Hearts That Move

Good morning, brothers and sisters. So my name is Boris Pena.

I am the youth pastor at the Platteville Free Methodist Church and the Platteville

Evangelical Free Church.

I am very excited to be here this morning sharing a word that the Lord has put on my heart.

But before I preach, I always like to tell a little bit about myself so I'm

not just some random stranger teaching you the word of God.

So I was born in the Dominican Republic. I came to the United States when I

was three years old. My family and I lived in New Jersey for quite a few years,

and then we moved to Aurora, Illinois, where I grew up. I was about 10 at that time.

In Aurora, it's a massive city, 300 plus thousand people.

So it was an interesting experience to live in a big city. Let's just say that.

My high school was around 4,000 people.

My graduating class was 1,000, and our average class size was like 36 kids.

So it was a massive school. So that's how I started my life.

My parents are both pastors in the Free Methodist Church, so I'm a pastor's kid.

Unfortunately, I wasn't one of the good pastor's kids. I was the trouble pastor

kid. It was rough for my parents, at least.

When I graduated high school, I went to school for software engineering.

I love computers. I love tech. I love all of that stuff.

And then one summer, I had always gone up to this place called Sky Lodge Christian

Camp. and somehow, actually, I don't even remember how someone told me about

it, but I ended up there as a college foreman.

I was told, hey, if you come work at camp, you can be a kitchen foreman.

One of my hobbies is cooking. I love it. So I'm like, perfect,

I'll be the kitchen foreman.

What I didn't realize was that I was actually the dish foreman.

So my job for the entire summer was to wash dishes, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I was not a happy person that summer. I made some great friends that summer,

and it actually made me fall in love with Sky Lodge, even though it was a rough experience.

That was a summer where I finally learned that God was my God,

not my parents' God. I was discipled.

I got to experience adulthood away from my parents. It was a wonderful experience.

Somehow, I came back. I wasn't just the dish foreman this time.

I was actually the lifeguard foreman.

I love swimming. I love the water. So I was happy that summer.

And that was the summer I also met my beautiful wife, Cassidy. She also was a foreman.

And we have been married eight years. And we have a two-year-old daughter,

Elena, and then one on the way that's due in December. So I'm excited for a Christmas baby.

Well, mixed feelings, I should say, about Christmas babies. Do you feel...

27th, oh, 23rd. So hopefully before the 23rd, actually.

So I, after my wife and I got married, we lived in the Milwaukee area for a

few years and we really couldn't find a church to settle down.

My wife is one of 11 and my siblings are all, I'm one of three and I'm the oldest.

So my siblings are adults at this point in time when we're married and she still

had siblings in the single digits.

So we decided to move back to Platteville where she grew up and started attending church there.

Her family goes there. It was probably one of the best decisions we've ever made.

We found a church where I was welcomed, where I was able to serve,

and I fell in love with the small town life.

I realized the city actually wasn't for me. I am actually secretly a country

boy through and through.

My parents still think that is very funny. But in Platteville,

I started serving and the youth.

So I became the youth pastor over five years ago, and I've been serving there ever since.

And I love teaching the youth.

I love teaching the youth because the youth are not scared to ask you hard questions.

And the youth are also not scared to call you out on your hypocrisy. Youth are intense.

And in all of this, as I was praying and getting ready, I'm like,

Lord, what should I teach on?

Well, evangelism is a really good one for us.

And that's what the Lord had laid on my heart. So I'm going to be teaching out

of Romans chapter nine today, verses one through three.

But before we get to that, I always like to give a little bit of a start, an introduction.

So in Romans, right before we start in Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 8 finishes

Romans 9 · chapter mention Romans 8 · chapter mention

with these beautiful verses.

38 and 39 goes like this. For I am convinced that neither death,

nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present,

nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth,

nor any other creative thing will be able to separate us from the love of God

that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is beautiful.

Like you can almost hear the early church shouting amen after reading that in this letter.

But then, without warning, we start with chapter 9. It's this crazy shift from

victory to grief, to despair.

There is a different tone.

Verses 9 through 3 go like this. I am telling the truth in Christ. I am not lying.

My conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow

and unceasing grief in my heart.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the

sake of my countrymen, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, who are Israelites,

to whom belongs the adoptions as sons and daughters,

the glory, the covenants, the givings of the law.

I went through four and not through three, so I just gave you a little bit of

extra and that's all right.

We go from celebration to lament in one breath.

Paul is rejoicing right before about salvation, how he can't be separated from

God, but his heart is breaking.

Why is it breaking? because many of his fellow Israelites, the very people that

God gave all of these promises that he entrusted these beautiful things to,

have rejected Jesus, have rejected the Messiah.

And the thing is, this isn't just a passing sadness. Rather,

he calls it an unceasing anguish. It's something heavy.

His compassion for his fellow Israelites, for the people near him,

runs so deep that he says, if it were possible, I'd give up my place in Christ for theirs.

That's heavy. The thing is that that isn't just Paul's heart saying that.

That's the heart of Christ living in Paul.

Romans in the context of 9 through 11 is this section where Paul wrestles with this major question.

