Riverside or River City?

Rodney Gehman – September 29, 2024

PRAYER

First things first today, I would like to welcome all of the children who are sitting in with us! Today is family sit-together Sunday, which is so that everyone can be part of this morning – hearing the vision for the building, then getting to participate in the activity a bit later on. 

So I just want to put you at ease, parents – some extra wiggles and noises are okay. It is a good, good thing that you are raising your children in the gathering of the church. So let’s start there and everyone else in the room can agree to have a little extra grace today. As you have already heard, today we’re talking about the prospect of building a facility for River City Church to meet in that is our own. 

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that we have been meeting here at the school since the Fall of 2018, even before our official start as a church in April of 2019 and this building has met our Sunday gathering needs very well to this point. We have had a good relationship with the school, so it’s not as if we have to leave, or that a bad relationship has developed. The school has served us well. In fact, we have had people attend River City solely because we meet at the school. It’s a familiar place, they know their way around, it’s not quite as “churchy” and so it feels a little safer, or whatever. So I think that’s something to keep in mind. There are some things about the school that are very much worth all the work of setup and teardown. 

However, we knew from day one that the school couldn’t be our permanent home forever, so from the outset we’ve had a budget line item going toward a future building, our own space, where we could put permanent roots into Riverside and be a church for the city. And we’re in a good place with the budget to make a land purchase, and get the ball rolling in that direction. 

Now, some of you may be wondering – if we have an architectural firm working on this already, where is the land? Where are we building? Did I miss an announcement? Well, part of the reason the building team hired the designer at this stage of the game is so that we can design a space around what we want the building to actually facilitate, and then make sure we choose land that’s going to fit what those goals are. 

So before we dive into all of that with Paul today, I want to take us back to the vision for this building. Because I realize we haven’t rehearsed this vision in its entirety for quite a while, and some who have only started attending River City in the past couple months may have never heard this. So, that’s the goal for today. The vision behind the building. That may help you later in the exercise.  

Today [ 001 ] the title of the sermon today is “Riverside or River City?” And yes, it’s a question. We have three scriptures we’re going to look at this morning that we will reference to draw out three points about this building. [ 002 ] 

1. 2 Samuel 7:1-17. If you are new to the Bible, we’re about to meet a king named David who was the 3rd king of Israel (this is around 1100 years before Jesus). And the second thing you need to know is that back then, there was no such thing as a church, or churches, and no such thing as Christians. God’s presence was with only one nation on the earth: Israel, and some of his glory was present in a portable tent called a tabernacle. 

David takes the throne in Jerusalem, and with all of his new power and wealth he builds a really nice cedar house to live in, and it dawns on him – man, here I am living in a beautiful palace while the presence of God sits in a tent. This isn’t right. So he calls in the prophet Nathan, tells him that he has a plan to build God a beautiful house, and Nathan says go for it. 

But that night, Nathan the prophet gets a message from the Lord for David. And basically what the Lord wanted to say to David through the prophet was this, [ 003 ] verses 5-7, “Are you seriously going to build me a house to live in? For 400 years, I’ve been moving around in a tent, and I never once asked you to build me a house.” Just so we're clear – I never complained about my tent, and I never asked you to build me a better building.

And the reason God would say that should be fairly obvious. The Most High God doesn’t live in buildings made with hands. [ 004 ] In Isaiah 66, God says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What sort of house will you build for me? Didn’t I make everything?” 

Back to 2 Samuel, down in verse 11, [ 005 ] Yahweh said to David – “You want to build me a house, but in fact, I’m going to build a house for YOU. I’m going to raise up someone from your descendants and establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish his throne forever. My faithful love will never leave him.” 

That descendent in the short term would be David’s son Solomon who ended up building the first permanent house for God, known as Solomon’s Temple. But there’s more to the story.

That takes us to scripture #2 [ 006 ] 

• 1 Peter 2:4-5 - And here the apostle Peter is describing those who belong to Jesus as the house. And here’s how he uses the same language of building. [ 007-1 ] “As you come to [Jesus], a living stone – rejected by people but chosen and honored by God – [ 007-2 ] you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

So here, Peter uses that language of building a temple, but he picks up where God left off in 2 Samuel. God told David, I’m going to raise up one of your descendants to build a house for my name. And Peter runs with that and says, YES! God is building a house of worship, and every individual believer is a stone in the walls of this new temple where the presence of God will live. 

Now, anyone who has been in construction or built a flower bed or a retaining wall knows you have to start somewhere, right? If you’re going to dig out a foundation for your house, or you’re pouring a pad of concrete to set a building on, you have to first pick the spot that will be your starting point. Maybe that means you pound a stake in the ground and then square up string lines from that stake. Maybe it means you find something that already exists and you pull measurements off of that. In the instance of building with rocks back in Jesus’ day, you put a stone in the ground that serves as the point all other measurements are drawn from. It’s not only the starting point – it’s the standard. You square your walls from that stone. You get your elevation from that stone. The entire house is built around that particular stone. 

