Seeing Jesus in Matthew: A Church for the Mission

All right, everybody. Awesome. Good to see you all.

Hey, let's, uh, I just want to jump in. I want to pray today. Just seek the Lord.

Oh, so God, we just thank you. We thank you for bringing us here.

We pray for those who are sick. There's so many things going around.

A lot of people have been sick this past week. Lord, we pray for that to end.

God, that would just, that cycle of just passing along illness would just, would just stop.

So God, we just pray for rest for those who are sick, for healing.

And Lord, would you just encourage us? Would you gather us together?

Would you give us a good time of fellowship this morning, good time in your word?

Holy Spirit, we just welcome you into this place. Lord, we just want to listen

to you, to be attentive to you, or we expect something from you.

We expect you to do all these things that you tell us you were that you're going

to do, that you're going to build up your church.

You're going to give us more hope, more faith, more encouragement.

So fill us with your spirit, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right. So we're continuing on in the book of Matthew.

You know, we've been just faithfully, dutifully going through and it's been good.

I've really loved this little section of Matthew, which is focusing on healing.

You know, I mean, obviously there's a series. Mike's just a little bit hot.

Ryan, can you just bring it down? Just hear a little feedback.

Thank you so much. Yes, sorry.

Or is my voice just that squeaky? Makes that sound. Could be one or the other. Okay.

So we are now in the third of like three consecutive sections that gives a glimpse

into Jesus's healing ministry, right? It's just like...

Three is like this kind of special number in Hebrew culture.

And so it's kind of just giving you this completion, this wholeness,

this very thorough picture of who Jesus is, and particularly his power,

his authority, his ability to heal.

Like all these things are really highlighted in this section.

We're starting to wrap that up.

And as we kind of think about this passage and this section that we've been

in, I think it's a good idea to just jump a little bit ahead to Matthew chapter

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

11. So if you're, you know, in your Bibles, you just turn the page.

But Matthew chapter 11, where Jesus receives a messenger from John the Baptist, who is in prison.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

So the messenger comes from John the Baptist, and he asks Jesus,

he says this, Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?

And Jesus replied to them, to the messenger, to go to John, Go and report to

John what you see and hear. The blind receive their sight.

The lame walk. Those with leprosy are cleansed.

The deaf hear. the dead are raised, the poor are told the good news,

and blessed is the one who isn't offended by me.

So, you know, a few chapters on from where we are at right now,

but it's definitely a part of this narrative and connected to it.

John, John the Baptist, we've already met earlier in these chapters.

He's in jail, which is not a great place to be.

And he's wondering, is Jesus really the Messiah.

You know, clearly he understands Jesus is important, but he's like, are you just like I was?

Like John understood himself to be one who is coming, preparing the way for the Messiah.

And he's saying, well, is Jesus like, is he actually the Messiah?

Is he like someone who like me is preparing the way for someone else?

Because like many of those who are following Jesus, who are observing his ministry,

he's super impressed by the miracles he sees, right?

He sees in Jesus so many messianic traits, so many fulfillments of prophecy,

like John understood all this stuff.

And yet, John feels very acutely and personally that everything is not as it should be, right?

Everything is not resolved as they thought when the Messiah would come, it would be.

For John in particular, I mean, John

is experiencing that because he is in prison. He is in a Roman prison.

There's a prison cell that he will eventually, as we go along here in Matthew,

we'll get to this, he'll eventually die in that prison cell.

Rome is still ruling over Israel. Sinners and wicked people are still doing their thing.

They're like, it seems like even doing better than ever before.

So John is not, I mean, out of line to wonder, like, what is this?

I mean, are you really the one? Because I had these expectations about what

it would look like when the Messiah comes, and a lot of them,

a lot of them are happening, but then some of them are still unresolved.

And Jesus replies rather indirectly the way Jesus tends to do when he's asked

really direct questions.

He tells this messenger to let John know about all the miracles that are happening.

He says, like, the blind are being healed. The lame are being told to walk.

The lepers and the deaf are being healed.

And it's Jesus' way of saying, yeah, no, I am.

But he goes on to say something else that's pretty important.

