[0:00] Good morning, church. I'm really excited to bring the word this morning.! I'm excited to talk through God's word this morning with you guys.! I'd like to go ahead and pray for us before we start, though. So let's pray. Father, thank you so much for all the people you've given us this weekend to pour over the scriptures and consider what it means to press pause, to prioritize prayer, to prioritize scripture in our lives.
[0:24] Lord, as we continue on this morning and we look how we can press play, God, I pray that you would hide me behind you, that you would speak mightily through the word this morning, and God, I pray that you would just, I pray that you would continue to move in these students' lives.
[0:41] We talked about highlights, but God, I pray that you help us to remember how to carry on, how to carry on from here with what we've learned, and God, just help us to remember the things that we've learned this weekend.
[0:52] Lord, thank you for all you've done. Thank you for what you're going to do this morning. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, if you are planning on following us this morning in the scripture, Matthew 28 is where we're going to start. So Matthew 28, if you'll turn there really quick.
[1:05] I already did this, but I just want to say it again. Thank you so much to everybody who helped out. If you prayed, if you brought snacks, if you did all those things. Man, I'm telling you, my team was awesome.
[1:16] The people who were able to be boots on the ground right there, moving things back and forth. You guys are lifesavers, and so I'm just so grateful for all that you all have done. I also want to let you guys know that this week, yes, there was a lot of great gospel conversation.
[1:32] I want you to know that it was definitely a fruitful weekend. I'm not going to say the name of the student, but someone has professed and confessed faith in Christ this weekend. Someone's trusting Jesus this weekend. So that gives a round of applause right there.
[1:44] Absolutely. Praise the Lord for that. And I had another student talk to me about baptism as well. So the Lord is definitely moving in this place, and we do worship Him. We do worship Him. One thing we did this weekend, you may have seen some of the pictures up there on that recap video.
[1:58] We did a gospel service project, basically. So what we did was we went out to a couple neighborhoods, went to the Centennial, went to Country Club, and we did a canned food drive.
[2:10] And so some of our students went around, knocked on doors, but we had gospel tracts. If you know what a gospel tract is, and I have to thank Wade Pierce for helping me out with that, get some gospel tracts.
[2:21] Gospel tracts are basically just little ways that if you don't know how to share the gospel with your words, you can say, I wanted to give this gift to you. And it's a gift of the gospel. And on that little piece of paper or whatever form or media it may be, it is just a gospel laid out for somebody.
[2:36] So our students went to homes, knocked on doors, asked for cans of canned goods. We're going to take to the mission or to the outrage here in town. And then they also said, well, thank you for that or thank you for your consideration.
[2:50] Wanted to leave you with this. So they got gospel tracts. So our students got to participate in sharing the gospel this weekend. And that's another mighty way that God moved, that our students got to partake in evangelism. So that's another major thing in the Christian life is baptism and evangelism.
[3:06] Sorry. The other thing I want to report is we only had one bloody nose. And if you guys know me, if you heard me talk about this, my students know, what's my one rule in youth ministry? No blood.
[3:18] So we only got it one time. We did really good. We did really good. It's okay. I won't say who did it. I won't say how it happened. But I will say that it did happen at the last junior high involvement.
[3:30] So that gives you any indication of what group this may have happened in. And it was at Dodgeball. It was in Dodgeball. So that was really fun. I also wanted to let you guys know that this is really interesting how God works on things.
[3:41] I hadn't really planned and thought through how I wanted to do it, but the sermon series we've been going through with the youth on Wednesday nights has been called Follow. So we learned what it means to be disciples of Christ.
[3:52] And so the first session was going through that Christ initiates relationships with us. He initiates it. We don't go to Him. He comes to us, which makes a whole world of a difference because if I tried to go to Him, I'm always failing on that.
[4:06] I'm always failing on going to Christ. But Christ came and found me in my spiritual death. And then we talked about, the second thing we talked about, sorry, the second thing we talked about was how Jesus does not just make change possible.
