You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet
From the Series: Greater Things
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: February 8, 2009
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Transcript
I want to welcome everybody at all five of our locations, Ebenezers Coffeehouse, Union Station, Ballston Common Mall, Georgetown and can we give it up for Kingstowne! As we launch our fifth location, we are so excited about being a part of the Kingstowne community. It is a joy to welcome you for the first time.
We are kicking off a new series of messages this weekend called Greater Things. Would it be alright if I share a little bit of history? I think we’ve got some folks here for the first time, obviously at Kingstowne and I want to share a little bit of back-story. I went to seminary in the Chicago area and actually that’s where I grew up in a western suburb called Neighborville, and my Laura and I thought we would live there forever. Our family was there, we love Chicago-style pizza, and Michael Jordan was still playing for the Chicago Bulls. Why would you want to live anyplace else? Besides the sub-zero wind-chill. While I was in seminary, we visited my roommate and his wife, who had moved into the D.C. area. I had never been to D.C. My brother came to D.C. on his 8th grade trip and I remember seeing the pictures and I anticipated my trip but by the time I was in 8th grade, budget cuts or something, we went to the Octagon House in Watertown, Wisconsin. Has anybody been there? You’re not missing much! It’s a house with eight sides! Not that I’m bitter or anything…
So we came out to D.C., stayed with my college roommate, and it’s hard to describe, but we drove down Pennsylvania Avenue and I fell in love with this city. What an amazing place! So when I neared the end of seminary, we just started praying, “God, where do You want to take us, what do You want us to do?” To make a long story short, Laura and I packed all of our earthly belongings into a U-Haul truck and we moved out to D.C. We didn’t have a place to live but just by faith, we felt like this was where God was taking us and we stayed with my roommate and his wife for a few days until we could find an apartment. We found an apartment in Kingstowne! That’s where we lived when we moved here. So we moved to the D.C. area, by the way, that was in the Middle Ages, there wasn’t the movie theater, there wasn’t the Macaroni Grill and there wasn’t even a Wal-mart! We beat Wal-mart to Kingstowne!
Let me fast forward, in January of 1996, we inherited a core group of 19 people and we were meeting in a D.C. public school and our first Sunday was the weekend the Blizzard of ’96 came through the East Coast and we got two feet of snow on a Saturday and then our Grand Opening was Sunday. I remember driving out of Kingstowne into the city, and Van Doren, it’s not a real steep hill but it was snowy and icy and I had to get out and push our ’91 Ford Taurus, I think it was only us and the salt trucks on 395, but we make it into the city and when we showed up at the school, it was a little bit of a let-down, three people showed up – myself, my wife, and Parker, who was just a baby at that point. Of course the up side is that we experienced a 633% growth spurt the next week! 19 people showed up the next Sunday.
I’m not gonna lie to you, the early days were rough. I remember starting services with six or eight people and I used to lead worship, scary! And I remember distinctly that I used to close my eyes during worship because it was too discouraging to open them. We were doing our best but there wasn’t a whole lot there. Then something really bad happened that turned out to be really good. The D.C. public school where we were meeting closed down because of fire code violations. So we are on the verge of becoming a homeless church, and one day I walk into Union Station and almost on, call it a spiritual whim, I walked into the theatre and asked if they’d ever considered letting a church meet there on a Sunday morning and the next thing I knew, God opened an amazing door of opportunity and we started meeting at Union Station and it has been a beautiful ride. Did you know Union Station is the most visited destination in D.C.? Can we give it up for our Union Station location? 25 million people pass through the Station every year, we’ve got our own parking garage. How many churches have their own subway system?! It’s awesome! Then it grew on us, we like the big screens and the comfortable seats and the smell of popcorn. It’s our incense! So doing church in a movie theater just became part of our DNA and our vision is to meet in movie theaters across the metro area, and that’s how we got to Kingstowne! There it is. Such a joy, we can’t wait to see what the Lord is doing and what the next chapter holds. It is a joy for us to extend our family and to serve and to be a part of the Kingstowne community.
If you have a Bible, turn to John Chapter 1, or you can follow along on the screens. Here’s what we’re going to do, over the next couple of weeks, we are going to look at three stories from the gospel of John. There’s a little phrase – greater things – that is repeated three times, John 1, John 5, John 14. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to break these down, and there’s what I want to do, I think sometimes we read a passage real quick and we don’t really digest it, we don’t absorb it, it goes in one ear and out the other, so I want to walk real slowly through this story this weekend, and I think by the time we are done, the Lord is going to speak into our lives, and you’re going to be encouraged by what He has to say.