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This is a cornerstone. [ 008 ] And in the living, breathing house of God that is the church, that stone is Jesus. Everything about this spiritual temple that is the Church all comes back to Jesus, and as you can see in verse 6, whoever believes in him will never be put to shame. 

And I want to offer a caution here. Here’s my caution. Every church has a cornerstone. It’s not always Jesus. Sometimes it’s tradition, and everything the church does is drawn off of “this is the way we’ve always done it.” Other churches draw everything they do off of the opposite – they are centered around the statement “This isn’t your grandmother’s church.” We do things differently here. The cornerstone could be all kinds of good things. You get the point. 

My caution to us today is that we don’t let our cornerstone of our new facility be the actual building itself. What I mean by that is that there is a danger in all of this, that we could end up being a congregation who is so proud of what we’ve accomplished with our building that the building is what unites us instead of the Holy Spirit. That would be tragic. 

So the cornerstone of River City must be Jesus Christ and him crucified, building or no building. 

And that brings us to the third scripture: [ 009 ] 

• Jeremiah 29:5-7 – Now, you can put your imagination to work here. If the authorities rounded up every one of us here this morning, and hauled us off to some city in Russia, where none of us speak the language or know the culture, it would be incredibly tempting to all move into the same apartment complex, right? Stick together. Hunker down. We don’t know how long this will last, so let’s just lay low, don’t cause a scene, and hope for the best. 

Here in Jeremiah 29, the prophet is writing a letter to the people of God who have been exiled to the city of Babylon about 600 years before Jesus. Babylon was the pinnacle of evil at that time, so you would expect Jeremiah’s letter to tell them hunker down. Stick together. Lay low.  

And instead, what’s a little surprising about Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles. He says, in verse 5, build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat the produce. Keep on falling in love and getting married. And so far all of that can be done in-house, right, you can stick to yourselves and do all of that. [ 010 ] But then he adds in verse 7 – Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive. 

And here’s where the title of the sermon comes from, as a question. Is our desire for this building pursuing the well-being of Riverside? Or the well-being of River City? And at least part of the answer to that question can be found in who we pray for. Do we pray to the Lord on behalf of the city of Riverside? Maybe that’s where we need to start today.

Our vision for this building has been from day one to be a facility that pursues the well-being of the city with people in our space 7 days a week. I’m willing to go so far as to say, maybe the name on the side of the building isn’t River City Church, but something a little less churchy and more community oriented so people feel comfortable there as much as they do here in this space. 

What if we built a space the city can call its own? A place that sports teams can use, a place businesses hold conferences, a facility for a daycare that has outgrown a home, a full kitchen that can be used by high school students and weddings and moms making freezer meals together and senior dining and pizza parties after football games. I’m talking about community gardens, soccer fields, co-working spaces, and much more. Maybe even having some apartments for short term stays for refugees or those in recovery. 

I know the city is talking about building a rec center, and we’re not trying to compete with that – I think we can complement it. But I think we could build a space that everyone knows the church owns and facilitates, but one that the people of Riverside are blessed by.

So, with all of that in mind, let’s put the pieces together into these three points. [ 011 ] 

• God doesn’t need a new building

• The real building is the Church, and Jesus is the cornerstone. 

• Seek the well-being of the city you live in.

Here’s how I see those three points fitting together to form the vision of River City Church. 

For those of you who are new to River City, our vision statement that we have been using around here is that [ 012 ]  one day, we want to see every man, woman, and child, in Riverside (and the surrounding communities) able to have a gospel-centered interaction on a daily basis. 

In fact, if you happen to have one of our gray River City hoodies, you’ll notice that under the logo are the words, “every man, woman, and child.” That’s to help us remember that the real mission of River City is the people of Riverside. 

Back when we start putting things together for River City, the picture in our minds was that everyone who attends River City would so much embody the person and work of Jesus in the 6 days between gatherings, through generosity, hospitality, welcome, grace, patience, forgiveness, presence, and joy, that anyone who bumps into us at school, on the ballfield, at the restaurant, at Caseys, in doing business, in buying or selling a car or things at a garage sale or whatever, would be able to leave that interaction the same way people left their interactions with Jesus.  

With a sense of joy and peace. Every man, woman, and child in Riverside, surprised by the grace of Jesus. 

Now, that gospel-centered interaction can look a lot of different ways, however the Spirit might lead us in those moments. But the main idea at the bottom is that we aspire to be a body of believers that is full of grace and truth, until the day that everyone in the city who has ever interacted with us would say, we would hate to see that church have to leave our community. 

On top of that, we think it’d be cool if we got to be part of seeing more people healed like Patty, seeing people who have been wrapped up in despair and hopelessness delivered to walk in joy and hope and freedom. Seeing people who never read or understood the Bible now diving in with co-workers, classmates, and their own family, studying scripture together and growing in their understanding of faith in Jesus. We want to help men, women, and children move from just hearing about Jesus, to knowing him, walking in the Spirit, and growing in spiritual maturity. 

