Unusual Suspects // Jeff Rudder

Welcome to the Movement Church podcast. We want you to

know that God is for you. So you're about to

hear a.

Sermon from one of our weekend services in the twilights

of southern Colorado. God is not a monument, He's a movement.

So we're praying that this message will move.

You in a meaningful way.

Listen closely after the message for ways to get connection

with us. God bless you.

Thanks for tuning in.

Those who don't know me. I'm Jeff Rubber. I'm part

of the teaching team here at the Movement Church, and

I'm really glad you're here with us today. Whether you're

here in person or whether or not you're listening in

on YouTube or the podcast, We're really glad that you

are here with us today. If you are new, then

I would just tell you I'm not our normal pastor

not that there's anything normal about Richie Fike, but I'm

not him, and he will be back next week after

a much deserved vacation. So today you're just gonna be

stuck with me, all right. For the last number of weeks,

we've been in this series called Urgent, where we've talked

about urgent care and Urgent Prayer and Urgent Share And

next week we're going to begin a new series on

understanding how God uniquely made you and how you can

begin to deploy your gifts for the sake of the

Kingdom of God. And throughout the Urgent series, we talked

about the what and the why and the how of

the Great Commission. Right, But today, sandwiched in between these

two series, we're gonna talk for just a bit about

the who. And I'm not talking about Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend,

John Entwhistle and Keith Moon. Okay, I'm talking about the

who of the Great Commission, the who that God wants

as part of his team to spread his goodness and

his mercy and his truth around the world. And I'll

go ahead and skip to the end here. Okay, I'm

go ahead and give you the punchline and tell you

that the who that God wants is you. Right, you

are the who. And I know as we stand here

this mornings I stand here this morning that a lot

of us are not convinced that that is correct. Right.

We think God works through the pastors and the seminary

professors and the missionaries. Right, what could he possibly do

with people like us. It's a question we all ask,

and I think there's a reason that we think this way,

and it's simply this. We tend to over spiritualize the

characters that we read about in the Bible, and I

think we do this because we have the benefit of

seeing the finished product, right, We get to read ahead

as we look at the Bible. We see these Biblical

characters for who they are after they've spent time with Jesus,

and after they've learned, and after they've grown and when

they become mature. We get the benefit of seeing them

that way. We see them for what they eventually accomplish

and who they eventually become. But in reality, they're just

a bunch of unusual suspects, and we'll unpack that as

we go along today. The problem with our approach to

understanding these characters in the Bible, and what I want

to address today, is that we don't spend enough time

understanding who they were when Jesus first call them to

be part of his team. We don't think about that.

And the truth is that for most of us, we

too often hear the not so subtle whispers from the

enemy telling us that we're not good enough, we're not

knowledgeable enough, we're not experienced enough for God to do

something amazing in and through us. We have to be

aware in this Christian life. We have to be aware

that there is a liar who tells lies is what

he does. Satan isn't trying to tell us anymore. By

the way, if you're a believer, Satan is not trying

to say God's not real. He's way past that, right.

Satan is trying to convince us that we don't belong

on the team. And it's this that I want to

refute here this morning. So today we're going to talk

about the twelve Disciples. We're going to talk about all

twelve of them at great length. All right, that's just

a joke. We'd be here till dinner time if we

did that. We're not going to do that. But we

are gonna look quickly at Simon and his brother Andrew,

and James and his brother John, and finally Matthew and

Simon the Zealot, who you're gonna figure out as we go,

are about as far away from being brothers as you

could possibly imagine. We want to understand why Jesus picked

these guys, and then we'll wrap up with three observations

about what all this means to us. Okay, And when

we're done, you might start thinking about the twelve Disciples

as more of the Dirty Dozen. Okay. This is one

of my favorite movies, by the way, so I love

to throw this up there, but we're gonna think of them.

I think like the Dirty Dozen. So let's say a

prayer and then we'll jump in here. Okay, Lord be

with us today. I pray that it would be your

words that are spoken, not mine. I pray give us

ears to hear what you're saying to us, ord and

how it applies to us right here today, Jesus name amen.

All right. To really understand the point of any scripture,

we have to first understand the context of the day

and age in which those events actually occurred. So here's

just a bit of a review. Jesus is at the

very beginning of his public ministry. He's thirty years old.

