Week 1: Shaped for Mission (Derik Fuller) | Shaped by Jesus

I'm going to get a stand. There we go.

The last four weeks, if you've been with us, we have been

walking through and looking at how Jesus is at the center of

the entire Old Testament. The whole thing is a beacon

pointing us towards him. I've heard from a bunch of you

how much you have enjoyed that time and putting those pieces

together. And if you're in the boat where

you like, hey, I wish we could do another four weeks, I've got

a great news for you. On Monday, April 20th, we start

an equip class where for four weeks, Laura Tucker, who is

hosting this morning is going to be walking through Jesus in the

Old Testament. And so if your heart is really

left and you want to kind of get to understand this even better

and see how the Old Testament points towards Jesus in the new

want to encourage you to sign up for that equip class.

I have loved the last four weeks too, but I'm really excited to

get back into Luke this morning. Next 10 weeks we're going to be

in Luke Chapter 9 and and we want to see how Jesus shaped his

Luke 9 · chapter mention

disciples and is shaping us for ministry.

Here's our our kind of series big idea for the the next 10

weeks as we track together that following Jesus is not simply

about believing right things about him.

It is about being shaped by him. It's not just giving

intellectual assent or knowing certain things about Jesus, but

it is actually allowing Jesus to shape our lives.

Throughout this section of Luke's gospel of the account of

Jesus life, we see Jesus really intentionally forming his

disciples, especially the 12 disciples who he calls out as

his apostles. We see Jesus working on them to

humble their hearts. We see Jesus working on them to

confront their fears, to to strengthen their faith, to give

them a bigger vision of what he has come to do and a bigger

vision of who he is. And then ultimately to call them

into what he has already begun doing.

And, and I think as we walk through this, we're going to see

how Jesus wants to do that with each of us.

If you're here today and you're like, I, I really want to

understand what does Jesus have for my life?

What's my purpose? What's my calling?

I think Jesus going to show us that if you want to know, hey,

how can Jesus shape me to be a more courageous, less fearful

person, We're going to see how Jesus does it.

If you want to say, how can Jesus help me see a bigger

picture of who God is and a bigger picture of what his

Kingdom is meant to be on this earth, we're going to see that

in Luke Chapter 9. And I want to say this, I've

Luke 9 · chapter mention

just been so convinced of this as I've been putting this series

together, as I've been thinking about walking through this

section like our world desperately, desperately,

desperately needs followers of Jesus.

Don't just know some stuff about Jesus.

It needs people who know Jesus. It needs people who are actually

being shaped to look more and more like Jesus in their lives.

And so before we get into the, the, the sermon today, as we

kind of begin to enter into this whole series, I just want to

pray over our time together over the next 10 weeks, over our time

together this morning. Then we're going to read God's

Word together. Father, as we open your Word

today, we thank you that the same spirit that inspired the

words that Luke penned lives in each and every follower of you

who is here today. And so as you have given us

these words passed down and transmitted to us through the

Scriptures, allow your Spirit, who is the transcriber of those

words, to also be the interpreter of those words in

our heart today. Help us to see where we need to

take the words that we hear and apply them to the lives that we

are called to live, particularly in this area of being shaped for

mission. Father, I just desperately want

you to show each of us, myself included, how we can live more

in line with the mission that you have called us to how we can

be better ambassadors for you. So God would you for each one of

us, give us ears to hear today and then give us the courage and

the boldness and the power to put into practice what we hear

in Jesus name, Amen. All right, let's read this

passage from Luke Chapter 9, the 1st 6 verses together this

Luke 9 · chapter mention

morning. Luke records this.

It says summoning the 12, that is the 12 apostles.

He gave them power and authority over all demons and to heal

diseases and then he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God

and to heal the sick. Take nothing for the road, he

told them. No staff, no traveling bag, no

bread, no money and don't take an extra shirt.

Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.

If they do not welcome you when you leave that town, you shake

off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.

And so they went out and they travelled from village to

village proclaiming the good news and healing everywhere.

So if we go back and we think about where we've been in Luke,

Luke calls the first disciples to begin to follow him and walk

alongside him in Luke chapter 5. And then he calls twelve of

Luke 5 · chapter mention

those disciples to be his inner circle, to be those who are just

with him all the time watching, observing, healing, watching him

teach, watching him heal, watching him cast out demons

and, and, and those 12 are called the apostles.

And now in this section, everything begins to change

because the watchers are now called to become doers.

The observers are called into participation.

