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Morning. It's great to see you guys. It's good to sing with you. Beautiful day outside. And awesome spring weather. Really thankful for that. Hopefully you guys get to spend some time outside today after we leave here. But very thankful. We're going to do something a little bit different this morning, thus the whiteboard. But we'll get to that in a minute. This is the Sunday after Easter. And last week we were in this room celebrating the resurrected Savior. Hopefully, your week was an encouraging week as you thought about the fact that Jesus came out of the grave and that changes everything. I don't know about you guys, but personally I'm just so grateful that my God is not dead. And I see his hand in my daily life. And so I just pray that you were encouraged this week. If you're a guest today, or if you're just a visitor to point and you're like just checking this thing out, if you're maybe here for the first time, maybe you're already a Christ follower, or maybe you're not a Christ follower. Wherever you find yourself, my prayer is that today you would encounter the presence of God because that's what I know personally I need is to just know God is real, that He is there, that He loves me, that He's for me. If you're if you're you know searching and you're trying to discover, maybe on the journey of trying to just figure out who God is and what this is all about, my prayers that some of that you'll have clarity today through this process. And even what we're gonna do in just a minute, I hope that you understand that the core message of what we teach is uh is not a message of fix yourself. It's not a message of make yourself into a better person. Um, and that's not what God's called us to. It's it's trust in Jesus. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about that. But uh I want you to think for just a second, and for those of you that are believers in this room, I don't mean to cut you out if you're not. I don't mean to uh to uh you know say this isn't for you, but if you if you are a believer, you've put your trust in Jesus Christ to save you, you've come to faith in Christ, I want you to think about this for a second. Think back, who was it in your life that told you the message about Jesus? The news that Jesus Christ loved you, that God loved you, and that Jesus Christ died for your sin, that he rose again. Who was it that shared that gospel message with you the first time? Can you get that that person's uh face in your in your mind? Can you picture them? Um think about how, for some of you in that conversation, how they had to have felt some nerves, they had to have felt some tension, uh, maybe some awkwardness. But think about how that they spoke that message to you, how they shared that message with you. Now, and I think back for me, I I grew up in the church, and so I know that I'm not um normal to most of the people in culture, but I grew up, I grew up in the church, and and so I probably heard the gospel the first time uh when I was in my mom's belly. Okay, that's probably the first time I heard it, but but I think back as I grew up and I began to understand uh you know things and my mind was able to comprehend uh when I moved from concrete to abstract and I started to understand my sin and my depravity and all the issues that I had. I remember continuing to hear this gospel message, and I remember, you know, at some point it really clicked for me. And I'm thankful there were multiple people who conveyed the message of God of Jesus' love for me and what he did for me on the cross, like we celebrated last week and like we talk about every single week here at Point. And I was just thinking about that this week because we're gonna talk about uh sharing the gospel, the message of Jesus with other people, and it just reminded me to be really thankful for the people that shared it with me. And so I'm gonna ask you to do something. This is on the front end. I'm gonna ask you this week, uh, I want you to, if there's a way, if that person still is alive and and they are they are around, I want you to simply shoot them a text message or a phone call. Uh you can call them or some way, just tell them thank you. Can you do that? Can you just say thank you for sharing the message of the gospel? Maybe it was your parents, maybe it was a teacher, maybe it was a friend, a coworker, I don't know your story. But if someone shared the message, would you just tell them thank you for that? Because that was incredibly gracious and kind of them to share the message of the gospel. Some of you guys are already doing that. I see that. They might be sitting with you right here in this room. That's good. That's good. Okay? So you guys, as we we come out of Resurrection Sunday and we think about the mission that Jesus had when he came, and we're gonna talk about that in just a second. Um, we know that Resurrection Sunday is a massive, massive day on the calendar for us as Christians because that is the day when we understand that Jesus Christ is who He says He was, He said He was, and He did what He said He was gonna do, and we know that now He's alive, He is reigning, and He and everything is changing because of Him. And when we were talking about this just maybe six weeks ago, uh one of the things that really struck me was that we tend to talk about the resurrection and we tend to see it as the end of the mission. That Jesus had, He came, He lived, He died, and then He was resurrected, He rose again, and then that's the end. But here's what's interesting. When you look at the Bible, um the first four books of the New Testament, that's the last third of the Bible, there's 27 books there. Four of those books are called the Gospels. All right. Some of you may know this already. This might be basics for you, but for some maybe you don't know the Bible that well. