I was born in 1984, so I am a child of the eighties. Really if you’re born in 84, I’m, I’m kind of a child of the nineties. But it cooler to say that you were a child of the eighties. ’cause The eighties, man, they went hard. And if you wanna know how hard the eighties went, here’s a picture of a theme park. This is called the Cannonball Run. This was built in 1985. Now, now the, the theme park is called Action Park. It got the nickname class Action park, and probably, probably, that’s all you need to know as to why it was called Class Action Park. The owner of the park, they decided to build this, this crazy tube slide. Now it’s a water slide, so there’s wire coming out. It looks like you go into a pool. You do not, you just go out into basically a big slip and slide.

And they built it clearly without any engineers. ’cause When they get that thing done, they take some test dummies and they slide it down that slide. And when they were coming out the slide, they were coming out without body parts, <laugh>. And so they were looking at it, they’re like, ah, what, what, maybe we should change it, or maybe we should just keep trying it with new people. And, and so here’s what they did legitimately, is that the park was trying to convince some of the teenage workers to go down the slide. And at first they wouldn’t do it. And then the park said, well, what about for a hundred bucks? And then some of these teenage workers, this was the conversation. There’s documentaries about this, this water slide. There’s documentaries about this water park. The teenagers, they, they huddled together and they say, well, hey, I will do it if you will do it for a hundred bucks.

And so a group of teenagers go down the slide and they break their, their teeth and they, they bruise themself and some of ’em gets stuck. And no surprise, in, in less than a month, the government stepped in. This is in New Jersey, and they shut it down. Not just the slide, but eventually the entire park. But, but if you wanna really, well think about how hard the eighties went, but also the challenge of peer pressure. That peer pressure is a real thing. And there are good types of peer pressure. And then there are bad types of peer pressure. And if I stop and evaluate my own life, here’s what I know. Some of the dumbest things I have ever done in my entire life were because of the friends that I was hanging out with at that moment. And also some of the best things I have ever done in my entire life.

Or, or because of the friends that I were hanging out with in that moment. If you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to Luke chapter six. Luke chapter six, and we’re gonna start in verse 12. And it’s something interesting that we see about Jesus and the community that he chooses to keep. Luke chapter six, starting in verse 12, it says this, and these days, he, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray. And all night he continued to pray to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them, 12 whom he named Apostles Simon, whom he named Peter and Andrew, his brother, and James and John and Philip and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas and James, the son of Alpha and Simon, who was called the zealot. And Judas, the son of James and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. As a side note, you miss it sometimes, but there’s actually two disciples named Judas.

Isn’t it a, a shame to be Judas, the son of James? ’cause He never gets mentioned. As a matter of fact, people always assume that he’s the other Judas, Judas Ariat, who became a traitor. Now, here, here’s why. What we read the list in that list, it doesn’t describe exactly who is who, but if you look at all four gospels together, you, you get these brief snippets and descriptions of the disciples and who they are. And, and here’s what we find when we see the 12 people, the Jesus chooses to spend the vast majority of his time in his ministry with that. We’ve got a bunch of fishermen and we have a tax collector, and we have a zealot. We’ve got a, a skeptic. Thomas would become a skeptic. We’ve got some, some very loud mouths on that team. And then we’ve got a traitor.

Oh, and Judas wasn’t just a traitor, he was also a thief. He also stole money from Jesus. Now, when you look at that group, Hey, here’s what I want us to understand, that Jesus does not choose them at random. He’s not just standing on the, the shore, and he is like, I’m that guy and maybe that guy. And how about that guy over there? Sure, it doesn’t matter to me. I know he, he chooses them intentionally. That, that this is God the creator of the universe, this sovereign that has a plan and a purpose. And when he’s choosing his 12, he chooses some crazily different personalities, different worldviews, different mindsets. To, to best illustrate that, just imagine these two figures. So you’ve got Simon, the zealot, and you’ve got Matthew, the tax collector. Now, we know a lot about the zealots because we know about the first century.

And and if you read in history books about who the zealots were, it gives us a great description of what, what we know that Simon would have believed before he became a follower of Jesus. So Simon, the zealot was a fiery anti-woman purists. The zealots hated Rome. Not only did they hate Rome, they felt that the way to fight back against Rome was basically to be anarchists. So they would murder Roman officials they would murder tax collectors. They would do everything they could to disrupt the system. So Simon, the Zel, he thought taxes were evil, and his dream was to overthrow the government. So you’ve got Simon, the Zel. Just imagine he’s hanging out with Jesus as one of the 12. And sitting right next to him is Matthew the tax collector. He’s a Roman employee, he’s a toll agent. He profited from the imperial system.

