Whole Family (Week 6)

Good morning.

How we doing?

Good morning.

I'm glad to be here.

My name's Chapman.

I've preached in nursing homes.

I've preached in barns.

I've preached in homes.

I've preached a lot of places, but I have never preached in a movie theater.

So I am just super duper grateful to be here this morning in this movie theater with you guys where we're having church.

And as we're having church, I was thinking about what in the world, how would I start this morning?

And I think I just tell you, I have prayed for this church, for this people, for this body for years.

As soon as Southland said, we're going to plant churches, I started praying about that.

I started praying that Southland would give us churches that would really leave Kentucky better than we found it.

We say that a lot at the church I came from.

And I know with my whole heart that what Forrest and Emily did when they uprooted their family from Charleston, and let me tell y'all, I couldn't have left Charleston.

I don't know what's wrong with them.

But they wanted to come to Frankfurt and they uprooted their family, brought them here, and what they've done is they've planted a church.

But they've planted deep spiritual roots in Frankfurt, Kentucky.

Where there once was no church, there now is.

In my church that we're planting in Campbellsville, we have 11 people, and I look out here and I'm like, look at all these people.

Golly, that's including the baby and two kids we got.

So we got 11.

This is amazing.

Y'all got a lot of people in here for us.

This movie theater is jumping this morning.

But I have prayed.

I have prayed for this church for so long, and it is such a joy and a privilege and an honor for me to get to stand here today and preach, to preach God's word.

And I'm just super grateful for it.

But a little bit about me.

I want to introduce you to the better part of me, my family.

Aren't they beautiful?

Look at baby James.

So he like uh I was introduced, they say he's almost a year old now.

So on the 28th, we're gonna celebrate his first birthday.

And that's my wife, Gentry, and they are just the light of my life.

I love them so much.

And it's my very first Father's Day getting to celebrate uh that little dude.

So just yeah, all the dads super excited that I get to do that, and just super grateful for the privilege and the honor to be his dad.

But what I used to do at Stalin was I was a high school pastor at one of our campuses, and we had a pretty sizable ministry.

We probably had on any given Wednesday between 100 to 125 students that would show up.

And I was tasked with leading them, with shepherding them.

And if you know anything about high school kids, that's a hard job.

Anyone got high schoolers in the room?

Nobody?

Wow.

Some of y'all, I see all the little kids running around in the kids' ministry.

I couldn't believe how many kids were here this morning.

But you'll have them one day and they are nuts.

Like, I genuinely mean it.

They're crazy.

And I had to deal with a hundred of them every week.

And when I first started the job, I started thinking, like, what am I gonna have to deal with?

And I was running through the lists in my head one day, and I was like, I know there's gonna be boyfriend, girlfriend drama.

It's a given high school relationships.

I know we're gonna have kids that are upset about the fact that they didn't turn their homework in, they weren't responsible, or they played bad in the game on Friday night.

And I thought most of what high school ministry would be was just playing with kids and having a great time, making them feel welcome at church.

I thought that would be a lot of the job, but as I started doing the job about three months in, one of our other student pastors was preaching, and he was preaching to the students about their need to be real and their need to be vulnerable in community in the context of the local church.

As he's preaching the sermon, he says, at the end of the night, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hand out whiteboards to every single student.

So we handed out a hundred markers, a hundred whiteboards, all of them were gone.

He said, I just want you to write on there.

I want you to write something you're struggling with, something that our student staff can be praying over our ministry as we start to think and to plan.

Just give us things that we can be prepared for, things that we can help you deal with.

And what those students put on those boards that night absolutely shocked me.

I thought we'd get a lot of that trivial stuff.

But over 75 of those whiteboards on the stage that night, after the kids handed them in anonymously, they dealt with their family struggles.

They were struggling with over half of those 75, over half of those whiteboards said their main struggle in their life was with their relationship with their dad.

Was with their relationship with their dad, and I was taken aback that night.

I was like, this is so much bigger than boyfriend-girlfriend drama.

This is so much bigger than sports in our church.

Because I was like, that's a problem out there.

Like I know dads are abdicating their responsibility outside the church, but not inside the church, not my kids, not my really awesome students that sat every week and heard me preach.

