to relate that to Philippians two, because the same thing is happening when Paul is writing this letter to the Philippian church. Paul most likely is in Rome in a prison cell. He's awaiting his execution for his faith in Jesus Christ and his bold preaching of the gospel.

And so before death comes, he knows it's on the horizon. He begins to pen letters to these churches that he's helped start in Ephesus, in Colossae, in Galatia and in Philippi. And what he's writing to them, again to the churches, it's to the church, not a lost and dying world he's writing to, he's writing to church folk.

He's writing this to them because he needs them to know these things so that when he dies and he's gone, it's not just something they know, but it's something that they actually show. He knows they're gonna need these things to be their witness, to be on mission for the call of Christ Jesus on their lives.

He picks up in chapter two verse number one.

It says, therefore, now the word therefore is in reference to chapter one. Anytime you see the word therefore in the bible, you ask yourself this question, what is it therefore? Because it points back. Chapter one was all about how to conduct ourselves, how to live worthy of the gospel of Christ Jesus.

So therefore, in light of chapter one, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, now if you take notes or you write in your Bible, just write this down. If you love Jesus at all,

like even just a little bit. Paul says, if you love Jesus, then make my joy complete by being like minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility, value others above yourselves, Not looking to your own interest,

but each of you to the interest of the others. Paul is saying, here is the prescription.

You wanna take what you know and it manifest in what you show? You wanna take the kingdom of God into every room you walk into? You wanna make a difference in a lost and dying world that is absolutely a mess? This is the prescription of how you do it. This is the prescription and the description of what it looks like to actually step into what you show and move beyond just what you know.

Have you ever watched your TV and wondered this? What are these people doing? What are they thinking? Anybody else or is it just me? What are they thinking? Let me help you. They're not because they don't have Christ living in them like you and I do. And

listen to me, those who are not thinking like they should be thinking are not our enemy, they are our mission. We are called into the world to be light and we could spend our entire life cursing darkness or we can take light into that darkness. This is the prescription. Paul says the first thing, you gotta have unity.

He says, being like minded or of the same mind. How in the world can our country ever bridge the divide if the church of Jesus Christ is divided as well? We are called to be united but we are not called to uniformity. That's good right there. We're called to unity but not uniformity.

When we give our life to Jesus, we become brothers and sisters in Christ with one another but God didn't make us twins. Aren't you thankful that there's only one you? Nobody elbows somebody right now but my wife is thankful there's only one me because sometimes I can be a lot and I actually think we can find

unity, watch, in the beauty of our diversity. It's possible. Here's why, because unity isn't about how I feel, it's about who I follow And if you follow Christ and I follow Christ, we can find common ground at the foot of the cross and we become united behind

one mission and one cause. Now, I grew up in the nineteen eighties, greatest decade ever and I grew up in Texas, the belt buckle of the bible belt and I watched church people do a lot of crazy stuff as a teenager. I watched church people argue about color of carpet in the auditorium.

I watched church people lose their minds about what translation of the Bible are you preaching out of. I watched church people go toe to toe over things that did not matter and while they were fighting in the divide, the enemy was going unchallenged in the world.

And if ever there was a time for the church of the living God to be united, it's now. It's this day. It's this age. Psalms one thirty three, the Psalmist said this, how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. It's pleasing to God.

Not that we agree on everything, but that we can get united under the banner of the cross of Jesus Christ. Unity matters. Uniformity is not the call, but unity is.

You guys might remember Matthew chapter 16, there's there's a scene there where Jesus takes his disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi and there's a place there known as the Gates Of Hell. Caesarea Philippi is like Las Vegas on steroids.

It's one of the most immoral places on earth in Jesus's day and age and of all the places that Jesus takes his disciples to ask them this question, Caesarea Philippi would not have been on my list, but he's gonna make a point. He says to his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, who do men say that I am?

And they quickly say, well, some say you are Elijah, John the Baptist or you're just a prophet. And then he looks at his disciples and says, who do you say I am? And our boy Peter pipes up and says, you are the Christ, you're the son of the living God.

