Parables: Week 3

Good morning. My name is James, and I just want to encourage you

with a couple of things. One, our youth group has brought twenty six

guests in the last two weeks. Can we give them a big hand there

next door and they got a lot of guests, and I love that.

David asked Andrew to preach over there today and he said, Andrew, make

sure that you invite people to respond to the gospel. So we want to

pray for those guests to come to Christ today. Secondly, you know last

week we kicked off our neighborhood market and we shared a little bit last week,

but just want to let you know again just we're raising God. We

haven't opened again here in the next week or so. And last week we

were able to serve and feed one hundred and forty people when you count out

all the people we were able to feed. And so we're just praising God

for this church taking these steps to reach the needs in our community. And

so before we pray, I just want to say, hey, let us

dive into this word today because this word can be challenging for some of us,

and so let's prepare our hearts. God, we love you, and

we thank you for the opportunity to worship you today, to seek you today.

And God, I just pray that as your word challenges us today,

that we will respawn like the people of God should respawn. And Jesus Name

Amen. You know, I have a few moments in my life where I'm

like, man, I wish I could go back to that moment and have

that moment over again. Do any of you have that moment where you're like,

Oh, I wish I had a mulligan on that moment in my life.

And if I had a time travel machine, I would go back to

that moment and I would do something so different, you know. I have

one of those big moment was when I was a young youth passers and I

was in Renosa, Mexico, leading a mission trip and it was our day

office or our pockets were full of money, and we were walking into the

market there and we were crossing the American side of the border, and as

we were walking across, I noticed that the fence, the bridge that we're

going to walk across, had a fence that went over the whole bridge,

and I thought, oh, that must be to keep people from falling over

into this dry bed underneath. And as I started walking across, I quickly

realized that the fence was not to protect those who were walking across the bridge,

but as to protect those who were on the bridge from those who were

under the bridge. And there wasn't really any adults under the bridge, but

there was kids, a whole bunch of kids. And the kids had these

long sticks, and on these sticks they had either Clorox bottle or a gallon

of milk empty bottle, and they opened up the top of it so that

they could smack the fence as you walked all the way across, and you

know, just basically want you to drop money into those And as I was

walking across, I had never seen anything like that. And when I first

saw it and they were smacking, and I looked at these little kids,

my heart almost just stopped and I thought, oh my gosh, this is

this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life, and I could

hardly take it. I even thought to myself that if there was ever an

image on Earth that could even come close to what Hell might look like,

this is what it is. And in that stunned moment, what I didn't

do was I didn't instruct my group, who every single one of them had

their pockets full of money. I didn't instruct us to, you know,

feed these kids with launch or even to go down and love them them.

By the way, did you know our whole mission trip was to go down

there a love on people. But when we saw this, here's what I

did. I couldn't stand a look at it. So I put my head

down and I just walked across the rest of the bridge. And what I

didn't realize that I had done. When I got to the other side of

the bridge, I looked back, and the hundred students that were walking behind

me followed and did exactly what I did. I taught them to put their

heads down. I taught him not to look at pain. I taught them

to just pass on by. And that's one of those moments that God has

dealt with me in some serious ways. And I'll share more about that here

in a little bit, but it's one of those moments that I just wish

I could have that moment back. And when we come to our texts today,

there's a man who probably wishes that he could have this one moment back

in his life. He asked Jesus a question, and Jesus volleyed the answer

or volleyed the question excuse me back to the man, and the man took

the question and then he answered it correctly. But once he answered the question

correctly, he then asked another question that would make him look really good in

front of everybody. And it's at this moment how Jesus answered that question man,

the way Jesus answered that question, I can guarantee you, because how

it's recorded two thousand years later, that man wishes he could have that moment

back. He probably wishes he never asked that question. So let's look at

our texts today. As we look at Luke chapter ten, it says,

on one occasion, an expert of the law stood up to test Jesus teacher.

He asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Now a

lawyer stands up in the midst of a group. Now you gotta understand about

a lawyer. Back then, they knew the Old Testament law. They were

the ones who people looked through. They were religious, they were experts,

they were scholars. So he asked Jesus this, what were you would call

a pretty simple question. Now here's the thing the Greek word test to test

Jesus. It's not what it looks like on the surface. It wasn't like

he was just hoping Jesus would get a right. No, he was intentionally

hoping to catch Jesus in a theological trap and embarrass him. So Jesus,

having this lawyer who's trying to trap him, takes up another not and he

uses the Socratic method and he responds to a question by asking him a question.

So let's look at this next partner. It says, what is written

on the law? Jesus replied, and how do you read it? So

he turns a question back on the man. Now here's what the funny part

is. You got to see that there's humor here devout you during that time,

especially ascribe a lawyer, it would have been wearing a philactery on their

forehead and another fallactory on their arm. A philactry would be a leather a

little box that has scripture in it. So you can imagine Jesus when the

guy ask him in what must I do to inherit eternal life? You can

imagine Jesus pointing at what's written on his head, almost like well, what

do you think it says here? And I wish the Bible says would say

that. Jesus flicked him on the fallactory and said, what do you think

it says that? But you know, I don't get to right the Bible.

But this guy's literally wearing the answer. It would be like I'm wearing

a T shirt that has a famous rock and roll band on it, and

then I ask you what's your favorite band? And then you would respond,

what is the band that you're wearing on your shirt? The guy asked Jesus,

how must I inherit eternal life? And Jesus like, well, man,

you've got it written on your forehead, so what do you think it

says? So you see this very humorous interchange between these two, and so

the young scribe he answered, well, Number one, love the Lord your

golf, all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul,

of all your strength. Number two, love your neighbor as yourself.

And then Jesus responded, hey, you got a buddy. You answered correctly,

do this and you will live. Now here's what you got. Understand.

The guy answered correctly, and he broke it down into two simple answers.

He broke it down too, love the Lord your God with everything you

have, and love your neighbor. Now to understand what was going on here,

he answered the first part, love the Lord your God everything you got,

and that was a prayer that they would say every day, twice a

day, called the Shemah. The shemah covered the first four commandments, which

was talking about our relationship with God. So the first four commandments of the

ten Commandments is all about our relationship God. But then the second part,

the last six commandments, that's talking about how we interact with our neighbors.

So by answer love the Lord your God, he covered the first four commandments,

love your neighbor. He covered the last ten commandments. So by this

man's answer, love God and love others, he covered the whole ten Commandments.

This is a very wise, a very much educated scholar, and so

he answers a question correctly. So this is where the story changes. Ready,

here's where the story changes. But he wanted to justify himself. I'm

gonna interpret this myself. He wanted to prove his intelligence, he wanted to

show off, he wanted to get admiration. He was having a prideful moment,

so he wanted to justify himself, and he asked Jesus, well,

who is my neighbor? And so we see here the expert has the same

problem that most experts in this world have. They could become extremely proud of

themselves. And therefore he asked Jesus to define neighbor. But he's not asking

Jesus to define neighbor just so over buying. You know, in the crowd,

we'll get some education. But he's wanting to prove that he's a good

neighbor. And what you see here in this text is pride. And pride

is something that so easily well up in us just for doing a little bit

of good. You know, Pride is something that I constantly have to pray

all the time for God to not allow my life. And I'm the type

of person that I could become prideful over anything. Yesterday my wife asked me

to fix a cabinet in our kitchen. It required me going out and getting

a drill, opening that door and go. And I did it. And

I closed the door, opened it up two or three times, put it

down. I thought, what would she do without me? And I was

so proud of myself. I was, I mean, pride could just well

up in a so quickly over anything. I was invited along with the rest

of our staff to go over to Pastor Isaac's house. Pastor Isaac is the

pastor who leaves the Arabic congregation at our church, and we went over to

his home. The whole staff was there in his house, absolutely beautiful house.