This is the age at which the Jewish religious law

permits one individual to teach others. To become a rabbi,

you had to be thirty to do that. And in

Matthew three we see that John the Baptist is now

active in his ministry of preparation. He's preaching repentance, and

he's preparing the way for the coming Messiah. And at

the end of the chapter, Jesus goes to John the

Baptist to be baptized. And when John lifts Jesus out

of the water, the spirit of God descends like a dove,

and there's a voice from heaven that says, this is

my dearly loved son, who brings me great joy. Then

the spirit leads Jesus out into the wilderness where he

prays and he fasts for forty days. And it's in

this moment of weeks us, after not eating for forty days,

that Satan shows up and begins to tempt Jesus. First

with food, Are you hungry? Maybe you want to turn

these stones into bread? And then with a test of

God's protection and provision. If you're really God, why don't

you throw yourself down and His angels will catch you,

of course right. And then finally with power all authority

has been given to me over this world. I'll give

it to you, Jesus if you just worship me. But

Jesus says, hey, no, thanks, I got other things to

do here, and then Jesus goes straight away to his

home in Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee. And it's

this place where his ministry officially begins. By the way,

this is an actual photograph of Capernaum's not very goods blurry,

but this is a photograph of the village of Capernaum

on the edge of the Sea of Galiley. It's really

not much of a town. So let's pick up the

story in Luke five. As Jesus encountered Simon, his brother Andrew,

and James and his brother John. One day, as Jesus

was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee,

great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the

word of God. He noticed two empty boats at the

water's edge, for the fishermen had left them and were

washing their nets. Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus

asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water.

So he sat in the boat and he taught the

crowd from there. When he had finished speaking, he said

to Simon, now go out where it's deeper and let

down your nets to catch some fish. And here comes

the eye roll from Simon right they had worked all night.

They had just finished cleaning their nets, which is a

really challenging task, and now Jesus wants them to go

out again. Master Simon replied, we worked hard all last

night and didn't catch a thing. But if you say so,

I'll let the nets down again. And this time their

nets were so full of fish they began to tear

a shout for help, brought their partners in the other boat,

and soon both boats were filled with fish and on

the verge of sinking. When Simon Peter realized what had happened,

he fell to his knees before Jesus and he said, Lord,

please leave me. I'm a sinful man, for he was

awestruck by the number of fish they had caught, as

were the others with him. His partners James and John,

the sons of Zebedee, were also amazed, and Jesus replied

to Simon, hey, listen, don't be afraid. From now on

you'll be fishing for people. And as soon as they landed,

they left everything and followed Jesus. Okay. This passage fills

us in on Jesus' encounter with Simon, who he later

renames Peter, and his brother Andrew, along with James and John.

So what do we know about these four guys, Let's

take a look. We know that they were from a

small fishing village called beth Seta on the north shore

of the Sea of Galilee. Beth Seta literally translates as

house of fishing, just like Bethlehem translates his house of

bread or Bethel means house of God. So we know

that they were fishermen in a town where everybody was

a fisherman. And they weren't the bill dance kind of fishermen, right.

They weren't these guys you see on the Outdoor TV

channel zooming around the lake in a thirty thousand dollars

bass boat. Now, they weren't like that. They were working fishermen,

probably more like the guys from the Deadliest Catch TV show.

Have you ever seen that show. It's about crab fishermen

off the coast of Alaska who fish in the Bearing

Sea and what they do is crazy, right. So these brothers,

just like in the show, they probably work all hours

of the day and night in all kinds of weather,

trying to eke out a living for themselves, and they

probably smoke too much and drank too much and cursed

too much, just like the guys on the show do.

We also know, because they were fishermen, that they weren't

particularly well educated. In their culture, basic education stopped at

the age of fifteen, so only the brightest and the

best advanced beyond the age of fifteen in school. So

these guys, because they're fishermen, we know they were not

the brightest and the best. It's safe to say none

of them is in the running for valedictorian for their class.

And we also know that of all the Disciples, only

Peter is mentioned as having a wife. It's in Matthew

eight where Jesus encounters the mother in law of Peter.

