HOPE
PLANT AND NOURISH NEW CHURCHES
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 16: 13
NOVEMBER 9, 2008
It must be very hard to be a Chicago Cubs baseball fan. I know that Chicago Cubs baseball fans have been wishing and wanting for the Cubs to win a World Series. And they’ve waited for 100 years. There are some people who think that the Chicago Cubs are cursed, and in the year 1945 there was the Curse of the Billy Goat. When William Sianis, the owner of the famous Billy Goat Tavern of the city Chicago, came to a Cubs game, it was the World Series and the Chicago Cubs were in it and he brought his billy goat with him to the game. He bought a ticket not only for himself; he got a ticket for the goat. But they wouldn’t let him in and he was so mad he cursed the Chicago Cubs and said that they would never win a World Series ever in their existence.
Now, the truth is this last year there was hope. This year the Chicago Cubs had the best record in the National League and they were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers who had the worst record amongst all the playoff teams. And so, they went to the division series and expected to win. The owners of the Chicago Cubs got a Greek Orthodox priest to come and anoint the team. This Greek Orthodox priest came. He anointed the locker room, the lockers, the places where the players were, the bases and the diamond. They wanted to invoke the blessings of God upon the Chicago Cubs. And yet, you know what happened. The Chicago Cubs went out first round, the division series, and lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-game sweep.
The thought occurred to me that God really doesn’t anoint baseball teams. God doesn’t anoint football teams. I’m a Bronco fan. I know many of you are. But don’t expect God to bless the Broncos. God doesn’t anoint basketball teams.
What does God anoint? What does God really care about? God loves His Son supremely. His Son is the Christ, which in Greek means “the anointed one.” His son is the Messiah, which in Hebrew means “the anointed one.” Jesus said, “I will build My church and the powers of Hades, powers of death, will not prevail against it.” And the church is the anointed instrument, the anointed vessel of Christ in this world. The Church is the bride of Christ, the wife of the lamb.
Today we talk about the purpose of Christ for His church, the plan of Christ for His church and the call of Christ upon this church. Today as we look at church planting and nourishing churches, I really have two teachings and the first teaching is foundational. We really can’t understand the plan and purpose of God for His church unless we understand this foundational point. And that is this: the church of Jesus Christ is meant to grow. You must always remember this: the Church of Jesus Christ is meant to grow.
We can go back to the Old Testament, and we see the plan of God from the beginning. You can go back to the Old Testament and look at Daniel, the book of Daniel chapter 2. You see King Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonian empire. It was Nebuchadnezzar who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. King Nebuchadnezzar, as recorded in Daniel chapter 2, had a visionary dream, and in that visionary dream he saw an image, a statue, a great statue of a man. And this image was fierce and it was scary. At the head of the image was gold, the head and the shoulders made of gold. The arms were made of silver. The chest, the trunk, was made of bronze. The legs were made of iron and the feet were mixed iron and clay.
In his vision Nebuchadnezzar the king saw this huge image of this man. Then suddenly from the heavens came a stone not carved by human hands. This stone crashed into this image of man and shattered it and the image of man crumbled to dust and then the stone began to grow, and the stone grew until it became a mountain covering the Earth. The king of Babylon thought, “What does this mean?” He knew it wasn’t an ordinary dream. It wasn’t just something he had to eat. This was a message, and he summoned his counselor Daniel, whoh told him that the image of man represented the kingdoms of man and that the gold head and shoulders represented the Babylonian Empire. The rest of the image represented kingdoms to come. We know them to be the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. But in truth this image of man represented all the empires of mankind and the stone represents the Messiah. The stone represents Christ, the anointed one, who would come and bring the kingdom of heaven. And His kingdom would shatter the kingdoms of man and His kingdom would grow and it would cover the Earth.
This is the plan of God. We see this plan of God throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. In Matthew’s gospel, the 13th chapter, and you see the words of Jesus Christ. He shares two parables and one is the parable of the mustard seed, and the other is the parable of the leaven or the parable of the yeast.
In the parable of the mustard seed Jesus explains to the crowds that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds. But when it is planted it grows into the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make their nests in its branches. He said the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.
