Compassion For The Crowd | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

Amen.

Month of October, we're gonna be in uh four weeks in the book of Acts.

Uh the book of Acts, for a little bit of uh context and background, is written by Luke.

So the the other book Luke wrote, you guessed it, is Luke.

He actually wrote Luke and Acts initially as one book, and it was later separated into two.

So Luke is what we would call a gospel or a um the story of Jesus and Jesus' life, and the book of Acts is is it comes after that.

So Luke would be first, the account of Jesus, and then Acts.

Uh you only see Jesus in the first chapter where he gives his disciples the great commission.

He says, You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead will fill you.

And when the Spirit fills you, you're going to be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, until the ends of the earth, and then Jesus ascends to heaven.

So that's the book of Acts, and we're going to spend four weeks there.

I'm going to start in chapter 2, actually.

So this is after Jesus ascends, his disciples get together and they start to pray about what to do next.

And when they're filled with the Holy Spirit, some unique things begin to happen.

And at one point they're there's on the day of Pentecost, they're they're at a uh essentially a festival where there's a lot of people that have come from all over the world.

And so think about that.

Like God says, I want you to go to all the world, but he brings all the world to them, and then eventually uh they're gonna go back out.

And so they're in this really uh important moment, and it's at the end of Acts 2, uh end of Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We'll start reading in verse 41.

It says, Those who believe what Peter said, so Peter stood up and kind of connected the dots for everybody.

He went through the Old Testament and connected the dots of what God's been doing and what God's been setting up since the beginning of time, all the way to that moment in time, and it said, those that heard him believed and what he said, and they were baptized and added to the church that day, about 3,000 in all.

So 3,000 people from zero to three thousand, like that.

Verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.

Everyone was filled with awe as many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.

All the believers were together, they had everything in common.

By that it means they were sharing.

Verse 45, they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts, they broke bread in their homes, they ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people, and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

What I want to do today is I want to talk about the relationship between three stories in the Bible.

You may or may not be familiar with, but you will be with by the end of the day.

The first is the feeding of the five thousand, the feeding of the four thousand, and the feeding of the three thousand.

Um you notice what we just read is in Acts 2, and it mentions that 3,000 were added to their number.

But I want to backtrack a little bit to what happens before this story that led up to it.

And I think once we see this relationship, uh our part of it, how this applies to us, will be very clear, but I think it's important to see these all together.

So if you look at the story of the feeding of the 5,000, the five loaves, two fish kid who brings the stuff and Jesus feeds five thousand, uh, it shows up in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but we're gonna start looking in Matthew 14.

I just want to peek at this story, and I want you to notice a few things about it.

So this is in Matthew 14, starting in verse 14.

It says, Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat.

Okay, I want you to remember that word.

So Jesus steps from a boat and he sees, it says, uh a huge crowd, and then notice the second word, it says he had compassion on them.

So he sees a large crowd, and his heart is moved with compassion, and then he springs into action and he heals their sick.

Verse 15.

Send the crowds away so that they can go to the villages to buy food for themselves.

But Jesus said, That isn't necessary, you feed them.

Um, okay.

Crowds, crowds are something that show up in the gospels quite a bit.

There were crowds all around Jesus, and when you think of crowds, think of four things.

The crowds were, first of all, fickle.

So the same crowds, you know, crowds were yelling, king him, worship him, and they also eventually yelled, crucify him.

Uh it says actually, after the feeding of the 5,000, that they wanted to make him their king.

And yet he didn't want to be their king the way they wanted him to be their king.

He was a different king with a different kingdom.

Not as he said very clearly, my kingdom's not of this world.

So when they tried to make him king, he slips out in the crowd.

But but the people, same people that wanted uh him to be their king would also eventually crucify him.

So crowds, we know crowds, group think can be very fickle.

One minute they're up, next minute they're down, and and it can change, which then makes a second thing, which is crowds are dangerous.

Crowds are dangerous.

The same people that have a pitchfork that are on your team, if they decide they're not on your team anymore, that pitchfork now is turned on you.

So crowds are dangerous.

Crowds are also, we we know, are needy.

Um Jesus, the crowds that were following him were always in major need.

Because Jesus was healing people, then everybody who had a physical need and infirmity came on mats, came with diseases, Jesus was healing.