And Jesus looks at Peter and says, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you Peter, but my father which is in heaven And upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell, and he points to it, literally, Caesarea Philippi, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Jesus just said

that the gates of the most immoral place on planet earth in Jesus' day would not prevail against the church he was gonna build. So if the disciples were told that and you and I know that, so does the devil.

And so the devil knows he can't destroy the church, so instead of destroying the church, he divides the church so the church just destroys itself. We've gotta find unity. If anything should be united united on planet earth, it is the local church. He says be united, but then he says you need love.

He says you need not just love like I love this and I love that, he you need that real agape love, that love of Christ, that real love that he talks about in first Corinthians 13 when he says, if I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels but didn't love others,

I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Paul says, if I know all this stuff, but it doesn't come from a heart of love, unconditional love, then I'm just noise and when I'm just noise, the world turns me off. There's a lot of noise right now in the world.

There's a lot of noise about problems, there's very little talk about solutions. And so when I hear noise about problems, I just immediately turn it off. But we have the answer to the noise, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to the solution

that needed, is needed in this world. He goes on in verse two, if I had the gift of prophecy and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge and if I had such faith that I could move mountains but didn't love others, I would be nothing.

If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrifice my body, I could boast about it but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing. And Jesus himself said to his disciples, a new command I give you, love one another because they're gonna know you're my disciples because you have love for each other.

We're called to love. Paul says you gotta love. You gotta have the same love in you that Christ has for a lost and dying world. You see love is the currency that's required for speaking truth but it's also the currency for truth being heard and received. Love is the currency

that opens the door to the conversation. Write this down, one of the greatest acts of love you can do for someone is love them enough to tell them the truth.

It is. Because where I live, we pride ourselves in lying to you so we don't hurt your feelings. We use terms like, well God bless you, which means you're an idiot. We just don't wanna tell you. Stop doing what you're doing. You're headed down the wrong path. What if the greatest love we could do is actually share truth

with those who have been blinded by the enemy, the father of lies? It matters that we love enough to have hard conversations. We recently sold our house. When I say recently sold our house, like seven days ago sold our house and we have to be out by Tuesday.

It's a cash deal, a guy from California sold his place, moved to Texas, said I wanna buy your house. It'd been on the market for like four months, nobody had made one offer, he came in with cash and we're like, done. So that's why my wife is not here with me this weekend.

She's suffering for Jesus at home packing up the house. I was like, I already committed to pastor Lynn, I gotta go babe, I'm sorry. I'm going straight to the airport after the third service because I value my marriage. So we've been trying to get the house ready for the movers that are coming Tuesday morning.

But in the meantime, we've been hauling some of the stuff out of our house up to our new house that we purchased fifteen minutes north of us. My son-in-law has been helping me.

My wife has a Ford Explorer, so we've been laying down all the seats in the back and we've been putting some of the boxes in there of some of the things that are breakable that have stickers all over the boxes that say fragile, Brad, don't break.

I've been borrowing a truck from many people in Texas that have trucks and I've been hauling some other things in the back of the truck. We took some items up to the house the other day, we unloaded it, we got ready to go back to my current house to load up some more.

I took off in the truck, I looked behind me, Levi is not behind me, I finally looked down on my phone and Levi has texted me several times telling me my Explorer won't start.

He's like, I don't know what's going on, I'm trying to turn the key, it won't turn, the steering column is locked, something is jacked up with your car and I'm like, Lord, I don't need this right now. So I do a u-turn and I go back, when I pull in the driveway, there he is, he's frustrated trying to get it to work.

I get out of the truck and I go over and he says, well you can give it a try, can't get it to start. I said, me the key and he hands me the key and immediately I said, well this is why the car won't start Levi because you drive a Ford Explorer and so do I

And you're trying to start my Explorer with the key to your Explorer.

And he's like, I'm an idiot. Please, please, please do not share this in a sermon. I said, no bro, it's going in this weekend and here's why. What if the church has been trying to reach a lost and dying world and using the wrong key? And

what if the key that unlocks those conversations is that they know that you love them more than you hate their decisions? Paul says you better be united, you better find that love of Christ. And number three, you need community.

