Grab your Bibles. We're going to learn more about this kingdom
that's come. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter nine. We're going
to pick back up in verse 35, Matthew 9. 35. Those of you who are
joining us as guests, we are just going through the Gospel of
Matthew chapter by chapter, verse by verse, working our way through.
But this particular morning, I'm going to go ahead and confess
to you. This isn't how I was supposed to start the sermon this
morning. And the Lord brought conviction to me and said, no, you
got to tell him. So I was praying this morning, and the Lord
very clearly said, jason, that message that you wrote that you're
about to preach, it's for you, it's not for them. I'm going to preach
to you a message that is really all about God preaching to
me, because I am royally failing in this particular message.
I'm going to share with you. The Lord this morning was humbling
me, bringing me back to a place of remembrance of what I bring
to the table, which isn't much, and what the Lord can do if
I would just humble myself before him. So I struggle with what
we're going to be talking about, and the Lord had to beat down
my pride. He did it in multiple ways. One was during my
time of journaling and prayer, which was meaningful. I'll share
with that in a second. The second thing, though, was through
a text I got from my wife as I was driving up. It was a very simple
text, but it was a passage of scripture coming from her Bible reading.
It's Proverbs 16:31. It says, gray hair is a crown of splendor.
It is attained in the way of righteousness. It was just highlighted.
That's it. Nothing else. I texted back to my wife and said,
I must be a very righteous man. She wrote, for reals. That's
what she wrote. So God just reminded me, humbling me. All you're
bringing is a bunch of gray hair into this thing and a Bible
and give them. Give them me, don't give them you. Here's what
the Lord is doing. He's revealing to me an area of failure.
I don't like to admit this to you, what I'm about to admit to you,
because I'm not supposed to struggle with this. But I don't love
people the way I should love people. There are far too many moments
when I view people, again, don't hold your tomatoes. I view
people as inconveniences, intrusions and interruptions. I'm
a Pastor, like, my calling is to shepherd the flock of God. And
there are times when I just. People get in the way of what I'm
trying to accomplish. You ever been driving and you're going at
cruising speed and then all of a sudden a car pulls in front of
you just to slow down, and then you're like, middle finger,
stay down, stay down. Come on. No, I'm a Christian. I don't do that
kind of thing. But that's intrusion. Like, what are you doing?
Get out of the way. You're late to something and all of a sudden
somebody comes and says, hey, I got this issue, Pastor, can you
pray for me? I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, sure. Yes. How can I
pray for you? And I view a person in need as an intrusion. And
it's horrible. Sometimes it's my own family, my own children. I'm
about to go out, full dress to go mow, and I'm in my shorts and
shoes, and my beautiful daughter Jovi will run up, hey, Daddy,
do my shoes match? You know, come on, baby. I'm about to go outside
the door. Ask your sister, she'll tell you. It's a don't bother
me right now, I'm busy mindset that I just carry with me all the
time. And I just this morning the Lord said, jason, that's horrible.
You don't view people the way I view people. And because you don't
view people the way I view people, you'll never be able to minister
to people the way I want you to minister to people. And he's calling
me out and he's showing me, here's where Jesus is, here's where
you are. And I have a feeling that as he humbles me, some of you
in this room will be humbled along with me. Maybe I'm just praying
for that Some of you will be humbled along with me. But we're
gonna let Jesus do the humbling. Going back to the Gospel
of Matthew, chapter nine, verse 35, we're gonna pick up and
finish up chapter nine. Here's what it says. It says, and Jesus
went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues
and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease
and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion
for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep
without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest
is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly
to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
Alright, so here's what you got, you got Jesus now. And he's
saying, I want you to know what I've been doing this whole time,
actually. Verse 35, chapter 9, verse 35 is the bottom slice of bread
when there was a first slice of bread to make a sandwich. That
came back in chapter four, verse 23, where it says almost the
exact same thing verbatim. Jesus is saying, I came to preach,
teach and cure and heal every disease and sickness. Says then 4:23
says that again in 9:35. And you know what he does in between
that? He preaches, he teaches, and he heals every affliction. Chapters
five, six and seven are the Sermon on the Mount. He's preaching
and teaching at the highest level possible. Chapters 8 and 9,
he's healing every affliction, he's casting out demons, he's healing
the sick, he's raising the dead. I mean he's doing all kinds
of stuff. He's preaching, teaching and healing. But now in
this passage, it tells us the reason why. And this is where Jesus
and I get real different. Jesus was not doing this work so,
so that people would check him out like, aren't I amazing? Look
at me. He wasn't doing it for self glory or self attention. He
was doing it out of love. It says that Jesus saw the people and
he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless
like sheep without a shepherd. By the way, that phrase harassed
and helpless is an idiom in Greek. You could probably best translate
it. He saw them. They looked chewed up and spit out by the shepherds
who should have cared for them. In other words, life was so
broken, so heavy, so out of control that they were just, they
would just spit out on the floor, half dead, hopeless, helpless,
overwhelmed, at the end of their rope, nowhere to turn. He looked
out and that's what he saw. He didn't see intrusions and inconveniences
and interruptions. He saw people and he had compassion for
them. By the way, that word compassion in Greek, it's an interesting
word. It's born from the Greek word bowels or intestines. It literally
means he was sick to his stomach over the pain that he saw.