[4:21] It is going to happen. If you are a disciple of Christ, your life is changed. And I give this illustration to students all the time. I won't use it because I don't have a whole lot of time. But basically the idea is that if I came before you and said that I got hit by a bus yesterday and I stand before you like this, did I get hit by a bus?
[4:40] I'm lying to you. I've not been changed. And so when we encounter the gospel, we're changed radically. And it may not be immediately that it happens all the time for us. It may be over time as we grow in Christ.
[4:53] Some people's conversions, when they come to Christ, like I was a drug addict and I was an alcoholic and then Jesus saved me out of this and that's amazing. And then there's the really mundane one where it's like, well, I was eight years old and I got saved in church.
[5:05] No, both those salvations are incredibly amazing because the God of the universe looked down on you and said, I want that one. The God of the universe said, I sent my son for that one, that sinner.
[5:17] Everybody's equal in that playing field. So we talked about that in Christ, change is not only possible, it will happen. The third thing we talked about was that a disciple of Christ is what? Starts with an O.
[5:28] Obedient. Yes. Disciple of Christ is obedient. And I used a little phrase, if you guys remember, it says discipline produces. That's true, but discipline produces delight.
[5:44] Delight. Yeah, there we go. I heard it. Discipline produces delight. And so what we talked about was that in sports or anything you do, if you want to really enjoy your game, the sport you play or the instrument you play or whatever, it's not enjoyable to play football and not know how to tackle.
[6:04] I can say that from experience because my seventh grade year, I never played football before. I was new to the state and I found out that football was a religion, especially in Berkford, Texas.
[6:15] And I love my little town, but man, if you want to be cool, you play football. I want to be cool, so I play football. And I remember I tried to tackle and someone told me, they said, like, you can't be a spider monkey. That doesn't work.
[6:26] Because I jumped on people's backs and they're like, and I was like, well, I want to be like my dad. I'm going to be a running back. So I said, let's give me the ball. So I got the ball, but I had the nose the wrong way and it hurt really bad when I got hit by the linebacker.
[6:39] So what I'm trying to get to, though, is that I had no understanding of the game of football and how to play it. And in a similar sense, if we have no understanding of Christ, we have no clue how to walk in Christ, we won't be able to delight in Christ.
[6:52] So how do we learn how to grow in Christ? We go where? To the Bible, to the scriptures. And as we discipline ourselves in being diligent in reading and in prayer, we become, we get to a place where we are able to delight in the Lord all the day long and delight in the words and delight in the law.
[7:10] Just like when I started learning how to play piano, it was a grueling task where I was still under the reign of a teacher who used the ruler and smacked my hand when I did it wrong. But then I learned through discipline and learning it that I enjoy playing piano and I can play freely and I can enjoy it.
[7:26] So discipline in piano produced delight in playing piano. In a similar sense, discipline in the Lord produces delight in the Lord. So a disciple, discipline, disciple, is obedient and that obedience produces delight in the believer.
[7:41] And the last session we talked about was almost over the exact same thing that we talked about for this last session for us this morning. following Christ means a disciple maker or disciple makes disciples.
[7:54] We were all disciple makers. No one in here is on JV or varsity Christian. So who, who played a varsity sport? I played a varsity sport.
[8:07] Oh yeah, I played soccer at Burke Burnett. We did really good. No we didn't. You guys can laugh at that. Burke Burnett's not known for their soccer. We were known for basketball back in the day when I was there. But the interesting thing that we really talked about was that Christ commands us to be disciple makers.
[8:23] If we're following him we are disciple makers. And so this weekend that ties in, that, those messages we've gone through the past few weeks with our students on Wednesday nights tied in really nicely with pressing pause.
[8:36] That was our theme. If you've seen anybody with a blue shirt on you know it says the pause. And so in true youth pastor form what do you think I mean by the pause? What do you think I mean by pause?
[8:52] Okay, yeah? Pausing on a normal day life to spend time with Jesus. I love that. That's great. The definition they gave, I love this definition.
[9:05] Seeking God in silence and solitude through prayer and Bible study. When we press play, so we press pause, we're saying I'm going to take time to go spend time with the Lord.
