Transforming Encounter - Northland's Mission

Throughout life, we have encounters that change us. Some of them are transformative, like completely reorienting your life. So the before and after picture is very obvious. I imagine you can think in your own life or if you just thought about the world and movies and stories you've seen, these kind of encounters. Like when Peter Parker met the radioactive spider, or Bruce Banner, met the gamma rays, or Luke Skywalker. I met Obi-Wan Kenobi. I've been kind of living in a girl house for the last 22 years. And so it's when Elizabeth Bennett meets Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Say that you go. There you go. These encounters that the before and after is extremely obvious. I imagine in your own life, you can start thinking of encounters you've had. that were just transformative to you, that radically changed to you. When I was 28 years old, I met my wife, Leslie, we celebrate 25 years later this summer in June, just radically changed my life. I can see it before and after moment. But we want to talk today, not about just some transforming encounter, but the most critical, transforming encounter a person can have. It's the encounter that Moses had at the Burning Bush or Paul on the road to Damascus when he met Jesus. And it's not the kind of supernaturalness of that encounter that's impressive Moses and his burning bush of Paul and his blinding light. It's the person he was encountering. that they were both encountering God. And that encounter radically changed them. When I was 14 years old, I was alone in the living room of my house, reading a book. I'd been raised in church. So I'd gone to church, but wasn't a follower of Jesus reading a book about the Bible. At the end of the chapter, the author just says something like you should give your life to Christ. You know, you need to accept him. And I said, I do. And I did. And there was no blinding light, and there was no burning bush. I remember looking outside, and it was a sunny day, and there were the trees. And I'd given my life to Christ, got baptized the next week. But that encounter transformed my life completely, radically transformed my life. We're starting a 4 week sermon series. This week over our mission statement as a church, as we've launched our campus at Riverside. There preaching through the same series, and we wanted to reaffirm, why are we here? If you're here on Sundays, as worship begins, you hear our mission statement in the opening video, but often we get so comfortable with something, we get so used to hearing it that we don't pay attention to it. So for 4 weeks, we're going to break down the 4 parts of our mission statement. Here's our mission statement, it's in its entirety. It says, we exist. to lead people to experience a transforming encounter with God. A growing relationship with Jesus, authentic community with others, in fulfilling service opportunity. So each week we're going to take a part of this mission statement and unpack it. This week, the main idea of this message is just the 1st part of that mission statement. We exist to lead people to experience a transforming encounter with God, that kicks off this message, not tied to one verse in particular, but we're going to look at the biblical story and see how God is showing us this. And what he shows us 1st is that everyone needs a transforming encounter with God. And when we say transforming, we don't just mean it kind of tinkers with things. It's a complete reorientation of life. It's the difference between saying, I need a heart stent, or I need a bypass, or I need to get a new valve put in my heart, versus I need a heart transplant. I need a completely brand new heart. When we talk about a transforming encounter with God, we're saying that we need to be completely redone. We see this in Jeremiah, just one place, it's throughout scripture. Jeremiah 17, 9, Jeremiah, the prophet says it this way, the heart is deceitful above all things. And beyond cure. Who can understand it. Jeremiah saying, it's not that we need some medicine to help regulate our heart, that we need a complete heart transplant. How did we get into this condition of needing this transforming encounter, of needing this radical change in our life? And that takes us to scripture. We believe here at Northland, that the Bible is God's message to us to explain who he is and what he's doing in this world. It shapes us to understand the world, the way it really is. There's a lot of competing worldviews in the marketplace. We open this book to say, God, show us what you like. We don't know what you're like apart from you showing us. I don't get to create God the way I want him to be. He's shown me the way he is. So we open the pages of scripture and just say, here's what the Bible says. Here's what the Bible is telling us. What's interesting about this book is it's not a self-help book, although it will help you. And it's not a rule book, although it has rules in it. It's a story. At the heart of how it's put together, it's God telling us the story of himself and how all of that works. It's a certain type of story also, that there's all sorts of stories you can read, novels you can pick up. I love reading, so you can read, you know, epic war fantasies, you can read all these different ones. The Bible's a love story. And there's a lot of different types of love stories that exist. You can have the idea of, you know, love at first sight story. You have the story where enemies who dislike each other, eventually fall in love. Are they just