And we get to the living room, and in the living room as

a collage of pictures of Pastor Isaac throughout the years of ministry. So I

look at my wife and I'm like, they got a collage a picture of

him in their living room. There's not a picture of me anywhere in our

house. If if you were to go through our first level and upstairs,

the only evidence that I live at my house is there's a deer mount.

Other than that, there's no evidence that I exist. Okay, And so

I'm like, that's how you respect the man. Baby, She's oh,

okay, okay. Well, later that evening, we're sitting out back and

Pastor Isaac asked me, Hey, James, when are you gonna go to

Egypt? And so I'll joke around and I'm like, oh, that sounds

horrible, that's so hot. You just so hot, man, look at

me, I'll die. And he's like, well, there's other seasons,

and I said, and I said, also, I went online and there's

there's all this, uh, you know, hunting opportunities, but there's not

one thing that I would like to hunt for. You guys don't have great

hunting there. And then he says, well, you can hunt for snakes

and I said, hay snakes. I'm scared of death of snakes. Oh

lord no. And then one of his sons says, Dad, tell him

about when you fought the cobra. And I'm like, you fought a cobra.

And so here's how it works in Egypt. If you don't finish high

school, you're scripted to the army for three years. You finished high school,

two years, you finished college one year. Isaac was serving his one

year in the military. He's out in a desert on patrol. He's walking

along. He hears this big snake's coming up behind him. He turns around.

It's reared up at him, ready to strike. And so I said,

did you shoot it? He goes, no, You're not allowed to

pull your weapon without your commanders, you know, giving you the permission to

do that I go, well did you do He says, I grabbed a

metal stick, so what did you do? Then he was I fought it,

and then he just talked about it like it was nothing. He goes,

well, first of all, you don't want to go behind a cobra.

You don't want to go to the side of a cobra. When you

fight a cobra, you want to go head on. And then a soft

part of the top of their head, that's a soft part. That's why

you want to aim at. And then he proceeded to tell me that he

beat that cobra to death, and I am sitt there like you gotta be

kidding me, And then his kids go tell him about the barracks. About

a month later, another cobra got into the barracks, and so the army

guys said, Isaac, you know how to kill cobrash you go kill the

cobra. So Isaac grabs a metal bar, goes into a barrack and he

takes on another cobra and he kills it. And then I'm sitting there,

my jaw is to the floor, and I'm like, this is you are

amazing. I'm blown away by this guy and then I said something like this

is the equivalent to like in America, one of us killing a bear with

a knife. I mean, this is amazing. And in that moment,

my wife leans over to me and said, this is why he has a

collag And my wife founds how to humble me sometimes. And it's good for

us to have people who love us and humble us. And what we're gonna

see through the rest of this story is Jesus loves the people he's talking to,

but there's some humbling, and the humbling is hoping to bring change,

because when we're humbled, the only way we change is when we humble ourselves.

There's no such thing as change without humility. So Lord is trying to

humble through this story. So Jesus tells a story. He says in reply,

Jesus said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he

was attacked by robbers. They stripp him up his clothes, they beat him

and went away, leaving him half dead. And here's what we're gonna see,

and here's how we're gonna do the rest of this message. What we're

gonna do is we're gonna look at three different types of people in this world.

First of all, we come across the first group, and these are

the people who like to beat up on others. Now, traveling from Jerusalem

to Jericho, this man would have gone through the thing called a passive a

dumbam. A passive a dummam is translated into the Hebrew it means blood,

and so it became known as the way of blood. Up until the fifth

century, Jerome even called it the bloody way, and up until the nineteenth

century, local sheiks would charge you to walk you through this just so you

were safe, because basically you had nothing but desert. Then you had several

miles of nothing but huge mountains on both sides of a lot of caves.

It was very easy for people to hide in the caves and come out and

attack you. And so some people, the commentators over the ears throughout history

will even say, you know what, this traveler knew better. He knew

better than to walk through this area by himself. He knew better, he

heard the stories, he should have been going there by himself. This is

what he deserves, Fern, you know, not thinking it through. And

that's how someone who beats up on others responds to those in need in every

town, city, country in the world to say. There are people who

beat up on others. There are people who make themselves feel good at the

cost of others. There are people who bully others into doing what they want

them to do. These are the people who wear suits and then take advantage

of the poor. These are the poor who take advantage of the kind hearted.