If God's promises were given to Israel, why are so many Israelites rejecting Jesus?

Has God's plan failed?

Paul is struggling in these passages.

So when we look at the historical context of him writing this letter,

Paul is writing to a church in about 50 AD, after Jesus died.

This is a church that's a mix of Jews and Gentiles. But the unique thing about

the Roman church is that the Emperor Claudius, who was the emperor at the time of the Roman world,

he had expelled all the Jews from Rome. And that happens back in Acts.

Or it happens in Acts, when they return, the Jews come back after he dies,

there's tension between the Jewish believers and then the Gentile believers.

The reason why there's this tension is that some Gentiles believe that God had

replaced the Israelites with them.

So that means that Israel was done. But in these sections, Paul is saying,

no, God's promises to Israel still stand. his plan isn't finished.

So we got to go a little further back. I'm going to give you a lot of theology very quickly.

Bear with me, please. In Romans 1 through 8, Paul lays out the gospel.

All of us are under sin. Salvation comes by faith in Christ and we are secure

in his love. Beautiful. Basic Christianity. We love that, right?

Now in Romans 9 through 11, he's explaining how Israel's rejection fits into God's redemptive plan.

And it's a plan that ultimately includes the salvation of Jews and Gentiles.

So they still have a place in the story.

The thing is that he doesn't, Paul doesn't start this section with an argument,

but rather with a confession of personal grief.

It's not a debate, an academic debate for him, but rather it's about people

that he knows and people that he loves.

And here's why that matters for us. If the Apostle Paul could feel such deep

anguish for those who are far from God,

how much more should we as followers of Jesus carry that same heart for the

people around us? We all know people who are not Christian.

Why don't we have that same heart?

So Paul's passion for the lost, it didn't start with his personality.

He didn't start just knowing that, you know, I care for the lost,

but rather it came from God's spirit shaping his heart to reflect Jesus.

When Jesus was walking on the earth, he lived his life in this relentless pursuit of the lost.

Luke 19.10 says, For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.

Matthew 9.38 He had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless

like sheep without a shepherd.

In Luke 15, there's three parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

And each one of those parables is showing the father's joy when that lost item is found.

So Jesus just didn't feel sorry for the people. He pursued them.

We see that with the woman at the well when he's in Samaria,

when he's healing lepers, when he's healing the sick, when he invites himself to sinners' houses.

Paul experienced the same pursuit on the road to Damascus.

Before that day, he was Saul. He was an enemy of the church.

He persecuted Christians aggressively, and he enjoyed it.

But then Jesus came after him. Jesus pursued him. And from that moment,

Paul knew that he served a God, that if that God could save him, he could save anyone.

And that's why he writes this in 1 Timothy 1, verse 15.

1 Timothy 1:15

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.

But I was shown mercy, so that in me, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience.

If we want to develop a heart like Paul's, we first have to immerse ourselves in the heart of Jesus.

We can't manufacture compassion. It has to be an actual change in us.

It's something that is born out of time spent with the Lord.

It's time spent in prayer, in the word, in worship, letting the Lord's love

fill us up until it overflows.

When we look at Romans 9.3, we see it as an extreme expression of love in the Bible.

I wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people.

Now, Paul knows that that can't happen.

Only Jesus can take on someone else's curse.

But his statement is showing the depth of his willingness to give anything up

for other people's salvation, for his people's salvation.

So where did Paul learn this? It's not a trick question, it's Jesus.

He learned it from Jesus himself. We see this in Philippians 2, chapter 6.

It says, Of Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with

God something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing, and he became obedient to death,

and even death on a cross.

The cross is the ultimate example of sacrifice for the loss.

Jesus laid aside the glory of heaven and stepped into our brokenness and before

and bore the wrath that we deserved, not because it was convenient, but because he loved us.

So then Paul follows these footsteps.

In Acts 14, he gets stoned in Lystra.

They leave him for dead, and then he comes back and preaches again.

I'm going to be honest, if you beat me up after I'm done preaching, I'm not coming back.

Acts 16, he's beaten again. He gets beat a lot.

And he gets imprisoned in Philippi, but he sings hymns and leads the jailer to Christ.

2 Corinthians 11 lists beatings, shipwrecks, sleepless nights,

hunger, constant danger, all for the gospel.

He cares for the lost because he is an example of Christ's heart.

The thing about gospel love is that it costs something.

It's going to cost us our comfort. It's going to cost us our time.

It's going to cost us our money.

It might even cost us our reputation.

And that's okay. It may mean that we have a lot of awkward conversations.

It may mean investing in people who may never thank us.

It may mean opening our homes to those who are very different from us that we maybe don't agree with.

But the thing is, if we love like Jesus loves, we're going to see these sacrifices

not as losses, but rather investments in eternity.

We're opening doorways for people to find Christ.

A heart for the lost that never moves into action is just a sentiment.

We hear it all the time. Go preach the gospel. Go and do it.

Yes, it's a beautiful thought.

But if we don't move, if we don't do anything, it's just a sentiment.

Jesus' compassion always turned into movement.

