Vision Sunday 2021

If you are new to our church family, this is actually one of the best Sundays you could possibly pick to be with us. On a Vision Sunday you get to hear what God did in us over the past year, you get to hear where we believe He is taking us next, and — as a bonus — you get to find out where our name came from.

Our name began with a CD.

A Paper Insert and a Passage I Had Forgotten

I am not talking about a certificate of deposit. I am talking about those little metal discs engraved by lasers. How cool is that? They were so much better than my cassette tapes. With a tape you had to fast forward, stop, check, fast forward again, stop, realize you had gone too far, rewind. With a CD you pushed a button and there it was. Amazing.

I got a CD for my birthday from a worship artist I had never heard of. One of the things I loved most about CDs was the little paper insert. I still listen to music most of the day, but I miss those inserts, because I suffer from what I can only describe as lyric-alitosis — I think I know the words, but I can never actually remember them. So I pulled out the insert to read along, and inside the front cover was a passage from Ezekiel 47.

Here is the strange part. I had read through the book of Ezekiel only a week or two earlier, and I did not remember this passage at all. For a moment I genuinely wondered if they had printed it wrong, or pulled it from some odd translation. So I reached over, grabbed my own Bible, opened to Ezekiel 47, and read it for myself.

The scene is this: an angel has been giving the prophet Ezekiel a guided tour of a temple for several chapters, and by chapter 47 the tour is coming to an end. The angel brings him back to the door of the temple, and water is coming out from under the threshold, flowing east. The guide walks him downstream with a measuring line — a thousand cubits, roughly fifteen hundred feet — and leads him through the water, and it is ankle deep. Another thousand cubits, and it is knee deep. Another thousand, and it is waist deep. Another thousand, and now it is a river he cannot pass through, deep enough to swim in.

Then the angel leads him back to the bank, and Ezekiel sees very many trees on both sides. And the word comes: this water flows down into the sea, and when it enters the sea the water becomes fresh. Wherever the river goes, every living creature swarms and lives. There will be very many fish. Fishermen will stand along the shore spreading their nets. And along both banks will grow all kinds of trees for food, whose leaves will not wither and whose fruit will not fail. They will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.

That passage changed my life. It has deeply shaped my whole philosophy of ministry, which means it deeply shaped how I helped start this church. It is the reason for our name. I hope you can see it — the river, and the wood, the trees on the banks.

Let me walk you through three things in that passage. If you have been part of this family for a while, you have heard some of this before, so hang with me. If you are new, pay close attention, because it will help you understand the heart of who we are, and it will set up where we believe God is taking us.

1. The River Points to Jesus

I believe this river is a picture of Christ, and there are several reasons why.

First, the river comes out of the temple. For the Jewish people the temple was the place of worship. Jesus, the Son of God, came from heaven — the ultimate place of worship.

Second, at the end of verse 1 the water flows right past the altar. The altar was the place of sacrifice for the sins of the people. Jesus went to the cross — the ultimate place of sacrifice for the sins of humanity.

Third, notice the river goes out the east side. Back in chapter 41 God makes His entrance into the vision through the east gate, and in chapter 42 God says that because He has used the east gate, no one else may use it. The east gate is for God alone. That is why Ezekiel has to leave through the north gate and walk around the outside. And yet this river — because it is divine — goes out through the east side.

Fourth, and maybe most telling of all, this river flows down to the Dead Sea. If you know anything about the Dead Sea, you know it is so saturated with salt and minerals that nothing can live in it. You have probably seen photographs of people floating in it without effort. And now suddenly this river crashes into that sea and the water becomes fresh. It becomes alive. It teems with fish — so many that fishermen will stand on the banks spreading their nets to dry, just like on the Mediterranean. You do not pull fish out of the Dead Sea. And yet here, life.

Jesus said in John 10:10 that He came to give life, and to give it abundantly. That is why I believe the river points to Him. And that is why we are a Jesus-centered church.

2. Ezekiel Walks Through the River Four Times

The first time he steps in, it is ankle deep. We believe that if this river is what brings life, then anyone who steps into it finds life in Christ. That is why we talk so much about inviting the spiritually disconnected to find Jesus. We want to see people step into the river and find life.