[9:19] Who here, I asked this this morning of our students, who here is involved in more than three things in your life? Yeah. Who here does work? It's maybe a husband or a wife, has kids, sports, UIL stuff.
[9:36] Name it. There's probably that in the church somewhere. We are so busy today. We are such a busy people and we don't know how to rest in Christ and slow down.
[9:47] And at best, we may say, I'm going to give you Jesus. I'm going to give you five minutes to tell me all you need to tell me and we're good. That's my Jesus for the week. Five minutes. But we're really good at consuming ESPN, you know, multiple times a day, multiple days a week, and multiple weeks of the year.
[10:06] We're really good at, I'm not going to try to pick on you guys too much right here, but TikTok or YouTube or whatever else. We're really good at consuming that. And we talked about this morning, I think it's really important, we talked about how, if you saw that silly game we were doing with the board, what basically happened was, I'm an artist, okay, artist by nature.
[10:25] I drew beautiful pictures. Yeah, one of them said. I drew beautiful pictures of layouts of my home and if you know what my home looks like, imagine that, but someone who's never done any kind of architectural stuff tried to draw it.
[10:39] It was atrocious. But I drew my layout in my home and the students had the task of wearing upside down goggles, so they saw everything upside down, and they had to imitate my drawing in 30 seconds.
[10:51] Where I took like a minute and a half, they had to do it in 30 seconds. So the point I tried to make with them was that listening to the world, which is what we take in most of the time, listening to the world a lot, listening to the world is like listening to somebody with upside down goggles trying to imitate the perfect drawing that God has laid out for us in Scripture.
[11:10] Upside down goggles make it so that when you're walking, like here's my hand, it's like this, but this high up. And I have to look like this and around and try to find the right way. We don't want to wear upside down goggles.
[11:21] And we don't want to imitate somebody who doesn't even know what the real drawing looks like. Because most of the time when they drew it, they said, I'm going to take a quick look at it, goggles on, I'm going full blast, going right into it.
[11:32] And so that was the danger that we have in our lives is that we don't press pause to spend time with the Lord and come and know who He is. One more illustration I'll kind of give and then I'll get into the text this morning.
[11:44] I think this one's really powerful. We, I picked on Aubrey Pierce this morning, but I need a new volunteer, one new volunteer to get picked on. So yeah, let's use, I'm going to use, I'm going to use Caleb Wilson.
[11:59] I'm going to use Caleb Wilson. He's on the edge over here. Okay. So you guys, Caleb is one of my favorite people. He's my, my best friends. Okay. He is a two foot two, heavens to Betsy.
[12:12] He's a two foot two. That's right. That's right. He's a two foot two basketball all-star who hates wrestling and can't do it anywhere near good.
[12:26] He, he's really, really, really good at being very disobedient and like, he's like, he's not good with manners.
[12:37] So, you know, I'm trying to work on him a lot. Guys, is that Caleb? No. First off, he's not two foot two. If he was two foot two, my son's taller than you, my man. Come on. But, the point is, I'm not describing Caleb, but I'm, I think Caleb's my best friend.
[12:53] I don't know the true Caleb. In a similar way, if we have a Jesus that we formulate or we steal from the world as our Jesus, we're not loving truly who Jesus is.
[13:04] And so, that's big for us here. We don't want to follow a false Jesus. There's a lot of religions in the world that lead us to false Jesus. Just to name a few, not to pick on things, but the ones I've studied the most, like Mormonism and Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism, they lead you to the wrong Jesus every time.
[13:25] They have their own picture of him. Jehovah's Witness, those who believe that he is Michael the Archangel, we need to be careful of what we're taking in and consuming. And then, we have this danger of hearing it from the people we think are the most influential.
[13:40] And oftentimes, they have it the most wrong. So, we'll go ahead and dive into the word here. This just gives you a picture of the idea of why we need to pause. If we don't pause, we run the risk of just running into whatever the world says is Jesus.
[13:56] Let me read the text for us this morning. It's Matthew 28, 16 through 20. Now, the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him.
