An Extraordinary Invitation

Crossing family, I missed you and you have to just hear me say

this. It is such a joy and a privilege

and an honor to be numbered among you as we try to make this

region the hardest place on planet Earth to get the hell

from. Many of you have asked and let

me just tell you the trip was incredible and I speak on behalf

of all who are able to go, that something shifted and changed in

all of us. For me, I am still very much

processing and navigating everything that went on in my

heart and my hope is that in the coming months and years I will

do my best to let you in on what God is teaching and revealing to

me on the other side of this experience.

It was just incredible. I want to welcome all of our

campuses to those of you here at 48th St. to those of you in

Macomb, Kirksville, 929, Pike County, Hannibal, Lima, Mount

Sterling, Keokuk, Monmouth, Jacksonville, Weaver Online And

let's give another big shout out to those of you who are part of

our Inside with 17 Baptisms. I love it.

I also want to welcome those of you who are new here.

I am so glad that you are with us.

And if you have not stopped by the new here booth or downloaded

the app, please do so. Let me tell you why this is not

for us, This is for you. Connected people grow.

So if you're wanting to grow in Christ, let me encourage you.

Get connected. Today.

I want to publicly thank Tyler McKenzie and Chuck Hedsler.

Would you give them a big round of applause for preaching in my

absence? I was blessed by each of them

and challenged to take several steps to make sure that I have

done all I can do to raise and lead a godly family, and I hope

you did the same. As I said at the very beginning

of the Lovers and Landmines series, we are entering into

contested waters as a church. We're talking about family,

We're talking about money, we're talking about the Holy Spirit.

And hear me, Satan will be at work.

You see, God or Satan wants your family leaderless and godless,

so that he can be the dominant voice, so that his will will be

done inside of those you and I love the most.

He wants to keep you and I from being generous so we are

enslaved to the flesh in order to choke out gospel

effectiveness in our region. He wants you and I to be

ignorant of the Holy Spirit so that way you do not operate in

His power so that you are not guided by His wisdom.

So you have a life that does not produce His fruit.

Then after that we're going to have a one off series where we

celebrate the 250 anniversary of America and then we will launch

into what could be the highest attended month of ministry at

our church. When we jump into the At the

Movies series, begin thinking now about who you would like to

invite. You see, Satan hates it when

people begin to give Jesus or his church a chance and he will

do whatever he can do to stop it, to destroy it.

And so as I stand here today, you need to know where I'm at.

I see so much potential and opportunity in front of us, and

I am hopeful that God will do a mighty work in US and through us

over the next couple of months. And because of that opportunity

and because of what God is inviting us into, those of you

who would consider yourself a prayer warrior or to those of

you who from time to time pray, to those of you who have a

prayer journal, let me give you something to write down.

Would you please lift me up in your prayers?

Would you lift our staff up in your prayers?

Would you lift up our church as a whole in your prayers?

Would you go to God on behalf of this region and those we are

trying to reach? And since I'm talking about it,

why don't we do it? Would you spend a little time

with me and allow me to pray? Heavenly Father, you've been so

good to us. You have brought us to this very

moment, covered in Your grace and in your mercy.

And you more than any of us, You know what lies ahead of us and

you know what's at stake. I'm asking you to wake something

up in US, shift something in US. We're asking you to do something

mighty in US and through US. I pray that you'd protect the

ears and the minds and the hearts of those who are new here

and new to you. Draw them close to you so that

they crave an intimate, personal relationship with your Son Jesus

Christ and whose name we pray. Amen.

Several years ago, a group of us on staff were invited to a

conference that was being hosted in Nashville, TN and when we

arrived, we had a chance to meet up with somebody who used to

attend our McComb campus. He was one of the football

coaches for the Vanderbilt Commodores.

And so he took us on a tour of the facility.

And while he was showing at the athletic fields, in the weight

rooms, in the training areas, in the locker rooms, there was this

joy in his voice as he told us that they were getting ready to

launch a new renovation and expansion of their entire

athletic complex. And the cost was $300 million.

This was on the heels of them just doing a renovation, but it

wasn't enough and it wasn't big enough.

And so they set a goal of 1/3 of a billion dollars.

And then he said that the first $100 million came from three

families. And as he talked about this, you

could hear the excitement in his voice, the possibilities for

what it was going to allow them to do, the joy he had of seeing

people get behind the vision to make The Commodores a contender

in the SEC. Yeah.

