Crossing family, I missed you and you have to just hear me say
this. It is such a joy and a privilege
and an honor to be numbered among you as we try to make this
region the hardest place on planet Earth to get the hell
from. Many of you have asked and let
me just tell you the trip was incredible and I speak on behalf
of all who are able to go, that something shifted and changed in
all of us. For me, I am still very much
processing and navigating everything that went on in my
heart and my hope is that in the coming months and years I will
do my best to let you in on what God is teaching and revealing to
me on the other side of this experience.
It was just incredible. I want to welcome all of our
campuses to those of you here at 48th St. to those of you in
Macomb, Kirksville, 929, Pike County, Hannibal, Lima, Mount
Sterling, Keokuk, Monmouth, Jacksonville, Weaver Online And
let's give another big shout out to those of you who are part of
our Inside with 17 Baptisms. I love it.
I also want to welcome those of you who are new here.
I am so glad that you are with us.
And if you have not stopped by the new here booth or downloaded
the app, please do so. Let me tell you why this is not
for us, This is for you. Connected people grow.
So if you're wanting to grow in Christ, let me encourage you.
Get connected. Today.
I want to publicly thank Tyler McKenzie and Chuck Hedsler.
Would you give them a big round of applause for preaching in my
absence? I was blessed by each of them
and challenged to take several steps to make sure that I have
done all I can do to raise and lead a godly family, and I hope
you did the same. As I said at the very beginning
of the Lovers and Landmines series, we are entering into
contested waters as a church. We're talking about family,
We're talking about money, we're talking about the Holy Spirit.
And hear me, Satan will be at work.
You see, God or Satan wants your family leaderless and godless,
so that he can be the dominant voice, so that his will will be
done inside of those you and I love the most.
He wants to keep you and I from being generous so we are
enslaved to the flesh in order to choke out gospel
effectiveness in our region. He wants you and I to be
ignorant of the Holy Spirit so that way you do not operate in
His power so that you are not guided by His wisdom.
So you have a life that does not produce His fruit.
Then after that we're going to have a one off series where we
celebrate the 250 anniversary of America and then we will launch
into what could be the highest attended month of ministry at
our church. When we jump into the At the
Movies series, begin thinking now about who you would like to
invite. You see, Satan hates it when
people begin to give Jesus or his church a chance and he will
do whatever he can do to stop it, to destroy it.
And so as I stand here today, you need to know where I'm at.
I see so much potential and opportunity in front of us, and
I am hopeful that God will do a mighty work in US and through us
over the next couple of months. And because of that opportunity
and because of what God is inviting us into, those of you
who would consider yourself a prayer warrior or to those of
you who from time to time pray, to those of you who have a
prayer journal, let me give you something to write down.
Would you please lift me up in your prayers?
Would you lift our staff up in your prayers?
Would you lift up our church as a whole in your prayers?
Would you go to God on behalf of this region and those we are
trying to reach? And since I'm talking about it,
why don't we do it? Would you spend a little time
with me and allow me to pray? Heavenly Father, you've been so
good to us. You have brought us to this very
moment, covered in Your grace and in your mercy.
And you more than any of us, You know what lies ahead of us and
you know what's at stake. I'm asking you to wake something
up in US, shift something in US. We're asking you to do something
mighty in US and through US. I pray that you'd protect the
ears and the minds and the hearts of those who are new here
and new to you. Draw them close to you so that
they crave an intimate, personal relationship with your Son Jesus
Christ and whose name we pray. Amen.
Several years ago, a group of us on staff were invited to a
conference that was being hosted in Nashville, TN and when we
arrived, we had a chance to meet up with somebody who used to
attend our McComb campus. He was one of the football
coaches for the Vanderbilt Commodores.
And so he took us on a tour of the facility.
And while he was showing at the athletic fields, in the weight
rooms, in the training areas, in the locker rooms, there was this
joy in his voice as he told us that they were getting ready to
launch a new renovation and expansion of their entire
athletic complex. And the cost was $300 million.
This was on the heels of them just doing a renovation, but it
wasn't enough and it wasn't big enough.
And so they set a goal of 1/3 of a billion dollars.
And then he said that the first $100 million came from three
families. And as he talked about this, you
could hear the excitement in his voice, the possibilities for
what it was going to allow them to do, the joy he had of seeing
people get behind the vision to make The Commodores a contender
in the SEC. Yeah.
