Good In Tension Week 3 | Insider vs Outsider?

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18

We exist to help people become fully engaged followers of Jesus.

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere. Mark 1:40-45

Jesus was indignant. Mark 1:41

3 Lessons for Going out:

1. Recognition

2. Response

He reached out his hand and touched the man. Mark 1:41

3. Risk

Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Mark 1:45

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:45

But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. Galatians 2:11-13 NLT

1. Familiarity Breeds Comfort.

2. Fear keeps us captive.

3. Inertia is a powerful force.

4. Don’t have to wait till you’re perfect.

Discussion Questions:

What’s something you used to think was totally normal until you went

to someone else’s house and realized… nope, that’s just my family?

How can being an “insider” in church become a spiritual danger?

Have you ever caught yourself “blocking traffic” spiritually

comfortable but not moving?

When Jesus saw the leper, He didn’t just notice, He felt. What’s

something happening around you right now that stirs emotions?

How do you personally fight the pull toward comfort or routine faith?

Jesus risked His reputation and comfort for people on the outside.

What “risk” might obedience to God look like for you right now?

What step could you take this week to move

from spectator to servant?

Thank you for listening to the Relate Community Church podcast! Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If today’s message spoke to you, share it with a friend or leave us a review to help spread the word. To learn more about Relate Community Church, visit us at www.relatecommunity.com. You are always welcome here, and remember—you are loved

