Luke 9:37-50

Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Haven City Church podcast.

The following sermon was recorded on May 20th, 2018.

We are looking at Luke 9, finishing up Jesus' ministry in Galilee.

It's a great section.

Glad you tuned in and we're excited about going into the next section of Jesus traveling up to Jerusalem.

I talk a little bit about that in the sermon.

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And we are going to be in the book of Luke, chapter 9, verse 37.

Luke 9:37

Luke 9, 37.

We should have the text up here available on the screen.

If you don't have a Bible and you ever want one, we always have free Bibles when you walk in the door that are over here as well.

Okay, let's start in verse 37.

It says this The next day when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him.

A man in the crowd called out, Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child.

A spirit seizes him, and he suddenly screams.

It throws him into convulsions, so that he foams at the mouth.

It scarcely ever leaves him, and it is destroying him.

I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not.

You unbelieving and perverse generation, Jesus replied, how long shall I stay with you and put up with you?

Bring your son here.

Even while the boy was coming, the demon threw him to the ground in a convulsion.

But Jesus rebuked the impure spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.

And they were all amazed at the greatness of God.

While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did, he said to his disciples, Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you.

The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.

But they did not understand what this meant.

It was hidden from them, so they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.

An argument started amongst the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest.

Jesus, knowing their thoughts, look took a little child and had him stand beside him.

When he said this, or then he said to them, Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.

For it is the one who is least among you, all who is the greatest.

Master, said John, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he is not one of us.

Do not stop him, Jesus said, for whoever is not against you is for you.

Let's pray.

God, we um just ask that your spirit would speak to us through this text.

Thank you for uh the last, I don't know, six months that we've been in the book of Luke and finishing up this um this section of Jesus being in Galilee.

Lord, there's a lot of ground that we've covered.

There's different lessons that you have uh spoken to us by your spirit as we've just gathered.

And we want to continue that process of being shaped by your spirit and your word.

And so right now we pray for the illumination of the Holy Spirit to be in us, uh, that you would speak to us.

You know our stories, you know what we walked in the door with.

And so we want to be listening for your voice as we go through this text.

Um that's such a gift, God, to have you speak to us.

You know our stories, God, you know the burdens, Lord, that exists.

And I pray, God, for each one here that is weighed down that the the manifold grace of God would just comfort and encourage and um would just be so evident in each person's life here.

Uh that there would just be testimonies of your gracious work in each life this week.

So, Lord, we're here to encounter you, we're here to meet with you, and the attitude of our heart is one of just fully yielded over to you.

Say what you want to say to us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So Luke chapter 9, 37 through 50.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

Now, right in the middle of this chapter, we are going to be wrapping up a section.

So the next slide here, I want to just show you that this is where we've been.

Luke 4, 14 through 9, 50, where we're going to end today.

This is Jesus' ministry in Galilee.

In fact, there's a slide next that has a map of where Jesus is going to be heading.

So this whole region up here is the Galilean area, and he's going to be heading on his way to Jerusalem.

And the next 10 chapters through 1927, 1927 is going to be a whole new section of Jesus leaving his home turf in Galilee and taking the disciples on this journey to Jerusalem.

There's a lot that's good we're going to cover.

It's probably going to take us up through September for us to get there.

And it's going to be a lot of fun.

But I just want to point out as we're going along that we're going to shift gears after this week.

So it's like a reset.

I always love a reset.

For me, every day is a new day, right?

And that's like a little mini reset.

Every year is a new year.

I try to make new goals in the new year.

And we're going into like a new season.

The emphasis is going to be upon this whole idea of Jesus really trying to solidify in his disciples the ideas of discipleship.

So he's called out, the crowds have followed him, and now we have Jesus has selected the disciples and he's modeled some stuff for them.

And we covered the whole section where Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount, and there's been all these miracles.

In fact, Jesus has sent his disciples out to these different towns.

And so there's a lot that's already gone on, but Jesus, just over the last couple weeks in the chapters that we've been studying, he's ratcheting it up.