Hi. His own people despised him as a church. So if you’re Simon, the zealot, like if, if you wanted to just personify who he hated, it was Matthew. Like, that’s, that’s what it was. If he was gonna pick somebody out that he said, that is the scum of the Earth, it would have been that guy. And now, in addition to that, look what it says over in Mark chapter three, verse 14. It says, and he, Jesus appointed 12, whom he also named apostles. Here’s, here’s the key phrase, so that they might be with him. So the disciples weren’t just learning from Jesus. Jesus later on would go on to say that, that he had no home. So for three years, the disciples lived with Jesus. They did life together. They did everything together. And instead of choosing a group, 12 people that was like, Hey, these people all, they get along and they kinda look the same.

They kinda act the same. They, they basically kinda are the same. They’re in the same socioeconomic class. Everything about them is just gonna be just great and happy and friendly. He intentionally chooses a group of people that makes no sense for him to choose. So understand what that means. It means that Jesus chose difference. Jesus chose difference intentionally in his followers so that the only explanation for the unity that they might have would be him. I, I just wanna put it because I think sometimes it’s hard to, to take someone from the first century and, and understand it in modern context. Like, here’s how I would describe it in modern context. Let’s take two people that would be unlikely to get along in the United States of America. Like, let’s take person one and let’s say person one. We’ll call him Chad. And Chad lives in Texas, and, and Chad drives an old beat up Ford F-150.

It’s a diesel <laugh> in, in the back of his truck. He has a shotgun that hangs there all the time. Now, I’m from Texas, so I, I got a lot of buddies that are exactly like that. And if you talk to him, like, like he’ll tell you about some conspiracy theories that like, they’re, they’re legit. He’ll tell you about all the things that are wrong in the world. Like if you bring up climate change with, with Chad, he’d say it still snows don’t like, it’s, it’s very clearly that that’s a hoax, and there’s no reason to believe any. Now, now, on the other side, let, let’s pick someone, let’s call her Skyler, okay? And let’s say that she lives in, in Portland and, and Skylar, she drives a Prius. And Skylar thinks that that actually not only does, does she fullheartedly believe in in climate change, she thinks that you are the problem because you use plastic straws here in Colorado.

And you are the reason that the world is not now. Now, I want you to imagine that you took Chad and you took Skyler, and you are starting a group of people that are gonna spend the next three years with you every single day. And those are two of the people that you say, Hey, Chad and Skyler, go ahead and shake hands with each other. Y y’all are gonna hang out every day for the next three years. That, that’s the equivalent of what Jesus does with Simon, the zealot and Matthew, the tax collector. And so I, I want us to grasp something because, because I think it’s really important. We, we live in this time where people talk about just how divided it is and how culturally crazy it is and how difficult it is. And I’m not saying that, that there aren’t challenges that exist right now, but if we look at world history, guess what you’ll find.

It’s always been divided and crazy and had challenges that Rome in the first century had people that hated Rome equally, if not more than we do right now with people that live in the United States, that you had the zealots that, I mean, just constantly were waging war against Rome. And Jesus intentionally gathers this group of very different and eclectic people together so that he would say, Hey, underneath my banner, people that have no reason to hang out are going to choose to hang out. In the book of Romans we see Paul taking the teachings of Jesus and starting to put them into practice. There’s this interesting thing that happens in the, the book of Romans actually happens in just about every one of Paul’s letters where he starts by teaching theology. He teaches a lot of theology, and then after he teaches theology, he goes into, and this is how you put it into practice.

So Romans is an amazing book. It’s a deep book. It’s a heavy book. There’s a lot of theology that we get outta the book of Romans. The first 11 chapters of the book of Romans would be something that we call orthodoxy. That that is what we believe. So it’s all theology, it’s all doctrinal truth, it’s all this heavy stuff about who God is, who he created us to be. And then starting in chapter 12, really after that, it gets into orthopraxy. So, so it’s saying based off of who we are and what we believe our orthodoxy, this is how then we should behave our orthopraxy. Now, you, you see this in the very beginning, chapter 12, very beginning, chapter 12 is this word that says therefore, and that that is there to try and say, Hey, based off of everything in the first 11 chapters, therefore based off of all that we believe, it says, therefore, I urge you, my brothers and view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.