I'm assuming you're all moved just like I was, and to be

honest with you, as I'm walking through this, my mind was blown.

This is an incredible amount of money, an incredible amount of

generosity, an incredible amount of excitement for a game.

Now, do not get me wrong. Do not get me wrong, I have zero

problem with this. I love sports.

I love giving and participating in high school activities.

I love watching teams win and young men and women learning

about how to overcome hardship and adversity.

I love seeing them develop through the wins and the losses.

And there are some people who they love athletics so much that

they want to be patrons of athletic departments.

We call them boosters, and when you give enough money, they put

your name in the back of the catalog.

And so when you show up at the game, you can see, Yep, there we

are. We're a part of this.

There are other people who are hard wired differently.

God made them with different desires, gifts and desires.

And so they want to be patrons of the arts or patrons of music.

They get behind it, they support it.

In fact, some of the greatest works that have occurred in the

world of art were the result of patronage, somebody footing the

bill to make that happen. I titled my message an

extraordinary invitation. Turn to your neighbor and say

you have been invited. You have been invited.

I have a question for you. Well, before I ask the question,

a couple years back, I, I, I read a or I saw a, a, a sermon

by an author. And then I bought the book and

my heart was on fire as I read the book.

And my heart was burdened as I heard these stories because the

stories of these people absolutely and completely have

shaped the world that you and I live in today.

And I felt a burden to take you on the very same journey that I

went on. So let's begin with a question.

Have you ever wondered who funded Jesus's ministry?

Who paid to make Jesus's ministry happen?

And I mean, we read about everything that he did as he

walked along the banks of the Sea of Galilee and as he toured

the streets of Jerusalem. But who funded it?

Who paid and paved the way for Jesus to do what he did here on

earth? Jesus had money.

In fact, he had so much money, he had a treasurer.

You're going a treasurer? Yeah.

Jesus had a treasurer. And you know his name.

Do you know what his treasurer's name was?

Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

If you don't believe me, go home.

John chapter 12 verse 6 tells you all about it.

John 12:6

So we know that Jesus had money. We know he had a treasurer, but

how did he get it? And I know what some of you

Bible people are thinking right now.

He just made it happen. He's a miracle worker.

He just piled stacks of cash anytime he needed it.

Someone gave him 5 bucks and he was like, and that's how we did

it. No, no, no, no.

Some of you, you're a kind of Bible nerds and you're going.

I know how he did it because one time he was being asked about

taxes and he told Peter to go fishing and that there would be

a coin in the fish's mouth. And Peter goes and he fishes and

he pulls out the fish and inside the fish's mouth was money.

Fellas, your wife would not be frustrated with you for as much

money as you spend fishing. If every time you pulled a bass

out, you're like, babe, another $100.

Maybe that's what Jesus did. He just had his disciples walk

around and like Asian carp hopped out into the boat and

they were just pulling money out.

But that is not how he did it. I know what some of you are

thinking, but Clayton, we're talking about Jesus.

He turned water into wine. Jesus had a side hustle.

He would take wine or water and he would just turn it into wine.

You know, Jesus was the one who created Seagrams by the Savior.

Oh, it gets worse. The original Crown Royal

Bethlehem Brewery, Jordan River Gin, The real Maker's Mark.

This one's a stretch wave. Walker Scotch maybe?

No, that's not how he did it. That is not how Jesus got the

money to do his ministry. It happened because of a Gospel

patron. Somebody funded him.

There was this woman named Joanna.

Joanna was married to a very influential man.

They walked in powerful circles, held positions in high society.

Her husband was well connected, oversaw re illustrating multiple

streams of income. For the most part, Joanna and

her husband lived lives where their needs were always met.

Until she got very sick. And this sickness, well, it

changed her. It humbled them.

All the connections and all the wealth could not fix her.

They ran through doctors until they ran out of doctors.

And yet she remained sick. So what does she do next?

After she had tried everything else, Joanna tried Jesus.

Some of you, you can relate. You've tried everything else and

you are no better off than when you started.

And now you find yourself doing things you never thought you

would do. You're here at church on a

weekend. You find yourself reading and

praying to praying to God. You've tried everything else.

And so you decided to give Jesus a try.

So Joanna met Jesus, Jesus met Joanna, and Jesus heals her.

And as a result, two things happen.

The first, she begins to follow Jesus.

