SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: Church, we're called to be a people full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_01: That's the new apologetic.
SPEAKER_01: That's the new proclamation of the gospel in the third millennium.
SPEAKER_01: Not just full of truth, but also full of love and truth, grace and truth.
SPEAKER_01: Understanding the brokenness of people's hearts, but not allowing any opportunity God gives us to not introduce people to a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from pastor teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: When I was a gymnast in college, you were an advanced level to have been a collegiate gymnast, but I started in ninth grade in high school.
SPEAKER_01: And we had a really, really lousy gymnastics coach.
SPEAKER_01: This guy pretty much stunk up the place as a coach.
SPEAKER_01: He was really a track coach, but he got paid a little bit extra to come in and watch us swing around.
SPEAKER_01: But there was no help.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the next year, that guy resigned and they brought in a great coach, and he changed my life in the arena of athletics.
SPEAKER_01: Because what he did is he said, we are going to be the very, very best gymnastics team in the state of Georgia in the basics.
SPEAKER_01: And if we get the basics right, there's no end to what you can do on each apparatus, but you've got to get the basics right.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: So, in the Christian life, there's so few opportunities for us to get the basics and to really understand what are the nuts and bolts of how to grow.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they they give you the basics to get a driver's license, right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have to take a class if you're gonna get a driver's license.
SPEAKER_01: In hunter safety and stuff like that, where you're using firearms, you have to go through a hunter safety class.
SPEAKER_01: Any sport, golf, baseball, maybe there's maybe there's a tiddly winks training camp, I don't know, but you've got to get the basics.
SPEAKER_01: So what we're gonna do is we're gonna call it starting points, and I want to talk about for the next few weeks what it means to be an outlier Christian.
SPEAKER_01: What it means to be a whole heart, all-in disciple.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we miss this part, then we'll continue to have this circular kind of faith that goes from victory to defeat to victory to defeat without growing in our faith.
SPEAKER_01: I want the trajectory to be maturity in our walk with God, not just getting victories and defeats and victories and defeats.
SPEAKER_01: Because what happens oftentimes in most Christians today is that we're feeling great and we love our faith when circumstances are going our way.
SPEAKER_01: But we fall just as prey to the works of the enemy when our circumstances go south as anybody else.
SPEAKER_01: And I guess where true joy comes is when we weather storms differently than everybody else.
SPEAKER_01: And the only way to weather storms in parenting and in singleness and in divorce and in cancer and all those things that every one of us will have some kind of an experience with is to have a faith that's grounded in Christ through the ways that He's given us in Scripture to be grounded in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's a lot of information out there, men and women.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of stuff on the internet, some of it's really good, and a lot of it's really not.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't ground you in your walk with God.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to start today with what I think is the beginnings of understanding Jesus and how he called people to discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: And how many of you have taken psychology 101?
SPEAKER_01: Anybody taken psychology 101?
SPEAKER_01: Now, when I was in college at the University of Georgia, we called it Psycho 101.
SPEAKER_01: And they had this thing called a scatter plot diagram.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you know what that is, some of you may not.
SPEAKER_01: But just imagine with me, and I don't have a I don't have a graphic thing.
SPEAKER_01: I need to get this graphic, but I never had time this week.
SPEAKER_01: But you have an X and Y, you have axis X and Y, and then you have dots.
SPEAKER_01: You remember that?
SPEAKER_01: They're little dots.
SPEAKER_01: And you do a survey, it might be height in relation to weight, or it might be finances in relation to success.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever the survey you're doing, and the dots represent individuals.
SPEAKER_01: And the X and Y status is the measurements of what you're trying to find as the norm.
SPEAKER_01: Because you learn quickly in Psychology 101 that normal is the goal.
SPEAKER_01: You're always looking for trends, right?
SPEAKER_01: You're looking for normal.
SPEAKER_01: But when you do any kind of a survey where you're asking questions or you've got some kind of a way to plot what people say or what they feel or their height and weight or whatever it might be, there's always a couple dots that are like way off.
SPEAKER_01: They're like they're like way above the grouping or way below the grouping, and that's called an outlier.
SPEAKER_01: And what you learn in Psychology 101 is that you learn to delete data that doesn't fit the norm.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Sean O'Cor in his book, The Happiness Advantage, calls it the cult of the average.
