Your Story Has Influence | The Life You're Chasing | Shan Moyers

I want you to get to Mark chapter two.

We're going to be in three different gospels today.

We'll get there in a minute.

But as we're jumping in, in 1959, there was a guy named Nils Bolan.

Nils Boland.

He was an engineer for Volvo, the car company.

And do you guys remember like way back in the day, like all of you people that are under you know 45, 40, you won't remember this.

But those of us who are older than that, do you remember back in the day where you would get in a car and you would buckle your seatbelt and it was just the lap belt?

You remember those days?

There's a few people that remember those days.

And you know, you are younger, you're like, well, that was the back middle seat, right?

That was the only one that had that.

Well, Niels Bolin was the guy that said, you know, it'd be a whole lot safer if we didn't just have the lap belt, if we created what was called the three-point seat belt, which was the lap belt with also the shoulder harness.

And so he creates this with Volvo, and Volvo's like, we got to patent this.

And so they patented.

And when you patent something, it belongs to you.

Okay, it belongs to you.

And if you share it with somebody else, then they have to pay royalties on that thing.

And so Volvo stood to make millions and millions and millions and hundreds of millions over the years.

They patented it and they could have used it to make money.

They could have used it to promote their vehicles and say, we have the safest vehicles out there, but they decided to do neither.

What Volvo did is they did patent it, but what they did is they called every other car company in the world and said, we've patented this thing that we think is going to save a whole lot of lives, and we want to provide it to you for free.

Because Volvo believed this that saving lives was a whole lot more important than protecting profits.

So what happened is Nils Boland creates this, they patented, they provide it to every other car company, every car nowadays has front seat, back seat, all of it, has a three-point seat belt.

And what's people believe, what they have studied and what they believe is over the last 60-some years, that that has literally saved over a million lives.

How many of you have been in a car crash before?

Think about it.

You might just be one of those million lives.

And here's the thing, here's what Volvo knew.

When you have something that saves lives, you don't sit on it.

You don't keep it to yourself.

What you do is you share it.

We've been in this series.

It's called The Life You're Chasing.

Every one of us, doesn't matter where you're sitting today, where you're watching from, every one of us is chasing some kind of life.

Like something better in life, a little more peace, a little more financial stability, a little bit better relationships, all the things we talked about the last few weeks.

Some of us feel like we're chasing and grabbing hold of some things, but when we grab hold of that, we're like, it still is not.

There's always something else to be chasing more of, to just find a little more of.

Some of us we're chasing and missing.

Like, I don't, I don't have a whole lot to show for it.

When you step back, this whole series is about finding the life you're chasing.

And what Jesus says is you find what you're looking for when you follow him.

Luke 9.23, we've been going through it each week.

That Jesus said to his disciples, he said, Whoever wants to be my disciple, not church member, it's more than that, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross how often?

Daily, and follow me.

And he says, When you do that, you begin to find the life that you're looking for.

Because Jesus is the one who knows best about relationships.

He's the one who knows best about our bodies.

He's the one who knows best about purpose and life and work and anything and everything that you could imagine.

And he wants you to have what's called the abundant life.

Now, around central, we would say being a disciple is as simple as living out three values that are rooted.

They come out of that scripture, Luke 9, 23, but three values that give us a picture.

What does it mean to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus?

Those values are simple.

Jesus first, people always made for more.

All of our campuses right now, let's say that on three together.

One, two, three.

Jesus first, people always made for more.

And I've said it before, it's not just slogans on the back of the t-shirt.

Right?

There are definitions to these things that come straight from scripture that say this will give you a better life.

For instance, we spent two weeks on each one.

Jesus first.

We would say it this way: Jesus isn't just part of your life, he is your life, meaning you can't compartmentalize Jesus.

So many Christians say, I've got a spiritual life and a professional life and a social life and a family life.

You don't have, you have a life.

Jesus is not just part of your Sundays and your, you know, prayer time in the morning.

No, he is to be the foundational principle under every one of those things that defines what is best for you in your life.

And when you follow him and put him first in all of those areas, you will find more of what you're looking for.