And because in this culture most men were married between

eighteen and twenty one, that it implies that Andrew and

James and John were probably between fifteen and twenty one

years old when they encountered Jesus, and that Peter was

on certainly under the age of twenty five right, So

they were not the older men with full beards that

we see in all the medieval artwork and on the

made for TV movies about the Disciples. They were young men,

barely out of their teenage years if they were out

of their teenagers. So let's review what we know about

these guys. Right, they were young, they weren't well educated,

they weren't wealthy, they lived rough, demanding lifestyle, and they

were blue collar through and through. And of the four

we know way more about Peter and John. So we're

going to focus on them for just a little bit here.

We'll start with Peter, and there are several examples in

scripture that give us a window into who Peter really was.

In Matthew fourteen, the disciples have just watched Jesus feed

five thousand men plus women and children with two fish

and five loaves. Later in the evening, Jesus tells his disciples, Hey,

I'm going to the other side of the lake. Why

don't you meet me there? And we're not talking about

Lake George here, we're talking about the Sea of Galilee.

It's a big lake that covers sixty five square miles,

so it's a long row of several hours to get

to the other side of the lake. It's gonna take

a little bit to get there. And as they're rowing,

they see Jesus walking on the water, and Peter says,

if it's you tell me to come to you. And

so Jesus says, all right, come on, and Peter begins

to walk on the water towards Jesus until he had

lost his focus on Jesus and he began to think.

So this tells us that Peter can be a little

bit impetuous, right, a little quick to act and a

little quick to lose focus. And there's another story that

tells us about Peter as well. In Luke twenty two,

during the last Supper meal, the disciples began to argue

on which one of them is the greatest disciple. Now

that if anything should tell you, this is a room

full of young men. They're arguing about who's the best.

Can't you just hear them posturing with each other like

a room full of young Muhammad Ali's I'm the greatest, No,

I'm the greatest, right. And it's here where Jesus says

to Peter, hey about that greatest thing? Before daybreak? You're

gonna deny me three times? And Peter's quick to say

no way. He actually says, I'm willing to go to

prison or die with you. But we all know how

that ends, right with Peter the Rock denying. He even

knows Jesus under the withering and interrogation of a teenage

servant girl. Right, I'm sure she was very tough. And

here's another glimpse into who Peter was and Luke twenty two,

when it's time for Jesus to be arrested and Peter

pulls out a sword and he cuts off the ear

of the servant of the High Priest. Have you ever

thought about what Peter's actually doing here? My guess is

he's trying to split somebody's head wide open, but he's

so bad with the weaponry that the best he can

do is to lop off the guy's ear. But you

get the sense of his true nature when the pressure

is really on. So when you look at the personality

of Peter, he's impetuous, he's passionate, he's moody, he's impulsive,

and he's aggressive. Some modern psychologists have suggested that what

Peter had was a severe case of ADHD. I think

they may be right. I wonder if any of us

can relate to this version of Peter. Now, let's look

at John for just a minute. In the Book of

John's Gospel, written by John, he titles himself, the disciple

that Jesus loved. That tells you almost all that you

need to know about John. You have to be pretty

bold to say that in writing for everyone to read

for perpetuity, right. And then in the account of the

Resurrection in John chapter twenty, he and Peter race to

the tomb after the women have said Jesus was no

longer there, and John again and his written account for

all of posterity, points out that he outran Peter. I

love this image. I can't see it if you're listening

on the podcast. It's Peter and John racing each other

to the tomb with Will Ferrell's Ron Burgundy characters superimposed

on the image, saying I'm kind of a big deal, right,

But that's John, maybe just a little bit self absorbed.

Then in Matthew twenty, James and John do something that

causes all the disciples to lose their minds. Let's read here. Then,

the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee,

came to Jesus with her sons, and she knelt respectfully

to ask a favor. What is your request, he asked,

and she replied, in your kingdom, please let my two

sons sit in places of honor next to you, one

on your right and the other on your left. But

look at what the response was from the other disciples.