Not them.

But it was them.

It was those kids that needed their father, and they needed a better relationship with their dad.

So I didn't come here today to come at your neck, dads, but I did come here today to encourage you, to say that you are valuable.

If we look at the research, we don't have to look very far to know that fathers matter a lot in homes.

And I know as I preach today that we have kids in this room that have grown up to adults that never had a dad.

That grew up without that earthly father that they needed that would provide and protect for them.

And I know that some of us in this room, I know there are kids right now that probably want a better relationship with their father in this room.

So what I came to do today is not to come at your throat, but I came to encourage you and say, Dad, you're needed.

We need you to step up.

We need you to be shepherds that lead in your homes.

God designed fathers to be shepherds who point to the good shepherd.

That's what God designed fathers to do.

As we sit in this movie theater, I love movies.

Any movie fans out there?

My wife and I, every time we go home, I think I put Top Gun on the new one.

And you can just hear the soundtrack blaring throughout the house.

I love it.

Just such a movie guru.

And as I was thinking about the fact that I get to preach this morning, I get to open this book, and I get to share the greatest story ever written.

We get to come in this movie theater and we get to share this epic love story about God's redeeming love for his kids.

About a father who would go to any length to rescue his children.

He'd stop at nothing to come after that.

That's not lost on me today.

So what we're going to do is we're going to read from John chapter 10, and we're going to pick up in verse 1.

John 10 · chapter mention

And what I want to do with this text is I want us to see that Jesus is our good shepherd.

I want us to see that he will provide for us, he will protect us.

As we see it, I'm going to point out a lot of stuff, Dads, to you especially, and to the rest of us in this room.

But here we go.

John chapter 10, beginning in verse 1.

John 10 · chapter mention

It says, I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold rather than going through the gate must surely be a thief and a robber.

But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him.

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them.

And they follow him because they know his voice.

They won't follow a stranger.

They will run from him because they don't know his voice.

So what we're reading today is a common metaphor used in the Bible to describe God's love for his kids.

It's the sheep-shepherd relationship.

It's used in Psalm 23.

You can think about the imagery of that.

God leads us beside still waters, leads us into green pastures.

It's also used in Ezekiel chapter 34, where God talks about his great love for us as his sheep.

Ezekiel 34 · chapter mention

He protects us, he watches over us, he unites us in his flock.

And the first thing today, though, I want to point out to us is that Jesus is the gatherer.

Jesus is depicted as a shepherd gathering his sheep in the morning to lead them out of the pen.

And what he's going to do is he's going to lead them to pasture, to where they can eat, to where they can thrive.

And if you know anything about sheep, that can be a really hard task because sheep aren't always the smartest creatures.

They don't always go where you want them to go.

This week I saw a pretty funny video.

I want you to check it out.

You might have seen it.

It's pretty good.

Wait for it.

We get an instant replay.

Listen to the sound, it's pretty good.

What's one word you would use to describe that sheep?

Stupid, dumb, right?

That's a really dumb sheep.

And it's no mistake that the Bible calls a sheep.

If you're anything like me, you do some really dumb stuff.

You know, there's stuff that leads you in the ditch, and then we get out of the ditch, and then what do we do?

We do right the same thing that led us into the ditch in the first place.

We jump right back in.

But sheep are also smart enough to follow the voice of the shepherd.

They know his voice and they follow him.

One of the unique things that shepherds used to do is a lot of them would carry a flute and they would play a specific note for a specific sheep.

So when a specific sheep started wandering off, they'd play that note, and that sheep knew it was time to come back to the flock.

They knew the sounds of their father.

So for some of us in this room, we jump in ditches where we just mindlessly scroll through social media and we use that as a numbing tool just to not have to deal with the relational stuff that's hurting us in our life, to not have to deal with the problems and pain before us.

Some of us in this life, the ditch that we keep jumping in is we keep trying to climb to that next rung in our job while all along our marriages at home struggling.

Some of us just keep trying so hard to earn the love and the affection of others.

We'll do anything.

We're the biggest people pleasers.

And every time that we try to do that, we just end up jumping back in that ditch.

Because if we live for people's acceptance, we'll die from their disapproval, right?