When he looked out over them, it hurt him in the deepest level
of his gut to look at them. We would say it broke his heart to look
out there and see them harassed and helpless and broken
and suffering on the floor, chewed up and spit out. That's what
drove Jesus to do what he did. And I look at how I view people and
they get in the way they slow me down. I got things I'm trying
to accomplish. And I realize how dissonant my view is of the people
around me and how glorious Jesus view of people around him was.
But God is trying to give you and me a gift, because I have a feeling
there are some of you in this room, maybe a little Type A like
I am as well. And you got your mission, you got your vision, you
got your goal. You're after it. And either the people are helping
you or they're in the way. Did you ever notice how interruptible
Jesus was? Here's the savior of the stinking world, and he stops
for a bleeding woman who touches his garment and say, all
right, stop the whole parade. Someone touch me. Always interruptible.
Why? Because the people were the mission. He looked out there
and saw them harassed and helpless. They weren't in the way.
That's why he came. And he says to us, here's what I want you
to know. People, my people, my disciples, as I have loved them,
I want you to love them, too. He's about to do something. This
is a hinge point in the whole Gospel of Matthew. So up to this
moment, Jesus has been doing all the work. He's the one doing
the preaching, the teaching, and the healing from chapters five
all the way to chapter nine, the very end of it. Now he's about
to say, I want you now to pick up the mantle and do what I've been
doing. I'm not gonna accomplish this mission on my own.
I'm handing it off to you to pick up the reins and to do what
I've been doing, preaching and teaching and healing every affliction
and every disease. I want you to do what I've been doing, and I
want you to love how I've been loving. I'm gonna give you three
points this morning. Here's the first point. It's the gift of
compassion. Compassion allows us to see people as harassed and
helpless and not as intrusions or inconveniences. He's trying to
give you and me a gift through compassion, to look out and actually
see people the way they are. And I want you to know all around
you are people who are harassed and helpless, chewed up
and spit out. It's that grumpy neighbor who always seems angry.
And what you don't realize is that one of his children is suffering
with cancer right now, and his whole life is shattered. And you
think he's just grumpy, but he's harassed and helpless, and you
get angry with him or you can go love on him or that kid in the
school who keeps on bullying somebody else. That a parent. You
just want to go tell that little kid and his parents what to
do. You don't realize that his parents just got divorced and his
whole life is in shambles, and that little boy is harassed and helpless
and overwhelmed, that he doesn't know what to do with it.
So he bullies somebody else. So we can look at them and we can
see intrusions and complications, interruptions, or
people who are harassed and helpless. And Jesus says, look at
them with compassion, see their brokenness. This is what I
stink at. I confess to you. I don't look at where people are and
why they're hurting. And therefore, my heart doesn't love.
And if my heart doesn't love, I don't do the mission of God. He's
calling us out this morning. Look at them the way I see them and
love them. And then he's going to tell them in just a moment and
take up my mission to them. But he starts in an incredibly simple
way. He starts with prayer. Did you notice that? He says. And
he said that after his heart is breaking over them, after he's
feeling the gut of his stomach, he says, calls the disciples,
says, therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest. By the way,
that's Almighty God the Father. And ask him to send out laborers
into the harvest. He said, the harvest is already plentiful. Send
out laborers, workers into the harvest. And I believe this is something
that we're supposed to take literally. Now, we could wait until
Wednesday to do it, but I don't want us to wait until Wednesday.
I want us to do it right now, to actually take Jesus literally.