But notice the river keeps flowing. There is a current, and it is beckoning you to go deeper. A thousand cubits later Ezekiel walks through again, and now it is knee deep. If you have ever waded in a river, you know at that depth you can still move around, but you are starting to feel the pull. That is what happens when you put your faith in Jesus and begin some disciplines — reading the Bible, spending time in prayer, getting into a growth group where other people are shaping you. You start feeling the current of the Holy Spirit pulling you deeper into your relationship with Christ.

A thousand cubits later it is waist deep. Now the river is really pulling on you. You cannot just run around and do whatever you want anymore; you feel it against you. This is where you give more of your time, more of your energy, more of everything for the sake of the gospel. This is where you start serving. This is where you really start giving — financially, but also your influence, your skills, your hours.

Then the last level. Suddenly Ezekiel cannot touch the bottom.

Years ago — probably seventeen or eighteen years now — I wrote up a paper based on this passage and handed it to a good friend of mine. He was sitting in my living room reading it, and when he got to this part about being in over your head, he made a noise. Just huh. And I thought, oh no, did I interpret something wrong? Then he looked up and said, “You realize that if you are in a river and you cannot touch the bottom, the river is in control.”

That is what God wants for every one of us. That we would be in His river, in His gospel, and that we would pick up our feet and let the river take us. That is what Matthew 28 is describing: as we go into all the world — as we go to the nations, as we go to the grocery store, as we go to our neighborhood, as we go on a walk, as we go to work — we carry the gospel with us. We pick up our feet and let the river take us where God wants us to go.

3. The Trees Point to Jesus-Followers

The trees show up in verse 7, but we get the fuller description in verse 12. Two things stand out.

First, their nourishment comes from the river itself. I believe that for anyone who claims to follow Jesus, spiritual growth comes from the gospel — from continuing to peer into Christ. Tim Keller put it this way: the gospel is not the ABC of the Christian faith, it is the A-to-Z of the Christian faith. A tree along the river is not getting its nourishment from somewhere else. It gets it from the river.

Second, the tree produces fruit — but the fruit is not for the tree. The fruit is for others. And look at how closely the tree’s work mirrors the river’s work. The river came to give life; it crashed into the dead sea and healed the waters. The trees’ leaves are for healing, and their fruit is for food, which sustains life. The tree cannot crash into a dead sea and fill it with fish, but it can help feed the fish and the animals along the bank.

If we are going to live like Jesus lived, we have to do similar things to what He did. Jesus said He did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life. These trees are doing something similar. They are not there to serve themselves. Their fruit and their leaves are for others.

Before We Look Ahead, We Have to Stop and Celebrate

I have discovered something about myself. By temperament I am pretty go-with-the-flow. I do not spend a lot of time worrying about the past. But as a pastor my mind is almost always in the future. I am routinely two or three months ahead. Every November on my spiritual retreat I plan out the entire next year of preaching. I have already been thinking about Easter, and it is not until April.

That can be a strength — it helps us plan. But it has a real weakness: I do not stop and celebrate. After we launched on Easter Sunday of 2014, people wanted to celebrate with us, and I caught myself thinking, we’ve got next Sunday. When we had our grand opening in this building, the place was full, a ton of people joined us online, it was a genuinely big deal — and all I could think about was how much work was left on the building. Honestly, the biggest thing on my heart was that I did not want us to become a church that settles into a building, shows up on Sundays, and calls it good. So I celebrated, but part of me was worried the whole time.

I am not going to make that mistake today. 2020 was a hard year, and God did amazing things in us and through us. Because of what He took us through, we are a stronger church and a more mature church. When you see God work like that, you stop and celebrate.

What God Carried Us Through

One year ago this month we were having conversations about whether to sign a three-year lease on this building. We had looked at it the previous September. You have to understand we had looked at something like fourteen or fifteen different places around town — not necessarily to buy, just rentals or whatever we could find. This was by far the best we had seen, and the asking price was fair.

But when we looked at our financial situation honestly, we knew what we were. We are not a big church. We are not a wealthy church. If we bought it and then had to renovate it — and it was in rough shape — we thought it would put too much burden on us. So our elder team said no.

Someone else bought it. But they did not have solid plans for it, and in December they came to us and asked what we would think about leasing from them. We said we were not sure. The elders started asking, well, what if we requested this and this and this? So we asked. And they said yes to all of it.

In January we brought it to our partners. Any time you bring a decision like that to a church — a big step with a big financial jump — you normally get pushback. Some people do not like it. Some people preferred renting. Some genuinely believe rental facilities keep a church’s mission purer. When churches make a move like this, you usually lose a few families over it.