In fact, not only did she follow Jesus, she kept following Jesus

because you read about her again because she was at the

resurrection in Luke chapter 24 verse 10.

Luke 24:10

The second thing that happened is that she became generous so

that other people could meet the very same Jesus that saved her.

On the heels of her generosity, Jesus restores a demon possessed

man, raises a dead girl, and heals the woman with the issue

of blood. Three stories that you know

well, but do you know what happened before that?

Joanna became a patron of the gospel as Jesus traveled from

town to town preaching the good news, the gospel of the Kingdom

of God. He was funded by Joanna, a

gospel patron. You can read about it in Luke

Luke 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8 verses one through 3. After this, Jesus travelled

about from 1 town and village to another proclaiming the good

news of the Kingdom of God. The 12 were with him and also

some women who'd been cured of evil spirits and diseases.

Mary called Magdalene from whom 7 demons had come out, Joanna

the wife of Chooser, the manager of Herod's household, Susanna

and many others. These women were helping to

support them out of their own means.

Joanna is almost completely forgotten in history, but it was

her generosity that funded the ministry of our Savior.

And what you will see happen over and over again, not just in

Scripture but in history, is that behind every significant

move of God, there were people faithfully giving behind the

scenes. They were patrons of the gospel.

In the 1700s, the Bibles in England sat in homes and in

churches, collecting dust. As a result, people far and wide

ignored the Bible's teaching on sin, salvation, and the coming

day of judgment. Church was stuffy and formal,

and the ministers of the day were timid.

No one was attracted to God and to His church.

No one was inspired to live for His Kingdom cause, and as a

result, society was out of control.

That is how the 18th century began.

But by God's grace, that is not how it would end.

God saw fit to raise up a preacher and a patron to turn

things around. The preacher was George

Whitfield. He was described as a Man on

Fire. At a time when sermons were dry,

moral essays read from church pulpits.

Whitfield's words were like living water overflowing from

his heart. The Bible's truths about heaven

and hell, God and Satan, sin and salvation, we're all realities

to Whitfield, and he preached them that way.

George Whitfield was described as Thunder and lightning in the

pulpit, a man made to awaken the slumbering.

He spoke in a way that showed spiritual things to be real.

He was biblical, passionate, dramatic, and joyful.

He loved the people he preached to.

He frequently wept in his sermons.

He urgently pleaded everyone to come to Jesus.

Whitfield's maxim was to preach as a palace painted, but for

eternity. He often said would ministers

preach for eternity? They would then act the part of

two Christian orators and not only calmly and coolly inform

the understanding, but by persuasive, passionate address,

endeavor to move the affections and warm the hearts.

And the patron, The patron, it was Lady Huntington.

She was a woman who was described as a tornado and a

silver spoon all wrapped into one.

A5 foot 6 force of nature in the heiress of old money.

Blunt, opinionated, constantly in motion.

Lady Huntington was a rare English aristocrat.

She rubbed shoulders with royalty, enjoyed a pinch of

snuff, and she really believed the Bible.

This is my kind of girls. Her heart was broken for the

gospel and for her country, and so she cried out to the

preacher. This is what she said.

What pride the rich have, Mr. Whitfield.

I am quite out of patience at all of the wickedness of them

all. To which Whitfield replied, the

love of money is the reason many are no more than all most

Christians. I wish the Church of England was

the joy of the whole earth, but the Christian world is instead

in a deep sleep. That night, Lady Huntington

poverty or pondered the gravity of her nation's sinful

condition. She was grieved that parties,

fashion shows, concerts and gambling houses were captivating

for the rich for months at a time.

She mourned that they sat down to eat and drink and rose to

play with no thought of eternity.

And so that night she prayed. But Lord, what am I to do about

it? My generation lies lost in

darkness. They are like sheep without a

shepherd. God, may you pour abundant

blessings on our sinful country and help me to fill my place in

your work. Sometime later, the patron, Lady

Huntington, reached out to the preacher, George Whitfield.

Mr. Whitfield, I watched God save souls through the light of

His all glorious gospel, and now I see the one thing living which

must be the proclamation of the love of God to man in Christ

Jesus. I am nothing.

Christ is all to behold. The glory of such a Savior ought

to make us breathe His praises from pole to pole.

To preach Christ and His blessing upon repentance over

the earth is the Commission. Whitfield sat still.