He says, blessed is the one who isn't offended by me. So what's offensive about Jesus?

Well, it's that Jesus is doing all these messianic things.

He's obviously a powerful person sent from God. He's able to heal.

He's doing all these things. He's fulfilling prophecy.

But he is not yet dealing with all these other underlying problems.

These expectations that people had, Jewish people had, of what the Messiah's

rule and reign would look like are being disappointed. It's not happening.

And so Jesus says, yeah, that's the reality of what's going on here.

There's going to be some offense. Rome is still going to be around.

Sinners are going to still be in charge. The world is still going to be a broken

place, even in the midst of all of this.

We've looked at this graph the last couple of weeks, and I mean,

it's just a depiction of kind of history examined from a lens of theology.

And it's depicting what is called in academic circles, inaugurated eschatology.

So we know what inauguration is, right? We've just had one not too long ago.

It marks the beginning of someone's, I want to say rule, but I don't want to,

you know, I'm not saying anything.

I'm just saying the beginning of someone's power, right?

We're all good, right? Okay. I'm just trying to say what I'm trying to say and

not say anything else. this marks the beginning of someone's time in power, right?

Eschatology is like the, it's from the Greek word eschaton, which means like the last things.

So it's like the biblical theological picture of what is, where's all this going?

What is the world going to end

up like? Where is, what is this the whole purpose of everything, right?

And so we were realizing this reality that we live in kind of in between.

We live after the inauguration of the kingdom of God, Where Jesus is coming,

he is taking on his authority.

He's expressing that authority through healings, through miracles,

like through teaching authoritatively to people, for saying this is definitively

what your life's purpose is and what it means to be a full-fledged human and

to be someone who knows God.

He's making that very clear. And yet he is not resolving all the problems that we face in this world.

There will be a time when the end will come and all those things will be resolved,

but we live in the midst of kind of a messy middle between the cross and the

second coming of Jesus Christ.

And Jesus' message to us as we sit here in the middle is, blessed is the one

who's not offended by that.

Because it's a little bit offensive to think that God who created the world

has come down, died for our sake, like he's saving us and he's healing people,

oh, but he's not yet dealing with all these other huge problems that we think are so obvious.

And why not, Jesus, if you're everything you say you are?

Blessed are those who are not offended because of me.

We live still in a broken world, a world that is still messed up by sin and by wickedness.

And yet we serve a powerful, merciful, saving king who is at work in the midst

of all the messiness, right?

This is the messy middle that we live in. and we are blessed if we're not offended by that tension.

And in fact, what I'm suggesting, I mean, I think what's the whole point of

what faith is all about is that we actually have to not just not be offended

by it, but step into the reality,

that we are serving a king who's come and yet is coming again.

A king who is already powerful, he's already working, and yet has not resolved all things.

And he invites us, faith invites us right into that tension.

And if we don't like it, if we want to just be like hands-off being like,

oh, whatever, Jesus, I'll just wait till you come again.

Like what we're doing is we're saying, I'm not going to step in and have faith

in the midst of this moment. I'm going to actually forego my calling and my purpose.

And the invitation that we have is as

people who follow after Jesus to be participants in this kind of reality.

I think that we live in an exhausted culture.

I mean, especially when we're all sick and it's February. I mean,

I guess it's March now, right? But it feels like just February is going to last a couple months.

We live in an exhausted culture. We live in a culture where everybody's busy.

And I think we live in a culture where increasingly we're told like,

just don't get involved in stuff. Just kind of sit on the sidelines.

I think that's my generation's, us millennials, kind of what we like,

we'd like prefer to just be more hands off about stuff.

I think the reality is though, if we're going to be following Jesus,

like it's, we're going to require some ownership.

Like it's going to require like stepping into the messy mess of things.

We don't like messes. I don't like messes. I prefer to just simplify my life,

but I think faith invites me into the mess.

Okay, so that's just framing things up. So Jesus says, right,

I'm the one, but don't be offended that all these details are still kind of

unfolding. He tells this to John.

And interestingly, in Jesus' reply to John, he mentions a couple miracles, right?