Transcript

Welcome And Series Momentum

SPEAKER_00 0:28

All right, everybody. Welcome to church. I'm glad you're here. Tell somebody next to you, I'm glad you're here too. Or both sides. You not one person. Tell them both. I'm glad you're here. I am excited to see you guys. I feel like over the last uh over this series, things that weren't meant to be in the series, they're just a bit they're they're getting caught up in this idea of overcoming the tensions in the church, the tensions in the body of Christ. And last week we had an incredible speaker, Pastor Sean Cooper. If you weren't here, you need to cut, you need to go back online and watch the video and take notes. Like just go to church on Sunday afternoon if you weren't here last week. How many of you were here last week? Good, good. Such a powerful word for us. I feel like it wasn't meant to be in this series, but it was it was right along with what God has been leading us into uh in challenging our culture, challenging like the way the way that we do church, the way that we approach God, the way that uh first first Wednesday was also incredible. Come on, somebody, we saw 13 people get baptized. 13 people went into the water and made a proclamation for uh their lives to say, I am following Jesus. That was that's always incredible. Every month at First Wednesday, we look forward to uh to seeing that. And um, man, I'm excited to dive right into the third week of this series, and um I hope y'all are ready. That's all I really have to say. I hope you're ready. Today is uh uh is a chat. We're challenging ourselves. In fact, uh I would I would ask you to pull out your notes. If you have not pulled out your notes, we're a note-taking church. I like to see right here front row note-taking notebooks, tablets, uh clicky binders, all of those things. If you do not have somebody raise up your white note binder if you have that right here. We got it, we got them all. If you do not have a white notes, sermon notes binder, get one on your way out. They're already paid for. You don't have to buy them. They're they're provided so that we can learn, we can dig in. And um, all right. Are y'all ready? Okay, good. I got half of you going with me. That's that's enough. We'll all go together. Here we go. Let's just pray for a second. Lord, we just thank you for your presence in this place. God, we thank you that you're leading us. We thank you that you have a purpose for us. That we were made for for a purpose, God, and that purpose is not us. Lord, we want to follow you with our lives, with everything that's in us. We want this church, relate community church. We want this moment, this service to be about you. So, Lord, speak to us, lead us by your Holy Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I want to kick off this message really and catch us up to speed because for the last few weeks we've been kind of taking another step and then another step toward an end. And that uh I'm gonna show you right where we're at. Matthew chapter 28, verse 18. Jesus tells the disciples, he's getting ready to ascend to heaven, and he gives them this last, this is what I want you to do. He gives them an assignment, and that assignment is still good for us today. So Jesus came and told the disciples, here you go. I have been given all authority in heaven and earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And then he tells them, You're not gonna go on your own. I'm not just tagging you in, but I'm gonna go with you. I'm gonna empower you, I'm gonna give you everything you need. He says, I'm always with you, even to the ends of the age. In other words, I'm not just telling you to go. I'm gonna, I'm not leaving you alone. You're gonna have everything you need to do it. Here's where I want us to kind of settle in, and that is um week one of this series. We talked about how the John says that Jesus was full of grace and truth. If you don't know what that means, and you've never even considered the concept of being full of grace and full of truth, and how those two things really they feel like they clash, but the church doesn't have to resolve that tension. We just have to manage it. We have we can't be either truth or grace, which is the natural inclination of any person to realize that I have to either tell you the whole truth or I have to give you full of grace and like, ah, you're okay. There's there's a balance uh where we keep the tension, but we're able to do both, just as Jesus did. In week number two, we talked about how the church sometimes loses the mission for the methods. Like we fall in love with the methods. We uh, but there we have decided as a church, we're gonna do anything short of sin to see the lost saved. That's the methods don't really matter. So we could we could turn all the lights on or all the lights off. We could have church, we've proven this over seven years. We could have church in a movie theater or in a graveyard or wherever we want to have church. As long as the mission is being accomplished. And thank God we have a beautiful room to sit in with air conditioned. We didn't always have air conditioned, but we do now, thank God. Church could be an hour long or five minutes long. I don't care about the methods that we use to have church or do accomplish the mission. What matters is that the mission is being addressed and that we're we're moving forward and we are heeding the call that Jesus said to go. Go, therefore, make disciples, baptize them. We just did that, continuing to do that, teaching them. We're growing, we're maturing. That's stretching, that's our word for the year. Here's the problem today. I want us to talk about what happens when we know the mission, but we don't accomplish the mission because we get stuck. There's some things, there's some places that we get stuck. So before we get into it any deeper, I want to ask you this question. Have you ever wanted to just tell someone, get