Son of Man | Seek and Save the Lost - Luke 19:10 | December 22

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Well, good morning, Mountainside. I'm super ecstatic to stand up in front of

people and talk this morning.

So, I wanted to give a little story to start off with about my ability to speak in front of people.

So, I went to Wilts Community College for a couple of years before I transferred

to Lenoir Rhyme, and if you've been to school,

if you've been to college, you know that you're going to have to eventually talk in front of class.

For me you have to get you had to give a you had to take a public speaking class

so wilts community college i took a public speaking class and the requirements

you had to give five public speeches and the average of those grades would be

your your score for the class right.

So i had a teacher brenda moore she was also my english professor and somehow

i took a class with five speeches and I never gave one. And I made a C.

So I'm really good at avoiding this type of thing.

I made a deal with her. I always had a baseball game come up or some kind of

reason not to be in class the day I was supposed to speak.

So I made a deal with her. She liked me. She said she'd give me a C as long

as the next semester I came back and gave my speeches in front of a different class.

She gave me the C. I passed. I didn't come back.

She never went back and changed it to an F or did not qualify.

So I passed this class at Wilts Community College. I transferred to Lenore Ryan.

And the only class that didn't transfer of all my classes was public speaking.

So Lenore Ryan, I got to give, I got to take a public speaking class.

And this time the requirements six speeches.

And the average is going to be your your grade

for the year somehow i navigated through this class and i gave only the first

speech which was a three minute talk on any topic you wanted to and it was supposed

to lead up you know getting you used to speaking in front of people so i gave

one out of 11 past two years of public speaking so here we are,

so without further ado Julie's going to come talk today.

No no so,

Yeah, this is to get the sea to stay from 20 years ago.

The last several weeks, we've been talking about Daniel. We've been talking about the Son of Man.

We went through all of Daniel, but we stopped for the last several weeks and

been talking about Daniel 7, 13 through 14, and the reference to the Son of

Man. So I'm just going to read it real quick.

I saw in the night visions, and behold, the clouds of heaven came, one like the Son of Man.

And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before

him and to him was given dominion and glory

and a kingdom that all people's nations

and languages should serve him his dominion is an everlasting king an everlasting

dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed

daniel 7 13 through 14 and this is a vision that Daniel had.

Daniel was a prophet in the Old Testament.

So people in Jesus's day would have understood the son of man was God coming

to fulfill this and to take reign and to have dominion over the earth.

And so we see in the New Testament that Jesus referred to himself over 80 times as the son of man.

And it was his way of proclaiming that he was God in the flesh and letting people

know that that's who he was.

So Jesus came with a specific mission, and that's what I want to speak about

today, Jesus's mission.

The mission is, what is a mission? A specific task with which a person or group is charged.

And Jesus came focused with a certain mission when he was here on earth.

He was born to come and do a certain thing. That's what we're going to talk about today.

Luke 19.10, Jesus is speaking to Zacchaeus, and he says, for the son of man

has come to seek and to save the lost and i believe this was part of his mission

on earth was to seek and save the lost,

He's speaking to Zacchaeus, and Zacchaeus was known as a chief tax collector.

And at this time, he was having dinner with Zacchaeus, and everybody was appalled

that he was spending time with the worst of the worst, if you will.

Tax collectors were considered bad people and thieves, and they stole some of

the tax money and stuff like that.

But Jesus was spending time with the lost. He was trying to seek and save the lost.

I think there's three aspects to Jesus's mission.

The first is Jesus reveals to us the heart of the Father.

The way he lives shows us what God feels about us, what God feels about me,

what God feels about you, the way he showed his love for other people,

the way he performed miracles, the way he cured diseases.

All this was God's love pouring out on his people and showing them,

you know, God's heart for us.

Several months ago, me and Julie went to

Pennsylvania for a conference and leading

up to it our small group a couple of us have been talking and praying

about God's eyes for

people around us and what it would be like if

we could see what God saw when he saw certain people

like if we went to a drive-through what does God see not what is what does Josh

see with his eyes and his mind but what does God see what is God's heart so

we've been talking about that and praying about that and this particular morning

me and Julie were in In Pennsylvania, I got up and I had been walking in the mornings,

about six o'clock in the morning, just listening to worship music and spending time with God.

And I got up and I was walking, had music on, and I was just kind of praying.

And I was praying this, I was saying, God, you know, would you show me your eyes for people?

Like kind of take away my eyes and give me your eyes, show me your heart for people around,

And I've been praying that off and on over a couple of weeks,

but this particular morning, God flipped the switch and it was just like, and it just floored me.

Like I had this overwhelming feeling of love.

And the only thing I can describe it as is like the love you have for your kid.