So you had a large crowd of needy, fickle, dangerous, and then the last is we're gonna see, is expensive.

So they're fickle, they're dangerous, they're needy, and they're expensive.

Um, when Mark tells this story, of course, Mark is Mark is not an eyewitness, but his mentor was Peter.

So we call the book of Mark, most uh historians or theologians call it the gospel according to Peter.

So Mark is telling us what Peter told him, which he said uh when he tells this story in verse 31, chapter 6, 31, Jesus said, Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place to rest for a while.

And and look what it says in verse 31, it says, He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his disciples didn't even have time to eat.

So they left by boat for a quiet place where they could be alone.

But many people recognized them and saw them leaving.

So, so think about this now.

So you've got a crowd that's fickle and dangerous and needy and expensive, and then you have Jesus' disciples who are tired and hungry.

On top of that, uh, the backdrop of this is John the Baptist has just been beheaded, which means they're grieving.

So they're tired, hungry, and grieving, but on top of the grief, he was beheaded by Herod Antipas, and John the Baptist was part of their cohort.

So not only are we grieving the loss of a friend that we'll never see again who died in a gruesome way, but on top of that, we ourselves are in danger.

Because if Herod Antipas will do that to John the Baptist, what would he do to us?

Why would we be saved?

So they're tired, hungry, grieving, and afraid, and they have a crowd that's needy, fickle, oh no, I'm forgetting the words.

You get the idea.

Expensive, all right, and dangerous.

And they're all they're all in front of them.

And and so uh Jesus says, or the disciples say, send them away, and Jesus says, No, you feed them.

Uh it's interesting because in uh Acts 14 um they look out and they they see this crowd, and their instinct to sing the crowd is send them away.

It's quite interesting because it's starting to get late, and and I kind of feel the disciples.

Actually, it feels like responsible.

Like have you ever been sort of enraptured in your work or or you're with a group of people and everybody's so into what they're doing, we've lost track of time, and and and all of a sudden you realize you're like, hey, hey, just so you guys know, I know we're all doing good stuff here, but it's 7 o'clock, and no one's thought about food.

And and if we if somebody didn't start thinking about food, it's gonna be 8 o'clock and we still hadn't thought about food, and then we're gonna be hungry to hangry, and we don't want to, we're trying to get out in front of the problem.

And so they they come to Jesus and and they say, Hey, let's send these people away because it's getting late and we don't want to, we don't want it to get too late.

And then Jesus hits them with, you feed them.

Um, if you read in Mark's account, he says, late in the afternoon, when he's telling the story, late in the afternoon, his disciples came to him and said, This is a remote place, it's already getting late, send the crowds away to the farms and the villages to buy something to eat.

But Jesus said, You feed them with what?

They asked.

I love that.

With what?

What are you talking about?

Me feed them, us feed them.

With what?

Look, he says we'd have to work for months to earn enough money to buy food for all these people.

If some of you have your Bibles open, if you're in Mark 6, uh 37, it says it would cost 200 denarii, which is like, what is 200 denarii?

200 denari is about$40,000 in today's money.

Uh some of your Bibles say it would take a half year's wages.

In John, it says 200 denari, it wouldn't even feed everybody.

He says, uh, and so they're going, this is a$40,000 meal.

And Jesus says, verse 38.

How much bread do you have?

He asked.

Go and find out.

Have you ever had like a boss or or or a parent or an authority figure give you an assignment you know to be ridiculous?

Uh and they're dead serious.

This feels like if you've ever worked for somebody that wants you to do stuff and they just want you to pull it out of somewhere and they don't even know how much it costs to do it or how much time it is.

Okay, it's funny, I had this thing with our team.

I was out uh and I saw this beautiful coffee table book, and I was like, man, you know, we it'd be so cool to have a beautiful coffee table book that just has testimonies of cool things that God's done in people's lives in our church.

Because if you're gonna have coffee at your coffee table, you might as well, I mean, you know, people are flipping through looking at like living rooms and like curtains and stuff.

I'm like, you might as well get a testimony of good things God is doing.

And so I go to our team, I'm like, hey guys, we need a beautiful coffee table book with testimonies.

And I just thought they'd be like, sure, man, we'll have it to you by the end of the day, you know?

And they're like, oh, okay, Greg.

They're like, we can do a coffee table book, but we want to help you count the cost first.

