ROMANS: Preach Christ

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Romans 10, starting in verse 14.

We're continuing on in our series on Romans.

I get the gift and the opportunity and the job of finishing out Romans 10.

We'll begin in verse 14 and read through the end of verse 21.

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Romans 10, starting in verse 14, says this How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?

So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

But I ask, have they not heard?

Indeed they have, for their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

But I ask, did Israel not understand?

First Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation.

With a foolish nation I will make you angry.

Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I have been found by those who did not seek me.

I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.

But of Israel, all day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and a contrary people.

We read this passage together and it talks about preaching and hearing and going and proclaiming, and the the immediate thought we draw the conclusion is the missions guy is behind the pulpit.

We're going to hear a sermon on missions.

Because you are.

And uh and I'm not going to apologize for that, but and this does play a role into not so much getting on an airplane or getting in a van and going somewhere, and that is part of it.

We will talk about that, but it's also what does it look like to be on mission here as God is calling us to preach and do these things.

Um we have eight verses, and what I think Paul has given us three clear points here.

I'm entitled this sermon, Preach Christ.

Preach Christ.

Easy.

And I think there's three things that fall under that lifestyle of preaching Christ: of saying, God, you are the way, you are the truth, you are the life.

And so, because of that, because I know that to be true, it elicits this desire in me to hear, as Paul says, to preach, to go, and all those things.

And so we're going to talk about that from three different angles this morning.

I think the first place we have to start is with that word preach.

For some of us, we hear preach, and that elicits kind of a sticky response in us, whether that's somebody being preachy or someone don't preach at me or whatever that is.

Um kind of a disservice for a lot of us in some of the translations that we have in our Bible, there in verse 14, it says that someone has to, a preacher has to go.

But that's not what it's saying.

It's saying is someone has to go and preach.

It's not saying it has to be someone behind the pulpit.

It doesn't say it has to be one of an ordained minister or someone on late night television or a professional missionary with a 12-pocket shirt and a pit helmet in the desert somewhere.

Yes, because I'm never gonna wear one of those.

I'm gonna be honest with you, either.

Um but what it is, what what what what the what the text is saying is that we are all called to go and to preach.

Because if we don't, what happens is subconsciously or maybe even consciously, we begin to say, hey, you know what?

It's the preacher's job to talk about Jesus.

It's the preacher's job to have the conversations with people and ask them what they believe.

It's the preacher's job to present the gospel.

And then we just begin to sit back and and consume other people's stories, other people talking about with fervor, instead of entering into that ourselves.

Instead of saying, you know what, God has has called me to preach.

Yeah, I I think this is this is a good a good thing to think about.

Is is uh I do this with the first service, and one of the guys caught me after he said, Look, you lost your place.

It's like, no, I just cut a whole section out of the sermon on the fly there.

But but here's here's what I don't want us to miss is if we believe the Bible, that's a good place for us to start, right?

If we're coming here on a Sunday, if we believe the Bible, the Bible tells us time and time and time and time and time again that Jesus is the only way.

And he's the only hope.

And then he calls us to go and tell others.

Where'd the amens go?

They're like, no, you guys do that.

The guys that get the paycheck and stand behind the lecture and you guys tell people.

It doesn't say that.

I just explained to you that the translation doesn't say a preacher.

It says to preach.

It's an action for all of us to do.

And so in that begins this first point of preaching Christ, where Paul lays out this method.

This method, that's their first point in preaching Christ.

There's a method to it, and it's the preaching.

The second one is the hearing, is the hearing.

When Paul asks how will they hear in verse 14, put your thumb there and then just look down at verse 16.

It might say heed in your translation, it might say obey.

Just know that those come from the same Greek word.

When it says to hear and when it says to obey, those are coming from the same core word.

And there's a reason for that.

It's because you just can't hear and agree with it.

You have to hear it and then do what it says.

You have to hear it and then believe it.

And if we believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and we hear that, what Paul is saying is how are people gonna hear if we don't go and tell them?

How are people gonna know that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life?

How are they gonna know that if Jesus doesn't, if we don't listen to Jesus and then go and tell them?

Many of you are familiar with uh our mission partners in Costa Rica and that they work on a on a reservation.

Um, was working on the sermon this week, and I don't I'm not a big coincidence guy.

I think God is just sovereign and and just continues to just throw softballs to me when I'm bullheaded and want the sermon to look like I want it to look like.

