Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Preachers always tell you to sit down. You'd sit down without us, right?
[00:00:05] I guess we're standing through the sermon. You wouldn't do that.
[00:00:09] So I am so thankful to be a part of a church that celebrates together the gospel of Jesus as we work together, as we do difficult things together, fun things together, as we eat together. Whatever we do, we do in the name of Jesus.
[00:00:35] I was a youth Minister for about 30 seconds when I was. For two years. And I wasn't great at it.
[00:00:48] I like hanging out with kids. Like, we got along. You could see where that might happen, where teenagers. And I still, as we say in Arkansas, jeehaw.
[00:01:03] And so I was a youth minister, but like, I was a church where the eldership was very involved. This is the wrong word. With the youth group aware.
[00:01:19] They were very aware of the youth group. I was once in an elders meeting where they. We talked for 20 minutes about how I was offering pizza too much at these youth events. Come up with something else, they said.
[00:01:34] And so sushi it was. It cost the church quite a bit. But.
[00:01:42] And this was a tough part of youth ministry. One of the tough parts of youth ministry was balancing fun and Jesus and church stuff, as if those two were just at odds with one another.
[00:01:59] Where you could do church stuff, you could sing, you could give a devotional, read scripture, you could pray together as a youth ministry, as a youth group. But then there was also dodgeball and pizza and sushi night and all of the things.
[00:02:17] And when was Jesus and when wasn't Jesus.
[00:02:22] And I'm so grateful to be a part of a church that sees every encounter with each other as gospel.
[00:02:33] When we get together in the foyer and have coffee and donuts, that's gospel.
[00:02:43] Now. We're not proclaiming the gospel.
[00:02:46] We're not out there saying, here's the message of Jesus. There's something to that, for sure. But. But being unified and together as the kingdom of God is gospel.
[00:03:01] I don't have to give you the five steps of salvation or the Roman road, or the prayer. You have to pray. I don't have to give you that to walk you through a process to be a part of the kingdom of God. We will get there eventually. And at Glenwood, we trust that the people that God is sending to us, we trust that God cares enough about them to shape them like Jesus.
[00:03:31] That we do not have to do any of the. Hey, guys, excuse me. You've got to get this right now.
[00:03:37] Now that you've been baptized, now that you take communion with us, now that you. You profess Jesus as Lord. Here's. Here's the way you're supposed to act.
[00:03:47] We believe that Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the grace of God, will change people.
[00:03:58] And a lot like he changed you and me, and is still indeed changing you and me.
[00:04:05] He will change them slowly.
[00:04:08] And at times it will be painful, and at times it will be obvious, and times it will be subtle.
[00:04:15] But it will be this long process. No one is ever quite where they're going to be when you meet them, if they have Jesus.
[00:04:25] And so Jesus comes into a life, into a community, and he shakes that community, changes that community for us.
[00:04:37] And however he does it, in small ways, God can use donkeys to proclaim his message.
[00:04:48] You remember that story.
[00:04:50] If you don't, quick reminder. Balaam a man of God and Balak a king, which you have to remember. M for man of God and K for king, so that you remember who was who. Balaam is a man of God. Balak was a king.
[00:05:09] The he's going to do something that Balaam is going to do something that God does not want him to do.
[00:05:19] Why or when or how or to whom, no one knows. Don't even look it up.
[00:05:25] Just kidding. It's a full story in the Bible. You can read it. But he's heading to a place and he's going to do something that God does not want him to do. And there stands an angel in his way.
[00:05:38] And the donkey runs him into, just won't go because the donkey can see the angel. By the way, this story is much funnier in the King James, but that was just for a couple of you. I apologize.
[00:06:01] The donkey can see the angel and Balaam can't.
[00:06:06] And so he does. What you do is you whoop the donkey.
[00:06:14] Okay, that joke's over, guys. Y'all stop.
[00:06:20] And the donkey turns around and says, hey, what are you doing? Sounds like Eddie Murphy, but I'm not good at impressions. What are you doing?
[00:06:30] He says, which is fun. Which is my favorite part. One of my favorite parts of scripture is that Balaam goes, I'm whooping you, not.
[00:06:41] He doesn't. Ah, you're talking.
[00:06:45] You won't go, don't you? And then God opens his eyes and he can see and that just this donkey knows better than this man of God.
[00:07:04] And we can be corrected by people who are different in different parts of their stories as we are. If God can use Balaam's donkey, he can use me to proclaim the message.