We want to help you understand this isn't you just post something on Facebook and drag and drop it, and now it's here.

They're like, coffee table books are a huge challenge.

So so they sat down and they laid it all out.

But we are gonna have a coffee table book.

I just want to let you know.

We're still gonna have one.

Uh I think the end of January is the goal, but um took longer than I thought, and it was a little more expensive than I thought, but it will be priced high, and it will go to next is now.

Um, all that to say.

We're doing a coffee table book, but it was a lot more than I knew.

Jesus goes, hey, uh uh, it's not necessary to send them into the village, you feed them.

They're like, What do you mean we feed them?

$40,000.

It'll cost$40,000 to feed them one time.

They're gonna wake up in the morning hungry again.

What a waste of$40,000.

Jesus says, You feed them.

And then he says, How much bread do you have?

How much bread do we have?

Not enough.

What are you talking about?

And then he says, Go find out how much you have.

Imagine being like James, the son of Alpheus.

And Jesus says, I want you to go in and find out how much bread we have.

We've got to feed these 5,000 families.

Okay, by the way, the the math isn't mathing for me because$40,000, 5,000, it says 5,000 plus women and children.

So we'll call it 5,000 families.

That's eight bucks a family.

You can't eat for eight bucks a family.

Where are you gonna eat for eight bucks a family?

That doesn't even, okay, it's it's more than that.

It's more than 200 denarii.

All that to say, sorry, that was a side sidebar.

Jesus says, go, can you imagine being James the son of Alpheus?

You're going through the crowd and you're like, you guys got any bread?

Just doing some math here.

I'm trying to try, I'm trying to do math on how much bread we have.

For what?

Apparently, the only one willing is a kid with five five loaves and two fish, right?

That comes to Jesus.

And yet we get this little glimpse, by the way.

One of the cool things about having all four gospels tell the same story is you get these four different perspectives where you get a little bit of something different.

In John, it says that Jesus had this conversation with Philip.

It says in verse 5, chapter 6, 5, Jesus saw a huge crowd, uh, people coming to look for him, and he turns to Philip and he asks, Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?

Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?

And then it says in verse 6, he was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.

And Philip replied, even if we worked, again, 200 denari, we wouldn't have enough.

So what you have is Jesus, by the way, this it's it's a test, but I think a better word than test is this is training.

When Jesus says you feed them out in a remote place where there's no bread to be had, he wasn't really expecting them to do that.

Because it wasn't they weren't capable of it, the resources weren't even there.

Jesus wasn't trying to get them to feed the 5,000.

John tells us he already knew what he was going to do.

He must have told them later, hey, I had this up my sleeve the whole time.

I knew what I was gonna do.

What he's doing is training them because at this point, when they see a crowd, because they see needy, expensive, fickle, and dangerous, they just think send them away.

They see a crowd, I see problems.

I don't know about you, I do not like crowds.

I love people in small groups, I don't like large crowds.

I love the buckeyes, but I don't go to the games unless I have an unbelievable ticket, or it's a big game because I don't like crowds.

I don't like fighting 100,000 people to get to the same place at the same time.

I don't like parking three miles away.

I don't like waiting in line for anything, especially the bathroom or food.

Those are the two things.

Food, bathroom.

I need it now.

Okay, if I want it now, I want it now.

When I go to a uh we took my daughter, uh, she's turning 17.

We took her on a trip, we went to this place, it was wonderful.

I thought, this is a nice place.

I might come back.

And I asked them, hey, when is the slow season?

When are the fewest people here?

That's why I don't like fighting people to get from point A to point B because I see a crowd, I see a bunch of selfish people trying to get the same place, and we're all in each other's way.

And I don't like living that way.

I don't like doing that.

And so what you have with the disciples is they see a crowd, their instinct is not what Jesus' was, which was to see not just a big blob of people, it said he had compassion.

Jesus saw the individual in the crowd, and he realized at the feeding of the 5,000, it exposed their level of maturity and what they saw when they saw the crowd, they saw a problem to be sent away.

Send them away.

And so when Jesus says you feed them, you feed them wasn't really about Matthew 14.

It was about Acts 2.

What are you gonna do when I'm gone?

When you read some of these dramatic, miraculous stories of Jesus, don't get so caught up in the miracle that you miss the teaching.

