How Does God See Me? | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

Tonight six o'clock.

First time ever, all of our campus pastors will be

in one place, all of our worship leaders will be

in one place.

You don't realize how.

Complicated it was to organize this, so you better appreciate

it by being here again. We're in the middle of

a construction project, some of yours thinking. Maybe you've always

wondered why do we need to add a balcony. It

is the first Sunday in August, in the middle of

the summer. We have four services today and this one's packed.

You know why we need a balcony because God's doing something.

It's pretty awesome. If you don't know why am I'm Brandon.

I'm the lead pastor of the church. If you're new

to Venture over the last month when I've been traveling

speaking at our other campuses, I'd love to meet you today.

I'll be hanging out in the lobby after the service.

Please come up introduce yourself to me. I would love

the opportunity to meet you. I'm continuing our series where

we are answering hard questions we have forgot. The question

I want to answer today is does God really like me?

How does God see me? What does God think about me.

I want to ask everyone to buy your heads, close

your eyes. I want you to repeat this prayer after me.

Everyone say, dear Jesus, speak to my heart, change my

life in Jesus' name.

Amen. I want to introduce you to my best friend. Here.

He is, I know good immediately, better response than the

first service. I thought it was super funny in the

first service. I had asked my daughter afterwards, was I

funny or should I just ask every joke? And she goes, no,

they weren't giving you anything, so do a better job.

This is Ozzy.

The crazy thing about this dog is that the older

he gets.

The more I love him.

Have you noticed that people have crazy relationships with their

dogs like we have a crazy amount of love for

our dogs. We will post Instagram pictures of our dogs.

We will create Instagram accounts for our dogs, and the

crazy thing about it is people follow the account. Have

you noticed that we will tolerate more from our dogs

then we will any human being.

In our life.

One of the crazy stats about the Seattle area, did

you know that there are? This is actually a true stat.

Don't look it up now, trust me. But if you

don't trust me, google it after service. But there are

more dogs in the city limits of Seattle than there

are children under the age of eighteen.

In this region. We're obsessed with our dogs.

That particular dog, as cute as he is, he destroys everything.

I forgot to shut our closet door one time when

I left. He ate my favorite pair of cowboy boots.

So I'm holding this right now. This is my official

Pastors with Prop Instagram post for those of you that

are into preacher sneakers. I got my golden Goose shoes on,

so take a picture.

Of those two. I'm just kidding.

You, guys are way better than that first service. So

we first moved into our house in muckle Teo and

our house was built in the nineteen fifties and we

love it.

It's a quirky house, but a quirky house.

Built in the nineteen fifty has lots of quirky things

about it.

First off, our house.

Is slanted by about four inches from the front to

the back, so it's at an angle to begin with.

And with that angle, when it's hot out, our door

expands and it doesn't close all the way. So we

have to, like Jimmy rig our door so that it shuts.

And one particular morning I had to work, I didn't,

and so I was sleeping in but I was woken

up by our other dog, ConA, frantically running around and

scratching my side of the bed. So finally I get up.

I see ConA. I wonder where's Ozzy, and so I

start walking around the house trying to find Ozzy. He's

nowhere to be found. And then I just happened to

glance at our front door and it was wide open.

Now I have many assis. Many assis are like beagles.

They just want to escape your house. And I thought,

first thing, Die did not properly close the door, so

my dog escaped. So I ran outside and began to

run up and down our driveway yelling.

Ozzy, Ozzy, where are you.

All of a sudden, a family in an SUV pulls

into my driveway and the mom is sobbing. They hop

out of the car and they say do you do

you have a black dog? And I said, yeah, Ozzy's gone,

and then the dad starts crying and he says, we

hit your dog with our car and he ran off.

So immediately I think the worst. You know how dogs

sometimes if they get wounded. We'll go off into a dark,

hidden place and die. And I think Ozzy is gonna

go find a place and die by himself because my

wife didn't shut the door, and these evil people so

him their car into him. So I call everybody, I

call my kids, I call my wife, everybody comes home.

Nicole Butcher gets on the Muckle t O Facebook page

and posts about our lost dog. Within forty five minutes,

twenty people from the community have showed up at my house.

We're all walking down the street yelling Ozsie like we're

searching for a missing child, and this is happening everywhere.

Finally, after a couple hours, we can't find him.