SPEAKER_01: He's a Harvard professor, and he does this all the time for a living.
SPEAKER_01: His whole book is basically surveys.
SPEAKER_01: He calls it the cult of the average, and when he began to study about 10 years ago, this idea of what they call happiness psychology, what makes people happy?
SPEAKER_01: The tendency before that has always been to go with the average and kick out the outlier.
SPEAKER_01: Delete it.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's how you get an A.
SPEAKER_01: But he challenged the system, and I would encourage his book called The Happiness Advantage, it's a bestseller, it's a great book.
SPEAKER_01: Why were these outliers so happy?
SPEAKER_01: And these, this, this cult of the average so unhappy.
SPEAKER_01: And yet we were trying to make studies, courses, uh, based on the cult of the average, and he said, No, I'm gonna actually study the outlier and pull the average up.
SPEAKER_01: And that was the result that gave the result that became his book.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, here at the road, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_01: I am not interested in average Christianity.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in American Christianity.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in us just moving along with our happy-go-lucky American dream life and make no impact on the culture.
SPEAKER_01: Because if I look at that scatterplot diagram, I see the Evangelical American Church as a scatterplot church.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in building a cult of the average church.
SPEAKER_01: I'm interested.
SPEAKER_01: We are focused on the leadership team here to build wholehearted, all-in disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And so the only way that can happen is for us to live it ourselves, which is the most important thing.
SPEAKER_01: But then, secondly, that we know through Outlier University how to equip you mentally, emotionally, and at the heart level to be an outlier.
SPEAKER_01: This is going to be a university.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a training center.
SPEAKER_01: It's a university.
SPEAKER_01: And what I mean is the difference being we are building something that's going to take some work, but you're going to come out a changed person.
SPEAKER_01: You will not be able to take these courses without coming out going, having a grounding in what you say and how you say it and how you minister to others that is going to set you apart.
SPEAKER_01: And we've designed each course, if it relates to even creation and evolution, relates to how we know each other.
SPEAKER_01: How do we know that the Bible's the word of God?
SPEAKER_01: How do you know that?
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're going to study.
SPEAKER_01: That's one of the courses.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to know why the Bible is the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Why is Jesus an outlier?
SPEAKER_01: Why is Jesus worth giving everything to?
SPEAKER_01: Why are the happiest people on the face of the earth fully devoted Jesus followers?
SPEAKER_01: They just are.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a course.
SPEAKER_01: There's a course on that.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about how to about your finances.
SPEAKER_01: And we and we love the Financial Peace University, so that's going to be a course.
SPEAKER_01: Mission.
SPEAKER_01: How do we think missionally about our lives?
SPEAKER_01: That's going to be one of the courses.
SPEAKER_01: So at the end of the service, when we're done, I want to encourage you to go back to the back tables and just go through and see what the offerings are and be a part of that.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here is where I want to start.
SPEAKER_01: Turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_01: If you've downloaded the app, it's right there in your app for the sermon notes.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have a Bible, and see if there's one in front of you in one of the seats.
SPEAKER_01: And if there's not, just look around and share with somebody.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 1, verse 14 is the most outlier verse in the Bible, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01: And then we're going to look at another one in a moment.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to break it down what I mean by that, but this is a really weird verse.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is a description of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: John 1, 14.
SPEAKER_01: And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_01: That's Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And we beheld his glory.
SPEAKER_01: The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, the only born of the Father, is what he's saying here.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the part you ought to underline, you ought to circle it, you ought to highlight it.
SPEAKER_01: Full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_01: That's the most counterintuitive statement in all of Scripture, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01: He was full of grace and love and mercy, but he was also full of righteousness and truth.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't it true that when we look on the spectrum today, churches as well as kind of even political parties tend to fall on either a true side or kind of a love and grace side, and Jesus was perfect in both.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that amazing?
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus came first with grace and love.
SPEAKER_01: And so he hung out, and we're going to look at this passage in a moment, with tax collectors.
SPEAKER_01: Tax collectors laundered money.
SPEAKER_01: Tax collectors were traitors to the Jews.