The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, "Follow me."
Now, for the record, the invitation that Jesus extended 2, 000 years ago still stands, He is still inviting people to follow Him. I want to talk about what that means, because they physically followed Jesus, we are called to follow Him in multi-dimensional ways. Can I say up front that I hope this weekend that some of you accept this amazing invitation to follow Christ?
Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
I better give us a little bit of backdrop here. The Old Testament prophets, hundreds of years before Jesus was born, prophesied about a Messiah that would come and save the Jewish nation. There were a lot of misconceptions and misperceptions. A lot of the leaders, the rabbis and the Pharisees were looking for a political savior that would help free the Jewish nation from Roman occupation, but the truth is, Jesus came to confront a much more dangerous and insidious foe – our own sin. He didn’t come to necessarily change these external circumstances, He came to change people from the inside out. So, He shows up, He came to forgive our sin, to heal our hurt, to give us a new lease on life. Now, it’s interesting, there are more than 400 prophesies in the Old Testament pointing to the Messiah. This is absolutely incredible. They told everything from the place where the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem to the fact that He would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, the specificity is amazing, even to the fact that He would be crucified, which wasn’t even a form of execution when the prophesy was made, but not only that, but that they would gamble for his clothing. What I’m saying is, there is amazing detail pointing to the identity of the Messiah fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ. But here’s the thing, most of these hadn’t happen yet in John 1, this is the front end of Jesus’ ministry, so this is quite a claim. You need to catch what Philip is saying here. He says, ‘We have found the One that we have been looking for and waiting for for thousands of years.’ This is a bold claim, and given that, you can hardly fault Nathanial for his response, he was a little skeptical. Here’s what he said, verse 46: "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked. And here’s Philip’s response: "Come and see," said Philip.
Let me just zoom out for a second. This little statement, Come and see, does a pretty good job of summarizing our philosophy of ministry. What we have tried to do over the years is create a church, create an environment where people can come and see who Jesus is. One of the reasons we like meeting in movie theaters is because it gives people the opportunity to seek from the shadows. Maybe some folks don’t feel comfortable walking into a church, but somehow, being able to seek in the shadows… Now, listen to me, at some point, we want people to come out of the shadows and into the light and go public with their faith by way of baptism or connect with other people or get in a small group and build relationships, so we want people to have the full experience, but we’re alright with ‘come and see, you need to check this out.’ Let me put it this way, last weekend, I spoke at our Ballston location, hey while we’re on this track, can we give it up for Ballston? I was at Ballston, and afterward, we went out to lunch at Rock Bottom in the mall. Here’s the deal, we had our NCC Super Bowl last weekend and there’s no way I’m going to miss that, so when we got to Rock Bottom, we didn’t really have time to eat. So what we did was we ordered the Rock Bottom Sampler. I highly recommend it, but we got the bill and Laura was like, “We got one sampler! This is as much as our entire family eating out.” But it had everything, the nachos, so good, it had wings, it had taquitos, it was downright good. I love samplers! Is anybody with me? A little bit of this and little bit of that, a taste test. In a sense, what Philip was saying to Nathaniel was, ‘Come on and get a little taste test, come and check this out.’
Here’s my concern, I think all too often, if you’re going to put your faith in Christ, this is a huge decision, I believe that your eternal destiny rests upon this decision and we just happen to believe that the most important decisions ought to be the most informed decisions. You owe it to yourself, you need to come and see, you need to see this guy, the things He is doing, He is healing people and casting out demons! You gotta hear this guy!
So here are a few ways we invite you to come and see at National Community Church. One is we have our weekend experience so you can seek from the shadows, but there are a couple of other ways. This is so cool, we have a podcast and webcast. Last year, we had people tune in from 83 countries and we are reaching thousands of people via those mediums. Some of them are NCCers that come and go, people in the State Department, people from Timbuktu and we can all stay connected, maybe other people that we supplement their spiritual diets, that’s great, but what I love, I’m hearing more and more stories of people who just want to sit in the privacy and security of their own home or office or with their own computer and check this out. We love that. Send a link to your friends. We have found so many people who have eventually become part of NCC who started out that way. That’s one reason why we are going to take things to the next step and develop an Internet campus because we believe that to be a versatile, when Jesus said, “Go into all the world,” He didn’t specify how, that’s what I’m getting at. We want to redeem any and all technology at our disposal to tell as many people as we can about the good news of Jesus Christ.