Bible scholars today debate the meaning, the symbolism, of these two parables, but they all agree on this: clearly Jesus is saying His kingdom is meant to grow from something small to something great. His kingdom is meant to grow. We have this consistent message in the Bible and as we approach Christmas, we remember Isaiah chapter 9. “Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Father of Everlasting, and the Prince of Peace. Of His kingdom, of the increase of His kingdom and of its peace, there shall be no end.” An incredible statement about the kingdom of the Messiah. The kingdom of Christ and the greatest expression of the kingdom of Christ in the stage of the world is simply the church, His church, the bride, the wife of the lamb. The church is meant to grow.
So we come to Matthew 16 and we see the Matthew 16:18 controversy. I have a book at home in my library that is a couple inches thick and the whole book is called The Matthew 16:18 Controversy. The whole book’s on that one verse because this verse is so controversial. Of course, it’s part of our passage of Scripture for today.
As Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, which was north of Galilee and near the headwaters of the Jordan near Mount Herman. It’s a beautiful place. He came there with His disciples and He said, “Who do men say that I am? Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” And they answered Him, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, some Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Jesus said, “Yes, but who do you say that I am?” It was Simon Peter who answered. Simon Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon BarJonah. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father, who is in heaven. And I say to you,” (this is Matthew 16, verse 18), “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church.”
This verse has divided Catholics and Protestants, and of course, we need to get over it. We need to love each other. Catholics and Protestants need to love each other. We need to serve Christ. We need to serve Christ together. But this verse is a source of great controversy.
When Jesus says to Peter, “You are Peter,” the Greek word is “petros.” Petros means a stone that had been separated from a mass, a stone that has been separated from bedrock. So, “You are an individual stone, a separated stone.” Then Jesus says, “You are petros, and upon this ‘petra,’” same root, but a different word, “upon this petra, upon this rock, this bedrock,”—petra, bedrock—”I will build My church.”
This makes the verse very difficult, you can understand. We don’t know exactly what Jesus meant and we don’t know how He gestured. He could have said, ” You are petros, but upon this petra, I will build My church.” So, you are an individual cut stone. I’m the bedrock and upon that bedrock I’ll build My church. Or He might have been saying, “You are petros, you are a separate stone, but upon the bedrock of your confession, I will build My church.” Or it might be, “You are an apostle, a separate stone, a cut stone, but upon the bedrock of all the apostles I will build my church.” There are many possibilities, including the Roman Catholic interpretation.
Of course, what’s clear in the verse that all the Bible scholars would agree is this: the church belongs to Christ, not Peter. “I’ll build My church.” And then secondly, it’s not Peter who builds the church, but Christ, “I will build My church.” That’s clear. All Bible scholars agree with that and clearly He’s saying the church is meant to grow. “I’ll build it.” The powers of Hell, the powers of Hades, the powers of death will not prevail against it. “I will build it.” So, this is the purpose, the great eternal purpose, of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He would build His church.
Of course, in this world, there are congregations in virtually every nation and some churches are small, some churches are large. Christ loves them all as long as they are faithful to Him. Christ loves them all.
This church, Cherry Hills Community Church, is a small segment of the church of Christ universal. I marvel how some people hate large churches. I talk to some people and they just can’t stand large churches, and they call them mega-churches, which is a term I don’t think any of us really like. They just don’t like large churches.
I read books, I read it recently the book Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. Shane Claiborne and Jim Wallis are Christian authors who write similar books. They’re evangelical liberals, and sometimes I read their books because I love their passion and their heart for the poor. There’s wonderful understanding of the Gospel’s call to help the poor and the oppressed and the hurting and the afflicted all over the world. So, in that sense I like their books. I listen to them sometimes at conferences, but they also bug me. Truly, honestly, I read their books, and there is a tendency towards pacifism, and there’s no way biblically you can extract the philosophy of pacifism, not if you treat the Bible holistically. Their books also lean toward socialism. And there’s no way biblically you can extract the teaching of socialism, not if you look at the Bible holistically. I would say these books just aren’t balanced. But there’s also in their books this anger towards large churches and just a condemnation of large congregations.