friends? They're just hanging out. And over time, they fall in love. The Bible is a breakup story. And it's a story of a couple that was together at the beginning of the story. Through infidelity, through one of the members cheating on the other, they split apart. And the whole time you're asking the question, will they ever get back together? Or is this over? It's this couple that we saw at the beginning. gonna fix things or is the separation, the infidelity, the unfaithfulness going to end them? The Bible is a story of hope and reconciliation. We know the story. If you've been in church any length of time, you know this story, but I want to refresh your memory. And if you're new at church, this is the God that we serve, that we worship here. I want to put a picture on the screen that just kind of plots the average kind of breakup story if you went to the movie. So, guys, if your wife said, let's go to the movies, you're heading to the romantic comedy, probably, you're probably not getting the war epic, unless, you know, if she did something wrong that week, and then you can say, hey, off to the war epic, we go. This is just a standard plot line. Soulmates are together, there's a betrayal. There's this pursuit by one of them. There's this grand gesture, there's reconciliation, and then happily ever after. That's just the plot. You can stick that on a whole lot of breakup stories. That comes straight from scripture. There are some twists, some things in the story of the Bible, though, that are interesting. So let's unpack this storyline and see what the Bible says. Let's start with soulmates. This idea that they were just made for each other. You watch those movies or read those books and you just go, oh, these two, they're soulmates. They are just made to fit together. That's God and humanity. Genesis one, the Bible says that God said, let us make man in our image. Male and female, let's make them, we'll give them stewardship over the whole earth, and we see God and humanity meant to be together, that we were created for God. To be in relationship with him. That's the purpose for our creation. Now, God, in his graciousness to Adam and Eve, in the garden said, hey, I've put you here. You're made for me, but enjoy all the other stuff also. Enjoy the garden, enjoy the trees, enjoy the work you're going to do. All those are wonderful, good things. But he says, we're made for each other. We see this in 3 passages randomly. You can go throughout the Bible and find passages that say this. Psalm 956 says, oh, come. Let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. Psalm 150, verse 6. Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord. Revelation 411. Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things. And by your will, they existed and were created. We, you and I were made for God. There's a soulmate relationship. But if you've read your Bible at all, you've gotten to the 3rd chapter of Genesis. So it doesn't take long for the story to tell us that things went wrong, and it doesn't take long in our own life. You don't have to read the Bible to know that things aren't right in this world. We grow up. At a certain point, we find ourselves hiding in the closet from mom and dad because we did something wrong. We feel it deep down that we've messed up. And then we just grow up and we realize the world is a broken, painful place. And if we're honest with ourselves, we realize I've contributed to that also. I've been a part of that. That's called the betrayal. It's a place where the relationship was ruptured. We see it in Genesis chapter 3, where Adam and Eve were told, enjoy everything. I've made this world for you. I've made you for me is what God says. The only thing, don't eat of this one tree. A serpent comes into the garden, and we know what Adam and Eve do, because we've all done it ourselves. The thing that we should avoid, we grasp for, And they take the fruit, and they said, it looks like it would give me life. They don't listen to God. They don't trust God. They don't want God. They want this fruit. They want this lesser thing. The thing he created. The thing he made, they reach for, and they bite. And they die. They cut themselves off from life. And we've all done it too. We've all done this. Paul says it this way in Romans chapter one. Verses 21 to 23 says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise. They became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, and birds, and animals, and creeping things. Humanity, all of us, at one time in our life, said something is more important than God. Something is more important to me than God. That could be some sinful activity you do. Or it could be something good, like family, or friends, or just being good at your job. You think that's the most important thing in my life. That's your idol. That's what has replaced God. You see, the Bible isn't a book primarily when we pick it up about morality, about how do we live in such a way to be good citizens, to be good people. Our sinfulness, the things we do wrong are simply symptoms of a broken, defective heart. And if all we did was clean up our behavior, we haven't fixed the problem. Let's just imagine hypothetically. I don't think we can do this, but imagine hypothetically, we offered a 10 week course here at Northland. And if you went through it, you would never do anything wrong ever again. No bad thoughts, no lying, no cheating, no stealing. You would do nothing wrong. And all we do is change your behavior. We haven't fixed the real problem. Because the real