So we're put a little pause on the sermon, and we're going to turn
this worship service into a prayer gathering. So here's what
I invite you to do. In just a moment, you're gonna find three or
five people around you. You're gonna huddle up. And I'd encourage
you. Don't worry about wasting time on introductions. Just come
together and start praying. And you're gonna pray for three things.
You're asking the Lord to send workers into three places. One, locally,
ask the Lord to raise up workers to go to the people who live
next to you in your apartment or on your block, or people who work
in the cubicle next to you, people who shop in the store that
you do or go to the restaurant. This city that we live
in, pray for God to send workers to tell them the good news.
Of the gospel, then two nationally, don't just pray for our
country. Pray for God to send workers to our country. Because the
answer to our country isn't politics, it's the gospel. And so
we need to be praying for God to raise up church planners who would
take the gospel to more and more places in our nation, but not
just this nation, to the ends of the earth. We need to pray for
God to send workers to the unreached, unengaged people groups
who haven't even heard the name of Jesus yet. So those three
things, locally, nationally, internationally, we're gonna pray
for God to raise up laborers. So I wanna invite you, just you can
pop up around your house, stand around, grab three or four
other people, and let's make this a prayer gathering. Spend just
two or three minutes. And then when that time is over, I'll pray
for us and lead us on to the next thing. So go ahead and move
around and do that now. Lord, thank you. Thank you that you hear
our prayers. Thank you that you can hear all our voices at the
exact same time. Your word tells us we're supposed to make your
house a house of prayer for all nations. Thank you that we get
to obey your scripture this morning. Thank you that you will
send workers simply because we've asked. Oh, God, we praise your
holy name in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Praise God.
Listen, as you make your way back to your seat, thank you. Thank
you for letting us do this. By the way, if you enjoyed that. Every
Wednesday night we pray and we do a lot of this kind of thing. If
you didn't enjoy it, come anyway on Wednesday night and learn
how to enjoy it, because it's a lot of fun. Prayer is one of those
things that you learn by doing. And so one of the reasons
why we don't like it is because we don't feel good at it.
Good news is you don't have to be good because God is good. We just
lift up our prayers, as imperfect as they are to him. And
that that means right now, this morning, some of you lift up
some very shaky prayers that the unshaken God will answer. And
so we're going to see him actually raise up workers. But I
want to go ahead and forewarn you. Jesus is a little tricky on
this one because he has a habit of making you the answer to
your own request. Oh, you pray for workers. How about you? In fact,
that's exactly what he does with the disciples. When you keep
on moving to chapter 10, what you're going to see is him say, hey,
disciples, I want you to go ahead and answer your own prayer
request. Look at verse 10. I mean, excuse me, verse one of chapter
10, it says. And he called to him his 12 disciples and gave them
authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every
disease and every affliction. The names of the twelve apostles
are first, Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew, his brother,
James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, Philip and Bartholomew,
Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James the son of Alphaeus
and Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed
him. These 12 Jesus sent out. I'm going to pause there for a moment.
I can 100% guarantee you that the vast majority of you in this
room, when you read that list, all you focus on is, is the name
of the 12 disciples, the 12 apostles. Like, some of you are so
nerdy, you memorize the names of the twelve apostles because you
think somehow you're going to get, like, special bonus points in
heaven if you can name them all. We focus on the names of the
12. And that's actually not the point. I mean, you need to know
the names. It's cool to know the names and see they're real people.
But that wasn't what he was doing. That's not why Matthew put
their names here. He put their names here to show what Jesus is
doing in the turning point of the gospel. You can see it in a couple
of ways. One of the first ways you see it is in how Matthew lays
them out. I don't know if you notice this, but he lays them out
in pairs. You'll see the word, and between the couplets, it starts
off Simon, who's called Peter, and Andrew, his brother. Then it
says James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, Philip
and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, and. And. And what he does
is he gives six couplets. And here's the reason why Jesus sent
people out two by two. These are the six mission teams that he's
sending out. And he's telling them how they went out in teams.
That's why he's given the names that way. Another way, though,
that you can tell what he's doing here is not so much just giving
his names, but sending them out is because of what they're called.
Back in verse 2, it says that the names of the 12 apostles are
these. That's the first time the word apostle is used in the New
Testament, by the way. And the word apostle is an interesting Greek
word, it comes from apostolos. That's not that difficult. Apostolos
becomes apostle. Just a transliteration. It doesn't take
rocket science to figure that out. But in English, you don't see
what you would see very quickly in Greek. So the word apostolos
comes from the Greek word apostelo. I mean, that makes sense.