So, as I went through the book, I came to these pages, and there’s a section in here on the mega-church and as you go through it, he builds the argument that Jesus condemned large churches. He says in Jerusalem in the days of Jesus there was a mega-church and it was called the temple. Now, he’s wrong. The Temple was not a church—not a mega-church, not even a church. The Jewish equivalent of the Christian Church is the synagogues of Judaism. This was not a synagogue; this was a Temple, the Jewish Temple, and certainly not a mega-church. But he goes on to argue that this was a mega-church and that Jesus condemned it. When the disciples looked at the Jerusalem Temple, they said, “This is beautiful.” And Jesus said, “I tell you the day will come when not one stone will be left lying upon another.” He pronounced judgment upon the Temple.
So, Claiborne argues that’s pronouncing judgment upon large churches is pronouncing judgments on the mega-church. What a strange argument, particularly when you understand that the Temple was built by the command of God. Also, when you understand that the original Temple, the Temple of Solomon and David, was built by the specific instructions of God with the material specifically commanded by God. Herod’s Temple was meant to be a place of worship, and Jesus didn’t condemn it because it was big or because of the materials that were used to construct it. He condemned it because of what was going on inside of it. What was going on inside of that building was people who were no longer faithful to God, no longer loved God, no longer loved people. People had turned the Church into a business.
There is nowhere in the Bible where God, or Christ, condemns large churches. But there is in the Bible the message that God wants all churches to be faithful. God wants His people to be faithful, whether they’re in a large assembly or a small assembly. Claiborne also argues in there that Jesus condemned the religious rulers for taking the widow’s mite to build their buildings. And that’s a total misunderstanding of the passage. There’s no mention of religious rulers taking the widow’s mite. She just simply made an offering to God and Jesus thought it was precious because it was all that she had.
There’s this prejudicial treatment of the Bible based on these presuppositions that large churches displease God. Don’t buy into that. Understand. Treat the Bible fairly. We try to be faithful in our exegesis and hermeneutics, rightly dividing the Word of God. Don’t buy into some of the stuff that is out there. God loves congregations, small ones and large ones. But what He requires is faithfulness, and the truth is He wants the church to grow. So He likes small churches to grow, He likes more and more churches to be planted, and certainly we are to seek the growth of the church of Jesus Christ.
Buildings are needed and necessary, but the church is not a building. The churches consist of people, the people of God. And of course, the church, the people, the congregation, need a place to assemble. So throughout history churches have built buildings.
Many of you have gone to Paris. Some of you have gone to the River Seine, into a little island in the midst of the River Seine, and you have seen the cathedral of Notre Dame. It’s majestic. Barb and I have been there and it’s one of the greatest examples of gothic architecture in the world. And of course, it’s hard to imagine when you look at that edifice that they began to build it in the year 1163. That building is old.
You walk inside the cathedral of Notre Dame and remember back at all the historical events that have taken place in there and how in the Middle Ages men, women, and children went into that church to pray and to beg God on their knees for their loved ones and even for themselves as the bubonic plague spread throughout Europe. You remember how Joan of Arc was beatified there in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and how Mary Queen of Scots was married in that cathedral and how Princess Marguerite, a Catholic, married a Huguenot in the Cathedral of Notre Dame and that spawned the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, when thousands of French Protestants were killed.
Napoleon Bonaparte went into that cathedral and was crowned Emperor by his own hand, as he took the crown from the hands of the Pope himself and proclaimed himself emperor. You can’t help but be just a little awestruck as you look at that, and yet I don’t think God is awestruck. God knows that the church isn’t about gothic architecture. It’s not about famous moments in history. The church is just simply about His people learning to love Him and to love each other. It’s about His people learning to care about the world and proclaiming the Gospel.
He loves His people, and when we say we want to grow the church we mean we want to grow His people qualitatively and quantitatively. Of course, church congregations sometimes malfunction. It’s kind of an easy target to criticize churches. There are so many churches around the world making mistakes, so many pastors doing something stupid. It’s an easy target.
I remember a few months ago I told you all Barb’s and my washing machine kept breaking down and it was frustrating to us. I should say it was frustrating to Barb. I must confess I rarely use the washing machine, but it had broken down seven times, and it was still under warranty. We bought it at Sears (and by the way, I’m not meaning to criticize Sears: it’s a wonderful store) and we called them and you remember I told you that they told us that if it broke down four times for the same reason they would declare it a lemon and we’d get a new one for free. So, we said, “Well, it’s broken down seven times,” and they said, “Yes, but for like seven different reasons, so you don’t have a lemon.” If ours had broken down for one reason it would have been a lemon, but because it wrote down for seven different reasons it was not a lemon.