SPEAKER_01: They were Jews themselves who had chosen to work for the imperial forces of the Roman dictators that were ruling over Israel at that time, and they pilfered money from the people.
SPEAKER_01: They stole from them.
SPEAKER_01: They overtaxed them.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he went and he ate with them and he hung out with them.
SPEAKER_01: And that made the Pharisees, who would be considered the conservative wing, really, really mad.
SPEAKER_01: And then he loved on prostitutes.
SPEAKER_01: We know that Mary Magdalene had seven demons cast out of her.
SPEAKER_01: Tradition has it that she was probably a prostitute.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know that for sure.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing in scripture that says that, but it does say seven demons were cast out.
SPEAKER_01: That's a pretty good bit of demons in one person.
SPEAKER_01: So he hung out with prostitutes, full of love.
SPEAKER_01: And he just, he was such an outlier because at that time and place, men and women, that the attitude was that if you were in physical contact, if you were in a room with people who are immoral, unethical, irreligious, anti-religious, then you were associating, you were actually giving veracity to their lifestyle.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, as an outlier, came out of that and he went right into that, and it really made people mad.
SPEAKER_01: But he was also full of truth.
SPEAKER_01: So he didn't just hang out with the prostitutes and with tax collectors and the subsequent word that you see a lot in the New Testament is just sinners.
SPEAKER_01: Just sinners.
SPEAKER_01: Hang out with sinners.
SPEAKER_01: The woman who is caught in adultery, they're going to stone her.
SPEAKER_01: She comes before him.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm not going to stone you.
SPEAKER_01: But then what does he say next?
SPEAKER_01: He says, but go and sin no more.
SPEAKER_01: So that ticks off the political left.
SPEAKER_01: Who believed, that's the Sadducees, who believed in righteousness a little bit, but really were more committed to mercy and to justice issues.
SPEAKER_01: And yet here he is bringing this woman in, and he speaks truth into her.
SPEAKER_01: He's not accepting of her lifestyle, he's accepting of her.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says to a man named Zacchaeus, who, we know the story, climbed up the tree, and he's a tax collector, somewhere around Jericho, we believe.
SPEAKER_01: And he comes down and he and Jesus goes to his house and Jesus calls him to repent.
SPEAKER_01: He calls him to salvation and he starts just giving away everything he's gotten.
SPEAKER_01: Righteousness has come.
SPEAKER_01: Full of mercy and truth.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, outlier.
SPEAKER_01: Church, we're called to be a people full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_01: That's the new apologetic.
SPEAKER_01: That's the new proclamation of the gospel in the third millennium, not just full of truth, but also full of love and truth, grace and truth.
SPEAKER_01: Understanding the brokenness of people's hearts, but not allowing any opportunity God gives us to not introduce people to a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: This is a starting point for us.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: That we are, God's calling us to be different from this world and to make an impact upon this world.
SPEAKER_01: So now turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a starting point, I believe, of being a Jesus follower.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter 2, as you're turning there, Timothy Keller writes in his excellent book, Making Sense of God, Jesus turned the dominant social pattern on its head.
SPEAKER_01: He freely ate with the moral and social outcast.
SPEAKER_01: He welcomed and befriended the impure and called them to follow him.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus did not fear that they would contaminate him, which was pretty radical at that time.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, he expected that his wholesome love would infect and change them, and again and again and again, that's exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_01: How exciting! That we might be accepting to everyone, no matter what their sin, no matter what their background, no matter what they've been through or who they've slept with.
SPEAKER_01: But through that love, their lives would be transformed.
SPEAKER_01: Their lives would be changed in the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So here we have this really crazy story.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: I love this story.
SPEAKER_01: I've been in it for a long time.
SPEAKER_01: And this week I've been in it a lot, and I've got so much circled and so many things underlined.
SPEAKER_01: We'll see what happens here.
SPEAKER_01: But look at verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: So look at verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus is just, he's teaching.
SPEAKER_01: He's in the Capernaum area, not far in that province of the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_01: And he's just walking along, and this is what he does.
SPEAKER_01: Then he went out again by the sea, and all the multitude came to him, and he taught them.
SPEAKER_01: So he's probably got thousands listening to him.
SPEAKER_01: But as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the tax office.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to him, Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: So he arose and he followed him.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot here.