And we just keep jumping in these ditches instead of just allowing Jesus to lead us, to guide us, just allowing Jesus to be who he is, our good shepherd.

So no matter the thing that leads you in the ditch, your lust, your jealousy, your greed, your anger, your pride, and it can be a long list, but no matter the thing, Jesus wants to gather you into his flock.

No matter how far you try to run away, no matter how many times you try to go a direction that he doesn't want you to go, he wants to gather you in his flock.

Like I said in Psalm 23, that's the imagery that Jesus is drawing from.

We hear those words, rod and staff.

You think those weapons, right?

Violent weapons that a shepherd would use to keep the wolves at bay, to keep the predators away, that the shepherd would use the rod to beat things.

And a lot of us in this room feel like a sheep that if we do the wrong thing, Jesus is gonna use that rod.

He's gonna use that staff and he's gonna beat us with them.

That he's gonna take out his anger on us.

But all the while, a good shepherd, he doesn't use his rod and his staff to beat his sheep.

What a shepherd would do with his staff is it's very long, so what he would do when sheep started going off track, he'd gently use his staff and he'd tap the sheep on the side, guiding them back towards the flock, guiding them back away from death and towards life.

He has tools, he wants to guide us in a healthy direction.

If we follow the sound of Jesus' voice, he will lead us towards life.

Let's keep going in verse six.

Those who heard Jesus use this illustration didn't understand what he meant.

So explained it to him.

I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.

All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sh the true sheep did not listen to them.

Yes, I am the gate.

Those who come in through me will be saved.

What a promise.

Those who come in through me will be saved.

They will come and go freely and will find good pastures.

The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.

But my purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.

Another translation says an abundant life.

Jesus truly is the gate.

Shepherds would often have to lead their sheep out of the pen, and when they led them out of the pen, they would often lead them very far away towards green pastures.

They often ate the pastures that were closest to the pen where safety lied.

So when they'd lead them away, what a shepherd would have to do is when he was miles and miles away and couldn't return the sheep to the pen at night, he would have to use rocks and thorns and trees and anything he could just to build a safety net around his sheep.

And oftentimes what would happen is the shepherd couldn't gather enough stuff to build a safe pen for his sheep.

So what the shepherd would do is he would build the pen as large as he could, and then with the remaining opening, if he didn't have enough materials to close it, what the shepherd would do is he would get on his back and he would lay down and he would sleep there at night.

He was the gate for his sheep.

He would lay down and he would be what the predators had to come through to get to his sheep.

That's what Jesus is for us.

He's a gate that opens the way.

John 14, 6 says that he's the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through him.

So, yes, Jesus is the one that earns us our salvation, that grants that to us, and he wants to give that to us freely, but he is also the shepherd that lays his life as the gate before us to protect us, to love us, to care for us, to provide for us.

Married men in the room, I know we got a few.

Talked to a lot of husbands this morning already.

Married men, when you took a covenant commitment to marry your wife, you entered into a marriage where you made the decision that you were willing to die.

And every husband says, Amen.

I know, preacher.

Kidding.

But you entered into an Ephesians 5 commitment where you are to give yourselves like Christ gave his life for the church, to lay your life down as the gate for your family, to provide and protect for those whom God has entrusted to you.

And that's a big responsibility and that's a big deal.

Fathers, let me take that a step further.

You are called to provide and protect, right?

We said that a lot.

But what does that mean?

Does it mean that we go to work and we provide financially and come home and don't really attach and be present with our kids?

No, fathers, we show up and we provide for our kids spiritually.

We provide for our kids emotionally, we provide for our kids through encouragement and affirmation when they need it.

We provide for our kids in more ways than we typically think of as a father.

And that's our job.

That's what God's calling us to.

He's calling us to be like Jesus who is the gate.

Jesus is also simply the gate that leads to life.

He's the gate that leads to life, and anyone who enters through the gate will be saved.

What a promise.

We keep jumping in that ditch, and if you're anything like me, you think I've jumped in the ditch too many times.

Maybe if I could just quit jumping in that ditch, then Jesus would let me through the gate.

If I just had the right passcode to his lock, then he'd open it for me.