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, those are the Gospels. And those are the accounts that these four men write from their perspective of Jesus' life. Okay, his ministry from the time he was born to the time he was died, to the time he resurrected, to the time he ascended. All right. And then from that point, when he is resurrected and he ascends, we have then 23 other books in the New Testament. Most of those are letters written to early churches by the apostle Paul, by other apostles like Peter, James. Okay, so we get these books in the Bible. And there's more things that happened, right, after Jesus is ascended. Here's my point. The mission didn't end when Jesus ascended. It continues today. It's still going on. Now, Jesus is part of the mission. What he did on the cross and what he did through coming out of the grave has ended, but the mission continues. And you may be aware of this, you may not. Maybe you've heard some things on the radio, or maybe you've seen a billboard, this thing called Love Where You Live. Anybody seen that? Okay? Uh this little jingle on the radio. Um, it's kind of stuck in my head, the little lovewereyou live.com or whatever. Um, you may not know how that's associated uh with the church or any of those things, but let me just tell you really quickly what's going on because some of you were here with us in the fall. Uh, across the the greater Austin area, uh, churches are working together and they're collaborating to say, look, uh, we love Austin. It's a great place to live, and Christians ought to be uh like some of the best citizens in this great city, in this great region. And we should be enhancing the place in which we live. We should be praying for it, we should be loving it, we should be serving it, we should be leading uh the charge to make Austin the best city in the world, not so that we can say, hey, we live in the best city in the world, but so that God can use Austin to point others to him. And so this uh there's a group of men who've been praying about that and praying, how do we as the church really lean in and love the city well? And they came up with this love where you live uh goal, this initiative, and it specifically hinges from Jesus' words when he said the greatest commandment is to love God and to love people, love your neighbor as yourself. What if when Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself, he literally meant love your neighbor? Like love the people who live next door to you, or have the next cubicle over from you in your workplace. What if he actually meant we should love people around us? I actually think that's what he meant. That we should love people. We should love the ones that are around us. And so this love where you live is Christians, uh, the church, the big sea church, 350 expressions of the church in Greater Austin saying we want to love the people who live around us. We want to serve them. And ultimately, we would we would hope that they would know the love of Jesus in such an impactful way that they might have the opportunity to actually put their trust in Christ and receive the growth the gift of salvation. Okay? So that's that's a little bit of love where you live. Well, that coupled with what I just said a while ago, that the mission continues, is that we have the opportunity as a church, as a people, to participate, to be involved, not just in an initiative for one year, but every day in our lives to engage, loving God, loving people, and pointing people to the life to life in Jesus. That's what we get to do. It's awesome, it's incredible. And so this morning, um, and backtrack, six weeks ago, we were having this conversation, and one of the things I realized is that we talk a lot about sharing the gospel or you know, telling other people about Jesus, but we've never really sat in a room like this on a Sunday morning and said, here's how you would do that. And so, why not? Let's just take some time to do that. So this was not in the plans, this was not in the original work, but God's, He leads us, and so as we were praying, felt like God was saying, take a Sunday after Easter and talk about what's next. What happens after Easter? Well, God's church begins to grow and begins to thrive because people decided that when Jesus said, Go and tell the world about me, that they should actually go and tell the world about him. And we're here today because of that. And we're here today because people share the good news, the gospel, with us. Okay? You with me? Tracking? Okay. So here's what you do. I want you to open your Bibles, and we're gonna look in the book of Luke. Uh, last week we actually read John chapter 20, most of that chapter, and towards the end of the message last week, we made a point, and I told you we're gonna come back to it, where John records Jesus' words to his disciples, just like all of the these gospels, um, these four books, at the end of them, you kind of get these last conversations that Jesus has with his disciples. And in those conversations, he gives them some instructions. He tells them, Here's what I want you to do when I leave. Now, I'm guessing they were a little bit freaked out, they were a little bit nervous, they're a little bit anxious because here's their leader, he's leaving them. But he gives them specific instructions for what this is going to look like when he leaves. Okay? He tells them, here's what I want you to go do. And last week we read from John's account that it says he walks into this room, uh, he appears to them, they all start freaking out, and that then he says, Peace to you, just as the Father has sent me, now I what? Send you. Okay? And then it says he breathes the Holy Spirit on them. That's what it says in John's account. I want to read Luke's account today. It's a little bit different, but the same picture, the same uh basic content of what Jesus is trying to get across to his disciples before he leaves them. So, in order to get context for this, rather than just jumping right into the main section of text, I want us to start at verse 36. So if you guys have your Bible, I encourage you just to read along with me this morning. Here we go. Ready? And as they were saying these things, he himself stood among them. He said to them, Peace to you. Again, notice consistency between what Luke says and what John says. And I've got a feeling again, they were a little bit uh a little bit freaked out whenever Jesus shows up because they're they're like, Is he a ghost? Well, what's going on here, right? But they were startled and terrified, and they thought they were seeing a ghost. Why are you troubled? He asked. And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet. It is I myself. Notice there's the exclamation point there. He's saying, Look, guys, it's me, all right? Check me out. Look at me. I'm I'm I am Jesus. All right. They were having a struggle with that. And I'm sure, again, they'd never seen a ghost, or they've never seen somebody resurrected like that. They think they're seeing a ghost, right? So it's a little bit freaking to them. But notice what he says, look at my hands and feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you can see, I have. Which, by the way, this is interesting. This is Jesus' resurrected body, which tells us again, he wasn't just resurrected into some sort of spirit form. He was resurrected in a bodily form, a literal resurrection. And this might give us a little bit of a clue what our bodies are going to be like once we are resurrected, because we said last week, Jesus is resurrected, therefore we will be resurrected. Having said this, he showed them his hands and feet, but while they were