These are the takers of the world. These are the people who at

home, in their home it's their way or the highway. These are the

people who at work that you work with use other people to their advantage.

In the church, in the church as those people who have their own agenda

without thinking about anybody else, because it's all about them and their agenda.

Now here's a very very silly, silly little story to help you get that

point. It was after I was here for a little while, not too

long, We're having a big party out back after church to Haverstick. And

it was a very hot day, and I had finished doing stuff up here

greeting people, and I walked out to this parking lot facing Haverstick and then

I was walking over through the parking lot the faces for sixty five and I

had a long sleeve shirt on. And now this is right after the period

where I decided to spwaring suits and and and coats and I'm just gonna dress

like a normal human being. And so I'm walking and it is hot.

It is hot. I'm murray dropping with sweat. And then I see this

elderly lady and said she and I wants THEMS parking lot because the whole party's

over there, and she's really struggling with a walker and she can't get into

her car, and so I run over to her. Did I tell you

it was hot? So I run over to her, and I'm like,

hey, it looks like you're really struggling. Let me help you out.

And I literally helped her, like physically get to her car seat, buckled

her up, I said, what's your injury? Taught her, I'm so

sorry you're hurting, and and it was our first time, you know,

trying to figure out how to do life like this, and I put her

walk her in the back seat and I close up and I said, man,

I really hope you get the feeling better pretty soon. You have a

blessed day. And then she looked at me, she said, past her,

I wish you would dress better. She did not say thank you,

She just simply said, I really wish you would dress better. The only

I've been better in that story is she would have pulled out and ran over

both of my toes. That would have been great, a much better story.

But instead she just walked away. And to be honest, I tell

you that story because it's a really, really, really silly story, but

that really represents an overall attitude that can happen very easily in a church.

People can get their expectations of what they want from everyone else, what they

want from the church, and it's all about their expectations. You know what,

if I was a guest that day and I wasn't the pastor, I

would have done the same thing. I would have helped anybody like that.

And if she'd just says something to me about the clothes I was wearing,

you think I would have ever brought my family back to this church. There's

no way. There's no way. And let me tell you something. I

tell that story only because I feel like I'm not seeing any of that for

a long time. And a matter of fact, the way you love people,

I am extremely proud to be your pastor, But I wanted to tell

you that little silly story because he let me tell you to be a hundred

percent honest. As I walked over to the crowd, I felt a little

beat up, like I'm not good to be her, I'm enough to be

a pastor here at this church, and I felt beat up. See people

who have their own agenda, they will beat up other people. For instance,

the guys who were high down the cave who attacked this man, they

felt like it was beat him up to do whatever they wanted to him physically,

emotionally, or mentally, and they stole for him. Why because they

felt like it was. They're right, if they want to beat somebody down,

they could beat somebody down, because there are those in the world who

believe it's okay to beat others down. The second group we see that Jesus

talks about are those who pass up others in need. Those who pass up

others in need. Let's look at this. A priest happened to be going

down the same road and he saw the man and he passed by on the

other side, so to a LEVI when he came to the place and saw

him passed by on the other side. Now this is a group I believe,

hope so ohheartedly breaks Jus's heart. The priests and a Levite. These

are people considered close to God. They're representatives of God. They represent the

church people, they represent the pastors. This is a group that would represent

the church, and they just passed on by. Jesus picks out two men

who are considered men of religion, and they just passed on by. Whenever

I read this story, I can't help but to think about a story that

I read a long time ago, which I'm sure a love you are readers

in this church. He've ran across this story before. The young man recounting

his days in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, and he said, I lived