A series of miracles, many of which we've seen, some of which we've had.

He says, the dead are raised and the poor are told the good news.

We've definitely seen the poor are told the good news before,

but we see another instance of that here. And we see an instance of this dead being raised, right?

So this kind of is rounding out this narrative of Jesus's healing.

So backing back up to Matthew 9, 18, we'll see how Jesus shows his authority

and demonstrates and fulfills this sign of his being the Messiah here. Okay, so Matthew 9, 18.

As he was telling them these things, suddenly one of the leaders came and knelt

down before him saying, my daughter just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live.

And so Jesus and his disciples got up and followed him.

And then a woman who had suffered from bleeding for 12 years approached from

behind and touched the end of his robe.

For she said to herself, if I can just touch his robe, I'll be made well.

And Jesus turned to her, turned and saw her Have courage,

my daughter, he said Your faith has saved you And the woman was made well from

that moment And when Jesus came to the leader's house He saw the flute players

And a crowd lamenting loudly Leave,

he said Because the girl is not dead but asleep And they laughed at him And

after the crowd had been put outside He went in and took her by the hand And

the girl got up And the news of this spread throughout that whole area,

So as this section is wrapping up We have a few more healings one that interrupts the other, right?

It's just Jesus is like so busy that on his way to live, raise somebody from

the dead, he just casually heals someone who's been in a state for 12 years.

You know, he's just healing all the time.

So first we have a leader of a synagogue, a socially well-off man who comes to Jesus, right?

And probably is actually risking offending some people, right?

He's stepping forward in faith.

He's risking offending the Pharisees and the Sadducees who are really kind of

sidelined at this moment, right?

They're like looking at Jesus and saying, I don't know about this Jesus guy.

We'll see that in a second. We talked about it last week.

But he is stepping out in faith and he's saying to Jesus, look, my daughter's died.

But I know that if you just come and you put your hand on her,

she's going to be made alive again.

So Jesus is, he likes this. This is faith. Jesus responds to faith.

So Jesus heads with him to his home where the body is going to be laying there.

But along the way, he meets a woman or actually rather the woman just comes up from behind.

We're going to skip her for now, but we're going to come back, okay?

But after meeting her, Jesus heads to this man's house and he arrives there

and he walks into two people playing the flute and people crying.

And this is just this is what a typical funeral service would have looked like at this point.

If somebody died, you would hire professional mourners and flute players.

I think of, like, they weren't playing Yaz flute, you know.

They were playing sad songs, you know, funeral songs. And so it's like a whole scene.

It's a whole funeral, right? And in fact, like, I think Matthew gives us that

little detail because just to convince us, like, oh, no, this is really a dead person.

And you know what? These professionals have been around a lot of dead people.

If you're a flute player in ancient

Israel, you just spend every day at a funeral, right, playing a flute.

If you're a mourner, you spend every day mourning people, and so you know what

a dead person looks like.

So Matthew is telling us to indicate that she's not sick. She's not in some kind of coma.

Jesus says she's asleep, right? But I think what these people are saying is,

no, she's definitely dead, Jesus.

And Jesus says that because he's about to raise her. So she's definitely dead. So Jesus arrives.

He tells these mourners to get out. They laugh because they think,

you're crazy. She's definitely dead. But Jesus insists.

And so he kicks them out. He goes, he touches the girl. And right instantly

upon touching her, she's made alive again. So the dead are raised.

And this is like this very strong final indication, particularly to John,

that the Messiah has not only great authority over illness and sin and brokenness,

right? But even death itself.

I mean, this is a hugely important and comprehensive picture of Jesus that we get here in Matthew.

Every area of life, everything that feels like is touched by and broken by sin.

Jesus says, no, I come and I undo all of that. It is within my power and authority

to conquer death, to conquer sin, to conquer illness and brokenness and all

of this disorder that has come as a result of sin entering into the world.

Jesus in every aspect demonstrates his power, his authority.

And so we've also seen, just to back up, we see this picture of a woman who

comes to Jesus and she's been, she has been.

As he's heading to the funeral, right? She's been bleeding for 12 years,

which is like tragic for her.