I'm assuming you're all moved just like I was, and to be
honest with you, as I'm walking through this, my mind was blown.
This is an incredible amount of money, an incredible amount of
generosity, an incredible amount of excitement for a game.
Now, do not get me wrong. Do not get me wrong, I have zero
problem with this. I love sports.
I love giving and participating in high school activities.
I love watching teams win and young men and women learning
about how to overcome hardship and adversity.
I love seeing them develop through the wins and the losses.
And there are some people who they love athletics so much that
they want to be patrons of athletic departments.
We call them boosters, and when you give enough money, they put
your name in the back of the catalog.
And so when you show up at the game, you can see, Yep, there we
are. We're a part of this.
There are other people who are hard wired differently.
God made them with different desires, gifts and desires.
And so they want to be patrons of the arts or patrons of music.
They get behind it, they support it.
In fact, some of the greatest works that have occurred in the
world of art were the result of patronage, somebody footing the
bill to make that happen. I titled my message an
extraordinary invitation. Turn to your neighbor and say
you have been invited. You have been invited.
I have a question for you. Well, before I ask the question,
a couple years back, I, I, I read a or I saw a, a, a sermon
by an author. And then I bought the book and
my heart was on fire as I read the book.
And my heart was burdened as I heard these stories because the
stories of these people absolutely and completely have
shaped the world that you and I live in today.
And I felt a burden to take you on the very same journey that I
went on. So let's begin with a question.
Have you ever wondered who funded Jesus's ministry?
Who paid to make Jesus's ministry happen?
And I mean, we read about everything that he did as he
walked along the banks of the Sea of Galilee and as he toured
the streets of Jerusalem. But who funded it?
Who paid and paved the way for Jesus to do what he did here on
earth? Jesus had money.
In fact, he had so much money, he had a treasurer.
You're going a treasurer? Yeah.
Jesus had a treasurer. And you know his name.
Do you know what his treasurer's name was?
Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
If you don't believe me, go home.
John chapter 12 verse 6 tells you all about it.
So we know that Jesus had money. We know he had a treasurer, but
how did he get it? And I know what some of you
Bible people are thinking right now.
He just made it happen. He's a miracle worker.
He just piled stacks of cash anytime he needed it.
Someone gave him 5 bucks and he was like, and that's how we did
it. No, no, no, no.
Some of you, you're a kind of Bible nerds and you're going.
I know how he did it because one time he was being asked about
taxes and he told Peter to go fishing and that there would be
a coin in the fish's mouth. And Peter goes and he fishes and
he pulls out the fish and inside the fish's mouth was money.
Fellas, your wife would not be frustrated with you for as much
money as you spend fishing. If every time you pulled a bass
out, you're like, babe, another $100.
Maybe that's what Jesus did. He just had his disciples walk
around and like Asian carp hopped out into the boat and
they were just pulling money out.
But that is not how he did it. I know what some of you are
thinking, but Clayton, we're talking about Jesus.
He turned water into wine. Jesus had a side hustle.
He would take wine or water and he would just turn it into wine.
You know, Jesus was the one who created Seagrams by the Savior.
Oh, it gets worse. The original Crown Royal
Bethlehem Brewery, Jordan River Gin, The real Maker's Mark.
This one's a stretch wave. Walker Scotch maybe?
No, that's not how he did it. That is not how Jesus got the
money to do his ministry. It happened because of a Gospel
patron. Somebody funded him.
There was this woman named Joanna.
Joanna was married to a very influential man.
They walked in powerful circles, held positions in high society.
Her husband was well connected, oversaw re illustrating multiple
streams of income. For the most part, Joanna and
her husband lived lives where their needs were always met.
Until she got very sick. And this sickness, well, it
changed her. It humbled them.
All the connections and all the wealth could not fix her.
They ran through doctors until they ran out of doctors.
And yet she remained sick. So what does she do next?
After she had tried everything else, Joanna tried Jesus.
Some of you, you can relate. You've tried everything else and
you are no better off than when you started.
And now you find yourself doing things you never thought you
would do. You're here at church on a
weekend. You find yourself reading and
praying to praying to God. You've tried everything else.
And so you decided to give Jesus a try.
So Joanna met Jesus, Jesus met Joanna, and Jesus heals her.
And as a result, two things happen.
The first, she begins to follow Jesus.