People always, we jumped into that one last week, and we just said that people always is this idea that we love beyond the walls that divide us.

Wouldn't you agree?

Our culture is divided.

Like everywhere you go, there are the divided, these differences between us, difference of opinion, difference of backgrounds, different, all these things we would say we love beyond those differences, and where the world in the gap of those differences fills it with hate and anger and frustration and lack of unity.

What Jesus says is we are to fill that with what?

With love.

That we are to love beyond the walls that divide us.

And the second thing would be is when you find something, it's the idea of when you find something that is a life-saving thing, man, you share it.

The most loving, here's what we say the most loving thing you could do is to introduce someone to Jesus.

Mark chapter two.

Mark chapter two, I'll give you a little bit of the setup and the setting.

Mark chapter two deals with a story that happens in a town on the west side of the Sea of Galilee that's a port town called Capernaum.

Capernaum was really important.

We know where Jesus was born, we know where he grew up, but in his ministry, the headquarters of Jesus' ministry was in this town called Capernaum.

Jesus did one third of his miracles there.

I mean, you can get this picture of that when Jesus showed up in Capernaum, people knew him, and man, the crowds gathered.

If you go to Capernaum today, you can actually see part of the reason that it was the headquarters is that's where some of his disciples live, Peter's house.

You can find the ruins, the remains of what they believe was Peter's house there.

There's a church built over it now, but that's Capernaum.

Jesus is very familiar.

He's walking up off the Sea of Galilee when this happens, and he's walking past a booth, sees a person, an innocent bystander there.

The crowds are following, and what Jesus does is he invites that person to follow him.

Mark chapter 2, verse 13.

Mark 2:13

Says once again Jesus went out side beside the lake.

A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach him them.

As he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alpheus, sitting at a tax collector's booth.

Interesting, two weeks in a row, tax collectors.

Last week Zacchaeus, this week Levi.

Follow me, Jesus told him.

And Levi got up and he followed him.

Now, if you weren't here last week, if you had and don't understand the context of maybe what a tax collector was in that day, let me just quickly say it.

Tax collectors were hated by their fellow Jews in that day.

Why?

Because tax collectors were employed by the Roman government.

Rome was over basically most of the known world there, and the Jews were subject to them.

So what Rome did is they taxed the Jews.

Tax collectors, Jewish men, were used as tax collectors, and they were given a quota by Rome to collect from their own people.

But the way they got paid was anything above the quota.

Rome put no limits, and so tax collectors extorted exorbitant amount of monies, and they lived these, you know, lifestyles that you would, the rich and famous, right?

They lived those kind of lifestyles off the backs of their own people.

Rome didn't care as long as it got their money, so the people hated them.

Now, said last week, tax collector's job was a lucrative job, but it was a what job?

It was a lonely job.

Because when you're that guy, the only other friends you got are tax collectors.

And so there's this guy, Levi, and Levi's not Zacchaeus, who last week he was the chief tax collector, the guy at the top of the pyramid, you know, all the tax collectors underneath.

He's the guy that's the son of Alpheus, and Alpheus is down the ladder to the point where he's not the chief, he's the guy with the booths.

He's putting the people in the booths, and what you got is you got Levi, who's probably early 20s, late teens, working for his dad.

He's got kind of the low-level job in the business, still a very wealthy family, but a low-level job.

And Levi's the guy that's sitting there taking the ire and the anger of the people every single day.

He's at the front desk, and when anybody's really angry and frustrated about what they're having to pay, they're lighting him up, putting the Google review in, you know, the whole nine yards.

And what happens is Levi's sitting there, and Jesus walks by.

I mean, he didn't really say that, but you know, it's got that kind of feel.

He's like, You enjoying life right now?

And Levi's like, uh uh.

He's like, Man, I gotta, you know, when you're that age, you just, you're always like, Man, give me the next adventure.

And Jesus says, Follow me.

And what does Levi do?

He chucks his pen, he hands the money back to somebody else, he jumps out of the booth and he follows Jesus.

And there's a piece in this story that you you do not grasp.

It's so interesting when you look at scripture.