problem is a relationship. Imagine parents. If we could take your kids, and put them in a 10 week course, and they would never misbehave again. They would never do anything wrong. But they didn't love you. Would you think the course was a success? Husbands, wives. What if we took your spouse? And in a 10 week course, they never did anything wrong again in your relationship, but they didn't love you. Have we fixed anything? First, we know that wouldn't happen. If they don't love you, they are gonna do wrong things. eventually. But even if we could fix all the behavior. It's a heart issue. It's a relationship issue. God's concerned primarily with our heart. That's where it starts. Until you fix the heart, the outward behavior, which is the symptom of the defective heart, you're just treating the symptom by saying, okay, I'm not gonna lie anymore. I'm not going to get drunk anymore. I'm not going to cheat anymore. I'll be a better person. The very 1st commandment is, have no other gods before me. Simply changing our behavior doesn't fix the problem, and we know, we know, that we can't simply change our behavior. that we don't have it within us to do that. But there is this betrayal that has seeped into the very core of humanity, where we turned our back on God and chased after lesser things. We've given our love to lesser things than him. And in every story that's a breakup, there's then the pursuit. We see that God is calling us to a transforming encounter. Most often. In fact, almost all the time, in a breakup story, the one doing the pursuing, the one who's actually chasing the person is the one who cheated. So someone cheats, and then they chase the person. And was saying, I wonder if the other person's going to forgive them. I wonder if they're going to allow them back. I wonder if they will have that within them to forgive them. The shockingness of the pursuit in scripture is that we as humans don't seek God. Orn't faithfulness is complete. We're not out looking for him. We've put something else in that spot. Paul says that, that we replace God. The ultimate God with something else. And that he's the one that's pursuing us. From the moment of the breakup, from the moment of humanity's unfaithfulness in the Garden of Eden, God's been pursuing us. He calls Abraham in chapter 11 of Genesis, and he says, I'm going to make you into a great nation and through your people. I'm gonna bless the world. I'm going to bring people back to me. The whole Old Testament story is leading up to God's pursuit and his grand gesture. We love watching love stories in that pursuit. wondering if it's going to work out. And it always leads to the grand gesture, right? This moment where the one doing the pursuing does something so amazing, so kind of out there that you go, this is it. is your decision point. They run through the airport. And they chase them down before they get on the plane and say, here's your last chance. My wife's favorite movie. When she was growing, one of them was say anything. So if you're from the 80s, you'll know the reference to Anthony as he holds his boombox over his head and say anything. And he plays the song and he says, can I win back Diane? And you just go, oh, look at that moment, that grand gesture. Here's the grand gesture that God did. John 316, for God so loved the world, that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world. to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. God has been pursuing humanity, since humanity cheated on him. He's been pursuing you. Since you cheated on him. So much so that God sends his own son, who is in glory with the Father, to become human, to humble himself, to become one of us. and to step into a world, of darkness, and hatred, and to offer love and light, and life to the world, and to be rejected, because the ultimate grand gesture, Peter describes it this way, says he, Jesus himself, bore our sins in his body, on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep. But have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. The grand gesture in scripture, is God becoming human and God dying for you. Jesus on the cross is the grandest pursuit gesture in the history of stories. Everything else pales in comparison to what God did, to call back to himself, his unfaithful people, his soulmates that were made for him. And he dies on a cross, but he doesn't stay dead. If you just stay dead, then all of this is meaningless. We went through that throughout Easter. The resurrection is crucial. If Jesus isn't resurrected, then this meal we just had is just remembering some guy who died and stayed dead. But if he's alive, it says, we remember his death until he returns. that we have this pursuit and this grand gesture. But then the question is, is there a reconciliation? Peter, when he was giving the 1st gospel message. Gospel just means the good news of who Jesus is and what he did and how God is calling us back to himself in Acts chapter 2. He told the people that, hey, you've rejected your savior. You've rejected your God when you crucified him on the cross. And it says they were cut to the heart, and they asked Peter, what must we do? And he says this in Acts 2.38. And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And ask Peter, what do we do? He didn't say, hey, here's what you need to do. I need you to quit, you know cussing as much. And I need you to be nicer to your spouse. And I need you to make sure your taxes, if you haven't done them yet. They almost do, are honest, you're paying your fair share. I just need you