You can see the connection. An apostolos is somebody who has been
apostelo Ed. Well, apostelo means to send. So literally, if you
were to. You were to translate it in verse 2, the names of the 12
sent ones are these. And then he gives the 12 names. And then in
verse 5, it says, and these 12 Jesus aposteloed he sent out. So
often we focus on the 12 and think about their position like the
12 pillars of the Church, the foundational ones. But did you know
that his main point in here wasn't to show us who are just set
apart to be the pillars of the Church? He's telling us how he's
passing off his mission. And by the way, he doesn't stop with
these 12. You go to the book of Luke. He sends out 72 people,
two by two, to go do the exact same mission. By the time you get
to the end of the Gospel of Matthew, he sends out all his disciples
and says, go make disciples of all nations. He's ascending God and
he's sending them out. Did you know that there are people in the
Bible who are called apostles? Who are not these 12? There's at
least four where the Bible calls them apostles. Paul is probably
the best well known, calls him the Apostle Paul. But Barnabas was
also called an apostle. Sometimes the ESV is tricky. On this
one, it'll call it a messenger instead of apostle. But the Greek
word is apostolos. He's called an apostle. You also have Titus,
who's called an apostle. And you have Epaphroditus. All four of
those are called apostles. Which shows us he wasn't just talking
about the 12 original ones. He was talking about anybody who was
sent. His point here is the function. They are being sent out
to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is why it actually says
that he calls them. In verse one, interesting. Verse one, it says,
and he called to him his 12 disciples. What's so intriguing to
me is that it sounds like there are all these disciples out
there somewhere. And he goes, okay, I pick you, and I'll pick you,
and I'll pick you. I'm calling you to me. But actually, the 12 were
already with him following around, he had already been bringing
them to himself. Every scholar I studied believes that this is actually
referring to a more technical like commissioning service, a calling
service where Jesus has these 12 and he lays hands on them and
commissions them with his authority. That's why it says, and
he gave them authority to do the very miracles that he was doing.
He's calling them to go out. By the way, I want you to know this.
No rabbi in Jesus time did it this way. Every rabbi had a pattern.
It's kind of like getting a PhD. Like you gotta do your years,
you gotta write your dissertation, you gotta, you got
to defend it. And then when you've done all that, then you are
given the mantle. You can go out and teach and do your thing.
That's how rabbis worked. They would call apprentices or disciples
to them. Those disciples would have to memorize everything that
that rabbi taught. He would have to show that he has been trained
well and he would just sit and spectate the whole time. And at the
very end of all of his training, if he had everything memorized
and he passed all the tests, then that rabbi would send him out
to be a rabbi. Jesus has a commissioning service at the very
beginning of his ministry and he calls them out when they have
no idea what they're doing and says, good luck, take my authority
with you. That's how he does it. Which means these poor trembling
disciples have no idea what they're doing. They're like, are
you sure? I'm a hillbilly from backwoods Galilee, Jesus, I don't
know what I'm supposed to do. Alright, it's okay. You got my authority.
Just go. Here's what I want you to understand about Jesus. Here's
the second point I want you to write down. Jesus doesn't send us
out when we're ready. Jesus makes us ready by sending us out.
It's completely opposite of what you would normally think. Oh
no, if I want to go share the gospel with somebody, I got to be
trained better. I'm going to go on a mission trip. I got to go
to seminary or something like that. I got to memorize my Bible
a bit more. I didn't even memorize the Sermon on the Mount.
Jason, I can't go on a mission trip. I can't share my faith with
somebody. They might ask questions too hard. I'm not ready.
Jesus doesn't send you out when you're ready. He actually makes
you ready by sending you out. So if you feel completely unqualified,
praise God, you're right where you need to be to be sent out by
Almighty God. That's exactly what he does with these disciples.
Bunch of hillbillies from backwoods Galilee. And he says, I'm
sending you out. That's verse five through 15 is their first mission.
They go out onto being the answer to their own prayer immediately.