Verse twenty four says this, When the ten other disciples

heard what James and John had asked, they were indignant. Okay,

I think this statement has to be in running for

the understatement of the millennium. Right. We already talked about

how temperamental Peter was, and we know that Judas, one

of their disciples, was a thief and a swindler and

a betrayer. But it's this request that undoubtedly James and

John put their mother up to. It's this request that

caused the disciples to lose their minds. James and John

were arrogant, and they were self absorbed and maybe just

a little bit narcissistic. There's one more story that we

have to look at to get the full image of

who James and John were. Look at lut. Nine. As

the time drew near for him to ascend to Heaven,

Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem, and he sent messengers

ahead to a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival.

But the people of the village did not welcome Jesus

because he was on his way to Jerusalem. When James

and John saw this, they said to Jesus, Hey, Lord,

should we call down fire from heaven and burn them up?

So Jesus had a nickname for James and John, by

the way, Sons of Thunder. And when you think about

this story, when you think about James and John, that

Sons of Thunder thing, it starts to sound a whole

lot more like a motorcycle gang, right than the hapless

disciples that we see on made for TV movies. James

and John likely don't really play very well with others,

and they weren't just arrogant and self absorbed, but I

think they had a little bit of a self righteous

mean streak. They were willing to destroy those who didn't

see things their way. In a day and age where

we see Christians on TV shouting back and forth with

whoever is on the other side, I wonder if some

of us can see just a bit of James and

John in ourselves. I wonder if we can relate to them.

And just as in aside, Jesus didn't say the world

will know you're my disciples because you fight so hard

to win every argument. Now we said, they'll know you're

on my team because of the way you love each other.

Just think about it, all right. The bottom line is

that any of us, if any of us were trying

to build a worldwide movement, I don't think we pick

any of these guys. Simon, Andrew, James or John would

not be the guys that I'm picking for this. Let's

keep going. Matthew is also a really interesting choice for

a disciple. The best to understand Matthew, we really do

have to understand sort of the context of his particular

situation in that day and time. So let's do a

quick review about sixty years before Jesus, the Romans take

over the Holy Land, right, and they're just the latest

in a long line of oppressors over the nation of Israel.

And under the Romans, the Jewish people become second class citizens,

subject to the whim of their Roman overlords. And as

part of this, the Jewish people of Judea faced an

overwhelming tax regime set up by the Romans, and they

did it with help from unscrupulous Jews who saw an

opportunity to enrich themselves. To sum it up, by the

time Jesus arrives. Jews were dominated in every aspect of

their daily lives by the Roman government, and they were

resentful of their occupiers. And Matthew is a tax collector.

He has aligned himself with Rome at the literal expense

of his own people, and he would have been hated.

I mean, he would have been loathed. He would have

been an outcast. He's a corrupt, wealthy extortionist of a

young man. When he encounters Jesus, Matthew nine tells his story.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named

Matthew sitting at his tax collector's booth. Follow me and

be my disciple, Jesus said to him. So Matthew got

up and he followed him. It doesn't tell us a

lot about Matthew, but we do know this that Matthew

is from Capernaum, where Jesus is residing, and he's aligned

himself with Romans, and he would have been a complete

outcast with his own people, all for the sake of

material wealth. I wonder if he and Jesus had ever

encountered each other before. Perhaps Matthew had heard Jesus preaching

and had leaned in a little bit, just to hear

what he was saying. Maybe Matthew had tried to unjustly

tax Jesus on the tools he used as a builder

as a carpenter. Maybe Matthew had just seen Jesus and wondered,

in his quiet moments whether or not Jesus could help

him the way he had helped others. We don't know.

Unlike the fisherman, Matthew is not working with his hands.

He's not a blue collar guy. He's making a passive

income by taxing the people unjustly. Today we call guys

like Matthew white collar criminals. Right at best, he's like

a Bernie made Off or maybe a Charles Ponzi character.

But we can't ignore the fact that Matthew had the

force of the Roman government behind him. So maybe Matthew

is actually a little more like this guy, Michael Corleoni.

Maybe Matthew's part of the first century crime family of Judea.

The point is he's not a good and he'd be

viewed as a trader, hated with a contempt beyond even

the Romans. I wonder why Jesus picked him. And this

leads us to our last unusual suspect of the day

here Simon the Zealot. He's only mentioned four times in

scripture and only in lists of the disciples. There's no

real stories directly related to Simon the Zala, so we

don't know a lot about him. But we do know

about the Zealots, and there are several different scholarly interpretations

of who this group of people actually was, but I'm

going to use the one that I think is most likely.