So now Paul starts to transfer into this position of saying, if this is true, if this is what we believe, if all of this orthodoxy is true about God, then therefore here’s how we should live. And he starts by saying that we should live as a living sacrifice, that our life is a sacrifice to God. But then he gets much more intentional with that. Look down in chapter 12, starting in verse nine. Romans chapter twelves in verse nine says this, let love be genuine abhor what is evil? Hold fast to what is good. Then verse 10, it says, love one another with brotherly affection. Now, if you’ve got a different version, every version translates that verse a little bit different. Like in the NIB it says, be devoted to one another in love that sounds nothing like love one another with brother brotherly affection. The reason for that is because it’s a hard verse to translate from Greek to English because it picks up on this word that, that in the Greek they would understand that the intention behind the word is family, except we don’t have that same word in English.

And so people kind of take different variations to try and describe it, but none of them really did it in a way that, that that is something easy for us to grasp without a further explanation. The further explanation is this, that, that Paul is trying to get us to understand that what it looks like inside of the church should look radically different than the other relationships that people had in the first century in Rome. He, he’s saying that when you are inside the church that you should show a love for one another that looks genuine and devoted the same way you would for a brother or a sister or for your mom or for your dad. Now that, that sounds radical to us now, but it sound crazy in the first century. I mean, it was a wildly crazy teaching that Paul is dropping that, that he’s saying based off all this deep theology in the first 11 chapters, he says, if that is true, if you and I believe that and practice that, then because of that here then is how we should live.

And he, he, he holds up this ideal that’s really challenging and that is to love everybody inside the church as if you would love your own family member. Then in the second half of verse 10, he says, outdo one another and showing honor, we’ll come back to that in a second. He goes on to say, do not be slothful and zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight, repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all that, that he holds up this ideal, that that is really high and really lofty.

That, that he’s trying to paint this picture of, he’s saying, if what we believe about God isn’t just this abstract concept, but if it truly is something that makes this way into our heart, then that should transform how we operate in the world around us. Now, understand the order. He doesn’t start with, this is how you should live and then teach us, and this is who God is. And sometimes I think inside the church we have this expectation, well, hey, you need to look godly and holy before you know God. And that’s not what Paul’s saying at all. The first 11 chapter says, Hey, the goal is that once people understand who God is, once they understand the glory, the weight of God, they can’t help but therefore start living in this different way of life. And there’s this interesting phrase when it talks about outdo one another with honor that in our context, it’s hard to understand, well, what does that mean to outdo one another with honor in, in America?

We don’t live in an honor shame culture. Actually, 80% of the, the world right now still lives in some type of an honor shame culture. So there’s certain things that you can do to elevate your status or bring honor to you and your family. There’s certain things that you might do that brings shame, that diminishes your status. And so in the first century, that was the idea. So honor was something that you tried to receive, you tried to earn, and shame was something you tried to avoid. So that phrase, when it says outdo, it’s from this interesting Greek word. And the Greek word means to take the lead. It means to don’t watch, to don’t wonder if that person deserves it or not. But instead he he’s saying, you should beat them to showing honor. Now what what we don’t get is that would’ve been a radical concept in the first century.

Then the first century, you don’t give someone honor unless they deserve it. And then Paul steps in and he says, Hey, I want you to outdo one another in showing honor. Be the first to give honor even when they don’t deserve honor. Like, like get this concept that in Rome honor was scarce, that you fought for honor. Now you climbed over dead bodies to get honor. But he, he’s saying that in the church honor is abundant, so abundant that hey, that we’re just, we’re just giving it away. There’s so much honor, honor for you. It’s like Oprah. Everybody gets honor. You get honor, and you get honor, and you get honor. But like, that doesn’t make any sense. But what Paul’s trying to understand is he’s trying to get us to see the contrast between the world and the church that in the world, that the idea is that you, you get honor for yourself.

Hey, do everything you can to accumulate honor, be the most honorable, famous, well loved, successful person possible. But the church is saying, no, hey, actually we’re gonna, we’re gonna take that honor instead of taking it for myself. I’m just gonna continually give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away. This idea of honor, this isn’t the only time that Paul talks about New Testament, talks about honor a lot. Now again, understand the first entry, like you had to do something to deserve honor. Then in the New Testament, here’s all the people, the New Testament tells us that we should honor. And it tells us that we should honor our parents the weaker members of the body. We should honor widows, we should honor elders who rule. Well, it goes on to say that we should also honor the emperor, the government officials.

