So, look at the people God picks. Each of them looks weak at some point in their life. Each of them looks unqualified. They aren’t the first choice. Each of them even have a great moment of failure. And yet … each of them have moments of great success — moments when you could potentially call them a … MIGHTY WARRIOR. What is it that makes them a mighty warrior? Is it something that they have within them? Is it something they are able to do on their own? Is it the potential that God sees in them? Or is it something else? Here’s the answer, and then I’ll show it to you. MIGHTY WARRIORS never set out to be hero’s. They only set out to do what God asks them to do … and then God puts them in over their head so the sufficiency comes from him.

God has made peace with you through Jesus. You didn't deserve it. You didn't earn it. But it’s true none-the-less. God made a two-way agreement with you where one side provided all of the collateral. And through it, he created reconciliation between you and God. But it comes with future expectations. If you are at peace with God, then you are to help other people come to peace with God. You are Christ's ambassadors and you carry the ministry of reconciliation. So don't go starting wars. Don't go picking fights. Don't go needling opposition. Jesus followers don't contribute to war — we contribute to peace. Your job is to help people get right with God just like Jesus worked to get people right with God.

So, where does God keep what is most valuable? It’s not in some sort of a safe that is in heaven. It’s not under lock and key. It’s not something that is hidden behind guard. It’s not something that He has security systems for to make sure that no one would come and mess with what’s most valuable to Him. God has placed what is most valuable to him — the truth of the gospel — in those who have accepted that truth. GOD LOVES TO USE THE ORDINARY. GOD LOVES TO GIVE UNCOMMON USE TO WHAT IS COMMON.

"Our perception, our expectation, says MORE JESUS EQUALS MORE RULES AND MORE CONDEMNATION AND LESS FREEDOM. That’s what we believe, so that’s what we expect. The gospel changes and reverses our perspective because the reality is: MORE JESUS EQUALS MORE FREEDOM AND LESS CONDEMNATION. Is it true? Is the gospel about freedom and not rules? Because some people think that the Bible is a really big book of rules. This is just one passage. I could be cherry-picking. I could be pulling one piece out that kind of slipped in somehow to the whole. Is that what’s happening here? Is it true that the gospel brings freedom, not rules?"

Guys, the gospel changes our perspective. Our perspective says avoid trouble at all cost. Our perspective says run from hardship, avoid struggles, pretend they don't happen, dodge negative energy. We see trouble, we see affliction as chaotic or some sort of a random piece of artwork that doesn't make any sense. But the gospel changes our perspective. If we can move a little and see the troubles and the afflictions of this life a little differently, then we begin to see a masterpiece of artwork. Look at God. He was willing to die for us to make all things right. When we see a God whose character is compassion and comfort, suddenly hardship and struggles and troubles and afflictions … don't seem so intimidating. Hardship and struggles and troubles and affliction, they become the things that cause us to experience a really good God. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but you need to hear it. You cannot know a God of comfort without a life of trouble.

Jesus teaches on prayer very specifically to the individual. But prayer, although an individual activity, also becomes a core community activity in the church. It’s directly linked to fellowship, which is really interesting to me. The pillar of fellowship is the piece that binds the rest of the foundation together. They listened to the apostles’ teachings … together, broke bread … together, and prayed … together. This group of guys who had lived with and learned from Jesus are now praying … together. Wouldn’t you love to know what the prayers of the early church sounded like? It would have been incredible, right? We don’t have to completely guess. The Book of Acts unpacks a lot of the things they prayed for. We won’t look at all, but here are the big ones.

to get a better understanding of breaking bread, we're going to jump into Paul's letter to the first chapter to the Corinthians, his first letter to the Corinthians. So if you have a Bible and you want to follow along, or if you've got maybe an app on your phone and you want to follow along, I encourage you to pull that out. Take a look first Corinthians, chapter 11. Or you can just follow along. We'll have the verses on the screens here this morning. You see, breaking bread had a different meaning to those in the early church than it does to us today. Our practice of breaking bread took place as part of what I believe was the original potluck. Now, in the Bible, you're not going to see the word potluck. The new living translation, though, gives us a little bit better understanding of Luke's writing in Acts chapter 2. With its translation, where we read these words, all the believers devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, and to sharing in meals, which included the Lord's Supper and to prayer. You also won't see this description in the Bible, but the belief is that in the early church, this, this idea of breaking bread was oftentimes referred to as an agape feast. The agape feast, or this love feast, was a communal meal that Christians shared as a way to foster fellowship among the believers of a local church. Many believe that it is in his letter to the church at Corinth where we first get this idea of, of an agape feast. And unfortunately, Paul wasn't happy about their treatment of each other at the feast, so he wrote to them about it. So let's jump into our text this morning.