in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. I attended

church since I was a small boy. We had heard the stories of what

was happening to the Jews, but we try to distance ourselves from the reality

what was taking place? What can we do to stop it? Anyways,

and they said the railroad track rate behind our small church, and each Sunday

morning we would hear the whistle from a distance in the clacking of the wheels

over the track, and we became disturbed when one Sunday we'd noticed that there

was cries coming out of the train as it passed by, and we grimly

realized that they would carrying Jews like cattle on those cars. And week after

week the train whistle would come and we would dread to hear the sound of

the old wheels, and we knew that the Jews would starts crying out as

they passed. At church, he said it was incredibly disturbing us. So

he said, our church decided that when the train came by and the people

start screaming, that's when we would start our worship set. And then the

louder they screamed, the louder we was seen until we could hear them no

more. You talk about wishing somebody could go back and having another moment.

I wonder what the priests or leave I distracted themselves with when they passed by

the man who was beaten. Did they passed Did they distract themselves with thoughts

of like, well if I touched him, I'm unclean and I can't go

do my duties at the temple, Or you know what, maybe this is

a scene they want us to go help him, and then there's gonna be

o robbers who are gonna come out and attack him. I wonder what they

distracted themselves with in order to justify passing on by. But here's the thing.

That text doesn't give a motive. It's not concerned for a reason.

The reason doesn't matter to Jesus. The point is that someone who knew what

to do didn't do what they were supposed to do. Instead, they just

passed on by. And then let's read the rest of the story. But

a Samaritan, now a story changes. As he traveled, came where the

man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

He went to him and banish his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.

Then he put the man on his own donkey brought him to an end and

took care of him. The next day he took out too, Denarian gave

it to the innkeeper. He said, look after him, and when I

returned, I reimbursed you for any extra expense you may have. Now we

come to the third type of humans, those who lift up others. See.

The only problem with how Jesus ends a story is who he makes the

hero. The Jews hated the Samaritans. They didn't just kind of not like

them, They really hated them. They made jokes about them, they talk

bad about them, they ignored them in public. The Samaritans you need to

live in your neighborhoods. Jews will live in our neighborhoods. And there was

no love lost between these ethnic groups. So where did this source of hatred

come from? Can you pull up the map. The source of hatred came

from about nine twenty two BC, if you see here in the Kingdom of

Israel. During that time, Samaria was actually the capital of Israel, very

important city. But when the Assyrians came over and attacked, they carried away

all the people of the northern Kingdom. They left a few people behind,

a few people from Samaria behind. Well in Second Kings chapter seventeen, and

talked about how those Samaritans who were left behind, they started to intermarry with

people from outside of their ethnic group. And so they start marrying anybody they

can find outside of their at the group. And so by the time of

the Jews came back from captivity to rebuild Israel, they considered the Samaritans a

mixed race, and so therefore they would have nothing to do with them.

And then this this went on for years, even to the point where the

Samaritan temple on Mount Garrizine was destroyed. So think about this. By the

time Jesus tell us a story, it answers a question, who is my

neighbor? Who is my neighbor? By time Jesus answers the story, it's

been seven centuries, seven hundred years of hating each other. Now, Jesus

didn't do this on accident. Jesus had a purpose for naming the Samaritan here.

Let me give you those two purposes. Number one, he makes it

clear that in God's Kingdom there is no such thing as non neighbor. All

right, do you hear that? And God's Kingdom there's no such thing as

a non neighbor. If you are a part of the Kingdom of God,

there is no such thing as a non neighbor. Too. It doesn't matter

if they're black, they're why, doesn't matter. What ethnicity did come from

doesn't matter. If they are a Jew, doesn't matter. If they're Egyptian,

doesn't matter. If they're Latino, it doesn't matter. If they're from

Canada. It doesn't matter. I didn't even mean for that to be funny.