He's saying, I'm going to the cross, and if you want to be my follower, you need to be ready to go to your cross.

That you need to take up your cross and follow me.

This passage flows.

So you'll recall last week we finished with the Mount of Transfiguration, that Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up to a mount, and the appearance of Jesus is transformed.

Moses and Elijah are there talking with Jesus, and Peter says something dumb about building some houses for them, and then God's presence overshadows it.

And God says, This is my son, listen to him.

And so it's important as that's the context that we come into this because literally it says at the beginning of our text that Jesus comes down the mountain and a large crowd met him, and there's a man who calls out asking for this healing work.

So keep in mind that we're finishing up these ten chapters.

We're going into this section about discipleship, and really you could kind of classify these two stories of the demonic spirit being cast out of this boy, and also this discussion about who's the greatest in the kingdom.

This is like an example of the disciples' failure.

So they failed to cast out the demon, and then they failed to get this whole messianic process of the cross, and instead they're bickering over greatness in God's kingdom, right?

So the disciples have a long way to go in their formation process.

Um and they represent us.

We have a long way to go, right?

We we um we are not the heroes of the story, we're there with the disciples in like the failure to get it.

And so um it's great that God picks and chose to use failures.

Amen?

You ever failed?

I know I do every day, right?

And it's such a blessing to have a God that picked men that failed, even after all of this time of ministry.

And Jesus is gonna correct them.

Um, so but what has also happened at by this point is that Jesus asked, who do the crowd say that I am, who do you say that I am?

And they've established, they've said you're the Messiah.

And we and we talked about last week about by saying you're the Messiah, that puts a claim on your own life.

I mean, that is such a significant statement.

It's literally the fulfillment of Judaism to say that Jesus is the Messiah.

And so it's just getting more intense.

Like Jesus is turning up the heat on his disciples.

So let's look at this first section, verses 37 through 43a.

And and Derek, I know you're running the slides.

I forget what I put on the slide.

So just go to the next slide when I made these.

Okay, good, that's tough.

I'll keep we'll keep we'll work together on this.

So this is these are the other accounts.

So so let's go through this story really quickly.

Jesus comes off the mountain of transfiguration, and the crowds are back, right?

So Jesus is now, this is kind of an incidental thing that comes up in the account of Luke, that he has these crowds.

Um the father of an only son approaches Jesus and says that his son is demon-possessed, and the disciples could not do anything about it.

Um remember, uh a couple chapters earlier, the disciples had been sent out empowered to cast out demons and to heal people.

And the actual record in Luke says that they did heal people, cast out demons, and proclaimed the gospel.

And yet, here's an outlier, here's an incident where this man brought his only son to the disciples, and the disciples were ineffective.

They were not able to cast out this particular demon.

And the father gives uh an explanation of his son, and you'll notice that Luke, who writes this, gives a clinical diagnosis.

He's talking about here's what happens to his physical body because of this demon.

Um Jesus then says this sharp rebuke after hearing the account.

He says, You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you and put up with you?

Do do we hear Jesus say things much more sharp than that?

That's about, I mean, other than Jesus dealing with the Pharisees and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, this is one of the sharpest rebukes that Jesus gives in the Gospels.

Um it may be somewhat directed at the Father, but it seems to be more directed at the disciples.

Let's look for just a second at Matthew 17, 14 through 21.

There is not a slide for this.

We won't get to this quite yet.

Matthew 17, 14, 21 says this.

When he had come to the multitude, a man came to him, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely, for he often falls into the fire, often into the water.

So I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.

Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you?

How long shall I bear with you?

Bring him here to me.

Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came, uh, and the disciples uh came to Jesus, or it came out of him.

The child was cured from that very hour.

Verse 19.

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why couldn't we cast it out?

So Jesus said to them, It's because of your unbelief, for assuredly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.

However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.

If we had time, we could go into this the passage in Mark 9 as well, which gives, in that account, in Mark 9, it gives the back and forth between Jesus and the Father.

You may want to look it up on your own time because each gospel writer gives a different angle on this account.

But in all three accounts, what we see emphasized is the need for faith.