But all the while, Jesus is saying, you don't need a code, you don't need anything other than what you're currently bringing me.

You just need to bring yourself to me, and I'll open the gate and I will let you through.

He's good enough, he's powerful enough, he's bigger than your sin.

He is all sufficient to forgive your sin.

Let's keep going in verse 11.

I'm the good shepherd.

The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep.

A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming.

He will abandon the sheep because they don't belong to him and he isn't their shepherd.

And so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock.

The hired hand runs away because he's working only for the money and doesn't really care about the sheep.

But Jesus is different.

I am the good shepherd.

I know my own sheep, and they know me.

Just as my father knows me, and I know the father, so I sacrifice my life for the sheep.

I have other sheep too that are not in this sheepfold.

I must bring them also.

He's a gatherer.

They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd.

Jesus is the good shepherd.

He's not just the good shepherd, he truly is your good shepherd in your life.

He loves you, he cares for you, he wants what's best for you.

Hebrews 12 2 says, Jesus is the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Pastor Dane Ortland says, For the joy?

What joy was waiting for Jesus on the other side of the cross?

The joy of seeing his people forgiven.

If you've ever broken an arm or you've been so sick that you need to go to a doctor, you show up to the doctor's office and they don't say, What'd you do that for?

Why'd you do that again?

Idiot, you're stupid.

No.

A good doctor, it delights.

He delights in healing his patient in the same way.

When we bring Jesus, our mess, our problems, the thing that keeps putting us in the ditch.

Jesus isn't mad.

He's not angry.

He delights in healing us.

He delights in our restoration.

He delights in our redemption.

Verse 11 says, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep.

The word for there, for the sheep, is probably better translated as instead.

Because someone had to pay the price.

As unholy people, we have no business being in the presence of a completely holy God.

Someone had to pay that price.

In the Old Testament, they sacrificed lambs.

But Jesus became sin so that we who knew He who knew no sin became it.

So that we didn't have to endure it on the cross.

He took our pain, he took our shame, and he didn't despise it.

He's excited, he's joyful, he's glad to heal you, he's glad to redeem you.

Will you allow him to be your good shepherd this morning?

And I mean everything your porn addiction, your sexual impurity, your anger, your jealousy, your gossip, your lies, your judgmental attitude, the harsh words you've spoken, Jesus is big enough and strong enough to take it all.

And to leave it on that cross, to nail it to it and completely leave it there, to cast it as far as the east is from the west.

Or sin had left a crimson stain.

Jesus washed it.

He washed it white as snow.

Let's wrap up our text today.

Verse 17, it says this the Father loves me because I sacrificed my life so I may take it up again.

No one can take my life from me.

I sacrifice it voluntarily.

For I have the authority to lay it down where I want to, and also to take it up again.

For this is what my father has commanded.

I showed you a picture of my little man James earlier.

And James is at this really fun age, almost one year old, and he starts to reach up.

And he wants his dad, he wants his mom, he wants to run into the arms of safety.

And he'll start crying.

And he does this like waddle walk now.

It's like real cute.

You'll see it hopefully when you come meet us after service.

I'd love to meet some of you guys.

He waddles around, and when he gets real upset, he waddles real fast.

So he'll come like it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

And what do I do as his father?

The verse said, God loves Jesus because he gives up his life.

That's not the only reason God loves Jesus.

God loves Jesus because he's his son.

God loves Jesus because he's his kid.

So what do I do?

I bend down.

When my son comes running and I open my arms wide open.

And I say, Come here, James.

I love you.

I care for you.

I can help you.

And I wrap him up in a warm embrace and I kiss his head.

And my love for my kid can't even compare to God's immeasurable love for you, his kid.

And we need to see ourselves as sons and daughters of the Most High King, who are welcomed into a warm embrace from our Father.

We have a natural tendency to reject our Father, our earthly father's shortcomings onto our good Father.

Where our fathers disappointed us, God never will.

Where our earthly fathers abandoned us, God will never abandon you.

Where God is, where he is, there is life, there is freedom, and he wants to invite you through the gate into his loving arms.

And that gate's swinging wide open today.

So like I said, good fathers, God designed good fathers to be shepherds who point to the good shepherd.

