To Become More Like Jesus | Together is the Way | Rick Atchley

Thank you for the interesting show and talk to you later. All right. Take care all. Hello everyone pastor Rick here welcoming you to the hills. I want to welcome our online family and everyone in person today. We're a church of four campuses with a fifth about to open in Weatherford. And today I am preaching live at the West Fort Worth campus. So shout out to all of you at North Richard Hills Keller and Dallas. We're in week three of a series called together is the way and I want to take just a moment and give a shout out. This is the first full week that school is back. I know it's exciting. It's exhilarating. It's exhausting and I want to take a moment to honor all of our teachers and our coaches and our counselors and administrators Hills Church. Can we put our hands together and thank them for what they do and I really do hope you have a great school year. Here's what I know because I also serve in a career that is trying to serve other people when you do it right hardly any attention comes your way and when it goes wrong you get a lot. I appreciate the school that had this automated answering service. You call the school and you would say hello in order to assist you in connecting the right staff member. Please listen to all of your phone options before making a selection to lie about why your child is absent press 1 to make

excuses for why your child did not do his work press 2 to complain about what we do press 3 to swear staff members press 4 to ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several emails press 5 if you wonder us to raise your child press 6 if you want to reach out and touch slap or hit someone press 7 to request another teacher for the third time this year press 8 to complain about bus transportation press 9 and to complain about school lunches press 0 and if you realize that this is the real world and your child must be accountable responsible for his or her own behavior class work and homework that is not the teacher's fault for your child's lack of effort hang up. I love that and I bet some of you teachers do too, but here's something I don't love automated answering machines. I'm from a generation that preferred to talk to a person. I'm that person that'll listen to all the options that finally says if you want to press O you can talk to an operator. I'll do it every time. That's my generation. I understand that my generation would rather talk to a person than a machine and the generation under me would probably rather talk to a machine than a person because they're quite used to it and the generation under them would rather not make the call at all. Why even bother with making a call? I've got apps I can order my groceries. I can get my prescriptions. I can buy new clothes for the kids. Why do I need to talk to anybody? We are developing ways of doing life where human contact is

not necessary. We excel at connectivity. But can I contend that we fail at community? A journalist in Atlantic magazine recently wrote the typical American it seems tax a bunch of people. We should get together before watching tick-tock alone on the couch and then passing out that is Americans have friends. We just never really see them today. There are more ways to relate that have ever existed yet as a society. We are more isolated than ever before 54% of Americans say no one knows them. Well 51% of young mothers 61% of young adults report being lonely frequently. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy who served under the Obama and Trump administration called loneliness the greatest pathology in America today not heart disease not diabetes loneliness. and he argues that it's the equivalent of smoking a pack a day or being obese in terms of its harm to your health. That loneliness is the contributing factor to increased heart disease, anxiety, depression, and even dementia. Now what I'm not going to do in this sermon is put down technology. I'm not as used to it as some of you, but it's the world we live in. We're not going back. Here's the thing. Technology simply isn't designed to form us into people of radical love. It can do what it can do, but what it cannot do is shape us into people who enjoy real community. Only apprenticeship to Rabbi Jesus can do that, and that's why we say the Hills Church exists to make and grow followers of Jesus. We do this together by being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did. We become like Jesus together, and here's why. I've already said that we're made in the image of an eternally relational God. God has always been love,

and love can only exist in relationship. And so Father, Son, and Spirit have always existed in a community of love, and that's who we are made in the image of, which means we cannot thrive as human beings unless we do it together. This is why in all of us there is this longing for belonging, to connect, but what is inhibiting this longing like never before in our society? And believe it or not, I don't think technology is the biggest problem. Now, it exacerbates the problem, but I think the real culprit is an ideology that has taken over our society, an ideology that my grandparents and your great-grandparents never could have imagined, an ideology that for millennia was not dominant, but it is so dominant today in the West we don't even realize it, and that ideology is called the rise of radical individualism. It's an ideology that emphasizes personal autonomy over societal values and norms. And the reason community is so hard is because community is seen as a potential limitation to my personal sovereignty. Now, I'm going to illustrate this, and I'm going to tell you before I do that the illustration I'm going to use is going to make you mad, okay? Especially some of you ladies, so hear me out. Some of you are old enough to remember a blockbuster movie in 1998. It won the Academy Award, and it was called The Titanic. And if, like me, you saw that movie, you were amazed at the stunning special effects. You really did feel like you were there watching a giant ocean liner sink into the frigid Atlantic. But that is not what made that movie so popular and huge. What made it huge was a love story that so resonated with the West. It involved three main characters, Rose, a socialite from England, her narcissistic, boorish fiance, Cal, and Scrappy Jack, a street kid that only got on the boat because he won a pass in a poker game. And Rose cares nothing about Cal. He's a hard person to like. She meets Jack. He's winsome. He's funny. And so what happens? Rose falls in love, and we go with Rose on this journey. But here's the rest of the story. You see, Rose has a mother on the ship with her, and she's a widow. Her husband, Rose's father, has lost all the family money, squandered the wealth. And their only hope of staying in their social strata and living the life they're used to is for Rose to marry Cal.