He's gone. I'm thinking the worst. So that is when

I lost it. It was in my house, started sobbing, thought,

all right, my dog's gone. And then I said what

every dog owner loses the dog says, I'm.

Never getting another dog again.

And then two weeks later we buy two. But I'm

just kidding. I'm kidding, I'm not done.

I Uh.

I thought, I'm gonna give this one last try. So

I walked up the hill behind our house, which I

hadn't gone yet, and I start screaming Ozzy, and you've

probably had this happen before with your dog.

When they're gone.

He runs out of a bush after recognizing my voice,

and he sprints and he jumps into my arms. I mean,

all the neighbors there crying and thrilled, my kids and

my wife, everybody's crying. Our dog is safe, but he

did get hit by a car. So I decide to

take him to the vet. And so I take him

to the vet and right when I walk in, everybody

that worked at the vet clinic goes, is that Azzy?

We've heard about him, We've been worried about him. There

crying that crazy dog. I do love the other dog too,

he's just way more obedient. But how does God see me?

How does God feel about me? Does God like me?

In Scripture, there is a metaphor that is frequently used

to illustrate our relationship with God. We are referred to

as sheep, and he is referred to as our shepherd.

In the Book of Psalms, it says, know that the

Lord is God. It is he who made us. We

are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Throughout scripture you see this metaphor, over and over again.

We are his sheep, he's our shepherd. There are two

great parables where Jesus uses this illustration, and I want

to read them to you. The first one we find

it in Matthew chapter eighteen, verse twelve.

It says, this is Jesus talking.

Jesus is specifically talking to his disciples when he says this.

He says, what do you think if a man owns

a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away? Will

he not leave the ninety nine on the hills and

go to look for the one who's wandered off?

And if he finds it?

Truly, I tell you, he is happier about the one

sheep than about the ninety nine that did.

Not wander off.

Jesus also shared this parable in the Book of Luke.

This particular time, Jesus was talking to the religious people.

He was talking to the people that were naturally pious, legalistic,

the Pharisees. He said, suppose that one of you has

a hundred sheep and he loses one of them, doesn't.

He leave the ninety nine in the open.

Country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?

And when he finds.

It, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.

Then he calls his friends and his neighbors together and

he says, rejoice with me.

I've found my lost sheep.

I tell you that in the same way, there will

be more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents

than over ninety nine righteous persons who did not need

to repent.

What a parable is is.

A parable is a story that you can relate to. Now,

it's not necessarily a true, actual story, but the reality

is we can all hear a parable and think, oh,

I've heard that happen to someone before, or I've thought.

About that before.

And the purpose of a parable It's like a metaphor,

and that it's not an.

Actual well story, but it could be true.

It explains an idea or a point with a deeper

personal meaning. These parables show God's heart towards us and

his heart towards those that are lost in sin. We

are his sheep and he is our shepherd. Unfortunately, we

use that a lot, but you and I don't get

that metaphor. You know why we don't get it because

we don't have any sheep. Really, how many of you

raise your hand if you own a sheep.

None of you.

Raise your hand if you're related to someone who owns

the sheep. Two of you, two of you have relatives

in New Zealand.

Same thing. But how many of you own dogs? Boom?

How many of you know someone who owns a dog? Everybody?

So I'm actually not gonna use I don't want you

to think of sheep and shepherd, because we don't understand sheep,

we don't understand shepherds.

I want to modernize this.

I want to make this the twenty twenty five version

of this parable. So I want you to think of

it this way, dog owner and dog, or if you're

a cat person, cat owner and cat.

But we don't talk about that. I did that because

I saw you there.

So I'm going to talk about sheep and shepherds, but

I want you to think dog and dog owner, if

that helps. The Bible says a about Jesus being our shepherd.

I want to read just a couple verses for you

to get a picture. One Peter five to four. Jesus

is our chief shepherd. Now you know this that Pastor

Brandon is the shepherd of this church.

But though I'm your shepherd.

In this church, we all have a chief shepherd, Jesus,

who is the shepherd over all of us John ten eleven.

Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd

lays down his life for his sheep. Hebrews thirteen twenty

says Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep. So

Jesus isn't just a good shepherd. He is the best shepherd,

a perfect shepherd. And I want you to notice something

about sheep. Notice that there's no differentiation between who is

a sheep.

We're all sheep, whether you go to church or not.

Jesus sees you.

As his sheep, whether you reject him or chase after him,

Jesus sees you as his sheep. Everyone that walks this

earth in the eyes and heart and mind of Jesus,

saved and unsaved.