Jesus is saying in this moment, as we start now into this

chapter, guys, it's your turn now.

You've been around me, you've seen what I've been doing.

Come on and join me in it. Right in Luke 443.

If you go back and you look at that verse, Jesus said that His

mission is is to proclaim the good news about the Kingdom of

God. In fact, He said when

individuals were coming and asking him to stay where he was,

to continue teaching and healing and casting out demons, he said

no, it's necessary for me to proclaim the good news about the

Kingdom of God to other towns because that's the purpose I was

sent for. This is why I've come.

And then what's he calling these guys to do The exact same thing,

right? Proclaim the Kingdom of God and

heal the sick. The same thing that he has been

doing, He's now calling the disciples into.

This is really important because we need to understand this.

This is not a new mission. It's not the disciples mission.

It's Jesus's mission that he is now inviting the disciples to

enter into, and he's invited them to enter into it.

I want you to see this morning He also invites us to enter into

it. This is the mission of every

follower of Jesus. Jesus is calling us to

participate in his mission. Jesus mission is our mission.

Christianity is not a spectator sport.

It is simply impossible to follow Jesus from the stands or

the computer screen or the balcony seats or the seats on

the main floor. Like if that's the totality of

your understanding of what it means.

To follow Jesus is to show up, to listen to somebody else do

things for Jesus, to listen to somebody else talk about Jesus

and feel like you are following Jesus.

You are not a follower of Jesus. You may be a fan of Jesus, but

but Christianity is not a spectator sport.

Sometimes Christians argue about really dumb stuff.

I don't know if you noticed this now, and I will say this because

I don't. This is just because people

argue about dumb things and Christians are people.

So if you're here and you're not a follower of Jews, you're like,

oh, the Christians, yeah, they're always.

I'm just telling you, everybody argues about dumb stuff.

Christians follow into it too. And one of the things that

Christians argue about that's really dumb is whether

Christianity is at it at its core.

Are we supposed to be evangelizing or making

disciples? And the reality is you can't

separate those two things. Is like saying is breathing

about taking in oxygen or is about expelling CO2.

It's the same thing. It's one in the same you, you,

You have to have evangelism and discipleship because they're one

in the same. Evangelism is required to make

disciple. You got to invite people, tell

people of Jesus, invite people to follow Jesus if you're going

to have disciples and disciples evangelize, because that's what

it means to be a disciple. If you're a disciple of Jesus,

your mission is to proclaim the gospel or the good news, just

like it was Jesus's mission to go proclaim the good news.

That's the definition of evangelism.

Proclaiming good news is literally what it means.

The gospel is good news, you angelion.

It's the good news, and Jesus said, I came to proclaim this

good news, to herald this good news that the Kingdom of God has

come. Now the question we should ask

is why is that good news? Why is it good news that the

Kingdom of God has come and the Kingdom requires a king?

Can't have a Kingdom without a king, Doesn't work that way.

Why is it good news that the Kingdom has come?

Why is it good news that the king has come?

The reason that it is good news that the Kingdom has come and

that the Kingdom has come is because the king is the only

hope for this world. You know what?

Ultimately, there's all sorts of people that want to sell all

sorts of hope out there. There's people who want to sell

you on the hope that if we could just get new or better or

different leaders, everything would get different.

And I've lived long enough to see every leader is basically

the same leader. We end up going through all the

same stuff, but but entire realities are built around

getting you to convince, get worked around, getting you to

believe that if you could just change the guy at at the top

who's in control with a different guy at the top who's

in control, everything would be different.

People will tell you if we could just get better education, you

know, people would just, we just educate people.

If people would just have better information.

We are awash in information. We got too much information.

It has not solved the problems. People say, well, we mean what

we need is better laws, better rules.

We got so many rules. My wife will tell you I'm not

exactly a rule person. I'm not a bureaucracy person.

We got so many rules. It hasn't fixed things.

Some people say, well, you're better technology.

Well, I think we know the answer to that.

Better technology is just better technology.

It doesn't make things better. And often times if the people

who are using it aren't better, it makes things worse.

I even hear people what we need is a four day work week or a

social program or guaranteed income or what we need is more

empathy. No, like all those things may be

good things. I don't know.

I just know that none of them are actually going to fix what's

broken. There's no real hope.

If you're pinning your hope on that, you're going to end up

disappointed. The hope, the good news for this

world is that the King has come. That's why we celebrate Easter.

And that's why we celebrate every Sunday, because every

Sunday is a celebration of Easter.