out of the way? Might have been on your way into church today. I don't know. There were some people in the parking lot, and they just would not get out of your way because they're just moving too slow. Here's where I am usually at. It's usually in traffic, and there's a long line of cars, and the line, the lane next to me is moving, moving. I know we're supposed to be going faster than this, and you're trying to figure out you're moving over a little bit, looking down. Who is going, who's slowing us down? This is not right. And you finally move around everybody, and you get down there 10, 12, 15, 20 cars later, and you I slow down because I want to look and see who is someone needs to be held responsible for this. And I pull up. I will not do this near the church because it's probably one of you. I don't know. I just look in the window, and sure enough, it's always someone in their driving. They have look like they have nowhere to be. They got McDonald's spread out all around them and a sandwich in their hand, probably watching their phone, and you want to just honk at them and tell them, Would you drive or get off the road? That's how I feel. You probably never felt that way before. When I was uh 16 years old, so that's been a lot of years now. I'm 46 years old now, so I can talk about it freely. My very first car I was buying on a payment plan from my grandparents. Um otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford an already aging, almost broken down Jeep Cherokee that y'all don't know about this, but the AC didn't blow unless I had slammed the door real hard and then the AC would come on. I loved that car because it gave me freedom and I got out of the house and I could drive and go. But even in those days, I struggled with trying to figure out why this person in front of me is not going the speed limit, at least. Let's just go the speed limit. In my I discovered in our garage one day at 16 years old that my dad had an old CB radio, and so I decided this is a treasure. I hooked it up in my in my uh my Jeep, and not only did I have a giant probably 15-foot antenna swinging around on the back of the car, I figured out there was a little toggle on the CB that said PA. So I hooked up a big speaker underneath my hood, and now I had a microphone I could talk to anyone on the road who was driving, who wasn't going fast enough. Needless to say, that microphone got me in a lot of trouble. And so Angela and I were dating even in those days, and she would, she didn't, I don't think she even wanted to ride with me. She said, I'll go with you. You just can't use the radio. You can't talk to people because people will get mad at us and chase us down. I don't know why. I know why they were, they don't like to be told the truth. That's probably why. I think that we're in a similar situation today because when you have a microphone, you can say whatever you want. And today I have another microphone, and I'm gonna tell you the same thing I told them, and that is get out of the way. God has given us a mission, we have a destination, we are going somewhere, and some of you guys, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, so I won't look at anybody. I'm gonna look right up here at this screen. Some of you guys are you you walked into church today, and it's almost like you got your McDonald's all spread out, and you're very comfortable in your chair, and you're you're watching your YouTube videos while we're going somewhere. The problem is we have a job to do, and sometimes we can get so focused and so comfortable and so happy about the thing, the journey, that we lose sight of the destination that we're we're supposed to be going somewhere. And so, with as much uh care and tenderness and respect as I can give you this morning, I want to tell you you gotta stop being so comfortable. You gotta wake up and let's get where we're going. We can't just sit back. Uh, we have uh a destination. We have relate has um our mission is to go therefore. We've taken the Great Commission, go make disciples, baptize them, teaching them. Like we've taken that and shortened it into just one idea, and that is that we exist to lead people to become fully involved, fully engaged followers of Jesus. It's just that like we're we're going somewhere. We have a purpose every day. We show up at church, 120 or so dream team members are fighting every week, the good fight to see the lost saved, to see people who uh have never been baptized, baptized, disciple, teaching them. That's what we're doing. And there's some people who have no clue. We're just coming to church, and now is the time for me to tell you, as the pastor of this church, hey, let's get with it, let's accomplish the mission. And so I think we should start, and I'm gonna show you a passage in the Bible in the book of Mark where Jesus goes out, like he doesn't just tell the disciples, hey, go do do the work. No, he's showing them, and he does something incredible that we can learn a lot from this morning. So we're gonna read Mark chapter 1, verse 40 through 45. Starts here a man with leprosy came to him, begged him on his knees. If you're willing, you can make me clean. And it says, Jesus was what? Indignant. He reached out to his hand and touched the man. I'm willing, he said. Be clean. Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning. This is important. See that you don't tell this to anyone. Like, don't tell anybody what just happened. Jesus doesn't do this all the time. Sometimes he says, Tell everybody. Sometimes he's okay with that, but he has reasons and there's purpose behind it. But he says, Don't tell anybody, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices so that Moses, the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing. In other words, go show the priests so they'll let you back in town. Because he's been outcast. He's been put out of the city because of his disease. He's contagious. Like, get out of the city. You don't belong here. You're not one of us anymore. You're not allowed here. So Jesus meets him outside the city and says, Okay, you can go back in the city, but only tell the people who will get you back in and watch what happens. Instead, he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere. I think that as the church, as people who are uh perpetual insiders, we're we we come into the church and we're we join the church, we're a part of the church, we partner with the church, and no matter what the mission is, no matter how big it is or small it is, we just get focused on us and we lose track of the go part, the the go out. And so I think for us to reconnect with that mission, we have to we have to see three things in this passage, and I'm gonna give to you right and write them in your notes. Number one, we see recognition, like Jesus recognizes this situation for more than it is. It's obvious that this is not just a common, like this leper comes up and he recognizes I have to do something. In Mark chapter 1, verse 41. So simply put, it says, Jesus was indignant. At first, I thought that was like, why is Jesus mad at this guy? He's just a he's sick, he needs help, he's asking for help. Why would he be mad? But the uh the theologists say that Jesus was indignant, meaning that he was upset at the suffering that he saw. In fact, when you look at Jesus feeding the 5,000, or anytime, a lot of times when Jesus heals someone, it says that Jesus was filled with compassion and he did something, he acted. This is very similar to that, where this indignation is like this feeling is so strong that it requires a response. That's the kind of thing that we have, we've become uh callous to that as a nation, as a pe our culture. We don't want to hear about the sad dogs on the commercial. That if we would just pay 10 cents a day, we could help so many dogs or children. It's just because we just changed the channel. I'm not telling you to watch the commercial, I'm telling you that there we can't shut down the part of us that says, hey, you have to do something. Jesus was indifferent, uh indignant, not indifferent. He had to he had to do something. And so we also if the part of us that drives us to act has been silenced or shut down or muted because we just we're we got too many things that we're championing right now, then we have to re-sync ourselves up to the one who made us and do what Jesus says. In fact, I think a lot of times I heard somebody say not too long ago that all of our problems could be fixed. Every all of our lives could be put right if we would just read the Bible and do what it says. Just read the Bible and do what it says. Tell somebody next to you, just tap them on the just you don't tell them real loud, just hey, read the Bible. Number two, do what it says. That's sermon's over, right there. That could be enough. If we could just do what he said, if we could just go, part allow us, uh allow ourselves to feel that. Number two, number two is the response we see from Jesus. And the response is actually, I think it's a little surprising because you would think that if the guy comes up and says, Jesus help me, I need to start a conversation, basically. Jesus, before he says a word, it says he reached out his hand and touched the man before he even says anything. He doesn't say, Okay, I'll heal you, then touches him. No, he before he says, Okay, come on, I I I'm I hear you, I'll I agree. I love you, God loves you. He doesn't say any of that. He touches the untouchable. In fact, it was against the law for him to touch a leper. And yet he touches the untouchable, he loves the unlovable. He was moved with compassion, and he can't not act. Is there some place in your life where you are motivated to you have to, you can't not? Hopefully, those things are not the uh the Good Friday deals that pop up. I have to buy this, I have to go to this event, I have to go to this party. Hopefully, the things that move you that deeply are the things of God, the things where he says, You have to help these people, you have to reach out and go out, and you have to do the leper had a skin disease where his skin was literally falling off, and here's Jesus, who's supposed to be a teacher, a rabbi, someone who's important, and Jesus forgets anything, all of the lip service. Have you ever noticed that sometimes we think that just saying something is enough? In fact, I think having been in the church for a long time, even as a pastor for many several decades, I think one of our problems is that we just like uh a drive-by witness a lot better than we do a real life witness. We would just like, hey, hey, hey, Jesus loves you. See you next week. Jesus loves you, or hey, we're sitting at the uh the light, and here comes a homeless person, and oh, better not look at him. Oh, okay, let's find five dollars, find two dollars. Here you go, see you later. Or we like to have a shirt that says John 3.16, or a tattoo that has a big cross on it. Now they'll know I'm a believer, they'll know I'm a Christian, and I won't have to even say anything. What if we started doing something and our focus was on what we were doing and where we were going and not just what we're saying? Because it's become really popular to just post online. I gotta let everybody know that I read my Bible. I gotta let everybody know that Bible and coffee go together. And Jesus reaches right down into our mess and pulls us out, and Jesus is willing to, every one of us, Jesus has picked us up. He's reached into the problem, into the muck and the mire. And that if we're followers of Jesus, like the church should represent that. The church doesn't represent, you know, it's trending right now that the people calling churches and asking if they'll help and then posting online the uh the rejection. That's sad that that's what the church is known for. What the church should be known