Not only because that's, that's a long time, a long, I mean,

I 12 hours of being sick and I'm, I'm, I'm a waste, right?

Now, most women are tougher than that, right?

But even women after 12 days, they're going to be sick of it.

But 12 years of, of, of being sick.

Can you imagine that? I mean, it's tragic. And it's tragic not only because,

I mean, to just have an ailment that is so persistent that every day you're

waking up to this brokenness that you can see. I mean, that is difficult.

But also because her bleeding would have led her to a life of isolation and poverty.

I mean, so because of this bleeding, she was in the society in which she lived

in considered ritually unclean. So she couldn't just go around and live a normal life.

Had she been married before all of this started, we don't know if she was,

but she would have certainly been divorced and abandoned by her husband because

her husband can't be around her.

Because if he's around her, then he's going to be impure as well.

And so it would have been normal in that culture for him to just put her away

and maybe provide for her, but maybe not.

She can't go to work. She can't do things to survive because she can't be around

people. So she's fully isolated. She is extremely poor.

She couldn't live a normal life.

And in fact, I mean, her just coming into this crowd where Jesus is,

is already against all the rules.

And it's totally fighting against

all the isolation that has been heaped upon her. But she has faith.

She believes that if she just gets in there and if she just touches Jesus's

robe, she's going to be healed.

And so she throws caution to the wind and she risks everything.

She risks a lot because actually there would have been severe punishments had

she been caught around people making them all unclean.

And Jesus, as she reaches out, sees her and he doesn't say, ew, gross.

He doesn't do anything. He just looks at her and he says, have courage.

Your faith has saved you.

Jesus heals people. He saves them.

And T. Wright, who, as I said, is the Taylor Swift of theologians,

says this, says, having had a particular ailment, internal bleeding for 12 years,

she sees her chance of healing and takes it.

Knowing she was making everyone unclean, as she pushes past them,

she comes up and touches Jesus.

And this is the great part. But at this point, we realize that something is

different. Her uncleanness doesn't infect him.

Actually, something in him infects her.

Jesus turns around, sees her, and tells her, as he told the centurion,

that what has made the difference is her own faith. And here is the mystery.

Jesus has the power to heal, but those who receive it are those with faith.

And the word Matthew uses for healing in verse 21 and 22 is save, rescue.

No early Christian would miss the point. What Jesus was doing was the beginning

of a whole work of rescuing the world, saving the world from everything that

polluted and defaced and destroyed it. and those who would benefit would be

those who would believe.

I mean, the whole gospel is told in this little encounter.

This woman has faith. She's confident that the blessedness of Jesus,

that his grace and his kindness will overwhelm her own uncleanness,

which everyone has told her is true about her for 12 straight years.

She's confident that if she just comes to Jesus, that he will break all these

barriers and all this distance and all this shame and all this isolation that

has just been weighing upon her year after year.

She knows that Jesus can just make it disappear.

And it's amazing because her faith seems to come out of nowhere.

I mean, where does this person develop this kind of faith?

It's not as if anyone would have told her that she should do this because,

of course, she's isolated. No one's telling her to do anything. She's a total pariah.

Certainly, she's heard about Jesus because she hears talk and she's heard about

all the healing that has been happening.

But it would have taken so much boldness for her to take that step to say,

well, I'm actually going to walk into that crowd because everywhere Jesus goes

is a crowd. So you got to walk into a crowd.

I'm going to touch his robe. And I just believe that that will be enough for

me, that his grace and his kindness and his holiness will overflow onto me and

not the other way around.

And I think it's just worth considering how brave that was and what a risk it was to her.

And yet she goes. Her faith made the difference.

Coming to Jesus in the middle of brokenness, confident that he saves,

that he rescues, that he cleanses, he restores, that has made all the difference. And you know what?

There's a lot of theology around what we believe and how we believe and what's

the biblical thing to do.

But fundamentally, what we come down to when it comes to faith,

faith is just looking at Jesus,

moving towards him and just saying, hey, I'm so broken and I'm so lost and I

can't even name my problem in a way that I could explain to people, but I see you, Jesus.