That the King came, that he set in motion the hope for us, That

as Val prayed not just the hope for us as as individual, but the

hope for all things, That restoration and renewal not only

might happen, but is going to happen.

That everything that is wrong will be made right.

Jesus came and he died on the cross for the full penalty of

our sin and the sin of the entire world to make right all

that was set wrong by sin. And then Jesus as the King rose

again to prove that he reigns. He reigns over all things,

including death itself. That's why Easter is so great,

because Jesus rules and reigns over all.

So proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom is to proclaim the

good news that that is the King who has come, that there is a a

King who has paid the price, pay the price that sin made

necessary. He, he has come to set us free

from guilt and shame. He has come to set us free one

day ultimately from the entire reality of sin that corrupts and

breaks everything. And that King, Jesus, he is the

King who rules and reigns over all things.

Followers of Jesus are not first and foremost sent to proclaim a

moral message or a social message or a psychological

message or a political message. We are sent to proclaim a truth.

Jesus is the King who died, Jesus is the King who is buried,

and Jesus is the King who is risen and reigns over all

things. That's we come to proclaim.

And I'm just going to tell you when when Christians and the

church, when the mission becomes something other than that.

First and foremost, when the mission becomes political, we

fail in our mission. When the the mission of the

church becomes social, we fail in our mission.

When the mission of the church becomes about doing good, we

fail in our mission. When the mission of the church

becomes about anything other than proclaiming that Jesus

Christ is the King, the Lord, and our Savior, we fail in our

mission. But because Jesus Christ is the

King and the Lord and our Savior, it changes all of those

things. And if we don't recognize that

and allow that truth to shape us in every other way, then we'll

fail in our mission. But we can't get them backwards.

And far too often, Christians and churches get it all

backwards. It starts with proclaiming a

truth, and that truth changes everything else.

To proclaim the good news that Jesus has come.

He's made it possible for every single person to be part of his

Kingdom. That's our mission.

And as we're going to see from the rest of this passage, if

we're going to do that, it's we're going to require some

things. The first thing that we see is

that the mission that we've been given requires us to declare the

gospel. To declare this truth following

Jesus requires us, as I said, to move from from from observers to

participants. I would also say it requires us

to be heralds, not mimes. Here's what I mean by that.

Look at what he says. He sent them to proclaim the

Kingdom of God. That word proclaim has meaning

it it to proclaim it was what a herald is think about a town.

If you've ever seen one of those funny town and I'm sorry if you

are a town crier because maybe there's somebody in here that's

but even people with the funny hats they go they say hear ye,

hear you. They stand out and they they

make an announcement. That's what it means to proclaim

is a stand in the city square and to make an announcement on

behalf of the king. Most Christians avoid

announcing, and they hope they can kind of mime it.

Mimes are confusing and weird and nobody likes them.

OK, and again, sorry if you're a mime, you can't do mime

evangelism. You can't do charades of Angel.

Also, nobody likes charades, so don't do it as a party game.

You can't do mime and charade evangelism and just hope people

get it. If we're going to proclaim the

good news about Jesus Christ, sooner or later we have to use

words. You have to use words.

If you don't use your words, I feel like I'm talking to when my

kids were little. If you don't use your words to

share Jesus with people, then we talk about all the time, hey,

we, we're a church and our whole mission is to make disciples of

Jesus who love God, love others, and serve the world.

You can't serve the world. Can't do that part of being a

disciple of Jesus without using words.

Can't. You can't if serving means

meeting needs, right? I think we'd all agree serving

means meeting. It means meeting the needs of

somebody else, every person's deepest need.

Is to know that they need Jesus. That is the deepest need that

every single person has. The deepest need is not

ultimately to have friends. That's important.

Deepest need is not even to have food and shelter.

Incredibly important. The deepest need of every

individual is to hear that King Jesus came, that he died for

them, He paid the penalty for their sins, and he rose again.

And here's why. Because you can give people

food, you can give people housing, you can give people

healing, you can give people community and friendship.

What is true of all those people, no matter how much of

that you give them, is they're going to die.

And if you die without knowing Jesus, you die separated from

God forever. That's what we call hell.

And if you don't tell somebody that you just give them

everything else they need, but you don't give them that, you

haven't given them what they need the most.

Ultimately, if we love people, we're going to share the truth

of how much we love them. If we are going to serve them to

the deepest need that they need to be served at, we have to use

words to tell them what Jesus has come to do for them and to

invite them to follow him. The mission that Jesus gives us

requires word, words, but the mission we've been given also

requires us to display the gospel.