You are his sheep.

No matter where you're at in your faith journey, Jesus

sees you as his sheep. So how does Jesus see me?

How does Jesus feel about me? Does Jesus does God?

Does he like me?

In each parable Jesus tells the story of someone who

had a hundred sheep and every time the owner left

ninety nine sheep to chase after one. And in both

of these parables, the ninety nine represents a different group

of people. In the Book of Matthew, that ninety nine

represents the most faithful people, the people that are the

most earnest and passionate about their relationship with Jesus, those

that are the most solid followers of Jesus his disciples.

In the Book of Luke, the ninety nine illustrates the

church people that frequently make us look bad, the ones

that are super legalistic, judgmental, the ones that are overly

pious and make being a follower of Jesus difficult because

they attach so many rules and regulations to it. But

we all understand who that one sheep is. It's lost,

it's outside of the ninety nine. And again, if you

struggle with the sheep shepherd metaphor, think dog dog owner.

Here's what we learn about the nature of sheep from

these parables.

First off, we learn.

That sheep stray, Sheep tend to wander off, Sheep go

hot and then cold the next day. Sheep can be

on fire at a worship service on a Sunday night,

and they are lukewarm and apathetic by Monday. Sheep can

go through the church membership class on Sunday and decide

on Monday they're gonna look for a new church. Sheep

have times they really believe, and they have other times

they're consumed with doubt. Sheep have times where they accept Jesus,

and then they have seasons of their life when they

absolutely reject Jesus. Sheep stray. Another thing we learn about sheep.

Part of their nature is that sheep falls short. Sheep

are only partially obedient. They don't obey completely. Sheep disappoint,

they frustrate. They do well one day, they mess up

the next I'm telling you I can leave, we can

go to work, leave Ozzie at home for two weeks.

He'll be great, and then one day this happens and

a lot worse. Paul said this in Romans.

He said, there is no difference between jew and gentile,

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory

of God, and all are justified freely by His grace

through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. We're all sheep,

we all wander, we all fall short, we all are

desperately in need of Jesus. We all have sheep likeness.

If you wonder what is your sheep likeness? You have

the moments where you wander away. If you wonder what

is your sheep? You have moments where you fall short.

We have our good days, we have our bad days.

Sometimes we think it's just a little fib thinking what

people don't know won't hurt them, and then we find

ourselves lying, sometimes look bit too long at someone, and

then the next day we find ourselves lusting. Sometimes we

pride we were good days. We have our bad days.

We all have those moments where we wish we could

like hop into a time traveling DeLorean, go back and

change something that we've done, because.

We all sin.

One of the most amazing verses in the entire Bible

is by Paul. It's Romans seven fifteen. And you got

to put this in the context of who Paul was. Yes,

Paul's probably the greatest evangelist that's ever lived. Paul is

the greatest church planner that's ever existed. Paul wrote over

half of the New Testament. But Paul was in this

moment where he was reflecting on like he was reflecting

on decisions that he makes and how he wanders and

he falls short, and he says this, And tell me

if you don't relate to this statement.

Paul says, I do not understand what I do for

what I want to do. I do not do.

Well what I hate. I find myself doing very sheep

like sheep mess up? Dogs mess up? Did you know

that as a dog owner, I still love my dog

even when he choose my cowboy boots.

It is amazing to me how quickly people forgive their dogs.

Your dog can eat an entire wall in your house,

and two days later he looks at you with that

big fluffy face, those big brown eyes, and you love

him even more than you did when you had a wall.

I always think, like my wife tolerates everything from those dogs.

They can eat.

Her shoes to her purse, destroy her house and she

doesn't even remember that they did it two days later.

If I forget to put the dishes in the dishwasher, I.

Hear about it six months later. We're just being real.

Have you noticed that, Like we're really we're harder on

people than we are on our dogs. What's the other

nature of a sheep? Sheep need help? Finding their way home.

Sheep don't accidentally get lost and end up back home.

Sheep continue to wander further and further away because the

sheep needs a shepherd to rescue them. Have you ever

noticed that when you and I get lost in our thoughts,

when we get lost in our sin, when we get

lost in our bad decisions, we need someone to help

us reset our thinking. The amount of times I was

thinking about this that people will come to me and

they'll have their spouse or their boyfriend or their girlfriend

with me, and they'll talk about an addiction that they have.

