That Jesus Made and Grew Followers | Together is the Way | Rick Atchley

Next episode... ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello, and welcome to The Hills. If this is your first time to visit our church, or the last several weeks is your first time, two things about our church you need to know. One is we actually meet in several campuses. We have four campuses in Keller, in North Richard Hills, in Dallas, and West Fort Worth, with a fifth campus launching later this year in Weatherford. The other thing about our church you need to know is that I'm the preacher. I have been for a long time, actually, but I've been out for a few weeks, because every summer I am blessed to get to take a study break. And thank you so much, church, for allowing me that blessing. I love the Word. I love the study of the Word. I want to be prepared when I preach the Word. And so these last number of weeks, I was able to do research and work on sermons for the next six months. And my trust is when you hear these sermons, you're going to realize he didn't just write that yesterday, did he? And I'm able to do that because you value the Word and the ministry of preaching. Also, I'm able to do it because good men and women preach while I am gone.

I want to thank all of them, but especially, I'd like you to put your hands together and thank Drew Ritchie and Cooper Seidman for the preaching they did in my absence. I want to start with a story of a woman who goes to the kitchen table, and there's her husband in his pajamas eating a bowl of cereal. And she says, honey, we got to leave for church in five minutes. You need to get dressed. He said, I don't think I'm going to go to church this morning. She said, give me one good reason why you wouldn't go to church. He said, I'll do better than that. I'll give you two. Number one, I don't like anybody over at that church. And number two, I don't think anybody up there likes me. He said, besides that, you give me one good reason why I should go to church today. She said, I'll do better. I'll give you two. Number one, you know God wants you to go. And number two, you're the preacher. Okay, so you need to know, this preacher loves to go to church. And these six weeks I was out, I went to church every single Sunday, a different church every week. I got to visit a number of our church planters. In fact, the first one I want to tell you about,

remember EJ and Rachel Brown, they're in Tacoma, Washington. And we got to see them. EJ was on our staff for a number of years. And he went to a church that was dying. And so they let that church close and they relaunched that church as a new plant with EJ as the lead pastor. And we supported them to do this. And they launched last fall and they've already had over 100 baptisms. So all of you that know EJ and Rachel, send them some love. I got to visit some other church planters, I'll tell you about in the weeks ahead. And every experience was beautiful. I love visiting other churches. I'm always blessed. The preaching is always strong. We share the exaltation of Christ in our worship. We take the Lord's supper. But I want to be at this church more than any other in the world for this reason. Here at the Hills, I receive the blessing of together. At other churches I gather, but here I receive together. What I mean is that my church family at the Hills is the community where I am being formed as an apprentice of Rabbi Jesus. We say this a lot at our church.

The Hills Church exists to make and grow followers of Jesus, full stop. That is our mission, that is our only mission. We must never drift from that mission. We have no other reason to be a church but that mission, to help people start following Jesus and grow as they do so. How do we do this? Well, we do it together by being with Jesus and becoming like Jesus and doing what Jesus did. And so you may hear us say a lot. We want to be and become and do, but there's a word in there we haven't talked enough about. that we're going to talk about the next four weeks. We do it together. We believe that following Jesus is the goal we have for every single person, and that fellowship, yes, I made up a word, fellowship demands fellowship. Or to put it simply, and here's the big idea for the next four weeks, you ready? Together is the only way to follow Jesus. Now, I know that's a bold statement. I'm gonna back it up. Let's start this way. Whether you follow Jesus or not, you have probably heard someone say, I have a personal relationship with Jesus, or you need a personal relationship with Jesus. You may not know that expression.