I'm sorry, but I was just thinking of other areas. It doesn't

matter. There's no such thing as a non neighbor. Number two, he

challenges his listeners to relook about the way they think about ethnic groups. So

we're supposed to emulate the Samaritans. What's three things that Samaritans do? Now,

how do we emulate Number one? He has compassion, his heart's broken

for this person. So, but he doesn't just stay at compassion, because

a lot of us could stay at compassion. When I walked across the bridge,

I had compassion. Okay, we can have compassion, but we must

move to the next step. And that as he got his hands dirty,

and those who are in the Kingdom get their hands dirty, they do something

about it. And I love that he uses his own resources. He didn't

make an excuse. Did you notice that he did not actually have all the

resources that he needed to take care of him. He said, here's a

deposit, I'll be back and i'll bring some more to cover this. In

other words, he's going to figure out how to take care of that person.

So sometimes we will use excuses we don't have what it takes But if

we are really caring for someone, we'll figure it out. We will figure

it out. Now here's Jesus tells a story which kind of blows everybody's mind.

They did not want to hear the story like this. They're not happy

about how the story is told. And then Jesus closes it like this.

He asked another question, which of these street do you think was a neighbor

to the man who fell in the hands of the robbers. The expert of

the law again nails. By the way, this guy's right every single time,

he says, the one who had mercy on him. Good answer,

hunh, perfect score one. But did you notice something in this text?

Do you notice that there's something really big left out here? Pay attention this

Who was the one who you know was the neighbor in a story? He

says, the one who had mercy on him. The expert of the law

still could not say Samaritan. His hatred for that culture was so deep that

he still could not say the Samaritan. That's big. That's really big.

And so Jesus takes this and what he does is he he doesn't let this

just become a story that goes down in history, a beautiful story, a

moment where he uh outdules the you know, the scholar. No, Jesus

ends a story by saying this, go and do likewise. There's a call

to all of us to go and do likewise. See, let me just

break down a few things. As we think about our church, as we

think about not trying to be a bigger church, but doing everything we can

to be a better church, what does our church look like in the future.

There's a few things we can grab from this story. Okay, here

is the field that we're gonna play in. Okay. Number one, Okay,

we are not to ask who our neighbor is. We're to just be

a neighbor. Okay, we don't ask who our neighbor is. We're just

to be a neighbor. Number Two, Love that comes from the heart responds

with the hands. We're not a church. It's just going to be full

of tears and compassion. But we're going to be people who do something about

things seeing knowledge of God. We can go to all the Sunday school classes,

all the small groups that we can do, all the Bible studies on

this earth. But if you become a scholar and yet you don't know how

to be the hands and feet of Christ. We've missed something big time here.

It's not the point. It's not the point. Now, how do

we apply this text to our congregation to day number one? I think Jesus

wanted us to do a three things one as we help others even when they

brought trouble on themselves. Here's what I've heard over the years from many many

Christians over the years. Well, if they had done this, they wouldn't

be in a situation, or if they had done this or that, or

this or that, or because they made these decisions or blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah. We're so focused on how somebody screwed things up

in the past that we make that as an excuse so we can't help them

today. I don't think so, No, that we are not going to

be those people. When someone has a need, we try to meet that

need. See, even the scholars throughout the years said, hey, he

knew better than to go down that way. Jesus wasn't didn't care if that

was the point. He just says, let's help those who are in need,

even if their backstory isn't something we're excited about. Number two, anyone

who is in need that's our neighbor. A number three or response must be

practical and not simply consist of feeling sorry. So as I close up today,

I just want to share a few things. One, I want to

go back to my original story and say, God dealt me for a long

time about that, and out of that I decided, you know, I'm

definitely I'm gonna change. I'm I'll be a different type of pastor. I'm

not going to be a pastor who preaches all the time about what we should

do and doesn't and doesn't live it out. And so the first change I

made was when our hometown had a homeless ministry opportunity. I was one of

the first pastors say I want to help. And so for the next many

years, I would live with the homeless for three to six weeks. I

taught our church how to interact with the homeless, and to the point where

actually some of the homeless people became a part of our church ministry and got

saved. Number Two, I said to our youth group, we will no

longer go on mission trips and just be like tours to do good. Whatever

we learn on the mission trip, we will come back home and implement it.