still amazed and unbelieving, because their joy, he asked them, Do you have something here to eat? So he's basically showing them, again, I am real. I want to eat. And so he asked for a piece of fish. They give him a piece of broiled fish, he likes seafood, and he took it and he ate it in their presence. Alright? So here's Jesus, he's eating something. He's showing them, like, look, I'm I'm alive. It's not a physical being here. And then I want us to really pay attention to this next section. Then he told them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was with you. That everything written about me in the law of Moses, that's the first five books of the Bible. We get the Genesis account, then we get these books of the law. Okay, these are the first five books. They don't know what the law of Moses was. The prophets, all these books in the Old Testament, like uh Micah, Nahu, Mabakak, Zephaniah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, we all these books of these prophet guys in the Old Testament who were messengers. Prophet just means they heard from God and then they told people what they were hearing from God, what God wanted them to hear, what they needed to hear. Okay. So all these prophets, these Old Testament guys, uh, and the Psalms. That's David and some of the other musicians that write these songs of worship. Some of them we sing still today, or we take phrases from those psalms and we sing them. Okay? Notice what he says. They must be fulfilled. So all of that Old Testament scripture that all these Jewish people would have clung to, would have hung on to, he says these things must be fulfilled, right? Then he opens their mind to understand the scriptures. Wait. These are his disciples, right? They're with him. They've been with him for three years. They've been hearing him teach day in, day out. They've been hearing him come with power and delivering these messages that are just like mind-blowing, and they're not just, you know, they're not just these heady, uh, way out there concepts, but they like, they're such deep truths, but they come home to the heart and they really transform people's lives, and they're hearing this message. But notice, up until this point, they still hadn't put it together. Remember, we said even last week in the book of John, they're in the tomb. They're in the tomb that's empty with the grave clothes there, and it says they still don't get it that the scripture says he must die and be resurrected on the third day. But notice what happens here. He opens their mind to the scripture. Now, how many of you guys have watched a movie where like there's a character and all these different things are happening, and then at some point in the movie, like they show this flashback of all these scenes, and this person, it's like something clicks, and all of the things that have happened at this point make sense. It all comes together for them. You know what I'm talking about? It's like in this moment, these disciples are remembering all the things that Jesus taught, all the things that he said, all the way back to that Sermon on the Mount, to the parables of the sower, to these different stories that he's told, and it just clicks, and they realize it's all about Jesus. He's the central figure of the whole Old Testament. All these Old Testaments and uh these all these laws and these prophets and these Psalms, it's about Jesus. And it clicks for them. Now, significant thing here, one, is that Jesus had to open their minds to it. And still in our day-to-day, I believe that unless God opens our minds and our hearts to the scripture, we're kind of lost. Not kind of, like we're really lost. We come to the Bible and we read it, and we can maybe pull some good how-tos and some practical self-help stuff out of it, because there's some good things in here. There's some like practical proverbs in the Old Testament. But when God opens our mind to the scriptures, all of a sudden we realize all of the text points us to the person in the work of Jesus. Now that's really, really good. Because if not, you would turn this book, this book called the Bible, into a book of morality. And you just basically say, okay, well, let's see, read that and then let's do it. Let's read that and let's not do that. But that's not the way that the Bible works. It's living and it's active because it points us to a living and active resurrected Savior named Jesus. And what he has done for us, right? So he opens their minds to the scripture. He also says to them, This is what is written the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day. And repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. So he's basically saying, Look, Jesus, I'm the Messiah, you understand that now, you get that now. I died, I rose on the third day, just in case you're not clear. Here's what happens. This is what the scripture said. I've done it. And now what happens next? Well, the forgiveness of sins is going to be proclaimed to all nations. It's going to be proclaimed to all people. Starting in Jerusalem, where they live, this is where these guys were hanging out right now. They were in Jerusalem. He said, Going to the ends of the earth, people are going to hear about the fact that Jesus died and that he rose again. And that that's how we receive forgiveness for our sins. So that's what he tells them. And then he goes on to say, You are witnesses of these things. In case they aren't clear, you're the ones who are going to proclaim this message. In case you aren't quite getting it, you're the ones who are going to take this message, this good news, to the nations. And then he says, And look, I'm sending you what my father promised. Anybody know what that was? It's talking about the Holy Spirit, okay? If you're familiar with the Bible, you know, Jesus already said in John earlier in the book that he is going to send a helper, a comforter, a one who would remind them of all truth. So they'd have the wisdom that they need, they'd have the capacity and the strength that they need to actually be what God's called them to be, to be witnesses for him, right? And so here they are being witnesses now of these things. And he says, I'm sending you what the Father promised, the Holy Spirit. And as for you, he says, Don't go and try to be a witness on your own. Stay in the city until you're empowered from a high. Stay in the city, stay in Jerusalem until you get this gift called the Holy Spirit that comes on you. Alright? So that's are we all together? You hear? This is how the story unpacks. Alright. So here's the thing. I want us to be reminded this morning, first and foremost, of Jesus' mission. I want us to be reminded of Jesus' mission. Because in this text, Jesus is finishing his mission and we are starting