for reaching into a messy situation. Oh, I know this is a mess, because oh, we don't have a process for that. We don't have that kind of a program, Pastor Sean. Jesus wasn't engaging in a program whenever he reached out and touched the leper. What I'm asking for you is I'm not asking you to join something. I'm asking you to open up your heart and go. When the Holy Spirit says go, when you see and recognize that you reach out and you act. Don't just invite people to church. Maybe it's bring somebody to church. Maybe it's have church with them right there on the street or at your house or pray for someone in the middle of Walmart, even though that makes you nervous. Here's what happens we get caught up in church. We like church. I love I probably love church more than anybody. I loved it so much, I just stayed. But what happens is we start to fall in love with church and everything that happens up here, and then we get turned towards this, and oh man, I love this and this and this, and when they get up and do that, and then we see the screen and we see the uh the program of church, and now my back is turned to the things that really matter. And everybody outside the church, you know what we're saying without saying a word? We're saying, I don't care about you, I care about this. When that's not the point at all. Imagine if Jesus walked into any church that was so focused on itself, he would just be wondering, what about the mission I gave you? What about the job of the church? You just you forgot. Let's not let that be us. We can't just point at the people on the stage. We have to do better because there are people around us that are crying and dying and hurting and suffering, and part of us has to cry out with them and for them and be willing to not say a word but reach out and touch. Number three, Jesus shows us that he's willing to take on a risk. Why? Because it's his reputation, first of all. He didn't care about what people thought about him, he risked everything. And I want to show you that it probably goes deeper than you think. I haven't always been a rule follower. I even now I like to think that there are some rules that have to be followed, and there are some rules that can be bent a little bit, and then there's other rules that can be broken all the all the way out. It started when I was a kid, and I just some rules are those rules that you just follow because it's the right thing to do. And other rules are like, is mom watching? And nowadays it's there are some rules as is anyone watching? I don't know. And then usually is it God watching? Is God watching me? And Jesus breaks the rules when it comes to the cultural and societal norms of no, you can't go out there, you can't touch that guy, you can't talk to him. He says, this is a rule that can be outright broken, because this guy's more important than the rule. There has to be some rules that we break. Mark chapter 1, uh verse 45, it says, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places. I want you to recognize this that when Jesus touched this guy, and Jesus tells him, Don't tell anybody, but when he goes back into town and tells everybody what essentially takes place, even though Jesus tries to avoid this because he has a job to do, he says, He's like, There's still work I have to do in the city, but he's willing to exchange that and trade places with the leper. Because you remember when we started the story, the leper was put out of the city and Jesus was in the city. He leaves the comfort and the safety and the security of the city to go out where the leper is, and then he lets the leper go back into the city, and then he couldn't go back in the city. So he had he switches places with the leper, which is exactly what he does for us. He left the comfort of heaven to come down into a broken and murky, miry world where we're full of sin and full of ourselves and selfish. And he says, I'm gonna leave the comfort of heaven and eternity and the right hand of the Father and come down where you are, God with us, and takes our place on a cross. And we the church who call ourselves Jesus followers and the body of Christ, we think we're exempt from trading places with people who are in ugly places. Nah, we don't need to do that. Let's just have church. Sometimes, you may have heard this phrase, but there's a there's a time where the afflicted have to be comforted, and then there's a time where I think the comforted have to be afflicted. Where the church has to be upset and somebody has to poke you a little bit. Just poke somebody right next to you. Just reach over, thank you. You need to get a little bit uncomfortable, you need to be poked out of your comfort zone. Jesus left the comfort of the city to make room for somebody else. When's the last time you did that for somebody? Someone? When's the last time you were willing to trade places with someone? When's the last time you were willing to not just get a little bit uncomfortable, but stay a while? Because here's the deal people don't need trinkets and little gadgets, and they don't need something for you to give them to change their life. They need time with you. There are some elderly people in your life that live around you that are in our community. They don't need someone to tell, hey, Jesus loves you. Don't forget that. No, they need you to go sit with them. They need you to talk to them, they need you to spend life with them. You know what? Discipleship is not a program. It's not a class that you go to. Discipleship is walking with people for a while, learning what needs to be learned, catching things. Parenting is not a class. Parenting is not a book you read and then you follow the steps. Parenting is walking beside a little kid long enough for them to see how life should be done. You have to be with them for it to happen. Discipleship is the same way. For us to teach and baptize and disciple people, you have to be, you