to be a good person. He doesn't say that. He says, repent, and the repentance he's speaking of is not just of the wrong things you did. That's the symptom. He says, repent of rejecting God. and be baptized. This is our baptistry here. What happens in this baptistry as a person stands here? And when they go into the water, what they're saying is, I'm accepting Christ, not, I'm just rejecting bad things in my life. I promise not to lie anymore. I promise not to cheat anymore. I promise to be a kind of person, to be a more generous person. I promise to love people. All of those are symptoms. of a relationship with Jesus, where we want to be that way, and we're empowered to be that way. But what baptism is, is me saying, I reject the God that I have been serving, the idol I've created, and I accept you, Jesus. And then flowing from that is this transformed life. Jesus says it this way in John chapter 3. He says, Jesus answered him, this is Nicodemus, a guy who would come to Jesus just asking, what's up with you? What are you doing? What are you teaching? And Jesus said to Nicodemus. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a 2nd time into his mother's womb and be born? He said, this is impossibility, is what Nicodemus thought. And Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is one of the flesh, is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit, is spirit. When we turn to God and say, save me, I admit that I've run from you, I admit that I've rebelled against you. I admit that I haven't made you, my God, I've made something else, my God. I trust you, says that the spirit then makes us new. He gives us the heart transplant. We don't do it ourselves. You don't put yourself on anesthesia, and then kind of replace your own heart. You can't do it bit by bit. I'll take this little piece out today, and then I'll fix this, and then I'll fix that, and then this will change, and this behavior will get fixed, and then God will love me. God already loves you. He wants to give you a new heart. that is aligned with him. We simply say, I trust you. Jesus says, that was just born of the spirit. His spirit. Once we've accepted him, we're then empowered by the Spirit, to live for him, to grow closer to him, that's next week. Matt's going to talk about we exist to lead people to experience a growing relationship with Jesus. Right now, we're just talking about this transforming encounter, this moment of coming to Christ. This moment of reconciliation. Put the picture back up about the plot story. We see the soulmates, that God made us for himself, that we were made for God. You were made for God. Anything less than him. is less than what you were made for. And that doesn't mean the things of this world are bad necessarily. It doesn't mean family's bad. God's a big fan of family. He's a huge fan of friendship and of love. He created all the plants and animals, all the things we enjoy. He made all of those, and he said, enjoy them. But we enjoy them in relationship with him. We betrayed him. I've betrayed him. Youve betrayed him. He pursued us. His grand gesture on the cross. If you've accepted him, you've been reconciled. And then we have this happily ever after. We all know that we haven't reached that yet. It's guaranteed. We remember his death until he comes in the Lord's Supper. But we'll have funerals in 2026. We'll have sorrow and tears. And we'll even have moments as believers where we don't live up. to our relationship, where we are found to be unfaithful at times, and we go to God in confession and say, I'm sorry. And he forgives us. He says, keep following. Keep moving forward. But we see in Revelation 211 to 4 this picture of this happily ever after that God has with humanity. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the 1st heaven and the 1st earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and he will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. That's the end of the story of scripture. That's the hope we can have in a world that's falling apart that looks like there is no stability. We know the truth. Christ has defeated death. And he has risen again because he loves us. He pursued us. He pursued you. So what do we do with this? How do we live that out? Here's our mission statement, the 1st part. We exist to lead people to experience a transforming encounter with God. Let me break that down. If you're a member here at Northland. If you joined with us in kind of covenant membership saying, I want to be a part of this family. I want to be a part of this church. We is the 1st statement. We. It's not the organization exists. It's we. The church is the people. We, that means all of you. If you're a member, this is what, as Northland, we have committed ourselves to. We exist. We exist. This is the main thing. Transforming encounters, leading people to experience a transforming counter is not a side hustle for Northland Church. It's not like we've got all these other good things we do. We want to care for the community. We want to do all these other things. And by the way, if we have time, we're going to hopefully lead people to have a transforming encounter. It's the main thing. It's not the side quest. It's the main quest of Northland Church. We exist. Each of you who God is brought here exist to lead people. to lead people to an experience. We are always excited as our staff gets together, as we go through more about North, and we have one coming up soon, as people come. We hear of people who have moved into the community, who are believers, who plant