ours. As Jesus' mission mission ends, ours begins. And notice what it what we we can see from the text, verse 44 and 45 again. I already just read it to you, and we explained a little bit that from the law and the prophets and the Psalms that must be fulfilled in the person of Jesus, we see what Jesus' mission was. His mission was to come and to live a perfect, sinless life, to die on the cross, a painful death that he did not deserve, unjustified, and to ultimately, again, in that process, pay the penalty for our sin, and then to be resurrected and to live again. Right? So he did his part. From the time Jesus was born, the time he was old enough to understand what was really, or could communicate with everyone, he understood what his mission was. In Luke chapter 19, verse 10, it's at the end of the story of Zacchaeus. You guys know the story of Zacchaeus? If it wasn't it wasn't that long ago, here in this room we talked about do-overs and how Zacchaeus got a do-over. He was a tax collector, he was hated, he was living for himself, he was very self-centered, he was stealing things, he was padding his life with all these comforts and wealth, but he was an empty, empty man. Sounds like a lot of Americans, right? And here's where Zacchaeus was. And it says in the text that God, that Jesus comes to his tree where he's trying to see Jesus as he's walking by, and Jesus says to him, I want you to come down, we're gonna have dinner together. And Zacchaeus' life is radically transformed because he understands who Jesus is, and in that moment he surrenders his life to Christ. He surrenders and he says, I'm gonna repay all the things that I have done wrong. I'm gonna repay, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna sell my possessions, I'm gonna give to the poor, I'm gonna do all these great things. He has an incredible repentance that takes place in that moment. And then at the end of that story, it says this in Luke 19, 10. For the Son of Man, that's Jesus, came has come to seek and to save the lost. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. What is Jesus' mission? Jesus' mission was to seek and to save the lost. Maybe you've heard it this way. Jesus had a search and rescue mission, right? He came to seek and to save the lost. There's other texts that speak to what Jesus came to do, like uh Jesus didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus came to lay his life down for his sheep, is what it says. But all these speak to this idea, I think this summarizes it well, that Jesus came and shows up on the scene to seek and to save the lost. And if you're curious, what was lost? It was humanity. People were lost apart from God. They didn't know how to get to God, they didn't know how to find a way back into God's grace and his relationship, the relationship with God that was originally intended to be this close knit relationship where there was nothing separating us, going all the way back to the book of Genesis. Okay? And Jesus comes on the scene. And again, notice this started way before Jesus was actually born. Because they were talking about it way back in the prophets, way back in the Psalms, way back in the The Torah, the first five books in the law. They're already talking about Jesus coming. And so He comes and He seeks and He saves the lost. I love that word seek in the sense that God takes initiative. He moves towards us, doesn't he? I don't know about you guys, but I feel like sometimes I take way too much credit for my salvation. That I'm saved. When I stop and really think about it, like I didn't pick where I was born. I didn't choose to be exposed to the gospel at the young age that I was. I didn't get to do that. That stuff was just part of my life. And so when I think about that, that brings me to a place of incredible gratitude and thankfulness that God exposed me to truth at an early age, and I got to respond to Jesus. I got to come to know him and to be saved, to have salvation. He was seeking me out. He gives me incredible thankfulness in my heart that Jesus sought me out and he saved me. But the question then is if that's Jesus' mission, what's our mission? What's our mission? Well, let me just simply summarize it by this: to join him, Jesus, in his mission by being witnesses of how he came to seek and to save the lost. So we actually join him in his mission. It's not that we have a different mission in a sense because we're actually just joining up with his mission that he wants to seek and to save the lost. Remember what he said in the text? That you will be my what? Witnesses. You're going to take this message to the nations. He's talking specifically to his disciples, but we can transfer that commandment, that instruction, that commission, if you will, to us today because we are still his followers. We are still his disciples. So we get to take this message that Jesus forgives sin, that he saves people. We get to take that to the world. It's an incredible, incredible invitation and responsibility that he is giving to his church. Now, I want to say that because, again, remember, the mission of people coming to faith in Jesus is not over. The mission of people being saved is not over. It's still ongoing. But there are two alternative missions that sometimes trip us up as the church. And when I say the church, I mean God's people. Because you guys know that like the church is not the building, right? The church is not the worship service on Sunday. The church is God's people. In fact, last night before bed, I should I should say we should give some awards out to some of you dads who kept the kids while the wives were away. Yeah, I heard there's an amen. You know, that was a bit very difficult task, wasn't it, man? We appreciate our wives so much more when they're when they're gone and you're on uh in on daddy duty in that in isolation. But uh you guys laugh. Um we survived. I took all my kids to Chewy's, it was awesome. Um filled them up with chips and hot sauce and put them into a food coma, and then we came back and then went to sleep. So um here's the thing. Yeah, I made totally lost where I was at now. My last night before bed, I heard our three-year-old. Uh he said, Hey dad, when are we going up to the church building in the morning? And I was like, Yes, he gets it. We're going up to the church building. You guys are like, what does that mean? That means nothing. That's silly. Like what? Because he understands we don't go to church, we are the church. We gather at the church building. And so I've been building that in from the time he was very young because I want him, semantics do matter. We are teaching through what we say. And so my son, I want him even at a young age to know like we don't go to church, we are the church, and we participate