have to walk with them. Accountability and sanctification works the same way. You can't do it alone. And yet, we live in a world that has so idolized just getting online and being your own person and following your own way. What we're missing is mothers and fathers, spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers and sisters and brothers who are willing to link arms and walk with people long enough to, oh man, I'm so tired. I need to go take a nap. Let's walk together. Let's get out of our comfort zone, change places with people, go hook up arms with somebody, even if you don't like how they smell. Ooh, I can't I can't do this one. I can't sit next to this person. I'm not willing to give up my chair, Pastor. Uh-oh. Here, I want to invite everyone in the room. If there's an empty chair in front of you next week when you come, sit in it. Even if it says save for the youth. They're shaking the youth leaders are saying, no, don't do that. So that someone else can sit in your chair. Come a little bit early. Because we're on a mission. This is not just a program, it's not just a meeting. I better move quick. Okay, I want to show you really quickly. There's some things that um, some reasons why we get stuck, some reasons why. And if you read in the book of Acts and um throughout the middle of as the church is developing in the early church, you can see that there's some struggles. In fact, they're having the same struggles. Uh on First Wednesday, we really unpacked this, so you can go back and watch it. But we talked about how the early church um they did not agree on who should be allowed in the church. So Jesus came and he said, Hey, go therefore the highways, the byways, get the get the Jews, the Gentiles. And what happens is the disciples who were all Jewish, they're kind of like, hey, we're just gonna see, we're just gonna bring in the Jewish people. They're just like us. They've been circumcised. And if they haven't been circumcised and they want to join the church, they can join the church as long as they have this little surgery. It would be like going to church and say, hey, I want to join the church and coming into the the new members' class, and they they they telling you, uh, all you have to do to join the church is just have this little procedure done. It won't take long, but it'll only affect you for a few days, and mostly affects the men, women, you're you're in. Guys, you need a surgery to join the church. That would be that's what the early church was telling people. If they want to join and follow Jesus, then they had to be circumcised. They had to eat the right things, they had to act like the Jewish people, they had to embrace the whole culture, follow the traditions, the customs. And Paul, who wasn't uh Jewish, Paul is like, I don't come from your world. I I met Jesus on the road, and he told me to go save the Gentiles. So Paul and Peter, who was Jewish and wanted to the two of them were arguing and fighting, and uh they could not agree on who was supposed to be in the church. And so Paul writes in the book of Galatians, he called out Paul a little bit, not a little bit a lot. Watch this. But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face. Now you guys know that that is that's strong language. I told him to his face. That's what he's telling the book. That's what he's telling the people in the Galatian church. When he first arrived, then he starts to tell them the story. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentiles. This is the the uh the non Jewish believers. He ate with the Gentile believers who were not circumcised, but afterward, when some Friends of James came, in other words, the religious, the churchy folks came. Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore. So Peter's friends with these people, eating with them, fellowshipping, discipling, teaching them. And as soon as the churchy, religious people come in, Peter says, Oh, I can't hang out with you guys anymore. The important people are here. Paul says, That's not right. Paul says he was afraid of criticism. He was afraid of criticism from these people who instead insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed followed Peter's hypocrisy. So Peter, even though he he just didn't want to get in trouble, he didn't want people to think poorly of him. He was afraid of the religious people, so he started going and acting religious, and so all of the other new believers started doing the same thing. It says even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. Even Barnabas, who must have been a pretty good guy. We think that's crazy, Pastor. How could circumcision be such a big deal? But we do the same exact thing because we get locked into our people. We get locked in. If you're not like us, we don't want you. If you don't think like us, look like us, act like us, you don't belong here. What keeps us stuck and keeps us from going, I want us, I'm gonna give you four really quick things in the next five minutes. Five, five minutes. Number one, familiarity brings comfort. Psychologists say that we do things that are comfortable, that uh we do things that are familiar because they they're not stressful. That's why we watch the same shows over and over. That's why you can watch the same series. You know all the words, you know how it ends. It's not stressful because you know what happens. You can quote the the words with you, only listen to the music that you listen to, and that same familiarity and tending towards comfort and away from stress is the same thing that keeps us on Sunday mornings, the most divided groups of people around the world, is if you walk into any church, everybody kind of looks the same, acts the same, come from the same place, same places, same background, same custom, same culture because we like people who are like us. That's a huge problem for people who have been given a mission to go. Get out of the