And sometimes we’re like, well, I can’t honor government officials ’cause I disagree with him and I don’t like him. And that’s a terrible person. Do you realize when Paul wrote that, who the Emperor of Rome was a guy named Nero. Nero is historically remembered as the most terrible, awful emperor that Rome had towards Christians. That, that we have historical accounts that, that he would take Christians, he he would cover them and wax and use them as candles to light his garden. Like Nero hated Christians. And yet Paul, who by the way, when he’s writing that, that he was underneath arrest in a prison because of Nero, and and he’s saying that we should show honor to that guy. He says that the husband should show honor to their wives. And, and then he, he goes on, we, we see Peter pick it up and he says that actually as Christians, we should show honor to everyone.

To everyone. Like I, I don’t think that we get how radical of a concept and an idea this was, that in this place that, that you, you’re outside the place and, and it’s it’s dog eat dog and you’re fighting against each other and you’re trying to keep other people down so that you raise yourself up. And then the, the New Testament ideal is that when you come together as Christians, it, it looks totally different than that, that we’re honoring people because they’re created in the image of God. They deserve honor not because of what they have done, but because of who God is and who God created them to be. What does it look like when we actually live in a way that is showing honor to people? Psychologists would say that there’s tremendous value in that. Listen to, to recent research about 15 years ago, it’s called the Mic Michelangelo phenomenon.

Michelangelo phenomenon is the process in close relationships where one person’s affirming view and behavior towards their partner, sculpts that partner toward their ideal self through perceptual affirmation, seeing and naming who they can become, and behavioral affirmation, acting in ways that elicit and support that growth. You say, what on earth does that mean? Here’s what psychologists have found, that, that in a, a marriage con relationship, when a husband and wife are, are married together, when one spouse starts, starts speaking life into the other spouse, that they start honoring them and bringing out the things that they see in that person. Even if they aren’t real in that moment, they start speaking life into that person, then that person starts living up to that ideal that they will increase who they are because of the words that their spouse has spoken about them. What’s fascinating is the Michelangelo phenomenon goes in reverse too, that when you surround yourself with people that are speaking death to you, that you’ll, instead of raising up, you will actually lower yourself, lower your standards, lower your expectations because of the words of the people around you.

The reason it’s called the Michelangelo phenomenon is because Michelangelo, the famous artist who’s a sculptor, he has this famous quote where he says, when he looks at a piece of marble, he said, every piece of marble has a beautiful and amazing sculpture that’s inside. It just takes the right artist to understand what is there and to reveal it. And so there’s this phenomenon that happens in marriage that if you look at your spouse and you see the beauty inside, you see the masterpiece in inside and you start speaking the life towards that masterpiece that your spouse will live up to that ideal. But if you do the opposite, they will live down to your words that the same is true in the community around us. That that God puts us in community asking us to honor one another. And psychology would say that when we do honor one another, when we lift people up, it, it does change who they are, how they live, how they act.

It changes the trajectory of their future. And so there’s this beautiful thing that’s happening where Paul’s encouraging us, Hey, this is what can be. And yet so often that we’re hesitant to step into that community because it’s hard. Psychologist Scott Peck has this, this famous quote that I think he gets very right when he says, there can be no vulnerability without risk. There can be no community without vulnerability, there can be no peace and ultimately no life without community. That that, why do we not want to step into community? Because community means that there’s some amount of risk that goes with it. We have to be vulnerable because ultimately community is messy. Do you think, and the three years that Simon, the zealot and Matthew, the tax collector were hanging out, do you think it was always pretty? Like, do you think there were ever moments where it was messy?

Like you, you think of your Thanksgiving meal where you’ve got some different background people and sometimes they argue over things and you feel awkward and you’re not sure what to think or say. Like I can guarantee you based off the personalities that in the three years hanging out with Jesus, his disciples had a lot of disagreements. Like they probably fought over all kinds of stuff. And yet Jesus intentionally chose those people to hang out together. I I think there’s this, this challenge that exists where, where we, we don’t want that vulnerable side of hanging out with other people. There, there’s a forum that, that I saw this exchange on. It’s a golf forum and somebody in this golf forum that they, they write out what they’re looking for and they say this, they say, I know I’m outing myself as a freaky weirdo, but I just can’t ev enjoy golfing with other people as much as I can enjoy golfing by myself. I don’t wanna make small talk with strangers and no one I know wants to play this way. Meaning not talk at all where I’m from. It’s extremely rare to find an open slot to play golf by himself. So someone responds and he says this, brother, if you love live anywhere near Connecticut, I will golf with you every weekend and never talk to you <laugh>.