See it says then he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God in

the next part matters and to heal the sick again.

I like, I like people say you do not like morning.

No, I like mornings like this where everybody gets

uncomfortable that I think we should.

We should always feel a little bit of tension.

We should always feel a little uncomfortable in church.

This matters not only that you say the gospel that you display

the gospel that matters. Now when it says healing the

sick, I, I again, here's where I'm going to get everybody a

little annoyed here. This is not because healing is

normative at all times and places for all people all the

time, and that if you aren't doing, if healing isn't

happening, that something is broken.

OK, Does God heal the sick today?

100% Some of you can give testimony that right now and can

have you stand up and you could share how God answered prayer

through somebody else and you've been healed.

Might God call you to pray over someone for something?

100% I think honestly, if you're following Jesus, sooner or later

he's going to call you to pray over in some really

uncomfortable ways. People healing the sick, though,

What, what is this for? Why did he send them out to heal

the sick? Because healing the sick was

meant to be demonstrative of the fact that the Kingdom of God,

the, the restoration and renewal of all things is breaking in

the, the, the Jesus came to see it's, I was out in my garden

yesterday and I was taken and I know I'm not supposed to take

all the stuff out yet because the bugs and stuff are in there

and I, but I was nice and I was doing it.

I cleared it out and I started to see the little shoots coming

up and I was so happy to see green breaking through that when

when Jesus says the Kingdom has come, it's the shoots breaking

through. And so when someone is healed,

it's like, hey, that's the shoots breaking through.

This is what the Kingdom is going to look like in its

fullness. Everything's going to be healed.

Everything's going to be restored.

And so Jesus sends them out with power and a proclamation to say

I'm doing something. The kingdom's breaking through.

This is divine power to authenticate the message.

But even in the New Testament, everybody doesn't get healed.

Paul wouldn't have left his friend Trophimus in Second

Timothy 420 sick if everybody just got healed when they were

prayed over. He he wouldn't have told Timothy

to go take some wine for his stomach.

Now I'm now I'm making the Baptist mad, too.

You wouldn't have told Timothy to go take his some wine for his

stomach's sake, which was a common remedy at the time

because people got sick from the water, if he could have just

said, hey, if you just pray, you'll be healed.

So, Timothy, go find a healer, OK?

It's not that healing is meant to be normative for all places

at all times for all people. You just pray and people get

healed all the time. But should it be true that we

pray sometimes people get healed?

Yes, we should not shy away from the miraculous.

We should not shy away from the fact that the same power that

was at work through the apostles can be at work through US and is

at work in the world today. And we should ask God to do the

miraculous and then let God be God and decide what he's going

to do because he does the thing to do a lesser miracle.

And the healing is a lesser miracle to prove that God can do

the greater miracle, which is raising people from death to

life. That's what it is.

Every time someone gets saved, that's the greatest miracle.

It's the greater miracle. Healing or casting out demons

was always meant to be in service of the proclamation of

the truth of the gospel that the Kingdom has come and the king

has come. It's an authentication.

The gospel isn't just that Jesus came to save sinners from their

sin, but that he came to renew and to restore a world that has

been ravaged by sin. He came to undo what sin has

done. He came to reverse the curse of

Genesis 3. That should always be a part of

the gospel. That should be a part of how we

bring the gospel to people. Good news is always meant to be

accompanied by good deeds. That's why we are doing the big

serve. It's at the heart of the big

serve. We want everyone who's a part of

Forward to be in because we want the world around us to see that

God has come to bring something new and something better.

We want people to see that living under a different king

looks different and that that different king wants to bring a

different type of Kingdom into the world.

We are sent out. I mean, this is good news.

We're sent out to be beacons of hope in a world that is

hopeless. That's at the heart of what

evangelism is all about. When Peter says be ready to give

an answer for anyone who asks you, he says it is for the hope

that is within you that people would be asking you, do we go

out and live like people of hope?

Do we go out and live like we live under a different king in a

different Kingdom? Do we do things differently in

the world? When you do that, people notice

and they will ask and then you proclaim the truth of the King

to them. We aren't just going out when we

do the big serve to do random acts of kindness.

We are going out to point people to the God who in His ultimate

kindness sent us Jesus Christ. OK, I need us to understand this

is all. There's not one or the other.

It's both. And Matthew 516 says this.

This is Jesus words. Let your light shine before

others so that they may see your good works.

And some of us want to cut it there and give glory to your

Father in heaven. But they can't give glory to

your Father in heaven unless they know that you've gone out

to do your good works because of your Father in heaven.