Sometimes the point of scripture is not to write a novel that gives you the color of every single situation and describes all the details.

I mean, this moment is about this long in scripture, and you're going, man, there's so much more.

I would encourage you when you read scripture, take a moment and just step back and see it as a movie.

Jesus walking off the Sea of Galilee.

I don't know if he just got out of a boat, you know, fishing with Peter and all that, walking off the Sea of Galilee.

There's a massive crowd behind him, and he's walking up and he sees this tax.

There's people probably angry and yelling at Levi, and Levi's look and they lock eyes.

I mean, just get you just kind of put that picture in there.

But when you read this story, there's a piece of this story that you don't grasp and even from reading, even from dreaming, like what was up.

You got to dive into the language and the history to grab it.

Here it is, and I think somebody needs to hear this today.

When you step back and you look in, Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story.

So three gospel writers, John does not, Matthew, Mark, and Luke do.

But what's interesting is different names are used for Levi.

So Mark and Luke, they refer to the tax collector, they refer to him as Levi, which would have been a proper Hebrew name.

Okay, they're they're writing about someone, they would refer to him as a proper Hebrew name.

Matthew does not, he does not use the proper Hebrew name, he uses a secondary name, which is the name Matthew.

If you go to Matthew chapter 9, Matthew tells the story, and guess who he's telling the story about?

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

He's telling the story about himself.

Matthew, the gospel writer, Matthew, is Matthew or Levi, who's in the tax collector booth, who gets called by Jesus and called out.

And what's really interesting in these, you look at it and you say, well, why did Mark and Luke use Levi?

And why did Matthew change it and not use the proper Hebrew name and use it's still a Hebrew name, but why did he use a different name?

Well, it was common in those days.

It was common in those days that because of different languages and different cultures, and even within the Jews, there was the Greek language and there was the Hebrew language, there was Aramaic language.

Sometimes it was because of that that men had, young men had different names.

You see other disciples, Nathaniel and Bartholomew, same person, two different names and two different gospels.

You go back in, but you also see that if you go back through scripture, sometimes it's not language, sometimes it's calling.

So God would call somebody, and when he called them to a mission in their life, sometimes he would change their name.

If you go back to some examples, Abram was changed to Abraham, Sarai was changed to Sarah, Saul was changed to Paul.

I don't know what it was.

I don't know what it was, but somehow in this, Mark and Luke, they say Levi.

Matthew says Matthew.

Here's where it gets really interesting.

When you step back into the names and their Hebrew meanings, I think it tells the whole story.

Like the name Levi, a proper Hebrew name called by it.

So Matthew and Luke, they're almost like, hey, well, this is his proper name.

This is where it called it.

Do you know what that name means?

It means attached to or joined with.

And think about this for a second.

Think about everything.

If you just look at this story and you think about everything this young man had been attached to or joined with in his past, think about he was attached to a vocation with his family.

He was attached to a tax collector's booth, he was attached to a quota.

He was also attached to a reputation that tax collectors had: that they were sinners, they were traitors, and they were thieves.

He was attached to a reputation in the community.

When people walked by him, they would have spit on the ground when they walked.

They would have hated seeing this person.

And these are all the things that Levi's attached to.

Mark and Luke call him this name.

It's what he's referred to before he meets Jesus.

Do you know what the book of Matthew means?

Do you know what the name Matthew means?

The name Matthew is not joined or attached to.

The name Matthew is gift of the Lord.

It's almost like Matthew in this moment.

What he's doing is he's saying, Yeah, Levi's who I used to be.

That's who I used to be.

That was all the things I was joined to, attached to.

But Matthew is who God, who Jesus has called me out of that tax collector's booth to become.

This is the calling that I have.

And then Matthew becomes the gift of the Lord who writes the gospel of Matthew and tells the story of Jesus to the traditional Hebraic Jews.

I mean, there is something there.

Like there's something I think somebody needs to hear in that story right here, because you just look at kind of our lives.

Like if you just take Levi for a second, Levi was a description of everything he was attached to.

Matthew was not a description of past.

Matthew was this idea of the gift of the Lord.

It was a new definition of life that he was called to.