Here’s a second way you and come and see, and this is the perfect time. On Monday night, we have four Alpha groups that begin meeting. Now, we have so many small groups but Alpha is designed for that person who has questions or maybe it’s for the skeptic, for the Nathanaels, Alpha is for you. I want to encourage you, not just to come, but to invite someone to come with you. It’s all about bringing your questions to the table, it’s about creating an environment where you can sample this thing and try to get to the bottom of who Jesus is. So I want to encourage you to do a couple of those things, to come and see.
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false."
What a fascinating statement! Especially given who is saying it. What a statement! Then, I love this, Nathanael’s response is so classic:
Verse 48: "How do you know me?" Nathanael asked.
The dude doesn’t even act surprised! No false humility here. I’m having a little fun with Nathanael, but do you think he ever forgot what Jesus said to him? I think that these words were locked in his auditory cortex forever. Has anybody ever said something to you, maybe a teacher or a parent, and the words make all the difference in the world? Have you had one of those moments? Can I share one of my moments?
I’ve probably shared this story two times in thirteen years, it is very personal to me and I’m always concerned about people misinterpreting it, but let’s spit into the wind and see what happens here. When I was in college, I felt called to ministry and I knew that the Lord wanted to use me somehow, some way, but I would describe myself as low on confidence and low on direction, like, I don’t know, Lord use me if You can, where in the world do I start? Where do I go? Compass needle spinning, I have no clue. I remember sitting in a service one night, it was a mid-week service and a guy named Chris Smith, who was a preacher from England came and spoke that night. I don’t remember his message but I remember that at the end of it, he invited people to come forward, so I came forward and spent some time at the altar praying. I was at a very fragile place spiritually, I was seeking the Lord. I’ll never forget, he came over and put his hand on my shoulder and at some point, a prayer became a prophecy. I don’t know what school you come from, but there are moments, I would describe it this way, I want to preach the timeless truth of Scripture but I also want to speak timely truth that gets into your spirit at the right time and the right moment and that’s how the Spirit of God works, and at some point, a prayer became a prophesy, and it might not seem like much to you but I’ll never forget the words he prayed over me – God is going to use you to do great things. I don’t know that I totally believed it, honestly, I didn’t really care whether he was a false prophet or a true prophet, I just needed to hear that, I needed someone to speak into my life. And I tell you, on the bad days, during the discouraging season, like those early days of National Community Church, there are moments where the Spirit of God would bring those words back to me. The Spirit would surface something deep in my spirit, “I’m going to use you, I’m going to use you,” and it did something to me. And the guy’s name was Chris Smith, can you get more generic than that? I apologize if there is a Chris Smith at one of our locations, but that is about as generic as you can get! I didn’t know this guy from Adam. By the way, there is a verse in Scripture that says I wish all the Lord’s people were prophets. I believe that for us, I believe God wants us to speak words of life, words of encouragement and words of hope into each other’s lives and you never know when something you say to someone else can make all the difference in the world.
This is that moment for Nathanael. Don’t tell me he ever forgot what Jesus said. What I’d like to suggest, I think Jesus gave him something to live up to. I think in those moments where he was tempted to compromise his integrity, oh, yeah, but Jesus said, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false,” I better live up to that. And I’m going to circle back to why that is so significant, but I love this. I love it.
A few years ago, I read a book by Lori Beth Jones entitled The Power of Positive Prophecy and in the book, she said that 40% of our lives are based on personal prophecy. Not someone saying ‘Thus sayeth the Lord,’ but people just speaking words into your life, like ‘You’re never going to be good at that’ or ‘you can’t do that’ or ‘you can do that.’ Now, you can’t quantify 40%, I don’t know where she came up with that number but does that not bear witness with your spirit, like, wow, a lot of my life has a lot to do with the people that I’ve surrounded myself with that are speaking either positive or negative things into my life. We need to surround ourselves with the right people to speak positive things into our lives so that we can have a positive effect. Now, hold that thought and stick with me because I think this gets to the heart of what I think the Lord wants to say to us this weekend.
This week I read a fascinating story about a musical trainer who worked with opera singers who couldn’t hit certain notes within an octave even though those notes fell within their vocal range. It was a mystery, that’s why they hired this guy. They didn’t know what was going on, so the trainer did extensive testing on their vocal chords but he couldn’t find any reason why they shouldn’t be able to hit those notes. On a whim, he tested their hearing, and what he discovered was that these opera singers could not sing a note that they could not hear. The problem wasn’t singing, the problem was hearing.
Now it’s time for a little feature we call random facts at National Community Church. The zebra finch. I got you at zebra finch didn’t I. The zebra finch, like a lot of different bird species, has its own unique song. According to ornithologists, a window of opportunity opens 30 days after a zebra finch hatches and closes 50 days later, and if a zebra finch does not hear its song within that 50 day window of opportunity, it will never learn the song. Aren’t you glad you came to church this weekend? It might come up on Trivial Pursuit. What does that have to do with anything?