And one of those, I got an email out of nowhere from Bart.

Bart, I I love Bart.

Bart never sends updates ever to me.

I mean, it's in their newsletter, Heathers on top of that.

It's kind of like the way we I don't know about your house.

I am the most unorganized person in the world.

No, we would be living in an alley somewhere if my wife wasn't around because I would, oh, bills have to be paid.

I forgot about that.

And so and so all of a sudden I get Bart just says, hey, I just wanted to send you an update.

I want to send you an update um about what's going on in the village in Copi in one of the Cope, one of the villages, that's just the best way to put it.

In one of the villages.

And uh they're gonna start a church.

And one of the guys that you met when you were down there, when the team was down there, he was part of the baptismal service.

If some of you were here during the summer, you saw the pictures that came back from the baptismal service.

One of the guys that was there, the village has charged him with starting a church.

You're gonna see his picture up here.

There we go.

And his name is Modesto.

And what Modesto has has come to realize is that people need to hear the gospel.

We can't just think about it.

We can't just pray for them.

We can't just hope that missionaries will come from America and preach.

We can't just help that missionaries will come from Panama and come preach.

That someone from here who knows, who is heard, needs to go and then preach.

And so he has he's he's begun a church there and he's begun to tell them about the truth.

And and so from that preaching, then comes the hearing that we were talking about.

Let me let me set the stage for for for understanding hearing.

Just this morning, you woke up this morning, you got an extra hour of sleep.

Praise God, right?

There's a God in heaven who gave us an extra hour of sleep, we came, and I don't know what it was like for you to get here this morning if it was trying to get your traveling circus into your suburban and dump all them in there, it didn't matter if their clothes matched or not, and you get here and let the jack in the box out of the box and just put them where they're supposed to be, and then you sit here and breathe, maybe for the first time in a week, or maybe you didn't have kids, whatever it took for you to get here this morning.

And you sit down and you got a nice warm cup of church coffee, and you're sitting in your seat, and Clyde and the band comes up and they lead us into worship, and God begins to move, and you begin to hear these things, and you're like, yes, those things are true about God, and I moved to sing them back to God.

And you sing those things, and then Clyde gets to the end of our time of worshiping through song, and he looks over here and he gives the nod.

Have you seen Clyde give the nod?

You guys know what the nod?

Look for Clyde.

When he finishes, he gives the nod and it lets whoever's preaching over here know, oh, it's time for me to go, it's go time.

And so they'll they'll run up on stage.

So Clyde gets done and he gives the nod and nothing.

Crickets.

And he gives the nod again, and then a tumbleweed blows across the stage.

And Clyde goes, Oh, we we forgot to line up a preacher for this week.

Some of you'd be hacked off, right?

And I came all the way for this, and there's nothing.

Here's the deal.

Here's where Paul just draws it in for us that we are all responsible for the preaching, but we're also all responsible for those that hear, and that they're present to hear.

Why have we become so callous in the church?

Big C church and little C church here at Grand Park, we have all the empty seats.

Now look at me.

This isn't guilt, this isn't membership drive, we're not gonna do that, and he'll just tell we don't do that here.

But if we believe that the gospel, that we believe that Jesus Christ is the only way, he's the only hope, then why are we okay with people not hearing the gospel?

Why have we become so callous to the empty seats around us and it's just the way it works?

But in reality, it should break our heart because it's part of the quote-unquote method of we preach, we hear, and then we move us to the next one, which is believing.

Look at verse 14 again.

It says, How then will they call on him who they have not believed?

How are they to believe in him whom they have not heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

John Wesley has this great quote that I find myself preaching to myself on more frequent occasions than I'd probably like to admit and hear, when I get frustrated with people who are not followers of Jesus acting like they're not followers of Jesus.

Why would they do that?

I mean, God wouldn't want them to do that.

They don't know God.

But yet I put on them without ever having a conversation with them about Jesus.

But yet I put my expectations, I put my desires on them for them to act like Jesus, but I yet I've never had a conversation with them about Jesus.

John Wesley says this where Christ is not proclaimed, faith as a response to God's gift in Christ cannot arise.

Of course, Wade, they're not gonna act like Christians because they're not.

And you're gonna sit there and get frustrated, but you've never had a conversation with them about Jesus.

What does this look like?