And I think here's what we need to understand.

Your past, man, every single one of us have a past.

Your past may describe you, but here's the thing: your past does not define you.

Like somebody sitting in one of our campuses, somebody listen online, there are so many of us that here need to hear that today.

Your past, while it may describe things in your life that you are joined and attached to, it does not define what your present or your future is going to be or can be.

Like we all got a description, right?

Like there are things in our life that we are attached to in our past because of our upbringing, because of our stories, because of some decisions, or because of some things maybe other people have labeled us with.

And some of those things and stories are good.

Hard worker, good parents, loyal friend.

And some of those things are bad.

Some of those descriptions of our life of quick temper, addict, liar, quitter, irresponsible, lazy, failure, most of us spend an entire life either living up to or living down to descriptions that people have given us in our life.

Man, you just set aside like the events that have caused some of those things to happen in our life.

Sometimes the way people define and say those things, a coach, a teacher, a parent, a boss, an ex, a whoever, the things we all of a sudden we receive those things in our life, and what we do is we begin living down to the descriptions that were given.

Matthew had a choice in that moment to keep the description of a life that he'd had and everything that meant, or to step out of that tax collector booth and be called into a new definition, a new calling of life.

And man, what are you sitting with right now?

Some of us was like, we're sitting in that tax collector's booth, and we're just like we got a story.

And what we got to realize is that Jesus is not looking at the past story, he is sitting there, inviting us into the new and future story.

Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, meaning they have placed their faith in Christ, meaning they have asked forgiveness of their past sins and their present sins and their future sins.

2 Corinthians 5:17

If anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation.

The old things have passed away.

Man, what in your life you're like, man, I wish that memory would pass away.

The memory may not pass away, but the power it has to pull you down can.

It can if you will let Jesus deal with it.

If anyone is in Christ, that this is this person is a new creation.

The old things have passed away.

Behold, new things, new definitions, new callings, new missions have come for you.

Man, what is it right now?

You just need to kind of lay down and let Jesus deal with your past.

Your past does not disqualify you from God's forgiveness or his acceptance.

It does not.

For some of you would say, Man, I'm just I'm just hung up on this past sin in my life.

How many of you have spent a lifetime asking forgiveness for the same sin that you committed years ago?

So many of us.

Everyone, everybody, like 92% of these crowds sitting in these rooms right now, they would say, would raise their hand.

If I had them raise their hand, they would say, me too.

And the other 8% are lying.

You know?

Like we all have that.

Here's the thing, though, we may be stuck on and hung up on past sins, but Jesus is not.

Why?

Because he hung on the cross to take care of them.

And in his mind, those things are taken care of once you ask for forgiveness, once you ask for his Holy Spirit, once you ask for him to be the leader of your life, he says, Done.

My blood paid for that.

Erwin McManus says this if you live in the past, you will die to your future.

And I would add, but if you allow Jesus to help you die to your past, he will help you live to a new future.

To find the life that you're chasing, to find freedom from those things.

And still those stories exist, but they become a platform for you to be able to share not just your story, but to share the goodness of God and what he is doing with your story.

And I would just say to all of us, Jesus is calling us up.

He is not calling us down.

He is inviting us to be a disciple of Jesus.

He's inviting us to deny old descriptions, stories, and to become what scripture calls a new creation.

And it is as simple as three things: believe, receive, and follow.

Levi, who became Matthew in the moment, Levi was sitting there in that tax collector's booth, and he had all these descriptions.

And Jesus walked by and Jesus called him up.

And Matthew believed, he received the invitation, and then he acted and followed, and then became the writer of the gospel, became a missionary for the gospel, became the one who gave the great commission at the end of the book of Matthew that says, Man, go into all the world, because if you got something that saves lives, you don't keep it to yourself.

You share it with others.

And it's the same thing for us when we believe, when we come to the understanding of who Jesus is, that he is God, and that God sent his son.

God came in the form of Jesus, came and Jesus went to the cross, died, and paid for the penalty of our sins, and then rose from the dead.

When you believe that he is the risen Savior, that he is God Himself, who gave his life for you, and you place, you receive that by placing your faith in Jesus, in the saving act that happened two thousand years ago on the cross.

