Matt Chandler - Family Discipleship (Time, Moments, Milestones)

Good morning! It’s good to see you, really for the first time in the last decade. The Flower Mound campus is completely off stream, so all our other campuses across the Metroplex are doing their own series this summer. It’ll just be us for the next six weeks hanging out, and some of that I’ve put together and some of that you’ve put together. Coming off of three weeks on marriage, we’re going to turn our attention this week to family discipleship. We’ve got a sermon on the role of joy, celebration, and rejoicing in the life of the believer, and then we’ll have a sermon on singleness. We’re also going to talk about the Trinity, one of those more confusing doctrines of Christian theology. From there, we’ll do three weeks on progressive sanctification, or how the Spirit makes us more and more like Jesus over time. Then, we’ll all be back online with one another come, I think, August 16th. That weekend, we’ll all be back. We just get the summer to contextualize where we are, and I’m excited to do that. We’re going to talk about family discipleship today during our time together. Um, sorry, I just breathed in the wrong way. That’s never happened to you, I guess! That’s just a unique experience of mine. Now, when we talk about making disciples, the term «disciple» simply means «learner.» We’ve been called by God to make disciples, not just converts. After making converts, we make disciples, so the goal of the Christian Church is not to make converts, but to make disciples—to create, by the grace of God and by the Spirit of God, followers of Jesus Christ. The way we do that is by embodying the story that you and I find ourselves living in. Here’s a secret—or not a secret, but something a lot of people don’t really talk аbout: everyone you know is living out of a worldview; they are participating in a story. As Christians, we have a story that we’re actively living in and out of, and that story is usually framed like this: creation, fall, redemption, restoration. Let me take that and kind of embed it into how we as Christians see the world. I won’t contrast it with atheists, Buddhists, or others, but I want to show you how this story shapes our morals and ethics and influences how we live in and out of the story in the world we inhabit. Let me put this on the screen so you can get a sense of what I’m talking about. When we ask ourselves as Christians the question, «Where did I come from?» Everyone is going to answer that question. The atheist is going to answer that question or just ignore it; the Buddhist is going to answer this question, and here’s how Christians answer this question: we were created by the Creator God of the universe, and we were made in His image. That’s where we came from—we were created by God, made by the hand of God. This immediately begins to shape and inform our morals and ethics. Being made in the image of God by a Creator God means that we have dignity, value, and worth that is beyond the rest of the created order. This doesn’t mean that we look at the rest of creation with disdain; it only means that humankind, regardless of their socio-economic status, intellect, or physical capabilities, is more valuable than even the most expensive racehorse. I understand that you love your dog and that your dog is like a member of your family, but your dog does not have equal value and worth as another human being. As Christians, we would not slide that scale and say, «Well, I mean, they’re not fully human because of their intellect…» or, «They’re not fully human; they’re not fully of value or worth because of this disability or because of this socio-economic status.» Our worldview is shaped by men and women being made in the image of God; they hold high value. They are more valuable than sea turtle eggs or white-spotted owls. It’s not that we don’t care that those things are endangered; it’s that we say humankind is far more valuable. We’ve been created in the image of God, which leads to the second question that everyone has to answer: what went wrong? The Christian believes that sin entering into the cosmos fractures it in two ways: first, it bends the human soul towards iniquity. If you’ve got kids, follow me here: no one in this room needed to teach their kid the art of lying, right? I’m guessing you didn’t, around the time they were three or four, say, «Hey, come here! When I ask you a question, here’s how you just completely lie to me.» That would be a terrible thing to do! Yet, it’s this crazy thing with your kids—like the story I’ve told before about one who shall not be named. There was a time when I came home, and we had received a package with these packing peanuts, which were shredded all over the floor. I said, «Hey, why did you do this?» and that kid said, «I didn’t do it.»