A Church That Pleases God Week 7: A Mission that Pleases God

Jesus be the name that gets all the glory. That's the desire of my heart this morning.

I believe that's the desire of a lot of your hearts this morning,

that in everything we say and in everything we do, that Jesus gets the glory

and Jesus alone gets the glory for everything that's said and done in our lives.

We have been on a trip over the last seven weeks.

We've been on a journey and we've been asking the question, what does it look

like to be a church that pleases God?

And from the very beginning, we said, if we were going to be a church that pleases

God, then we have to be people who are pursuing pleasing God with our lives.

And if you've missed one of those, go to our church center app or go to Facebook

or the website. They're all online and you can catch up there.

But this morning, as we close out our series on a church that pleases God,

we want to ask a simple question.

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?

I mean, we're all here this morning, so we must be followers of Jesus, right? Right?

In our culture, we follow a lot of things, don't we? We follow people on Instagram.

We follow Fail Army and watch silly people doing silly things, getting hurt.

Heck, I've seen some of you doing silly things, getting hurt on Facebook and Instagram.

We follow things all the time.

But what does it mean to follow Jesus when Jesus gave us the invitation to follow him?

What does that really mean?

Sadly, in today's world and even in many churches, I would say that there are

a lot of people who claim the name of Jesus who say, I follow Jesus.

That really have never surrendered their hearts and lives to him.

Their lives are no different than anyone else in the world. Their actions are the same.

Their language is the same. The way they use their time is the same.

What they watch or listen to is the same.

And really at the end of the day, if we're completely honest,

most of us, most days, our number one struggle is we want to follow number one, right?

We want to follow ourselves. We want to follow our own desires. We want to follow.

And so today we're putting the past behind us and we're saying,

I'm no longer choosing to follow culture. I'm no longer choosing to follow this or that.

I am choosing the one who has said, follow me.

This morning, if you have your Bible with you or your favorite Bible app on your phone.

Or your device, I want to invite you. We're going to be in Luke today,

but we're going to go to Matthew 4 first.

Matthew is the first book of the New Testament.

And at the beginning of chapter 4, we see Jesus, and he's not yet begun his earthly ministry.

And we actually find him fasting and praying in preparation for the things that are about to come.

It's then that the devil came and tempted him and tried to distract Jesus from

the purpose that God had for him.

And let me just give you a side note. Anytime that you want to do things for

God, there are going to be battles for your will, and there's going to be battles for your desires.

The enemy will immediately try to come and distract you and to thwart God's purpose for your life.

So here's what Matthew 4 says, verse 18.

As he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, talking about Jesus,

he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother, Andrew.

They were casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

Verse 19, follow me, he told them, and I will make you fish for people.

Immediately they left their nets and they followed him.

So here we find Jesus and he's out for a walk and he sees Peter and Andrew fishing

and he calls them to be his disciples. And he says, hey, follow me and I'm gonna

make you fish for men instead of just fish, right?

And although I've read this passage through my life, probably hundreds of times,

there's one little part that always sticks out to me.

Two things, really. The first thing is it says they followed immediately.

Like when Jesus called them, they just up and left. Like there was something

about the call to follow Jesus that was powerful.

There was something specific to them.

And this morning, Jesus is calling us. And I don't want us to walk out of here,

not having responded to that call. If you haven't responded already. I hope you have.

The second thing I see is that not only did they follow immediately,

but notice they left their nets.

I was at a small group last night listening to a story someone told,

and they were camping, but it was like, you know, camping, camping, not glamping.

You know the difference, right? Camping is like, we're going to get a tent out.

We're going to blow it up with air.

We're one with the earth. We're in the ground. There's insects. It's hot. It's sweaty.

Like it's it's not a ton of fun but it's nice ish glamping is like you're bringing

the hotel or the whole villa to you to the campground minus the pool.

You go to koa or wherever they got their own pool and water slide so you know

camping well my friend tried camping and he said He immediately left the tent, didn't even pack it up.

He sold it. That's what they did. They were like, the call of Jesus, I'm gone.

I'm leaving that behind me. Which also reminds me that when God calls you to

something, there is something that you have to leave behind.

There's always something we have to leave behind. Maybe it's a relationship

that you know is not honoring to God. We are called to leave it behind.

Maybe it's friends that are bad influences And they drag us down We're called

to leave it behind The way we spend our money changes How about this?

The movies we watch The music we listen to that's full of cursing.

How about our language? When we come to Christ, y'all, we leave that old language,

the cursing, behind. Because guess what?

The Bible says, this is a clean well.

It's clean now. That's not where we live. That's not the way we speak. We're different.