Jesus wasn't just feeding a crowd, he was forming leaders.

So when when Jesus is in the boat, we talked about this a few weeks ago, he's in the storm and he calms the wind and the waves.

Don't get so caught up in Jesus stilling the wind and the waves that you miss the real lesson that he's teaching about the internal environment.

That's what we talked about.

But the same with this story.

Don't get so caught up in the abracadabra of the five loaves, two fish, and now everybody eats with leftovers.

We have leftovers at the end.

Don't get so caught up in that that you miss the fact that Jesus says, you feed them.

When he had no expectation of them feeding them in chapter 14 of Matthew, he's saying, I'm preparing you for the day that I'm gone.

And when I ascend to heaven, and now y'all are in charge, I don't want you to look out at a crowd and go, send them away.

I want you to feed them.

I want you to take responsibility, I want you to have compassion, I want you to see them the way I do.

So Jesus realized there was a gap between how he saw people and how his disciples saw people.

By the way, you've probably noticed in your Bible that there's in Matthew 14, there's Jesus feeding the 5,000, and then you go to the very next chapter, chapter 15, and it says, Jesus feeds the 4,000.

Right?

We've talked about this before, but if not all of you were here and we did, but but this is what we'll talk about.

So chapter 4, actually in Matthew 15, it's Jesus feeds the 4,000.

And the 4,000 is, okay, they go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

And the other side of the Sea of Galilee was, in chapter 14, the crowd was the crowd that was culturally in alignment with the disciples.

So this is the culture they knew, the culture they were familiar with.

This was their people.

But with their people, right, the best they could do was, the disciples was, hey, it's getting late.

We'd better get these people on.

Let's get them out of here.

They get to chapter 15, we go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee to the culture that they despise.

Understand, the dynamics are they thought so low of the people from the decapitalism that a good person, uh, uh an upstanding righteous person wouldn't even say decapitolist.

Like we kind of play around with it, like the team up north or whatever, like we play games, or but it's really not we're not that serious, it's not that serious.

Like we play about it.

Ah yeah, team up north, I don't even say it, right?

Okay, and but we're kind of playing around in like a sports rivalry.

They were not playing around about it.

This was not a game, this was not funny.

These are people that they could not imagine God having any love or compassion for.

These are God's enemies.

These are the people that that God uh wants to get rid of.

And yet this is now the place Jesus goes, taking his disciples reluctantly, or like, what are we doing here?

And now that's the backdrop of Matthew 15, and look look what it says now.

Now, knowing all of that, knowing that we've just had this Matthew 14.

Where are we gonna buy bread for these people?

Don't send them away, you feed them.

That just happened in chapter 14.

Now we're in chapter 15.

It says Jesus left there, went along the Sea of Galilee, went up in the mountain.

Here's that word again, verse 30.

Crowds, great crowds came to him.

Needy, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and laid them at his feet, and he healed them.

And the people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking.

Look at this.

And they praised the God of Israel.

This is beautiful.

They're making a difference.

Jesus meeting needs, his compassion led to action, led to healing, led to an expression of love.

And these people are like, Look, this is real, this is God.

And so they're making a difference.

In verse 32, Jesus called his disciples to him to connect the dots.

He said, just so you guys know, I have compassion for these people.

Chapter 14, he probably didn't even need to say that because of course you have compassion for these people.

These are our people.

So Jesus, we we we looked at compassion in chapter 14.

Chapter 15, he can't assume that they know that.

And so he says, I have compassion on these people, for these people.

Look at the next line.

They have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat.

Three days.

At least in chapter 14, they were like, you know, it's getting late.

It's almost seven.

Let's get these people out of here.

They go over to the decapolis, the ten towns, and nobody ate for three days.

And the disciples are like, Oh well, don't know what we're gonna do.

And so he says, I have compassion for them.

They've been here three days.

I do not want to send them away hungry, they may collapse on the way.

And the disciples answered, Where could we get enough bread in this remote place for such a Crowd.

It's pretty wild when you read it that way, right?

Knowing that one chapter before they had the exact same problem and they had the exact same answer.

What is Matthew doing?

He's showing us that the disciples are slow learners here.

And even though they just saw Jesus do the very miracle, you would have think one of them would speak up and go, you know, Jesus, that thing you did on the other side of the Sea of Galilee was pretty sweet.