Here’s one of the phrases in the New Testament that I’ve been contemplating, meditating on, thinking about, it is repeated, it is fascinating. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says. What that is saying to me is that it is possible to not hear what the Spirit is saying. I am convinced that many of us are trapped in negative cycles or sinful habits or destructive patterns because we haven’t heard the voice of the Spirit. I think we can’t hear His loving voice, so we are expressing negative things because we are hearing negative things. By the way, that’s why it is so important to read the Bible, because when we open the Bible, God opens his mouth, and when we close the Bible, God closes his mouth. We need to open the Bible so we can hear his voice. You’ve got tune into his frequency, and here’s the thing, when you begin to hear what God says about you, when you give Him the place of the prophet in your life, when you maybe tune out what some other people are saying and you listen to God’s voice and you start hearing what the Creator of the universe has to say about you, it begins to change your life. You become Nathanael where Jesus speaks into your life and it changes you into a different person. I’d rather that you hear one word from the Lord, maybe you’re reading through the Bible and something jumps off the page and jumps into your spirit, or maybe while I’m talking, you tune me out because the Spirit of God begins to speak, I would rather you hear one word from the Lord than a thousand of my sermons. It is not about what I have to say, it is about tuning into the voice of our heavenly Father who loves us, tuning into the voice of the Spirit that speaks Spirit to spirit, and when we begin to hear the things that he says to us and about us, it changes our lives. And that’s what’s going to happen to Nathanael. I promise we will get to the end of this story.
Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you." Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel."
This is one of the greatest paradigm shifts, I mean, to go from ‘can anything good come from Nazareth’ to ‘You are the Son of God.’ Quantum leap in a matter of moments. We don’t know everything that is going on here, but by the way, this is a mystery, you were still under the fig tree, Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly what this is referring to. Bible scholars have their thoughts and ideas, one is simply that rabbis used to teach under trees because they didn’t have classrooms so the tree would cast shade, so maybe there was a moment where Nathanael was under a tree, I don’t know. My guess is that maybe Jesus was referring to a defining moment or something that happened but here’s the bottom line, I think Jesus was saying, ‘You don’t know Me but I know you, I know everything about you, but more than that, I don’t just see who you are, I see who you can become.’ Spoken like a true prophet, speak to him and something changes. I love what He says next:
Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that."
What a statement! You shall see greater things than that! In other words, you haven’t seen anything yet, nothing. Stick with me, I’m going to have to give you the quick deal. I think that we celebrate what God has done in past tense. I want to talk corporately for a moment then I’ll come back to you personally. By the way, seven years ago today, we signed a contract to buy a piece of property at 201 F Street Northeast. Give it up for Ebenezers. So I feel a sense of destiny today. The reason I remember it so well is that I was at Washington Hospital Center and Josiah, our youngest, was born yesterday, seven years ago. I was at the hospital, they brought the contract and I signed it. After we bought the property, we found out that four people offered more money for it, two of them real estate developers, but they didn’t pray for it for years. We did prayer walks, we would lay hands on the building and ask God to give it to us. We underestimate the authority that is ours in Christ when we are operating in alignment with the will of God. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. We prayed in alignment with the will of God and now it is Ebenezers, last year it was voted the Number 1 coffee house in the D.C. metro area, two services on Saturday night, serving customers seven days a week, including yours truly, I love it. It traces back to a moment where we just believed God and God delivered. So, we celebrate what God has done past tense, yes. Praise God for what He has done.
We also celebrate what God is doing present tense. There are some pretty amazing things happening around National. It wasn’t long ago that we had one church with one service at one location. This weekend, nine services at five locations, the kingdom of God is expanding. We are going to see more and more people find faith in Christ that’s going to change their lives. Ten missions trips in ten months to ten countries. That’s something we can celebrate! So we celebrate what God is doing present tense. We begin a new small group semester, we’ve got like a hundred groups to chose from, let’s celebrate that. We celebrate what God is doing past tense, we celebrate what God is doing present tense. Are you with me here? We have not seen anything yet. The best is yet to come. I believe that for National Community Church and I believe it for you. We have a core value at NCC, it is never too late to become who you might have been. I love that. It is true, if you are breathing, then God is not finished with you yet. This is not something you can teach, this is only something you can catch, but if you get this into your spirit, you will live your life with a sense of destiny, with a holy anticipation at what God has for you. He is not done with me, greater things than this.
