Join us this week in our new series "Different" For any other information you can visit our website coastlinensb.com or email us at hello@coastlinensb.com
Coastline Church NSB Podcast
Different Week 1
Welcome to the coastline podcast. We exist as a church to help connect you to God and the people around you, to help you grow in your faith, and to challenge you to go into your community sharing the love of Christ. Three things. Connect, grow, go. If you'd like information on what is going on at Coastline, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, or email us at hello@coastlinensb.com. Alright, man. Yeah. How y'all doing this morning, Coastline? How about doing well? You having a good weekend so far? Everybody well rested? How many of you guys are ready for Monday? Yeah, three people. Yep. That's about right. That's how it feels. Summer is coming to an end. All the moms said, amen. Amen. Preach a preacher, right? Moms, you guys are ready for your kids to go back and get on schedule. Speaking of kids, I'm going to take a break real quick and dismiss all the musical students and teachers and guys that are going to go. You guys can go out into the breezeway and go to your classroom. And they've got a lesson for you guys there. You can connect with one another. It'll be a good time to hang out. Also, if you've got small kids, this is a great time to take them over to the kids ministry. I know how some moms think, man, my kid is just so disruptive. My kid is so bad or whatever. I'm going to tell you, we got professionals. We got moms that have been moms for decades over there. We got grandmas that have seen everything and anything. And I promise you, they take care of our kids in a safe way. They have fun over there. They teach them about the love of Jesus. And I'm super thankful for all of our volunteers and staff over in our cosign kids. Amen. I'm going to tell you, if it wasn't for those guys, when I was a little kid, man, a lot of the stuff that made me who I am today was learning it from moms and dads that volunteered in the kids ministry. Man, I'm super thankful for the time and effort that they put into that. Today, we're going to read primarily from the book of Romans. Romans is written by the same author that we talked about in our last series, which was Ephesians. This is the Apostle Paul. Paul writes most of the New Testament. If you're new to the Bible, the Bible is not just one book. If you were to grab it off your shelf and blow the dust off of it, it looks like one book, but it's not really. It's 66 different books compiled of a multitude of different authors written over hundreds of years, different authors, different years from different perspectives written to different people group. And so whenever you read it and study it, you've got to kind of understand a little bit of maybe who the author is talking to when you read it. Here specifically in the book of Romans, this is after the Gospels. The Gospels are the stories of Jesus of life. And then after that comes these letters from the Apostle Paul specifically teaching the early church, what would be called followers of this movement. They were called the way followers of the way. This would have been the early church. This would have been what we use now as terminology as Christianity, the beginning of Christianity. And so Paul is writing to these churches, he's encouraging them. And along the way, as he's teaching them about how to do church, about how to live, about how to do life. This is a similar perspective that we can listen to even today because as we continue to lead the church that God's given us here at coastline, there's encouragement and challenges and things that we need to just along the way to do it the best way we can. Apostle Paul writes and says this, he says, "Don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way that you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." This scripture right here, Ephesians 12-2 will be the basis for these next couple weeks of what we preach on or what I preach on. But the Apostle Paul is challenging them. He's telling them, he said, "You need to understand when it comes to following Jesus, when it comes following Jesus, you might not fit in." And to take it a step further, I don't think we're supposed to fit it. I think when it comes to being a follower of Jesus, what we're all charged to do is to be a little bit different. Now, hold on. Some of you guys just heard me say people going to church, people that are Christians are supposed to be weird. That's different. It's a whole different thing, okay? You don't got to be weird to be different. There's plenty of weird Christians, God bless them. If you want to be weird, just don't wear a coastline shirt. You don't wear another churches shirt or something like that, okay? Don't be the guy out in the street corner being weird. But Apostle Paul says, "You need to be different." He says, "Don't conform to the patterns of this world." He says, "But be transformed, be changed, be different." And the way that he says it, he says, "By renewing your mind, by changing the way that you think." He says, "Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." Erick, will you bring me a bottle of water? I'm having a tough time. So Paul, when he's writing this, I want to jump back into the first scripture that he says, the first intro into this chapter. If you've got a Bible, you can pull it open to Romans 12 verse 1. He says this, he says, "So dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of what he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice. The kind that he will find acceptable." This is truly the way to worship him. Now here in those days in those cultures, the people of that day would have understood what sacrifices mean. Because you've got to think the Roman Empire, they had many, many different deities that they worship. The other religions of that time had different deities. And the idea of sacrifice, whether it was an animal or some type of offering, was something that was pretty common in those days. They understood what that would mean. But here the Apostle Paul, he adjusted. He says, "No, no, this is what you're going to do now is different." He says, "Let your bodies be a living and holy sacrifice." So that means it's something that you do. It's something that takes effort beyond just giving up of. It has to do with your actions. And he says, he uses this term "holy," which means to be set apart from sin. So he says, "When it comes to how you live, set your life apart from sin, try to stay away from sin, and understand