Hope Church LV Sermons
Our Message. Our Mission.
In September of 1999, God interrupted my life. I had a plan and I thought it was His plan. I was serving in Memphis, Tennessee as the senior associate pastor of a church there called the Kirby Woods Baptist Church. And I had a wonderful relationship with the pastor that I was working with, the senior pastor there that I was serving. And I'd known him my whole life, he was my dad. And I had the privilege of serving there for a couple of years with my dad as his associate pastor. And everybody kind of thought that the plan was that my dad would retire, which he did about three to four years ago, and that when my dad retired, that I would be the next senior pastor there at our church in Memphis. Like I said, my dad had been there for 20 years, it had kind of been a church that my family had been a part of for a number of years and then had the opportunity to serve there for two years with my dad. So it just kind of looked like that that was what God was doing, that God was moving us towards that point in time when I would take the responsibility there and accept that call. Because it's a wonderful church family, it's a church family that runs over 2,000 people, they're involved in giving away over a million dollars a year to missions, they're involved in church plants and doing things globally. It's a wonderful fellowship, and that's when we thought we were headed. Then in September of '99, I was sitting in my living room there in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was having a quiet time. Just what you do on a regular basis, what I do, we sit down, we open the Word of God, and we begin to read Scripture, we get our journal, we write things down, we read some devotional books, and that's where I was. I was just spending time with the Lord, I'm on personal devotional time, and I came across a verse of Scripture that I'd read many times before, but that morning it forever changed my life. It's in Luke chapter 4 and verse 43, here's what that little simple verse said, Jesus said, "I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose." As soon as I read that morning in the Scripture, God began to stir in my heart, and there were two phrases that jumped out at me, that phrased the kingdom of God in other cities, that Jesus had a passion for cities that had not been exposed to the gospel, or cities that were unchurched and needed the gospel, and God just stirred something. It was just one of those moments where God spoke into my life, it wasn't an audible voice, but it seemed louder than that. I just sensed God speaking into my heart so strongly, and I went and got my wife, Christi, and then we sat down and we prayed together, and we said, "Lord, yes, we don't know when, we don't know where," but the answer is yes. And to be totally honest with you, at that point in our lives, we really had prepared in our hearts that God was about to send us overseas. We'd been involved in missions, and we really thought that God was going to plan our lives somewhere in India or China or Africa, and we'd just really wrapped our hearts around that, that God, when God spoke to us that He wasn't going to leave us in Memphis, He was going to relocate us to a place to plant churches and multiply and be about the kingdom of God, we just really thought we were headed somewhere you had to have a passport to get to. Two weeks later, my mentor and friend who was another pastor named Johnny Hunt, I had him come speak for us at an event there at Kirby Woods, and after he spoke that night, we had a lot of men give their lives to Christ, and Johnny and I were walking out of the building, and he stopped me. I'll never forget it right there in the hallway, right by the men's bathroom. He said, "Vance, our church in Woodstock, Georgia is feeling led of the Lord to plant a new church in Las Vegas, Nevada," and he said, "God's put it on my heart that you're here to be the pastor of that church." I told you, my wife and I had prepared ourselves for China or Africa or India, but I grew up in Alabama. In Alabama, people don't go to Las Vegas, and if they do, they don't tell anybody, right? I mean, where I grew up, people don't think Las Vegas is hell, but they believe you can smell it from here, that we're really close. When he said Las Vegas, "You couldn't have caught me more off guard," and yet as soon as he said it, God just overwhelmed my soul with the peace to the point that I knew God was calling our family to come here. We put together a team, we relocated to Woodstock, Georgia, we went east before we came west, we spent a few months there preparing, and then we relocated in December of 2000 to Las Vegas. I've been on the field about two weeks, and I got a telephone call from a lady who is now famous in the annals of Hope Church history. Her name is Letty Peralta. Letty is just a little Filipino lady who called me on the telephone, and she said, "Pastor, can I tell you a story?" I said, "Ledy, I don't know anybody in Las Vegas. You can tell me any story you want to tell me." Here's the story she began to tell me. She said, "Pastor, I'm from the Philippines." She said, "I come from a very poor family, and I moved to Hong Kong to make money for my family." She said, "While living in Hong Kong, I met an American family and moved in with them and became the caretaker of their home." She said, "My American family adopted me, and then I relocated with them from Hong Kong all the way to America, a place called Woodstock, Georgia." She said, "While living in Woodstock, Georgia, I visited a church about six times called the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, and