In fact, in Mark, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus emphasizes faith, and the Father says, he cries out, he says, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

So the real thing that comes out through this story is the need for faith, right?

That Jesus is rebuking the disciples and those that are there with this, just there's a need for faith.

In Matthew, it really emphasizes the idea that this comes out, this does not come out but by prayer and fasting.

So there's a um, there seems to be this connection between prayer and fasting and faith, which which I want to get into in just a second.

But let's just look at a few points.

Like, like, you know, we talked about, I think it was um maybe at Easter, where that's just right on the surface, there's some obvious stuff that this text teaches us.

First of all, as parents, we need to bring our kids to Jesus, intercede for them, ask God to work in their life.

What Jesus can do in our kids is greater than any other human.

We live in a society that that places emphasis on particular societal societal roles and influence over kids, right?

So we look to the schools to play a role in our kids' lives.

We look to the government to do some things for our kids.

We look to parents to take on some roles.

But I would say this: that Jesus can do more for our kids than any human institution.

So that means that we ought to be praying for our kids.

We ought to be looking to heaven as the source of the good work that needs to take place in our children.

Second, when we we go into this passage, we see that Jesus is the great physician.

He preached about the kingdom and he healed people.

Have you seen that as we've gone through Luke?

It's paired together.

You can't miss it, right?

It's he tells his disciples, Go out, I want you to heal people, and I want you to preach the gospel.

When Jesus goes into a city, what he does is he's healing people and he is preaching the gospel.

This week Derek and I were talking about some of the abuses that sometimes come up in church.

One of them is the idea of kind of the health and wealth gospel, that Jesus uh just uh wants you to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, and that suffering isn't included in the gospel.

And and so that's a that's a false teaching.

It doesn't represent what the Bible teaches, and but the temptation is to overreact and get over here, because this is a false teaching over here, where we don't believe that God can work in our life at all.

And yet the way that we see Jesus over and over again, it's this these twins of healing and the gospel.

Healing and the gospel.

Jesus warns the church about suffering, but one of the interesting things is that he doesn't talk about physical suffering all that much.

He talks about outside persecution, suffering for the gospel, but but healings left out.

And personally, where I'm at is I am, there's this teaching called divine healing, that it's God's will that all who are sick be healed.

I'm not there, but I do believe that it is God's will to heal many people, and for God to demonstrate his healing power in the world.

And that if there is sickness that remains, that it serves the purpose that Paul talks about in the Corinthian letter, where God wants to allow a weakness to be evident in our life so that God's grace is manifested in us, so you may live with a terminal sickness, a condition that God chooses not to heal, and it is for a reason, it's so that his grace is known in your life.

But I would say this too.

I I just want to I want to make sure we emphasize this, that Jesus healed a lot of people.

Jesus healed a lot of people.

You've got to make a decision.

Did he do that to just start the church to kind of kick things off?

And it's like, okay, the church has got momentum and now all it needs is the gospel, or does God continue his healing work today?

This is a debated issue, but what I see is not Jesus saying, hey, hey, hey, don't believe in healing.

Like, slow down, don't trust me that much.

Instead, I see this encouragement to just entrust our lives to the Lord.

So here we encounter the great physician.

Um the third thing, right kind of on the surface here, is that this idea of a spiritual battle.

Right a couple weeks ago, I think it was two weeks ago or three weeks ago, we talked about um demons and unclean spirits, and we kind of did a whole biblical theology on what this is.

But here again, we're encountering a demon that has possessed a child and is manifesting itself in all these physical ways.

Literally, it says that this demon wanted, this the father says, This demon wants to destroy my son.

And it reminds us of this reality that we are in a spiritual battle, right?

That we are living with an invisible opponent who is We may have, oh no.

Sometimes we'll we'll lose our batteries.

Um we have a fun system with our batteries, but and doesn't that always happen when we're talking about demons?

It seems to happen kind of regularly.

Okay, so anyway, back on demons.

Um you have an invisible opponent that is out to destroy you.

And so that's not something that needs to freak us out.

