I'm going to get a stand. There we go.
The last four weeks, if you've been with us, we have been
walking through and looking at how Jesus is at the center of
the entire Old Testament. The whole thing is a beacon
pointing us towards him. I've heard from a bunch of you
how much you have enjoyed that time and putting those pieces
together. And if you're in the boat where
you like, hey, I wish we could do another four weeks, I've got
a great news for you. On Monday, April 20th, we start
an equip class where for four weeks, Laura Tucker, who is
hosting this morning is going to be walking through Jesus in the
Old Testament. And so if your heart is really
left and you want to kind of get to understand this even better
and see how the Old Testament points towards Jesus in the new
want to encourage you to sign up for that equip class.
I have loved the last four weeks too, but I'm really excited to
get back into Luke this morning. Next 10 weeks we're going to be
in Luke Chapter 9 and and we want to see how Jesus shaped his
disciples and is shaping us for ministry.
Here's our our kind of series big idea for the the next 10
weeks as we track together that following Jesus is not simply
about believing right things about him.
It is about being shaped by him. It's not just giving
intellectual assent or knowing certain things about Jesus, but
it is actually allowing Jesus to shape our lives.
Throughout this section of Luke's gospel of the account of
Jesus life, we see Jesus really intentionally forming his
disciples, especially the 12 disciples who he calls out as
his apostles. We see Jesus working on them to
humble their hearts. We see Jesus working on them to
confront their fears, to to strengthen their faith, to give
them a bigger vision of what he has come to do and a bigger
vision of who he is. And then ultimately to call them
into what he has already begun doing.
And, and I think as we walk through this, we're going to see
how Jesus wants to do that with each of us.
If you're here today and you're like, I, I really want to
understand what does Jesus have for my life?
What's my purpose? What's my calling?
I think Jesus going to show us that if you want to know, hey,
how can Jesus shape me to be a more courageous, less fearful
person, We're going to see how Jesus does it.
If you want to say, how can Jesus help me see a bigger
picture of who God is and a bigger picture of what his
Kingdom is meant to be on this earth, we're going to see that
in Luke Chapter 9. And I want to say this, I've
just been so convinced of this as I've been putting this series
together, as I've been thinking about walking through this
section like our world desperately, desperately,
desperately needs followers of Jesus.
Don't just know some stuff about Jesus.
It needs people who know Jesus. It needs people who are actually
being shaped to look more and more like Jesus in their lives.
And so before we get into the, the, the sermon today, as we
kind of begin to enter into this whole series, I just want to
pray over our time together over the next 10 weeks, over our time
together this morning. Then we're going to read God's
Word together. Father, as we open your Word
today, we thank you that the same spirit that inspired the
words that Luke penned lives in each and every follower of you
who is here today. And so as you have given us
these words passed down and transmitted to us through the
Scriptures, allow your Spirit, who is the transcriber of those
words, to also be the interpreter of those words in
our heart today. Help us to see where we need to
take the words that we hear and apply them to the lives that we
are called to live, particularly in this area of being shaped for
mission. Father, I just desperately want
you to show each of us, myself included, how we can live more
in line with the mission that you have called us to how we can
be better ambassadors for you. So God would you for each one of
us, give us ears to hear today and then give us the courage and
the boldness and the power to put into practice what we hear
in Jesus name, Amen. All right, let's read this
passage from Luke Chapter 9, the 1st 6 verses together this
morning. Luke records this.
It says summoning the 12, that is the 12 apostles.
He gave them power and authority over all demons and to heal
diseases and then he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God
and to heal the sick. Take nothing for the road, he
told them. No staff, no traveling bag, no
bread, no money and don't take an extra shirt.
Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.
If they do not welcome you when you leave that town, you shake
off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.
And so they went out and they travelled from village to
village proclaiming the good news and healing everywhere.
So if we go back and we think about where we've been in Luke,
Luke calls the first disciples to begin to follow him and walk
alongside him in Luke chapter 5. And then he calls twelve of
those disciples to be his inner circle, to be those who are just
with him all the time watching, observing, healing, watching him
teach, watching him heal, watching him cast out demons
and, and, and those 12 are called the apostles.
And now in this section, everything begins to change
because the watchers are now called to become doers.
The observers are called into participation.
Jesus is saying in this moment, as we start now into this
chapter, guys, it's your turn now.
You've been around me, you've seen what I've been doing.
Come on and join me in it. Right in Luke 443.