As fathers, that means in our families, we regularly pray for them.

We regularly worship with them.

We regularly share with our family what the Lord is doing in our hearts and our lives.

And here's the issue.

I said a lot of men abdicate their responsibility as fathers.

But men in this church, we can't abdicate our responsibility to shepherd our families at home.

We can't do it.

Too much is at stake, too much is on the line.

We need to be leading our homes, to be shepherding our kids.

If you have questions about what that looks like, I know Forrest would love to answer those.

I know there are men in this church who would love to walk with you, walk beside you, tell you where they've blown it, and how they can help you.

Become a better father, one that looks more like the good shepherd.

And for some of us in this room, I think, I think we just don't believe it.

Like we hear this word from John chapter 10, we just don't believe that's for me.

John 10 · chapter mention

Like God doesn't really, He doesn't really want me.

He doesn't really love me.

But then we read in Luke chapter 15 that heaven rejoices more over one sheep who comes back that's gone astray than over the 99 that never left.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

And that's who our God is.

He's the one that goes after the one.

He never ever leaves the one behind.

And if that's you this morning, I just want to invite you back to the flock.

Jesus is the gatherer.

He's going to gather all his people in his family.

And your place in the flock.

It's not just a place here on earth, but it's a place that he has gone before you to prepare for you.

Our Father's arms are wide open, but his house has many rooms in heaven.

And there's one with your name on it.

He wants to invite you into that kind of life today.

A joyful, abundant life where you can have everything that Jesus talks about.

I'll close with a story that Michael, a pastor in Cincinnati, shares about God's work of redemption in his family.

So around 2008, Michael's sister's first husband abandoned her.

She had a six-year-old daughter and twin infant sons.

Michael remembers thinking, what in the world is she going to do?

How will she make it with three little kids of her own?

A while later, she ran into an old friend from high school who had taken her to prom and they started dating.

The next year Michael performed their wedding ceremony.

Michael's new brother-in-law married into a ready-made family of four and became the father these kids needed.

They ended up having one more child together, so they became a family of six.

The new dad of this family wasn't able to adopt his three girls because they needed the family, the financial the family needed the financial support of the biological father who'd abandoned them.

Once Michael's niece turned eighteen, she began the process of legally changing her name to Akres, his brother-in-law's last name, to honor him for being the dad she needed.

He thought it was still months from being final, but she pulled some strings to get it completed in time for Father's Day.

She presented him a frame certificate while their whole family was together.

With the whole family in tears, she shares a poem she wrote her dad.

Begged him to want me.

You never walk away.

You never forget about me.

You take care of me.

You love me.

Piece by piece, you collected me up off the ground where he abandons things.

Piece by piece you filled the holes that he burned in me at six years old.

That's what an earthly father did for her.

Piece by piece, he helped put the brokenness of her life back together.

And if an earthly father can do that, what can our heavenly father do?

He can take the broken pieces of our life and turn it into a beautiful mosaic for his glory and his good.

He loves you.

Multiply.

I couldn't be any more proud of the work you're doing here in Frankfurt, Kentucky.

I know you're going to leave it better than you found it.

I'm so proud of the work that God's doing in and through your church.

At Heartland, we've already learned so much from you guys and will continue to do so.

If any of y'all feel like you're out of church planting in Frankfurt and want to come to Campbellsville, we'll take you.

I know y'all are doing the hard work.

And all I want to say to you is at just the right time, Galatians tells us we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up.

Keep going in your faith.

Keep reaching into Frankfurt.

Keep burying those roots deep down in the soil.

And at just the right time, you will reap a blessing.

I love you guys.

I've been praying for you for years.

I'm so glad I got to meet you.

Let me pray for you.

Our Father, our Father in heaven, who loves us, who cares about us with wide open arms, who piece by piece restores us, puts us back together.

We love you.

We love you.

And God, we just ask if there's anybody in this room, anybody who needs to know that you truly are their good shepherd, God, may you just continue to reveal yourself to them.

May you make yourself known as the good Father and Good Shepherd who loves us, who cares for us.

May we be good dads who represent the good shepherd well.

Jesus, we love you.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.