We have the ability to stand strong in the evil day, Paul says in Ephesians chapter uh 5 or 6, right?

Um, but our weapons are spiritual weapons that God gives us.

It's not that we are have big muscles and thick skin, so we can fight off the devil.

No, we're able to resist Satan's attacks against us because we are strengthened by God and he fights on our behalf.

And the fourth thing, just as again, going through disciples failed.

The disciples failed.

Um, and in Matthew, Jesus told them that they failed because they lacked the faith to cast out the demon.

They lacked the faith that was needed.

So jump over to Matthew.

There's in Matthew 1741 or 1721, what happens there is that Jesus tells his disciples that faith is needed in order for this demon to be cast out.

But then he says, this kind does not come out but through prayer and fasting.

Imagine in your uh in your mind, like a pyramid, and there's this top section of a pyramid.

Like the pyramid represents all of the things that God wants to do, can do in the world.

And all, and there's just this tiny section at the top of the pyramid, which are the things that are the only things they can only come out through prayer and fasting.

Everything underneath the bottom section, the biggest section, the majority of stuff, just the normal average day faith works.

But then there's this top group, he says, that comes out through prayer and fasting.

What is he talking about?

What does that mean for us?

Like, what does that look like?

Here's what I think.

Um, and I want to talk for a set just a second about the whole idea of fasting.

So, so the Bible talks about fasting.

The Old Testament, the um children of Israel would fast.

In the New Testament, Jesus teached on taught on fasting, and he expected his disciples to fast.

He didn't say If you fast, he said, when you fast, don't do it as a show to everybody around you.

And said, kind of do it secretly before God.

So it's a it's a discipline that carries on for Jesus' followers.

If there's fasting in our life, it's an absence.

There we go.

Let's see if that works.

Okay, so fasting is a change in diet.

It can be decided deciding that you're gonna miss one meal.

It can be like Jesus, where he um didn't eat for 40 days.

First of all, um you need to consult your doctor, right?

Before you change your diet and you fast for 40 days, you should consult your doctor.

That's the first thing in my notes here.

The second thing is um there is a newfound benefit to fasting.

I think it's on Netflix right now.

There's a documentary that's like an hour long about the benefits of fasting.

You can go, um it's either like in China, um, where they have these fasting clinics.

You go for 10 days, you have water only.

Um they they have other, like you're doing yoga, you're doing other, like um you're in a restful setting, and uh it has radical ability to heal diseases.

And so there's actually these prescribing of fasting um for all kinds of conditions.

So if you have access to Netflix, then uh go and check it out.

It's very it very interesting.

On the health and like wellness diet side, um, intermittent fasting has become kind of the new fad, which is this idea that um well, there's a couple different ways of intermittent fasting, but it's basically like a 16-hour pause between meals where you're going eating at like your last meal at six at night and then eating the next morning around 10 or 11.

And this has all kinds of like radical benefits to your physical body as well.

In fact, a bunch of Hollywood stars are doing it to um as their training process to um uh like get in shape.

So it is fascinating that kind of our culture right now is taking a second look at fasting, but it seems to have been a discipline in Jesus' life.

Um it is really important to understand that fasting does not earn you the favor of God.

It's not like you're giving up a meal so that God will bless you, right?

It's not a legalistic thing where you're earning God's favor.

Instead, it causes our body to affect the our disposition so that the way we relate to God is pleasing.

It develops in us a dependence upon God and an ability to hear and say yes.

So here's here's how it works, right?

You abstain from food even for like 16 hours, it'll put you in a weakened state.

And that weakened state it can be beneficial to you.

I don't know if I have 2 Corinthians 13, 3 through 4.

No, I don't.

Um go backwards.

I'll just read it.

2 Corinthians 13, 3 through 4 says, Since you are um demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me, he is not weak in dwelling with you, but is powerful among you.

So Christ is powerful.

For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God's power.

Do you see that?

Christ was uh crucified in weakness.

Christ Jesus went to the cross and it demonstrated weakness, but he lives by the power of God, or by God's power.