That's what's best for the whole family. But what are we all doing as we watch a movie? We're all thinking, don't do that, Rose. Follow your heart. Go after Jack. And that's exactly what she does. And we applaud, and we love it, and at the end, we cry. But Rose followed her heart. She didn't do what was best for everybody. She did what was best for Rose. Now, if you played that movie in the first century when Jesus was alive, Rose would not have been a heroine. She would have been a villain. A Jewish audience would have been scandalized that she would even flirt with a man when she's engaged to someone else. And the rest of the world would have been appalled that Rose put her interest above the well-being of the whole extended family. This is how the world thought for millennia. This is how most of the world thinks today, but not where we live. The dominant philosophy for us in the West is that personal happiness is more important than communal ramifications. And how does this affect us in community? Well, we choose communities only as vehicles for our own self-actualization. We ask of the community, will you help me get where I want to go? Maybe if the ladies could relate to the movie illustration, you guys can relate to college sports. Look what's happened in the last few years. We watch a football game now, and it's October in the middle of the season, and what are we thinking? This guy who's playing so well for my team, will we keep him? Or will he go in a portal because he can get more money somewhere else? College students, they aren't thinking about team. They're thinking about where can I go to make the most? Think how it affects the way we do church. So my grandmother lived most of her life in a little church.

It wasn't super healthy. It had a lot of preachers that came through. There was a lot of problems in that little church, and it never dawned on her that she should go to another church. These were her people. Today? Well, I'm changing churches because the music of the church down the street is cooler. I'm changing churches because the pastor said something, didn't agree with my politics. Or how about this? Well, we're not going to church this morning. You know, we had kids sports all day Saturday, and we're exhausted, so we're going to stay home because, you know, I need me some me time. What's happened with radical individualism is we start to see people through a consumer mentality. Why do you think divorce rates have skyrocketed in the last 60 years and birth rates have plummeted? Because we see people through the lens of, what do you do for me? This is radical individualism, and it sells itself as a path to freedom, but the consequences of this ideology in our society are actually enslaving. It's behind the unprecedented rise in anxiety or the inability to value or even to be civil with people that have different views than we have, and the inevitable result is increased isolation. I read just recently about how building homes is changing in America, and it used to be build a home with lots of windows because people want lots of light. Now they want lots of dark. The critical thing is that every room needs a wall where you can put a big screen on, so that even in the family, people can each go to their own room, and one contractor put it this way. We are building homes for people to be alone, but we're still made in the image of God. We still have this longing for belonging, but how can we satisfy a longing for belonging

when we think freedom demands resisting any challenge to our personal desires, and as a follower of Jesus, how can I expect that putting my wants first is ever going to shape me into someone like my rabbi? Here's the thing, Hills Church. If you're a follower of Jesus, we're following the most selfless person who ever lived. Scripture says he emptied himself of all of his rightful privileges so that he could serve others. We follow a rabbi who taught the path to your best self. is dying to yourself. And that's why, if you're going to follow this rabbi, and if you're going to become like him, you're going to have to do it together. Becoming like Jesus requires putting we before me. We just get this one life to live, and we don't get very long. And at the end of this life, the most important thing is not going to be, what did you do? Or what did you own? It's going to be, who did you become? And the only way we're going to become people who love, like Jesus, is by doing life together. I didn't say gather. I said together. The Hebrew writer says, let's think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. Let's not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another daily, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. Why do we gather? We gather so that together, we can motivate each other to become people of love.

If we want the character of Jesus, we're going to have to pursue the community of Jesus. Let me quickly tell you three ways that we must be together to become like Jesus. First, that together is the best way to grow in holiness. Now, I just did a series on the Holy Spirit. So you heard me preach, and you know that I believe that every Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit, and intimate, personal fellowship with the Holy Spirit is available for every believer. But you know what I also preach and believe? I believe that fellowship with the Holy Spirit is personal and communal. And maybe we don't talk about this enough. Look at 1 Corinthians 3 with me. Don't you realize that all of you together are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will destroy anyone who destroys his temple, for God's temple is holy, and you, he's talking collective, plural, you are that temple. Or look at Ephesians 2. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. So together, each of us become a holy place, which means then that my holiness is important for your holiness. See, this is a direct challenge to radical individualism's insistence that,