There's a lot of um lot of theologians and a lot of Bible historians that um are a lot smarter than I could ever hope to be.

Think that when Paul is writing about the hearing and the preaching and the believing, especially the believing, that he is thinking about and he's drawing attention to a Jesus' encounter he has with the man in John 9.

You don't have to turn there, it'll be on the screen.

Um But let me set the stage for you for the sake of time instead of reading all the 34 verses that lead up to John 9, 35.

Um, on a Sabbath day, on a Sunday, Jesus is walking and he walks by this area where you would find lots of beggars that are struck with afflictions, um, that are diseased, um, that most of society has desired that either they or their parents or their ancestors have sinned.

And so Jesus is walking, and so they're hoping for this pool of water to be stirred and to be healed.

And Jesus is walking and sees a blind man, and so Jesus walks up to him and uh and and squats down in front of him, we're guessing, and and spits down into the ground.

And in the ground he makes mud, and then he takes the lugi mud.

It's just, I mean, read the Bible for a day.

He just spit in dirt and made mud.

Alright?

Jesus spit.

Are we okay with that?

Are we okay with the fact that God with skin on spit on the ground?

He spits on the ground, he makes a mud pie, and then he rubs it on a guy's face.

If you think having a conversation about Jesus is awkward, spit on the ground, make a mud pie and rub it in someone's eyes.

Alright?

It brings a whole new perspective of how awkward it really can be.

And so he takes this mud and he rubs it on the guy's face and rubs it into his eyes, and he says, and go and wash this off.

And he does, and he washes it off and he can see.

This drives the Pharisees crazy, right?

On a whole lot of different levels.

One, he was working on the Sabbath.

Two, there's a lot of people that think, why did Jesus spit in the mud?

Because there was a Jewish law that on a Sabbath you could spit on a rock, but you couldn't spit on the dirt because that dirt then would become wet and it might cultivate and something might grow out of there, so that would be work.

I don't, I'm just telling you what I've heard.

Alright, so there's that, and so then the fact that this Jewish upstart from North Pleak, Israel, is sorry to offend anybody if you're from there, has come and he's healing people, right?

And he's preaching himself so that they can hear and that they can believe.

And so the Pharisees are so worked up, they draw, they they bring this guy in and they interview him.

Are you really the man who was blind who we used to see and not paying attention to all the time?

Yeah, that's me.

And you can see now, and he's like, Yeah, we don't believe you.

They send him away.

They're like, we gotta do something about this.

So they bring him back again and they bring in witnesses.

Is this the guy?

Is he the blind one?

Yeah, he's the blind one, and now he can see.

We still don't believe you.

And they're still angry, they can't take it, and they send him away again.

They bring him back a third time after interviewing his family, and they're like, was he really blind?

Or was this just a scam you guys are running for 50 years and just made him act like he was blind?

So all of a sudden, when Jesus came on the scene, he could spit in some dirt, make mud, and rub it on his eyes.

They're like, No, he's always been blind.

They still can't handle it.

They cast him out.

Here's where we pick up in John chapter 9, verse 35.

John 9:35

You might be thinking, it'd have been a lot faster if you just read it, dude.

Uh thank you.

Jesus, verse 35, Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

And he answered, Who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?

And Jesus said to him, You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.

And Jesus said, Lord, I believe.

And he worshipped him.

And Jesus said, For judgment I came into this world, that those who did not see may see, for those who see may become blind.

Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and they said to him, Are we also blind?

And Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would have no guilt.

But now that you say we see, your guilt remains.

And there's a whole lot there, and I'm not preaching John 9, so I just want to just draw a couple things that I think Paul wants us to see as it comes to believing.

He's called us to preach, he's called us to hear, he's called us to believe from that hearing.

And that believing, remember, it's action.

You don't just hear and go, oh, that's good.

Amen.

Yeah, that's good for you.

No, you hear it, you believe it, and you obey.

Remember?

Are we all on the same page?

So you believe.

Just a couple things about belief from this passage in John 9.

Jesus sought him out.

Look in verse 35.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out and having found him.

Well, to find him, he had to have been looking for him.

Jesus goes looking for people.

And some of you, and I know this because I'm not only a pastor here, I'm a member here.

And most of the time, I sit out here and I listen to sermons being preached by Neil or by Lance or by other people that come in, and I hear the stories they tell, and I'm like, that's great for them.