In fact, not only did she follow Jesus, she kept following Jesus
because you read about her again because she was at the
resurrection in Luke chapter 24 verse 10.
The second thing that happened is that she became generous so
that other people could meet the very same Jesus that saved her.
On the heels of her generosity, Jesus restores a demon possessed
man, raises a dead girl, and heals the woman with the issue
of blood. Three stories that you know
well, but do you know what happened before that?
Joanna became a patron of the gospel as Jesus traveled from
town to town preaching the good news, the gospel of the Kingdom
of God. He was funded by Joanna, a
gospel patron. You can read about it in Luke
chapter 8 verses one through 3. After this, Jesus travelled
about from 1 town and village to another proclaiming the good
news of the Kingdom of God. The 12 were with him and also
some women who'd been cured of evil spirits and diseases.
Mary called Magdalene from whom 7 demons had come out, Joanna
the wife of Chooser, the manager of Herod's household, Susanna
and many others. These women were helping to
support them out of their own means.
Joanna is almost completely forgotten in history, but it was
her generosity that funded the ministry of our Savior.
And what you will see happen over and over again, not just in
Scripture but in history, is that behind every significant
move of God, there were people faithfully giving behind the
scenes. They were patrons of the gospel.
In the 1700s, the Bibles in England sat in homes and in
churches, collecting dust. As a result, people far and wide
ignored the Bible's teaching on sin, salvation, and the coming
day of judgment. Church was stuffy and formal,
and the ministers of the day were timid.
No one was attracted to God and to His church.
No one was inspired to live for His Kingdom cause, and as a
result, society was out of control.
That is how the 18th century began.
But by God's grace, that is not how it would end.
God saw fit to raise up a preacher and a patron to turn
things around. The preacher was George
Whitfield. He was described as a Man on
Fire. At a time when sermons were dry,
moral essays read from church pulpits.
Whitfield's words were like living water overflowing from
his heart. The Bible's truths about heaven
and hell, God and Satan, sin and salvation, we're all realities
to Whitfield, and he preached them that way.
George Whitfield was described as Thunder and lightning in the
pulpit, a man made to awaken the slumbering.
He spoke in a way that showed spiritual things to be real.
He was biblical, passionate, dramatic, and joyful.
He loved the people he preached to.
He frequently wept in his sermons.
He urgently pleaded everyone to come to Jesus.
Whitfield's maxim was to preach as a palace painted, but for
eternity. He often said would ministers
preach for eternity? They would then act the part of
two Christian orators and not only calmly and coolly inform
the understanding, but by persuasive, passionate address,
endeavor to move the affections and warm the hearts.
And the patron, The patron, it was Lady Huntington.
She was a woman who was described as a tornado and a
silver spoon all wrapped into one.
A5 foot 6 force of nature in the heiress of old money.
Blunt, opinionated, constantly in motion.
Lady Huntington was a rare English aristocrat.
She rubbed shoulders with royalty, enjoyed a pinch of
snuff, and she really believed the Bible.
This is my kind of girls. Her heart was broken for the
gospel and for her country, and so she cried out to the
preacher. This is what she said.
What pride the rich have, Mr. Whitfield.
I am quite out of patience at all of the wickedness of them
all. To which Whitfield replied, the
love of money is the reason many are no more than all most
Christians. I wish the Church of England was
the joy of the whole earth, but the Christian world is instead
in a deep sleep. That night, Lady Huntington
poverty or pondered the gravity of her nation's sinful
condition. She was grieved that parties,
fashion shows, concerts and gambling houses were captivating
for the rich for months at a time.
She mourned that they sat down to eat and drink and rose to
play with no thought of eternity.
And so that night she prayed. But Lord, what am I to do about
it? My generation lies lost in
darkness. They are like sheep without a
shepherd. God, may you pour abundant
blessings on our sinful country and help me to fill my place in
your work. Sometime later, the patron, Lady
Huntington, reached out to the preacher, George Whitfield.
Mr. Whitfield, I watched God save souls through the light of
His all glorious gospel, and now I see the one thing living which
must be the proclamation of the love of God to man in Christ
Jesus. I am nothing.
Christ is all to behold. The glory of such a Savior ought
to make us breathe His praises from pole to pole.
To preach Christ and His blessing upon repentance over
the earth is the Commission. Whitfield sat still.