If you have kids, you know how much you love your kids, like just an infinite amount of love.

Well, it was that times 800,000.

It was unbelievable. and it was overwhelming.

And I just started crying like the biggest baby you've ever seen.

I'm sitting there at six o'clock in the morning and I was crying and I was laughing.

I was like filled with joy and all this love.

So imagine like you're in a car and you pull up to this little main street in

this little town and you're turning left and you see me sitting on a little

four foot wall out in front of like a lawyer's office on a main street.

And I'm just sitting there and like snots everywhere, tears,

t-shirts, shorts, my hat's on backwards. And I'm just.

And I'm laughing at the same time. You would think I was crazy,

but that's what God's love is for us. It's crazy.

Like it's just, it's overwhelming.

So that's just a personal story of what God's love is for us.

And for those around us, we obviously see many stories in the Bible where Jesus

shows us God's love for us and for others.

Anytime he cured people, he would sit with people that you wouldn't think he

would sit with. He would spend time with them. He would love on them. He would care for them.

My favorite story is Matthew 8, where Jesus cleanses the leper.

And I'm just going to read Matthew 8, 1 through 3. It's like such a simple little

story, and it's so complex, and it shows so much about God's nature.

That is just like, this little story blows my mind, so...

Matthew 8, 1, when he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him.

And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying.

Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.

And Jesus stretched out his hands and touched him, saying, I will be clean.

And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. and

if we if we know anything about leprosy and

being a leper back in those days they weren't allowed to be

in the vicinity of people you couldn't

walk up and have dinner with nobody you couldn't shake hands with anybody you

couldn't even be in town that's why jesus was out in the mountains they say

he's coming down from the mountain and that's where he meets the leper the leper

is not allowed to be in cities if the leper was coming and he saw people he

had to start screaming, unclean, unclean.

And that was to tell everybody to get away from him.

So I don't know how long the leper had leprosy.

I can imagine it was several months, maybe years that he had to walk around and by himself.

And I can imagine how depressed or anxious he would be by never being around

people and never being touched.

There's all kinds of medical evidence of what a touch does and the hormones

it releases that help with anxiety, that help with stress,

that help feelings of love for each other and develop relationships and stuff

like that. And the leper hadn't had that in a long time.

So to me, verse three, Jesus stretched out his hands and touched him saying, I will be clean.

He doesn't like just immediately cleanse the leper. The leper thinks he's wanting to be cleansed.

I think really what the leper needed and wanted and what God saw was that he

wanted to be touched. And God knows that.

God knows our heart and he does the thing that we need more than the thing that

we think we want or whatever.

And I think if you were to ask the leper deep down, would you,

A, like to either be touched and never be cured of leprosy?

Or would you like to be cured of leprosy and never be touched again?

I think the leper would take being touched.

And I think God saw that. He just reached out and he touched him.

And it's just like God seeing our heart and just knowing us and loving us so

much that he knows what we need before we know what we need.

Another one, John 3, 16, obviously a famous verse, for God so loved the world

that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life.

This is gonna lead into our second part that Jesus came to restore our relationship with God.

He sent his son to die for us to live the perfect life so that we can be in his presence.

Genesis 2, we see the first sin and the separation that it created between man and God.

And the only way to cure that was going to be a perfect sacrifice.

It was going to be Jesus living a perfect life, living all the laws, fulfilling all them.

And then dying on the cross and being raised from the dead is the only way to

close that gap between us and God.

By dying on the cross, Jesus bore the penalty for our sins and made a way for

us to be reconciled with God.

Mark 10, 45, For even the Son of Man did not come to be served,

but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

We see here that he was set about doing his mission from the get-go the whole

time he had it in his mind.

Jesus knew that he was going to die on the cross, like his whole life was heading

towards this point, and he was focused on it.

He was focused on getting us back to him. God wanted to have a relationship

with us. He loves us so much that this is what had to happen.

Through his resurrection, Jesus made it possible for everyone to experience

eternal life. He did this just like he's sitting with Zacchaeus,

who was considered the worst of the worst.

He didn't do it for the best of the best or people that are just good and had

good morals. He did it for everybody.

And this restoration wasn't just about to get us into heaven.

Heaven is a byproduct of being restored and in a relationship with God.

It's to be in his presence and to be able to commune with God again.

And then as a byproduct, we get everlasting life.

We get to go to heaven and live forever.

And the third point of Jesus's mission was to give us an example of how to live.

Jesus came down. He was God. He became man. And he went through this life that we're living.

And he showed us how we should live it.

He gave us an example to go by, John 13, 14 through 15.