Is that too honest to say that as one of the professional Christians here on staff sometimes like, that's really good for them.

I don't think I could do that.

But we do that and we say, that's great for them.

But but can I can I challenge you with something?

That the way that Jesus might be seeking people out is through you.

That Jesus might be seeking people by you having the conversations that are hard to have.

Because Jesus seeks people out.

Jesus also asked him what he believed.

He says, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

When's the last time you asked somebody what they believed?

Do you believe in Jesus?

What do you believe in?

Believe in Buddha?

Do you believe in Muhammad?

Do you believe in anything?

We don't do that.

You guys are looking at me.

I wish you could see your faces.

We don't do that in polite society.

Why not?

Jesus did.

Let's go all the way back to the beginning.

Can you come with me all the way back to the beginning?

We all agreed that we believe the Bible.

And we believe in Jesus.

But where's the disconnect from there and asking somebody, do you believe this which is true?

Which is the only way?

You're not the aim is it stopped.

We're somewhere, somewhere in between here.

I don't have time to track it down, but that's a question we have to ask is why are we not willing to have those conversations?

If we believe that Jesus is the way.

I need to calm down and stay on my notes.

Jesus told him that he is the only thing worth believing in.

If it's rude to ask somebody what they believe, then you tell them they're wrong if they don't believe in Jesus.

Jesus says, I'm the only thing worth believing in.

Look at verse 36 and 37.

The man answered, Who is he, sir, that I might believe in him?

Jesus said to him, You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.

Neil brought this up last week, and I'll I want to point this out.

It kind of comes in seasons in churches where churches begin to rise up and they begin to say that Jesus never claims to be the Son of God in the Bible.

And Neil took an opportunity to point that out to you last week.

I don't want to miss an opportunity to say, right there, he just said, I'm the Son of God.

I'm the one you need to believe in.

So in these conversations, you can't stop with, oh, that's what you believe.

Well, I guess I guess that works for you.

You guys enjoy how I'm inviting you into these awkward, inconvenient conversations that you don't have to get on an airplane to have.

And lastly, the man's belief led to action.

Look in verse 38.

He says, Lord, I believe, and then he worshiped him.

Worship, he acted.

It says, You are God.

And in me, that elicits a response.

In me, I go from believing to worshiping.

Which then brings us to the second part of this method.

Or the last part, rather, of this method, which is the calling.

The calling.

And we hear that word the call, and people are called to ministry, and no, no, no, we're all called to preach.

Remember from the very beginning, we're all called to preach, we're all called to hear, we're all called to believe, we're called.

And um and that calling, all it is, is just I I know this to be true, and I have to tell other people.

Remember when you first got saved?

Remember when you had to tell everybody about it?

But then somewhere, I'm I'm I'm the blind, I'm I'm I'm the number one culprit of this.

Of just where's where's the fervor in that?

Where what happened to our passion to tell people?

Yesterday I was um working on my sermon and um had gone blind looking at my notes and um was just like I need a break from this.

So I I was on, I was inside, I was in town, and so I brought my workout bag with me, so I just threw my running clothes on.

I went over to Memorial Park and went running.

And I was just spending the whole time, just like, God, what is what is a calling look like?

What do you I want to represent your word well?

I want to represent what Paul is calling us to, what ultimately you're calling us to through through Paul's word in Romans 10.

What does it look like to hear and believe and to preach and to never get tired of doing it all over and over and over again?

And I thought about Neil shared last week about his conversion experience, um, being a senior, uh, the summer after a senior year and being at a camp and a guy walking through the Roman road, and I'm sitting right over here with my wife and I'm fighting back tears because I'm thinking about July of 1996 when a guy named Matt Coleman sat me down at a summer camp and walked me through the Roman road.

I grew up in church.

I had the Roman road memorized, right?

I had no idea what it meant.

All I knew is it meant I got cookies at the end of Sunday school, and so I memorized it.

Anytime I get food, that's a carrot for me.

Let's do this.

And but I sat down with him, and for the first time it was like, this is this is what it's about.

I can have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And I remember that feeling welling up in me, sitting there at a picnic table at Camp Zephyr in Corpus Christi, Texas.

If you've never been, don't go.

Uh and I'm sitting there in uh anything named a Zephyr that goes down in flames.

I'm just saying.

Um thank you.