I could be wrong, but the Zelots were a radical

Jewish sect who use violence to accomplish their political goals,

which centered on driving the Romans out of Judea. Depending

on your perspective, Simon the zeal It would either have

been a terrorist or he would have been a hero.

He was either Osama bin Laden or Luke Skywalker. Regardless,

he had a political goal and violence was the tool

that he chose to use. And one of the things

we know historically is that it was very hard to

get to the Romans. They were extremely well armed and

extremely protected. So for the Zealots, it was the traders

like Matthew who were often the targets of their violence.

It's very likely that Simon the Zealot would have known

who Matthew was and would have hated him, and perhaps

it even plotted at some point to kill him. So

let's review the team here for just a moment, all right,

Who do we have? Peter Andrew blue collar, rough and

tumble fisherman, James and John founding members of the Sons

of Thunder motorcycle club. Matthew a white collar criminal, a

best or a mobster who's using Roman muscle at worst.

Or Simon Dozella willing to use violence to achieve political outcomes.

How are we doing so far? What do you think

about these guys? Right? Can we just pause for a

moment and state the obvious that there's nobody on this

list that any of us would pick. So the question

and the whole point of our discussion this morning is

why did Jesus pick them? Well, there's a couple of clues.

Let's look at Matthew nine, and then we'll make our

three observations here to tie all this together. Later, Matthew

invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests,

along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But

when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples. Why

does your teacher eat with such scum. In other words,

Pharisees didn't understand why Gesaesus was hanging out with these

guys anymore than we can understand it today. Let's keep

going verse twelve. Here. When Jesus heard this, he said, Look,

healthy people don't need a doctor. Sick people do. And

then he added, now go and learn the meaning of

this scripture. I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifice.

For I have come to call not those who think

they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.

Think about that statement for just a minute. I've come

to call those who know that they are sinners. Jesus

just revealed his game plan here in this one sentence,

to put people on the team who are willing to

acknowledge that they don't have it all together. It's what

Peter said when he encountered Jesus on that first day

at the boat. Get a lord, I'm a sinful man.

Don't be around me. Look, the Jewish leader considered themselves

to be the righteous crowd, and people like the guys

we've discussed this morning were kind of the scum of

the earth to them. But Jesus didn't see it that

way then, and he didn't see it that way today.

Why because he knew that this idea of righteousness was

that it had a very limited number of participants. Right.

Scripcher says that there's only one righteous. It's God. God

is the only one who's righteous. The rest of us

are in need of grace and forgiveness and mercy. And

when you understand that we're all in this same boat,

it kind of levels the playing field just a little bit, right,

and it makes Jesus choice around these guys begin to

make a little bit of sense. He wasn't looking for

the self righteous like the religious leaders of the day.

He was looking for people who can show just even

a moment of humility, like Peter did. Best I can

figure out understanding that they were sinners, their need for

Jesus and their willingness to say yes to Jesus was

their only qualification to be on the team. It's their

only qualification. So here's a question. Are you aware that

you're a sinner and of your need for the doctor?

You aware that that on your own you can't do

enough good to outweigh the bad. I think most of

us weigh down deep inside. Probably are aware of that.

But a little warning here. It really was the religious

crowd that had the most trouble understanding this. And Satan

is just waiting to point out to you how unworthy

you are and to poor guilt and shame on you

for any of your past mistakes. So if you're feeling

that shame as we talk a little bit about out

sin here, that I just want to tell you that

is not coming from Jesus, that it's coming from the enemy.

