JANUARY 2, 2022 SUNDAY MESSAGE
JOIN US AT 10 AM TODAY!
Sermon Transcription below:
Welcome everyone! It’s a new year with
a new start and
NEW possibilities
And the reality is that it’s a new US here at Common Ground Northeast
because “WE” are made up of multiple parties in this room:
The PLANTING of CGNE:
Original CGNE folks
Those who joined in after
The COVID season has CHANGED us all - whether we realize it or NOT
We have had a lot of people who have come AFTER COVID and now…
Brought on a new pastor and see some from His community “Healing Place”
We have those coming from the Healing Place to check us out and,
though we have said it before, it is truly a NEW US, Perhaps it’s an understatement to say: We are A NEW CHURCH,
a joining together of parties in A NEW SEASON has taken place to CREATE SOMETHING …NEW!!
In order to help us navigate this, we wanted to look at this topic in the scripture in a series we are simply calling “NEW.” There is a LOT in the bible about this subject
New Creation, New People, heart
New wine, all things NEW and
There are MULTIPLE PRINCIPLES we can embrace if we want to walk together into the next season well!
New Land or New Location
Metaphor for the faith journey
If you didn’t know it, leadership circles with their resources, books, and conferences ALSO LOVE to talk about moving people into NEW things. SO they teach you to
1. “Cast Vision” - Leaders should ALWAYS “<PAINT A CRYSTAL CLEAR Picture of the FUTURE location>” in a way that compels the masses to move forward.
This is what we will call POINT “B”…
2. THEN, on the flipside of THAT FUTURE LOCATION, there is also a beginning.
This is the “here and now” and to get there we must untether ourselves from:
the places WE USED TO OCCUPY &
the way WE USED TO DO THINGS.
On that subject, they say something like this…
“As a leader you can’t get people to move to something new before you convince them they can’t stay in the place they already are.”
OR “Part of vision casting is that, before you can move on to point B, you have to loose your grip on point A.” SO…You must create a CLEAN-CUT from the FORMER LOCATION.
So the idea is that, if we want to see “continual movement” in our lives, it requires a CONSTANT rhythmic rocking back and forth. We must constantly cast vision for what THERE might look like while simultaneously creating DISCONTENT with the static placement of HERE (whatever your “HERE” might be). We’ve all probably been in this process at some point in our lives. These ideas are TRUE ENOUGH, RIGHT? BUT, in my experience, when God is involved, things are never quite as CLEAN or as CLEAR as we WANT IT TO BE:
Not everything from POINT A is bad so our history is never meant to be thrown out.
There is good in our history
AND then we have to be honest - NOT EVERYONE EXPERIENCES the locations in the same way.
For SOME, the starting point doesn’t seem so bad?
In fact, it feels pretty nice and we are very comfortable if not emphatically pleased with the status quo, the things we have, and the ways of life we have become familiar with are great!
For OTHERS, however, the experience of Point A is NOT unsticking but a welcomed changed!
For some the first location is uncomfortable, unstable, lacks resources or it is even oppressive
If this is YOUR experience, you can’t WAIT to get out of there!
Well then we get on the road and there is more time spent “In-Between” here and there than we would like to spend.
Stumbling Blocks
Enemies
Updates A.2 or A.23 before you ever see the future location!!
POINT B is often fuzzy by design!
The “crystal clear future is elusive”
The search for it may even be an idol
God requires faith because,
if you knew the giants in the land you’d run away
If you had the fullness of the journey you wouldn’t have begun in the first place
GOD SAYS, “JUST TRUST ME!”
I want to give you an example of this from the scripture as God moves His people from one location to the next: open your bibles to Exodus chapter 2 verse 11.
This picks up at a point where Moses had a really nice “POINT A” - his “here” wasn’t so bad
Life is good when you’re under the protection of Pharaoh's daughter and growing up as royalty in Egypt.
He got to partake in all their benefits and privileges.