SPEAKER_01: First thing I want you to get today.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus initiated.
SPEAKER_01: God initiates with you.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't accept Jesus into your life.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus gave you the faith to believe that he has saved you.
SPEAKER_01: And you believed.
SPEAKER_01: Even that faith, Martin Luther talked about, was from God.
SPEAKER_01: God initiates with you and me.
SPEAKER_01: He's the initiator.
SPEAKER_01: You're here because God loves you so much and he's so passionate about your life that he called you out and you came today.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things you could have done.
SPEAKER_01: You could be shopping right now at Chapel Hills Mall.
SPEAKER_01: It's just down the road.
SPEAKER_01: But you're here.
SPEAKER_01: That to me is no great temptation, but for some of you it might be.
SPEAKER_01: God initiates.
SPEAKER_01: And in the beginning, in Genesis 1, 26, 27, and 28, it said that God made man in his own image and in his own likeness, male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, this is what I believe.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that when God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit looks at you, he does not see you as a sinner.
SPEAKER_01: I believe he sees you as you were created in Genesis 1, 26, 27, and 28.
SPEAKER_01: He sees his image.
SPEAKER_01: He sees his likeness in you.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe there was something different about Jesus walking along that Levi caught when Jesus said, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: With all the things that Jesus could have been doing.
SPEAKER_01: He comes to a guy who is corrupt, embezzling money, laundering money for the Romans, and he says, Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus initiated.
SPEAKER_01: And there's two ways really to look at our lives.
SPEAKER_01: One is all your sin and all the rebellion and all of the stuff that's happened in your past.
SPEAKER_01: And we do that.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus, I believe, looks and he doesn't see that.
SPEAKER_01: I think he sees you as you could be, not what you are.
SPEAKER_01: And Levi saw those eyes look at him.
SPEAKER_01: Think what he's giving up.
SPEAKER_01: He's a millionaire by those standards at that time.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to just walk away from that.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus comes and he calls him out because I believe he sees him.
SPEAKER_01: Levi's been created in my image and in my likeness.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, you are beloved.
SPEAKER_01: You are created in his image.
SPEAKER_01: And the more you dwell on that, and the more you think on that, and the more we meditate on that, the more you become what you are.
SPEAKER_01: That's who you are.
SPEAKER_01: Sin is foreign.
SPEAKER_01: Sin is not who we are.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bibles and you're looking at your Bible, look at Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_01: I love Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: And again, if you're on the app, it's right there on your app.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_01: For you, and by the way, Psalms is right in the middle of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're if you're new to scripture, which many of us are, if you just Take your Bible and just sort of just sort of let it open.
SPEAKER_01: Usually it opens in Psalms, right in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: If you hit Proverbs, then you went to the right too far, then go left and you'll hit Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 139, for you formed my inward parts.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: For you formed, God formed your inward parts.
SPEAKER_01: You covered me in my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_01: Hello?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that right there is one of the most powerful passages in scripture.
SPEAKER_01: That God sees that child, not a fetus, in the mother's womb.
SPEAKER_01: And that baby is just praising God for that.
SPEAKER_01: And that is awesome.
SPEAKER_01: You formed my inward part, you covered me in my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_01: I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
SPEAKER_01: Marvelous are your works.
SPEAKER_01: This is before the child is born.
SPEAKER_01: This is before you were born.
SPEAKER_01: God says, marvelous are his works on you.
SPEAKER_01: You're unique.
SPEAKER_01: You're beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: You're created in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: There's no sin yet.
SPEAKER_01: That's who you are.
SPEAKER_01: And that my soul knows it very well.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, the writer here is saying, my soul needs to know this.
SPEAKER_01: My soul needs to meditate on this.
SPEAKER_01: Because when I meditate on this, it changes my whole outlook.
SPEAKER_01: I am fearfully and wonderfully made, no matter what my parents said about me, no matter what kind of poverty I was born into, no matter how much sexual abuse I went through.
SPEAKER_01: That's demonic.
SPEAKER_01: That is dark.
SPEAKER_01: That's satanic.
SPEAKER_01: But this is the way every one of us in this room were made.
SPEAKER_01: You were made beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: You were beloved.