Then Paul says, likewise, we are weak in him.

Now you're going, wait a second, we read Philippians all together, right?

It says that he is strong, right?

He's able to work in us.

But here he says, no, we are weak in him, yet by God's power we will live with him in our dealings.

Here's the idea.

When you fast and you abstain from food for even just a little bit of time, and your body is craving that food, you take on a state of weakness.

Now, it just so happens that that benefits can benefit your relationship with God because it accurately reflects the truth that we are weak, right?

It accurately reflects the fact that we are, we have this fragile nature as humans, and so as you're relating to God, praying in weakness, it puts you into a place of dependence upon Him.

It's the same thing, like when you pray, you may find it helpful rather than closing your eyes and bowing your head.

Maybe you're in a quiet place, lifting your hands, looking up to heaven.

Your body position may help you put your attention upon God.

So fasting doesn't earn us God's favor, instead, it assists our physical body in being in the place where we need to be, where we can relate to Him in an accurate way.

One other thing, too, to just know about fasting.

So we're born with five senses, most of us.

Sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.

Our brain is processing all of that.

You can talk to Christine about that later.

And um, but when you take away one of those faculties like um taste, it's almost as if you have more clarity overall.

Now, this is anecdotal, this is not the Bible saying this.

So I may be totally wrong, okay?

I try to tell you when I'm when I'm just throwing stuff out there, but it seems to be from my experience with fasting that there is greater like clarity and the ability and like a um uh an awareness of the spiritual realm more when I'm fasting than when I'm on a regular diet.

Now that means that both satanic attack and the work of God's Spirit kind of is like in vivid colors, like the highlighter of the Holy Spirit comes along and things are like really bright.

Now, maybe that's just me.

Um but I throw that out there as a as a possibility.

So if you're in a place where you need God to speak to you, it is worth um considering fasting.

Um, some people just do a Daniel fast where they just change up like what's in their diet.

So they're not having um uh maybe carbs or they're not having um sugars and they're just having um other kinds of food.

That can have a similar impact upon your body.

Um fasting is a great, great thing to experience.

Um, if you haven't done it recently, and I'd encourage you to try it again, even intermittent fasting.

Um of the things when I was in Bible college that I discovered when I was fasting is just how much our culture can idolize food.

That literally we we we wait from meal to meal for the pleasure of eating, not for the energizing our body so we can do the mission of God, which is why I think we eat.

I think we're supposed to eat and and care for our bodies so we can do his mission, right?

But instead, our culture has taken food and made it into, and it's not bad that it's it's enjoyable, right?

God told Israel, I'm blessing you, and part of the blessing is the land's gonna taste good.

There's gonna be honey, there's gonna be milk, it's gonna be awesome, right?

So the pleasure of eating is not necessarily a bad thing until it gets pulled out of its context and becomes something that is idolized.

When I was fasting in Bible college, it was like probably the most intense fast that I did.

It was like 10 days without without food, just water.

And um my desire for the pleasure of eating was so intense that I would go to the grocery store, just walk the aisles, and take pleasure in looking at the snack aisle and the cereal, just imagining eating it was pleasurable to me.

And it revealed to me, wow, that is like my relationship to food.

That I look to food to f to um be a source of entertainment.

So it's just a it it was a self-uh teaching moment that was helpful.

Okay, let's look at the next section.

So so I say all that.

Okay, so why did why do we talk about fasting before before we do move on?

So Jesus tells these guys there's a degree of faith that that you needed to be able to cast out this demon.

So if you're praying and you're fasting, I believe that it's your body contributes to an overall attitude of faith that allows you to be able to do what was what to have the faith that was needed here.

Okay, I'll throw that out there.

You wrestle with it, do with it what you what you will, what God lays on your heart.

But it seems as if that the fasting and the prayer would have increased their level of faith so that they could have addressed the situation.

One way or another, they needed to have more faith, and Jesus rebuked them for not having enough faith.

Okay, 43b through 50, we read through it.

We see again the crowd is marveling at Jesus.

Jesus is telling the disciples again that he is going to be delivered into the hands of men.