And so this morning, we're asking the question, if Jesus says,

follow me, we better know where he's going.

Where is he going? Because if you're really serious about following someone

for the rest of your life, you might want to know where you're following them to.

You might want to, Jesus said, consider the cost. What's it going to cost if I follow this Jesus?

I remember the first time I saw my beautiful wife, Jen, before she was my wife.

If you know anything about me, I spent the last 20, 25 years,

more than that, leading worship.

We traveled around the country, the world, and we did concerts.

And before I joined the group, she was already in this group of six people.

And I saw that on the calendar day, they were coming to do a concert in Iowa.

And so my mom and dad and I, we went to the concert. We went to this church,

I don't know, somewhere in Iowa.

And I remember seeing this gorgeous girl up there. I'm like.

I'm going to be part of this group.

She is smoking. Yeah.

I mean, smoking. Did you get, you know what I'm saying, right?

She was hot. I was just like, man, we're going to make some beautiful music

together in more than one way.

And so I was just like, man, this is incredible. I didn't go up to her and ask

her to marry me the first night.

I had no idea who she was. I knew she was pretty.

I knew that she was back there selling CDs and trying to get people to sponsor

children and orphans around the world.

And she was giving her life for the Lord Jesus. And I'm like,

man, that's attractive that someone is going after Jesus.

And I would encourage you, if you're not married, find someone who's walking towards Jesus.

Join them as they're walking towards Jesus. Don't try to find someone and drag

them to where you're going.

It doesn't work that way.

Over time, she wore me down and we ended up dating and then we got married.

Why? Because we saw the same, we were walking the same direction.

We were walking towards Jesus.

The big question you have to know when it comes to Christianity and following

Jesus is where are you going?

This morning, I'm going to look at something that's really the heartbeat of the gospel.

And Kelly, I'm going to be jumping around all over the place this morning.

I apologize ahead of time, kind of.

Luke 15 is where we're going to be this morning.

Luke 15, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

In order to know what's happening, we're going to see that Jesus is going to,

give two parables and then he's going to give a third one. And instead of reading

that because of its length, it's quite long.

I'm just going to tell you what happened in that third parable.

He's talking to the Pharisees and the tax collectors. He's talking about keeping

the laws, being perfect.

They didn't care about the relationships. They cared about religion.

They cared about piety. And so Jesus addresses this religious group.

And this is what he says. And it's really the heartbeat of the gospel.

It's the heartbeat of Jesus.

Verse four, what man among you who has a hundred sheep and loses one of them

does not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost one until he finds it.

When he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders.

And coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together,

saying to them, Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.

Verse 7, I tell you in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one

sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don't need repentance.

It's really interesting because Jesus, when he's teaching a single point,

usually he will have one single parable.

This one must have been so important because he didn't do just one.

He didn't just do two. He does three.

Here's the second one, verse eight.

Or what woman who has 10 silver coins, if she loses one coin,

does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?

When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together saying, rejoice with me.

You're going to see this theme that when one comes home, when someone's found,

when God's seeking out for someone, there is immense celebration and joy over that one.

Rejoice with me because I found the silver coin I lost.

I tell you in the same way there's joy in the presence of God's angels over one sinner who repents.

And then in the following parable, it's the prodigal son. Most of us,

if you grew up in church, you've heard of the prodigal son.

Basically one father has two sons. One of the sons wanted his inheritance now in advance.

And so he gets up, and he goes out, and he spends it unwisely,

and he blows it on everything fun and sinful,

and he ends up with nothing, and he's hungry, and he's working in a pig pen,

and he's eating the very same food that they're feeding the pigs.

But something happened in that pig pen.

It was in the pig pen of his life that he came to his senses,

and he realized it was all wrong.

And I just want to stop and remind you that oftentimes God allows us to be in

the pig pen in order to bring us to the palace. Are you with me?

Most of us who are now followers of Christ, man, there is a section of our lives.

There is a chapter, maybe two chapters.

Maybe y'all have most of the book. I don't know.

But there is a section in all of our journeys that was the pig pen.

But God revealed himself to us in the pig pen, and we are now walking, and we're in the palace.

God does some of his most incredible work when you're in the pig pen.

So don't lose heart and don't lose hope when you find yourself there.

So the prodigal son realized how good he had it back home, and he decides to

go back to his father's house.

And while he was still far away, the father saw him and ran to him and hugged

him, put a robe on him, gave him a ring, killed the fatted calf.

They threw a party for him.

And they fully restored him. And he was just hoping, man, if I could just be

a servant in your kingdom, I'd be happy if just let me be a servant.

No, he was restored completely.