hey, what I do is my business, and it's not yours. The Bible completely disagrees. Old Testament and New Testament, we understand that what I do affects us, and that I could cost you the anointing of God and the blessing of God because of my sin and indiscretion. I read a article by a journalist named Sebastian Younger, who followed a platoon of US soldiers for over one year in Afghanistan. And he said, one of the things that impressed me was the de facto authority that all the soldiers have to confront each other when they don't live up to the standards of soldiering. Is your night gear vision correct? Have you cleaned your rifle? Have you hydrated and drunk enough water? He watched one day while they were walking along, and one soldier had untied boots, and the other soldier dressed him down severely. Because he cared how he looked? No, because if sniper fire was to hit, and you trip over your shoelaces, you didn't just put yourself in danger, you put the whole platoon in danger. And this is how they understand dealing in a world where there's an enemy that's seeking to kill and destroy. We have to be there for each other. It's hard to swim upstream in a downstream world by yourself. And so scripture says Hebrews three, encourage each other every day, while it's today,

help each other so that none of you will become hardened because sin has tricked you. Your holiness is my business. My holiness is your business. Because together, we're a holy temple of God. God. That's a big difference, by the way, between gather and together. Together is where I can confess my sins to you, and we can confess God's love for us even in our sin. We all need somebody in our lives. We all need another Christian in our lives who loves us enough to be able to say directly to us, is how you're living right now consistent with your stated goal of wanting to become like Jesus. You know who gets this sometimes better than the church? Alcoholics Anonymous. They have a couple of sayings I like. One is, we're only as sick as the secrets we keep. And another is, I get drunk, but we stay sober. We get better together. I love this illustration. We celebrate Jackie Robinson, the first person to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball, and we should. But who doesn't get enough attention is another man, the first black player in the American League the same summer as Jackie. His name was Larry Doby. He's a great player. He's in the Hall of Fame today, and it's 1947. He's playing for the Cleveland Indians. It's his first game, and he walks up to the plate, and you could imagine the language and the demeaning slurs that were aimed at him. He gets up there. He's a great player. He strikes out on three pitches, misses each pitch by a foot. The player after him was named Joe Gordon, an all-star second baseman, a great baseball player. And that day, they were facing a pitcher that Joe Gordon usually blasted. Joe Gordon goes up to the plate after Larry, strikes out on three pitches, misses each pitch by two feet, goes and sits down next to a glum Larry Doby, and just puts his hands over his head. And nobody ever asked Joe, did you strike out on purpose? But here's what you need to know for the rest of his career. When Larry Doby would get up to go to the field, he would pick up Joe's glove as a sign of respect and toss it to him. The next year, the Indians won the World Series, and Larry Doby was their best

player. And it's partly because there was a teammate who said, when you're your best, it's best for all of us. So I'm here to make sure you become the best you can be. Listen, we become more like Jesus when we're helping each other become more like Jesus. Together is the best way for us to grow in holiness. Another thing, I think it's the healthiest way for us to heal our woundedness. Life is hard. Following Jesus doesn't make our lives storm free. It makes our life stormproof, but not storm free. We're all going to have hard, hard things to deal with, and nobody gets better by suffering alone. I come by my introversion naturally. I'm a son of my father. My father didn't really like crowds of people. He didn't like groups. And so I didn't grow up in a church that ever had small groups. But after we left home, my mother and father moved, and they went to a church. And small groups was a part of their culture, and my mom wanted to be in a small group, and my dad didn't, but they got in it, and they did it. And then my mom got cancer, and she went down that cancer road for five years. And that small group loved her so well. And when she died, you couldn't dynamite my father out of that small group. He would miss time with his kids and grandkids if it was the night that his small group was meeting, because they suffered with him and helped him carry his grief. And see, by the way, that's another difference between gather and together. I said earlier, when all you have is gather, nobody's ever going to challenge you about how you're living. Here's another difference. When you have together instead of gather, you don't always have to be fine. Now, if all you have is gather, what's the official word? You walk up to people at church, how are you doing? Fine. Church is for fine people. Are you fine? Tell us. If you're not fine, you stay home until you get fine, and then come back and tell us you're fine. That's what we do when all we have is gather. But when you have together, you can have a conversation like I had this week with... the brother. How you doing? I'm not doing well. We could talk and encourage and pray. You know, even Jesus needed friends to help him carry the cross. It says in Galatians 6 to carry each other's burdens. You know, there's a reason the word encourage appears over a hundred times in the New Testament. Pour courage into each other. Let's help