When you place your faith in that, and then you respond, and the Bible says we respond by believing and confessing out loud before other people, we confess that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, and we repent of our sins.

Doesn't mean we will never sin again.

It means That we will recognize what our sin does to us and other people, and we begin to follow Jesus and allow his grace to cover that and allow him to transform us into new people.

And we begin to follow.

Man, it says when you receive that, man, you are forgiven, that you are given a new calling, and you are invited to be a follower.

Understand again, is a follower a church member?

Okay, is a follower a church member who just sits in a seat on a Sunday?

No, a follower.

You won't find the life you're looking for.

It's more than sitting in a seat on a Sunday or a Thursday night or praying, throwing up a few prayers when things aren't.

It is to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus that puts Jesus first in every area of our life.

And when you find that and you start following that, you start finding the life you're looking for.

Like life begins to transition and begins to change.

And here's what's so interesting about Matthew.

He understood when you find something that saves lives, you don't keep it to yourself.

So what does Matthew do?

He holds a dinner party.

Check it out.

Matthew chapter 9, verse 10.

Matthew 9:10

It says, while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, verse 9 is the one where Matthew describes how Jesus walked past the tax collector's booth and said, Follow me.

And he's like, I'm putting on my stuff, and I followed him.

And then I threw a party.

Listen, while Jesus, this is right after, while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.

Matthew opens, Matthew, the gift.

The gift of the Lord opens his home to give the gift of Jesus to his friends.

Now Luke describes it a little differently.

Matthew's like, yeah, I just kind of had a meal.

Luke's like, you didn't have a meal?

Luke is known for the details.

He's like, Matthew, come on, quit being humble.

Let me just say what Luke said.

Luke chapter 5, verse 29, it says, Then Levi calls him by his proper name, who's Matthew, held a what?

Luke 5:29

He held a great banquet, meaning party.

He held a great party for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others came to the party with Jesus, the person of honor, so that Matthew's friends could meet the one that could save their lives.

And here's what's really interesting tax collector attached to, joined with reputation.

What was a tax collector's reputation?

They were sinners.

They hung out with other tax collectors, prostitutes, addicts, those people.

It was a different kind of party.

Probably one of those parties would have gone viral, you know, with some of the things that happened.

This was a different party.

Matthew all of a sudden says, Hey guys, I'm gonna have a party.

But he they didn't know when they were showing up, there's a whole different piece of this party.

And Jesus was the person who was invited to be the person of honor at this party to meet Matthew's friends.

So that Matthew's friends, you see, see, Matthew's first thing he did was to introduce someone, his friends, a group of people, his connections to introduce them to Jesus.

Because the most loving thing you could ever do is what?

Introduce somebody to Jesus.

When's the last time that you actually introduced someone to Jesus?

When's the last time you had a conversation about Jesus with anybody?

Because here's the deal you and I, we have conversations about all kinds of things, don't we?

And there's so many things we get super excited about.

Last week, I went to a Cardinal football game.

I know it's preseason.

Okay, I know it's a Cardinals, but guys, you you know, we're we're Phoenix people, Arizona people, whatever.

I have been a Cardinal fan since I was born.

They were in St.

Louis way back in the day.

I was born in St.

Louis.

My dad was a fan.

We had, it's been hard.

But we've been fans all the way through.

There's been some good years, but this isn't, you know, it's been a little hard.

We went to this game.

There's a whole lot of people, it's a preseason game.

There's a whole lot of people who are like, I ain't going to a preseason game.

I'll go to the real game.

Guys, when you had our tickets, you go to a pre-I was going anyways, but you have our tickets.

I here's my crew I went with.

I went with my my two boys, Jake and Luke and their buddy Gavin.

We're having a blast, but you have no idea where we're sitting right there.

Guys, we got tickets at the 50-yard line, 10 rows back, 10 rows back.

You can see we're playing the Dallas Cowboys.

The saddest thing for me the whole night is there was more Dallas fans there than there were Cardinal fans.

But I did my best.

I did my best.

And guys, here's the thing: it wasn't just the seats.