their life here, some 18 years ago. That was me. We were already believers. We were already following. We came through the doors, we eventually joined the church, and that's always exciting. that God has brought someone new, one of his followers to plant their life here, to help us pull the rope on our mission statement, to accomplish what God wants us to do here. But we exist to lead. We want to see new believers. People who haven't given their life to Christ, who don't have the hope that we have. We rejoice when believers join us, but if all we do is kind of say, hey, the community's growing, this zip code's growing, More people are moving in, the putting apartments up left and right. I'm sure someone who's a believer is gonna show up in the area. They're going to look for a church. We show up high on the Google search, they're going to come here, we have really good coffee, we're really nice, we love Jesus, and they plant their life here. That's amazing. If that's all we do, if that's how we grow, we're missing our mission. We exist to lead people, who never heard this. We exist so they can repent. Be baptized. But get in this water and give their life to Christ and commit their life to him. We exist to lead people to experience a transforming encounter with God. We can't create that experience. That's something the Holy Spirit does in the person. We can pray that they would have, that we can preach in a way, teach in a way, share in a way that they would have that. But we can't do that. That's God's job. Our job is just to tell people the story. Your job, my job. We, the we job, is to share your faith with others. This week in our life group, one of the questions we're going to ask is, who can you share your faith with? Not what time of the day you're going to stand on the street corner and just tell random people, what a person you know, in your family, a friend, you can send a text to, you can talk to, a coworker. Who can you be praying about to share your faith with? We're praying as a staff and deacons and several others. Last year or this year, we want to see 50 baptisms at Northland. And that number isn't just, hey, let's hit a number. It's 50 people who experience a transforming encounter with God, 50 people who hear the good news that God loves them, 50 people that then give their life to God and realize I was made for God. I was made for him. I was created for him. And everything else in their life, even the difficulties and the struggles and the pains and the sorrows, find meaning and purpose. and ultimate fulfillment in him. We exist to do this. But we never want to leave a worship service, and just assume everyone here is a believer, and everyone has experienced that. So we always want to offer an invitation. Have you experienced the most transforming encounter, you can have in your life, which is an encounter with the God who created you. You were made for God. You weren't made for whatever your current God is. You were made for Jesus. And he's calling you home. He's pursuing you. He's made the grand gesture of dying for your sins and rising again. He's the one that completely satisfies. If you're putting your hope for satisfaction in life and anything else, it will let you down. It could be, you're putting it in things that obviously will let you down. It's like, man, I just, I'm just putting my hope in the party life. You know that's going to let you down, but it could be, I just want to love my family. I want to have the best family I could have. I want to love them completely. That will let you down. Even if no one does anything wrong. It's not meant. My family, my wife, and kids, my parents, my brother aren't meant to bear the weight of divinity. Only God can bear that weight. They're not meant to be my ultimate satisfaction. They're part of the, all these things will be added onto you. Jesus said seek 1st God. and who he is. And then all the other stuff. He says, I'll add to you. I'll give to you. And then they'll be in their right place. They'll be in their right position in life. You were made for God. If you're here and you haven't given your life to God. Our worship teams are going to come up and lead us in a time of worship. We're going to be in the back corner over here. It's our prayer corner. If you want to come and talk about what it means to follow Christ. Just head back that way during the song. We'll talk with you You can write on your connect card. Hey, reach out this week. I want to talk about a transforming encounter and what it means to follow Christ. This God who has pursued me, this God who made the grand gesture of love for me by dying on a cross, to cover my sins, to deal with my rebellion, and to give me a brand new heart, to love him. We exist. To lead people to experience, a transforming encounter with God. Will you join me in prayer? Father, we love you. And we praise you that you offer us a new heart. to replace our rebellious one. Father, that you pursued us to the point of death on a cross. that you defeated death. And overcame our sin. And Father, I pray that for those of us who know you, that you would strengthen us in our walk with you, help us to grow closer to you each day. And there's someone here that doesn't know you. Well, your spirit would move. and pressure them, like you did in Acts 2, and they said, what do we need to do? Father, that we would repent, trust you. Repent and come home to you. and experience the transforming encounter of meeting the God for whom we were made. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.