people who are like you and go find the people who are not like you. I've told you guys probably many times before, the the year before we planted this church, so this has been eight years ago, Angela and I decided that we were gonna go and uh visit other churches because I've been a part of a full-time staff member at a church since I was 16 years old. And so I'm gonna go visit other churches, see what it's like to walk into a church not knowing anybody. I want to know what that experience is. So when we start, uh when relate is going, I want to know what it's like walking. So we walked, we went to all kinds of churches. Our kids had to learn what it looked like to we'd go online and open up the website and say, Oh, all these people, okay, we can wear t-shirts today. Oh, nope, we gotta wear a jacket today. Oh, we gotta dress nice, put on your nice shoes, Jake. We had a we and then I can tell you this one thing I learned is that the website's not usually right. We would walk in and oh man, we're we're way off. It's it is very uh uncomfortable to walk into a new place. Church that wants you there or not. And so one Sunday we decided we're gonna go visit this church. We were all prepared, we had visited the website, it looked like okay, we're gonna fit right in, we're gonna experience this, and when we get there, we pull up, and it doesn't take us very long to figure out uh something's wrong here. This feels we started to realize that there were a lot of people here, and we were the only white people. So we're like, should we go? Uh, should we stay? I don't, I don't, I'm not sure if we can do this or not. This is this is this is already weird. And I was just like, nope, we better do this. We're going, all right, we've already committed to it. We're gonna be late. This is the day. We're walking in, so we get out, we start walking in, and then it becomes very obvious that we probably shouldn't have stayed. It was just very uncomfortable, and we're like, oh, I don't think we belong here, and no one was really talking to us, and it was like, oh no, maybe they don't want us here. I don't know. But I was excited to be at church, and so we sat through worship and it was amazing. And we sat the whole thing. Oh, and by the way, I don't like to sit on the back row. I had already committed. I'm not, I I had to fight with the family. We had to negotiate. We're gonna sit on the uh second row, no, the tenth row, and then we'd negotiate all the way down to about the fifth row. All right, we're gonna sit in the fifth row right here in the middle of the room. Um that turned out to be a big mistake because after the worship, it was so good, we all sat down, and then the pastor walks out onto the stage, and then within just a few moments, he stops. He says, stops the band, and he looks at us and he points right at me. And he says, Stand up. And I said, I knew this was a mistake. Ah I stand up, and I thought, well, you know, I can endure anything. And he says, No, no, no, no, no. He all four of you, stand up. And so the kids, I am not joking with you. We were standing for about seven minutes. It was a long time that we were standing, and he was talking to us, and at one point he turns to the whole big congregation and he says, I want everybody to pay attention right here. These people right here, this is what we want. He says, If you don't see what, if you can't, if you don't have eyes to see, he began to preach at them and much harsher than I have been today, but the same message. And so he began to say, We our church should reflect exactly what I say all the time, that our church should reflect our city, that we should be people who are not locked into our demographics, because it should not just be about who we like and people like us, and I I offered later, I end up talking to him on the phone, introducing ourselves and and and um partnering with them for a few weeks. I said, Look, it's gonna be difficult for anybody else who comes in. I I I told him our whole story that we're not gonna join the church, but I said, Look, I can stick around for a few weeks and we can work together, and hopefully the next people that walk in, I'll greet them, we'll get them plugged in. So we did that for we could only do so much if the people who I can only do so much if you're not willing to step out of your comfort zone. If you're not willing to go, I can only stand up here and yell at everybody and say, Let's go for so long. Let's get to it. We can't we cannot be defined by our demographics and our comforts and the things that are like us. We I I I found you a list. We have to be defined not by those things like age, ethnicity, race, income, education, occupation, marital status, household, etc. etc. It's not on the screen like I thought it was. We have to be defined by who God says we are, and we're a part of his family. He's our father. We are his children. Thank you. Number two, real quick. Number two, fear keeps us captive because Peter said, it says Peter was afraid of what they would say about him. What are you afraid of? What they'll say, what people will say about you, how it'll make you look? What if this changes my life? If I touch this leper, what if this changes everything? If I touch this untouchable person, what's this gonna do to my life? What are people gonna what about the fear of losing control or the fear of if I try and talk to this person and lead them to Jesus? What if they reject me? I can tell you that you may not have a lot of confidence in yourself, but you can have all the confidence in the world that you hold the answer that this world needs. That God has given us the ultimate answer, the solution to life's problems, to set the captives free, to heal the brokenhearted, we carry that answer. Here's number three reason why we can't go or won't go or don't go is that inertia is a powerful force. That Newton's law of motion bodies at