John says that we can’t claim to have fellowship with Jesus if we don’t do the things Jesus did. Kind of like high school. You can’t be on the football team if you don’t show up for the workouts or practices or games. You can say you are part of the team, but you’re not doing anything that tells me you’re truly part of the team. And you can’t be in the band if you don’t practice, or if you don’t show up at the rehearsals, or if you don’t actually do anything in the performances. You’re not really part of the band. And it’s true of academics. You can’t excel in academics if you don’t go to class, and if you don’t turn in your work, and if you don’t study for tests. But that’s not all. John reveals another really big truth. If we have fellowship with God, then you’re going to have fellowship with other believers who have this same relationship to God. If you play football, you’ll know other football players. If you’re in a band, you’re going to know other band members. And even in something as isolated as academics, if you take academics seriously, you’re going to know other people who are taking academics seriously. Guys, if fellowship doesn’t exist between believers, then any claim to have fellowship with God is … invalid. If you don’t have fellowship with the church, if you don’t have fellowship with other Jesus followers, then you don’t have fellowship with God. That may scare you. But you can’t be a Jesus follower alone.

So, for most of the New Testament, that word "apostle" and "disciple" are kind of interchangeable terms. The twelve disciples become the twelve apostles with a little bit of change. When it comes to the apostles' teaching, we're talking specifically about men who were close followers of Jesus before His death and who saw him after His resurrection. The bigger question for us today is: What are the things that the first leaders of the church taught? Because they had sat with Jesus, they had lived with Jesus, they had devoted their lives to Jesus. What were the top things that they focused on when teaching the first generation of the church? What were those biggest, most important things that they were going to teach?

"Can you imagine the practical challenges the disciples faced? They’re out in the water, whatever body of water that they found to baptize people in, and they are staring at these long lines of people choosing Jesus. 12 guys baptizing 3000 people. Each guy baptizing 250 people. It’s going to take a while to baptize every single person. While they’re standing in the water, I wonder if they began to panic. I wonder if they started struggling with what to do next. They have to be just as shocked as everyone else. They’ve witnessed a resurrection, an ascension, and now they’ve witnessed thousands of people coming to faith after an unprecedented outpouring of the Holy Spirit. How do you follow that up? Now what are they supposed to do? What they need to do is build the church. I’m not talking about a physical building; I’m talking about the gathering of Jesus Followers. In the Greek it’s the word ekklesia. It means “the called-out ones.” This ekklesia is the gathering of the called-out ones. And the ekklesia now exists … but this is day one. And no one has ever built a church. What do you do with it? How do you build it appropriately? You have to start with the foundation, right? Anything that will stand the test of time will have a strong foundation. They have to figure everything out, and they have to figure everything out right now. There is no time to form a committee, there isn’t any time to write books or have debates. The people are here now … and we have a church now … this is a right-now kind of a problem to solve. They have to figure this thing out right now. So, what do they do? What is this foundation? We don’t know how long it took them to get to the answer, but they came up with one. They go back to what they were doing while they waited in between Acts 1 and Acts 2. Verse 42 says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." They built a foundation. And their foundation has four pillars. If you remove any one of these pillars, the church crumbles."

"At the end of Hebrews, the writer gives some very simple, practical teaching about what it looks like to be a Jesus follower. It's true for those anxiously waiting for the promises to be fulfilled, and it's true for those building rock monuments to remember the victories. It's true for all Jesus followers in all times and situations. This is what we remember in the meantime." Ben Webb, Lead Minister

"Promises are kind of a tricky thing. Promises aren’t anything special by themselves. They become special when they become fulfilled. You’ve been on the receiving end, or you’ve seen the receiving end of promises fulfilled – think of a marriage and vows. You’ve also been on the receiving end, or you’ve seen someone else on the receiving end of unfulfilled promises – think of a marriage and vows. A promise becomes special when it's honored. If you string enough honored promises together, trust gets built. Some people trust God's promises; they have a history with God and the ways in which He has fulfilled His promises to them. Some people refuse to trust anybody or anything, including God. They've had too many promises not fulfilled, they've been lied to. Because trust is not built off of my ability to believe, but off of the promiser's ability to do what they said they would do. So, here's the really big idea that you're going to hang on to today: Jesus keeps His word. Which is a really, really big deal in a world where things don't always work out the way that we want. In a world where life is hard and things happen that we can't control … when wounds happen, when loss happens, when pain takes place … we need to know that a guy named Jesus keeps His word. If you're looking for strength and motivation to make it through this world, then you've got to remember the promises He makes."

So, in this desert, they don’t see a God who can provide for them; they see a God who’s holding out on them. They cry out for food; they cry out for water. They complain because Moses has these meetings with God, and he takes too long. One time, it seems like Moses has been gone so long that he must be dead. Or, maybe Moses abandoned them. Everything’s always negative, everything’s always bad. They never see what God has done; they only ever see what God hasn’t done. God isn’t providing – he’s holding out on them. In their impatience, they build a golden calf and begin worshipping it. They forget the God who rescued them from Egypt while they begin worshipping a fake god that looked like the gods in Egypt. They imitated what they had been freed from. They forgot the victories … and God steps in and punishes a generation of Israelites. He sentences them to 40 years in this desert before they can get into the Promised Land. He says an entire generation is going to pass. Their forgetting led them to wandering. Guys, just really quick: when we forget the victories of God, when we forget what God has done in our life, it makes our lives look like aimless wandering. When we live in ignorance to the victories of God, it takes away from the meaning in our lives. It looks like wandering around, aimlessly, through a desert.