If we look at all three of these parables in each one of them,

there's some things that are

in common. There's something in each of them that are in the wrong place.

And there's something that's in the right place. And then there's a person who is representing God.

Now in the first parable about the lost sheep, we have God representing the shepherd, right?

So what's in the wrong place?

The sheep, those messy, dirty sheep, one wandered off and there's a sheep that's in the wrong place.

One sheep, one sheep is lost.

One sheep is not where he or she is supposed to be.

And in the right place, there's 99. There with the shepherd,

right where they're supposed to be.

The second parable, there's God is represented in the woman who's lost the coin.

And we're the coin, we're the lost coin and he's sweeping the house and he's

looking for us intently because you matter.

Maybe the pig pen that you're in and it feels awful and it feels like it's really tough.

It's really God sweeping the house right now, trying to find you and he's looking for you.

Finally, the third, God is obviously the father there and he's looking for the son who's run away.

I think there's several things that we can take this morning as we talk about

a mission, a life mission that pleases God.

And I want you to see some things about these parables.

Number one, Jesus' attention is always focused on the lost.

Right? Right, church?

Y'all are tired this morning or something. The point Jesus is trying to make

in these three parables, one after another, is that there's two categories.

There's the lost and there's the found.

Jesus is always seeking the lost.

You know, some of us, we think, ah, 99's pretty good. We got 99. What's one?

Nah, Jesus is more concerned that we go to that one than that the 99 of us stay

together and sit comfortable in the church.

There's something in the heart of the shepherd that can't stand the thought

that even one single sheep,

that's in his possession and that's loved by him is lost and in the wilderness.

And so he leaves the 99.

That's you. That's me, man. Jesus is all about the lost coin, the lost sheep.

The lost child. And when he says, follow me, he's inviting us to follow him.

And when we follow him, we're agreeing that we're going to reach the lost.

Number two, following Jesus means following him to reach the lost.

It doesn't mean following him to stay in comfort.

It means getting out there and going and seeking and inviting and reaching and loving.

He's saying, follow me to hand out those invite cards.

Follow me not only to church on Sunday, although that's part of the deal.

Follow me to find another coin. Follow me to find another lost son or daughter.

That's the gospel, the good news.

We have to be about those who are not yet in here.

It should break our hearts that these chairs are empty because it represents

a lost son or a lost daughter.

And we need to plead with them to come in. It's all about the gospel.

Everything else is secondary.

And let's go back for a minute to the two men that Jesus called in Matthew 4.

One of them was called Peter, as we know him, and he went on to follow Jesus,

and he did really well most of the time.

But later on in his life, there was a time when Jesus was arrested,

and on the road to Calvary, Peter made an adjustment in the way he followed Jesus.

And here's what it says in Matthew 26, 58. Meanwhile, Peter was following,

help me out here, from a distance.

Peter was following him at a distance, right to the high priest's courtyard.

He went in and was sitting with the temple police to see the outcome.

Number three, when we follow Jesus at a distance, our mission changes.

See, at this point for Peter, the stakes are really high.

The cost was a little higher for him than it is in our church today.

It involves personal risk, safety, security, comfort.

And now all of a sudden, Peter makes this mistake, and he allows there to be

a distance in his following.

Technically, he's still following Jesus, but he's following now at a distance.

And if you read this chapter later on, you'll see how people came up to Peter,

and they asked you, aren't you one of his followers?

Remember what happened? He said, not me. Not me. I'm not one of his followers.

I'm not one of his followers. They're like, yeah, you are.

You're one of his followers. You even talk like him. Of course, you look just like him.

I know I've seen you with him before. Do you know what he does to separate himself

from being a follower of Christ, from looking like a follower of Christ?

Not trying to step on toes, he cussed.

He cursed and he cussed to prove that he was not a Christian.

And yet we walk around and we think it's okay for us to talk like the world. And it's not.

What separated him at that moment was his language.

I love y'all. Christians don't talk that way.

I'm your pastor. And there's times I'm going to coddle you and I'm going to

love on you. And there's times I'm going to take that little thing and go, stop it.

Get him back line. No, get him. No, you're one of us.

You left that behind. That is one of the costs. That's one of the prices that

we pay for him taking our place on the cross is that, man, I'm going to look

like a Christian. Christian actually means a little Christ.

I'm going to look, I'm going to talk. I'm going to act like a Christian.

Peter allowed distance to come between him And now his focus was on himself

and his safety Rather than on following Jesus,

His goal was his own comfort and security But praise God, he did get back to following Jesus,

Some of us here today,

We say, I'm all in with Jesus I'm all in with Christ.

I'm all in with Generations Church.