[14:07] But some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
[14:22] And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. So, I think it's important why we did that series. I think God is really, really amazing at working things out.
[14:34] We went through our follow series that Jesus initiates relationships. He changes us, calls us to obedience and he calls us to make disciples. And right here, we see that in the Great Commission that we are called to make disciples.
[14:53] So, the first thing is that Jesus is speaking from an authority, not just like, oh, I'm the guy who's in charge. He's speaking as an authority as I am God. And you are my creation but you're also my followers.
[15:06] And I love you but I give you this command. And this is not to try to step on anybody's toes but how often are we making disciples right now? In your own personal life. This is again, not to step on any toes because I've not always been the best at making disciples but Jesus tells us that we are to make disciples.
[15:25] Whatever stage of life you're in. I don't care if you are 12 years old and you've come to Christ or you're 112 years old and you've been in Christ for X amount of years.
[15:37] You don't retire as a Christian here on earth. You are always making disciples. Whether that's your children in your home, whether that's husbands you're helping to walk your wives through scripture or wives you're helping your husbands understand like, hey, maybe you're wrong on this.
[15:51] My wife's done that to me a couple times. But Christ comes and gives us authority. He says that he has the authority to do these things but he says I'm going to give you the mission.
[16:05] Isn't that significant that Jesus says I have all authority on heaven and earth but I task you with this mission. That must mean that we have a real mission to do.
[16:17] It's not just a, hey, here's something you can do to be a good Christian. It's a, if you are a believer and you love me, you will do as I command. You will make disciples.
[16:29] His disciples devoted themselves to leading others to follow Christ as we go through, as they go through in their lives and as I said, there are, I love that phrase, there's no JV or varsity Christians.
[16:44] There are no JV, what do I mean by that? What do I mean that there's no JV or varsity Christians? Students can't answer, but maybe an adult, what does it mean there are no JV or varsity Christians in the church?
[17:02] Sorry? There's no second string people. You're not a second string person in the body of Christ, which means we're all on the team, all on the field, at all times.
[17:13] Some people play different roles. I played soccer all my life and the goalie does not do what the striker does. The guy who scores the goals at the front, the goalie does not do the same thing.
[17:25] And the striker can't even use his hands. The goalie can. We all have a different purpose in the body, but nobody is a second string Christian, which means that you have the same responsibility as the professional Christians, those guys who are the big speakers at camps, those guys that are the music people that you see on TV.
[17:45] You have the same responsibility to make disciples as they do. And they have the same responsibility to make disciples as you do. Because some of them don't always live up to what they preach. I want to go ahead and go to Acts 1, verse 8.
[17:59] You can stay where you are. I'll go there really quick. But it says this in Acts 1, verse 8. It says, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.
[18:15] So it's clear from Matthew and from here in Acts that Jesus has something very specific in mind when the church was founded.
[18:29] Jesus wanted his followers to be in the business of multiplication. That's our job. He wanted his disciples to be people who led others to become disciples of Christ. Christ. And that's what God wants for you to do today as well.
[18:44] So students, as we've learned about God's word, we've taken time to press pause. We did two things. We prioritized prayer because as Pastor Mikey, our speaker, who spoke so well this weekend, said to us, Prayer aligns our hearts with God.
[19:02] Prayer aligns our hearts with God. Which means that when we come in prayer and we come to the Lord in prayer, we are taking time to speak to God. And then Scripture also does the same thing, aligns us with God because we are hearing from God.
[19:16] We're coming to know who God is. So, we make time to seek God by pressing pause. And that's how we lay the foundation for our life.
[19:28] We have to be able to prepare ourselves to obey the Lord. So, anybody ever taken time to look at last words of famous people? Is that a weird thing?
[19:39] Last words of famous people? There's a guy who, it was Pope Alexander, one of the popes, many different Alexander popes. He says, wait a minute.
[19:50] That was his last word. Wait a minute. Caesar Augustus has reported to have said, the play is over. Applaud. I think his name is Max Baer. He was a boxer.
[20:01] He said, here I go. Here I go. Winston Churchill said, I'm so bored with it all. What a thing to say. Very callous. George Harrison, one of the Beatles, he said, love one another.