You need community. The message translation of this passage says this, you need deep spirited friends. Some of you last night, you hung out with some deep spirited friends, and you're just thankful today that you have all your fingers still left on your hands. You need people in your life who you can be real with

and know they'll still love you. Write this down, people can't love the you you pretend to be because that person doesn't exist. You need people in your life that know the good, the bad and the ugly about you and still love you. Deep spirited friends. You don't need to go to a community group at Cornerstone to .ani,

cross a t or check a box that you did that. You need to go because you need friends. I'll say it to you this way, Cornerstone, don't be a friendly church. Be a church where you can make a friend. We need community. Here's why, because long before the devil devastates us, he isolates us.

If you don't believe me, animal planet. There's always one gazelle who thinks I don't need the herd and it's when they step out of the herd and do life on their own that the lion pounces. As he's waiting for one to move away from the community of the herd. First Peter five eight says, you have an enemy like a roaring lion

that's roaming around seeking who he may devour. Who do you have in your life that has a backstage pass to your life? Who do you have in your life that has an all access pass to your life?

I have three people in my life that has an all access pass. One of them is not afraid to tell me the truth and to tell me the things I need to hear. You might know him. His name's Lynn Winters. He has no problem being a deep spirited friend, why? Because he cares about me. He cares about the church that I lead. He cares

that I finish as well as I started. We need people in our lives, we need community. August is always a season at Rock Creek and in North Texas where everybody gets back involved in things because you get back into a natural rhythm of school. So every August we'll do a push,

get in a community group, move beyond a gray chair there, a purple chair here, Dare to be known and to know people.

And every year someone will come say, I don't need that pastor, all I need is to come church on Sunday. And then something tragic hits and they're like, I don't have a community. We've been telling you get in community.

How do you how do you make a church more relational as it gets bigger? You break it down into smaller groups with community. You need deep spirited friends if you're gonna make it. Proverbs twenty seven seventeen, the writer Proverbs Solomon said, as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.

And how many of you know that in relationships there's gonna be conflict? How many of you know that iron sharpening iron isn't a smooth process? My wife and I have been married for thirty four years. We are a complete testimony that opposites attract and then they eventually attack and there's conflict.

But we get to choose if it's healthy conflict or non healthy conflict. Christian maturity doesn't mean comfort or ease. There may be times that that iron sharpening iron is frictional, but it's knocking off the rough edges of our lives. And then number four, Paul says you need to be a servant.

You need to have servant leadership. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vacancy. Rather in humility, value others above yourselves. I love how the message puts it. Don't push your way to the front. Don't sweet talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside. I think the world could use a huge dose of humility right now.

I also think at times the church of the living God could use a fresh dose of humility. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. Humility in the church world is picking up your responsibilities. I was raised by a father who felt like I would benefit as a teenager to have a few responsibilities

around the house. Of which I would say, well, what is my allowance for that? And he would say, that food you eat at the table every night, son, that's your allowance. And so I had three responsibilities growing up in our family. The first responsibility was this, I had to mow the yard and I had to mow the yard every Thursday,

not Wednesday, not Friday, but Thursday because the grass will always look better on the weekend if you mow it on Thursday. By the way, at Rock Creek Church, our lawn care mows the church yard on Thursday. That was one responsibility. Second responsibility was, we didn't have an ice maker in our refrigerator, I was the ice man.

My dad worked in construction, he worked in the heat and so every night when he'd come home, he would want a ice cold glass of sweet tea and if there was not ice in the ice bucket that I had put in there from the ice trays, it was not gonna be a good night for me. And by the way, don't just empty the ice trays,

fill them back up and put them back in the freezer, come on somebody. My third responsibility was, I was the trash man. I was the lawn man, the ice man, and the trash man. I took out the trash. I also took the trash barrel to the curb on Wednesdays. My Wednesdays and Thursdays were pretty full days.