I mean, it was an incredible view.

We had a blast.

I mean, the Cardinals got blown out.

It was clear from like the get-go.

Guys, we had all access passes to the inclusive, exclusive restaurant, Casa Roja, that is underneath our seats, underground there, which means all access means you can go as many times as you want.

I think we spent more time in the restaurant than we did watching the game.

And my boys were loving it.

They're like, we can have as many Cokes as we want.

I was like, don't tell your mom, but yes, you can.

We had a blast.

And you know how many people I've told about that story?

Like everybody I've run into this last week.

You know how many people my boy, my boys, think this is normal.

This is like going to a football game regularly.

I'm like, it's not normal.

But they've told everybody.

And you do the same thing.

How many of you have seen the new Spider-Man movie?

Raise your hand.

All our campuses.

How many people have you told it was awesome?

Because it was.

You tell everybody.

How many saw the Odyssey or whatever it is?

You have experiences that are so easy.

But when you have something that changes lives or saves lives, why is it harder to talk about it?

Why aren't we out there as excited about what has transformed our lives and what we are finding and the relationships we have because of that and the church we go to that is preaching and trying to reach people across this valley?

Why is that so hard?

Man, if we're gonna be people that understand this value, that we, the most loving thing we could do is share Jesus with people.

And when you find something that changes people's life, you should share it.

We've got to adopt Matthew's attitude.

And Matthew understood two things.

Matthew understood that your past is your platform.

Understand, Matthew was attached to a whole lot of things.

Some of you say, man, my past, I don't even want to talk about the pieces of my past.

Do you understand that your past is not a problem?

Sure, it has some problems with the feelings associated to some of those things.

But do you understand that your past could actually be your platform?

The very thing that you feel like in your life might disqualify you actually qualifies you to be the one person that talks to somebody else that's dealing with the same thing.

Like what the interesting thing is is God does not waste our past.

He does not waste the difficulty and the hardships and the addiction and the broken marriages and the cancer and the loss and the failure and the sin and the mistakes.

He uses them.

He doesn't cancel those things in our life.

He says, no, no, no.

Those are things that I came to redeem.

And the only way people know, not how good you are, but how good I am, is when you begin to share the story of what I was like before, what I was like during, and man, what my life is experiencing now.

It is not perfect, but God can bring redemption into any story.

Man, what is your story?

What is the story that God has given you?

I've been very open to the stage.

I would say for my family, we would go back.

My wife who's sitting in this service right now, we would just say, Hey, I don't, we don't want to go through some of the things that we went through relationally together with each other in the first 20 years of our marriage.

Like if you asked Jen, she would say, I was you could ask her and you'd say, Hey, Jen, would you want to go through that all over again?

She would say, No.

But man, I'm glad we are where we are now, she would say.

That's what I was, God, and God has taken that story and the redemption and the beauty of that story, and he's used it in so many other people's lives.

And what it's done is it qualifies us to be able to speak in and say, I've been there, and there is a light, maybe a glimmer.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel if you will put Jesus first and begin leaning into and work and allow his Holy Spirit to work in your life.

Jen would say, I don't ever, and I would say, I don't ever want her to go through cancer again, but cancer, that cancer, thank God she's cancer free, has connected her with so many people that she's been able to pray for and connect with and love and say, Hey, I believe in a healing God.

I believe in a God who loves and cares and can heal even emotions, even if he doesn't heal physically, and just share and be a person that connects and then points people to Jesus.

Man, what's your story?

What's the platform that God has given you?

Maybe instead of hiding those things, maybe what we need to do is start bringing those things that God's in the process of healing or has healed out in the open so he can begin healing somebody else.

That's why he left.

And that's why he left his Holy Spirit with us because he knew if he was just located in this little place called Galilee, nobody else would hear about him.

But he's uniquely positioned you and uniquely placed us with stories, redemptive stories, to begin to share those stories with someone else.

When's the last time that you shared your story with somebody else for the sake of them meeting a good God?

The second thing Matthew understood is that God has positioned you to make a difference right where you are.