each other carry the stuff we have to carry. We're supposed to hurt together. And the more we do, the more like our rabbi we become. You see, we before me actually produces the best version of me. Together, we grow in holiness. Together, we heal our woundedness. And one I believe it's the only way to combat my selfishness. Here's the greatest challenge to me, becoming more like Jesus. You ready? I love me some me. That's the biggest obstacle. The only way to overcome a me-centered life is to live a we-focused life. Some of you remember this name Yao Ming, the first really great basketball player from China, Hall of Famer. And he was asked after he retired, you know, China has so many great athletes in sports like diving and swimming and gymnastics, some track and field events. Why not more basketball players, more soccer players? And he said, you forget we grew up in the one child policy. We didn't grow up with brothers and sisters. We didn't grow up learning how to share. We didn't grow up learning how to cooperate. Our rabbi is trying to form us into his image. He's trying to shape us into people of radical love. And the only way he can do that is to put us together. And here's what he's going to do. He's going to fill us with his spirit. And then he's going to place us in a community where we have to serve each other. So during study break, my wife and I saw four of our church planters. I've talked about two of them. Let me talk about a third. We got to be with Josiah Weiss and Axiom Church in the Austin area. And they're meeting in a local school. And, you know, it takes a lot to set up church for a school. They meet in the school cafeteria and they're less than a year old. They already got about 150 people. But here's what this means. How do you have church in a place not set up for church? How do you have kids ministry? How do you do it? Well, you get there early. What this means on a typical Sunday is that a huge core of their members, and some of people who aren't members yet, get there at 7 o'clock to help set up for a service that starts at 10, lasts to about 1130. And then they have to tear everything down and they don't go home till after 1 o'clock. From 7 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon. That's what it means to have church. Now, here's the beautiful thing. From the beginning, they're understanding and creating a culture where if this is going to happen, we're going to have to do it together. See, here's the final difference between gather and together. You don't have to take up a cross to gather. Together asks me to die to my opinions and preferences and serve the people I might not even like. You see, Christian community is not a utopia.

It's a people we commit to who need grace just as much as we do. See, radical individualism treats frustrating people as disposable. I will unfriend you. I will block you because you're an obstacle to my personal happiness. You're disposable. But our rabbi wants us to treat all people as valuable. Valuable enough to die for. And by the way, if you will only settle for perfect community, you're never going to have community. Becoming like Jesus demands getting over yourself and loving and dying for people that you might not even like. This could be why right now, God is putting a difficult person in your church life because God is trying to grow and shape you into a person. You say, pastor, I don't have any difficult people in my church life. Well, maybe you're the difficult person that God is trying to put in someone else's life so they can become a person of radical love. But listen to me. Simply gathering is never going to form us into people who love like Jesus. Together is the only way that happens. I have a retired pastor friend named Randy Frazee. And when he was much younger, he had a young son who was born without a left hand. And so he's in Bible class when he's about four or five. And the teacher was doing something some of us can remember from when we were young, or how to do church. Maybe you remember this. This is the church, and this is the steeple. And open the doors, and there's all the people. And she was telling the kids, let's do that. And in her horror, she realized, I've got a child who doesn't have a left hand. But before she could stop, Randy's son's best friend,

they'd been in that nursery at church since they were babies, reached his left hand over, and they made the church together. So, who are you being the church with? Do you have together or just gather? Well, I want to close and get really, really practical. How do you know if you have together? Two questions. Number one, who am I caring for? I like to tell the story about the child psychologist that was famous for saying, don't spank the child, just love him. Well, he's extending his driveway. He's just used his trowel to smooth out all the wet cement, and a little boy runs right through it, makes a mess. He's angry. He catches the boy, throws him over his knee, about to spank him. Someone said, Professor, I thought we're supposed to love the child, not spank him. He says, I do love the kid in the abstract, but not in the concrete. Okay, here's my point. Who do you love in the concrete? Who do you do one another stuff with? Who do you encourage or admonish or rejoice or grieve with? Or maybe another way to say it is, who would call you at 2 in the morning in a crisis? See, acting in love in the concrete is a sign that we're getting our act together. Who am I caring for? Second question.

Who am I sharing with? Who would you call at 2 in the morning? Because you need help carrying a burden. Who are the people where you don't have to be fine? Do you have a community where people don't just know your name, but they know your story? Because to deny yourself is to disclose yourself. Who are you caring for? Who are you sharing with? And the great reward that radical individualism will never give you is that it's when you lose your life that you actually save it. That's what Rabbi Jesus says. I'll say it again. We just have one life and we don't have that long. And when we meet Jesus, the most important thing is not going to be, well, what did we do or what did we own? But who did we become? Did we become people who live in love like Jesus? I'll say it again. There's only one way to become more like Jesus together. So, would you pray with me? So, God, would you give us more passion about wanting to be like Jesus? That that's the most important thing. Let our hearts burn, God, with this desire. I want to follow Jesus. Every part of my life, I want to live it like Jesus would live it if he was in my place. And if that's our burden of passion, God, you want to

have to tell us to do together. That'll be the only way we can do it. And so God, give us a greater desire to be like Jesus. And give us people who want to be like Jesus so we can follow Him together. Pray in His name.