It's found nowhere in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible are you told to have a personal relationship with Jesus. When Jesus said, come follow me, it was an invitation to join a new community. Now, it's true, he saved everybody individually, but he saved nobody independently. He called no one to have a personal relationship with him. He called everyone to have a shared relationship with him. That's because his aim as rabbi is to form his apprentices into people of radical love, and that kind of formation requires being together. You cannot become a person of radical love living in isolation, and yet many Christians today are seeing their discipleship as an option, not an obligation, when it comes to being together. Like everything else, Christianity is being turned into just one more thing that we do on a screen. And what began as be and become and do has turned into subscribe and download and push play. The church is being viewed as a commodity that delivers services, particularly spiritual content. The church is a commodity. It's not any longer a community. We're settling for the spiritual equivalent of Uber Eats, but people are not becoming more like Jesus this way because content alone will never be enough to form people. Information doesn't guarantee transformation, and nobody understands this better than the persecuted church.

Hundreds of millions of Christians are meeting today around the world in countries who are meeting together, risk imprisonment or worse. They're meeting in places where you might think it would be wise just to stay home and download your faith, but they know in that harsh context, if we're gonna stay faithful to Jesus, we need to do it together. Together is the way that Jesus made and grew followers. I wanna show you that. I wanna show you that our rabbi practiced what he preached. First, because Jesus lived the together life. Together is how he lived. He was fully human, and human beings are incurably relational. There's something wired in the human DNA that wants to be around other people. When I was a boy, my mother would sometimes go to something called a Tupperware party. I said, mom, what is a Tupperware party? Well, a bunch of women meet and we look at plastic bowls. I said, okay, mom, stop kidding. What is it really? The Tupperware genius was the power of gathering. Now today, it might be essential oils or mahjong, and men have fantasy football drafts because we're wired to wanna be together. Why do people go to a bar? You say, well, duh, to drink. No, they can drink at home.

They go to that bar because people want to be with people. You know why? The first chapter of the Bible tells you why. It says, let us make man in our image. You see, God is love. Now, that didn't start when He created the world. God has existed eternally, and He's always been love. Think about it. You can't be love if you're not in a relationship. That's the only way you can be love. God has always existed, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in this beautiful, loving community. And we are divine image bearers. So we have that same desire. There was a song when I was a boy, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. Wrong. People who need people are the only people in the world. And the incarnation is confirmation of this reality. You ever notice when you read

the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the biographies of the life of Jesus, that the majority of the narratives about Jesus depict Him intentionally in the company of other people. Together is how He lived. Now, it's true there are texts where He would go, and He would retreat, and He would be alone just to spend time in intimacy with God. But those retreats were never for the purpose of escaping people. They were for the purpose of refilling His soul so that He could engage people. Jesus was a lover, not a loner. It's one reason, by the way, He put such a priority on public worship. Jesus never missed church. Luke 4. Jesus traveled to Nazareth, where He'd grown up, and on the Sabbath day, He went to the synagogue as He always did.

Now, if anyone has ever lived who could argue, I don't need other people. I can just have my time with God, and that's enough. It would have been Jesus, but that's not how He lived. He never missed church, and He hardly ever missed a party. If you invited Jesus to a party, He was going to show up. In fact, one of the legitimate criticisms of Jesus from the religious establishment was that He was always at a party. He went to parties a lot with a lot of people that the establishment did not think a lot of. But see, Jesus didn't just tolerate people. He genuinely liked people, even people who were not very much like Him. So what do we take away from this? Well, that being more like Jesus means liking people more. That was good, so I'm going to say it again. That being more like people

means you and I need to like people more. That guy at the table next to you in the restaurant that talks too loud, you need to like him. That lady in line at Walmart who's taking too long, you need to like her. That person at work that's just an irritation and so quirky, you need to like them. Being more like Jesus means liking people more. This is how He lived. And His walk backed His talk because together is not only how He lived, it's what He taught. If you could sum up the teaching of Jesus in two categories, it would be pretty simple. Love God, love people. That's what He taught. And He taught that loving people is the primary way we love God. And so if you go back and read in those Gospels, you'll notice that most of the teaching of Jesus

assumes doing life together. In other words, He's not in there giving commandments, telling us to have community. He's assuming that's how we're going to live. And so you may not be real familiar with some of the things Jesus taught, but there's a section in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, 6, and 7. It's called the Sermon on the Mount. Even if you've never heard of it, you've heard phrases from it. Like in chapter 5, there's a section called the Beatitudes. Everyone starts blessing... Blessed are, not blessed is. And everyone ends, theirs is, not yours is. In other words, these beatitudes, these principles for the kingdom are for people living together. Then in chapter six, there's a famous thing called the Lord's Prayer. Jesus teaching us how to pray. It starts, our Father. The first thing Jesus teaches about prayer is that you have a family.