[20:13] You know, like their Beatles voice, love one another. I can't do the British nasal voice very well. Teddy Roosevelt said, please put out the light. And then one of the most recent ones we had was Steve Jobs.
[20:24] You know what he said? Wow, wow, wow. Why was he amazed? I have no clue. But he said, wow, wow, wow. Whether he was seeing a glimpse of eternity before his eyes, whether he was seeing the significance or insignificance of his life, either live for Christ or not live for Christ, I don't know if he was a believer or not.
[20:45] I've not looked into that. But those words capture our attention because they have this gravitas. They have this thing that just kind of draws us in. Why would you say those words?
[20:55] Why were those the last words you said to us? So we have to ask that question. Why were the words that Jesus said, why were those the last words he said? Well, he knew that these would be his last words, obviously.
[21:09] These people did not really know or particularly knew that. But Christ knew these would be the last words he said and he was in full control of the words he said to them. He was not waiting to die.
[21:21] He knew it was going to happen and he was intentional as he always is intentional. And so, just a little aside, we said something this morning and it's just been hitting my heart since I heard it.
[21:32] The same God that you believe is slow to answer your prayers is also slow to punish you in your sin. The same God that is slow to answer your prayers is slow to punish you in your sin.
[21:45] Which leads me to say that he is a gracious, merciful God and that you can trust him, you can love him because he is intentional with what happens to you in your life.
[21:56] You may believe on him. So, Jesus knew the exact circumstances that were happening around him and he knew that they were going to be recorded as scripture.
[22:11] We've seen Jesus tell the followers here to be disciples and to make them but we have to ask the question, what is a disciple? We kind of talked about that with the youth the other day.
[22:22] What is a disciple? A disciple is one who learns. The original youth was just like one who learns, a learner. So, if you're a disciple of a rabbi, you are a learner of your rabbi.
[22:34] If you're a disciple of Dallas Cowboys, you are a learner of the Cowboys. If you are a disciple of X, Y, and Z, you're a learner of that. That's kind of the original use of the word. But it means that learner is very devoted though.
[22:48] Very devoted. So, as we go to, we're in a lot of scriptures this morning so you don't have to turn around everything, but Luke 14, 27, it says this.
[23:04] Luke 14, 27. Let me turn around. It says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
[23:17] So, a disciple is not just a learner. Jesus took the word disciple and gave it a whole new meaning and purpose. A new power. Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
[23:31] That doesn't just mean I learn. That means I'm going to be interacting with exactly how what I'm learning from did. And also in Luke 14, 33, he says, in the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
[23:48] And then Luke 9, 23 also says, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. So, the idea of being a disciple is not just, as it used to mean, just a learner.
[24:02] It's actually that we are to be totally sold out for following Christ. It's putting our devotion to Christ first and everything else second. A better way to look at it is not even that.
[24:12] A better way to look at it is like, someone mentioned the, I think, one of the small group leaders actually mentioned this to me on a car ride. We shouldn't look at like Christ as a slice of the pie or the biggest slice of the pie.
[24:25] We should say that Christ is the crust, the foundation of the pie and everything else sits on it. Because, yeah, the pie filling is good and tasty, but let's be real, the crust, crust is kind of the most important part.
[24:37] Because without it, you just get soup. You just get pudding soup. And that's, it's a whole thing. You don't want that. But the crust, the foundation, is the most important part. Christ is the foundation, not the first or second thing in life, the foundation of our lives.
[24:54] So that means being a disciple of Christ is living as God's children, taking on His ways and His purpose. As believers of Christ, we are called to make God known.
[25:06] We're called to lead others into a saving relationship with Christ, which is amazing that that happened this weekend. One of our small group leaders was able to walk a student into understanding the gospel.
[25:18] And this person did this, not just once, this person wanted to be diligent. Three or four times they went through things and I got to go through things and the answers were always Christ, His righteousness, what He's done, not me.