It's still fresh in our mind.

Five loaves, two fish.

Are you going to run that one back?

Do you want to do it again?

Do you want us to go like what do you want us to?

What's our part of this?

You want us, should we get the baskets ready?

Are you going to do the same thing?

What are you going to do?

They're like, what they go right back to where would we do, where would we get this?

And so what is happening here?

It's not hard to connect the dots once you have the context.

It's this Jesus is preparing them for the Great Commission.

I don't just want you in Jerusalem and Judea.

I want you in Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

So what Jesus is showing them is they have a flaw in their thinking.

They see crowds, they see problems.

They see expensive, needy, dangerous, and fickle.

And if they're not careful, if I'm tired enough and I'm hungry enough and I'm scared enough, then I might just send them away.

And Jesus is showing this is mission critical.

We cannot get to Acts 2, and you still see crowds as problems to be sent away.

And he says, not only do we do it in your hometown, I'm going to take you to the place that you can't imagine God loving people, and I'm going to love those people too.

And I'm going to make sure, don't, don't, make sure you understand, I have compassion on these people.

And for three days no one said boo, and I'm going to do the same miracle for them.

So he's setting them up for their mission.

So now, with all of this context, now let's look at the feeding of the 3,000.

Let's go back to where we started, Acts 2, 41.

Those who believe what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day, 3,000 in all.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship.

Now, think about this.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four gospels, they had happened, but they had not been written yet.

So there was no, hey, everybody open to Matthew chapter 14.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

If you wanted to hear what Jesus did, not only what Jesus did, but how who Jesus was and what he did connected to the law and the prophets, where would you hear such a thing?

But sitting at the feet of the apostles who walked with him.

So now in Acts 2, when they get together, they're sitting down, they're talking.

The apostles are teaching them how Jesus' life and ministry was a fulfillment of what God's been doing since the Garden of Eden.

And they're breaking that down and they're all learning together.

And they're getting a it's not just in isolation, it's not just watching content by yourself, it's in community that they're hearing this, they're learning together, they're growing together, and it says, and then they would fellowship, which means again they're they were just enjoying each other's company, and then they broke bread together, so they ate together and honored each other, and then they prayed together with each other and for each other.

So what's happening here, don't miss it, is the large mass of people, when it was 5,000 in Matthew 14 in the early stages of discipleship, the crowd was to be sent away.

In chapter 15, the 4,000 was a crowd to be sent away.

By the time they get to Acts 2, they understood that when they saw a mass of people, they didn't see a crowd.

They saw a community.

A community.

And it wasn't just we're all fighting each other to get to the restroom first, and we're trying to get to the food first, and we're trying to get from point A to point B with as little inconvenience as possible, regardless of how it inconveniences you.

They see within a community, and because they're growing together and they're praying together and they're fellowshipping together and they're doing life together and they're getting to know each other, look what happens.

It says everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles, and all the believers were together and shared.

They had everything in common.

Look at verse 45.

They sold property and possessions to give to everyone in need.

So what emerged was a natural instinctive generosity that happens in loving community.

Most of the time, we get so caught up in the five loaves, two fish story, and of course I'm down for that.

If God wants to, you know, do all the work that we need to do with one big sweeping miracle, that would be great.

I think the most relevant feeding story in the New Testament isn't Jesus taking five loaves and two fish and everybody watching what Jesus and one kid does, and we all sit and are the beneficiaries of what one kid's five, somebody else's five loaves and two fish.

I think the most relevant story is Acts 2, where you have a community where people are going out of their anonymity, they're not just seeing a blob of people to be sent away or to be competed with, but they're actually breaking bread together, they're growing together, they're loving one another, and when that happens and you start to see a need, we don't hope for somebody else to bring their five loaves and two fish.

We all bring our five loaves and two fish.

In Matthew 14 and 15, and the 5,000, the 4,000, you see Jesus Christ meeting the need.

In Acts 2, you see the body of Christ meeting the need.

You feed them, he says in chapter 14.

How?

They couldn't.

He wasn't expecting them to.

He was priming them, he was developing them, he was shaping their mentality because there's gonna come a day you're gonna see a crowd and it's gonna look really inconvenient.

And instead of sending them away, I want you to take responsibility and I want you to turn it into community, not just a mass of people.