If you go back and you look at that verse, Jesus said that His
mission is is to proclaim the good news about the Kingdom of
God. In fact, He said when
individuals were coming and asking him to stay where he was,
to continue teaching and healing and casting out demons, he said
no, it's necessary for me to proclaim the good news about the
Kingdom of God to other towns because that's the purpose I was
sent for. This is why I've come.
And then what's he calling these guys to do The exact same thing,
right? Proclaim the Kingdom of God and
heal the sick. The same thing that he has been
doing, He's now calling the disciples into.
This is really important because we need to understand this.
This is not a new mission. It's not the disciples mission.
It's Jesus's mission that he is now inviting the disciples to
enter into, and he's invited them to enter into it.
I want you to see this morning He also invites us to enter into
it. This is the mission of every
follower of Jesus. Jesus is calling us to
participate in his mission. Jesus mission is our mission.
Christianity is not a spectator sport.
It is simply impossible to follow Jesus from the stands or
the computer screen or the balcony seats or the seats on
the main floor. Like if that's the totality of
your understanding of what it means.
To follow Jesus is to show up, to listen to somebody else do
things for Jesus, to listen to somebody else talk about Jesus
and feel like you are following Jesus.
You are not a follower of Jesus. You may be a fan of Jesus, but
but Christianity is not a spectator sport.
Sometimes Christians argue about really dumb stuff.
I don't know if you noticed this now, and I will say this because
I don't. This is just because people
argue about dumb things and Christians are people.
So if you're here and you're not a follower of Jews, you're like,
oh, the Christians, yeah, they're always.
I'm just telling you, everybody argues about dumb stuff.
Christians follow into it too. And one of the things that
Christians argue about that's really dumb is whether
Christianity is at it at its core.
Are we supposed to be evangelizing or making
disciples? And the reality is you can't
separate those two things. Is like saying is breathing
about taking in oxygen or is about expelling CO2.
It's the same thing. It's one in the same you, you,
You have to have evangelism and discipleship because they're one
in the same. Evangelism is required to make
disciple. You got to invite people, tell
people of Jesus, invite people to follow Jesus if you're going
to have disciples and disciples evangelize, because that's what
it means to be a disciple. If you're a disciple of Jesus,
your mission is to proclaim the gospel or the good news, just
like it was Jesus's mission to go proclaim the good news.
That's the definition of evangelism.
Proclaiming good news is literally what it means.
The gospel is good news, you angelion.
It's the good news, and Jesus said, I came to proclaim this
good news, to herald this good news that the Kingdom of God has
come. Now the question we should ask
is why is that good news? Why is it good news that the
Kingdom of God has come and the Kingdom requires a king?
Can't have a Kingdom without a king, Doesn't work that way.
Why is it good news that the Kingdom has come?
Why is it good news that the king has come?
The reason that it is good news that the Kingdom has come and
that the Kingdom has come is because the king is the only
hope for this world. You know what?
Ultimately, there's all sorts of people that want to sell all
sorts of hope out there. There's people who want to sell
you on the hope that if we could just get new or better or
different leaders, everything would get different.
And I've lived long enough to see every leader is basically
the same leader. We end up going through all the
same stuff, but but entire realities are built around
getting you to convince, get worked around, getting you to
believe that if you could just change the guy at at the top
who's in control with a different guy at the top who's
in control, everything would be different.
People will tell you if we could just get better education, you
know, people would just, we just educate people.
If people would just have better information.
We are awash in information. We got too much information.
It has not solved the problems. People say, well, we mean what
we need is better laws, better rules.
We got so many rules. My wife will tell you I'm not
exactly a rule person. I'm not a bureaucracy person.
We got so many rules. It hasn't fixed things.
Some people say, well, you're better technology.
Well, I think we know the answer to that.
Better technology is just better technology.
It doesn't make things better. And often times if the people
who are using it aren't better, it makes things worse.
I even hear people what we need is a four day work week or a
social program or guaranteed income or what we need is more
empathy. No, like all those things may be
good things. I don't know.
I just know that none of them are actually going to fix what's
broken. There's no real hope.
If you're pinning your hope on that, you're going to end up
disappointed. The hope, the good news for this
world is that the King has come. That's why we celebrate Easter.
And that's why we celebrate every Sunday, because every
Sunday is a celebration of Easter.
That the King came, that he set in motion the hope for us, That
as Val prayed not just the hope for us as as individual, but the
hope for all things, That restoration and renewal not only
might happen, but is going to happen.
That everything that is wrong will be made right.
