Matt Chandler - Celebrating with Him

Good afternoon! It’s good to see you. I never like to start a sermon with a strong rebuke, but I’m going to today. What you are expressing are terrible emotions. I mean, I’ve just been around the world, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a group as bad at emotions as you just were. So, we’ll work on it in time, too. Oh yeah, I forgot if you’re one of our kids—you got the little worksheet! I’m Pastor Matt, and I’m glad that you’re with us today. I was just rebuking your parents for their lack of emotional skills, and that’s all that was. But why don’t you do me a favor? If you’re one of our first through fifth graders, you’re near this, so why don’t you stand up? I want to see you. If your small stature, just stand on the chair so I can see you; unless you’re in the balcony, then I would not do that because it might hurt. Hey, welcome in, guys! Now, do me a favor—look right at me. I’ve got a couple of things I want to say to you, and then you can sit back down, and we’ll continue on.

When the Bible talks to us as adults about what faith is supposed to look like, what Christianity is supposed to look like, one of the things that Jesus says to us is, «We’re supposed to be more like you!» Right? Like, you have got energy, you have got vitality of life, you have got faith that we’re supposed to look at and think, «Believe like they believe, have faith like they have faith, have energy like they have energy.» God, help us! And so, we need you in our church, and I’m so glad that you’re with us.

Here’s where we’re going: I’m going to preach for 22 minutes. You know why 22 minutes? Because that’s how long the shows that you watch are, right? And there are no commercials in this joint; this is streaming! So, I’m going to go for 22 minutes, and then we’ll transition to something else, and you can do it. I want you to dial in, hang with me for 22 minutes. Then tonight at 5 o’clock, if you’re coming, we’re going to party in the parking lot like crazy! I think there’s going to be a cotton candy avalanche that’s going to rock your world! All right?

So, until then, though, I need you dialed in, all right? Let me pray over you, and then we’re going to just get after it. Father, bless these young men and women in the name of Jesus. I just pray that you would do something in their spirit today—and really for the rest of their lives—when they think about church, when they think about you, and what it means to know you, that there’d be something that happens in their spirit in our hour together today that helps them understand that you’re good, that you love them, and that you love us. So bless our time together. Thank you for giving us your Word and your Spirit. It’s in your beautiful name I pray, amen.

All right, guys, let’s have a seat for 22 minutes. You can do it! Now, we’ve been talking this fall—this whole fall—we’ve been discussing what Augustine called witness and what this means. If I could just condense this, it’s that God wants to be in a relationship with us more than He’s interested in us doing good and not doing bad. God’s heart is to have a relationship with us and to do life with us—not «Hey, do what’s good, avoid what’s bad, ” but rather, „Know me, be with me, ” and in that, I’ll shape and mold you. We’ve called this witness.

Then we talked about needing to practice this because we’re not natural at it. So, how many of you play flag football, t-ball, baseball, cheer, soccer, or you’re involved in some sport—volleyball, that requires you to practice? If you play a sport or do a practice that you’ve got to go to, why don’t you raise your hand for me? All right, so what you do when you go to practice is you will do what’s called „reps.“ They will make you do something over and over and over again so that, in theory, when it comes time to play the game, you don’t have to think about it—you know what to do because you’ve practiced it so much.

Well, when we talk about being with Jesus and doing life with Jesus, having a relationship with Him, we talk about these same things. There are practices that we want in our lives. We talked in week two about this idea of rest. So here, I want to let you in on a secret. If you’re in 1st through 5th grade, lean in—lean in! Just don’t tell anyone what I’m about to say. You know how you kind of hate taking a nap? In the next 20 years, you will beg God for that nap! At some point in the next 20 years, you will say, „Please, sweet King Jesus, give me 30 minutes to lay down!“ Right? So, my guess is that if I’m talking about Sabbath rest, that’s like right now. But what would it be like to just not have to try to earn anything but just rest in the fact that God loves us as we are? I don’t have to work for God; I don’t have to do this or…