So, she said, my mind is made-up.
I would like to propose a partnership.
Go on, the preacher said. Lady Huntington replied, God
chose me to be a member of England's nobility, and now I am
ready to use my position for Jesus's sake, and I want your
help. I'm listening, the preacher
said, a warm smile spreading across his face like a sunrise.
She continued. Well, Galatians 22 says that
Paul preached privately to those who seemed influential in
Jerusalem. And I have a burden for the
influential in England. They won't go out to the fields
to hear Methodist preachers, and when they attend church, they
hear sermons with no theological guts.
Whitfield was known as an open air preacher.
He would go into the fields where everybody could show up,
and he would preach to the thousands.
But Lady Huntington was worried that the people she wanted to
reach wouldn't be people who would go to the fields.
Whitfield, I want you to bring the gospel to them in my house
starting tomorrow night. Whitfield was thrilled to answer
Lady Huntington's call, and so he wrote to her.
If they will hear the gospel only under a sealed roof,
Ministers S shall be sent to them there.
If only in a church or in a field, they shall have the
gospel there. Oh, that I may be enabled, when
called, to preach to any of them, so as to preach to win
their souls to the blessed Jesus.
And this partnership sparked the First Great Awakening.
To those of you who are unfamiliar with the First Great
Awakening, it's spread across England and it's spread across
the United States of America before we were the United States
of America, when we were still trying to figure out how to be
the 13 original colonies. And when you read our founding
documents where it says we hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, it was not evident until George
Whitfield preached the gospel to them.
You and I are standing on the ground not just paved by the
grace and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the preaching
of George Whitfield and the patronage of Lady Huntington.
This partnership made him one of her personal chaplains, a
special privilege reserved for nobility.
Her support gave Whitfield the means and the encouragement to
continue preaching everywhere, promoting revival among all
churches, all denominations and all peoples, as Whitfield wrote
to his patron, whom he described as a woman who was all aflame
for Jesus. Oh, that that could be said of
us, he said about 2000. Attend every night.
Last Sunday evening in the field there were about 5000 hearers.
I hear much good has been done at Bristol.
Everywhere fresh doors are opening.
People flock from all quarters. I have not been so well for so
long a season, for many years as I have been since I left London.
A proof, I think, that the Lord calls me into the fields to
preach. After 30 years, Lady Huntington
returned to the city that had appalled her when she was
younger. This time she bought a plot of
land, hired builders and began construction.
Lady Huntington's project caught the eye of the city and grabbed
their attention. Why build a Chapel, They
questioned. Your money could be better spent
helping the poor, she replied. I do pity the poor, and I will
give them what I can. But when I gave myself up to the
Lord, I likewise devoted all my fortune to Him with this
condition that I would take with a sparing hand what might be
necessary for my food, clothing, and support of my children.
Many benevolent persons who have no religion feel for the
physical needs of others and help them, but few, even among
professing Christians, have a proper concern for the awful
condition of perishing souls. As the gospel spread, the need
for churches and preachers was everywhere.
So Lady Huntington committed to building and funding the
churches, and Whitfield committed to raising up the
preachers to fill the pulpits. And within a few years, she was
responsible for 116 preaching places and a seminary to train
the preachers who'd prime proclaim the good news of Jesus
Christ. What Lady Huntington and George
Whitfield accomplished was truly incalculable.
They reached into the unreached places of both England and
America, where there were no faithful churches and no gospel
preachers. Together, the two of them
persuaded many of England's nobility that God was not a dull
idea, but a living Savior who could be known and felt.
In the years before the American colonies became an independent
nation, 4 fifths 80% of Americans had heard Whitfield
preach about Jesus. Whitfield's broad reaching
evangelism gave America a theological backbone that shaped
the nation for generations to come.
In total, Whitfield evangelized upwards of 10 million people in
his lifetime, and no one could begin to count the number of
conversions he saw the day before his death.
Although he was not feeling well, Whitfield had been
persuaded to preach what became his final sermon.
With a day almost gone and his health already poor, a friend
cautioned him. Sir, you are more fit to go to
bed than to preach. True, Sir, responded Whitfield.
But then the preacher turned his attention heavenward and prayed.
Lord Jesus, I am weary in your work, but not of it.
If I have not yet finished my course, let me go and speak for
you once more in the fields, and come home and die.