Acts chapter 17 says that God positions people.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

It says that he has placed people in appointed times and appointed places so that people, so they could and so that people could find out the good news of his salvation.

Now, there's a whole nother sermon that goes along with that because you just sit there and some of you go, well, why did he place me here?

And someone else was born in a country, in a third world country, that that's a whole nother sermon.

But the reality is he placed you where you are right now so that you could be available to people to be a light for the gospel to shine, the good life, the life they're chasing, and they're chasing in so many other areas with finances and with stuff and possessions and relationships.

And Jesus is going, I got it all right here.

And I've placed you there to be able to share that with people.

When's the last time you actually shared Jesus in the place?

You see, Matthew didn't need a new mission field.

Like, this is why Matthew didn't just all of a sudden pick up, run across town.

He's like, Man, I'm getting rid of that reputation.

Don't want to hang out with those people anymore.

So he runs across town, starts a new mission.

No.

He used the platform and the position he already had to reach the people he already knew.

Some of you just need to step back and realize you don't need a bigger platform.

You need to use the platform and the position you already have where God's placed you and let the Holy Spirit be in charge of the results.

And for some of you, it's gonna be reaching hundreds, and for some of you, it's gonna be reaching one.

Here's what's been interesting for me.

There's I've had a few people say, Man, you you tell a lot of basketball stories.

And I do.

And I've had a couple people say, You tell too many basketball stories.

Well, here's the reason.

The reason is because that's where God is positioned.

He may have positioned me with a platform to stand and to speak and to share with you about the good news of the gospel here, but a basketball court for me has been the greater platform, the greater position for him to position our family and me and my wife near people who do not know Jesus.

Because how many of you know Jesus?

There's a group of people that in this auditorium and in these campuses and watching that have not given their life to Jesus, but man, on a basketball court every day or week or whatever, throughout the decades of ministry that way, so many people, the majority of people who don't know, and he's positioned us to be able to do that.

And what's been interesting is for you, when somebody asks you and they have a conversation, they're like, hey, what do you do?

And you're like, Well, man, I'm a builder, I'm a contractor, I'm an engineer, I'm a doctor, I'm a coach, I'm a teacher, I'm a whatever your job is, they're like, Oh, tell me more.

Sean, what do you do?

Pastor, well, like, oh, a man on a basketball court, I'm a regular guy.

Coaching, I'm a regular guy, sitting in the stands with my family and cheering for your kid and my kid.

I'm a regular guy.

And what we've been able to do is love people through a game of basketball where we've been positioned to where when the opportunity and the credibility and the relationship and the influence is there and something happens in their life and the door opens, it's easy to love them through a game of basketball and tell them about the one who loves them most in Jesus.

And when's the last time you've used your platform or your position to be able to actually share something with another person about the hope that they could have in Jesus?

Here's the reality of what most religious people do.

And again, when I say religious people, like we're not about a religion, we're about a relationship with Jesus.

But most people in the world would look at us and consider us to be religious people, and here's the reputation we have with so many people out there as religious Christians.

Matthew chapter 9, verse 11 says, When the Pharisees or the religious people saw this, they asked his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Matthew 9:11

Matthew's throwing parties, the religious people trying to blow them up.

They're trying to blow up the party.

Like, why is he eating with those people?

And guarantee you, this is like right there in the vicinity because the disciples were at the party, hanging out at the party with the tax collectors, and the Pharisees are coming into the party and going, why is he even with those people?

And Jesus, on hearing this, Jesus says, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

But go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice, meaning you guys do all those religious activities, and what I desire is mercy to give mercy that you've been given.

To love people enough to give the mercy that you've been given.

For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Matthew's throwing parties, religious people are blowing up parties.

And you know what?

There's a whole lot of religious people, and I would say probably some of you in here have done your fair share of blowing up parties throughout the years.

And I can say that because I did my fair share of it.

I grew up in a pretty Christian bubble.

I was a pastor's kid, I had a super loving family.

They taught me about the grace and love of God, but I caught the law of God.

And when I was a Christian, there was this thing for me.

I grew up in this bubble until I was in my mid-20s, didn't even really know how to hang out.