Well, since I told you that, our washing machine has now broken down five more times. And thank God, Sears has just declared our washing machine a lemon. So, we got a brand-new one. Don’t we live in a world like that, though? We live in a world where some things just break down, some things just never seem to work right from the beginning. Some things are lemons. I wonder if God, as He looks at His church universal, all over the world and sees every single congregation, if God looks at the churches and He thinks, “You know, there are some lemons.”
I think there are. There are churches who have left the foundation of the Gospel, churches that no longer believe the Bible is the Word of God, churches that have become apostate, churches that have participated in heresy. There are churches that have lost their love. They no longer love Christ, no longer love each other. They no longer love the world. There are churches that have just turned into country clubs where people just kind of go to hang out and they don’t even care about mankind. So, yes, some churches malfunction, but you see, I promise you, most churches have congregations that love the Lord and love each other. Most pastors are simply servant-hearted and trying to serve the overshepherd Jesus Christ.
All churches are flawed. Most churches are faithful, but it’s Christ’s chosen vessel in the world. He has established the church, He will build the church, and He wants us to support the church and to seek its growth.
My second and final point this morning is about how we can serve the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ and be involved in planting and nourishing churches. I know each of you have something at least you want to see grow. Maybe you have a garden in the back and at least in the spring you want to see it grow. Maybe you’re young parents, and you have young kids and you want to see your kids grow. Maybe you’re married and in a very different sense you want your marriage to grow. Maybe you want your bank account to grow or your assets to grow. You might be a little frustrated these days as you see them shrink. Maybe you want your company to grow. We all want to see something grow, but if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, if you believe in Him, if you take His name, if you call yourself a Christian, you got to have a passion to see the church of Jesus Christ grow. You’ve got to have a passion to see His church grow.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 3:7, the Apostle Paul writes that he planted (with regard to church growth) and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. Paul said, “So that neither he who plants, nor he who waters, is anything, but only God, who brings the increase.” So, as we seek the growth of the church, we do it humbly. We water, we plant, but we do it humbly knowing that ultimately only God, only Christ, can grow His church.
I want to talk about 2 congregations. One is a church in Silver Lake, California. The other is a church in Aurora, Colorado. Some years ago, these 2 congregations both needed a new pastor and these churches were very similar. They both had 600 members. They were both Presbyterian churches. So, the one in Silver Lake hired a new pastor and things didn’t go well and the church shrunk from 600 down to 350 and they fired him. The church in Aurora hired a new pastor and the church grew from 600 to 4,200, and there was this great movement of God. But here is the strange thing: those two pastors were the same guy. It was Dr. Dean Wolfe, and he pastored both of those churches and in one case the church shrunk and the other case the church grew many fold. And he marveled. But he always said to me (and Dean is retired and living in the San Diego area), “The harvest is the Lord’s.”
We are simply to be faithful. So, we need to be on our knees praying every day for the church of Jesus Christ the world over. We need to be going on short-term mission trips. Over 3,000 of you have joined us on short-term mission trips to various nations where we visit pastors and churches and we plant churches and we seek to aid and help and nourish church growth. What a privilege it is. Many of you have offered your time, your talent, and your treasure to see the church of Jesus Christ grow both here at home and abroad. This is the call of Christ upon His people.
Now, the 12 apostles were church planters. The word “Apostolos” in the Greek means “sent forth” and they were all sent forth to the nations from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the outermost parts of the earth. Those 12 went forth with the Gospel, inviting people to believe in Jesus Christ. Then as they believed they called people into a community and formed a church and then as apostles they appointed pastors. Then they moved on. They would do this everywhere they went. They’d preach the gospel. Some would believe, they’d bring them together into a community called a church, they’d appoint a pastor, and then they’d move on. That was the great work of the apostles.
Now you come to 1 Corinthians 9 and you see the Apostle Paul using the word apostle in a broader sense. There he said there were more than 12 apostles because Paul’s describing many who have this role and as long as they had seen Christ and were working miracles and called by God to the office of apostle they still did the same thing—they went into regions and preach the gospel. The people who believed were brought into community and pastors were appointed.