Let's look at the first half of it. Pick it up in verse 5. These
12 Jesus sent out instructing them, go nowhere among the Gentiles
and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel and proclaim as you go, saying,
the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You receive without paying,
give without pay. Now, I want to put a little pause button there
for a moment because I want to deal with something that troubled
me for a long time when I read this particular passage. So Jesus
says, all right, I'm giving you instructions. You're going to
take the Gospel. Go out there, the Gospel of Peace. Just make sure
you don't tell the Samaritans and the Gentiles only go to the Jewish
people. I think sometimes we read the Bible and we don't stop
and actually consider the implications of it because we don't
want it to bother us. But that should bother you. Like, what in
the world is Jesus doing being so exclusionary here? Like, everybody
needs the Gospel of peace. Why is he saying, only go to the Jewish
people? There are other times Jesus did some things that are pretty
questionable until you understand why he's doing them. Like
telling a Gentile woman, like, oh, I'm not. The food is only for
the Jewish people, not for you gentile dogs. These are things that
Jesus said, you're going, bro, what's going on? You got to look
hard at these and understand why he's doing what he's doing. The
same thing with the Gentile woman. Jesus ultimately was just
testing her faith to see if she would still believe. And here
he's not saying, I don't want Samaritans and Gentiles to have the
Gospel. All this is is Jesus strategy. He's saying, I'm a Jewish
Messiah and a Samaritan, and a Gentile won't understand a Jewish
Messiah, but he would later go to the Samaritans and to the Gentiles.
In fact, if you read the Gospel of John, it says he intentionally
passes through Samaria, finds a woman at a well who's a Samaritan
and shares the gospel with the Samaritan people. So he's going to
take the Gospel to the Samaritans. At the end of Matthew
already mentioned it. He said, go therefore and make disciples of
all nations. He wants the Gentiles to have the gospel. But
he knew if he was going to start, he had to start with the Jewish
people. This is the same strategy Paul had, by the way. He
said to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile, start with the
base. Who can understand a Jewish Messiah? So Jesus says, go
to the Jewish people first. But he also says, and when you go,
heal the sick, cleanse the leper, cast out the demon, raise
the dead. Why? Because they ain't going to believe you're with
the Messiah if you don't have the power of the Messiah. You see,
Jesus knew this. He knew that every single Jew was expecting the
Jewish Messiah to come to earth with the power of heaven, sent
down as the long awaited son of David, who would bring the power
of heaven to earth. And so that's why Jesus did the miracles
he did. This wasn't some cheap parlor trick to say, check me out,
I can shoot lightning bolts from my eyeballs and webs from my
hands. Like he's. He's not trying to impress the people, he's
trying to show them I am the Messiah who's come down with the
power of heaven. And then when he sends his disciples out, the sent
ones, he says, you're gonna have to take my power with you or
they're not gonna. They're not gonna believe you are coming on behalf
of the Jewish Messiah. So here's my power. Heal the sick, cleanse
the leper, cast out the demon, raise the dead. I don't want you
to miss what Jesus just said. He said to a bunch of uneducated
hillbillies, you're going to go out and you are going to heal
the sick. All they've been doing at this point is watching Jesus.
And now he's going, you're going to go out and you're going
to cleanse the leper. You're going to go cast out a demon. You're
going to raise somebody from the dead. You little hillbilly, you.
You're going to go do it because you have my authority. That
should blow your mind that Jesus would give his authority to
people like these first 12 disciples. By the way, one of them
was a man named Judas Iscariot. And he still gave that
authority. Here's what this means for us today. When you feel
inadequate for the mission of God, praise God, because you're going
to depend on his power, not your own power. And he's saying to
you, I'm going to give you my authority and my power because you
go in my name. We should expect the same thing from God. In
fact, it's missionaries who are overseas to see the most miraculous
work of God because they're going in the name of King Jesus.
And Jesus himself said in John chapter 14, because I go away, the
Spirit, the same Spirit that's in me is going to come to you. And
greater works than me will you do when the Spirit comes. If it wasn't
just the 12 apostles that he gave this power to, he gives them
to the 72 later. He gives them to all his disciples later so that
we can be his messengers, the sent ones who go out in the power
of God. This is why we don't have to be afraid. Yes, we feel inadequate.
Yes, we don't have answers. No, we don't know if they're gonna
be healed or not. But we pray over them. And God does miraculous
works. And people see the power of heaven come down and they
believe that's the hope that we have. We have the power of Christ
because we are the sent ones. But I do have to temper that. It
is absolutely true. God is going to give you unprecedented power
when you go on a mission that you would never see somewhere else.
But that doesn't always mean when people see the miracles from
heaven, they are going to believe. We talked about this last
week, by the way. The Pharisees saw all the miraculous
healings of Jesus and they still said, nope, that can't be real.