And so on our first mission trip after that, we learned how to

run a VBS to a project community. So when we came back every summer

from that point on, on Wednesday nights, we would go to a local

project and we would run a VBS. We would have all the teachers out

there, the kids were leading all the classes, our students rely on the

classes. We had a barbecue, we have games, and we let a

lot of kids to Christ. And then the next year on my mission trip,

we learned how to throw these big block parties and so we would throw

these big block parties where were we would come back to our hometown and we

would go around and invite, you know, these kids and these block parties

where every single one of them would be told about Jesus and we would present

the gospel to every single one of them through a bracelet. And and here's

the thing, we didn't know whether to respect one hundred or two hundred and

every single one of those we did. We'd had four to eight hundred kids

show up for these. It was overwhelming, and our just our youth group

would put this on and some of the neighborhoods I went to, I had

to get gang members response permission to go knock on the doors, and some

of the neighborhoods the gang members would walk me door to door because even the

pastors and the gang members agreed, we need to love kids. Now,

I don't see that playing out here. When I was away last year on

my vacation, Lord really started to speak to me. And one of the

things that God really we started to ask me this question and started delving deep

into my soul. This question kept coming over and over again. What if

Church of the Crossing would not have opened back up after the pandemic? What

would happen? And the first thing I thought it was, there's a lot

of people who's been here for many years. It would be heartbroken because they

lost their friends, they lost their church, and they investment. Okay,

but then I felt like God kept proud of me. But what would the

community think. I'm like, well, there's there's this one ministry here,

this one little mystery. They'd be really sad if we didn't have the ECC

in our community. But to be honest, I could not say if integrity

that our community would be heartbroken if Church of the Crossing would have shut down.

And I feel like it's the purpose that God spoken to my souls for

us to become the type of church that if we were to shut down tomorrow,

that the community is around us would have to go to their civic leaders

and say what are you going to do to replace the works that they were

doing? For us to become a church that if something were to happen,

it would rock our community. That's the type of church we are going to

become. We're gonna become a type of church that when we see a need,

when we get a leader and the resources, we're gonna meet that need.

It's gonna take a while. This is the direction we're going. We've

already started. Hey, we got to already opened up our neighborhood pantry.

Hey, we got a legal clinic going on. We're helping those girls who

decide to keep their baby. We're going to be discipling them and throwing parties

for them and loving on them. And we're taking one step at a time.

But ultimately, what we're gonna do is we're gonna be a church that

decides we're not going to just pass by our community. But we're going to

be the hands and feet of Christ in our community. And so my question

to you is we've been talking, Andrew and I keep talking about having dirty

hands around here, and really what that's talking about is not being somebody who's

a what I would say, a Christian who just gobbles up the Bible and

we become like these turkeys and we get all fat because we just gobbled up,

gobbled up, gobbled up, but we've never went out and done anything.

I want us to be a church that gets our hands dirty and loves

us community, loves on our kids, loves on our youth. I want

to give us some time to pray right now, and I want you to

just talk to God. And again, it's one of those things where we

take step by step and we just want and part of it it's just consecrating

ourselves to the Lord and saying, Lord, these hands belong to you,

my body belongs to you, my life belongs to you. I will not

pass people by. So can we just take some time to pray right now.

I want you to have a conversation with the Lord and just hear in

silence for our heads bowed. I want you to consecrate yourself again, to

say, God, whatever you call me to do, whatever you need me

to do, my hands belong to you. Pray m Jesus. There's some

of us who, in order to be the hands of feed of Christ in

this area, we need to get connected to a group. So help us

to take that step. Maybe that's our first step today. For some of

us, it's not about that we don't have the part to do it.

It's just we're shy. We get anxious. God help us to empower us,

to help us to overcome those fears. For some of us, our

schedule is so crazy that we don't have time to do that. God,

show us how to do this in the midst of our crazy schedule. Help

us to see our workplace and chin help us our child's ball team as our

mission field. God, we want to be in the hands of feed of

Christ. We want to carry this message through the week. We prayed us

now the name of Jesus, Amen.