[25:32] We were able to be, we were able to live out that calling. But here's the real thing. This is where we're going to kind of land our big, big point this morning is we have this mission, this daunting task to be disciple makers, to be obedient to Christ, to follow and to be, to not be hypocrites before the world.
[25:52] But how? But how? When do we do that? We have to prepare ourselves before we go to battle.
[26:05] Always. I never realized how much the Christian life is a battle until I got into full-time ministry. And I say that because I have seen so many ways in which this pulls you this way and this pulls you that way and this issue comes down this way and you got this and then, you know, the whole kind of cliche that, you know, when you're working hard, the devil's working harder to pull you away.
[26:32] There's just so many things trying to work on someone's life when they want to really be pursuing Christ to pull them away. And so, I never realized how important it is to prepare for battle, spiritual battle.
[26:45] and I learned that and this weekend helped me to really put things more into perspective. We have marching orders but how do we prepare for that battle? Do we just charge in with nothing but gusto?
[26:59] Okay, so whoever, who's ever just like said, you know what, I don't know how it's going to work out but I'm going to go do it. I'm just going to go head first, right into it. How'd that go for you? Apparently pretty bad because no one wanted to say anything about it but I've tried just saying like, you know what, just give it a shot.
[27:19] I'm going to go in. Head first, no planning, just went straight in. Doesn't work out. It never works out because you don't think about all the other parts of the issue.
[27:32] Instead of just charging with all this gusto to go in, we need to plan and prepare plan and prepare to take on the spiritual battle we have.
[27:45] One of the ways I like to look at this as a military kid I grew up in a military house and ranks are really important. You can't just go do things with your soldiers and say, just go, let's go do this, we're going to go take care of this.
[28:01] No, you go to the general for the plan and you execute the plan. You go to the general, the commander in chief, get the plan, execute the plan.
[28:13] And so that's how that, that's how that works there in the believer's life is that we go to God in prayer and in the word seeking his guidance, seeking his wisdom, seeking to know, Lord, how do I do this?
[28:27] Whatever X, Y, Z may be. How do I make disciples? How do, how do disciples make disciples? You go to the word and you go into prayer and ask God, send me the one.
[28:38] And this kind of draws back into what Pastor Sam has kind of pushed on us. Who's your one? I just want to take a little time to harp on that. We did this one time at another church I was a part of. Who's your one? And we saw the church grow massively.
[28:53] This is not a church grow technique necessarily, but this is one where as the body of Christ here in Henrietta, this particular body of Christ, we are to be ones who are seeking to grow the community in faith, lead people to Christ.
[29:10] But if you don't pray for that person and you just start going, knocking on the door, at some point, it might shut you out because you're trying physical, man-made tactics.
[29:22] You need supernatural power to move in. Supernatural power that is from the Lord. So I urge you, if you don't have your one, choose your one. Pray for them diligently.
[29:34] Work on them. Students, if you don't have your one, maybe your one's next to you. Maybe your one's behind you. Maybe your one's in front of you. Really consider who's your one as you take time to pause and consider how to battle for the Lord for that person's soul.
[29:50] Because remember, we're not in a battle against flesh and blood. We're in a battle against the powers that be around us, our evil adversary. An intimate relationship with God, His word and His ways are the groundwork for living our lives on God's mission.
[30:08] And as believers, we are always on mission. How you speak, how you think, how you act, that will determine what people think about Christ.
[30:21] Oftentimes it does. If you come in guns blazing saying, I'm going to show you how your religion is wrong, they oftentimes will be like, wow, you're hateful.
[30:32] Why would I want to know this God that you know? But if you come in with kindness and the gospel, if you come in not a hypocrite leading a double life, saying, I trust in Christ, but I live my life a completely opposite way in the darkness.
[30:52] Scripture actually has something to say about that, being a double-minded man. He is unstable in all of his ways. A double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. Don't be the double-minded man, or you will see all of your ways crumble.
[31:06] Things will break in your life. Because I've seen it in many of my friends' lives I have known. I've known many people who have fallen to the double-mindedness. I want to look back at Matthew 28 again.
[31:19] This is verses 19 through 20. And it says this. It says, Go therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to deserve all that I have commanded you.