SPEAKER_01: You are precious in his sight.
SPEAKER_01: And it goes on.
SPEAKER_01: That was hidden from my mother, and it was hidden from my dad, and it was hidden from this world, but it wasn't hidden from you.
SPEAKER_01: When I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth, your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, you were beloved before you were born.
SPEAKER_01: You were beloved before you were born.
SPEAKER_01: And this belovedness was initiated by God.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have a conscience yet.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have the ability to respond to God yet.
SPEAKER_01: He's already loving us, he's already there for us, he's already noticing you.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you, he's putting little artistic gifts in.
SPEAKER_01: For others, he's making you of someone who will be great mechanically.
SPEAKER_01: And for some of you, you'll be great at math.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you will be great in relationships, and some of you are going to be introverts and extroverts, and there's all these tests you can take, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
SPEAKER_01: But your beloved doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: Be all in.
SPEAKER_01: Because he created you.
SPEAKER_01: And he gave you talents and he gave you skills, and every one of you in this room are you're in the special needs class.
SPEAKER_01: You are.
SPEAKER_01: You're in the gifted class.
SPEAKER_01: You're gifted.
SPEAKER_01: Find your gifting.
SPEAKER_01: Quit comparing yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Don't look at others.
SPEAKER_01: Don't wish you were this way or that way.
SPEAKER_01: Dive into who Christ made you.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're parenting kids, dive into how God made them.
SPEAKER_01: Don't compare them to their older brother, their younger sister.
SPEAKER_01: Let them be them.
SPEAKER_01: And love them and let them know they're beloved and let them know they're powerful and they're special and they can change the world.
SPEAKER_01: That they can be outliers and they don't have to fit into the cult of the average.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Bible says, Romans 5.8, but God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_01: And so we look at that and we go, Christ, even though we were in our sin, died for us.
SPEAKER_01: He initiated.
SPEAKER_01: But way before that, church, before you knew of a personal relationship with Christ, before we had the opportunity to hear the gospel in the womb, he was already saying, you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
SPEAKER_01: You are beloved.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you want a God who doesn't compare you with others and doesn't care whether you made A's in school or flunked out?
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't care, you know, what kind of issues you have.
SPEAKER_01: He's already loved you and he's just asking you to go back to Eden.
SPEAKER_01: Go back to Eden.
SPEAKER_01: We've been living east of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: On this earth we live east of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Why don't you go back to Eden where you were fearfully and wonderfully made?
SPEAKER_01: Right there in Eden, you were made in my image and in my likeness, male and female, I created them.
SPEAKER_01: That's exciting stuff, folks.
SPEAKER_01: So he's saying to Levi, Come on, man, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: So that's the first thing.
SPEAKER_01: Second thing.
SPEAKER_01: He said to Levi, Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: So he arose and followed him.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: Now it happened as he was dining in Levi's house that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many, and they all followed him.
SPEAKER_01: Second point this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus did not say, follow a moral code, follow do's and don'ts.
SPEAKER_01: Follow yes and no's.
SPEAKER_01: Follow the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Follow the Torah.
SPEAKER_01: Follow, he said, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: If they followed the Pharisees, that was the conservative right.
SPEAKER_01: If they followed the Sadducees, that's the liberal left, the progressives.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't care.
SPEAKER_01: He said, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, we follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We don't follow a church.
SPEAKER_01: You don't follow the road.
SPEAKER_01: You follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: The road did not go to Calvary for you.
SPEAKER_01: The road did not die on a cross for you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you come out of Catholic backgrounds and Baptist backgrounds and Pentecostal backgrounds and Mormon backgrounds or Jehovah's Witness backgrounds, whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care about your denomination.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care about kind of cult you came out of.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care about just follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: That's the first step.
SPEAKER_01: That's a starting point in our journey, is that God initiated, and then he said, follow the one who initiated.
SPEAKER_01: And that's Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus says, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: So, church, when we share of our relationship with Christ with others, keep the focus on Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Don't get off on all these tangents about this or that or whatever's happening in the news.
SPEAKER_01: Follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, he's really good at sorting all that stuff out.
SPEAKER_01: But we got to get born again first.
SPEAKER_01: You're here this morning, you haven't been born again.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not talking about walking the aisle, raising your hand, or standing up.