And when you do that, generosity will emerge so naturally you won't even think of it that way.

It'll just be a need that needs met, and I have something here, and so I'm gonna sell what I need to sell, or I'm gonna give what I need to give, okay, because that's what people who love each other do.

Here's the point of the story.

The point of today's message.

Jesus wants his disciples, both then and now, to see people the way he does.

People are not a crowd to be sent away, they are a community to serve generously.

Let's say it again.

Jesus wants his disciples to see people the way he does.

People are not a crowd to be sent away, they are a community to serve generously.

Um I wanna I w I wanna end with this.

Kind of two action steps.

One is for us as a collective, as a church, and then the other would be for you individually when you leave here in your life separate from from this community.

So the first is we are we set out two years ago, in fact, two years ago this month, I shared with you our next is now projects.

And in a sense, it's our desire to essentially take bring our loaves and fish and to serve the needs of the people.

You know, currently we have people sitting in overflow every Sunday.

The the growth of our church and every level, our facilities are inadequate.

Um, we can't even park everybody we need to park.

We can't do any of those ministries, and so we, or we can't do them to the to the meet the need.

And so we've needed to expand.

So I went, got with engineers, architects, they said, hey, we can, we have uh 16 acres here, we can do double the parking, double the seating, and we have plenty of room for kids and and and our special needs programs.

And so we designed the whole thing.

I shared it with you two years ago, and then at the end of October, two years ago, everybody pledged uh toward the project.

And so um the last two years have been unbelievably difficult.

Um, it's like one of those things, every single turn has been a challenge.

It took us a year to get our plans, uh over a year actually, to get our plans through the city approved by the planning commission, but we finally did.

Um, and it's one of those, I told I kind of was joking with a friend the other day, at some point the law of averages is gonna catch up and and we're gonna catch break.

But but it's been one one after another.

And frankly, it's been for me challenging because I didn't go to school to build buildings and all this.

I love doing sharing God's word with people.

I love seeing the community built out, and that that's that that's what I love to do.

It's building buildings.

We I said this two years ago.

I don't love buildings any more than God does.

The only cool thing about buildings is that we can welcome people and do ministry in them.

That's it.

That's all that's what matters.

And so in this project with every challenge, I had this uh I had this experience toward the end of my time off this summer.

I took a break to try to get really rested up.

I was two days from the end, so I was like counting down.

I had like 48 hours left on my my time off, and I get kind of an emergency call.

Of all the components of the project, we had one component that I felt really confident in.

The rest of them were uh changing and moving all the time, and and this one I thought I could count on, and I find out that there was an issue, and it was a big issue, so I had to kind of like come back early.

I cleared everything, and I just went face first into it.

And so I'm trying to think how to say this well.

I I I was angry, okay.

I was angry that I had to do this, I was mad at some people, I kind of want to tell some people off.

I was frustrated that that it felt like you know, I was sort of in the uh woe is me, uh a little bit feeling um sorry for myself and angry at other people.

And so I come my first day back to work, I come to what we call our crew huddle.

Uh and our crew huddle is when our whole staff gets together on Tuesdays and we just share testimonies.

It's C-R-E-W.

Celebrate wins, recognize people, encourage culture, and worshipful stories.

And so different team members will get up and they'll put pictures of some of you guys, people from the church, like, hey, here's this person, here's what God's doing in their life, and this is where this person's leading, and this person went the extra mile over here.

And so no one in the staff knows I just had this thing I've been dealing with for two days.

I come in, I'm sitting there, dude, and I'm mad, dude.

I'm ready to, I'm just, I'm ready to burn the thing down.

All right, I'm just angry.

And I'm sitting there seething, and as I sit there, I get one team member after another getting up, just testimony, testimony, testimony, testimony.

And it went from, you know, it calibrated me like the disciples.

It was like community, community.

And I'm sitting there, and I remember it was Amanda Schrader.

She was probably the she's over our guest experiences.

She's probably like the sixth person to get up, and she is so fired up about this person on her team and what God's doing in their life.

And I mean, it's it's like might as well be her sister.

I mean, she's so fired up, and I'm sitting there listening to her talk, and this resolve came over me.

It was like, God, I got into this to obey you, to honor you, and to serve you, and to serve people.