In other places in the Bible, you see this word apostolos used in a still broader sense where it’s synonymous with missionaries. So, sometimes this word apostolos connotes the concept of a missionary and in fact in Latin the word missionary comes from missio, which means “sent forth,” just like the Greek word apostle comes from apostolos, which means, “sent forth.” So, you have this identical root meaning “sent forth.” So, apostles in some sense are missionaries.
In this church, we support missionaries all over the world. In over 60 nations we have missionaries and we visit them and we work with them. These missionaries preach the gospel, and people believe, and as people believe they are brought into community and churches are formed and pastors are appointed and then we go into other regions, other territories, we preach and communities, churches are formed, pastors are appointed, and it goes on. And we’re all part of this and we’re in it together. It takes a congregation to be in it together.
I was talking with Gene Kissinger this past week about our missions work in India. We have many different people and programs that we work with in India. One of the organizations that we hold hands with in India is Operation Mobilization India. Operation Mobilization India has started the Good Shepherding Community Church movement, which forms churches and appoints pastors. So, we work with them on this. We take teams over there to be part of this. So far, the Good Shepherding Community Church program has established 2,500 churches amongst the Dalits in India. Is that incredible? We have 800 pastors. These 800 pastors of the Good Shepherding Community Churches have to serve all 2,500. So, there are pastors serving multiple congregations.
700 additional pastors who are church planters are going to other parts of India seeking to form other congregations. You understand we need you. We need you to be willing to go forth on a short-term mission. It’ll change your worldview. It will give you a chance to love other people and be loved by them. It will give you a chance to see poverty and to come back and be so grateful for what you have. It will give you a chance to grow the Church of Jesus Christ and be part of its growth in other parts of the world.
I was talking with Gary Sokol and Gene Kissinger this past week about New Life in Christ Church, with which we’re partnered downtown. We have six churches with which we’re partnered downtown, and New Life in Christ has been located near Bronco Stadium, but the demographic is changing. These are hard economic times. Jack La Petra, who’s pastor at New Life and a good friend of mine, and Luis Villareal who heads up Whiz Kids and used to be the associate pastor, are great. In fact, I’m having lunch with them tomorrow. But the church is having to uproot and we are going to replant it. It’s going to be replanted on West Colfax where there aren’t any congregations or churches and growing poverty. So, it’s going to be in a conservative Baptist church building. That conservative Baptist church is letting New Life in Christ use it, but they may just give it to us because they have only 28 people and they’re very old. They’re asking Jack and his Hispanic congregation to come in and take care of them. They want an early morning service for themselves and then later in the morning Hispanic congregation services.
But we need people. We need to establish a food bank. We need to establish a clothing bank. We want to have a midweek community meal every week, and we need teams of folks from our church to go down and help establish the food bank, the clothing bank, the community weekly meals. We need people to pray. We need people to give. We need people to offer their very selves, planting the church of Jesus Christ, nourishing it, and growing it.
I met Thursday with Dr. Chung, who attends this church and is a professor of systematic theology at Denver Theological Seminary. Dr. Chung is an awesome guy. He got his master’s degree from Harvard and his Ph.D. from Oxford. He’s poorly educated, but he just loves Christ. He really loves Christ and he came to my office with Dr. Lee from South Korea. Dr. Lee used to be the head of World Vision in Korea. Dr. Chung came with Reverend Kim and with Bruce Lee, who is a member of our congregation and does not know martial arts.
So, the four of them came and we sat down in my office on Thursday. Gene Kissinger joined us and they wanted to talk to us about what’s going on in South Korea and in North Korea and the opportunities that are there and the suffering that is taking place. They want to hold hands with us and do something great for Christ. There’s this epidemic of TB in South Korea, but even more so in North Korea. People are dying by the tens and hundreds of thousands. Apparently, if I got the numbers right, 300,000 children have already died of TB. This is an epidemic and they believe 3 to 4 million men, women, and children are going to die because it’s such an impoverished, malnourished people, and the TB is a resistant strain of TB.