an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Bodies in motion tend to stay remain in motion. And if we're going, whether you're at rest and stagnant in one place and have trouble just standing up and going, or whether you're going in the wrong direction, it takes effort to change that direction. And so here, I'm gonna give you a couple things, and then we're gonna close. Sometimes changing the inertia and changing the direction, the momentum that you have in life is you you can't start, you can't go from zero to a hundred. You have to go from zero to five, zero to two, zero to ten. Take baby steps. So, me telling you to go, therefore, into all the world, I'm not asking you to become an African missionary and go sell everything you own and just move to another country. I'm telling you that you got to start opening your mouth and connecting with people. That's difficult. I know. But it's there's also degrees between it's hard for me to ask you to go out in the world when you're not even talking to anyone in the church. So, how about this? Here's an assignment. Let's start connecting. There are people in your small group that need to hear the message and the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are people who attend your small group that never show up on a Sunday morning. I love that, but it requires that we are witnessing and sharing our lives and connecting outside of church, not just on the street. So join a small group. There's a few weeks left. We're not quite to Legacy Sunday, that will be um beginning of January. But there's uh something we're we're working out the details for, we're trying to add this into our legacy program, is that we have been given an opportunity to be um added to the streams that prisoners all around the country are able to access through their uh prison-assigned tablets. They can only get so many things, but there's a way for us to be on that with our small group, with uh, with our Bible studies and with the Sunday sermons and the with with the message of the gospel to be presented to prisoners who are literally locked up and are just looking for an answer. It requires that we go. Sometimes it's not on our feet, but it costs about$20,000 a year. But if that's the cost of leaving our comfort zone and going somewhere where someone's desperately in need, part of me says we can't not do something. Part of me says that we can't stay where we're at and just, oh, we'll just have church. We have to go, even if it costs us. Maybe that means jumping on a kids' team because there's some parents that are walking in this room, walking into this building, that if someone will take their kids, and right now there are there are kids up there, being taken care of by uh willing dream team members who are just ready to serve, and that mom and dad can come sit in the service, and their life can be changed because of a message that God loves them. Today, would you stand up on your feet? And I want us to just take a moment and commit to going. Just one word, and for every person in the room, it might look different, but we're gonna go. We're gonna step out, not join a program, but we're gonna let our hearts be moved with compassion and act, stretch out our hands. God's gonna give you an opportunity this week. Maybe it's inside the church, maybe it's right outside the church, maybe it's at your uh at your job or at your school or in your neighborhood. Maybe it's in your family, somebody that you live with, somebody that you know, and you've just been I can't go there. They're a mess. And I'll be the first to say that the church doesn't always get this right. In fact, we get it wrong a lot because it's messy and it's hard, but we got to keep bringing ourselves back to the heart of God. I feel like this today's message is a message for the family. And so I want to encourage you to go, but I also want to say this that if you're not in the family and you feel like an outsider, maybe you feel like a leper, maybe you feel like you've been put out or cast out or abandoned, and you've been in that lonely place. Here's what I know I know that God cares so much about you that he sent his son to die, to leave the comfort of heaven, to come down and pay a price that none of us could pay. He gave his life, his comfort, his safety, so that we could have more, so that we could be brought into a family and given love. If you've never, if you've never taken him up on the offer to trade places with you, because I didn't have to hang on a cross to pay for my own life, for my own future, for reconciliation with God, he paid it for me. If you've never taken him up on that offer, I would invite you to say a prayer with me today, to take the first step on the journey of faith that God wants for your life, he wants more for you, he wants life and life abundantly, he wants to walk with you, and it requires that you just decide and say yes to him today. So would you just bow your head right where you are? And I'm gonna lead us in a prayer. And those who are in the room who would today choose to follow Jesus, just make a confession from your heart and decide that today's the day. So would you say these words out loud? God, today I give you my life, I choose to follow Jesus. So, Lord, I give you my life in exchange for the life that you have for me. Take my sin. I repent, forgive me, and from this day forward, I will follow you wherever you lead. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's put our hands together for those who said that prayer. The band is coming. The prayer team is gonna join me right up here at the front. If you want to pray with someone before you leave, uh, I'm so thrilled with what God is doing and know that He wants to answer our prayers. And um, if you'd like to come up and pray with one of them, they would love to. If you want to stay in worship, that's good too. Otherwise, you're dismissed. I love you, and we'll see you next week. God bless.