And so faith is just looking to Jesus and saying, no, he's got the solution.

He's the one who saves. He's the one who cares. He's the one who blesses.

He's the one who's with me. It's that kind of attitude that just looks to Jesus

and just says, I just have to get near him. I don't know why that will make a difference.

I don't know how that will make a difference. I don't know the mechanics behind

it. But somehow God has given this one authority.

And so I'm drawn like a moth to a flame to Jesus Christ. That's what faith is.

We make it so many other things. And it's like as somebody who likes theology,

who likes to think about the Bible and likes to understand the mechanics and

explain it, like that's part of teaching.

You got to sort of like think about the background stuff in the end,

like the people who come to Jesus and he says, well done, have very little understanding.

They just have this one thing. They know that what I need, he's got.

And so I'm going to push through whatever it is.

I'm going to throw myself on his mercy because I'm confident of it.

And I'm confident of his power. And I'm confident of his love.

Faith makes all the difference. And I mean, that's immediately demonstrated,

right? Again, continuing on this series of healings, immediately demonstrated as Jesus keeps going.

We see two more healings at the end of the cycle.

Picking up in verse 27, as Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed

him, calling out, Have mercy on us, son of David.

When he entered the house, the blind men approached him, and Jesus said to them,

Do you believe that I can do this?

And they said to him, Yes, Lord.

And then he touched their eyes, saying, Let it be done to you according to your

faith. And their eyes were opened.

And then Jesus warned them sternly, Be sure that no one finds out.

I love this. This is the kind of wonderful disobedience that celebrated in the Bible.

Be sure to tell anybody about this. But they went out and spread the news about

him throughout the whole area.

And I think probably Jesus would have laughed. I mean, we don't get Jesus' reaction.

I think he was okay with this. I think he knew it was going to happen.

Right? Because there's something that happens. When Jesus does something miraculous

like this, like when he heals you, when he totally changes and transforms your

life, like how could you not say anything?

How could you not go out and tell

people about that? It would be a strange thing not to want to do that.

And I think Jesus understands this. And so there's some humor here.

Moving on. Just as they were going out, a demon-possessed man who was unable

to speak, so he can't come and say, Jesus, I have faith in you. He can't confess Jesus.

But a demon-possessed man who was unable to speak was brought to him.

And when the demon had been driven out, the man who had been mute spoke and

the crowds were amazed saying, nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.

But the Pharisees said, he drives demons out by the ruler of demons.

For the sake of time, I'm not going to go into all the details of these other

healings, but again, it's just unmissable.

But faith is the thing. Faith is the thing that's lifted up.

What's the difference maker for all of these stories? It's faith.

Faith usually of the person being healed, but also from those around them.

I mean, Jesus responds to faith. He goes where faith is and He works where faith

is. He cares about faith.

But I want to spend the rest of the time that we have in these last couple of

verses in these upcoming ones.

Okay, so let's just keep going because these are awesome. I love this.

Jesus continued going around. It's kind of wrapping up this series of healings.

Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their

synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness.

And when he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed

and dejected like sheep without a shepherd.

So here at the end of chapter 9, Matthew is wrapping up his focus on Jesus' early ministry.

And from here on out, we get more of attention to the actual content of his

teaching, not really the miraculous stuff that he's doing.

You know, it's a section that's kind of ending.

So here at the end of chapter 9, he's wrapping up that focus.

Jesus has thoroughly demonstrated his power to heal all things.

He has offended the Pharisees, right? Who just can't square what Jesus is with

their theology and with their expectations.

They can't get over their offense. And he has delighted the poor and he's delighted

the broken and embraced those who were cast out.

He withholds nothing of himself consistently over and over again.

Anyone who comes to him in faith, he will heal, he will bless, he will save.

And we're told that as Jesus keeps traveling around, he just like continues on.

He doesn't just stop healing at this point. He just continues to travel on. He continues to teach.

He goes to the synagogues in different towns.

He's traveling. He's teaching. He's healing.

He's preaching the good news that the kingdom of God has come near.

And everywhere he goes, there are crowds gathering around to hear about what he has to say.