They need folks to come over and join them, and love people and hug people, give them smiles and bring medicine. Because it can be cured – there’s a 95% cure rate, they just don’t have any money and they don’t have any medicine. For $30 we can cure somebody. Six months of medicine will do the job. But they don’t have any money. They don’t have anybody loving them. They don’t have anybody who cares because the tragedy is so great in North Korea and it’s a communist government and their doors have been so closed. But because of the suffering they’re opening their doors and saying, “help us.”
So, Dr. Lee just went there recently and he met with leaders—communist leaders—of North Korea. They sat around a luncheon table to have lunch and they asked them to bring folks to help. He said, “I want to help.” He said. ” Now before we eat lunch, I’m a Christian. I’m a follower of Jesus, and I like to pray before I eat,” and these communist leaders in North Korea said, “Okay.” So he prayed and when he was done praying, all around the table, “Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.” And Dr. Lee said, “I thought as communists you didn’t believe in prayer,” and they said, “Well we remember 50 years ago, and our hearts are still very hungry.” And they have established now 2 churches in North Korea. 10 years ago there wasn’t a Christian in North Korea. 2 congregations in North Korea are growing, and 500 prayer groups. It’s an incredible opportunities.
But you understand this is the kind of thing we want to be yoked with—this is what our church is about. We want to plant churches and grow the church, not just in Highlands Ranch, but all over the world. Because Jesus said, “I’ll build My church, and the powers of Hades, the powers of death, will not prevail against my church.”
I think the Gospel has been misunderstood in our time. I think particularly in the Western world, folks have just misunderstood the Gospel in our individualistic, kind of maverick, society we’ve misunderstood the Gospel. We think the Gospel is simply an individual call to personal faith in Christ for personal salvation. And that is part of the Gospel, certainly. The Gospel calls us as individuals to place our faith in Christ and receive salvation. Certainly, that’s part of the Gospel, but it’s only part.
You look at the Gospel biblically and it’s a call to community. It’s a call to communion with Christ in community with His people. The Gospel calls people into His church. There can’t be any lone wolf Christians because the Gospel is not just about salvation, it’s about the Church eternal and calling people into community so that they might learn to love each other, learn to serve each other.
One of the cool things about a large church is collectively God can use us to do so much in this world if we join hands and love Christ with a passion. I think we’ve misunderstood the Gospel and its call to community, its call to the church.
I was reading this past week in the book of Numbers, and I came to Numbers 35. In Numbers 35 there is a description of the Cities of Refuge and we’re told in Numbers 35 that by the will of God there were six Cities of Refuge, three cities east of the Jordan and three cities west of the Jordan. So, west of the Jordan there was Shechem and Kedesh and there was also Hebron, just 19 miles from Jerusalem, the City of the Patriarchs. Hebron, Shechem, and Kedesh were west of the Jordan.
Then east of the Jordan you have Golan, Ramoth, and Bosor. What were the Cities of Refuge? If you go to Joshua 20, you can read a little bit about them, as well as Numbers 35. These were cities which by the will of God were sanctuaries for criminals. So, if you committed a crime, you could go to one of the Cities of Refuge and find sanctuary. But it couldn’t just be any crime. It had to have been unintentional, then you qualified for sanctuary in one of the six Cities of Refuge.
Now, you look further in the Bible and you look at Isaiah chapter 8, and Ezekiel chapter 11, or in the 60th Psalm, and you see the prophecy and the promise that there will come a greater sanctuary. In this world there will come a greater sanctuary. It is a prophecy and a promise regarding the Church of Jesus Christ. This is a greater sanctuary. Every church is meant to be a City of Refuge. This church, Cherry Hills Community Church, is meant to be a City of Refuge.
But it’s not simply for people to come and find sanctuary when they’ve done something accidentally. It’s for real sinners. The churches of Jesus Christ are Cities of Refuge and therefore people who have committed premeditated sin can come and find forgiveness and love and healing and community and salvation and faith and begin to partake in loving service for the cause of Christ on Earth—Cities of Refuge.
Our goal, our passion, and our desire is to build Cities of Refuge all over the world, all over Colorado, all over America, and all over the world where people can find sanctuary. It’s the incredible plan of God. People can come into community and find friends that will be friends not just on this Earth, but in heaven and forever. This is the plan; this is the call of Jesus Christ upon His people. So we bring the hope of Christ, the hope of the Church, as we seek to plant and nourish churches all over the world. Let’s close with a word of prayer.