You must come from the Prince of Demons. There are going to be
people who don't believe. If Jesus is about to send his 12 out
of as sheep among wolves, and he says some of you are gonna. Some
of them are gonna believe, some aren't. So here are my instructions
of what to do. And that's where it finishes up in verses 9
through 15. So let's finish up the passage this morning. Picking
back up verse nine. He says, acquire no gold or silver or copper
for your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals
or a staff for the laborer deserves his food. In whatever town
or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there
until you depart. As you enter the house, greet it. And if the house
is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy,
let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you
or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when
you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more
bearable on the Day of Judgment for the land of Sodom and
Gomorrah than for that town. We're going to finish that. I want
to go ahead and confess to you a second part I struggled to understand
when I first read this. It was that whole thing about, go to somebody
who's worthy, and if you find somebody who's worthy, let your peace
rest on them. But if they're not worthy, take your peace back.
What does that mean, to be worthy? You know, they're given an
assignment. Don't take a bunch of money with you and all these things.
You're gonna live off the hospitality of the people that you're
going to be with. He says, go and look for people who are worthy.
So it was incredibly important they understood what they were looking
for when they were looking for somebody who was worthy. So what
does it mean to be worthy for them? Did it mean that they had a
big enough house where they could sit in there? They had enough
money to put food on the table because they were supposed to live
off hospitality? Was it wealth? Was that what made them worthy?
No, no, not at all. Well, was it their Jewishness? I mean, if they
were a good enough Jew, if they went to celebrate the Passover
every single year and all the festivals and they tried to obey
the law of Moses, it was if they were a good Jew, Is that what
made them worthy? No, or he wouldn't need the message of the
gospel if that's what it was. What made them worthy? It was one
thing, actually. Verse 14 gave the clue to it that I hadn't seen
before. It says in verse 14, if anyone will not receive you or
listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet, and
right there you get the clue of what it means to be worthy. To
be worthy simply means you receive the message of the gospel
with faith. They will listen. Which, by the way, in Greek, that
word listen also means obey. You will let the message of the gospel
come in, and you will obey the message of the Gospel. That's what
makes a person worthy. He's saying, if you want the peace of
Christ, you have to receive the Gospel of Christ, and that will
make you worthy. But if you reject the gospel, then you are not
worthy. Now, I want you to know this runs in the face of everything
you have been taught in this world about what makes a person worthy.
This world tells you the size of house you live in that makes you
worthy. How fast your car drives, that's what makes you worthy.
How nice your clothes are, how successful you are at work, what
kind of extreme vacations you take, what kind of physical health
you're in, how well your children turn out. These are the
things that show you whether you're worthy or not. And it's a
bunch of hogwash. Those things do not make you worthy. Now there's
some of you smart enough to baptize some new ideas and think
that this will make you worthy. If I go to church, that'll
make me worthy. If I give money to the church or to the poor,
if I serve others, if I start memorizing scripture, if I read my
Bible daily, if I do all the spiritual disciplines, that'll make
me worthy. If the good outweighs the bad, I'll just make
sure that there's more good than bad in my life. Maybe that'll
make me worthy. And I want you to know that will actually keep you
from being worthy. The Bible calls all that effort self righteousness,
and it says it is filthy rags in the sight of God. It is our tempts
to be worthy that keep us from becoming worthy. Let me tell you
the message of the Bible. All have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God. There is no one righteous, not even one, including
this preacher up here on this stage. None of us are worthy. There
is one human being who has ever been worthy on this planet,
and his name is Jesus. The only ones who have obeyed the Father,
done what was good, have been worthy. And the whole message of
the gospel is that Jesus was worthy in our place. Why there's
a baptistry that says Jesus in my place, Cristo en mi lugar. Because
he was worthy in our place. And then we come and confess, I am
not worthy. I have failed you, God. I have been unworthy. And I
can never make myself worthy. And so here's what I do. I throw
myself at your feet, Jesus. I put my unworthiness on you, Jesus,
because when you were on the cross, you paid the price of somebody
who's unworthy. You took my unworthiness on your shoulders and
you let yourself be crucified so it could be paid for. And then
you handed me in your resurrection, your worthiness. And
all I have to do is receive it by faith. That's the message of the
gospel. You have to be unworthy in order to become worthy.
As Christ comes inside you, that's the only way to receive the
peace of Christ. He says, if Somebody is worthy. If they will
receive you and your message, then bring them my peace. But if
they are not worthy, in other words, they don't receive the message.