[00:07:21] If God can use. Listen. Time Out. A lot of you have a joke that you want to walk up to me in the foyer and tell me afterward. Just don't. Just email it to me. So I have record of who sent it.
[00:07:34] And I can pry. I can hold it over you later. But this long story. And all throughout the story of God, all throughout the Old Testament, we have story after story of God using people who haven't figured it out yet.
[00:07:53] And that's what church is.
[00:07:56] The most dangerous part is when we all think we figured it out.
[00:08:01] That when we set down and say, we've achieved it, people like us, we come to this place, we figured it out, we've got it right.
[00:08:13] But what church is, is not a group of people who have all the same doctrinal understandings. Church is a group of people who sit around the table with different understandings of scripture, different understandings of the way the world works, different perspectives, what's going on in the world. And we pull out our chairs and we sit down at the table of God. Because Jesus is the king, not me. Not my ideology, not my doctrine.
[00:08:39] And so we have to see the kingdom of God is not just, well, this time where we sing and we pray and we preach and we do devos and then not the pizza time, all of it. Every table that we've got is the kingdom of God. And I think that message is a message that must be declared. It's a message not, you've got sins and I'm going to save you.
[00:09:06] I saw a church sign yesterday.
[00:09:09] Macy and I went to a play and I saw a church sign yesterday that said, jesus saves.
[00:09:20] You. Would be wise to consider it, which felt like the most, like, gentlemanly way to say you're doomed. Like, you would be wise. Like, I felt like the church signs would have a monocle and a top hat. You would be wise to consider salvation.
[00:09:36] Well, thank you, kind sir. That was polite. But it's not just you have sins and it's been forgiven. You were in this place, and now you're in this place. You were going to this place and now you're going to this place.
[00:09:50] Salvation doesn't just define where you're going. It defines what community you're a part of and who's in charge of that kingdom. The king.
[00:10:03] And so when I look at Jesus, one of the things that is just as a ministry leader, as someone who has worked with churches my whole life, one of the things that dumbfounds me is how often he walks away from popularity, how often he tells people, don't Tell people what I am just yet he was at Simon's mother in law's house.
[00:10:39] So Peter's wife is never mentioned, but she must have existed because no one adopts a mother in law.
[00:10:49] No one just picks one.
[00:10:56] So Simon's mother in law was in bed with a fever and they right away, straight away told Jesus about her.
[00:11:10] So he went to her and he took her hand and he helped her up.
[00:11:15] The fever left her and she began to wait on them.
[00:11:22] Now imagine the shock. This is early, this is early on in Jesus ministry. They're just at the point now where like, okay, we're following you now. Do you want to go meet my wife?
[00:11:38] Peter says to Jesus, I will drop my nets and follow you. Would you mind telling my wife I need you there?
[00:11:53] And so he goes in and he sees the mother in law and he helps her up. She is healed. And they are, I'm sure dumbfounded by this, blown away by what Jesus has done to help Peter's mother in law in this way, this quickly.
[00:12:18] No grand prayer, no, he just takes her by the hand and helps her up.
[00:12:27] That's it.
[00:12:31] And she's not just then healed, but she's healed and ready to do what she loves to do.
[00:12:41] They are blown away by this.
[00:12:48] They say to themselves, my goodness, it's only Mark 1 and here he is raising people from the dead or not from the dead, from a fever.
[00:13:01] So that evening after the sunset, people brought Jesus all the sick and demon possessed. There's more going on here, but that's a Bible class and that I've already taught last year.
[00:13:17] So come to Wednesday night. It's interesting, the whole town gathered at the door. So if you imagine it, Jesus helps this woman and fever's gone and now people are crowding in. The house doesn't have the bandwidth to keep up with all those who are showing up at the door. It's a crowd trying to get into a place. People who are hurting, who are sick, demon possessed.
[00:13:51] And Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons. But he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
[00:14:05] He wasn't ready to show them yet.
[00:14:11] So very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and he went and prayed. And let's stay here on this scripture just for a second.
[00:14:25] This is one of my favorite mental images. Sometimes you just have to open the book, open the Bible and let it pop up to you. Remember the pop up books. Just take a minute and set yourself into the text 1. There's just something about imagining Jesus waking up that is powerful to me.
[00:14:48] I don't know. He rested and then he woke.
[00:14:54] He sits up. I'm sure they're crowded into one room.
[00:15:00] Sits up.
[00:15:02] He makes his bed, because that's what gentlemen do.
[00:15:07] Rolls up his mat, or whatever it is he's using, and quietly steps over the disciples who might have hung back.