I heard a pastor by the name of Johnny Hunt preach, and God radically changed my life." She said, "Then my family relocated from Woodstock, Georgia to Las Vegas, Nevada." She said, "Pastor, I've prayed every day for a year and a half that the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, would start a church in Las Vegas, Nevada." She said, "Pastor, would you please tell me what church sent you here?" Now, with my jaw hanging wide open, I said, "Ledy, it was the first Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia." I share that with you because I want you to understand, from the very beginning, we knew God was at work in our city. God is doing something here, and we understood that God had invited us to be a part of something that was bigger than any one of us, and hear this very clearly. Before my family ever got involved in it, God was at work in the city of Las Vegas. Before Ledy Peralta ever prayed the first prayer, God was at work in the city of Las Vegas, and long after every one of us are off the scene, God is going to continue to be at work in and through this fellowship in our city because it's the activity of a holy God that He simply allowed us the incredible privilege to be a part of. And as we take this unbelievable step this weekend of what began in the heart of God becoming a reality right here in the heart of Las Vegas, we're celebrating ten years of seeing God do unbelievable things. Over 2,500 people, you saw the testimonies, just a snippet of them earlier. Over 2,500 people have personally come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior right through this fellowship. We've had the privilege of seeing now over ten churches planted out of our church, and did you know that this quarter, the very first quarter of 2012, we're starting six new churches in the western United States, Denver, Colorado, Salt Lake City, Utah, Carlsbad, San Diego, California, Vancouver, and Hawaii. Everybody wants to end on that church plant, right? I'm feeling led, Pastor. Let me grab my surfboard and my sunscreen. I think God may be in this. I think I just had a Luke 4 moment, Pastor, right here. It wasn't audible. It was louder than that. God's calling, God's opened up the door to us to work all over the world, a little 10-year-old fellowship that began in a living room 10 years ago with 18 adults. We're now having the privilege of serving on four continents around the world. On an annual basis, we're training tens of thousands of national leaders and seeing tens of thousands of people come to faith in Jesus Christ. And currently, we're working on a project to begin the translation of the gospel into the language of a people group in the Middle East that's about 3 million people who have never to this point had the gospel and their language before. Why do I share all that with you? Because today, today we're celebrating a significant next step, and I don't want to diminish it. This is precious. What God's given us. I thought even last night as we began the service, right before the service began, our partner in Southeast Asia that we work with who lives in an area of the country or an area of the world where every day he doesn't know if he'll be shot, killed, arrested, persecuted for the gospel, and he sent me a text 10 minutes before our service began last night. I guess he'd figured out the time change and set his alarm, and he sent me a text to say, "Pastor, we are praying for you this weekend because of your partnership in the gospel in our part of the world." As we take this significant next step, it's been a journey. We've met, this is our eighth location as a church family in 10 years. Our church for Wilesman, the church that said, "Come if you can find us," right? There are people at Silverado High School this morning crying out to God because they believe the raps just happened. They think they've been left behind. They're saying, "Oh God, where are they?" It's a big deal that we're able to move into a permanent home, but I want you to hear me say something right out of the gate. We have not arrived. This is not a mission accomplished moment. We have only just begun to see all that God desires to do through us. One of the great dangers of taking a step like this and moving into a permanent campus is that we all want to sit back and take a deep breath and go, "Whew, we made it." So, we didn't make it. There's a mission to be accomplished. And as I was having my quiet time yesterday morning in the book of Jeremiah, the prophet was speaking to the nation of Israel. And God just spoke to my heart again about all the things that He's yet to do through our fellowship as we establish this permanent launching pad. So as we think back over the reality today of all that God's done, I want us to look at a couple of verses out of the book of Colossians. If you have your Bible, I want you to turn to Colossians chapter 1. And these are actually some life verses that God gave to me over 20 years ago when I began in ministry. Colossians chapter 1, we're going to begin reading in verse number 28. Just going to read two simple verses, and I want to draw a couple of truths out of these verses this morning as we celebrate this grand opening. The Bible says in verse 28, "We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power which mightily works within me." Out of these two simple verses, we could literally spend the next several weeks just unpacking the truth here, but we're not going to do that. I just wanted this morning to draw two defining statements. And these two defining statements are very intentional. They're designed to speak to two groups of people this morning. Number