So if you, Lord and teacher, have washed your feet You also ought to wash one

another's feet For I have given you an example That you also should do as I have done for you.

So his whole life, the way he lived, the way he treated people was for us to

be able to watch and kind of process and then do that ourselves.

To love on people the way he did, to speak the way he speak with kindness and

gentleness, to seek and to save the lost, to find the people that are away from

God and to tell them about God.

We should be the light, you know, drawing them to God.

He tells us very clearly that we're to follow

his example and live the way that he did in

order that others might be saved in our

small group we talked about we did a study several months

ago and in the study it talked about being disciples of

jesus and the disciples of jesus how they you wanted

to have the dust of your rabbi on you so you

wanted to follow your rabbi so closely that your

your clothes had his dust on him on you and

you lived the way he lived like

you would begin to talk the way your rabbi talked you would

begin to act the way your rabbi

acted we as mountainside should strive

to live so closely to

jesus and and follow jesus so closely that we

begin to look like jesus we begin to talk like jesus

we begin to act like jesus and people

around us they don't see us they see jesus is dust

on us which is which would be awesome right like so they approach us and go

what you got all over you you know and this is this is jesus you know this is

this is how jesus acts this is how jesus acts this is how jesus is patient he

loves he's kind he's gentle,

and they they should see that on us.

So the son of man came with a clear mission. He came to reveal God's heart,

show us exactly how God feels for us. How much God loves us.

He came to restore our relationship with him.

He came to bridge the gap so we can be in the presence of God so that we can.

Interact with him, that we get everlasting life, that we get to be in heaven.

He came to seek and save the lost, and he came to live an example for us to

follow, for us to see an example.

He gives us a full video. His whole life is a video for us to watch,

to consume, to get to know, and to get to follow and lead out ourselves.

My challenge for Mountainside is for us to love others the same way, for us to have Jesus'

dust on us, that we go out and we treat everybody we see,

whether it's people on the drive-thru or people that we already love,

people that we work with, or if it's people that have offended us in some way

that we somehow treat them the way Jesus treated everybody around him,

that they begin to get drawn to God because of the way we live,

the dust on us, how we follow Jesus so closely that they are drawn to God.

And that we somehow draw in the lost so that they can be in a relationship with God as well.

Let his purpose become our purpose. Show others God's love for them.

Tell them stories of how God loves you. Tell them stories of how God has shown

his love for you or how he's shown his love for others.

Live the example that he left for us. Be kind. Be gentle. Be patient. Be loving.

Seek and save the lost. We have to spend time with people that are lost.

We have to spend time outside of our group. I mean, we're all great friends.

We have a great church and most of us are all saved and we all are heading in

that direction, but we have to reach out and be around people that are not saved.

We have to seek and save the lost. We have to be around them.

We have to form relationships with them. We can't just like be around them a little bit.

We have to be intentional and form relationships with them so that

they get to see this life that jesus led the

example that jesus led yeah we

have to we have to get out there and and live what he said

as a result of jesus's mission

on earth our sins are now forgiven we're able

to be in god's presence when god looks

at us he sees jesus's righteousness if we if we've been saved if we've asked

god to forgive us and we've repented our sins God looks at us he doesn't see

all the stuff that we did he sees Jesus perfect life yeah that's all he sees

us it's a impossible thing for me to grasp sometimes.

And you have to kind of reaffirm those things, the things that Jesus sees.

We have to accept those and believe them ourselves. It's by faith that we understand

what Jesus sees when he sees us and not kind of fall back into,

oh, I did this, you know, several years ago or whatever.

We have to go, Jesus sees, I mean, God sees Jesus.

So I got a couple verses. I know this is a little quick.

But Brianna if you want to play the guitar a little bit I'm going to read a

couple verses that just kind of reinforce,

God's love for us and what he actually sees now if you were saved and what he

sees for people that he loves and just want you to kind of sit back and relax

and maybe close your eyes and soak in,

the truth that's in the Bible.

Psalms 103, 10 through 12. He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid

us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are by the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

2 Corinthians 3, 18. We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror

at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

This is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Hebrews 10.10 By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the

body of Jesus Christ once and for all time.

Hebrews 10, 22 Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith

with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

1 Peter 2, 24-25 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that having

died to sin we might live for righteousness.

By his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray,

but you have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

Romans 8.10 Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin,

but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.

Romans 8.1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

John 10.28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

And no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Galatians 5.1 Let me be clear, the Anointed One has set us free.

Not partially, but completely and wonderfully free.

We must always cherish this truth and stubbornly refuse to go back to the bondage of our past.

Thank you for listening to mountainside churches podcast we hope you found inspiration

and encouragement in today's teaching to learn more about our church stay connected or partner with.

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