And almost every time someone comes to me and says

they're struggling with an addiction, I tell them about an

amazing resource we have at this church, celebrate recovery. Every

Monday we have Celebrate recovery. You need people to walk

alongside you as you journey on in your recovery.

And almost every time.

I bring it up to them, there is a Pavlovian

response that people have to going to celebrate recovery, where

they immediately respond and say, oh, I can figure it

out on my own.

I don't need help with that.

I don't need like I can fix my marriage without

a marriage counselor I can solve all this on my own.

It's like we think, as she who have wandered off,

that we can find our own way home. Happens more

often than not, and then always two months later people

come back and meet with me and are like, I

really need a marriage counselor from my family now, I

really I need somebody to walk alongside me with my addiction.

That's because sheep need a shepherd to help.

Them along the way.

Have you seen it was a famous reel that was

kind of circulating the internet for several years, and it

was this image of a there's a ditch and a

sheep was bouncing up and it falls straight into the ditch.

Have you seen that?

And then the shepherd comes down and pulls the sheep

up and drags it out of the ditch, and immediately

what happens, The sheep hops right back and goes right

back down into the ditch. Because left to ourselves, that's

what we do. So that's what we learn about the

nature of sheep. What do we learn about the nature

of the shepherd? First, we learn that he chases, that

he is willing to leave the ninety nine to go

after the one lost sheep that he looks for the lost.

Did you know that when you stray, he chases after you.

Did you know that when.

You reject him and leave him, he doesn't leave you.

He chases.

He never stops chasing. If there is something that should

encourage you about, maybe a child that you have that

as an adult has wandered away from the faith, or

maybe you have a spouse that's wandered away from the faith,

or or a friend that you're wondering, are they ever

gonna have any sort of interest in the in you know,

following Jesus, regardless of where they're at. I'll tell you

where Jesus is at. He's chasing them. He will never

give up on them. He will chase and chase and chase.

In the Book of.

Ezekiel, God said this, He said, I will search for

the lost, and I will bring back the strays. So

what do we learn about the shepherd. The shepherd loves

to chase. The shepherd calls Jesus is calling you. He

goes to great links to get your attention, and he

knows that once you actually hear him, you will recognize

his voice. Scripture talks over and over again about how

sheep recognized the voice of their shepherd. I thought about

this in the situation where Ozzie was lost that hill

behind our house. Many of the neighbors had gone up

that hill yelling for Ozzy, but he didn't come. But

as soon as his owner walked up there and yelled

his name, Ozzie recognized my voice, sprint out of the bushes,

and jumped into my arms. We had a guest on

our podcast encourage you to go back listen to this

episode of Pastors Unfiltered. But this is a man who

grew up in a Muslim family, and he tells the

story about at a young he knew there was some

he called it a higher power. He knew there was

something like it, and he was seeking out who that

higher power was. Then, as an adult, he literally has

a dream where Jesus is in that dream, and in

that moment he tells the story he recognized his voice

as the same voice that was calling to him when

he was younger. Sheep recognized the voice of the shepherd

who calls them. One of my all time favorite verses

is Revelations three twenty and it says this is Jesus speaking.

He says, here I am. I stand at the door

and knock some of you. You are lost. You are

only at church today because someone made you be here.

But I want to tell you.

He's knocking, he's calling, he's chasing, and Jesus says, if

anyone here's my voice opens the door. All come in,

eat with him and he with me. What else do

we learn about the shepherd? We learn that the shepherd

carry the sheep back. We're familiar with the image of

a shepherd carrying a sheep.

This is the tempt number two to get on pastors

with props.

We've been to Israel eight times and I have to

buy something every time I'm there because you know it's important.

So this is from a olive wood place that we

always go on every single trip, and it is the

image of Jesus with a sheep over his shoulders.

My argument for die why.

I should buy this is that it illustrates me and

Jesus together, and she fell for it.

Now.

But this image, we're familiar with, the image of Jesus

with the sheep over his shoulders, carrying the sheep. I

was thinking this, when does this end in our faith journey?

Do you ever graduate out of being his sheep. Do

you ever mature your way out?

Some of you are like.

I've been serving Jesus since, you know, for sixty years.

I have graduated to shepherd mode.

Do you ever graduate out?

I mean it makes sense for us, Like all those

teenagers that are new Christians, they need a shepherd. But

like I'm a mature adult, do I still need a shepherd?