one, some of you are here today and you're new to our family of faith. This is your first time. You're just a guess. You're just checking us out. You've seen the building go up. You live in the neighborhood and you're here. I want to share these two things with you today because I want you to know a little about who we are. I want to take some time this morning to maybe answer some questions for you about what we're about as a fellowship. Because if you visit many different churches, churches are like Baskin Robbins. I mean there's 31 flavors as all stripes and sizes and shapes and colors and creeds. And I want you to know a little bit about who we are. So I want to talk from my heart today to you about who we are as a fellowship. But secondly, I want to talk to those of you that call hope your home. I want these two statements to be a challenging reminder for us about why God brought us into existence as a fellowship. So here's the first statement. At hope, our message is Jesus. At hope, our message is very simple. It's just Jesus. Paul opened these verses with the simple phrase, "We proclaim Him." We live in a day of messages. There are all kinds of messages being bombarded at us today. From text messages and instant messages and Twitter messages and Facebook messages to media and marketing messages through the internet and television. If you watch much television especially late at night at all, you bombarded with the infomercial. It's like we live in the day of the infomercial and it's a commercial that's packing this powerful message. And many of the messages that are out there today promise to change your life. For example, there's the message today that says, "If you just change the way you look, you can change your life." There's all these promises that if you'll just lose this weight or if you'll order this piece of exercise equipment or if you'll use this age-defying lotion, that it'll change your life. You can be a brand new person. There's the message that says you can change your life if you just have more stuff. They push at us investment opportunities and get rich quick schemes and programs and seminars and there's even a vein of Christianity that teaches a message that if you'll just come to church enough and have enough faith, you can have all the material possessions that you want. There's the message today that you can change your life if you'll just simply change your behavior. We go to self-help seminars and we follow the gurus and we listen to motivational speakers and we even sometimes get involved in religion to try to somehow change our behavior. If I can just stop some of these things, "Well, you know, preacher, I know I need to get in church. I need to change this particular activity or that particular activity. I need to add this one to the list of things in my life and if I can just change my behavior then I can change my life." Can I be honest with you today? You can try all of those things. You can even try church. Church won't change your life. Listen to me. I want to make you a promise today. Our church cannot change your life. Our programs, our ministries, our activities, it can't change your life. Let me tell you who can change your life. Only Jesus. Jesus Christ can change your life. And Paul says, Paul says right here in this verse, "We have one message and it is the message of Jesus Christ." You see, here's the reality. You and I were created by God and we were created by God to live our lives in fellowship with Him. And the only way you'll ever find meaning and significance and value in life is to live your life out of the overflow of an intimate fellowship relationship with God. Apart from a relationship with God, you'll never know life as God intended it to be. The problem is, the Bible teaches that we're born into this world, sinners, dead to God and alive to sin. And because of our sin, we're separated from a relationship with God. Everything had to be done to forgive us of our sin and to give us a relationship with God. There was nothing we could do to earn it. That's what Jesus did. Jesus came and on the cross, Jesus took all of our sin on Himself and He died for our sin. He died in our place, but He didn't stay dead. Amen? I mean, if all He did was die, we don't have any hope for life, but He didn't stay dead. He rose again from the dead as a testimony that God had accepted His sacrifice for our sin. And now when we turn from our sin and put our faith and trust in the person of Jesus Christ, we can be forgiven of our sin and given a relationship with God and find meaning and significance and value in life. Our message and hope is Jesus. That's why Jesus said it this way. He said, "I am, I am the way and the truth." It's important. He didn't say, "I'm a way." He said, "I'm the way." How can you be so narrow, Pastor? It's not me. It's Jesus. Jesus said, "I'm the way. I'm the truth. I'm the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me." Curtis Vaughn said it this way. At the deepest level, the apostle conceived of his message, not as a system or as a collection of rules and regulations, but as a living and glorious person who is the fulfillment of the deepest hopes of mankind and the source of new life for all his people. Money will not change your life. Behavior modification will not change your life. Eliminating wrinkles will not change your life. Listen, Jesus can and will change your life. At hope, there's something we say a lot. We say that following Jesus is all about relationships. First and foremost, following Jesus is an intimate love relationship with God that then spills into our relationships with others. That is our message. And