Shake the dust off your feet. Take your peace with them. They can't
have it. I believe there are some of you in this room. There are
some of you who are worshiping with us online. And you desperately
need the peace of Christ. Your life is in shambles. I was talking
about harassed and helpless. You're going, that's me. I'm overwhelmed
by my circumstances, by my life, by my addictions, by my depression,
by my anxiety, by my fears, by my brokenness, by my relationships,
by my work, by my failures. I'm just overwhelmed by all of it.
You have no peace of Christ. And he says, I want to give you a
peace that surpasses understanding, the peace of Christ
that will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Let me tell
you how that peace comes. It comes when you finally say, I'm not
worthy of it, only Jesus is. And so I cast my unworthiness on
him. I receive his worthiness and I invite Christ to come into
me. And when Jesus Christ, the spirit of Christ, comes in you, you
become worthy. The Father looks at you. He sees his son. He
says, here's my peace. You can have it. Here's what I believe. I
believe those messengers went into the towns, that he sent them
two by two. And they knocked on doors. And some of those people
said, we don't want your message around here. Go away. And
some of those people said, I open up the door, come on in and
eat with me. And me with you. I want you to know there's something
else. Jesus said. Revelation, chapter 3, verse 20. He said, I stand
at the door and I knock. Whoever hears my voice and opens
the door, I will enter into him and eat with him. And he with
me. Jesus said, don't force yourself into those homes. If they're
worthy, go in. If they're not, don't. And Jesus will not force himself
into your heart, even though he's what you most need. All he'll
do is stand at the door and knock. I believe he's knocking on
the door some of your hearts right now. And you have a choice
to make. You can say, not right now. Not a convenient time
for me. Or you can swing that door open and say, jesus, come in.
Come in and change me. Give me your peace. That baptistery, that's
the way you swing open the door. It's a symbol of faith. The
old you, dead and buried Unworthy. And you're raised up worthy,
not because of you, but because Christ did it in your place.
I believe some of you need to find the worthiness that comes in
Christ and the peace of Christ this morning. I'm about to give you
a moment to do it. But you're going to have to decide before I
do. There's one last thing I want to say before we finish up.
And here's what it is. Every single one of you in this room who
has been born again, who has believed in Jesus Christ and been
saved by the way. There have been so many people who've expressed
their faith in Christ over these last few years. Many of you
in this room have done so. Some of you have been believers for
a long time. You've believed in Jesus. You have been saved by
the grace of Almighty God. But there are some of you, perhaps many
of you, who've come under the false idea. Praise God. He saved
me. Now I'm just gonna coast through life until I make it to heaven
in the end and completely miss the whole reason why he saved you.
He didn't just save you for pie in the sky when you die. That's
not why you were redeemed. You have been saved in order to be sent.
That's your the mission is why he saved you, so he could get you
ready and send you right back out. That's actually what verse eight,
the second half of it was talking about. So profound a teaching,
you miss it in the English translation because sometimes it
talks about money, but it says literally in Greek it's four words,
but you have to do five in English. Freely you received, freely
give. That's what it says in Greek. Freely you receive, freely
give. He's talking a little bit about money, but he's talking
about so much more than that. He's saying, freely you have received
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the redemption that I bring, my authority
and my power. If you have received it freely, give it freely.
Don't hold it to yourself. And yet so many of us hold it to ourselves.
Third last point, I want you to write down, if you don't mind,
and it's a heavy one the Lord has been breaking my heart over.
Here's what it is. Few things sting the heart of God more than
people who have freely received the gospel but do not freely
give it. Few things sting his heart more. He weeps over the selfishness
of his people who freely receive the gospel of Jesus Christ
and say, that's enough. I don't have to tell anybody else about
it. There was somebody who took the gospel. To every single
one of you who are believers in Jesus Christ, there was some messenger
who was sent to you. Maybe it was a mom and dad who shared the
gospel or a grandparent who shared the gospel. Maybe it was a
Sunday school teacher. Maybe for some of you, I got to be the
messenger, a pastor who shared the gospel. Maybe you grew up in
a different country and there was a missionary who brought the
gospel or a different city, a church planner brought the gospel
to you, but somebody took the gospel to you. And how hypocritical,
how dastardly, how horrible would it be to have somebody come
to us with the gospel and say, thank you for changing my eternity.