Jesus came and he died on the cross for the full penalty of
our sin and the sin of the entire world to make right all
that was set wrong by sin. And then Jesus as the King rose
again to prove that he reigns. He reigns over all things,
including death itself. That's why Easter is so great,
because Jesus rules and reigns over all.
So proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom is to proclaim the
good news that that is the King who has come, that there is a a
King who has paid the price, pay the price that sin made
necessary. He, he has come to set us free
from guilt and shame. He has come to set us free one
day ultimately from the entire reality of sin that corrupts and
breaks everything. And that King, Jesus, he is the
King who rules and reigns over all things.
Followers of Jesus are not first and foremost sent to proclaim a
moral message or a social message or a psychological
message or a political message. We are sent to proclaim a truth.
Jesus is the King who died, Jesus is the King who is buried,
and Jesus is the King who is risen and reigns over all
things. That's we come to proclaim.
And I'm just going to tell you when when Christians and the
church, when the mission becomes something other than that.
First and foremost, when the mission becomes political, we
fail in our mission. When the the mission of the
church becomes social, we fail in our mission.
When the mission of the church becomes about doing good, we
fail in our mission. When the mission of the church
becomes about anything other than proclaiming that Jesus
Christ is the King, the Lord, and our Savior, we fail in our
mission. But because Jesus Christ is the
King and the Lord and our Savior, it changes all of those
things. And if we don't recognize that
and allow that truth to shape us in every other way, then we'll
fail in our mission. But we can't get them backwards.
And far too often, Christians and churches get it all
backwards. It starts with proclaiming a
truth, and that truth changes everything else.
To proclaim the good news that Jesus has come.
He's made it possible for every single person to be part of his
Kingdom. That's our mission.
And as we're going to see from the rest of this passage, if
we're going to do that, it's we're going to require some
things. The first thing that we see is
that the mission that we've been given requires us to declare the
gospel. To declare this truth following
Jesus requires us, as I said, to move from from from observers to
participants. I would also say it requires us
to be heralds, not mimes. Here's what I mean by that.
Look at what he says. He sent them to proclaim the
Kingdom of God. That word proclaim has meaning
it it to proclaim it was what a herald is think about a town.
If you've ever seen one of those funny town and I'm sorry if you
are a town crier because maybe there's somebody in here that's
but even people with the funny hats they go they say hear ye,
hear you. They stand out and they they
make an announcement. That's what it means to proclaim
is a stand in the city square and to make an announcement on
behalf of the king. Most Christians avoid
announcing, and they hope they can kind of mime it.
Mimes are confusing and weird and nobody likes them.
OK, and again, sorry if you're a mime, you can't do mime
evangelism. You can't do charades of Angel.
Also, nobody likes charades, so don't do it as a party game.
You can't do mime and charade evangelism and just hope people
get it. If we're going to proclaim the
good news about Jesus Christ, sooner or later we have to use
words. You have to use words.
If you don't use your words, I feel like I'm talking to when my
kids were little. If you don't use your words to
share Jesus with people, then we talk about all the time, hey,
we, we're a church and our whole mission is to make disciples of
Jesus who love God, love others, and serve the world.
You can't serve the world. Can't do that part of being a
disciple of Jesus without using words.
Can't. You can't if serving means
meeting needs, right? I think we'd all agree serving
means meeting. It means meeting the needs of
somebody else, every person's deepest need.
Is to know that they need Jesus. That is the deepest need that
every single person has. The deepest need is not
ultimately to have friends. That's important.
Deepest need is not even to have food and shelter.
Incredibly important. The deepest need of every
individual is to hear that King Jesus came, that he died for
them, He paid the penalty for their sins, and he rose again.
And here's why. Because you can give people
food, you can give people housing, you can give people
healing, you can give people community and friendship.
What is true of all those people, no matter how much of
that you give them, is they're going to die.
And if you die without knowing Jesus, you die separated from
God forever. That's what we call hell.
And if you don't tell somebody that you just give them
everything else they need, but you don't give them that, you
haven't given them what they need the most.
Ultimately, if we love people, we're going to share the truth
of how much we love them. If we are going to serve them to
the deepest need that they need to be served at, we have to use
words to tell them what Jesus has come to do for them and to
invite them to follow him. The mission that Jesus gives us
requires word, words, but the mission we've been given also
requires us to display the gospel.
See it says then he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God in
the next part matters and to heal the sick again.
I like, I like people say you do not like morning.