[00:15:23] Goes through that empty doorway that was crowded before.
[00:15:30] Breathes the cool morning air.
[00:15:36] He's drained.
[00:15:40] Sure, sleep helps, but you've got to go stand in the presence of the Lord sometimes to get your wind back.
[00:15:55] So Jesus finds his way to a hill and sits and prays.
[00:16:04] We've talked about this recently, but prayer isn't necessarily something that is scripted or that. But I'm sure there was some I would just love. We've heard a lot of Jesus's prayers, but if I could go back and watch any moment in history, it might be this one right here.
[00:16:25] I want to know what he prayed or if he just sat in the presence of God. I have no idea and I have no guesses, but he's there recharging.
[00:16:45] And then they come looking for him.
[00:16:48] Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed. Because this is the type of sentence you exclaim, everybody's looking for you.
[00:17:02] Huh?
[00:17:04] Me?
[00:17:06] Everybody's looking for you.
[00:17:11] Everybody's wondering where you are.
[00:17:20] Let's go back and give them who they want.
[00:17:31] Jesus almost ignores them.
[00:17:35] He doesn't say, oh, great.
[00:17:37] He doesn't say, well, let's deal with them in this way.
[00:17:43] He says, let's go somewhere else.
[00:17:49] Let's go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can proclaim, preach there.
[00:17:58] Proclaim this gospel I proclaimed earlier. This word preach here is giving this proclamation of the gospel.
[00:18:08] It's what the word Mark uses whenever Jesus comes over and starts proclaiming the gospel. He's preaching the gospel that the kingdom of God is here. He says, I've got to preach other places too.
[00:18:22] That is why I've come.
[00:18:27] I've got to preach in these other places. That's why I've come.
[00:18:33] It's not to have my name exalted because I can heal the sick, because I can cast out the demons. I can keep them quiet when they're wanting to say who I am.
[00:18:45] It's not because I'm all powerful. Jesus had every power in the world and he said, it's the proclamation I've come to do.
[00:18:57] I've come for the proclaiming.
[00:19:01] I'VE come for the proclaiming of the kingdom of God that it's arrived and that Jesus rightful place on the throne. Jesus rightful place in the throne of heaven, that he is our king. He's coming to proclaim that God has shown up in history.
[00:19:23] And so when we go into the world, a lot of what we are proclaiming is the presence of God and the kingship of Jesus. Whether we are doing that with our mouth and you need to do that with your mouth.
[00:19:36] You need to speak those words.
[00:19:41] The message of Jesus. The rule of Jesus needs to be proclaimed. Quit giving your parents credit for how good you are.
[00:19:53] Well, that was kind of you eyes raised right. You know, kids today aren't raised that way.
[00:20:04] Get a trophy for everything. Whose fault is that? It's their parents.
[00:20:15] We think we came by this goodness naturally by some raising and some understanding of ethics and some understanding of culture and worldview. Like that's we figured it out and now we're good raised right.
[00:20:36] I don't care how good your parents were or how good of a parent you are. Pray to God that you are influenced more by the King than you are by your parents.
[00:20:51] And stop in the moments when you do good things, stop giving all credit to just like help somebody at the gas pump. They or you've ever been in the grocery store and someone has just one too many bananas and they just can't afford it, or they didn't fill out the mortgage for their eggs, didn't sign that one paper.
[00:21:16] So like if, if you help out in that moment, bring Jesus there to speak up about it.
[00:21:33] I love experiencing Jesus here.
[00:21:38] I think the power of Jesus in this place is palpable. The Holy Spirit is felt and is free.
[00:21:50] But when we say Amen, Jesus wants to go somewhere else.
[00:22:01] Jesus wants to go with you.
[00:22:05] Proclaim the message. We are saying it with our mouth.
[00:22:11] But the flip side of that is true.
[00:22:16] If you're going, if you're going to not represent the kingdom of God when you're out there, don't have the name of Jesus on your lips.
[00:22:29] I say go as far as. If you cut somebody off on your way to church, just go right by this place and turn around and come back.
[00:22:37] I'm a little serious.
[00:22:43] I do that because I just, I work here and I don't want people because I come to this place often and if I make a mistake because I'm a B minus driver at best, if I make a mistake and I make mistakes, I just have. I know they're angry and so I Drive right into a Methodist church and then come back.
[00:23:16] But if you're not who Jesus is calling you to be, and you've been a Christian a long time, stop stapling the gospel to your anger about the culture.
[00:23:40] Stop stapling the gospel to the way you think the world should be.