But you're following from a distance. You're busy watching what happens. I hear. I have ears.

Let's just be honest. I've heard it in the last few weeks. Hey,

did they leave church? Are we going to close?

I wonder if Pastor Jeff's looking for a different job somewhere.

And so there are people in here that are like, I don't know if I'm going to

jump in. I don't know what's going to happen.

You know what's going to happen? We're going to keep following Jesus.

We're going to keep pushing on. Why? Because there's a lost coin that needs found.

There's a lost sheep that needs found.

There's a lost son or daughter that needs found.

And all we're doing is saying, hey, we're looking for them. You with us?

Come be with us as we look for those lost to bring them home.

To the Father who loves them so much that Jesus died for them.

It's time today to rid ourselves of excuses and be all in for the mission of

Jesus Christ. Can I get an amen?

We've got to be all in. It's not about becoming a big church.

It's all about having more people in the kingdom.

It's all about rescuing souls, rescuing the perishing as the old hymn I grew up singing.

Rescue the perishing. That's what we're about.

Number four, our love for Christ should compel us to action.

If our goal is to seek and to save the lost, then it's our love for Christ that

must compel us to action.

We talked about this when we talked about having a love that pleases God,

being a church that loves like Christ.

Next week, we have an incredible opportunity to invite people to church, to Generations Church.

To go out and to seek and to bring them in.

Because guess what? We're not going to be talking about relationships or some

happy-go-lucky thing. We're going

to be talking about the fact that Jesus loves them and died for them.

And he wants to give hope and he wants to give you joy and give you peace and give you new life.

It is literally a matter of life and death, this mission that we're on.

But I can't do it for you you have to invite you have to bring it should bother

us that this place is empty.

Want to close today by sharing a story that I shared with our launch team three

years ago before we, before we actually launched, before we had a building,

before we had our first service.

Go ahead and put the Titanic picture up there. The Titanic was the largest man-made object.

I know this is right up your alley.

You, he, Gabe loves the Titanic. He's an incredible artist and brings pictures

and shows me all the time. It's

fascinating. You want to know something about the Titanic? Go ask him.

But it was going from Southampton on its maiden journey across the Atlantic,

with 2,201 passengers on board.

And we all know what happened. In the middle of the night, the ship collided

with an iceberg and it started to sink.

And it took a long time, two hours, over two hours for the ship to go down.

It was actually about three and a half hours from the time of impact until it

completely disappeared below the surface of the water.

There was a lot of time for the lifeboats to be placed into the ocean.

But the strange thing about the story of the sinking of the Titanic that is

so hard to understand is that each lifeboat had the capacity to save 70 people.

Those are big lifeboats.

And it's documented how many people ended up in each one of them.

And the first hour, they only had between 30 to 12 people in each lifeboat.

Two-thirds empty.

And all of a sudden, there were hundreds of people in the water fighting for

their lives and screaming for help.

And this is where what's called the second disaster of the Titanic happened.

The fact that even though there were so many lifeboats, they were practically empty.

And people were so consumed with saving themselves that they rode empty lifeboats

with two, five, seven, ten people in them while hundreds are dying.

History tells us that only one single boat ever returned to go back to help

pick up survivors from the water.

And when I read that, I couldn't help but think that this is just like the world's

version of Christianity, where we just, we're happy with the fact that we made it.

Hallelujah. High five in donuts and coffee. We made it. We made it. We made it. Hallelujah.

I don't know why when we're excited, we always go into falsetto, but we do.

And we celebrate that we're saved and we're rowing away in our comfortable chairs

from all the people that are headed to hell for eternity.

Number five, don't be satisfied with a half-full lifeboat or an empty lifeboat.

On board the ship that night was a man whose name was John Harper.

John Harper was 39 years old. I don't know why, but anytime I look at pictures

of people from them back then, they look like they're 80 or 90 years old,

but he's 39. He had a rough life.

Was a Scottish evangelist. He was on board the Titanic and he was on his way

to go to Chicago where he was going to have a gospel crusade.

And he was supposed to preach the gospel to thousands of people.

And with him on the trip, he had his daughter, Annie Jessie, six years old.

Annie Jessie and John Harper were among the first ones to realize the danger.

They were the first ones to get out of their cabins.

How do we know that? Because in one of the first lifeboats that was lowered

into the ocean, Annie Jesse Harper is registered as one of the passengers.

They wrote down all the names of those who got in each one of the boats.

However, John's name was not there.

The other passengers of the lifeboat all witnessed later on how John Harper

came up with his daughter, held her for a few moments, hugged her,

kissed her, bawling his eyes out.

And he said, I love you so much, honey. I'll see you again.