And we're told that his reaction to this consistent people drawing to him is

that he sees these crowds and he feels compassion for them.

Why? Because they're distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.

And that little phrase is funny. The structure of this paragraph is funny. I'm such a nerd.

The structure of this paragraph is funny because the sentence before us,

the first sentence makes a general statement.

It tells us that Jesus went to lots of different places.

But the second sentence doesn't actually specify where he saw the crowds and felt this way.

So why is that? I think it's because every town that Jesus went to,

It was the same thing over and over and over again.

Every place he goes, the brokenness, the dejectedness, the lostness is just so obvious to him.

And his compassion is just so present for him.

Jesus never met anybody. He never went into any town. He never went into any

place where he's like, ah, man, now these people are good.

Or I don't love these people. Everywhere he goes, every town he gets into, the wealthy, the poor,

you know, the Samaritans, in Israel, like everywhere Jesus goes,

he looks at people and he says, these are people who like, I can have nothing but brokenness.

I can be only compassionate for. They're lost.

So had Jesus been traveling around the east side of Seattle,

he would have gone down to Kent and he would have gathered crowds around him

and he would have looked at them with compassion and said, they're like sheep without a shepherd.

They're broken and dejected. And then he would have gone up into Medina.

Bill Gates would have come out. I don't know. Where does he live now? I don't know. Who knows?

But he would have looked at these people, the wealthiest people,

and said, they're broken and dejected. They're sheep without a shepherd.

They're just as lost as everybody else. And then he'd go out to,

you know, the woods by truck town and all the people who live out in the woods would have come out.

And he said, these people are broken and dejected and lost. And I have compassion on them.

And then he would go to the ridge and all the people would come out. with their Starbucks.

Which Starbucks though? I don't know. It's hard to decide.

Or come out in their Starbucks and he would have said, these are just broken,

dejected, lost. How can I not have compassion on these people?

See, Jesus, everywhere he goes, he sees the same problems.

He says, these are just sinful people, not only just sinful people at all,

so they're bad, but people impacted by sin.

People who live in this present evil age and who need salvation,

who need grace, who need my mercy.

And I am just the type of person who looks at people with all kinds of problems,

and I see it for what it is.

Jesus sees what's really going on with people. We might not.

We might have levels of brokenness for people, but Jesus sees right through everybody.

Those who put on a good show and those who don't. Those who are just standing

on the street corner slumped over high, right?

And those who, man, they've got bazillions of dollars in the bank,

and they seem like they could provide everything for himself.

Jesus looks at everybody. He sees them for what they are.

And what does he do? He says to his disciples, looking at all these people,

everywhere he goes, man, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.

Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.

Summoning his 12 disciples, he gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive

them out and to heal every disease and sickness.

This kind of commissioning of the disciples to go be sent out is actually the

focus of the next chapter.

So I'm not going to go too deep into that right now because that's next week.

But I do want to just stop and just notice Jesus sees a problem.

He sees all these crowds, all this brokenness, all this pain,

all this sin. He has compassion.

And then he offers a solution. And the solution is to commission his disciples.

I mean, Jesus could potentially, you think he could just take care of everything, right?

But for whatever reason, he's elected not to be the one who is individually

going around person to person, age to age, to be the one who's just actually

doing the touching them and healing.

He says, no, no, no, there's too much work and there's too much bounty here.

There's too much need. And so I'm going to appoint my disciples and they're

going to go out in my name and do and enact my compassion and my mercy and my

grace and my saving work.

They're going to be going around preaching the way I'm going around preaching.

They're going to go around healing and praying for people the way I'm going

around healing and praying for people.

They're going to be doing all this stuff that I'm going to be doing.

Again, we'll get into the details of that next week.

Christopher J.H. Wright, one of my favorite theologians, not the Taylor Swift

of theologians, but different Wright. There's so many British people, you know.

He says this, it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church

in the world as that God has a church for his mission in the world.

Mission was not made for the church. The church was made for mission, God's mission.

And I mean, I think Wright's point is clear enough, but I just want to lean

into it a little bit as we wrap up here, because as he makes clear,

the mission of God pre-exists the church.