On Father's Day, we went over to my parents house to grill out, swim in their pool because it's always better to know someone who has a pool than to have a pool. Spend time with my dad and my mom and many of you know that dads grill out on mother's day and dads grill out on father's day? So

my dad is grilling out, getting the burgers and the brats ready and then we all go inside and my mom's making all the fixes to go with the barbecue and she's got the trash compactor open and the trash is just kinda busting out everywhere and my dad says to me, hey son, take out the trash for your mom. Now in that moment,

I did not look at my dad and say, I'm 56 pops, I don't do trash anymore. Ask your grandson. I didn't say that. You know what I did? I took the trash out because my daddy told me to And you know what else I did? After I got done putting it in the trash barrel in the garage, I came back in the house

and I put a new trash bag in the trash compactor because that's what my daddy told me to do. Because I'm a part of a family, and in families you have responsibilities, not rights. Why is the church of the living God any different? This is a family. We pick up our responsibilities. This isn't a club.

This is a movement to help people meet and follow Jesus. And in that, we have responsibilities. Pick up the broom, pick up the mop, pick up that responsibility. That's what it looks like to be a servant leader. And Paul says, if you're going to show what you know,

it starts with serving people. Why? Because Jesus came to serve, not be served, and to give his life as a ransom for many. You are never more like Jesus than when you give and when you serve. That's what it looks like.

So Paul doesn't come up with this idea on his own, he doesn't get it from social media. He gets this idea, this proclamation,

this challenge from the life of Jesus himself.

He continues in verse five, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, there it is. Who being in the very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

What if, what if, what if being the church is less about what we know and more about what we show?

Let me leave you with one last challenge and this comes from a heart of love and a heart of encouragement,

but it's a sobering thought and a sobering challenge. If tomorrow morning you had to go to your local courthouse and stand as a witness, being accused

of being a faithful, devoted follower of Jesus and that being manifested in your action towards others who don't look like Jesus and you were being convicted of that as a crime. Here's my question, would there be enough evidence in that courtroom tomorrow to convict you?

If not, it starts today. If not, tomorrow when you step on the job, when you step into the office, tomorrow when you start driving in your car, in that moment right there, start to show what you know. Take your light into the dark places of the world. Be the church, don't just go to one. Life is incredible when

you step in to being who God has called you to be. Will you pray with me? God

in this moment, we wanna be, we don't wanna just do.

We understand that the world probably will never see its need for Jesus until it sees Jesus in us. So tomorrow, today,

Use us outside these four walls to change every room we walk into. Not because we're good, but because you're good. Not because we walked in, but because you walked in.

Lord, you'd use Cornerstone, use Rock Creek to push back the darkness in our world. Not because we're noisy with identifying there's darkness, but because we bring light and solutions into it. Help us Lord to love others that don't look like us, that don't act like us. Help us to find unity inside these walls

behind one mission, the cause of Christ. Lord may we find deep spirited friends that care enough about us to tell us the truth. May we be real enough to have a real conversation. Before I conclude today, I just wanna ask maybe somebody in the room, you don't know the Jesus I'm talking about.

But as I'm preaching you're like, that's the Jesus I want. The good news is Jesus wants you. He died for you. If you've never said yes to Jesus in this room, in a prayerful moment, would you pray a prayer like this? Heavenly father, I'm a sinner, I admit it. Would you forgive me of my sin? I make you my savior and my Lord.

Heavenly father, I believe Jesus was your one and only son. I believe and I confess with my mouth that he died for me, but he rose again. Thank you for coming into my life. Thank you for giving me a home in heaven with you for eternity. God, thank you again for being in this room all weekend.

Thank you that you're moving right now in our country and around the world and we wanna seize this opportunity to be the church. I pray all this in the name of Jesus our Lord and savior. Amen. Amen. Come on, give the Lord some praise.

If you said yes to Jesus today, would you let us know by texting the word Jesus to 21999?

We'd love to celebrate that with you. Our prayer team is moving down front right now. If you need prayer, they would love to pray with you. Other than that, have a great rest of your weekend. I'll see you when I'm back next time. God bless.