Paul in this verse goes on to tell us a few things about how we're to share this message, Church. He uses three phrases to describe it. First of all, he says, "We proclaim Him." The word proclaim means to declare openly or publicly or out loud. It means to laud or to celebrate something. But then also that phrase proclaim is in the present act of tense. It means it describes something that's ongoing and continuous. Here Paul is describing, listen, Church, not just a weekly event where somebody preaches Jesus, but Paul is describing a fellowship where out of the overflow of a love relationship with God, we are constantly every moment of every day celebrating, proclaiming, talking about the person of Jesus Christ. You ever been around a grandparent with pictures? You can't make them stop. If you're around a grandparent and they grab for the picture album, run or pull up a chair because you're there for a while, right? They're going to talk about these kids, they're going to show you the pictures, they're going to tell you stories, they're going to walk you through things you don't want to hear. Why? Because they love Him and it spills out on their life. That's exactly the picture Paul is describing here in Colossians 1. We proclaim Him. He's describing people that are so in love with the person of Jesus Christ that it's so been radically changed by Him that every moment of every day in our pulpits, in our streets, in our schools, at our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, we just make much of Jesus Christ. We proclaim Him. But then He uses this phrase admonishing and teaching, describing that sometimes the way we share Jesus is different. Sometimes we admonish. It's a word that means to warn, it's a strong word that has the idea of challenging somebody about a Christless eternity, warning them of a life without God, but then He also uses this word teach, which is a very different word, it's a word that involves the investment of personal time by one person and another person's life. It implies sharing Christ through the vehicle of a relationship. Yes, there are some times that we need to boldly share Christ in a way with people that brings them to a stark reality of an eternity without God. But the Bible says there are other times when our method needs to be more relational, where we're cultivating relationships, and through those relationships and those platforms we're talking about the person of Jesus Christ. Here's the point. The message of the gospel is a confrontational message. But the way we share it shouldn't be. That's why Paul adds this third phrase, wisdom. He says admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, the word wisdom means to form the best plans and select the best means, including the idea of sound judgment in good sense. Means that we should share the right thing in the right way at the right time. I think some Christians take some personal pride in how many times they've blitzed somebody with the gospel. Like it's a notch in my spiritual belt. Hey, we need to be making much of Jesus Christ, but I don't get brownie points for how many times I walk through the Roman road. We need to use wisdom and how we make Christ known to the people around us. Sometimes it's a bold confrontation of the gospel. Sometimes it's cultivating a relationship which begs the question, who are we building relationships with that does not know Jesus Christ for the express purpose of sharing Christ with them? Let me give you a life application that kind of summarizes this point. We are to always look for ways to lovingly share Jesus with others. So here's what I'm saying this morning. If you're new, our message is simple. We're not here today for self-help philosophy. This is not a church where the pastors believe it's our responsibility to peddle our own philosophies and ideas and opinions. Our message is very simple, it's Jesus. We exist for one reason to point you to Him. We can change your life, and church, the message for us is what are we doing to make Him known? Let me give you the second defining statement this morning at hope. Our mission is making disciples of Jesus. Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus. Paul said we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man. You hear that? You hear that? We proclaim Him so that. It's an important little two-word phrase in the English language in the Greek, it's just one word, he-na, and it means here's why. Here's why. We proclaim Him so that we can draw large crowds and build buildings and establish campuses. Paul said, no, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. Paul says here that there is a finish line, but that finish line has nothing to do with buildings or budgets or attendance numbers, it's about people being complete in Christ. The word complete is an interesting word, it's a word that means mature or full-grown. There's a lot of ways in the church that we say, oh, that person's a mature Christian. How do we define that? Well, sometimes we say that by, oh, they've been saved a long time. That's a mature Christian. They've been a Christ follower for years and years and years. We know what? Sometimes that doesn't necessarily mean Christian maturity. Did you know the apostle Paul don't even say a little over two years when he started traveling and planning churches? He hadn't been saved 30 years. Sometimes we define a mature Christian as somebody who can quote all the Bible verses and know all 66 books of the Bible can say them backwards and forwards and they can define all the theological points, that's a mature believer. Sometimes we define a mature believer as somebody who's