"I love roller coasters, but I hate when my life feels like a roller coaster. I hate when I feel like my future is unpredictable. I hate when I don’t know what’s next for me. I hate when I don’t know if my marriage is going to recover. I hate when I don’t know if my finances will work out. I hate when I don’t know if my kids will make the right choices. I hate when it feels like my life is hurtling toward the end of a track, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Don’t you hate that? Don’t you hate … living by faith? But I’ve found over the years, looking backward is an incredible comfort. That’s what this sermon series is about. It’s about remembering. It’s about looking backwards and finding that comfort. In fact, we said it this way last week: the best way to know what God’s going to do in the future is to look backwards at what He has already done. The best way for you to know what your future looks like … especially your future with God, as you try to anticipate how God may move in your life … the best way to know what He may do in your life, is by looking backwards and seeing what He’s already done."

The New Testament gets really serious about remembering as well. It’s in Jesus’ language and it’s picked up by the rest of the NT authors. And … a consistent theme that keeps coming up, over and over again, is the big idea that we have to REMEMBER JESUS. Now, that may be the most simplistic statement you've ever heard in a sermon of any church ever at any time, right? Well, duh, of course we have to remember Jesus. Maybe you would argue that a church couldn't possibly forget Jesus, right? He's too important. He's a really, really big deal. What a simplistic, small, little idea to lay out that we would have to remember Jesus. But … sometimes people forget and forgetting leads to sin. Bad things happen when people forget.

A good friend of mine at the College put it like this: “Remember who you are and what you stand for.” Guys, listen: we aren’t Jesus followers just for ourselves. We do life his way because our kids are watching, and our grandkids, and our neighbors, and our classmates, and our colleagues … and our enemies, even. And who we are and how we live will be a far more powerful testimony for or against Jesus than anything we say. Do you get that? The other two parts just unpack it, a bit. I will support the testimony of my church … by attending faithfully … because, guys, it is who we are and what we do! The book of Hebrews put it like this: “Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And (here it is) let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.” (Hb 10.24-25).

"The Bible describes Jesus as the way to God, the touchstone of all truth, and the means to life as God meant it to be lived. It also describes Jesus as: “full of grace and truth,” 100% grace, and 100% truth. So … because there is a God you don’t get your own truth, and I don’t get my own truth. Do you get that? But he is 100% grace, too. Which means, if you can’t speak God’s truth with grace, you kind of need to hush. Truth without grace is not God’s truth. And grace without truth is not God’s grace. The two have to go together, they are inextricably intertwined. And, that’s kind of the way we want to do it here at CapCity … people following Jesus together, trying to live out his truth and grace, not compromising on either." Stephen "Doc" Pattison, Lead Minister

"I know we live in an age where people avoid commitment. We avoid committing to a job, a marriage, a country, a church. So, all around us there are these “floating believers” who hop from church to church … when they choose to go at all. There are a whole lot of Christians who are looking to get fed, but with no real desire to do whatever they can to contribute to the health of their family. It’s kind of like … kind of like a guy who hops around the neighborhood from house to house looking for a meal and bed for the night, but never really contributing to those who serve him. That wouldn’t work, would it? According to the apostle Paul, it’s kind of like a body part – a hand, or a foot, or an elbow, or a knee, that refuses to attach to a body. Or maybe, this week I’ll attach to his body, and the next week I’ll attach to hers. Kind of a stupid picture, isn’t it? Listen: “You are members of God’s very own family … and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian.” You were not made to go it alone. Together we give and we are given to, together we serve and we are served, together we love and we are loved … if a church family does it right. And life is better."

"Where's God calling you to go this morning? Where is he daring you to venture? I know he's challenging each of us. He does it every day. For someone here this morning, it might be the challenge to make him the Lord of your life. To take that first step in obedience to him and bow before him, acknowledge him as your Lord and Savior. For someone here this morning, maybe he's calling you to recommit yourself to him and do his work. To get off the sideline, to get out of the boat, to get involved in the work that God is doing here in his church capital city. Ultimately, the decision is yours. So what's it going to be?"

"Sometimes, it’s hard to see anything other than what you’re facing in your life at this exact moment. Gratitude is all about changing your perspective. Complainers and grumblers focus on themselves. Complainers and grumblers focus on the moment right in front of them. They lose sight of the larger picture. When we come to Jesus, we call it conversion, meaning that we change. Conversion means replacing old material with new, better material. The old me loved to complain because the old me was all about me. But when I convert to Jesus, my focus changes because it’s not about me — it’s about Jesus. I refocus, and people who are grateful always focus away from themselves. Guys, you’ve got to change the focal point; it’s going to change your attitude. So don’t focus on your circumstances — focus on God, on how God can use those circumstances. The more you feed gratitude, the more gracious you become, and the easier it gets. It’s so good and healthy for you." Ben Webb, Associate Minister