as the church, as the people of God, right? Simple thing, I know, but I just gotta say that and brag on my little son. Okay. But here's the thing: we have two alternative missions that really quickly sidetrack us as the church, as God's people. Number one, we get sidetracked by just trying to be good people. Sometimes we think that the mission is to be a good person. Now, is there anything wrong with being a good person? Well, other than the fact that Jesus said, no one is good but God, that's, you know, that's kind of a problem. Um, because we all have issues. But when we say good, we typically mean like we want to be a good dad, a good husband, a good uh a good uh friend, a good wife, whatever it might be, a good worker. Those things are okay. But you know what scripture says? It says that even in those good things that we do, we are doing those good things, so what? So that we can point people to God. In fact, Ephesians 2.10 says, we are created for good works so that we could point people to Christ, right? We don't do that uh because we are trying to earn God's favor or just be good people for just good's sake. So one of the things that can short track us real fast is to think that, you know, God just wants me to be a good person. He saved me, now he just wants me to be a good person. Which means that we can have a lot of moral people running around, but not people who are engaged in the mission. People who understand the Bible, who are really intelligent and know the Bible, know the know the word, know theology, no doctrine, but aren't actually telling anybody about Jesus. That's dangerous, isn't it? It's dangerous because we're missing the point. You see, God didn't save us just for our own sake, He saved us for the sake of other people to know and experience the life change that comes in Christ. But the second thing that kind of this leads us to is that the mission can sometimes be sidetracked by building good churches. By building good churches. This is where we just say, hey, look, the mission is simply to get large crowds of people who believed certain things and just come into a room together and to celebrate that and say, hey, we had a good, we had a good worship service, we got good programs, we've got a good church, we've got a big building, uh, we've got some good things we do for the poor. But here's the thing Jesus never said to go and build the church. He said, Go and tell people about me and make disciples. Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to have buildings. I'm not saying we're sitting in one for crying out loud. I'm not saying it's wrong for us to have programs if they help people accomplish the mission God has for their lives. So if we're learning uh scripture and we're learning the Bible, we're learning doctrine, we're we're learning those things, and it's pushing us towards living out the mission to love people and to point them to Christ, that's great. But if we're not, what are we doing? Are you with me? I know that's again, maybe this is really hitting home for me because I see a lot of pastors, and I know as a pastor, one of the tensions that we can have is we can actually build churches and not be on mission. We can actually create places where people come together and worship, but not actually go and reach the lost. Not actually help people that don't know Jesus. I want you to know that the church is not designed to be a social club for Christians, it's supposed to be a hospital for those who are in need. It's supposed to be a place that's a launch pad to send us back out in our everyday life and to love people and to serve people and to help them know Jesus. That's what the church should be. And when it stops being that, it's it stops being the church. It stops being the church that God wants us and intended and created. Are you with me? Sometimes I need to hear that. I need to be reminded of that because it's so easy to get sucked into just doing church, to just gathering with people who are Christians, who already believed, because that's comfortable for me. But it's not what Christ has called us to do. So, if this is the case, if this is our mission, to join Jesus in his mission, to be witnesses, the question we have to ask is how are we actually witnesses? So I want you guys to look into your worship guide, and there's another insert in there. I know Harley said there were several things in there today. One of those worship guide inserts has a logo at the top that says, Love where you live. I want you to look at that side real quick. You guys know that when God, again, saves people, his hope is that those people who have been saved, have been rescued, have been redeemed, then go and turn and are a blessing to the world around them. So much so that people start to ask the question, why are you blessing me? Why are you loving me? Why are you serving me? That your coworkers would speak would be like, Why are you kind to me? Why do you even care about me? Well, because Jesus Christ cares about us and he compels me to care about others. Everything that I receive vertically from God is then supposed to be pushed outward towards those around me. So my walk with Jesus deeply impacts how I interact with people around me. It causes me to love them as I'm receiving the love of God, right? Well, on that side that's got the Love Where You Live logo at the top, one of the practical things that we can do to love where we live is to bless people. And so we used a simple, maybe, uh maybe just you know helpful guide to say, how do we actually bless people? Well, the first thing we want to do is we want to begin praying. We need to pray for ourselves and we need to pray for those around us. We need to pray that God would use us, that we would be willing, we would be available to actually care for the needs of people around us, the people that live, again, on our street, or the people who work in our workplace, or the parents who we're sitting alongside of, like I was last week, watching my kid play soccer and having the conversation with them and just being able to say, hey, who are you? What's your story? And listening and those things. And that kind of leads to the next thing is be a listener. Listen, learn people's stories, know who they are, what they're about. You know, one of the reasons why Christians are very uh poor at sharing the gospel is because we talk about ourselves too much and we listen too little. And we need to listen, we need to learn people's stories, we need to hear what's going on in their lives. The next thing is we eat with people. Did you guys know that eating with people is one of the most spiritual things you can do? Jesus, look at his life. How many ministry conversations did he have? How many things did he do around the dinner