The church is created, commissioned in response to a problem.

A problem which Jesus solves by offering himself as a sacrifice for sin,

but that he enacts and realizes into the world from generation to generation by sending his church.

Jesus is on a mission to save broken, dejected people who are stuck and lost.

And so he says, well, I'm going to

actualize my kingdom and bring about transformation by sending my church.

Church and so that means that the only reason a church exists is for this purpose

of being a part of this mission,

And a church that isn't a part of this mission, or at least that isn't trying

to, I mean, figure it out, right? Because it's hard.

Like we live in culture and it's like things change and how do you be effective, right?

But a church that isn't built around moving towards and operating in a more

great sense into that purpose, like is a church that is misorganized.

You know, like when like cancer is disorganized cellular biology.

It's when the body is growing But in the wrong kind of way And we remove that

from our body When we find it, right?

Things that are created And created with a purpose Like they are made most fully

alive And they actualize their purpose By just living out what they're called

to do A church exists for the mission.

So, you know I'm just like thinking about this a lot Because I mean,

obviously we're going through just to get real about this

church right here at this moment in time like we're making some changes

a big change we're going someplace else i still don't

know where we're going you'll notice a bunch of holes over there in the

kids yard or don't fall in them we put up caution tape heed the caution tape

yeah but there's we're digging for we have to replace some septics right in

order to to sell this building and so we're doing that that's moving along probably

won't be until august until we move just so you know so it's not like an imminent kind of thing.

But a lot of people wonder, and sometimes I wonder, why would we do this?

Why would we move and why would we sell?

And I mean, just in the end, this is a nice building.

It's a comfortable building. I'm just not, I am no longer convinced that it's

a great vehicle for the purpose of the church.

And we can gather here, that's great, but how do we reach our neighbors?

And so I'm not, this is just, you know, through prayer and through discussion

and through the others, like that's like a decision that's moving forward.

But like, here's the thing. There's still many decisions to be made and God

still needs to direct a lot of things. And where are we going to go? I don't know.

But wherever we're going to do, like we have to remember this. We cannot forget this.

Wherever it is that Jesus is going to plant us, we have to become more so a

church who is on mission. of a church who understands that we don't exist for ourselves.

We don't want to be the coolest church because you get zero points for that.

And probably not going to happen with this guy.

We don't want to be, I don't know, whatever, whatever distinctive,

whatever superlative you could be in a church. All of it's nothing.

Just, oh gosh, I'm not going to say what I was going to say.

I was going to, I'm making up a very strange folksy, no, nevermind.

It's all nothing. It's all pointless if we're not actually like built around this thing.

And so we're doing some, it's going to be a little experimental,

right? It's going to be a little experimental.

We're going to be, it's going to require faith. It's going to require faith.

It already does require faith.

And maybe you're wanting to sit it out just to see what happens.

I would love to do that too.

Not an option for me, but I'm going to tell you this. It's not an option for

you either. You got to pray.

Does Jesus have compassion on people? I think he does.

Does Jesus have his eyes on the east side, wherever that is? Yes, he does.

I mean, does Jesus look at all the brokenness and does he say,

man, I want to do something about it. I know that he does.

And so it is going to require us like, like preliminarily to actually figuring

out where we're going or what kind of church we're going to be like,

we have to like understand that faith requires something of us.

It requires a degree of ownership and a degree of like willingness to just seek

out the Lord and just say, God, where are you so that we can find you and we

can go where you're working and be a part of what you're doing.

And if you want to just like sit on the sidelines, I get it.

That is less messy. I understand that. I understand the temptation,

but it's a temptation and it's not a good one.

Okay. And I was just, you know, like we're going to move somewhere and some

of you guys are going to be like, Hey, God bless you, but that's not my thing. That's okay.

Like, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to guilt you into something. I'm really not.

I know we know the risks, but the risks are worth it.

If we're on a mission, like what, what is a building except a vehicle for mission?

We'll be wherever we need to go as long as we are seeking this thing out.

And so we need to, all of us, be here asking the Lord, Lord, what are you going to do?