If you do some homework on the history of Riverside, you will find that not that long ago, people drove from far and wide to one of Riverside’s many bars, just so they could fight. It wasn’t always the safest place to be. Well, the gospel says our history doesn’t have to define our future, amen? So we think it’d be cool if one day, Riverside would be recognized as being a place of peace. Where it would be noticeable even just driving through on Main Street. That happens as we, the house of God, live out that peace in every one of our interactions. 

But this is not just physical peace, where no one is fighting anymore – it’s spiritual as well. God didn’t just create humans who rebelled against him. He created heavenly beings, many of whom also rebelled against him. They are devious and defiant; deceptive and destructive. And they aren’t ready to give up territory they’ve had in Riverside so easily. There is a spiritual war at hand for this city. 

But with Christ as the cornerstone, there is absolutely no reason to fear. We are living stones, built together into a house for the Holy Spirit. When we speak the name of Jesus, those powers of darkness have to flee. Satan is not able to be in all places at the same time like Yahweh is. So I have no doubt that there is an evil presence or power that has been assigned to this city, and to the surrounding cities in his place. They are called principalities, rulers, authorities in scripture for a reason. And what they try to do is to manipulate us to build our lives and our church and our community groups and our families around other cornerstones. Youth sports. Money and wealth. Success in the popular sense. Recreation and entertainment. Tradition. Or whatever.

Jesus has to be the cornerstone of River City Church because he is the only one who has defeated this supernatural opponent. You and I can’t compete with them. They are much too powerful for us. But with Christ in us, as we draw from every spiritual blessing he has given us, there’s nothing to fear – in fact, we are not on defense – we are the offense. The victory was won at the cross and sealed at the empty tomb. 

So what we need more than our own building is courage. What we need more than a facility is to know Jesus more today than we did yesterday. What we need more than rows of chairs we don’t have to set up is we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And every time believers in the New Testament were filled with the Spirit, it was always followed by proclaiming the glory of God BOLDLY.  

So River City Church, let’s step out in that Jesus-centered confidence to reach a city for the kingdom of God. Let’s never be a church that just rolls in on Sunday morning and then rolls out Sunday afternoon. Let’s never be a church that shows up to sing and pray in here, but then the other 6 days of the week, we keep our faith private. Let’s never be the kind of church where people are more impressed by our space than they are surprised by our grace. Let’s not just follow a picture in our head of what we think church buildings should do – let’s dream big about what our building could do. 

I’ll finish with this and then we’re going to share in the Lord’s Supper together. I heard a popular Christian musician say something recently that caught my attention. He said people come up to him after shows and thank him for everything he’s doing for the Lord. Thank you for doing this for God. And he said, my favorite thing to say in response is Oh I don’t play music FOR God. I don’t play music for the Lord, and people always look at him like he’s crazy. 

He said I don’t play music FOR God – I play music because of God. I don’t take the stage for God, I take the stage because of God. Because if I make music for God, I start to be demanding. God, look at what I’m doing for you. Why aren’t you showing up in my life in this way or that way? Why aren’t you blessing me? Why aren’t you healing me? Why am I not seeing more change? I’m sacrificing all of this for you: Why aren’t you giving me some reward? And that’s when God says, wait, I thought I was the reward? 

So Church, my encouragement to all of us today is this – we’re not doing this for God. He doesn’t live in buildings, he is not handicapped somehow by us meeting here in the school, revival isn’t going to break out in this city just because we’re finally in our own facility. If we imagine that what we’re doing is for God, we’ll be looking for rewards here on earth. This space we’re excited to build is not for God – it’s because of him. He is our great reward. He is our all in all. 

Lord Jesus, if YOU build it – this house will be a house of prayer for decades to come. But if we’re not a house of prayer now, we won’t be in a new space. If we’re not bold with the gospel now, we won’t be in a new space. If we’re not drawing our lives off of Jesus as the cornerstone now, we won’t automatically do it in a new building. If we don’t have a heart to reach Riverside now, we won’t when we have a new building. 

So Lord, we ask you to stir our hearts again with love for the people of this city. Stir our hearts again for prayer. Stir our hearts again to see your kingdom come here in this city. And stir our hearts again to know you, to love you, to seek you. Stir our hearts for every man, woman and child until our every move is saturated with the grace and truth of the gospel. 

As we participate now in the Lord’s Supper, we invite you, Holy Spirit to awaken us again to the cross of Jesus – that we would be drawn again to the fact that you lived, died, and rose again so that your enemies could be adopted as sons. You are the one building the church – you are the designer, you are the lead pastor, and you Jesus are the cornerstone. 

We ask for your presence and your grace as we participate in this small meal together. Amen.