faithful to all the programs of the church, man, you open the doors and they're always here. Can I give you a definition of complete forsake of time? Let me just put it up on the screen. Here's what it means to be complete in Christ. It's people who've come to know Jesus and out of the overflow of their relationship with Him are making Him known to others. It's people that have so fallen in love with Jesus Christ that out of the overflow of their relationship with Him, they're now making Him known in the lives of others. Let me summarize it in two simple statements, knowing Him and making Him known. That's the life of Jesus. I challenge you to read John 17, the high priestly prayer at the very end of it, Jesus said, "I have known you and I have made your name known." There is no two more Christ-like statements in all the Bible than to say, "I know Him and I'm making Him known." We're to present every person complete in Christ. That's the other phrase that's important in these verses, not only the phrase complete, but three times He says, "Every man," admonishing every man, teaching every man with all wisdom so we may present every man complete in Christ. That phrase, "every man," literally means every person or all the people. And it speaks to two issues of our mission. For one, it speaks to the inclusive nature of our mission. We are to make Jesus known to every person, black or white, rich or poor, educated or uneducated American or international. Our mission as a church is to share Jesus and make disciples of all people. One of the things I love about our church is the diversity of our church. Our church looks like what heaven is going to look like. More churches need to look like this. Why does our church look like this? Because we believe it's our responsibility to share Jesus with every person locally and globally. That's why God brought us into existence. We proclaim Him. We're no respecter of persons. We have one message, Jesus. We have one audience, everybody. Starts in Las Vegas. God put us in this city for a reason. Ninety-five percent of the people in this city do not know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. It means a nine out of ten people that woke up this morning, didn't have God on their radar, not thinking about church. I mean we're celebrating a grand opening most of our city could care less. They don't need to know about our building, they don't need to know about Jesus. But outside of Las Vegas, the western United States, did you know that the United States is now the fourth largest lost nation on planet earth? Only China, India and Indonesia have more lost people than the United States of America. We're number four on lost nations on the planet. Did you know that 40% of the unchurched population of America lives in the western United States? Let me connect a dot for you. God birthed our church in the center of the fourth largest numerical mission field on planet earth. Not so we could gather in here in a holy huddle and worship and celebrate and encourage one another and make sure we got all our needs met. God birthed our church in the center of this culture that we may be about proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ throughout the western United States. When God birthed our church, listen not only that, he had the nations on his heart. Did you know that there are three billion people in the world who have little or no access to the gospel? What that means? If they were going to hear the message of Jesus, the first thing they'd have to do is learn another language because three billion people in the world live today in places where they have no access to the gospel in their own language. What if you first had to learn Mandarin Chinese in order to hear the gospel? Oswald Smith said it this way, "Why should anybody in the world hear the gospel twice until everybody's heard the gospel once?" How many times did you and I hear the gospel before we finally yielded the control of our lives to Christ? How many times did we hear the gospel before we finally let go of the things of this world and surrender to Jesus Christ? Three billion people in the world have never heard the gospel one time, and they're lost, and God birthed our church with the nations on his heart. We proclaim him to everybody. It also speaks to the individual nature of our mission. Every person, every man means every single person, meaning we have a responsibility to every person in our fellowship to deepen their walk with God. It's why we put so much emphasis on small groups here. We don't want you to just slip into a weekend worship service and have your heart stirred and hide and go home. We want you to get connected in a small group of believers, because we think it's imperative that you have other people walking along with you on this journey to help deepen your love relationship with God and hope our message is Jesus, and hope our mission is simple. Make disciples of Jesus. Say, "How do we do that?" Well, Paul tells us in the next verse, verse 29, he says, "For this purpose I labor." The word labor means to work, to exhaustion. Paul says, "For this reason I'm wearing myself out. Hey, we get to rest in heaven. Now it's time to labor for the cause of Christ, but I love what he said next. My labor striving according to his power, which mightily works within me." Give you one last statement, "Everything God desires to do through us, he will do out of the overflow of what he's doing in us." Everything that is real as this mission is, our focus is in the mission. Our focus is the man. And as we focus on him, he through us will accomplish the mission for his glory. [BLANK_AUDIO]