Now I'm not telling anybody else about it. We have been saved
to bear the message and we must obey. It's time for us to become
the answer to our own prayer. We've been praying for God to send
people to the people around us. Workers, it's time for us to
say, here I am. Send me. I need to go tell everybody the good
news that I found out. It's time for us to be willing. Now, here's
what I want you to know. The moment you say yes, you're going
to immediately feel inadequate. Now, I want to remind
you what I said before. He didn't send you out. When you're
ready, he makes you ready by sending you out. You just need to
say yes. Now, one of the best ways for you to be trained by going
out is to do it in partnership with other believers. That's why
our summer mission trips are so beautiful. We have a number of
mission, some on the field already in San Diego and in Puerto
Rico. We have a whole team going to Houston this afternoon.
And we got teams, all 322 people this summer going out on mission
from our church. It's an incredible way. You go over there
and you learn how to share your faith and you learn what it
means to be a gospel presence, and you come back more prepared.
But there are plenty of you going, well, I forgot to sign up
for that, so maybe next year. I got good news for you. I knew that
about 10% of our people go on mission, which means about 90% of
you don't have that experience. And so we wanted to create
the mission team, wanted to create an opportunity for you locally
to go on mission this summer. So I want you to do me a favor. I
want every one of you who has a phone to pull it out for just a
moment. And you can either scan the Connect code on the seat
back in front of you. Or you can just go to fielder.org connect
it'll take you to the same place just like you see up there
on the screen. Phil.org connect and when you go there, at
the very top of it, you're gonna see something that says be
sent locally. And so when you go there, you open it and there it'll
take you to a page that looks like this. It'll have some info that
you'll fill out, but if you scroll down, it'll give you different
ways that you can move off. There's seven different things that
you can do this summer with descriptions about it. And then you
get to the bottom and then there's a list of 14 different dates
over the summertime that you can say, I want to be sent locally
this summer. I want to experience this with somebody else.
Now I want to warn you, the band has come out because we're about
to sing a song. Now I mentioned this earlier. I'm going
to say it again. There's a great chance for hypocrisy because
you're going to be saying, send me, send me. Then you're going
to go, but not locally. I don't know, Lord, I. I can't do that.
And I just don't want you to say send me and then not be willing
to be sent. Cause that's hypocrisy. So maybe before you start
singing this song, unless you're one of those going on the
mission trip, I guess you're already set. But if you're not one
of those, maybe what you need to do is to check at least one of
those boxes. You can check all 14. And by the way, if you check
a box, that doesn't mean you're going on this thing. It just
means you want more information about it. So you're gonna
get an automated email for however many boxes you check about
that. And a leader will reach out to you to see if they can help
you get the info you need. But maybe you need to check at least
one box before you try to stand up and say send me. To make
sure that you're not being hypocritical about it. And so I wanna
give you a moment, maybe it's what you need to do and just make
that decision and then you can join the song. But one last thing,
in fact, I wanna invite you to stand up right now if you will. I'm
invite the prayer team down front. There are some of you in this
room. And as I was Talking about being overwhelmed, chewed up
and spit out by life and circumstances and heaviness and depression
and all that. That's you. You're saying, I feel like I'm harassed
and helpless. I need help. I want to remind you, Jesus has compassion
for you. He sees you. He sees your pain, he sees your struggle,
he sees your issue, and he wants to meet it because he cares
and he can do something about it. And we know our God is moving.
Last Sunday, we had so many people come forward for prayer, and
we were starting to get back reports of the miracles taking place.
I had a sister come up to me and say that they prayed. We prayed
for our daughter, her daughter who had cancer. And they came back
and all the reports were, cancer's gone. Praise God. He moves
that way. I was standing next to somebody on Wednesday night when
we had a prayer time, and I got to hear him being prayed over.
And the gentleman said that he. When he walked up, he couldn't
turn his neck, prayed over him, and immediately he could turn
his neck. God is answering prayers. Reggie was sharing. There
was somebody who came up who couldn't lift his shoulder this high,
prayed over him, asked him to lift it, and he lifted his arm all
the way up. God is doing this kind of stuff, real miracles, and
it's not a show, it's not a spectacle. He's not doing it because
we're trying to get on YouTube somewhere. So we're doing this because
he wants to show he's a compassionate messiah who has power
from heaven. So if you need him to move, there's nowhere else
you need to be but down front receiving prayer, asking for God
to move. And we want to pray over you in whatever needs you have.
But most importantly, if he's knocking on the door, if he's saying,
come believe in me, trust in me, you got to open your door to
him and say, jesus, I invite you in, and we'll help you take the
step of baptism. Whether it's today or another day, we want to
help you. You got to come before you sing, make sure you've
taken your step to be sent. I encourage you to respond right now
as the Lord is telling you.