Our partners voted unanimously to take the step of faith. Unanimously. That is almost unheard of.

But a unanimous yes meant we needed more capital. By God’s grace we had about eighty thousand dollars saved, and we knew it was not wise to spend all of it at once. So we put together a small capital campaign. And I know this will come as a shock, but when pastors start asking for money, people get upset. People often leave during capital campaigns. We spent the month of February asking anyway. We set a goal of thirty-five thousand, figuring that with half our savings we could do the whole project for seventy-five thousand. Nothing fancy. Simple. But it would work, and it would leave us a cushion to cover the higher monthly rent until our giving caught up.

You blew it out of the water. We went past thirty-five thousand to forty-two thousand.

And then a pandemic hit.

One thing we did not anticipate was that a pandemic drives construction prices way up. Suddenly seventy-five thousand was not enough. Many of you pitched in more. I sent exactly one email to the outside supporters who had helped get this church started financially, and I do not know — eight, ten, a dozen people gave. In 2020 we raised fifty-eight thousand dollars. We did not have to take out a loan for the remodel, and we are sitting in decent financial shape. That is an absolute miracle, and God needs to be thanked and praised for it.

When the pandemic hit and states were figuring out what to do, gatherings were shut down. So we went online, and we had never done online before. I will be honest: a small part of that season was genuinely fun. I loved working closely with our small team on those Friday night recordings — one of our middle schoolers ran the camera, his dad came along, one of our folks stepped in to rescue our terrible audio. Getting to hang out with those guys every Friday night was a gift.

And yet I would not go back. I hated preaching to a camera. This right now is fine, because you are here — talking to a camera when there are people in the room is not weird. But when the camera is all you have, and there are four or five other people standing just off to the side, it is strange. I used to go into our old rented hall and stare at the wall to practice, because I did not know how else to do it. It was not fun. I missed you.

During that time I was talking with other pastors, and I kept hearing the same story. Small churches like ours were losing people — either because they had no online presence at all and were scrambling, or because what they managed to put together was not very good. Pastors were getting emails: “I checked out a big church online, I really like their preaching, their music is great, I am going to start attending there. When you resume in person, we will not be back.”

We never got an email like that. Not one person said they were out. Instead you jumped into the chat. You cared for each other. You did what you could to hold our unity together through it.

Then in-person gatherings were permitted again, and our elders decided we would meet. The hard part for me was that the moment we resumed, I was leaving for sabbatical. Do not misunderstand — the sabbatical was fantastic and deeply refreshing. But there were points where I thought we would have to postpone it. We had decided on it back in November of 2019. Then in December a building came up. Then in March a pandemic hit. Both times the elders said, no, you need to do this. We have got it.

And they did. Our Sunday team thought through every issue of how to make our gatherings as safe as possible, so that people would not walk in preoccupied with fear but could put their focus on Jesus. They led beautifully in my absence.

I know of churches where a pastor takes a sabbatical and people leave — some because they do not believe a pastor should get one, some because they church-shop during the gap and find somewhere they like better. We did not experience any of that.

Then I came back into the final stretch on this building. A lot of painting. A lot of cleaning. A lot of work. I know a church in our region that years ago was in a similar spot — temporary rentals, then a building of their own that they renovated themselves. One family poured enormous time into that project; they loved that kind of work. And within weeks of the church moving in, that family left. The pastor followed up to find out why, and they said it just did not feel like their church anymore. They had gotten so attached to the old location that the new one, even though it was finally theirs, did not feel like theirs.

You might think nobody was going to be nostalgic for our old rented hall. And yet things like that do happen. It did not happen to us. We got in here, we kept saying here is the mission, and you have stayed on board. I am genuinely honored to be part of this church family.

James 1:2–4 says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

We faced a lot of trials in 2020, and we are not done with trials. The pandemic is still going. We do not know what is ahead financially or otherwise. But I know this: we went through a great deal, you persevered, and we are more complete than we were. Not all the way there — I am still your pastor, which by itself rules out perfection — but closer. Closer to being like Jesus. We matured. And when God works like that, we stop and praise Him.

Now, the Distance Test

For four or five months now I have been ignoring an item on my phone’s to-do list: call the eye doctor. I have a bad feeling that when I finally go, I am walking out with bifocals. I know exactly how it goes. They swing that little card in front of you, you read the fine print, you hear the bad news. Then they swing the card away, put the letters up on the wall, and test your distance.