table? I like that, men, right? I like to eat, so that's good. I can invite people to eat with me. It's a great place to have authentic life. Genuine relationships are built around the table. And so we want to do that. And then we want to, what, serve people. We want to look for ways we can practically serve them. That means for some of us we have to uh give up some of our sacred uh, you know, veg time where we actually get outside in our front yards and we get to know neighbors, we see needs, and we actually move into motion, uh, put in go move into action to serve people's needs. Maybe that means, you know, there's a the lady on your street who needs help with their yard, and you go and help with their yard. Maybe it means um simply caring for someone who there's a couple that they need, they've not had a date night in in 10 years because they just haven't had a way to let their kids uh they they couldn't let go of that. Maybe you could help watch their kids. I don't know what it is, but you can find ways to serve other people and to minister to practical need. And then finally, the goal is to share your story and ultimately to share the gospel, to share the good news about Jesus. And so I want to just take a minute this morning and talk us through this because um I don't want to assume that you guys actually know how to share the gospel. So I'm gonna try to make sure you guys over here can see. But if on the back side of that sheet, if you have begun to bless people, if you begin to pray and you begin to listen and you begin to eat with people and you begin to serve people, there's gonna come a point where you're gonna get to share the message of the gospel. Now, sometimes this happens faster than others. Sometimes it takes years. Can I just be honest? Sometimes it takes years for people to be willing to actually listen to what you have to say about Jesus. Sometimes it takes a moment, like a few minutes. I've had this happen in coffee shops. What I'm about to share with you is something that I've shared with people uh in Mexico, in China, in Kazakhstan, in Indonesia, and in coffee shops, and in places all over the United States, in restaurants. Uh, most of the times uh I share it just by writing it on a napkin and showing somebody, here's what it means when we say the gospel. Uh, you don't have to use what I'm about to show you to share the gospel, but what happens when somebody actually asks you the question, what do you believe about Jesus? Or what do you believe as a Christian? That's usually what you hear, right? And I just want to tell you what I typically share with them, and maybe this will be a helpful tool for those of you who are Christians to be able to share this message with someone else. But also, if you're not a Christian, I want you to know this is the message that we believe. And maybe this morning for the first time it will click for you. Um, I've got a friend, his name, I'm not kidding. Oh no, I'm just kidding. His name is Rob. We call him F and Rob. Okay, so every other word out of his mouth is the F-bomb, and so we just call him F and Rob. And not too long ago, we're at a coffee shop and he says, What do you F and believe about Jesus? Okay, that's what he said. I'm just quoting him, alright? And what was interesting is in that moment I had the opportunity to share the gospel with him. And and it basically what I shared with Rob is what I put on your sheet. Okay? Uh Romans 6.23, I'm not going to write it out. It's actually on the sheet in front of you, but I would typically write Romans 6.23 and write the entire verse out at the top of the napkin or whatever I've got available at the time. Romans 6.23, what does it say? For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's what the scripture says. Very simple. I encourage you all to memorize that. It's a simple verse you can remember, remember, okay? And what I would do is I'd say, hey, Rob, here's the deal. This is what I believe. I believe that I'm over here. I'm kind of skinny. Um, I believe that man is over here, and that what this verse tells me is that the wages of sin is death. So I kind of go, wages, sin, death. And when I start here, I basically would say something to this effect. Listen, um, what's a wage? Well, a wage is what you earn from your work. I would say the scripture says that what we earn from our sin. What's sin? Well, a little kid could tell you, if they've been around here at point very long, a sin is anything you think, say, or do that doesn't please God. I would actually say simply this: sin is my way over God's way, right? When I say I'm in charge, God, I'm sinning. I'm saying I'm in control, I'm calling the shots, not you, God. So there's a sin there. That leads itself to a lot of different things. And they say, Well, I'm not a sinner. Have you ever lied? Or if they say, no, well, you just did, right? So that there we go. We can talk about the sin. So here's the deal. I say, sin is those things that we do that offend God, that they're in rebellion to God. So what we earn from our sin, it says in Scripture, is death. Now, death means a couple things here. It does mean that in one sense, if you sin, you could kill yourself. Because foolishness does lead to death. Like I tell my boys and my girls all the time, my kids at home, listen, if you're foolish, you can hurt yourself and you can hurt others. That's what sin does. It could produce pain in your life. And it could ultimately cost you your life. But here's the other thing you know is that death also means scripturally here, separation from God. That there's a chasm, if you will, that there is a disconnect from God because God is holy, he is good, he is pure, he is right, and he can't be in the presence of sin. And so he says, because I can't be in the presence, there's this wall between us, there's this chasm, there's this grand canyon, if you will, between humanity and God. And so I didn't say God's over here. So, Rob, here's where God is. And God, it says in that scripture that what? It's a great, great transition word there. For the wage of sin is death, but if the end of it was just the wages of sin is death, we're done. We're toast, that's it. But what? The gift, so I say gift of God is eternal life. Now that's good news right there, okay? Now I don't I don't know if if everybody at that point will get this, and let me just make this caveat. When I've shared this, not every person that I've shared this with goes, Oh, I want to accept Jesus right now. I want to put my trust in Jesus right now. Okay, I that's not the goal here. But it is to make sure that people understand what the gospel is. So I say, What's a gift? And they say, Well, a gift is something you receive from somebody. So then I say, Well, if it's a gift, let's say I was