that the effort that you put in on a daily basis, this is your sacrifice to God. He flips the script, he said, "This is going to be different than what the culture says around you." Now one of the things that you've got to remember in this is as the Apostle Paul is teaching this, people would have known who Paul was before. Because if you remember back to what we talked about last month, the Apostle Paul, his name when he first starts to get talking about in the Bible, was actually named Saul. Saul was a persecutor of people that were following the way, they were following Jesus. He would throw them in jail. The Bible says they would persecute them unto death. He was a pretty bad dude. But Jesus meets him on the road. He changes him. He changes the way he thinks. This meeting, this interaction with him, adjusts Saul's life 180 degrees. And he goes from being a persecutor of the church to a promoter of the church. So here's the thing I get from this is I realize that when you have a real interaction with Jesus, when you have this genuine interaction with Jesus, especially whether it's the first time or there's change that's involved, there's an adjustment that happens along the way. We see this from Paul who was Saul before Henry. We see this from Matthew who was a tax collector before he meets Jesus. Then he goes from being someone that takes from his own people, from his own tribe. He turns around and follows Jesus, changes his life, and starts to continue to tell him about what Jesus has done in him. We see this in Peter who was a lowly fisherman, probably wasn't a super smart or intelligent guy. He was a very passionate guy, very hardworking guy. He meets Jesus and his life changes forever. He would go on to be what Jesus would refer to as the rock and which the church would be built on. This interaction with Jesus changes people. I've seen people in my own life. Some of you guys have seen it as well. People in our church that, man, I don't know how many people that I go that you start to keep track of them in your head, but people come as like, no, dude, you don't know that guy when I knew that guy. You don't know what that guy was like growing up. Some of you all are elbowing your husband right now, right? I know what that's like. There's something about you meet Jesus and there's change. You're different. There's a difference that happens. It's a good thing. So Paul says, be a living and holy sacrifice. Be different. He goes on to tell about how you should do this. He says, don't just pretend to love others. You really love them. You know what he's saying there? He says, don't be fake. Don't be -- any of you guys ever you do the fake smile, you know what I'm talking about, right? Like someone comes talk to you like, hey, good to see you. You're like trying to make your face a good to see you, but it's really saying like something else. You know what I'm talking about? We've been there. He says, don't be -- Paul says, don't be fake. Be genuine. He says, love others, really love them. He says, hate what is wrong, hold tight to what is good. Now I want to stop real quick because when I read this, this past week, I got hit pretty hard with something that's happening in our culture here lately. If you guys have been on Facebook or Instagram, you saw the opening ceremony to the Olympics. And over the next couple of days, after seeing that, I saw many Christians come on and express their opinion of what they saw. Many of them, it was in a very negative way. I didn't get a chance to watch. I saw the -- just the highlights of it. There was parts of it where as a Christian, I'm frustrated and I feel a sense of needing to defend because when it comes to portraying one of the most critical moments in the life of our Savior in a way that was what seemed to make fun of, that's something that's hard to feel, for sure. Here specifically, when Paul is talking about how we're supposed to react and how we're supposed to act and how we're supposed to be Christians, he says, when it comes to people, he says, love others, really love them. He says, love people, he says hate what's wrong. He separates the two. There's two different things here. There's people, and then there's sin, or there's what's right and wrong. And he separates them. He says followers of the way as Christians, this is something that you're supposed to hate, but you're also supposed to love people. He continues on, he says, hold tightly onto what is good, love each other with genuine affection, they take delight in honoring each other. Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. Verse 12 goes on, he says, rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble and keep on praying. When God's people are in need, be ready to help them always be eager to practice hospitality. I love this part where he says, rejoice in our confident hope. I grew up in a way that much, if you grew up in the south, you probably have this similar thing of it's this passionate like this desire to defend, right? Like, man, I'll tell you what, middle school, high school, even in college, there's one thing you never do to a southern boy, okay, you don't talk about southern boys' mama. You say something about my mama, like, we're going to have, there's going to be two hits, me hitting you and you hitting the ground, so it's going to happen. You just don't talk about something. We've got this desire to defend, to go to war, to fight. Whenever I read stuff about the apostle Peter, I connect very much with the passion that he had, this passion to defend. And I remember the story this past week of when Jesus is in his final hours before he's arrested and taken before the Sanhedrin, as he's praying in the garden, said that these guards come and capture him. The apostle Peter, he pulls out a sword and says that he cuts the guy's ear off. Cuts one of the security guards' ear off, security guys' guards. I imagine Paul Blart out there trying to arrest Jesus. That's probably not what he looked like. He says he cuts his ear off. Now here's the thing, the apostle Peter, he was not like a swordsman. He wasn't a soldier, he was a fisherman, he wasn't going for the guy's ear. He was just being passionate, he was defending what he held valuable. But the way Jesus responds to the man that is persecuting him, to the man that's arresting him, to the man that's going to send him to what is going to be the cross. As he picks up his ear and he puts it back on his head and he heals him. It's one of his final, kind gestures, a miracle that happens. And I feel like many times as Christians, we feel like we've just