We just finished the near-sight test — everything that has happened, everything God has done. Now we turn and look down the road. Where are we going?

The way I am wired, I want to say something like: this year we are going to plant a church, or we are going to give fifteen percent of our budget to overseas missions. Something big and tangible. But as I have prayed over this message and over this year, I keep landing somewhere far simpler — and I think far more profound.

Look at Ezekiel 47:11: “But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt.”

In Ezekiel’s day salt was not a seasoning, it was a preservative. No refrigeration. If you butchered an animal and wanted the meat later, you rubbed it with salt. And one of the great sources of salt in that world was the Dead Sea. The Jordan flows down into it and there is no outlet, so the only way water leaves is by evaporation, and evaporation leaves the salt and minerals behind. That is why you float in it to this day. So if Ezekiel’s vision came true and this river brought the Dead Sea to life, where would their salt come from? I think verse 11 is God’s promise: I will provide for you. I can even provide salt.

Our World Is Drinking Salt Water

Let me twist that verse slightly and compare the water quality of those marshes with the water quality of the river. How many of you would like to drink out of a salt marsh? Have you ever tasted salt water? It is disgusting. And if you manage to choke it down, it dehydrates you. If you were stranded in a boat in the middle of the ocean, sun beating down, thirst climbing, that water would start to look awfully good — and drinking it would only make you thirstier and thirstier and slowly kill you.

I believe our world is drinking salt water right now. In 2020 we watched people turn to politics as if the right outcome would fix everything. Others escape into streaming, or food, or drink, or whatever promises that if I just had this, my emotional and spiritual thirst would be satisfied. It does not work. It makes us thirstier. And the thirstier we get, the nastier we get. Our world is tearing itself apart.

I recently started a book on loving our communities, and in the first chapter the author names three emotions that are ripping our world apart.

Hatred

Not just unkind words. Outright hatred. This past year we watched some Republicans absolutely hate Democrats and some Democrats absolutely hate Republicans. We watched some white people hate Black people and some Black people hate white people. We watched the poor hate the rich and the rich hate the poor. And it seems to be getting worse.

My family and I finally watched the documentary about social media algorithms that so many of you had been talking about. It shows how the algorithms drive a wedge between us — the political gap is wider than it has ever been, and it is not only here. The same polarization is happening in Brazil, in Germany, in Russia, all over. We are being split apart.

Here is the thing: hatred sells. Hand a microphone to a genuinely angry person and people will flock to it. Give them a podcast, a radio show, a cable hour, and people will watch. But it satisfies nothing. You end up thirstier. The only thing hate gets you is more hate.

Apathy

Apathy is hatred’s opposite. Hatred wants to destroy you — verbally, academically, emotionally, or God forbid physically. Apathy does not want to destroy you, because apathy does not care about you at all. Apathy does not care about your poverty. It does not care about the injustice you have suffered. It does not care that you lost someone this year. It does not care if you die, because you are a statistic.

Being around someone full of hatred leaves you frustrated and angry. Being around someone that apathetic leaves you frustrated and angry too.

Self-Righteousness

Self-righteousness is thinking you are better than someone else. It is what drives our cancel culture. It is not “I hate that person and they should be destroyed,” and it is not “who cares.” It is “how dare they — I am better than that — they need to be cancelled. No one should buy their product. No one should listen to them. No one should ever hire them again.”

The self-righteous person looks at someone experiencing homelessness and does not hate them, and is not entirely indifferent either. He notices and thinks, if they were more like me they would not be in that situation. If they had gotten a job like me. If they had not squandered their money like me. Glad I am not like them.

And here is the sad part: I have seen all three of those in Christians.

I fasted from social media during our 21 days of prayer, and I had already been off it during my sabbatical, and I am seriously considering not going back — because I have watched people who identify as Christians, some with “pastor” right there in their profile, spew vile, hate-filled speech.

I know of churches that have spent enormous sums on sound systems and buildings and do not give a dime to the homeless shelter in their own town. Completely apathetic to the needs around them.

But the most telling of all is our self-righteousness. So many of us think we are better. Better than that tribe of Christians, because we do not believe their foolishness. Better than that political party, because we do not buy their nonsense. Better than those people. And yet if we actually understood the gospel, we would know it tells us we are far more sinful than we ever realized. You cannot hold the gospel and think you are better than someone else.