No, I like mornings like this where everybody gets
uncomfortable that I think we should.
We should always feel a little bit of tension.
We should always feel a little uncomfortable in church.
This matters not only that you say the gospel that you display
the gospel that matters. Now when it says healing the
sick, I, I again, here's where I'm going to get everybody a
little annoyed here. This is not because healing is
normative at all times and places for all people all the
time, and that if you aren't doing, if healing isn't
happening, that something is broken.
OK, Does God heal the sick today?
100% Some of you can give testimony that right now and can
have you stand up and you could share how God answered prayer
through somebody else and you've been healed.
Might God call you to pray over someone for something?
100% I think honestly, if you're following Jesus, sooner or later
he's going to call you to pray over in some really
uncomfortable ways. People healing the sick, though,
What, what is this for? Why did he send them out to heal
the sick? Because healing the sick was
meant to be demonstrative of the fact that the Kingdom of God,
the, the restoration and renewal of all things is breaking in
the, the, the Jesus came to see it's, I was out in my garden
yesterday and I was taken and I know I'm not supposed to take
all the stuff out yet because the bugs and stuff are in there
and I, but I was nice and I was doing it.
I cleared it out and I started to see the little shoots coming
up and I was so happy to see green breaking through that when
when Jesus says the Kingdom has come, it's the shoots breaking
through. And so when someone is healed,
it's like, hey, that's the shoots breaking through.
This is what the Kingdom is going to look like in its
fullness. Everything's going to be healed.
Everything's going to be restored.
And so Jesus sends them out with power and a proclamation to say
I'm doing something. The kingdom's breaking through.
This is divine power to authenticate the message.
But even in the New Testament, everybody doesn't get healed.
Paul wouldn't have left his friend Trophimus in Second
Timothy 420 sick if everybody just got healed when they were
prayed over. He he wouldn't have told Timothy
to go take some wine for his stomach.
Now I'm now I'm making the Baptist mad, too.
You wouldn't have told Timothy to go take his some wine for his
stomach's sake, which was a common remedy at the time
because people got sick from the water, if he could have just
said, hey, if you just pray, you'll be healed.
So, Timothy, go find a healer, OK?
It's not that healing is meant to be normative for all places
at all times for all people. You just pray and people get
healed all the time. But should it be true that we
pray sometimes people get healed?
Yes, we should not shy away from the miraculous.
We should not shy away from the fact that the same power that
was at work through the apostles can be at work through US and is
at work in the world today. And we should ask God to do the
miraculous and then let God be God and decide what he's going
to do because he does the thing to do a lesser miracle.
And the healing is a lesser miracle to prove that God can do
the greater miracle, which is raising people from death to
life. That's what it is.
Every time someone gets saved, that's the greatest miracle.
It's the greater miracle. Healing or casting out demons
was always meant to be in service of the proclamation of
the truth of the gospel that the Kingdom has come and the king
has come. It's an authentication.
The gospel isn't just that Jesus came to save sinners from their
sin, but that he came to renew and to restore a world that has
been ravaged by sin. He came to undo what sin has
done. He came to reverse the curse of
Genesis 3. That should always be a part of
the gospel. That should be a part of how we
bring the gospel to people. Good news is always meant to be
accompanied by good deeds. That's why we are doing the big
serve. It's at the heart of the big
serve. We want everyone who's a part of
Forward to be in because we want the world around us to see that
God has come to bring something new and something better.
We want people to see that living under a different king
looks different and that that different king wants to bring a
different type of Kingdom into the world.
We are sent out. I mean, this is good news.
We're sent out to be beacons of hope in a world that is
hopeless. That's at the heart of what
evangelism is all about. When Peter says be ready to give
an answer for anyone who asks you, he says it is for the hope
that is within you that people would be asking you, do we go
out and live like people of hope?
Do we go out and live like we live under a different king in a
different Kingdom? Do we do things differently in
the world? When you do that, people notice
and they will ask and then you proclaim the truth of the King
to them. We aren't just going out when we
do the big serve to do random acts of kindness.
We are going out to point people to the God who in His ultimate
kindness sent us Jesus Christ. OK, I need us to understand this
is all. There's not one or the other.
It's both. And Matthew 516 says this.
This is Jesus words. Let your light shine before
others so that they may see your good works.
And some of us want to cut it there and give glory to your
Father in heaven. But they can't give glory to
your Father in heaven unless they know that you've gone out
to do your good works because of your Father in heaven.