“Ancient Egyptian royalty, nobility, and clergy enjoyed lives of wealth and comfort WHILE farmers and slaves struggled to subsist.”
MOSES had access to
the latest educational opportunities
Lavish foods, banquets, and wine.
But, one day God initiated an UNSETTLING for Moses…
EXODUS 2:11-15 says this:
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went OUT to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
You see, MOSES’ experience at the TOP of the pyramid in Egypt is MUCH different than that of the Hebrews enslaved and living underneath the weight of the pyramid!
BUT GOD AWAKENS HIM
GOD OPENED MOSES EYES to see something that, for YEARS, he had ignored.
We know this because it says “after Moses had GROWN UP” he went out and…
WHO does it say Moses saw??
<let them guess here>
It says “HIS OWN PEOPLE!”
That detail is so important that the scripture says it’s TWICE.
It says “He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of HIS OWN PEOPLE!!”
That’s important because, had Moses NOT identified with them as His kin (his brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and children) perhaps this story would have been a quick glance out over a balcony and a return back to the palace splendor that Moses had become accustomed.
Here is the principle I want you catch:
When the people at the top of the Pyramid don’t see the people at the bottom as “their own people” change will never happen!
But God DISRUPTS MOSES’ comfort…he is so impassioned he gets angry and acts out…but it doesn’t quite pan out like he thought! Verse 12 says…
12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock.”
In this moment, we see that in POINT A, Moses is REJECTED by BOTH
the Egyptians AND
the Hebrews
Moses is no longer able to stay in his previous place of comfort and…
he ends up in the desert, in Midian, MOSES finds himself in a gray space - that liminal space of in-between…He is no longer a man of Egypt. He is, instead, a man with
no land to call home,
no people to call his own
no heritage to claim,
no treasures/wealth to lean on and
no identity
…but this is the perfect location for God to do some work in Moses.
Picking back up in verse 21 it says…
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom,saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
Note that Moses never fully sees himself as a citizen in this space. He is connected by blood but God is going to carry them all into a new season that they could not have ever imagined. Verse 23…
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help, because of their slavery, went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Moving into chapter 3
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
While MOSES was being SHAPED in the desert,
God had NOT forgotten the CRIES of His (and Moses’) people.
God had NOT forgotten His COVENANT promise though, it seems, Moses did.
Now this next movement is REALLY important because Mose COULD have stopped. I mean, he is pretty comfortable in Midian!
It may not have the luxury of Egypt but nobody is actively trying to kill him there.
he has a family there and
he could live a long life of relative peace shepherding his father-in-laws flocks
Moses could have hid in the desert but
…God visits again,
disrupts him again and
gives another command to MOVE.
Ch 3 verse 2 says:
2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
This is the beginning of the famous “Burning Bush” experience. If you remember Moses goes over to check it out and has this POWERFUL encounter with God who gives Moses His personal name: YHWH!!
In revealing His own name, God also anchors His own identity in the Hebrew history saying: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”
Part of the power in this statement is that he is reminding Moses that he has a heritage and KINSHIP with those who are STILL suffering in Egypt.
So Moses is unsettled again and THIS is when he is ASSIGNED…
Continuing the story in verse 7…
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
Without verse 10, Moses can get behind that! It even crescendos!!
I’ve seen the misery (Amen)
I am concerned (AMEN)
Their cry has reached me (Go get ‘em LORD!)
I AM COMING DOWN TO RESCUE THEM (YEESSS!! SOMEBODY NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING!!!!)
10 So now, go. I am sending YOU to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
<RECORD SCRATCH>
WAIT…I said SOMEBODY needed to do something!
I think God took Moses into the desert to get rid of the Egypt still left inside of him…but God doesn’t leave Moses there. Instead Moses takes a piece of the desert (and the work that God has done in him) then sends him on assignment to go back to Egypt to confront the demonic empire and bring the Hebrews out.