We need to be built around faith in Jesus Christ. We need to be understanding God.

We don't understand a lot, but we're going to know this. We are going to press

through difficulty and obstacle, and we're going to try to be where you are at.

We've got to take that on collectively. That's why Jesus doesn't commission

just one disciple or two disciples.

He says, all the disciples are now going to be sent out with this purpose.

And we got to be people who have eyes that are open to the harvest.

Some of us are like, like we have preferences in places. I have a preference of where I'd like to go.

But in the end, we're praying, Jesus knows where he wants us.

And then when he makes it clear where we're going to go, we need to just start

to have eyes of faith and just say, okay, what's the opportunity before us?

And then we'll change ourselves and the way that we're organized to harvest where we're at.

Nothing sacred except the mission in a church. And it involves us saying,

well, we're going to have to trade our comfort, right, for our purpose,

whatever that looks like.

And that's what this, I mean, it's easy to get comfortable in your brokenness.

Like this woman could have said, 12 years, I made it this far.

I'm probably going to be fine.

This man could have, these blind people could have just accepted their state,

you know, and just lived and it would have been fine, right?

But they're willing to trade some discomfort for the sake of leaning into what Jesus has.

Worship team can come up here now. Sorry, I should have done that like three minutes ago.

But look, I know that's uncomfortable, and I know it's asking a lot,

but I believe that God has something. I don't know what else to say besides that.

But I also, I'm 100% convinced about this.

The way forward, the way towards this is not that I become more deeply convicted,

but it's that we all become more open and more, more, more, more faith-filled,

more understanding that, no, we are a part of this. All of us, every single one of us.

We want to be everyday disciples. You know, we want to be people who are stepping

out. We want to be people who are being used by Jesus.

And so, yeah, so we need to be stepping out.

And so, okay, like, you know, there's still so much ambiguity about this direction

of where the church is going to be, but you know what you have clarity on right

now, which can really prime you and prepare you to walk into faith is that you

have people around you right now,

who don't know anything about who Jesus is.

I shared a couple, I don't know, a couple months ago this phrase by a pastor

in Portland named Josh White, who I like, he says.

Mission is the driver of sanctification. Like if we want to be set apart,

if we want to be used for Jesus, no, sorry, witness is the driver of sanctification.

If we want to be used for Jesus, if we want to be stepping out,

if we want to be finding ourselves building up our own faith,

then we have to start to become people who understand when we have a part to

play in the middle of all of this.

Like Jesus commissions the disciples and again, we'll get to it next week,

but he sends them out and he just says, I know I'm doing this stuff,

but I'm telling you need to be participating in it as well.

And so like, who do you know in your life who's broken?

Like, and maybe you don't see their brokenness. Maybe you want to see their

brokenness. Well, start praying to see their brokenness. Start praying to see

the harvest that's before you.

Who do you know in your life that you can share Jesus with?

We have these everyday becoming disciples like habits.

And one is to talk about Jesus with somebody every week.

Who this week, can you just talk to Jesus? talk about Jesus with.

It doesn't have to be like, you don't have to come in with a hard sale.

You don't need any notches on your belt or whatever. You know,

you just like need to be somebody who understands, well, like these men,

right? These blind men, they got healed.

How could I not say, how could I not go around talking to people about what Jesus has done for me?

How could you not do that? You know, if I weren't to do that,

then there would be something broken in me.

I think a lot of us have just gotten used to, or we've kind of forgotten about

what Jesus has done for us, right? Talked about that last week a little bit.

So my prescription is, would you remember and would you just talk to somebody

about what Jesus has done for you?

Maybe you're at a point of like kind of discouragement, despondency,

where you're just like, it's been a while.

It's been a while since I felt like Jesus did anything for me.

Can I just encourage you in that like whatever that is um Jesus looks at that and he has compassion,

he sees you man if you're if you're lost and it's

been a while since you've been with your shepherd and you've known

his goodness and his kindness I think that then just turn to him and have him

remind you of what he's done I think he wants to do that um we're gonna worship

we're gonna come back in a second and we'll pray into that in a little bit. So let's worship.