OK, see most of us tend to be words people or deeds people.

We need to not be either or people.

We need to be both and people. We need people who will share

Jesus message Jesus way in Jesus character with Jesus power,

seeing Jesus things done in this world.

And we can't do that on our own. That's why verse one matters so

much. He gave them power and authority

over all the demons to heal diseases, and then he sent them

out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

The mission that we have been given requires God's power and

provision. Some of you, when this type of

message comes, we talk about evangelism.

You just want to get in a corner and curl up and start rocking

yourself because you get so anxious on the inside.

You're like, I can't do this. I don't know the words to say.

This is going to be really awkward.

Your voice changes like that. The good news is this, it

doesn't rest on your power and ability.

It doesn't rest on your eloquence.

The success of the mission, if it had rested on those 12 man,

as we read through the Gospels, they're dummies.

They get stuff wrong all the time.

They, they, they're with Jesus. They still can't see Jesus.

If you're a dummy and you get stuff wrong all the time, good

news, it doesn't rest on you rest on Jesus.

They would have been cooked, and we would be cooked if we go out

there and try and do this on our own.

But Jesus gives his power and authority.

When we go out in obedience, in submission to Jesus, he gives us

everything that we need. That's the good news.

Now, does that mean that training is useless?

No, of course not. The disciples have been watching

him for almost three years at this point.

He's giving them training and He's sending them out, and He's

sending them out, as we're going to see in a little bit, knowing

that they're still going to mess up sometimes they're going to

fail at the thing that He sends them out to do.

We have an equipped class coming up, May 12th, 3 weeks on how to

be a good neighbor because we want to equip you to be able to

do this type of thing and give you some tools.

If Jesus tells you to do something, though, He's going to

give you what you need to do it. That's the point here.

So if Jesus says I want you to go tell your friend about me,

you don't get to say but Jesus, I didn't take the equip class

they offered back in the fall. I think you should ask somebody

else now. If Jesus asks you to do

something, your response is yes, Jesus, I know you're going to

give me what I need. That's why Jesus says take

nothing for the road. No staff, no traveling bread

bag, no bread, no money and don't take an extra shirt.

Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.

Because they wanted, he wanted them to understand you're

ultimately dependent on me in this.

You can go out and do whatever you want to do and make all your

plans and preparations to have all the training in the world.

Nothing is going to work if it doesn't come through my power

and my provision. The call here is to submission.

It's to trust. It's to surrender.

God gives you everything that you need.

He's Jesus saying you don't need provisions.

All you need is a yes, it's all you need.

We've been given a mission by Jesus and Jesus gives us

everything that we need. It's the same mission that he

modeled to proclaim the good news of the King and the Kingdom

in a word and in deed. And he'll give you everything

that you need to accomplish it. And here's the part you're

really going to not like. But the mission that we've been

given requires facing rejection. So if they do not welcome you,

which means when they do not welcome you, when you leave that

town, you shake off your dust from your feet as a testimony

against them. The good news is great news.

It's the best news. It's also hard news.

See, to say Jesus is king is also to tell somebody else and

you are not to say Jesus came to save you is also to to say to

someone you're lost and you need saving.

Lots of people want to hear, I found, about how Jesus can take

the life that they currently have and make it better.

A lot less people want to hear about the fact that without

Jesus, there is no life. Jesus is telling his disciples

that there are people who are going to reject the message that

they bring. But don't let that fact stop you

from sharing the gospel. And when it happens, don't keep

it. Don't allow it to keep you from

going and sharing it with somebody else.

You move forward, you keep on going knowing that there will be

times where they reject you, where they don't want to hear

it. And it may be a time in their

life, maybe a season in their life, maybe the totality of

somebody's life. That's not for us to decide.

All we can do is offer Jesus to people and then leave that

between God and them. Be ready for it, because if

you're not ready for it, it's going to catch you off guard and

it's going to devastate you. After these instructions from

Jesus, I think it's really important to see how the

disciples respond in verse 6. So, so they went out and

travelled from village to village proclaiming the good

news and healing everyone. And we can miss something

important if we don't stop here, because the mission that we've

been given, this tells me, requires action, not just

intention. To be, as I said, a disciple,

Jesus is to be shaped increasingly more and more in

every area of our life. Like Jesus, every disciple is

called to live on mission. For Jesus everyone to do that,

it's not enough to have good intentions.

It actually requires action. You do not grow by intending to

be obedient. You grow by being obedient.