He TRIES to get out of it too:
I can’t speak right!
I already have Aaron coming to help you
How will they know you sent me?
Supernatural snake staff so they know “I AM” is with you!
God: Let’s go Moses, we are not leaving them in POINT A because we have listened to their cries
Moses is thinking: “even if we get them out, then what?” where are they going to go (if you’re reading between the line, “what’s the vision?”)
I told you, there is a “good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.”
You see, God is leading Moses through a journey and it has a little:
You can’t stay here in POINT A
You have to go there to POINT B
But it also has a messy middle ground too and, because Moses acted in faith, God did something unique in history that was GREATER than anyone involved could have ever imagined
And, in the end, no luxury in the empire of Egypt could have compared to the Fruits of the Kingdom of God!!
What does this say for you and I in our current culture right now?
I think what we’ve learned is true, EVERY leader is walking a path that emulates the MOVEMENT God has led Moses through, at least if we are good students of the word, and there IS a rhythm of:
We can’t stay here
Don’t get too comfortable
This is a place of survival but there is more
This place is not the fullness of what I have for you
We have to go there
There is growth to be had
There is a place of thriving you have yet to embody
There is greater things to come
So we are all on this journey with God! And I think the answer to that question, “What does this say for you and I in our current culture right now?,” depends on which POINT A we are talking about…
If we are talking about America - a culture literally BUILT on a system of slavery…then there is definitely a difference of experiences -
an Egyptian experience and
a Hebrew experience!
For the white community we have mostly had an Egyptian experience in this country and we have been discipled by that culture and the call is to be:
Awakened to the iniquity of that empire. Our culture has been constructed and been built with racism written into the fabric of it and it cannot be ignored because God has opened our eyes! and
To not ignore the inequity of our brothers and sisters of color,
we’ve been made aware of the conditions underfoot which we cannot, in good conscience be ignored!!
We must be UNSETTLED by the injustice created there, and
be willing to take actions that untether ourselves advantages
…to establish a new society that honors those who have been marginalized.
Here at Common Ground Northeast, we have been on a journey - we haven’t arrived at a final destination (we are in an in-between at best) BUT, over the last 5 or so years, I - and my hope is WE SEEN some things, or rather, our eyes have been opened and my prayer and hope is that you’ve undergone some heart change and, as a mostly white community
A “HOLY UNSETTLING” has occurred!! We have come to acknowledge and understand that our being WHITE comes:
With benefits
With advantages
In a racialized american culture that has
discipled racism into us and, as a result, must be discipled out of us!
When we read this story, we see there are couple options - a couple places - where Moses could have ignored what he saw:
In Egypt, he could have looked the other way when he saw the mistreated of his people.
In the desert of Midian,
The Hebrew people did not have an option
As the saying goes, “it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”
It’s not so different than God leading Moses back into Egypt because it’s not enough to be not part of injustice of Egypt, you have to go dismantle the injustice in Egypt.
SO, God assigned him to go
back in and dismantle it!!
God has said, MOVE!!
I am not calling the white community Moses but I am saying we have an example to follow in Moses.
We have a footprint to follow and some prophetic sandals to fill IF we are willing to MOVE.
Because STRUCTURAL and SYSTEMIC racism is an empire that must be dismantled and it will require faith, movement, courage, and grit to push against the Pharaohs especially when they benefit us and accommodate our comfort. COMMON GROUND NORTHEAST, are we READY TO MOVE?!?
There is another POINT A that I want us all to consider…it comes as a result of the American framework that placed white culture at the center of it’s caste system, we have been dealt a hand of segregation that still exists in churches today.
It is my STRONG belief that, our current point A, that we can no longer remain is the land of:
homogenous
Culturally specific churches
White, black,
WE CANNOT STAY HERE.
As NEW people come in and, as we welcome new people into our community, we ALL must be willing to discern our futures together in a way that doesn’t deny the good in our histories but are willing to decenter our cultural preferences to honor each others culture and find the Common Ground in order to become something NEW!!