Other than my basketball teammates that I hung out with, but I wouldn't go to their parties.

And I wouldn't hang out outside of basketball and other things with them.

There's just a few selected them because they were some of those people.

I wasn't gonna be the one to go to the party with those people.

Brene Brown has a great line.

She says, We're all one decision away from being those people.

We're also all one decision away from realizing that we are those people.

And thank God that we have a savior that has saved all of us, that doesn't rank any of us above it.

He is a compassionate God that sees us all the same, and that's what he's calling us as Christians to do because here's what Christians do: we leave our circles.

So many of you, when you became a Christian, what you do is you leave your circle because you're like, oh, there are those people now, and I'm this kind of person now.

And we separate and we isolate.

And Jesus says, Hey, I actually went to the party.

I actually went to the party because there's people at the party that don't know me.

Now, here's the thing: some of you might say, I can't go to the party anymore because I'm so tempted.

If you're gonna go, you gotta be the person who influences not the one who is influenced, but you don't leave your circle.

You stay connected to your circle because God has positioned you to reach somebody, and you might be the only one that gets to reach them.

The other thing that we have a tendency to do is we become these people that separate, we isolate, and we start throwing truth bombs by judging people, and all of a sudden we're a Christian and we know all this, and we just start judging people who are acting like Christians.

Well, guys, that's why they're not Christians.

And we've been there too, and we're still there.

Some of us we wear this picture of, hey, I'm a Christian, but we're still going around doing the same things, but we're acting like and we're throwing truth bombs in the divide.

What do we fill the divide with?

We fill it with love.

We don't point at all the things people are attached to that we've been attached to.

We point toward the calling that we call people up into the calling that God's called them to.

I want to show you the last verse, two verses, three verses of the book of Matthew.

This is Levi, who was attached to so many things, who becomes Matthew, who becomes the gift of the Lord, who writes the gospel, and who understood.

You throw parties for people.

And here's what he says: last three verses of the book of Matthew.

Then Jesus came to them and said, This is called the Great Commission.

This is our job as Christians.

This is not an option, this is your mission.

All authority in heaven or on earth has been given to me.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations.

Go.

Don't just come to church, go.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit.

And we don't just help them make a decision for Jesus.

Then it says, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you, because that's where this life worth chasing is.

Putting Jesus first, and surely I will be with you always, meaning I will fuel the mission through my Holy Spirit.

I will be there even to the very end of the age.

Man, sharing our faith is not optional.

It's the mission.

So could I invite you, all of our campuses, to start praying for one, to start connecting with one, and to start inviting one.

Like Matthew had a story, the platform that he used, he had a position, you have the same.

I would encourage you to start praying for one.

God put one person in my my life that I can begin praying for, and God, and it's amazing.

Some of you already have that person, you've been working for that's your person, and you keep going.

And what's really interesting, you start praying for one, God's gonna give you many.

And when He gives you the opportunity in the platform and the position, and step into it, and then invite them to come here what God's doing in your life and in so many others.

Because here's the thing when you got something that saves people's lives, you don't keep it to yourself, you share it.

Who's your one?

And when you find that one, you remember that what God gave us to reach people was you and one other thing collectively of all of us is the church.

And the more people we get on his mission, the more people we reach in this valley, and the more people that find the life that they're looking for.

Who's your one?

Let's pray.

Father, just come before you today, and we just want to I just want to pray and ask for the person who needs to step out of some things that they're attached to, or just the feeling of that.

Father, help them know there's a prayer team up front that they can come down to and they can there's people that can pray for them and they can schedule their baptism, that you are waiting to just call them into a new life.

Father, I pray also for every person who has made that decision.

Help us to turn around and understand that we have been given opportunities.

We've been given people.

Help our eyes to be open, help our hearts to be open, help us to have the courage to step into moments that not be weird, just love people.

And when the opportunity arises, we share you with them.

Father, I pray that this place will be filled with people that are missionaries going out of this place to Phoenix, Arizona, and beyond.

To help people find you.

God, we love you.

Holy Spirit, fuel that revival in us, and we just pray it'll fuel a revival across this valley.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.