And as Amanda was talking, I literally in my mind just thought, I will not let these people down.

I don't care about architecture, I don't care about square footage, I don't care about any of that, but I do do know this.

I have a part to play.

And I'm watching Amanda, and she's about the sixth person, and there's more coming, and I'm like, I I will not let this person down.

And it wasn't even like emotional, it wasn't even like let me out of them, you know.

I'm gonna go take care of this financing, you know.

Now let me out of them.

No, it was it wasn't even that, it was just like a quiet resolve that this is not a crowd to send away, this is community, and I can't do it all.

I can't, I can't do an abracadabra with five loaves, two fish, but I have a part to play, and this is the beautiful thing.

Jesus never asked them to do anything other than their part.

It says in Acts 2 I I I I I wish and listen, I've been praying three things for two years.

One, I've been praying for miracles.

Lord, if you want to do the five loaves, two fish thing, I got a great guy that you know, I promise we'll put it to good work.

Do it right here.

So if God wants to do that, I'm all in and I'm asking him for it.

But the second is that people will feel the joy of giving.

Not just, not like, hey, someday when we build the building, it's just like the pure joy that comes from loving relationship.

And then the third is that this would be a discipleship breakthrough for our church.

And this is where I think it's really come into focus for me.

Yes, we're believing God by however he wants to provide, but I'll tell you, church, I honestly think this is what God is up to.

It's not we're we're we don't have some benefactor that's gonna show up and take care of all of it.

The project's gone long, it's cost more, it's more expensive than we thought it was gonna be.

But the bottom line is what's gonna drive us to do it, it's not to see a crowd.

It's gonna be in community and relationships.

And so I'm I'm asking you, as part of the the church, not to do more than your part, to do your part.

Two years ago, a number of you gave pledges.

Uh many of you have fulfilled those, some of you are still in the process of that.

Others would, when they fill out the pledge card, they said, Today I can't do anything, but I'm hoping that someday I can.

And maybe for some of you, there's been some things in the last two years, and now you're able to help help us uh contribute to these projects to help us to get it done.

And then some of you weren't even here then, and you've just uh showed up now.

And so it it I'm just asking you as part of this, would you be a part of this Acts 2 story?

Based on the fact that we see God's hand here.

It says they were in awe of what God was doing.

I don't think it's any secret.

God's working here, He's doing something special here.

So we see God's hand and we love one another.

We see God's hand, we love one another.

We love God, we love each other.

And so I'm uh I'm asking you if you'd be a part of that to help us to make this happen.

If you're willing to do that, on the way out, we have some some cards that you can communicate.

Uh, you can take time to pray and let us know uh if God puts that on your heart, or you can even uh up there it is, the QR code uh on our website to do that.

So so that that's the one collectively.

The second action step, this is for you personally.

I want you to think about what Jesus taught his disciples and the progression from seeing people this way to seeing people this way.

And I want you to think about your own context.

Is there anywhere that you're tired, hungry, afraid, and grieving?

And in those feelings, you started to see people as fickle, dangerous, needy, and expensive.

In some ways, maybe you find yourself either falling into or tempted to fall into the mindset that the disciples had in Matthew 14 and 15.

This would be a good as good a time as any to allow the Lord to show you that and to take you from that mindset to sending people away.

This may be in your own family, it may be in your own community, it may be the way you feel about people in general right now.

Is everybody feels like a threat, too expensive, too fickle, and you just want to send everyone away.

And yet, as much as your flesh may be calling for that, allow Jesus today to guide you and say, No, you feed them.

See them as a community, lean in.

Don't let your flesh take over your life.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

We thank you, Lord, for what you're doing.

Lord, we don't take for granted.

I know so many faithful people who love you and have served you, have never been able to see the fruit that we see.

Some of it we're about to see right now.

Lives being changed, people being reached, people connecting to Jesus.

We thank you for that, Lord.

We stand in awe of what you're doing.

Now, Lord, I pray that you would provide.

And if you want to provide Matthew 14 or 15 style, that's all good.

But Lord, I have I have a funny feeling that it's not just about the financial provision, it's not about the resources alone, it's about the discipleship breakthrough, about the journey.

So help us, Lord, to be clear about that, to see what is our part, and to be driven by not only what you're doing, but by the people that we love within the community.

We love you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.