[31:37] How can we teach someone something we don't know? How can you teach someone the Scriptures if you don't know them? How can we lead someone to obey the things that we don't even obey ourselves?
[31:51] How effective will we be at drawing others to Christ when we ourselves are distant from Him? I've told our students this before. I'm not scared to say this thing. This is what happened to me. I was, before I came to Christ, I was in a relationship with a young lady that was very impure and it was not a good relationship to be a part of.
[32:07] And I did the thing, I call it, that's a really funny phrase, I was trying to flirt to convert. You ever heard of this? Flirt to convert? You ever heard of this? It's when you are a believer and you say, you know what?
[32:20] That person's not a Christian. I can make him a Christian. Watch this. You get in there and then you start just totally like leaving all things of Christendom. You start walking away from that. Well, I was not a believer already.
[32:32] I was not even a Christian yet. And I was trying to get her to believe the gospel that I didn't even fully believe. How can we teach people something we don't even know?
[32:42] How can we teach them to obey something we don't obey ourselves? How effective am I going to be at drawing that young lady to Christ when I myself am very distant from Him and not leading her anywhere near Christ?
[33:02] So I want to go ahead and go to, I'm trying to land this soon. I've got like six minutes. Man, I see what your problem is. Same with the timing, man. Goodness gracious. That just flies on by, doesn't it?
[33:13] Goodness. So in Timothy 3, 16-17, it says this, All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God, I'll also say the woman of God, may be complete, equipped for every good work.
[33:39] The words that were really important that stood out for me when I read that text was teaching, rebuking, training, reproof, some say correcting.
[33:52] The only way we can do any of that is if we have a knowledge of God's word. See, we have this issue where we think we are called to just be good people sometimes.
[34:04] Oh, a Christian's just a good person. A Christian's just a good person. He follows like Jesus. But we're more than that. We're more than people who follow a bunch of religious rules too. So if you're in here today and you think that Christianity is just a bunch of do's and do nots, shalls and shall nots, it's not what it's about.
[34:24] It's not about me following the rules to get God's favor. I can't earn God's favor. Remember, Jesus initiates the relationship. But God calls all of us in here who are believers this day to be messengers of his story, to teach people about Christ.
[34:41] He calls us to use our knowledge of his word, which I hope is growing now for you, to shape other people. And that's kind of hard for you to grasp and be like, oh, that's a big ask.
[34:54] It should be intimidating. It should be crushing for you, actually. It should be something that you're like, I can't do this. Do you want to know why? Because you should be relying on the Spirit for that. When we try to make disciples and do things in our own power, it always fumbles and crushes and crumbles.
[35:11] We ought to be relying on the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, at all times for all things. The way to be effective in these things is very, very clear then.
[35:22] We have to know God before we can lead others to him. And this happens by pressing pause on our lives to consider who Christ is. You know, all of you students, I'm quite certain, were not born before 9-11.
[35:48] And all of us who know what happened on 9-11 know the tragedy. But you also remember that there was this big call, rebuild those towers. Rebuild them. And it wasn't just like saying that we got to get the commerce back going.
[36:01] It was that we want to show that we are strong people. We will rebuild. We will stand up against the tyranny. That's a symbol of hope is what we were doing. We wanted to rebuild a symbol of hope.
[36:12] But to do such a thing took a lot of deliberation. It took a long time. And I believe, if I'm correct, it was not until November 3, 2014, when the One World Trade Center was opened.
[36:27] It took a very long time to get that built. A lot of planning, a lot of preparation. There was a lot to do in that. The rubble had to be cleaned up, checked out, make sure things are good.
[36:37] They reused some of the material from the Twin Towers, the statement of hope. Anything that important has to be prepared for in a very major way.
[36:53] And we can say the same thing as our lives as Christ followers. Our lives are ours to be stewards of. It's a huge responsibility to be a believer.
[37:05] And the preparation is as big, if not bigger, than the actual execution of the thing. Because yeah, you might fumble with your words, but your diligence to the Lord is more important than how well you did.