So, she said, my mind is made-up.

I would like to propose a partnership.

Go on, the preacher said. Lady Huntington replied, God

chose me to be a member of England's nobility, and now I am

ready to use my position for Jesus's sake, and I want your

help. I'm listening, the preacher

said, a warm smile spreading across his face like a sunrise.

She continued. Well, Galatians 22 says that

Paul preached privately to those who seemed influential in

Jerusalem. And I have a burden for the

influential in England. They won't go out to the fields

to hear Methodist preachers, and when they attend church, they

hear sermons with no theological guts.

Whitfield was known as an open air preacher.

He would go into the fields where everybody could show up,

and he would preach to the thousands.

But Lady Huntington was worried that the people she wanted to

reach wouldn't be people who would go to the fields.

Whitfield, I want you to bring the gospel to them in my house

starting tomorrow night. Whitfield was thrilled to answer

Lady Huntington's call, and so he wrote to her.

If they will hear the gospel only under a sealed roof,

Ministers S shall be sent to them there.

If only in a church or in a field, they shall have the

gospel there. Oh, that I may be enabled, when

called, to preach to any of them, so as to preach to win

their souls to the blessed Jesus.

And this partnership sparked the First Great Awakening.

To those of you who are unfamiliar with the First Great

Awakening, it's spread across England and it's spread across

the United States of America before we were the United States

of America, when we were still trying to figure out how to be

the 13 original colonies. And when you read our founding

documents where it says we hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men are created equal, it was not evident until George

Whitfield preached the gospel to them.

You and I are standing on the ground not just paved by the

grace and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the preaching

of George Whitfield and the patronage of Lady Huntington.

This partnership made him one of her personal chaplains, a

special privilege reserved for nobility.

Her support gave Whitfield the means and the encouragement to

continue preaching everywhere, promoting revival among all

churches, all denominations and all peoples, as Whitfield wrote

to his patron, whom he described as a woman who was all aflame

for Jesus. Oh, that that could be said of

us, he said about 2000. Attend every night.

Last Sunday evening in the field there were about 5000 hearers.

I hear much good has been done at Bristol.

Everywhere fresh doors are opening.

People flock from all quarters. I have not been so well for so

long a season, for many years as I have been since I left London.

A proof, I think, that the Lord calls me into the fields to

preach. After 30 years, Lady Huntington

returned to the city that had appalled her when she was

younger. This time she bought a plot of

land, hired builders and began construction.

Lady Huntington's project caught the eye of the city and grabbed

their attention. Why build a Chapel, They

questioned. Your money could be better spent

helping the poor, she replied. I do pity the poor, and I will

give them what I can. But when I gave myself up to the

Lord, I likewise devoted all my fortune to Him with this

condition that I would take with a sparing hand what might be

necessary for my food, clothing, and support of my children.

Many benevolent persons who have no religion feel for the

physical needs of others and help them, but few, even among

professing Christians, have a proper concern for the awful

condition of perishing souls. As the gospel spread, the need

for churches and preachers was everywhere.

So Lady Huntington committed to building and funding the

churches, and Whitfield committed to raising up the

preachers to fill the pulpits. And within a few years, she was

responsible for 116 preaching places and a seminary to train

the preachers who'd prime proclaim the good news of Jesus

Christ. What Lady Huntington and George

Whitfield accomplished was truly incalculable.

They reached into the unreached places of both England and

America, where there were no faithful churches and no gospel

preachers. Together, the two of them

persuaded many of England's nobility that God was not a dull

idea, but a living Savior who could be known and felt.

In the years before the American colonies became an independent

nation, 4 fifths 80% of Americans had heard Whitfield

preach about Jesus. Whitfield's broad reaching

evangelism gave America a theological backbone that shaped

the nation for generations to come.

In total, Whitfield evangelized upwards of 10 million people in

his lifetime, and no one could begin to count the number of

conversions he saw the day before his death.

Although he was not feeling well, Whitfield had been

persuaded to preach what became his final sermon.

With a day almost gone and his health already poor, a friend

cautioned him. Sir, you are more fit to go to

bed than to preach. True, Sir, responded Whitfield.

But then the preacher turned his attention heavenward and prayed.

Lord Jesus, I am weary in your work, but not of it.

If I have not yet finished my course, let me go and speak for

you once more in the fields, and come home and die.

He closed his final sermon by saying I have outlived many on

earth, but they cannot outlive me in heaven.