Let me wrap it up with this. Last weekend, we are on our leadership retreat. Nearly 200 leaders, small group leaders, ministry leaders, praying, planning, dreaming about this coming year. One of the highlights for me was at different moments having just a couple moments with some of our leaders and hearing about some of the dreams that God has put in their hearts. It was so exciting, and they are so varied, I think that’s part of what I loved about it. A guy said he had just gone through the first round of becoming an FBI agent, someone else wants to start a business, someone wanted to launch a ministry to athletes, and throughout this, I kept hearing stories about NCCers who want to start a non-profit to help the homeless here in D.C., someone else who wants to run for office, and I started to hear about all the different and unique dreams that NCCers have, and here’s the thought I had. When you become a part of this thing called National Community Church, we are inviting you into our dreams, and we make no apologies for it because we believe it is a dream God has given to us. We are going to keep launching new locations, we are dreaming about a 24/7 ministry center in D.C., I can feel it, I can taste it. We don’t do anything thinking we’ll do it once. Listen, we need another Ebenezers. We want to launch this Internet campus. Why can’t we have a thousand small groups in the metro D.C. area? We want to invite you, what’s so cool is that when we come to Christ, we become part of something that is bigger than us, more important than us, it’s the Great Commission, it is about being a part of this huge dream, God’s dream of redeeming human kind. But I also want to say that when you become part of this church, you are inviting us into your dreams. I want to pledge to you that we want to help you see that dream become a reality. Whatever God has put in your heart, I don’t care if it’s starting a ministry in Timbuktu, I have referenced Timbuktu two times in one message. I don’t care if your dream is way over here, I pray that God would help me be a better parent to my kids. That’s a huge dream. Anywhere in the spectrum. I want to believe that God has greater things for you and when you become a part of this community called National Community Church, you are inviting us into your dreams and we want to help you see those dreams become reality.
I want to make a very important point. My second and final conclusion. Where does it start? Like, I’m hearing you and I think I believe that God has greater things, and I want to believe future tense. I’m going to tell you exactly where it starts, it starts exactly where it started for Nathanael. There is a powerful profession of faith. If you want to become who God has designed and destined you to become, you think you might need a relationship with the One who created you in the first place. I hope that logic makes sense. He is the One who dreams for you, He is the heavenly Father that has plans and purposes for you, but it starts by accepting that invitation. It is such a primal profession, Nathanael said, “You are the Son of God,” and there are different professions in the New Testament and they are as unique as each one of our fingerprints, but I think there comes a moment where we’ve got to make a decision that I’m going to profess my faith in Christ. Same invitation, Follow Me. What does it look like for us to follow Him? It really comes down to this, those of you who have been part of NCC, you know that I’m kind of a dreamer and I have this list of life goals that is getting longer and longer, I dream of a lot of things, I have a lot of plans, but if you ask me what is at the heart, what is the one goal, it is so simple. I want to become more and more and more like Jesus. That is what it means to follow Him. I would suggest that everybody is somebody’s disciple, consciously or subconsciously, everybody is modeling their life after someone. A Christian is someone who has made a conscience decision that we believe Jesus is who He said He is, the Son of God and I want to live the way He lived, I want to pray the way He prayed, I want to make a difference the way He made a difference. I am going to follow Jesus, I’m going to go where He tells me to go, I’m going to do what He wants me to do. And it is about more than doing what He wants you to do, God is far more concerned about who you are becoming in the process. I want to become that person. I want to invite you to accept that invitation that He extended, tonight.
Here’s what I want you to do, two simple things. Number one, I would encourage you to read the gospel of John. We are going to spend three weeks, read John, it is a wonderful introduction to who God is. The second thing I want you to do is take just a moment and fill out a connection card, there is one in your bulletin, and if you take that connection card to our connection table, we want to give you a book called Wild Goose Chase, I think it is a way that you can begin taking some steps in that journey with Christ. If I were you, I would write the date on the inside cover of that book because today is a significant day for you. Accept the invitation that He has extended.
Lord, thank You. Just as You saw Nathanael under that fig tree, God, You see us, at Ebenezers, at Union Station, at Ballston Common Mall, at Georgetown, at Kingstowne, God You see us. Maybe we are that person that has been seeking in the shadows, I believe that today is the day, You have called us, You have invited us to follow You. Lord I pray that we would have the courage, some of us for the first time, to profess our faith in You. And for the rest of us, God may we recommit, may we redouble our efforts to follow in your footsteps. We commit ourselves to You, God we pray that You would have your will and your way with each one of us. In Jesus Name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