OK, see most of us tend to be words people or deeds people.
We need to not be either or people.
We need to be both and people. We need people who will share
Jesus message Jesus way in Jesus character with Jesus power,
seeing Jesus things done in this world.
And we can't do that on our own. That's why verse one matters so
much. He gave them power and authority
over all the demons to heal diseases, and then he sent them
out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.
The mission that we have been given requires God's power and
provision. Some of you, when this type of
message comes, we talk about evangelism.
You just want to get in a corner and curl up and start rocking
yourself because you get so anxious on the inside.
You're like, I can't do this. I don't know the words to say.
This is going to be really awkward.
Your voice changes like that. The good news is this, it
doesn't rest on your power and ability.
It doesn't rest on your eloquence.
The success of the mission, if it had rested on those 12 man,
as we read through the Gospels, they're dummies.
They get stuff wrong all the time.
They, they, they're with Jesus. They still can't see Jesus.
If you're a dummy and you get stuff wrong all the time, good
news, it doesn't rest on you rest on Jesus.
They would have been cooked, and we would be cooked if we go out
there and try and do this on our own.
But Jesus gives his power and authority.
When we go out in obedience, in submission to Jesus, he gives us
everything that we need. That's the good news.
Now, does that mean that training is useless?
No, of course not. The disciples have been watching
him for almost three years at this point.
He's giving them training and He's sending them out, and He's
sending them out, as we're going to see in a little bit, knowing
that they're still going to mess up sometimes they're going to
fail at the thing that He sends them out to do.
We have an equipped class coming up, May 12th, 3 weeks on how to
be a good neighbor because we want to equip you to be able to
do this type of thing and give you some tools.
If Jesus tells you to do something, though, He's going to
give you what you need to do it. That's the point here.
So if Jesus says I want you to go tell your friend about me,
you don't get to say but Jesus, I didn't take the equip class
they offered back in the fall. I think you should ask somebody
else now. If Jesus asks you to do
something, your response is yes, Jesus, I know you're going to
give me what I need. That's why Jesus says take
nothing for the road. No staff, no traveling bread
bag, no bread, no money and don't take an extra shirt.
Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.
Because they wanted, he wanted them to understand you're
ultimately dependent on me in this.
You can go out and do whatever you want to do and make all your
plans and preparations to have all the training in the world.
Nothing is going to work if it doesn't come through my power
and my provision. The call here is to submission.
It's to trust. It's to surrender.
God gives you everything that you need.
He's Jesus saying you don't need provisions.
All you need is a yes, it's all you need.
We've been given a mission by Jesus and Jesus gives us
everything that we need. It's the same mission that he
modeled to proclaim the good news of the King and the Kingdom
in a word and in deed. And he'll give you everything
that you need to accomplish it. And here's the part you're
really going to not like. But the mission that we've been
given requires facing rejection. So if they do not welcome you,
which means when they do not welcome you, when you leave that
town, you shake off your dust from your feet as a testimony
against them. The good news is great news.
It's the best news. It's also hard news.
See, to say Jesus is king is also to tell somebody else and
you are not to say Jesus came to save you is also to to say to
someone you're lost and you need saving.
Lots of people want to hear, I found, about how Jesus can take
the life that they currently have and make it better.
A lot less people want to hear about the fact that without
Jesus, there is no life. Jesus is telling his disciples
that there are people who are going to reject the message that
they bring. But don't let that fact stop you
from sharing the gospel. And when it happens, don't keep
it. Don't allow it to keep you from
going and sharing it with somebody else.
You move forward, you keep on going knowing that there will be
times where they reject you, where they don't want to hear
it. And it may be a time in their
life, maybe a season in their life, maybe the totality of
somebody's life. That's not for us to decide.
All we can do is offer Jesus to people and then leave that
between God and them. Be ready for it, because if
you're not ready for it, it's going to catch you off guard and
it's going to devastate you. After these instructions from
Jesus, I think it's really important to see how the
disciples respond in verse 6. So, so they went out and
travelled from village to village proclaiming the good
news and healing everyone. And we can miss something
important if we don't stop here, because the mission that we've
been given, this tells me, requires action, not just
intention. To be, as I said, a disciple,
Jesus is to be shaped increasingly more and more in
every area of our life. Like Jesus, every disciple is
called to live on mission. For Jesus everyone to do that,
it's not enough to have good intentions.
It actually requires action. You do not grow by intending to
be obedient. You grow by being obedient.