And he put her in the lifeboat, lowered her down.

What happens next?

He knew it was time to go find the lost sheep.

Sheep, plural, the lost coins, the lost sons and daughters.

And he started running around the ship, pounding on the cabin doors,

calling out women, children, and people who do not know Jesus,

get to the lifeboats now.

Women, children, and people who don't know Jesus, get to the lifeboats now.

He kept saying that over and over and over because his perspective was that

if I die tonight, I know what's happening to me. I know where I'm going.

But if somebody dies here tonight without knowing Jesus, they'll move into an

eternity separated from God.

And he knew that his calling right then in that moment as a follower of Christ

was to go find those lost sheep, to go find the lost coins and to find the lost

daughter and the lost sons.

He ended up being one of the hundreds in the water that night.

He began to swim in the icy, cold water, and he knew that he was going to die.

He knew his chance of survival was absolutely none.

So what he did was he swam around to wherever he could find people floating in the water.

And he said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

Believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved.

Countless testimonies in history testify that above all the cries of anguish,

there was a male voice screaming out, believe in the name of Jesus and you'll be saved.

Believe in the name of Jesus and you'll be saved.

God only knows how many people heard the gospel in their dying last moments,

and cried out to Jesus as their Savior.

And years later, after the disaster, there was a reunion for the Titanic survivors.

One of the first people to come up and give his testimony was a young man named William John Mellors.

And he said, I was only 19 when I boarded the ship.

And I was many of the hundreds of people who ended up in the water that night.

He talked about holding on to pieces of debris Trying to make it But realizing

he was probably going to die Before the night was over,

And then he shared That the current brought him close to a man Later who identified

his name as John Harper And this man looked at 19-year-old.

Do you know Jesus? William was not prepared for that question at that time.

And he said, no, I don't know Jesus. He didn't know what to say.

And John Harper called back to him, believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved.

And the current took them away from each other.

A few minutes later, the current brought them back together as only God could do.

And he said, do you know Jesus now?

And he said, no, sir, I cannot honestly say that I do.

Again, John Harper called out, then cry out and believe in the name of the Lord

Jesus and you'll be saved.

And that was the last time that anyone saw John Harper.

Young William, however, gave his life to Jesus in the cold waters that night.

And minutes later, he was picked up by the one returning lifeboat And now years

later, at a survivor's reunion He's sharing his testimony,

And he ended it by saying, I was saved twice that night.

That with you again today because as we were talking about what kind of church,

we want to be in the future before our first service,

I said there's only two versions of Christianity that we can choose from,

two types of churches that we're going to choose from.

Ones where we get in half full of lifeboats and we just row away happy and content,

that we're saved and we're comfortable.

Or we can be the John Harpers of our generation and we can realize that now

is the time that we are called to follow Jesus when the time is going tough.

We're gonna jump in the cold waters and we're gonna go to people and we're gonna

invite them in. We're gonna love them when people are unloving,

when they smell different, when they talk different, when they look different.

We're gonna go to them and we're gonna serve them in order for the gospel to

be presented to them because serving and loving people opens the door to gospel conversations.

Charles Spurgeon once said this, you have never truly found Jesus if you do

not tell others about him.

We all need to look at the mirror and ask ourselves, Am I really a follower of Jesus?

Am I really speaking the name of Jesus? Do I look differently? Do I talk differently?

Do I serve differently? Am I all in?

Am I jumping in the water? And y'all, you're here this morning.

Thanks for jumping in the water.

Let's swim together. Let's call out the name of Jesus. Let's pack the boat up.

It's a mission that God has called us to. And the only mission I want to be

a part of is one that pleases God.

And the mission and the heart of Jesus is seeking and saving those who are lost. Let's pray.

Father, there's been incredible examples, incredible stories of men and women

throughout history who have given their lives, who have given everything they have

to follow you, and yet somehow we read about those things and we see them and

we want to be that way, but we're still half in.

We fail to gather and pray. We fail to serve. We fail to invite.

You've made it so easy for us. You've given us so many tools like social media,

and invite cards and telephones.

Forgive us for not acting as if there's a mission at hand that you're not asking us to join you on.

You have asked us to seek and to save and to go.

And we have failed you greatly.

Evict our hearts.

Forgive us for holding back.

Would you give us your love for people so that when, like Jesus looked over

the city, he wept with compassion.

May we look at our cities in the Cedar Valley and may we weep with compassion.

But instead of just looking at it, may it drive us, may it compel us,

to serve and to reach those who are lost because you don't want any to perish.

Lord, forgive us, but empower us in Jesus' precious name.

And all God's people said, amen.