This is the second time he said this, right?

So the word delivered is also the word betrayed.

Uh, to this time be delivered.

Other times it literally says, um, Judas, this is the one who betrayed, or this is the one, Judas, who delivered Jesus up.

So it can be it can be translated betrayed or delivered.

So Jesus is saying, this is going down, it's gonna happen, but then the disciples, they don't get it.

The the disciples start to argue over who will be the greatest instead, right?

And and it's just such a such an irony, right?

That Jesus is like, I'm going to the cross, and they're like, Who's gonna be your right-hand man?

And then so Jesus, in order to teach them, he takes a little child, puts the child next to him, and says, If you welcome this child, you're welcoming me.

And if you welcome me, then you're welcoming the one who sent me.

In other words, greatness is a paradox in my kingdom.

It's flipped on its head.

Your whole concept of greatness is not what you think.

Welcome this little child, and you've welcomed me.

He's attaching the idea of greatness with this little child.

Now, you see the temptation, right?

Back when Jesus was a nobody, you're not gonna argue about greatness, right?

You're not in it.

You don't really care about greatness, but now he's got crowds.

Now you got the crowds, now you got 5,000 people that got fed last week, you know, by this crowds.

It's like, and and so it's up for debate.

Now, out of us twelve, who is gonna be the greatest?

And Jesus is just kind of shutting them down.

And it finishes off with this little account where the disciples say, Hey, we saw another guy casting out demons and we told him to stop.

And Jesus says, No, no, no.

If he is not against us, then he's with us.

And Jesus says, just let it be.

Um there's a lot going on here, and and maybe the Lord, just in going through that, just is speaking to you about something that you need to hear in your own life.

But the one thing that I just want to point out is that the approval ratings are not a good indicator of of what's ahead.

The crowd, having a crowd, having um, or things going really bad, right, are not an indicator of the future.

God can turn things on a dime.

And what we need is rather than having our eyes set on kind of the crowd or lack of a crowd or or things being difficult or suffering in our life, we need to just have our eyes set upon the Lord.

He's got our path set out before us.

And we run a risk.

The risk when there's crowds and when things are going good is that we stop being in that place of dependence upon God.

When we're fasting, we're in greater dependence upon God.

When the crowds are there, things are going good, it's easy to sit back.

I do it every week.

I fall into this.

I feel comfortable, and I start to get less disciplined.

I feel less of a necessity to follow the Lord, to read my Bible.

Like it can happen so easily, right?

It's like that hymn, Lord.

Our hearts are prone to wonder, to wander away.

And yet, that is the lesson here that God wants to teach the disciples, is that guys, we're going to the cross.

So let's step back for a minute.

We're about to go into chapter um 951 through 1927.

I want to set this out.

This is um just a few things.

Um, let's put this up on the board, uh, on the screen here.

If we are, if we want to be committed, if we want to be committed to Christ as disciples, and that's the section for the next three months that we'll be going through, and you're like, Josh, I want to be committed more.

What does that look like?

I've got I've got four things for you.

First, understand that when when you surrender your life to God and trust him, he gives you his spirit, and God's spirit activates a desire for commitment to Jesus and then provides you with the motivation and the strength to take the necessary steps.

So the long sentence, I know.

Sorry, I like to write in long sentences, but here's the idea.

All right?

You may be stirred up.

If you feel stirred up, like I want to be a disciple, and that's what Jesus is saying.

He's like, good, you need to be stirred up.

Like if you want to be a follower of me, it's like you're putting your life on the line, it's gonna cost you your whole life.

Well, just know that the Spirit of God not only provokes that feeling in you, but he will help you do it.

Because we're gonna talk about three things that you can do as a disciple, but it's the Spirit that's gonna help you do these things.

Let's go to the next slide here.

First of all, before we get to the three, right away, if you're want to be a follower of Jesus, you need to be baptized.

If you haven't been baptized yet.

And um, so talk to me about that.

We want to do um, we want to do a baptism here in the next couple of months, probably simultaneous to one of our um lunches, our barbecue lunches after church.