If if you've been following Jesus for any length of time,

the fact that you are called to share the good news of Jesus

with others, I would hope, especially if you've been in

this church for it's that this is not new information that you

have received today. If it is, my apologies, we have

failed you. But I know something else by the

admission of the people in this room, most of you aren't doing

it. I know that because we take a

spiritual health survey every fall.

Here's what the Spiritual Health survey tells me. 25% of

Christians regularly share their faith with people who don't know

Jesus. I also know that on surveys

there's something called the Halo effect that numbers

inflated. 48% are actively cultivating relationships with

people who don't know Jesus. Like you're actually looking for

people who don't know Jesus and just having them in your life.

55% pray for ways to show and speak God's love to non

believers. By the way, that's just total

even lack of intention can't even be bothered to have an

intention to pray and think I hope somebody wants to hear

about Jesus and that you would use me God and and and again I

need a Ruby really clear. I am saying this out of love for

you. This is I don't, I don't want to

heap things on you as a church, but I do want you to fully

experience all of what Jesus wants you to experience.

You know, I meet so many Christians who feel like

rudderless and lost no purpose in their life because they're

not doing anything that has any eternal purpose or value.

If you're not sharing your faith with other people, you're really

not doing anything that has real eternal meaning or value.

You just kind of spinning your wheels and wasting your time on

earth. And I say this out of love for a

world that's all around us, that's going to hell without

Jesus. And I wonder, do any of us care?

Do we even believe that? Because we don't act like we

believe it. If you're a follower of Jesus,

then follow him. Don't just intend, act.

This is a call to action. If you aren't at the very least

praying for people who are far from Jesus who need to

experience and hear about his love for him.

Let's at least get that number to 100% of followers of Jesus.

Then we would all commit ourselves to regularly be

praying for people who are far from Jesus to know Jesus and

that he would use us to be a part of that mission.

I think that's an easy we should be able to get to 100% next fall

on that. If you're praying, My guess is

God's also been prompting a little bit in your life and it

might be time to stop taking those prompts as suggestions and

start taking them as commands. If you've what we've been

talking, God's been laying people on your heart.

He's been like, hey, I've been this is the Holy Spirit doing

this. I've been telling you, you know,

I've I've been telling see, he's telling you what I've been

telling you because he's speaking my words to you.

Talk to that person. Pray that God would give you a

time to sit down and just say, hey, I'd like to tell you about

Jesus. He's made a world of difference

in my life. All that stuff that you've been

noticed about my life, that's because of what Jesus has been

doing. That's because of the Holy

Spirit are working. It's not because of me.

And also want to say this, some of you are here today and I know

that you don't know Jesus. And I would be remiss if I

didn't give you the opportunity right now to receive the King

who has come and to enter into his Kingdom.

Jesus is the king. You're not the king.

I'm sorry to tell you. You're not the queen.

You are lost. But he came to save you.

He came to fix those things, all those things in your life right

now. You know there's so much broken

in your life and you've been working away.

Reading the self help books, doing the work, you're trying to

get it right. You've been doing all the

religious stuff. You can't get it right.

You can't fix yourself. What's broken in you could only

be fixed by what Jesus did on the cross, and he came to fix

it. He died on the cross for your

sin, and he rose again to prove that he's the King over death

and everything else and that your sins have been forgiven.

And all you have to do is to call out to him as your Savior

and King and invite him in and say, Jesus, I choose to follow

you. I want to walk in your way now.

I want you to be Lord over my life.

You came to save me. I'm yours.

If you do that, Jesus enters in right now and he makes peace

between you and God and the Kingdom begins to break into

your life. He saves you from that eternal

death and he and he invites you into eternal glory and eternal

life with him through Christ. I said earlier, following Jesus

is not a spectator sport. There are way too many

Christians who think they are following Jesus when they're

really just acting like fans of Jesus.

They're sitting in the stands, they're sitting in the seats.

They like him, agree with him half the time they'll sing songs

about him. They're not actually following

him. The call of Jesus to anyone who

would claim to be his follower is that we would be shaped for

his mission to proclaim in a word and in deed that the

Kingdom and the king have come and they've come for you.

So I'm going to invite the band to come on out.

We're going to finish with a song that is familiar.

If you've been around forward for a while and as we sing these

words, and they might be again, really familiar words to you

today, would you allow these words to be a prayer?

Would you allow these words to not just be an intention, but

these words this week would be your commitment as to how you

are going to be shaped by Jesus? Live for him and follow Him.

Church, would you stand?