Remember Jesus said in John twelve, I did not come

to judge the world, but to save it. He does

not bring guilt and shame to sinners. He brings pardon

and freedom. But too often our response to a growing

awareness of our own sin is to find reasons to

stay on the sidelines when he's inviting us to get

into the game. We say things like, I'm not good

enough for God to accept me. I'm not a good

enough person to judge what anybody else has done. A boy,

I've done some bad things myself. I can't I can't

be in that position. I'm not knowledgeable enough to talk

about the Bible. I'm not experienced enough in my faith

to lead others to Jesus. I call these the I

am not statements generally, the types of arguments that we

create to maybe say that we don't belong in the game,

and they honestly show that we don't believe that Jesus

is who he said he is. When we come out

with these things, we don't believe that he's still in

the business of taking the broken people of the world

and doing great things in and through them. So how

do we get past the I am not statements? How

do we move past that? Well? I think we just

have to focus on the words of Jesus himself. Seven

times in the Book of John Jesus makes what are

referred to as the I am statements. I am the

Bread of life. I am the Light of the world.

I am the good Shepherd. I am the Resurrection, I

am the Life. I am the Way, the truth in

the life. I am the True Vine. Ultimately, it's a

devil's trick, okay, to get us focused on what we

are not instead of focused on what he is. When

Peter focused on Jesus, he could literally walk on water.

A second he took his eyes off Jesus, he sank

like a brick. So let's just take a moment here

and make three quick observations. The first observation is this,

Jesus is not afraid of our sin. Okay, if that's

your hesitation about either becoming a Jesus follower or believing

that he could do something amazing with your life, then

now is the time to just let that go. He

is not afraid of our sin. You have not done

anything too bad for him to both forgive and to redeem.

He's not afraid of our sin. He just needs us

to give him permission to perhaps rearrange the deck chairs

of our lives as he sees fit. That process is

actually called surrender. Okay, if you had a moment of

surrender with Jesus and he needs us to stay focused

on what he is rather than what we are not,

And he's not looking for the crowd that thinks they

have all of it put together. He's just not. He's

looking for people who are humble enough to recognize both

who we are and who he is. To get to

our second observation, let's consider Luke five for just a minute.

As soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus.

It's easy to look at this and think of the

four guys he first encountered leaving their jobs as fishermen,

or it's easy to think of Matthew leaving a life

of corruption as a tax collector, or even Simon Mozella

leaving his group of friends that he had plotted and

planned with. It's easy to reduce them to their jobs,

but the word everything, I think, forces us to look

just a little deeper at what they really left behind.

To Jesus, Peter had to leave behind the quicksand of

his impulsive and reactionary nature. Jesus renamed him from Simon

to rock. With Jesus, Peter turned from quicksand to being

the rock in The early Church exploded because of it,

and James and John had to leave behind their self

importance and narcissism. Right, they had to leave the hell

fire and the brimstone and the sons of thunder stuff

to God, and they had to find humility in the

presence of Jesus. You know when they did that. John

actually went on to write five books of the New Testament,

including Revelation, which describes when God not James and John,

but when God will be the judge of mankind, and

when Jesus was crucified, he even asked John to be

the one to care for his mother, and Matthew had

to leave behind his love of money and worldly wealth

and live as Jesus lived, where a scripture says, for

the son of man there was no place to lay

his head. Matthew was willing to trade in his silver

spoon for a spork and became an eyewitness to the

greatest story ever told. And Simon the Zalad perhaps had

the most difficult thing to leave behind of all. He

had to leave behind his anger, and his grudges and

his hate. And when he did, he got to be

on the team that would spread God's message of love

and forgiveness around the world for all nations. So this

leads to our second observation, surrendering your whole identity Jesus

allows him to give you something better. In return, Peter

surrendered his impetuous, impetuous nature and became the Rock. John

gave up his self absorption and became the guy who

would receive a vision of the greatest event yet to

happen in the whole span of human history, the return

of Jesus. Matthew gave up his love of wealth and

got to witness things that money can't buy. And Simon

the Zealot gave up his hate and got to help

plant the seeds of lasting love and forever forgiveness for

the entire world. So what do you have that you

might want to surrender to Jesus this morning in the

hope of getting something better in return? Do you have

a grudge you want to let go of. Do you

want to trade chasing temporary wealth for eternal significance? What

about trading in your I am not statements that we

all carry around with us most of the time. You

want to get rid of those? Maybe we trade those

in for the great I Am, Father God and his son.

You know, are you so wrapped up in what you're

not that you can't focus on what he is? Just

think about what you have that you might want to

trade for something better. As we wrap up here, our

third observation is simply this that living into the identity

that Jesus sees and you will not happen with one encounter.