Here's what the prophet Isaiah said, even to your old

age and gray hairs, I am he.

I am he who.

Will sustain you. I have made you, and I will

carry you. I will sustain you, and I will rescue you.

Even when your hair turns gray, You're still a sheep.

You never arrive. You can have flowing jetlike gray hair,

like John Plotner.

John is one of the most spiritual.

Men I know.

When I saw you get up, I thought you were leaving.

I thought, like mentions gray hair, I'm out, But then

you came up on stage.

Now he's one of the most.

Spiritual, godly men I know and has like perfect I.

Mean, you're gonna your hair is gonna go gray. You

want it to look like that.

I mean that is like the distinguished gray hair.

But he's still in the eyes of Jesus, He's still

a sheep.

You don't ever graduate out, You don't never mature your

way out.

Think of it this way.

Have you noticed that the older your dog gets, the

more you love your dog. Everybody loves puppies. Strangers love puppies.

They're cute and cuddly and playful, and they got puppy breath.

And the best thing about puppies is you get to

leave them with the dog owner and they get to

deal with the puppies. But as dogs get older, if

if it's not your dog, no offense by what I'm

about to say. Most people think your dog is ugly

as it gets older. They look at your dog and

they think, seriously, let that dog go to heaven. But like,

we love those old dilapidated dogs so much.

They're like part of the family.

And the older the dog gets, the more we love

the dog.

We have two growth groups this week over at our house.

And before when we first started having growth groups at

our house with Ozzy and Kna, we would apologize ahead

of time. Now we don't even apologize. Like our dogs

are obnoxious, they're terrible. I've decided that, hey, you still go.

To my church.

So you must not care about my ridiculous dogs.

But that's what happens.

So your dogs get older, you love them more, so

you never age out of Jesus loving you like that.

Paul told Timothy this for Timothy four to ten. He says,

that's why we labor and strive, because we've put our

hope in the Living God, who is the savior of

all people, and especially those who believe. There's so much

in that one verse. We're told that our hope is

only in Jesus. You can try everything else, but in

the end, Jesus is your only hope, and he is

the savior for all all one hundred, especially the savior

for those who believe. So what do we learn from

all this? How does God see me? How does God

feel about me? Does God really like me? You, whether

you are in the church or not, You, whether you

are a follower of Jesus or someone who refuses to

believe you, whether you are the ninety nine or the

one you in the eyes of Jesus are worth chasing after.

How does he I feel about you he chases after you?

Does Jesus like me so much that he spends his

entire life chasing after you. How does he feel about

me so much? Did he leave the ninety nine to

chase after you? You are worth chasing after. I want

to ask everyone to buy your heads and close your eyes.

If you were here today.

And you don't know Jesus, when something stirred in your

heart or in the worship and in the message, and

you're saying today, I want to I want to try

faith as an option for my life.

I want to give my life to Jesus.

In just a moment, I'm gonna count to three, and

if that is you, I want you to raise your hand.

There are others of you. You've gone to church before,

you've pray prayers, but if.

You had to be honest, you'd have to say I

am far from God. But today I want to leave

knowing that I am right with Jesus. And if that

is you, when I say three, I want you to

raise your hand. If you're here you don't know Jesus

but you want to, or you're here you're far from him,

but you want to leave knowing you are right with him.

When I say three, raise your hand.

Here I go one, two, raise your hand now three.

Thank you guys. Put your hands down. Can I get

everybody to stand up? I'm going to ask everyone here

to pray this prayer, but specifically for the dozen of

you that raised your hand. If you pray this prayer

and you mean this prayer, you get to leave knowing

that you are right with Jesus. But I ask everyone

to pray this together because we're family and we don't

do anything alone.

So we want you to know you're not alone.

So I want to ask everybody to buy your heads,

close your eyes, repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say,

Dear Jesus, I stand before you today and I admit

that I'm lost, and I ask you to find me

and forgive me, and I invite you to come into

my life and to change me. I choose from this

day forward to serve you with my life. Thank you

for forgiving me and for saving me in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen, before I turn you loose.

Yeah, that's great. Thank you.

Before I turn you loose, I just want to direct

your attention this week to the What's Next page. It's

a page on our app that we create for you.

If you need resources, you want to read a Bible

plan with us for the week, or you just want

to grow, have more questions.

It's a great place to go.

Be blessed as you go, remember how much Jesus loves you,

and have a great week.

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