If if you've been following Jesus for any length of time,
the fact that you are called to share the good news of Jesus
with others, I would hope, especially if you've been in
this church for it's that this is not new information that you
have received today. If it is, my apologies, we have
failed you. But I know something else by the
admission of the people in this room, most of you aren't doing
it. I know that because we take a
spiritual health survey every fall.
Here's what the Spiritual Health survey tells me. 25% of
Christians regularly share their faith with people who don't know
Jesus. I also know that on surveys
there's something called the Halo effect that numbers
inflated. 48% are actively cultivating relationships with
people who don't know Jesus. Like you're actually looking for
people who don't know Jesus and just having them in your life.
55% pray for ways to show and speak God's love to non
believers. By the way, that's just total
even lack of intention can't even be bothered to have an
intention to pray and think I hope somebody wants to hear
about Jesus and that you would use me God and and and again I
need a Ruby really clear. I am saying this out of love for
you. This is I don't, I don't want to
heap things on you as a church, but I do want you to fully
experience all of what Jesus wants you to experience.
You know, I meet so many Christians who feel like
rudderless and lost no purpose in their life because they're
not doing anything that has any eternal purpose or value.
If you're not sharing your faith with other people, you're really
not doing anything that has real eternal meaning or value.
You just kind of spinning your wheels and wasting your time on
earth. And I say this out of love for a
world that's all around us, that's going to hell without
Jesus. And I wonder, do any of us care?
Do we even believe that? Because we don't act like we
believe it. If you're a follower of Jesus,
then follow him. Don't just intend, act.
This is a call to action. If you aren't at the very least
praying for people who are far from Jesus who need to
experience and hear about his love for him.
Let's at least get that number to 100% of followers of Jesus.
Then we would all commit ourselves to regularly be
praying for people who are far from Jesus to know Jesus and
that he would use us to be a part of that mission.
I think that's an easy we should be able to get to 100% next fall
on that. If you're praying, My guess is
God's also been prompting a little bit in your life and it
might be time to stop taking those prompts as suggestions and
start taking them as commands. If you've what we've been
talking, God's been laying people on your heart.
He's been like, hey, I've been this is the Holy Spirit doing
this. I've been telling you, you know,
I've I've been telling see, he's telling you what I've been
telling you because he's speaking my words to you.
Talk to that person. Pray that God would give you a
time to sit down and just say, hey, I'd like to tell you about
Jesus. He's made a world of difference
in my life. All that stuff that you've been
noticed about my life, that's because of what Jesus has been
doing. That's because of the Holy
Spirit are working. It's not because of me.
And also want to say this, some of you are here today and I know
that you don't know Jesus. And I would be remiss if I
didn't give you the opportunity right now to receive the King
who has come and to enter into his Kingdom.
Jesus is the king. You're not the king.
I'm sorry to tell you. You're not the queen.
You are lost. But he came to save you.
He came to fix those things, all those things in your life right
now. You know there's so much broken
in your life and you've been working away.
Reading the self help books, doing the work, you're trying to
get it right. You've been doing all the
religious stuff. You can't get it right.
You can't fix yourself. What's broken in you could only
be fixed by what Jesus did on the cross, and he came to fix
it. He died on the cross for your
sin, and he rose again to prove that he's the King over death
and everything else and that your sins have been forgiven.
And all you have to do is to call out to him as your Savior
and King and invite him in and say, Jesus, I choose to follow
you. I want to walk in your way now.
I want you to be Lord over my life.
You came to save me. I'm yours.
If you do that, Jesus enters in right now and he makes peace
between you and God and the Kingdom begins to break into
your life. He saves you from that eternal
death and he and he invites you into eternal glory and eternal
life with him through Christ. I said earlier, following Jesus
is not a spectator sport. There are way too many
Christians who think they are following Jesus when they're
really just acting like fans of Jesus.
They're sitting in the stands, they're sitting in the seats.
They like him, agree with him half the time they'll sing songs
about him. They're not actually following
him. The call of Jesus to anyone who
would claim to be his follower is that we would be shaped for
his mission to proclaim in a word and in deed that the
Kingdom and the king have come and they've come for you.
So I'm going to invite the band to come on out.
We're going to finish with a song that is familiar.
If you've been around forward for a while and as we sing these
words, and they might be again, really familiar words to you
today, would you allow these words to be a prayer?
Would you allow these words to not just be an intention, but
these words this week would be your commitment as to how you
are going to be shaped by Jesus? Live for him and follow Him.
Church, would you stand?