We can be best friends. <Laugh>, I have one golf friend I play with regularly. I met him through work and I call him Hammer, that might be his last name. I don’t know his first name. I called him Kirkland for about a year before he told me that he plays Kirkland Balls, and that’s not his name. <Laugh>. We don’t talk about anything except basic golf chitchat. Like your ball is over there. I think it might have gone long after golf. We decide when we are playing golf next. That is it. Nothing else. Do I know what he did for Thanksgiving? Nope. Is he married? Does he have children? I have no idea. I have never done anything beside golf with this guy. And after my dog, he is my all caps best friend <laugh>.

And, and I, I think sometimes that that’s what we’re looking for. We’re like, Hey, look man, being with other people, there’s just something about that that is challenging and difficult and uncomfortable and I don’t know that I’m willing to do that. But, but on the other side, here’s what the data says. And I, I use this stat every single year. So some of you’ll recognize it. Studies have found that this single activity is a better indicator of future health and success than any other activity. Like if you’re a young parent in the room and you say, okay, what are the things I can do for my kids that’s going to predict future success? And we think of all these things like reading to your kid and, and maybe I play Mozart music or get them to learn an instrument or all these things. And those are great things, but this single one activity is a better predictor of success than any other activity.

What do you think it is? Family dinner. Family dinner. Separate from that here, here’s what recent research has found that chronic loneliness is so harmful to our bodies that research shows. It is, it increases the risk of premature death as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And so, so, so here’s the rub, right? Like, like the golfer guy, there’s a part of us that’s like, I don’t like people, like I don’t wanna be around people. They’re messy. It’s frustrating, it’s difficult. They’re gonna have different opinions than me, and I dunno what to do with that. And yet, on the other side, all the data would say that God wired you, wired me, created us in such a way that it is harmful when we don’t live in community. So then what do we do Here would be three specific steps. Step number one is this is commit to community.

And I get how challenging that is. Maybe, maybe, maybe you do something soft. Maybe the first step is, Hey, I’m just gonna go to the meal today and have a conversation with somebody. And maybe it’s, Hey, I am going to sign up for love extended, because that’s, that’s a pretty easy avenue into community. But figure out what, what is your first step into community? The second thing is to honor the hidden. And so here’s my challenge this week. Find some people that you could honor that don’t necessarily deserve honor, that our culture does a great job of honoring people that our culture sees and thinks well they deserve honor, so that we’re gonna heap honor on them. You find people that, that don’t quote unquote deserve honor and choose to honor them. You do it really simply three different ways. Find their name, then you notice them, notice something about them, and then you nourish them.

That’s it. Name notice, nourish. You do those three things. That’s how you honor someone. Well, and then the last thing is to honor across differences. Hey, here’s what I think. When we look at the brokenness of the world around us, Rome was broken in the first century and it changed like that over the course of 300 years. And it changed in the most unlikely way possible. Jesus didn’t come as a revolutionary. He didn’t come as a politician. He didn’t come waving some big banner and flag. No, he, he preached truth and the gospel and the followers of Jesus based off of Jesus’ death and resurrection. They said, Hey, that’s what I believe. And because that’s what I believe, it’s gonna radically transform how I behave. And largely the thing that stood out to the culture around them more than anything else, is they started honoring and loving first and foremost each other inside the church, even each other that had radically different backgrounds and perspectives.

No religion in the history of the world had existed. There was multiple ethnic groups until Christianity. You see the thing that can be different about the capital C Church, it is, we’re not the same to represent the body of Christ. It, it should be, Hey, we’ve got different ethnic groups, we’ve got different socioeconomic classes, we’ve got different ages. We’ve got different stages. Like the world needs to look at us and say, why? Like, why would that group of people ever hang out together? It makes no sense to me whatsoever. And then we look at ’em and we say, but Jesus, but Jesus.

And so what could it look like if we are a church that honors across differences? We don’t honor people because they deserve it. No, we honor them because of what Jesus did for us and how that changes how I view the world around me. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, we thank you so much that, that you want your church, the capital C Church to be different. And so our prayer inside this place is that we would be different. That we can be a place that honors each other well, that we can be like family. And I recognize that that stepping into community is hard and it’s vulnerable and it’s messy sometimes, but it’s also worth it. So God, I pray that you would stir inside each of us to become a place that looks radically different from the world around us. Not for our own glory, but for your glory because of what you have done for us as the mighty name of Jesus we pray. Amen.