Uh back over here.

And so I just remember praying that.

I just remember even before I could reconcile what a call to full time ministry looked in my life, looked like in my life, I just remember thinking, I gotta go back.

I gotta tell my friends.

I have friends that don't believe this.

I have friends.

If this is true, and I believe it is true, I believe I gotta go preach to them and tell them that they don't have a relationship with God.

They can't go to heaven with him.

And in my in my simple understanding, I just remember that as a call.

And I was like, that's that's not it.

That's not all there is.

And so I'm I'm finishing my run and I go back over and I'm stretching.

And I remember when I was 17, I didn't have to stretch.

Anyone remember that?

I'm 35 and it's just death.

Anyway, so I remember I'm over there stretching and I'm looking at the ground.

I'm like, it'd be nice to touch that.

I haven't touched that in 10 years.

And so um, and I'm standing over there in this kind of shady spot.

They're doing a lot of construction at Memorial Park, and I hear some rustling and some trees, and a guy walks out with a grocery bag.

And I was like, that's interesting.

Um and so I kind of look and I'm like, this he's he's without a place to stay.

This guy's this guy's living out here.

Um and so I was like, that's you know, it's interesting.

And I'm like, God, what's the call look like?

And I just keep stretching and what does it look like for to just jump out of you to tell someone about the hope in Jesus?

God, what does that look like?

And this guy's over there, and he gets over and he starts he just starts doing some exercises.

And um, I'm like, this guy is not a professional um homeless person.

He's this he's something's led him here recently um to this state in life.

And I just keep asking, and he leaves.

And I kid you not, I'm done.

I'm like, I get it back to the car, and what am I gonna do next?

And I'm just like, God, I don't know what this call looks like, and clear as a bell, God goes, Are you kidding me?

I was like, what?

That guy?

And God's like, yeah.

And I was like, God, I don't know, and that might be weird, that might be awkward.

Can I confess to you is the guy one of the guys that stands up here and preaches?

We don't have it all together, and we question, you know, and there's all those things, and and then God, I was like, God, what does that look like?

And he goes, you know, that emergency cash you keep in your wallet?

He needs that you don't.

I'm like, yeah, that's I like that.

That's that's some nice money.

Those are Chris Bills in there.

That thing is sweet.

And so then I start to do, I know none of you do this, where I was like, well, if he still there when I go across the uh.

And he was and I was like, I had to hide my wallet because uh it's gonna take me a while to find that I gotta dig that money in the mm-mm.

And I was like, well, once I get the money out of he steal it, I'm gonna get the money.

And he was.

And he's over there, and I start walking over there, and then I'm like, uh and I start stretching again.

And he's filling up water bottles, and I'm like, oh, this guy is camping out here.

This is just rough.

And so then he walks up and I'm like, man, he's got a nice car.

I'm like, yeah, I need any money, he's got a nicer car than I do.

And I look in there and I'm like, this cat's been living in here for a long time in his car.

And God goes, monkey, do what I tell you to do, right?

So I walk over to him, he's got earbuds in, his back's to me, and I'm like, I tap him on the shoulder, is he gonna pull a shank out?

I mean, we're all is this is this where it's gonna end for me, right here?

And I said, Hey man, uh he pulls the earbuds out.

He's like, Yeah, what's going on?

I said, Hey, it's gonna sound crazy.

I said, but uh, I believe in Jesus Christ and I follow him, and uh, and I believe he told me to give you this money I had in my wallet.

He just looks at me and he goes, What?

I was like, I gotta say it again.

So he goes the whole thing again.

And he goes, Who told you?

Someone told you to give me money?

I'm like, Yeah, someone.

It was Jesus.

And I'm gonna I'm gonna stand up in front of my people tomorrow and I'm gonna preach three services on responding to the call to preach, to hear, to believe.

And I think I'd be a hypocrite and should probably go to hell if I didn't listen to him and bring you this money.

We didn't we didn't hit our knees and do the sinner's prayer after handing the cash over to him.

Um but what we did was talk for 45 minutes about what led him there and just got to know my friend John and uh just phenomenal um time with him.

And uh and I was like, that's that's what it is.

Not what I do, but just what God does in us every day.

Every one of you in this room has that experience.

If God says, hey, go do that, go have that conversation.

And it's maybe you don't have your Evangelicube with you.

Do you guys, Evangel Cubes?