Think about every petition in that prayer. Give us, forgive us. Lead us and deliver us. Jesus did not teach us to only pray for what we need as individuals, but what us needs as a community. And then in chapter seven, even if you've never read it, I bet you've heard of the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When Jesus teaches, He is just expecting that we're gonna do life together, even when together might be a bother. And we are losing that. Especially, I think, in the last 25 years, because again, screens have given us a new definition of together. See, on the screen now, I have thousands of friends without the demands of friendship. No expectations. I expect nothing from you, and you are in no obligation to me. We just exist to post pictures to see who had the best vacation. Don't you dare think you can call me at two in the morning. We're friends with absolutely no demands of friendship. I don't think that's community. Real community will always be demanding, because you can't do together without experiencing conflict and misunderstandings and differences of opinion and difficult personalities.

Could you imagine Jesus ever saying, sometimes you just have to unfriend people? Could you imagine Him ever even using or thinking of that word? What Jesus does, He takes the ethic of community to a level higher than any religious teacher who ever taught, because Jesus said, if you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Jesus says, I'm building a community, I'm building a family, and we're not all gonna be alike, and we're not all gonna be easy to like, but we're building this community on promise, not on preference, and that's what we're losing. We're losing it in our society, and we're losing it even in the church. And I think what's especially exacerbated this loss is the way that we've made an idol out of politics. So I'm just gonna go ahead and jump in the deep water. A while back, I got an email that just scorched me from a family saying they were leaving our church because they did not like my politics. I'm telling you the truth before God, because they did not name what it was they disagreed with. I did not know if they meant they think I'm too much of a Democrat, or if they mean I'm too much of a Republican. See, you don't know what my politics are. I've never told you. I've never endorsed a candidate.

I never will. In fact, if you listen to me preach, you know I'm gonna teach at times and challenge the platforms of both parties because no political party is big enough to contain the kingdom of God. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. I've preached the gospel faithfully for years to that family. I saw them when they were in the hospital. I did a funeral for their loved ones, but they're gone because they can't have fellowship with someone over a political preference. Now, let's say you and I had a conversation about politics, and it's possible we may not agree. I may hold a different view than you on immigration reform or how to fund. public schools, or how to provide health care, or military spending. But shouldn't our allegiance to the kingdom, our acknowledgment of Lord Jesus, our desire to see the world get saved, shouldn't all of that trump our — wait a second, I'm going to change that word. I'm going to change that word. Shouldn't our commitment to the kingdom transcend our political preferences? And if we don't get that, we're never going to become the family Jesus wanted to create. Because real fellowship is not bound by compatibility, it's bound by commonality. What binds us together is our shared confession that Jesus is Lord, and our shared admission

that we all need His grace as much as the other person. Jesus imagined a table surrounded by people that were not like each other, but had decided to love each other. And He didn't just talk about it, He trained people for it. Together is how He lived, it's what He taught, and it's how He discipled. And I think we're all going to agree, Jesus knows more about how to disciple people to follow Jesus than anyone else, right? Nobody knows how to make followers, nobody knows how to grow followers better than Rabbi Jesus. And so it's significant. Jesus didn't give anybody private discipleship lessons. If you were going to learn how to follow Jesus, you were going to learn it with other people. He didn't have an apprentice. He had a small group of apprentices. Mark 3, Jesus went on a mountainside, He called those to whom He wanted. They came to Him, and He appointed 12 that they might be with Him, that He might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. It's true, Jesus sometimes spent time with a large crowd, and it's true, sometimes He had a one-on-one conversation with a person. But you read the Gospels and you realize Jesus spent most of His time leading a small group. He recruited them together. He's training them together to preach and to drive back darkness and the demonic world. And He's going to send them out on a training mission, but He doesn't send anybody by themselves. When He sends them out, He sends them out together. Together is the only way to follow Jesus. Think about this, where in your New Testament does it tell you to do something that will help you become like Jesus and do what Jesus did only by yourself? So next week, I want to show you what the very first church was like. Acts 2, Peter preaches. Many people are discipled and baptized, and they decide to start meeting as a church.