It's a lifestyle. What unlock the potential of the disciples

was not a one time experience on the beach with Jesus.

Nor was it a onetime dinner where Matthew invited Jesus

to come in and have dinner with he and his friends.

It was an ongoing encounter with Jesus where he invited

them to follow and they said yes, and then they

allowed his love and presence and teaching to penetrate into

their lives on a daily basis. And that's the same

in butt that Jesus is extending to you today. Is

Jesus a check mark on your calendar, something you do

as an appointment, or something you do to occasionally make

yourself feel better? Or is he like one of my

favorite products, liquid wrench, Right, it penetrates the deep recesses

of your heart and your mind, where Jesus is working

to loosen the parts of your life where you may

be stuck or rusted shut. So are you stuck in

your life today? Is my question? Are you hung up

on your own list of the I am not statements?

Are you unclear on your identity in Christ who he

made you to be? Do you struggle with the idea

that He could use you for something greater than yourself?

If that's you, I want to tell you a quick story.

I went back and forth on whether or not to

tell you, but I'm going to tell you the story.

For the last twenty seven years I was on Young

lifestaff is an incredible privilege to do that. Last October

I was approached by a search firm about leading an

organization called Edifi that works to lift kids out of

both physical and spiritual poverty and underresourced communities around the world. Honestly,

I thought there was about a one percent chance that

they were going to select me, of all people, to

do that when I told my kids. After the thing

started to heat up just a little bit, I finally

told my kids about the potential, and my son Jack said,

wait a minute, they want you to be their CEO.

He was understandably a bit incredulous, as I am still,

But somehow that happened, and in May I started this

new chapter leading this organization called Edifice. Since I've been

in El Salvador, the Dominican Republican, all over the US

witnessing what God has done and in some small way,

trying to help contribute to what he's doing. And it's

why you haven't seen me here as frequently as I

have been in the past, and I'm not telling you

this in any way to glorify me. I'm only telling

you this because anyone, and I mean anyone who knew me.

You can ask my parents, you can ask any of

my teachers, you can ask any of my friends. Anybody

who knew me as a as a teenager or a

young adult would would not have seen the potential that

was lying there inside of me. But somehow God chose

a very unlikely suspect to witness things that only he

could do around the world for nearly the last three decades.

And I think it was because somehow he enabled me

just to simply say yes when opportunities creeped up. He

allowed me to say yes. And I have witnessed things

that you can't believe. And somehow I keep trusting Him

to do things that I know that I can't do

on my own. And so here I am very unexpectedly

leading this organization. I'm just telling you that if he

can make something good out of the hot mess that

was my life as a younger man, then I'm pretty

sure he can make something great out of your life

as well. If you're a follower of Christ, I just

want you to think about that the only thing that

I have done that is maybe a little unique is

to say yes, and not everybody says yes. Is yes

part of your vocabulary? Think about it? Right? Maybe, though

you're not even a follower of Christ yet, maybe you're

just stuck on this question of whether or not any

of this is even real. Jesus is he real? Maybe

he'd like to believe in a loving God, But you're

sort of stuck on your own list of areas where

you've messed up in the past. Right, If either of

these scenarios is true for you, then I would remind

you of Jesus's own words when asked why he spent

so much time with the screw ups of the world

like me, He said, for I have come to call

not those who think they are righteous, but those who

know they are sinners. Look, if you know you're a

sinner and you're willing to let Jesus penetrate into the

tight spots in your life, then he's inviting you to

be on the team. And not just on the team,

but on the field in the game. He wants you

in the game. If you've never made that choice, why

don't you just think about it this? Well? Today you

decide to drop what you're doing and follow Jesus.

So what's God leading you to do next and how

can we help? Send us an email to info at

Movementchurch dot co and tell us how we can pray

for you and help you to take the next.

Step in your spiritual journey. If you like to contribute

financially to our ministry, you can text the amount you'd

like to get to this number A three three seven

two five zero one three two. That's A three three

seven two five zero one three two, or just look

us up online at movementchurch dot com. You can find

the Movement Church on all social media platforms, and we

hope that you'll give us a follow. God bless you,

and remember God is for you, and so are we.