got to like, we've got to be wimps or we've got to be soft. Like sometimes I think that's what people view as Christians. But that's not the case. That's not who Jesus was. The strength it must have took to choose that. It's easy to want to go to fight, it's easy to let our flesh come out and to argue and to be confident in our abilities and everything. But here the apostle Paul says, rejoice in our confidence, our confident hope. He's talking about Jesus, he's talking about our hope and God Almighty. Confidence doesn't come from our ability to fight. It comes for us knowing we already understand how the battle is going to end. Romans 12, verse 14, the apostle Paul continues on and he says, be different in this way. He says, bless those who persecute you. Don't curse them, pray that God will bless them. Now this is different. This is different than what the world says. This is different than what our initial feelings are, right? Raise your hand if you've ever had someone talk bad about you, right? You feel you've ever been hurt by someone that you trusted or that you love. We've all felt that pain before. Our initial thing is not to turn around and say, I'm going to pray for blessings for them, right? No, if that's you, then come, you're preaching next weekend, okay? You're coming up here. No, our initial, our flesh comes out and says, I got their number. I'm going to remember that forever. I'm going to hold that against them. I'm going to get to the point where I'm going to pay it back, right? That's what our ends, that's what we want to do. Hear the apostle Paul says, bless those who persecute you. Don't curse them, pray that God will bless them. You want to talk about some strength that it takes to pray that God will bless the people that have hurt you. That's tougher than anyone that I can think of right now. That's completely different than the world and culture that we live in right now. Paul says, be different. He continues on, he says, be happy with those who are happy and weep with those who weep, live in harmony with each other. Don't be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people and don't think you know it all. He says, never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see that you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. And he continues to segment with us, he says, dear friends, he's saying, come in close. He says, pay attention to this. He says, never take revenge. He says, leave that to the righteous anger of God. The Scripture says, I will take revenge, I will pay them back, says the Lord. Here the apostle Paul says, man, when it comes to human persecuted, you've been hurt. He says, surrender this. It's not easy, it takes effort. But if we choose to follow Jesus, if we choose to say, I'm going to live this life where I'm a living sacrifice, I'm going to give up of the things that I don't necessarily want to, that's not an easy thing to do, that I'm not going to conform to the pattern of this world which says, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, if you mess with me, I'm going to mess with you. Here the apostle Paul says, man, give this over to God, let him be the one that revengees you. He says, be different. Look at your neighbor, say, be different. Look back at your other neighbor that said it to you and said, you're already different. He finishes up with this, Romans 12, 20, say if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they're thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you keep burning coals of shame on their heads. The final verse he says this, he says, don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good. He says this is the offense, this is the weapon that you have, be different. The world around you says an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, hold on to the hurt. God says, man, let me take care of that and share the love that I've given you, the grace I've given you, the mercy I've given you, with those around you, and that will be enough to win over the evil. Man, in watching the highlights of the Olympic opening and seeing the news and watching the news just of other events that are happening in our world, the culture right now that we live in, man, to say that if you were to say that evil isn't in the world, you would be highly mistaken. There's a lot of brokenness. There's a lot of people that need Jesus. And here the possible ball says the best way that you can battle it is to do good in your life, in your every day. This next week you're not going to be on the world stage, and people aren't going to see your actions. But the people that you do life with, your family will. The people that you work with will. Your neighbors that live next to you will. The people that are on Facebook, that your Facebook friends with, like it or not, these people are, these are your digital neighbors. What does it look like to love them in such a way where they recognize it? You're different, that there's something different. Jesus does a great job of sharing this example with us in John chapter 8 verse 1 through 3. What happens here is it says that Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the temple. A crowd soon gathered and he sat down and he taught them. And as he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. Now culture in the law in that day said that if you were caught in the act of adultery, what would happen next is the people of the town would gather around. And you would be put to death by stoning. This is literally where people would gather in a crowd, grab rocks, and hurl them at someone until they no longer existed. It's an incredibly terrible way to die. And so these Pharisees bring this woman to Jesus. And they're trying to trick him. They're trying to get him to change maybe the law, the perception of the law. They understand that he's been merciful and full of grace in all this along the way. And so they're going to call him out as a false teacher if they can get him to say the wrong thing. Verse 7 of chapter 8 says, "They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, 'All right, but let the one who has never sinned through the first stone.' Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one beginning with the oldest, and told only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, 'Where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you? No, Lord,' she said. And Jesus said, 'Neither do I, go and sin no more.' He shows mercy and grace. He says, 'I'm not here to condemn you.' Now, don't get me wrong. He leaves her with a saying, and sin no more. He separates the love of the person and the hate for the things that are not of him. There's clear separation. I think this is a charge for us as well. I think many times it's easy for us to focus on someone else's wrongdoing and point out their mistakes. When the truth of the matter is, we're still called to love them, and the only person that we have the ability to change, and all the things that they do as ourselves. The world would say, 'Point out the faults in someone else because it'll make you feel better because you won't have to pay attention to your own faults.' But Jesus says, 'Look at your own self, adjust your own self, and love those that are around you. Don't condemn. Don't cast judgment. Continue to show his love.' I'm going to leave you with this. This is towards the end of Jesus' life, he gets together with the disciples. And as they're breaking bread together, they're doing life together as they did for a few years. He says this in Mark chapter 10 verse 35. He says, 'Then Jesus and John' -- sorry. He says, 'Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, these guys were brothers, came over and spoke to him. 'Teacher,' they said, 'we want you to do us a favor. What is your request?' He replied. When you sit on your glorious throne, we want to sit in the place of honor next to you, one on your right side and the other on your left. This was a big ask, because you got to understand culture in those days was that if you were at a feast or you were at a party or if you were in a meeting, the person that was the highest socially or the person that was in charge, the person that was being honored, they would be at the head of the table. And if you were close to that importance, if you were on that same level of hierarchy, you might get a chance to sit next to them on the left or the right. So James and John are asking, 'We want to be up there with you. We want to be in leadership. We want people to look at us.' And what they're asking isn't accordance with the culture that they're in, because that's what people would have wanted. And verse 41 it says, 'When the ten other disciples heard what James and John had asked, they were indignant.' So Jesus called them together and said, 'You know that the rules of this world lord it over their people and officials flaunt their authority over those under them, but among you it will be different.' Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first among you must be slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as the ransom for many. Jesus adjusts them and says, 'I understand your culture says this is what's important, but I need you to be different.' We've all heard the term before, the first will be last and last will be first, this is where this comes from. Jesus saying is, 'When I came to this earth I didn't come in as king and lead over all. It came born in a manger, they didn't have enough room for him in the end. With the livestock and the cows and the camels chose a life of humility, the son of a carpenter, of a man that worked with his hands. And all along the way he did not conform to the patterns of the world that was around him. He chose to continue to love, he chose to continue to hate evil and show mercy and grace to people. And because of what he did, the world changed forever. And so as Christians as we're called to be different, I think what we're called to do is to follow the way of Jesus and to live life the way that he would have. To show love to those that are closest to us, to our family. To show grace when we want to do is to get on them or get justice. To those that have hurt us, to offer forgiveness. To step out and be different and ask the Lord to bless those who have persecuted us. These are all things that are incredibly different and incredibly difficult. But I believe that as we continue to choose to follow him, as we continue to choose to do good, as we continue to choose to be different, the good we do will beat the evil back. And it doesn't start on the world stage, it doesn't start on this stage. It starts when you leave these doors, when you get in your car, when you're at lunch, when you start the work week tomorrow with your boss or your employees. When it comes to the conversation that you're going to have with your mother or your father or your kids, when it comes to how you interact with your spouse. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Continue to follow Jesus this morning as you step into this week. That's my prayer for you. And I know that if we start that here in New Smyrna, it has a chance to spread out into the world around us. And as we're raising these little kids that are growing up in what continues to look like a dark and concerning world, we have an opportunity to continue to share the life and the light and the love of Jesus Christ one day at a time. Let me pray for us. If you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, and you want to start one, or if you've had a relationship, but maybe it has not been real, and you want to step into having something that's genuine, if you want to renew that relationship, I want you to pray this prayer after me. You can pray it out loud if you want to, or you can pray it to yourself. It might be something that you pray on the right home, something similar to this. But it would go like this. Jesus, you know all that I am. You know what I've done, every sin that I've ever committed. Today I confess it all to you, and I ask you to forgive me and wash me pure as snow. Take away anything that would separate me from you and your plan for my life. I commit my life to you, I declare that you are my own Lord and Savior. Show me what's next, and let me draw close to you. Amen. Church, let me pray for us as we go into this next week. Heavenly Father, as you've charged us this morning to step out into the world and to be different, to conduct ourselves differently than what the culture of our world says, to react and respond in a different way than what our flesh immediately would want us to. To have our confidence be in you. If you've charged us with this, I pray that you would show us how to apply it here this next week. God, that when the opportunity comes up, that we would recognize it for what it is. An opportunity to continue to share your love and just how we treat people, how we talk to people. I thank you for this. I thank you for how you're going to continue to change our world to be a better place through us. We love you so much. In Jesus' name we pray, everybody said amen. As always, coastline, know that you are loved and that the best is yet to come.