I shall soon be in a world where time, age, pain and sorrow are

unknown. My body fails, my spirit

expands. How willingly I would live

forever to preach Christ, but I die to be with Him.

What was it that moved George Whitfield to be a preacher?

What was it that moved Lady Huntington to be its patron?

It was the good news. It was the gospel.

There might be some of you who are new to the crossing here

today and you might be asking what is this gospel that so

moved them? You know it.

John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and

only Son. Hear this, that whoever believes

in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

You may have a bad idea about God, but listen to what God says

about God. For God did not send His Son

into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world

through Him. God is on a rescue mission to

not condemn your soul, but to save your soul through His Son

Jesus Christ. And listen to the promise.

Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not

believe stands condemned already because they have not believed

in the name of God's one and only Son.

You want it a different way? You want to know how my trip to

Greece went? Well, I stood in Corinth where

Paul preached, and he wrote a letter to that church.

And in the 15th chapter, verses one through 6, this is what Paul

says to the church that he started.

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel

I preached to you, which you have received and on which you

have taken your stand. If your life is not standing on

the gospel of Jesus Christ, you are standing on sinking sand.

But if you are in Christ, by this gospel you are saved.

If you hold firmly to the Word, I preach to you, otherwise you

have believed in vain. This is the power of the gospel.

But what is the gospel for? What I received?

I pass on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for

our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried

and that He was raised on the third day according to the

Scriptures. And you might be going, well, I

mean, people could have made that up.

People could just be saying stuff.

Oh no, Paul goes on. There were witnesses to what

happened. There were witnesses to the

crucifixion, and there were witnesses to the resurrection.

And that he appeared to Cephas. That's Peter.

Then to the 12:00. And after that, he appeared to

more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at that time.

This is a verifiable historical event, some of whom are still

living, though some have fallen asleep.

This is the gospel. People can be saved, changed,

redeemed, made right before God, can have the hope of eternity in

their hearts, can conquer death, can't conquer sin.

This is the gospel that leads to salvation and that very gospel

raised up a preacher and a patron.

You've been invited. Will you join me in becoming a

gospel patron? We're moving to a time of

decision. Every week we have this moment.

We say we're moving to a time of decision.

And then we come down here and internally, we call it landing

the plane. You may not know this, I don't

expect you to, but Whitfield landed the plane and one of his

favorite closes was this. He would end his sermon with an

invitation for his his hears to believe in Jesus.

And he would say these words and let me say them over you.

Oh, let there be joy in heaven over some of you who believe.

Let me not go back to my Master and say, Lord, they will not

believe my reports no longer. Harden your hearts, but open

them wide and let the King of Glory enter in.

Believe me, I'm willing to go to prison and death for you, but I

am not willing to go to heaven without you.

The love of Jesus Christ constrains me to lift up my

voice like a trumpet. And He did, and millions of

lives were saved. And that message is still

available to you today. And so if you are here today and

you have never started an intimate personal relationship

with Jesus Christ, you have not believed in the gospel, in the

finished work of Jesus Christ on your behalf, no longer harden

your heart. In just a few moments, the

people around you are going to stand and sing, and some of them

are going to come to the steps and pray.

And I want to encourage you, if right now you are outside of

Christ, you have not yet surrendered your life to him,

I'm going to encourage you to either turn to a friend and say,

how do I get this figured out today?

Or if you want, you can take the bold walk right over there

underneath that screen next to the baptistry, and somebody will

meet you and talk to you about what it means to be in Christ.

To the rest of you, to those of you who call yourselves

Christians, you have received an extraordinary invitation to

partner with God in the saving of souls.

Do not harden your hearts. Do not be faithless.

Do not sit on the sidelines while God is inviting you onto

the field. Would you lift high the gospel

in your life and would you become one of its patrons?

Would you stand with me? Heavenly Father, we are not

worthy. We are not deserving to have our

prayers into your throne room. But we were able to do so

because your Son has made us worthy, that through his

sacrifice we are your sons and daughters.

So Heavenly Father, I'm asking that the hearts that are far

from you would be brought to you today and to the hearts that

have had their minds and their emotions fixed on the things of

this earth, that God, you would lift them up to the hills where

our hope came from. And God, that you would stir in

us a desire to make sure that everybody knows about what your

Son has done on our behalf. And your name, I pray.

Amen.