And you can read about it at the end of Acts 2, and you're going to keep reading in one word, together. They met together. They gathered in the temple courts together. They got into each other's homes and they ate together. How did they know to do that? What book did they read? What podcast did they listen to? All they were doing was continuing to live the way they'd been trained. They were just living the way Rabbi Jesus taught them to live. We should too. It's good to gather. I love to go visit a church and gather, but gather is not together. Together, those are the people that know my name and know my story, and we talk about following Jesus. So next week, I want to make available to you some ways that you can find that if you don't have that. There's many ways at our church that you can begin to experience together. I just want to give you an example of what it might look like. So, in 2023, Aaron and Lissette Garcia visited our church for the first time. It was Easter Sunday. They live in a home not far from the North Richland Hills campus. And so they even had their picture taken, and they enjoyed that experience, and they said, we're going to keep coming to that church. They were newly married. Well, they heard we had a group called Enriching Your Marriage. So, they met some other people and learned about following Jesus in marriage together. And from that, they heard about Rooted. So, 2024, they went through Rooted, made new friends. They started meeting with and being together.

They learned about Follow the Way, another chance to grow in the Lord. That's where they met Eric and Tara Doty, an older couple that began to mentor them. In 2025, they joined a community group so that they could have that experience regularly of being together. And then 2026, last spring, on Baptism Sunday, they decided to go public with this new faith, and I had the joy of baptizing them into Christ. And the neat thing about their story is that from the very start, the only way they understand living the Jesus life is doing it with other people. And so, recently, Erin, who's in the Marine Reserves, with only a couple of days' notice, was told to pack and be gone for a couple of months. Lissette is pregnant with their very first baby. And so, now, she's all by herself, but she is not alone. Who's checking on her? Who's saying, come over and have a meal with the family? Who's making sure she's okay? It's all those people that she has been together with. Because Jesus did not come to promote spirituality. He came to produce a new society. Other people cannot decide to follow Jesus for you. But you can't follow Jesus without other people. Who's your together? Now, I didn't say, who's your gatherer? Who's your together? One of the Sundays on my break, I got to preach in Abilene, Texas. That's the town where I went to college and where I preached at my first ministry for 11 years. But I hadn't been there in a while, so it was sweet to go back. And the night before, at Abilene Christian University, where I went to college, there was a big commotion. They have a place on the campus called Jacob's Ladder. It's a beautiful sculpture and fountain. You see, the football team had come out earlier than the other students to begin practicing for the season. And two days before practice started, the coach wanted them to go on a retreat.

He asked the members of the Beltway Church in Abilene to lead that retreat. And Saturday night, one of the teaching pastors, David McQueen, gave a call to follow Jesus, thinking maybe one of the boys might want to go public and do that. And what happened is that 41 young men on that football team decided to get baptized into Jesus. And that was a beautiful thing. But I think just as beautiful is the truth that the next morning, 41 young men got up and went together to church. If you have someone you love in college coming to faith, what would you want for them? To go to church and read the Bible and pray always alone? Or to go to church and read the Bible and pray together? What those young men are reminding us is that following Jesus is a team sport. And you need to be able to name your team. So we'll talk more about it in the week ahead. But this week, I just want you to wrestle with this question. Who is helping you follow Jesus? And who are you helping? Let's pray. God, I'm praying that you would bring a together revival to our church. That we would want to live like Jesus lived and obey what Jesus said. taught and minister to the world the way Jesus did. Together. So deliver us, God, from the illusion and maybe even the vanity of thinking. All I need is a strong will and a good screen. And give us, God, the conviction and the passion to experience the beauty of together. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.