[37:18] Your diligence to the Lord is more important than how well you did. So I want to go ahead and kind of land the plane for us this morning. Jesus tells us in the very last half of verse 20 in Matthew 28, He says, I am with you always to the end of the age.
[37:39] And that is the hope that we get to cling to as believers. We have daunting tasks before us. We have our own sin to overcome, our own hypocrisy, our own hardships in our lives to deal with.
[37:52] But Jesus tells us that as you go through all this stuff, as you seek to make disciples, as you succeed and fail in it, behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
[38:06] I'm going to be with you. as believers, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling with us permanently. God's Holy Spirit dwells in us.
[38:20] Like we get to walk around with Jesus in our hearts at all times. Whereas there was a moment when the disciples walked with Jesus and then didn't and feared.
[38:31] What's happening next? Well, you know, I know what's happening next for us. Because we're fighting a battle he's already won to draw it back to the song.
[38:44] No matter what comes my way, I will overcome. I may not know what he's doing in my life, but I know what he has done. I'm fighting this battle not my own power though.
[38:55] The power of the spear is how I fight this battle. And what battle am I fighting? The battle against evil, sin. And so, I want to leave this with you guys here. The call to be a disciple is not an easy one.
[39:09] And it should not be made lightly. It shouldn't be made lightly to be a believer in Jesus. It's not just a good thing we do. It is a full commitment of the life. Giving over of ourselves to Christ.
[39:23] It's as if you were a king of a kingdom and you said, I can't take care of this kingdom anymore. I can't do it. I need to give the keys away to someone who can take care of this kingdom.
[39:35] And you give your keys to your kingdom that you have inside of you to Christ and he comes in and he just demolishes the place but rebuilds it back so much better.
[39:47] He's building in you a kingdom. He's building this kingdom here right now. And so, know that Christ is in you building a kingdom. A priest of believers here to go preach the gospel.
[39:58] And so, as we come to the end of our service, I'm going to ask Miss June to come play for us. And I want to invite you guys into a time of either invitation or a time of prayer and consideration.
[40:10] I'm going to pray over us. And if you'd like to come to the altar to pray, take time to pause this morning from your busy Sunday, from your busy life.
[40:22] I'm not naive. Eve, I understand that we all have very heavy responsibilities. A lot that we're doing. But consider in light of eternity your responsibilities.
[40:37] Did you buy that tool today? Is it going to affect you tomorrow? Maybe. But, does that tool lead somebody to salvation?
[40:48] Probably not. Are you actively pressing pause in your life to slow down and prioritize being in prayer with the Lord? Going to Him in this secret place by yourself?
[41:00] Getting into the Word? There's a man, his name is Leonard Ravenhill. He's a pastor of the old days. I'm reading his book and one thing he says in the book was that a sermon concocted in the mind is only for the mind.
[41:17] But a sermon concocted and written with this power of the Spirit is for the Spirit of the man. And so my question this morning is in your life right now are you filling your mind with the Bible and doing your five minute real quick studies just because it's what you should do to make sure you feel right as a man or a woman?
[41:36] Or are you spending time in diligent prayer and diligent reading of the Word to really come and know who Christ is? That's all I have to say there I think.
[41:47] Consider in your hearts where are you right now? Let me pray for us. Father I thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for all the people who have sat through a message over many different parts of the Christian life.
[42:02] But Lord thank you so much for all you've done this weekend. Even just that one came to Christ. God hearing the praises of your people singing praises to you.
[42:16] A humbling feeling. Can't even imagine what heaven's going to be like. All of us singing praises and hearing the angels sing holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Lord I thank you for all you've done.
[42:30] Lord as we come to a close I pray that you would impress upon the hearts of those who need to be impressed upon to come to Christ. Lord those who are who are dealing with sin issues in their life.
[42:42] They would seek to confess it and kill it just take it out of their lives. Lord you've been so good to us. Lord thank you for even when we think you're slow to answer prayer you're still slow to handle us and our sin how we deserve to be.
[43:00] Lord thank you for all you've done in Christ. In my prayer.