Or your million-dollar track that you go and hand somebody and then run away.

No, it's just going and having a conversation and doing what God asks us to do.

So, which moves us to our second point, which is I know that I just ran the okie doke.

I told you three points, and I feel like nine points under the first one.

But our second point is the message.

Is the message.

We had the method, and now I get the message.

Verse 16 through 20, but they have not all obeyed the gospel.

For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

But I ask, have they not heard?

Indeed they have, for their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

But I ask, did Israel not understand?

First Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are a nation.

With a foolish nation, I will make you angry.

Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I have been found by those who did not seek me.

I've shown myself to those who did not ask for me.

What Paul is doing is he's quoting Isaiah, and he's just telling us these things about the gospel, the reality.

If you believe there is a call on you to hear, to believe, to preach, the reality is you're gonna talk to people and they're gonna reject the gospel.

We sitting here in this church in Grand Park Way are inheritance of a rejected gospel.

He says that he gave us the gospel because the Israelites rejected it.

And so we we get to be a part of this inheritance and a true inheritance because we did nothing to deserve it.

And so, even though people are gonna reject it, that doesn't mean that we're not called to continue to go and to preach.

Which kind of leaks into the next point, I think that's okay, is is because that's what Jesus does.

Look what it says.

Skip down um to the bottom to where 20 and 21.

It says, Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I have been found by those who did not seek me.

I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.

But of Israel, he says, All day long I've held out my hands to a disobedient and to a contrary people.

Here's what he's saying, and we can be done.

Is he saying, There were a people that cried out for me.

They cried out in the wilderness, and I came and I delivered and they rejected me.

And they cried out to me again, and I came and I delivered and they rejected me.

And they cried out to me again, and I came and I delivered and they rejected me.

And so I'm also going to offer this to the Gentile.

I'm gonna offer it to the one who hasn't been reading all these prophecies of me in the Old Testament awaiting the Messiah.

I'm gonna come to them, and I'm gonna redeem them, and I'm gonna change their lives.

And so if we're if we believe in this calling, if we believe in this message, if we believe in this Messiah, here's the question that we have to challenge ourselves with.

Is we are we we've inherited a rejected gospel and it's come to us.

Are we going to embrace that or is it going to be passed over to the next one because we haven't embraced it?

Paul quotes Isaiah and he says, How beautiful are the feet that carry the message.

In ancient times, if a kingdom or a country or province was at war, they didn't get the 24-hour news cycle we have.

And so someone was charged with being the herald.

Someone was charged with coming back and bringing the news, whether good or bad, what was happening?

What's happening to their boys that were at war, how goes the country, how goes the war, and all those things, and they got to come back.

And Paul says, how beautiful are the feet that get to bring the good news.

Our calling in this message, in this method through the Messiah is to be those feet.

We get to be those feet.

From the very beginning, it was God's intention.

It even says it in here that the word would go to the ends of the earth.

It was always God's plan the gospel would go to the ends of the earth.

But look at me.

It was also God's plan that it would go to your next door neighbor.

And it would go to your mother-in-law, and it would go to your boss, and it would go to your cousins and your brother.

And that is the calling that is on us this morning.

And so here's my question.

And I know that um it's a community group night, and this is the only question I've offered up, so Lance will cook up some other good ones.

Is this who do you need to have a conversation with?

Who is God calling you to be the feat to?

Remember the Jesus that goes and seeks people out?

Who is he wanting to use you to reach?

Here's what I'm gonna challenge you to do.

I'm gonna be your pastor for a minute.

You're handled a worship folder, you got a scrap piece of paper, got your smartphone.

I say make it real and put that person's name down in ink.

Begin to pray for opportunities.

But here's the deal.

Look at me and I'll be done.

Is it doesn't stop with praying.

Because it says that we believe and that believing is obeying.

Remember that?

That we believe and that believing is obeying, we go and do that.

How sweet are the feet that you get to have.

How sweet can your feet be to bring the good news that you believe, that you believe so much, there's a calling welling up in you to go and have conversations and ask as Jesus did.

Do you believe in Jesus?

What do you believe in?

Let me tell you about the only thing that's worth believing in.

Do me a favor and stand to your feet.

And if you would, hold your hands out like this.

Speak a blessing over you.

You're called to hear.

You're called to believe.

You're called to obey.

You're called to preach.