gonna give you a car for your birthday, and then I showed up the next day at your house and said, now start paying me for it. Is that a gift? No, it's not a gift. So I remind them that a gift is something we didn't pay for. But guess what? Somebody did pay for that gift. Right? And in this gospel, we remember that Jesus paid for the gift. And we'll get that in a second. But what is his gift? His gift is eternal life that starts now. A life that says that we are with God forever. God is good, he is perfect, we were made for him, and eternal life is being with God forever. In fact, scripture even says that to know Jesus is to know life. It's to know eternal life. All right? So then the question is, is how does man over here try to get to God? And people have all kinds of forms of what they think God is or what they how they are supposed to get meaning out of life, purpose out of life, satisfaction out of life, to find worth, value, all those things. And so people will tend to make these things like this we'll we'll try good works. I'll tell, I'll tell people like Rob, like a lot of people, they try to do good works. This means going to church, being a good guy, you know, like loving my wife, uh, dating her, uh, being a good dad, making sure I'm taking them out, daddy-daughter dates, whatever it is, we kind of find these good works that we try to infuse and we say, This will get me over here. Here's the problem. We're gonna fall right here, right? We're we're dead. We're dead in the water because we can never, this is the Grand Canyon. It's like we we could be the best long jumper in the world, but we're only gonna get out there 28 feet and then we're gonna go straight down. Because our works can't get us to God. Are you still with me? And so then I would say, what is the answer, Rob? Well, the the verse actually gives us the rest of the answer. The rest of the answer is it says, through what? Through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is where the cross comes in. We are here, we deserve death. God's over here, he wants to give us the gift of eternal life, but in order to pay for that gift, he had to kill his son. He had to put our sin on Jesus. And in the cross, he did that. He paid the price for our sin. That's the gospel, that's the good news, right? That he he put the penalty of our sin on Jesus. He poured out his wrath towards our sin on Jesus, and he has now made a bridge that we can get to God. We have access to God through the person of Jesus. So that means, listen, guys, you don't get saved by going to church, you don't get saved by being a good person, uh, you don't get saved by doing any of the things that sometimes religion will tell you you're supposed to do. In the gospel, it's through the person of Jesus. And it's a gift that has to be received by faith. So I have to say, Romans 10, 9, it's at the bottom of your sheet, if I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and I believe in my heart that God raised him from the dead, you are what? Saved. That's it. You're saved. That is the good news. That's the gospel. I've had this conversation with countless people, and then I ask something like this, do you have any questions? And you know, sometimes those questions go, well, what about evolution? Right? And they're like, Wait, wait, I wasn't talking about evolution, right? Or, well, what about why is there suffering in the world? Why do good people suffer? I mean, like, people go to different places here, and I want to keep driving them back to say this listen, I don't have all the answers to everything, but I do know that this is what the Bible teaches very plainly. The Bible doesn't give me a crystal clear picture of how creation all works together. It does tell me that Jesus spoke it, God spoke it into existence. I don't know how suffering all works because honestly, I have a limited perspective, and I have to just know that even though I can't understand suffering fully, I know that Jesus suffered and he understands and gets my suffering. But when it comes to salvation, salvation is about me putting my trust in Jesus Christ, his perfect, sinless life in my place for my gift of salvation forever. Okay? So you probably have people in your life who still think that Christianity is just a workspace religion where you just do good things to get to God. And this is what the scripture teaches. I could go to other passages. I think one of my favorites is 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Great passage. I think this one's a little simpler sometimes to man to work through. Uh, but just know that if we share this, Romans 1.16 says this. I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation for all who believe. We leave the ball in God's court. Do we save people? No, God saves people. Are we supposed to be car salesmen when we get into this? No. If your voice changes and you go into some sort of evangelist mode, they're gonna look at you like you're really whacked out. All right? Because you are whacked out. All right, at that moment. The goal is not to change who you are. Hopefully, you have a friendship, you've earned the right to be able to share this message. I've shared it with complete strangers and I've shared it with good, close friends. It's taken, again, years to get there. But whatever it is, we need to share the gospel. We need to share the person work of Jesus, is the only way we have access to God, to eternal life. So I want us to close out with a few things and thoughts on this today, because if we don't understand this message, we'll preach a false gospel. We'll preach something else that's sufficient for salvation, and there's not anything else sufficient than other than Jesus. And again, don't you don't have to use this model. You don't have to use this method. I've used other methods personally and shared different ways. God creates the world, that man rebels, that Jesus Christ redeems, and that ultimately he will restore. And we've talked through that in a different lens. But I think this is one practical, simple way that you can share the gospel. So, that said, there's three groups of people that I want to challenge you personally to share the gospel with. First one is family. Family. Did you know that God has put you in your family to be a witness to them of God's goodness and grace? If you're a Christ follower, I would invite you to consider sharing the gospel message with your family members. If you're a parent, don't assume somebody else is going to tell your kids about Jesus. What an awesome privilege and honor that we as parents get to tell our kids the good news about what Christ has done for them. If you're married and your spouse doesn't know this, make sure they know this. Make sure your mom. Your dad, your