Because, listen, there is a destination greater than remaining in a culturally segregated land.
It is greater than the here and now
It looks more like the Kingdom of heaven which is what I want to point us towards because
THAT’S the vision
THAT’S the destination!!
In fact, I get asked this a lot. What’s our vision for all this Justice and Reconciliation stuff…where is it all going?
This is where I want us to land before we head out today…because THIS is what the scriptures tell us our future Kingdom looks like…
REVELATION 7:9
9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
Now, I’ve told you this story before but I think it has more weight and clarity now that we are in 2022, with new people, and a new vantage point.
When I lead Communion I almost always draw our attention to
the history of communion at the passover table in the last supper
and the future communion table which is the heavenly banquet in the new heavens and new earth
Where we will exalt King Jesus as break bread and enjoy the global fellowship of every tribe, tongue, and nation present.
Every time I made this assertion, it was aspirational because I said it while looking at a congregation of mostly white people.
One of the days Pastor Ken preached, I lead communion and looked out at all the guests who came to watch him preach sitting alongside the typical crowd at CGNE and I saw it!!
A community of people sitting shoulder to shoulder (well SIX feet of social distancing) who were called to see each other as KIN and family praising God, willing to put down preferences and become, as King said, “the beloved community.”
IN OUR CULTURE THIS IS NOT NORMAL, NOT THE USUAL, NOT IN ALIGNMENT WITH THE CASTE, NOT GONNA MAKE THE DEVIL HAPPY, NOT GOING TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN…
BUT it is the Kingdom here on earth and it is the vision God has placed in front of us in the scripture.
PRACTICALLY, THIS is what we need
NEW Series Campaign/Goals
Pastor Ken is leading a month of prayer….Highlight Prayer Movement
We need volunteers in various areas of our churches ministries and leadership, and it’s a perfect opportunity want to see the New People of CGNE, get involved and have a voice in shaping the NEW CGNE:
Engagement Team (1-2)
Formation Team (1)
OPS (1)
Childrens (Teachers 18 over 3 months)
Worship Team (3-6)
Media Team
Sound Person (1-2)
Online Streaming (1-2)
Slides (1-2)
OTHERS
Hospitality (1-2)
Service “Hosts” (Elders and others)
I believe we have all been called to MOVE…out of the the familiar and into something NEW.
Into something UNIQUE
Into something that will require great faith to accomplish
Into something that many believe cannot happen which is this (pointing to REV 7:9)…but not as a future reality but, indeed, as Jesus prayer ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN!!
COMMUNION:
(1 COR. 11:23B-26)
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
PRAYER REQUESTS:
We are hosting prayer team meetings for both the congregation at large and individuals to sign up for individual prayer.
SUGGESTIONS FOR WORSHIP:
“Praise & Worship” Spotify playlist and “Praise & Worship” YouTube playlist (slightly different from each other), both of diverse music that are being constantly updated!
Bethel Music :
Bethel Music’s hours of live music YouTube Playlist, also being constantly updated
Bethel provides chords to most (if not all) of their songs here (just have to register email, but free!)
Live worship moments from the Upper Room YouTube Playlist
Journal writing! (I’m a writer too, so sometimes creative writing and writing my thoughts to God is my form of worship.)
Declare and worship with truth by singing and praying scriptures.
WORSHIP NIGHT! Dedicate a night to worship with friends and family, your house church or neighbors, those who need prayer, love worship, or just enjoy music through a video chat platform like Zoom. You can have one person leading at a time (switching off to whoever else wants to lead) while others sing along, pray, or prophesy, etc.
Serving your community, both online, in person, or both, is a great way to worship God, from spreading encouragement and God’s Word online to physically serving food to others. If you are able to go out and serve, click here for opportunities.
COMMISSIONING:
As Jesus said in John 20:21,
"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Go, be the Church!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.