He closed his final sermon by saying I have outlived many on
earth, but they cannot outlive me in heaven.
I shall soon be in a world where time, age, pain and sorrow are
unknown. My body fails, my spirit
expands. How willingly I would live
forever to preach Christ, but I die to be with Him.
What was it that moved George Whitfield to be a preacher?
What was it that moved Lady Huntington to be its patron?
It was the good news. It was the gospel.
There might be some of you who are new to the crossing here
today and you might be asking what is this gospel that so
moved them? You know it.
John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and
only Son. Hear this, that whoever believes
in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
You may have a bad idea about God, but listen to what God says
about God. For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world
through Him. God is on a rescue mission to
not condemn your soul, but to save your soul through His Son
Jesus Christ. And listen to the promise.
Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not
believe stands condemned already because they have not believed
in the name of God's one and only Son.
You want it a different way? You want to know how my trip to
Greece went? Well, I stood in Corinth where
Paul preached, and he wrote a letter to that church.
And in the 15th chapter, verses one through 6, this is what Paul
says to the church that he started.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel
I preached to you, which you have received and on which you
have taken your stand. If your life is not standing on
the gospel of Jesus Christ, you are standing on sinking sand.
But if you are in Christ, by this gospel you are saved.
If you hold firmly to the Word, I preach to you, otherwise you
have believed in vain. This is the power of the gospel.
But what is the gospel for? What I received?
I pass on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried
and that He was raised on the third day according to the
Scriptures. And you might be going, well, I
mean, people could have made that up.
People could just be saying stuff.
Oh no, Paul goes on. There were witnesses to what
happened. There were witnesses to the
crucifixion, and there were witnesses to the resurrection.
And that he appeared to Cephas. That's Peter.
Then to the 12:00. And after that, he appeared to
more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at that time.
This is a verifiable historical event, some of whom are still
living, though some have fallen asleep.
This is the gospel. People can be saved, changed,
redeemed, made right before God, can have the hope of eternity in
their hearts, can conquer death, can't conquer sin.
This is the gospel that leads to salvation and that very gospel
raised up a preacher and a patron.
You've been invited. Will you join me in becoming a
gospel patron? We're moving to a time of
decision. Every week we have this moment.
We say we're moving to a time of decision.
And then we come down here and internally, we call it landing
the plane. You may not know this, I don't
expect you to, but Whitfield landed the plane and one of his
favorite closes was this. He would end his sermon with an
invitation for his his hears to believe in Jesus.
And he would say these words and let me say them over you.
Oh, let there be joy in heaven over some of you who believe.
Let me not go back to my Master and say, Lord, they will not
believe my reports no longer. Harden your hearts, but open
them wide and let the King of Glory enter in.
Believe me, I'm willing to go to prison and death for you, but I
am not willing to go to heaven without you.
The love of Jesus Christ constrains me to lift up my
voice like a trumpet. And He did, and millions of
lives were saved. And that message is still
available to you today. And so if you are here today and
you have never started an intimate personal relationship
with Jesus Christ, you have not believed in the gospel, in the
finished work of Jesus Christ on your behalf, no longer harden
your heart. In just a few moments, the
people around you are going to stand and sing, and some of them
are going to come to the steps and pray.
And I want to encourage you, if right now you are outside of
Christ, you have not yet surrendered your life to him,
I'm going to encourage you to either turn to a friend and say,
how do I get this figured out today?
Or if you want, you can take the bold walk right over there
underneath that screen next to the baptistry, and somebody will
meet you and talk to you about what it means to be in Christ.
To the rest of you, to those of you who call yourselves
Christians, you have received an extraordinary invitation to
partner with God in the saving of souls.
Do not harden your hearts. Do not be faithless.
Do not sit on the sidelines while God is inviting you onto
the field. Would you lift high the gospel
in your life and would you become one of its patrons?
Would you stand with me? Heavenly Father, we are not
worthy. We are not deserving to have our
prayers into your throne room. But we were able to do so
because your Son has made us worthy, that through his
sacrifice we are your sons and daughters.
So Heavenly Father, I'm asking that the hearts that are far
from you would be brought to you today and to the hearts that
have had their minds and their emotions fixed on the things of
this earth, that God, you would lift them up to the hills where
our hope came from. And God, that you would stir in
us a desire to make sure that everybody knows about what your
Son has done on our behalf. And your name, I pray.
Amen.