Marked by Love

If you are going to be in the river — if you are going deep with Jesus, if your roots are going down into the gospel — you cannot live with hatred, or apathy, or self-righteousness. You are to be marked by love.

We talk about this constantly here: live like Jesus lived, love like Jesus loved. But as I look at our world and at what 2020 did to it, I do not think the right move this year is to raise a pile of money and go accomplish some enormous task. I think what our world needs right now is for us to go and love.

How does that work? Jesus told us in John 15. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” Stay right there. Then: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” And then do not miss this: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

So many people assume that becoming a Christian means following a list of rules that will rob you of joy. There is so much out there to experience — I want to enjoy my life, not be governed by all that. And Jesus says, no, you do not understand. When you chase that, you are drinking salt water. I came to give you joy. I want my joy in you. I love you. Abide in that love.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And how did He show His love? “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

Now, laying down your life does not mean dying on a cross the way Jesus did. He lived the only sinless life, so He was the only one who could pay the sinner’s debt. But you do lay down your agenda. You lay down your time. You lay down your wants and desires. You lay down your dreams. You lay down your schedule. You lay these things down to show love.

That means when we serve at the food pantry, we do not go to feel good about ourselves. We do not go so someone will notice. We do not even go so we can say, “we’re from that church, come check us out.” We go to show love. When you shovel your neighbor’s driveway after a snow, you do not do it so they will be impressed with you, and you do not do it so they will owe you one. You do it because Jesus loves you and you want to put the love of Christ on display.

It also has to affect how we communicate. The way we speak online has to change. That does not mean your opinion is wrong. But when you share it in an inflamed way, no one hears the love of Christ in it. (I am rarely on social media, so if you have been posting that way, I have not seen it — nobody here is being targeted.) Sometimes love means toning it down or taking a different approach, because the most important thing is not that you are proven right and they are proven wrong. The most important thing is that they find Jesus.

And it affects how we interact in person. Last week we talked about how sometimes we need to give a reasoned defense of the faith. But sometimes it is not about handing someone the right answer. Sometimes it is sitting and listening. Loving with your presence. Understanding their situation, entering their world, showing empathy, letting them know: God loves you, and because you matter to God, you matter to me.

Love Is Not Always Warm and Soft

Please do not mishear me. Love is not always warm hugs and teddy bears and roses. Sometimes love says or does what is not wanted but is always needed. Love always has the other person’s best interest in view.

When Jesus told His disciples He was going to die and Peter pulled Him aside and said, “No, this will never happen to you,” Jesus rebuked him. That was love. When Jesus saw the hypocrisy of the Pharisees — loading people down with religious rules they would not carry themselves — He called it out. That was love.

But those of you who enjoy confrontation, who are ready to “speak the truth in love,” remember the rest. Jesus also got down on His hands and knees, wrapped a towel around Himself, and washed dirty feet. He welcomed the prostitute into His presence. He fed the five thousand. He touched the leper. And He went to a cross and let nails go through His wrists and His feet. That is love. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

So Who Is the One Person?

Who is the one person you need to show love to this year? Someone at work? At school? In your neighborhood? In your extended family? Someone who is tearing themselves apart with hatred, or fighting apathy, or trapped in self-righteousness, and who needs to hear: God loves you. Jesus died for you. He can rescue you from this.

I told you it would be simple. But if we actually live this way, it will be profound. And honestly, I do not think we need to stand here and cast a vision about planting churches or launching overseas initiatives. I think if we spend this year genuinely showing love, this place will fill up and we will be forced to have those conversations anyway. How do we help plant a church? How do we take this love overseas? How do we do these things?

We have spent 21 days in prayer. Now we move forward, and we move forward in love. The best way I know to start is to put our eyes on Jesus — which is exactly what communion does to us. He laid down His life for us, and He calls us His friends.

Father, whatever is going on in our lives, we surrender it to You. The hard things, we bring to You. The things worth celebrating, let them lead us to worship You. But God, we believe You are calling this church to be marked by love — not the warm, fuzzy kind, but the true love of Christ. So help us do what Jesus did and lay ourselves down for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of Your glory, because You want to give us Your joy. And that living joy will only be found when we plunge ourselves into Your life-giving waters. Right now we commit ourselves, and we commit this church, to the love of Jesus and to the spreading of that love. Amen.

Go and be a blessing. Go and follow Him. Go and love like Him.