Um so that's like that's what Jesus said is like go preach the gospel, baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So if you have not yet been baptized and you would like to um talk to me.

Okay, let's go to the next slide, um, which should say community, right?

This should look pretty familiar.

Community is the first thing that we um are committed to.

You're like, I want to be a disciple.

That means if you want to be a disciple of Jesus, that means you're not just doing church by yourself, you're committed to God's family.

You're committed to God's family.

And do you see what it says?

It says our view of Christian relationships changes from coincidental encounters with like-minded people to instead being God-ordained friendships that we are committed to.

So the reason we gather, the reason why coming to church on Sundays and the other things that we do to build our relationships is because God has put us into a family.

Um, if you live locally here in Southeast Baltimore and you're you're kind of affiliated with the Compassion Center, we have this great thing where we get to see each other more than once a week.

Like we're hanging out.

I get to see Don and Claude and Brian every once in a while, and Albert, you know, and we get to see one another, right?

But even if you're not local, we do a number of things.

In fact, go to the next slide.

To build community, we have our Slack, so that's our app that we use to group message each other.

We have Sunday worship, we have the Compassion Center, um, we do our meals together.

So next Sunday after church, that's a great time to just say, I want to be a disciple of Jesus, so I'm gonna go to a lunch with my church.

Right?

That that's the connection there that exists.

And then our fellowship gatherings, our women's fellowship, our men's fellowship that gathers once a month.

And then that should be coming up pretty soon, I think.

So we'll put that on Slack.

Let's go to the next slide.

The second thing is claim.

For us, claim is this whole idea that God doesn't want to just save us, but he wants us to grow, right?

So we want to lay hold of that which has taken hold of us.

So Philippians 3.12 says, not that I've already attained all this or I've already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of me.

So if you are like Josh, I want to, I want to be a disciple of Jesus.

I want to be a more of a follower, that means that you're gonna pursue growth.

You're gonna pursue growth.

We do that in a number of ways.

I don't know if I have another slide that explains that or not.

Let's see.

No, I just have another Bible verse that goes into the same thing.

That you've been called according to his purpose.

He wants to shape you into the image of his son, right?

Just in case you didn't get the point.

Go to the next slide.

Okay, we won't get to um oh yeah.

Well, we don't have time.

There's too much.

Keep going.

Keep going.

Online discipleship class, Bible teaching on Sundays, men's and women's fellowships, the books at the welcome table, right?

These books, some of us are going through, the books that are over here.

Um, all of those things are there to grow.

Um if you are interested in growing, man, there's so many different ways to do it.

Let's go to the next one.

The third one is this idea of contribute.

1 Corinthians 6.19 says that you are bought at a price, therefore honor God with your bodies.

So you're like, Josh, I want to be a disciple, I want to be a follower of Jesus.

That means that you're all in, right?

You're not just, it's not like, hey, I want to give my money.

No, it's it's I want to contribute my whole life to God.

And a part of that is a generous spirit, but my time, my um, my gifting, all of those things, I want to give to God.

Go to the next slide.

It's one more verse.

Romans 12 says, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.

Why we contribute ourselves to the Lord.

Now, he by his spirit leads us in what it looks like to contribute.

What does it mean for us to live as disciples?

His spirit will show you what he wants you to give, right?

Go to the next slide.

Galatians 2.20.

Many of you know that.

Let's go to the next one.

Last thing here, five by five, right?

We're contributing our lives to the relationships that are around us, to people that don't know Jesus yet.

Serving at the Compassion Center, helping on Sundays.

All of those things that are listed there are a part of what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus.

So we're gonna go into the next ten chapters of Luke.

I'd encourage you to be with us.

Um, don't miss a Sunday if you don't have to.

I'll put up the podcast, the recording is there, but again, our relationships are important with one another.

Um let's let's finish um by singing the song.

Let's stand.

I pray.

Lord, we do pray that you would bless us as disciples of you.

We want to be followers.

And so we sing, Lord, this last song, just again, dedicating our lives to you.

Let's let's sing