When Jesus saw crowds, he taught them. When he met the hungry, he fed them.

When he found the sick, he healed them. and when he faced the cross, he carried it.

Paul went to the unreached cities. He engaged with people in their own spaces,

in synagogues, in marketplaces, riversides, homes, even prison cells.

He didn't wait for people to come to him. He went to them.

To be fair, we can't all be traveling missionaries.

Not all of us are called to go to Africa or Asia or some country to go preach

a gospel to some people that have never heard the gospel.

But for us here in the States, it could mean just praying daily for a specific

person that is far from God.

It could mean building a genuine relationship with your neighbor,

not just, hey, how you doing when you see them mowing, but actually getting to know them.

It could mean offering to pray for someone when they share their struggles with you.

It might mean inviting a coworker to your small group or to church.

It is supporting and encouraging those who go where we cannot.

D.L. Moody is an interesting character. One of the things he did is that he

vowed to never go to bed without telling someone about Jesus.

That's a pretty lofty goal. I think that's actually not too lofty.

But the thing is that one night he was already in bed comfortable in his pajamas

ready to get to bed when he remembered that he had not told anyone about Christ that day.

So he got up, went outside, and found someone to speak to.

I'm going to be honest, if I'm in my pajamas and it's bedtime,

I'm going to have to find someone the next day.

But the thing that Moody is showing us here is when our love for him fades,

our urgency for the lost fades too.

But we need that commitment just to do it, just to try it.

One of the things that happens when we drift from the heart of Jesus,

like a church in Revelation, the church in Ephesus, it says,

hey, they had the right doctrine, they had good works, but Jesus said you have

forsaken your first love.

When we forget our love, when our love for Jesus fades, our urgency for the lost fades too.

We should have this passion for the lost.

The thing is, is that many believers don't reject evangelism.

We think that it's good. We just forget about it.

We get comfortable in our circles that we lose any meaningful contact with unbelievers.

I know a few Christians that have no non-Christian friends.

How are we supposed to go out and preach the gospel or to make disciples of

the nations if we don't know the nations?

It's important for us to be a Christian community, but it's also important for

us to seek those who are lost.

So how do we rekindle this desire? Well, the first thing we do is we pray for God's heart.

We ask him to help us feel what he feels for the lost.

The second is a little harder to do, but it's important. We need to spend time

with unbelievers. Now, I'm not telling you to go to a bar and get drunk.

I'm not saying to go out and party. I'm not saying to indulge in sin.

But rather, what I'm saying is to follow Jesus' example.

To eat with non-believers, to listen to them, to get to know them.

The third thing we need to do is remember our rescue. It's important for us

to never lose sight of what Jesus saved us from.

We were unbelievers at one point. We didn't believe in Christ and the Lord has

taken us in, has changed us.

So we need to remember that so that we can bring others to him.

And the last and one of the most important ones is to actually take a step.

Sometimes, passion grows after obedience.

We may not feel like it's something we want to do, but after taking those steps,

after actually going out and getting to know someone, that passion will grow.

Paul's grief in Romans 9 is not a product of him having a tender personality or being soft.

Rather, it's an overflow of Christ's own love in him.

The thing is, if we're walking closely with Jesus, his compassion for the lost

will begin to overflow in us too.

We're going to start to see people the way he sees them, not as problems or

projects, but rather as souls that are worth every effort to reach out to.

I always end youth group with a challenge. Most of the time, they don't listen.

But I trust you guys to do the challenge this week because you listen.

So the challenge has a couple parts to it. The first is to pray,

to ask God for one name, to lay a name on your heart of a person that is an

unbeliever that you know, to put that name in your heart and on your mind.

The second part is to pray for that person every day this week.

Pray for opportunities that you may have to have authentic conversations with

them, to have opportunities to minister with them, to just interact with them.

And then the third is to take a concrete step to reach them.

That might mean different things to you, to every one of you.

It might mean inviting them to a Bible study.

It might mean sharing a YouTube video that you found that really explains the gospel well.

Maybe it means inviting them over for coffee to have a conversation.

It's taking an actual step to

bring them to Christ, regardless of whether they reject it or accept it.

And then keep doing that for the rest of your life. And that's the gospel.

That's how we reach the nations.

Romans 1.16 says, I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of

God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.

So let's live our lives like that's true, with hearts that burn for the lost,

like Paul's, but more importantly, like Jesus. Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord. Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for an opportunity, Lord, to spend some time in worship and fellowship, Lord.

Father, we know that you are more than worthy of our praise,

and we just lift this Sunday morning to you. Father, we pray that you soften our hearts to you.

Father, that we may have a heart that has a desire to reach those who are lost.

Father, burn that passion in

us, Lord, that we may want to draw closer to you and draw others to you.

Father, we ask that as we leave this place that you put names on our hearts

of those that are far away from you, Lord, that we could pray for and that we

may take legitimate actions, Lord, to draw them closer to you.

Father, we praise you, Lord, because you are a good God and have taken such good care of us.

And we pray that as we go about the rest of our weeks, Lord,

that you will care for us. In your name we pray, amen.