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about that you have said in your heart, Jesus, to the best of my knowledge, I want to follow you.
SPEAKER_01: With the strength that I have, I want to follow you.
SPEAKER_01: That's how we, that's how we get saved.
SPEAKER_01: That's how we get set free.
SPEAKER_01: That's how the Spirit of God, Ephesians 1.13, says the Holy Spirit enters into us when we're born again.
SPEAKER_01: Super cool.
SPEAKER_01: Here's why it's cool.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus is the ultimate outlier and risk taker.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the ultimate outlier and risk taker.
SPEAKER_01: So what do you mean?
SPEAKER_01: I mean he took a risk on you and me.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine this guy named Jesus raising up this strange group of 12 guys, and one's even going to betray him?
SPEAKER_01: And they're from all, they're kind of the motley crew.
SPEAKER_01: They're the motley crew.
SPEAKER_01: If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they're always arguing.
SPEAKER_01: They're always saying the wrong things, and they're always having getting into trouble, and Jesus is always like, kind of like, man, I told you this.
SPEAKER_01: And then he gave them the gospel and he left.
SPEAKER_01: He left.
SPEAKER_01: And he left it to eleven guys.
SPEAKER_01: And then the Holy Spirit came 40 days later.
SPEAKER_01: Holy Spirit shows up at Pentecost, they get filled with power, they get filled with anointing, they get filled with love, and the world's never been the same since.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, we believe, probably, if you count everything, never touched more than about 75,000 people during his three years of ministry.
SPEAKER_01: About 75,000 people.
SPEAKER_01: Those, those 11 guys that can't sit around the fire for one night without getting in a fight, get filled with the Holy Spirit and change the world.
SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01: But listen, listen.
SPEAKER_01: Crazy people change the world.
SPEAKER_01: Average people don't change anything.
SPEAKER_01: Average people just are average, and nobody even knows they existed except their family and a few other friends at the end of their life.
SPEAKER_01: Crazy people who are living for Jesus have tons of friends.
SPEAKER_01: Other crazy people.
SPEAKER_01: And they're called the church.
SPEAKER_01: We're building a crazy church.
SPEAKER_01: We're building an outlier church, right?
SPEAKER_01: Go like this if you know half of what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, you do.
SPEAKER_01: Good.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, just making sure we're awake here.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the deal, men and women.
SPEAKER_01: We are in this global situation right now where the enemy has been given this territory.
SPEAKER_01: We are living in satanic territory.
SPEAKER_01: He even said to Jesus, remember in Luke 4 and Matthew 4, Satan in the temptation with Jesus says, I've been given all these kingdoms and I can give it to whomever I wish, which is true.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus never disputes that.
SPEAKER_01: Because we begin to discover the most outlandish, radical, wonderful, stupendous love the world has ever known.
SPEAKER_01: And when you start to experience that, and most of you in this room have, it's exciting.
SPEAKER_01: It makes you crazy.
SPEAKER_01: Now look at verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: So first, Jesus initiates.
SPEAKER_01: Second, he says, Follow me, not dictates, not theology, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to his disciples, How is it that he eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus heard it, he said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician.
SPEAKER_01: So right there it smacks at the difference between a lot of religiosity today, which thinks we somehow need to get our act together to discover the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I'm not interested in those people.
SPEAKER_01: I'm actually interested in people that are really sick.
SPEAKER_01: You can't be good enough, men and women, but you can certainly be bad enough to come to know Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But those who are sick, I came for.
SPEAKER_01: I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
SPEAKER_01: So thoroughly, we are called to a purpose.
SPEAKER_01: God initiates, he calls us to Jesus, and then we're called to something.
SPEAKER_01: We're called to a job to do, we're called to a purpose, we're called to a plan.
SPEAKER_01: We're called to be his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, and I'm going to cover that next week.
SPEAKER_01: You're created to do something.
SPEAKER_01: Yesterday, we got out at this house and we got bit by little insects and we got sunburned, and some of us had sore knees, and some of us had sore backs, but we changed a person's life.
SPEAKER_01: We're called that the love of Christ would actually spill over.
SPEAKER_01: That's why many times I say not spirit-filled, but spirit-spilled.