[00:23:49] Stop combining the gospel with your judgment on the people who are different from you.
[00:23:56] That's not helpful.
[00:24:00] Jesus went out and healed sick the sick and he cast out the demons. And just a shorthand of that, just real quick explainer. It's essentially saying he got rid of that which divided.
[00:24:18] Don't have time to go into it, but it's essentially this. There's the demons have a divisive capability in that time.
[00:24:29] And that which divided Jesus is uniting a group of people.
[00:24:34] And so when Jesus go, when Jesus is told, hey, there are people who love you, who want to, they're really excited about you. They woke up early, and I don't know if you know, but this morning was daylight savings time. That day, in that time, it's in the Greek, so it's real early. They woke up real early and they formed a posse and they're looking for Jesus. And he says, no, let's go.
[00:25:07] We've got to go somewhere else with the gospel.
[00:25:14] And I think the mission of the church is twofold. We have to experience the gospel together every chance we get. When we sit down at tables together, when we take communion together, when we worship together, together, we are. We should be very intentional about experiencing the gospel in front of us when the Spirit is strengthening us. But then when Jesus says it's time to take the gospel somewhere else, by all means necessary, we go with Jesus somewhere else.
[00:25:50] That's why it is so. There is no program that we can offer to bring in people. There is no situation where we can say, well, we've fixed our logo and we've got this great Facebook ad, everybody.
[00:26:07] There's no billboard that we can put up that does more than you saying to a friend who needs a family, I've got a family for you.
[00:26:21] There's no better way to grow a church than to invite your friends.
[00:26:31] The gospel has to go somewhere else.
[00:26:37] And you might not be somebody who says, I can explain. I can talk about this, the gospel, in a way that's very easy to understand. And I want to have a Bible study with you. That might not be you, and I understand that, but you have no idea how much kingdom work you're doing. When you say to someone, there's a seat next to me and I want to worship God with you.
[00:27:06] There's a seat next to me and I want to worship God with you.
[00:27:11] Come on over.
[00:27:14] Be happy to see you this Sunday.
[00:27:19] Hey, and you don't have to wait until Friends Day.
[00:27:24] You don't.
[00:27:26] You just have to know that this person doesn't. That you're bringing, doesn't have to be perfect.
[00:27:35] They just have to be invited.
[00:27:38] And in doing so, you're taking the gospel somewhere else.
[00:27:42] You're going with Jesus.
[00:27:45] This is exciting. We clap our hands, we raise our hands, we sing our parts.
[00:27:56] But when this is all over, it's time to take the gospel and proclaim it somewhere else.
[00:28:05] It's worth that.
[00:28:10] Have you ever had a bit of news that you just wanted to tell somebody?
[00:28:17] I'm not condoning gossip here.
[00:28:20] Not that it's. When you have news for you and you're excited, you want to tell everyone.
[00:28:29] I'm going on this trip.
[00:28:32] Some of you are In Antarctica, like 3/4 of the year, you can go traveling. I love seeing your travels on Facebook. That's the best part about Facebook.
[00:28:43] That and the ads. I love the ads.
[00:28:48] It's like having a mall that's catered just to me.
[00:28:52] But I love, like. But I love seeing you go and do. And it's exciting. And I want to hear about it when you get back. And if something interesting happens, you just want to tell people so much so that people used to go and they would set onto a table, a round slide projector, and they would invite their friends over and they would say, guys, come have cheese and be bored.
[00:29:19] And it was. It was. They would say this, Watch what happened on our trip.
[00:29:28] And they would. They want to tell somebody.
[00:29:38] I want people to know about what Jesus has done.
[00:29:44] That his sacrifice has brought us salvation, that in his blood we find forgiveness.
[00:29:52] That in his resurrection we have hope after death. And as he is king, when he sits on the throne, through his table we have unity in a world that is divided.
[00:30:06] That's what church is. That's what the gospel is.
[00:30:13] And it wants to go somewhere else.
[00:30:16] Let's pray together.
[00:30:19] Father, thank you for the grace that you have offered us.
[00:30:26] I'm so thankful that your son proclaimed his message everywhere he stepped, proclaimed his message and did your will everywhere he went.
[00:30:40] And as we are his followers, as we are his kingdom, we want to be the type of people who take this message somewhere else.
[00:30:51] May our words and our actions reflect your kingdom.
[00:30:56] And may we preach, may we proclaim your gospel. It's in your Son's holy name, we pray. Amen. If you need anything this morning, please come forward.