brothers, your sisters, your aunts, your uncles. Listen, and I'm not saying you turn into a preacher and you go into preaching mode. That's not gonna get you anywhere. They're gonna shut you down. But I'm talking about genuine love and concern that says, I want you to know Jesus Christ alone saves. This is not a popular message. Can I tell you that? It's not a popular message in our culture. Because we would, this this right here offends the religious and the irreligious. It offends deeply. Because what this is saying is that there is nothing in this world that really will get us to what we're longing for except Jesus. So that means the most religious people in the world, their only hope is Jesus. The most irreligious people in the world, their only hope is Jesus. And that's offensive. But the good news is, again, Jesus has made a way. So we want to talk to our family. We want to talk to our friends. This is the second greatest opportunity we have to share the gospel. Wouldn't it be sad? And I'm not using this as a backdoor way to manipulate or create some sort of awkward feeling. Wouldn't it be sad though to get to heaven and go, man, I had a good friend on earth, but I never shared the most important message with them? I've thought about that some. Because there's been times when I've flat out missed opportunities to share the gospel with people that I really care deeply about. And I'm honestly, I've had to pray prayers. God, would you put somebody in their life who'd be more faithful than I was? Friends, thirdly, as you go, if we're praying, if we're looking for opportunities, God will give them to you. I've noticed that when I pray in the morning, God use me. God, I'm available. It's crazy. Like people ask me questions and it just gets into these spiritual conversations. I know you think that's insane. You probably don't think that happens. I'm telling you, I pray about it and God gives me opportunities. It's crazy. It's like prayer works. Part of it's because I'm aware and I'm trying to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Every day there's opportunities. The question is, is are we willing? Are we ready? Are we ready to step in and love people and share the truth? And again, we don't have to save people. It's not our job. We don't have to seal the deal. We just have to be faithful. So as we go, there's going to be opportunities like people that we meet in the coffee shop. Can I just tell you, I totally failed on this at Cracker Barrel last Thursday. I totally failed. I had been praying about this, and I sit down with one of our elders to have lunch. This guy walks up, he starts a service, his name's Jordan. I say, that's a cool name. He goes, is that like from Mike? I think the guy with me says, Is that from Michael Jordan? He goes, No, it's the Jordan River. It's like, interesting. I was like, are you a Christian? He goes, No, but my parents are. But anyway. And I knew in that moment God was saying I was supposed to have a conversation. I didn't know what it was going to look like. And you know what I did? I said, because I don't want to be the guy who's trying to impress the elder that's sitting across from me, I'm not going to share. And so I missed out on an opportunity. It was a wide open door. He sat there and straight up said, like you could see the angst in his face. I'm not a Christian because my family is. And the way he said his family, I was like, there must be some issues there, right? And I missed it. I failed. And I do that a lot. And I'm praying that God would help me to fail less in that, to be faithful more in those things. I had a great opportunity and I missed it. So we have the opportunity every day in our life to share with people around us. Important to remember success in evangelism is not based on whether a person puts their faith in Jesus. It's about obedience. It's about obedience. It's not our job again to save people. It is our job to share. It's our responsibility, it's our stewardship issue. We've been entrusted with this beautiful gospel, this message of hope and salvation. Second, effective witness comes from personal encounters with Jesus and reliance on his spirit. Notice what happened in this text. They had a personal encounter with the living Jesus. They were motivated, right? I was recently working with the prison ministry called Bill Glass, and we were doing some training, and we finished the training, and we got up to walk out, and this young man walks over to me. He's probably in his early 20s, and he says, Hey, what'd you think about that training? And I said, Well, what do you mean? What'd you think about the training? And he's like, Well, uh, like, what do you think about like what that message we just we just talked about? And I said, Well, I think that it's gonna be fun to go share it, but you can make it personal. You can share it however you want to share it. He goes, I don't believe that message. I'm thinking to myself, you're at a training to go share the gospel with prisoners and you don't even believe the gospel. You don't believe this message. I was like, yeah, no, you probably shouldn't go share the gospel with people if you don't believe it, right? Here's the thing the reason I typically struggle to share the gospel is because I've forgotten what the gospel really is. I've forgotten that I am saved. I am forgotten that he has rescued me from the death, from the jaws of death, that he has rescued me from eternal separation from God. And maybe the reason we don't share the gospel is because we've never received it for ourselves. Here's the thing I want us to hear as we we close up today. If you're a Christ follower, listen, just just I challenge you, I dare you. Pray and ask God to help you be a better witness. Just pray that he would stir your heart for your neighbors, your coworkers, your friends. Pray for that. And ask him by the power of his Holy Spirit. Remember what he said to his disciples, don't go do this on your own. Wait for the Holy Spirit to lead you. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you that courage, that boldness. If the apostles who ultimately died for their faith had to ask for boldness and courage, I can guarantee you we will. Pray for boldness, pray for courage to go share the gospel. And then go and share the message with your family, with your friends, and as you go. But here's the second thing. If you're here in this room right now in this moment, and you've never received this message, your goal is not to go share a message you don't believe. My hope is today that maybe this is clarifying for you that I can't get to God on my own. I need Jesus. And that today, even in this moment, you would put your trust in the person of Jesus to save you. That's that's the gospel, that's salvation.