SPEAKER_01: We're spirit-spilled believers.
SPEAKER_01: We're supposed to spill out with the love of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We're called to purpose.
SPEAKER_01: He says here, they are called to repentance, to change.
SPEAKER_01: Repentance.
SPEAKER_01: Metanoia in the Greek means 180.
SPEAKER_01: We turn around, we go the opposite direction the way we've been going.
SPEAKER_01: That's exciting stuff, folks.
SPEAKER_01: That's exciting stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Because we get to do it through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Now I debated about this third point.
SPEAKER_01: If I should say called to a purpose or whatever, because here's what I was going to title it, and you should put a subtitle underneath the third point, and that is that Jesus does it through you.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus initiates, Jesus comes in as we call to him, but then Jesus does it through us, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That's one of the most transforming, transformative principles in all of the Christian faith is that Jesus Christ does his work through us if we'll surrender to him.
SPEAKER_01: We surrender to him.
SPEAKER_01: Because I know what's going through many of our minds right now.
SPEAKER_01: I can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm so selfish.
SPEAKER_01: I'm so busy, whatever it might be that's going through your mind.
SPEAKER_01: Good.
SPEAKER_01: Good start.
SPEAKER_01: So then say to the Lord, Lord, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: So I surrender to you.
SPEAKER_01: I fall, what does it say in Hebrews?
SPEAKER_01: We fall into the hands of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: We fall into the hands of the we fall into the obys.
SPEAKER_01: We fall into the darkness of the mystery of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And then he lifts us up.
SPEAKER_01: And he makes you something you could never be.
SPEAKER_01: He makes you something you could never produce.
SPEAKER_01: You start having creative thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: You start becoming the artist that God always wanted you to be.
SPEAKER_01: You become the athlete that God wanted you to be.
SPEAKER_01: God calls you to be a businessman.
SPEAKER_01: He starts to give you ideas and thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: My greatest thoughts come when I prayer walk.
SPEAKER_01: When I just get up in the morning and Liz and I pray together, and then I take off and I do my prayer walk.
SPEAKER_01: And as I'm walking, I'm walking, I'm just giving stuff over to the Lord, and it's crazy what happens.
SPEAKER_01: It's crazy weird.
SPEAKER_01: And Christ shows up, and I can't explain it, but I get these weird thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: So I always carry my phone or a little notepad and I write stuff down, and it's just full of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not anything I was thinking of before.
SPEAKER_01: Because in the presence of God, he gives you the desires of your heart.
SPEAKER_01: And he produces desires in you that you can't hear until you slow down and you begin to intercede with him or worship with him.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to happen today.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to take communion in a moment.
SPEAKER_01: And if you notice, I keep changing up the service.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what's going to happen next.
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm trying to find what God wants to do with this church.
SPEAKER_01: And also we got four communion tables instead of two to cut down on the lines.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to take communion, and the worship team's going to come up.
SPEAKER_01: And listen now, I'm going to tell you something that I think is a truism.
SPEAKER_01: I've never heard anybody say this, so I'm going to be the first one to say it here by me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've heard it before.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have, maybe you haven't, because I've never heard it before.
SPEAKER_01: But I believe if you if you'll come each week, that there's something supernatural about the gathering of all the saints together called the church.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, no pastor thought this up.
SPEAKER_01: This was Jesus' idea, the church.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's a really dumb idea in many ways.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So only he could have done it, because naturally we don't think this way.
SPEAKER_01: He thinks supernaturally different than us.
SPEAKER_01: His ways are not our ways.
SPEAKER_01: We come together, and when you guys begin to worship, when Carly gets up here with the team and they begin to worship, get ready.
SPEAKER_01: Have a pen nearby, have your journal with you, and you say, well, you know, it's always a distraction.
SPEAKER_01: Like I'll be worshiping and I think about, oh, that bill I didn't pay.
SPEAKER_01: I think God wants us to pay our bills, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Write it down.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I need to write a letter to Susie.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, man, all these distractions.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're supposed to write a letter to Susie.
SPEAKER_01: Because God's going to give you revelation.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to speak into your heart as you worship him.
SPEAKER_01: Because he initiates in worship.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: Go to the road.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.