The Least Of These | Real Springcreek Church | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart | 36 years of Springcreek Church

Amen.

Love a C.

Oh wow, 36 years.

That's pretty amazing, isn't it?

But just like we sang, to God be the glory.

I mean, it has been God's faithfulness every step of the way.

He's carried us through all these many years.

He's touched, changed so many lives.

I'm just so grateful that God's let me be a part of this.

And uh Lord willing, I'll continue to be a part of this for as long as He would have me.

I'm in a I'm gonna do a message today.

I'm gonna call it the least of these, which is really about kind of where we've been as a church, where we're heading as a church, what God's been saying to us.

Uh many of you know I've been gone the last two weeks.

I've actually been on a mission trip.

I spent one week in uh Guatemala uh among the indigenous people who live in the mountains.

It was a truly uh transformative kind of trip.

It was really amazing.

And then I spent uh the next week uh speaking to national leaders, denominational leaders, uh, seminary leaders, pastors of big churches and small in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, uh just kind of talking about God's mission to the poor and how the church is supposed to be a transformational agent in society.

And those messages were all really received well, but I know it was because you all were praying for me.

Because your prayers made a huge difference and God just created all kinds of opportunities.

Uh, hopefully next week we'll get a report back from each of these countries about uh the long-term impact of, uh, or at least, you know, in the short-term impact of what this conference has done for World Vision and for the pastors in these communities.

Uh, today, as we get started, I want to join our uh welcome our online audience with this message too, and say, just join me as we get started in a word of prayer.

Father, this is your time.

These are your people.

I know, God, this is the message you would have me share.

I've prayed over this, I prepared my heart for this.

I just ask God now that you'd have your way.

And that all of us in this room would be in the position where we would be saying, God, have your way in my life.

I want to say yes to you in all the things you're calling us to do and to be in your name.

Amen.

So I did, I planted Spring Creek 36 years ago.

I was 28 years old.

We grew from a handful of people into hundreds in just a few short years.

We consider ourselves a seeker church.

So we were really trying to reach people who either were lost to the church, didn't want to go to church, or been hurt by the church in some way.

But in those early days, we were fixated on the culture of cool and mass marketing our product, and my preaching was primarily focused on meeting the felt needs of people.

We were constantly monitoring the latest trends in church growth, trying to stay ahead of the curve.

And over the years, that the cumulative effect of taking that approach was having a very negative spiritual effect on me.

Now, there's no question great things were happening.

There were lots of decisions for Christ.

We were baptizing hundreds of people.

People were telling all their friends about it.

My preaching seemed to be really well received and changing a lot of lives.

But along about 15 years into the church, I was finding it increasingly difficult to get out of bed.

My motivation for ministry was in an all-time low.

I had a nagging feeling that something wasn't right.

Something wasn't right in me, something wasn't right with the church, with the way we were doing ministry, but I couldn't tell you what that thing was.

And I told God, I told God at the year 15, I said, God, if this is what it means to be a successful pastor, I just got to tell you I don't want to do it anymore.

Because I didn't like what we had become.

So from all external appearances, everything seemed fine.

It's not like I was having this discussion with a lot of people.

I was just feeling very dead inside.

And I heard about a pastor's conference in Southern California in San Diego.

And I love this conference.

I'd been to it several years, and I decided I'd go that year.

And I heard a man named Tony Kampolo speak.

Tony Kampolo died just a couple years ago, great man of God.

He was a sociologist, but also an ordained minister, had a huge heart for the poor.

I couldn't even tell you what the name of his sermon was that day.

But I can tell you this.

Number one, Tony preached with a kind of passion that I felt like I'd lost years before.

And I thought, man, I want to have that passion.

I want to feel that way again about ministry.

But the second thing he did is he challenged every pastor in the room.

He said, every pastor here needs to sponsor a child in the developing world, and every pastor here needs to go to sub-Saharan Africa to see what the AIDS pandemic is doing to the continent.

And literally, as I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, okay, God, maybe this is it.

Maybe I'm supposed to go to Africa to help save Africa, not realizing that God had the opposite in mind.

That God was going to bring Africa into my life to save me from a very self-serving paradigm of ministry.

So 20 years ago, this October, so just this next month, October 2006, I took my first trip with World Vision to Nairobi, Kenya.

I had no idea at the time that a slum outside the city of Nairobi would hold for me the direction my soul had been craving.

Now, at first it didn't start off like a life-changing trip.

We were going to Soweto.

Most of you, when you hear Soweto, you associate it with South Africa because it's a short abbreviation for Southwestern Township.

This is the name that Nairobi gave to their town garbage dump.

Now, if you've traveled much around the world, and especially if you've seen poverty around the world, you're not surprised anymore that when you see entire cities spring up around town garbage dumps.

Because that's where the throwaways of humanity are, and a lot of people live off of the throwaways of the rest of humanity.

So there's an entire city centered around Soweto outside of Nairobi.

I can remember this trip into Soweto, and the stench was awful.

The eyes that I peered into as we were driving in our Toyota Land Cruiser through this community, they seemed hollow and hopeless.

A lot of them looked as if they maybe even judging us, like, who are you?

Why are you here?

Did you just come to gawk at our poverty?

And there was just a general feeling of hopelessness in this slum.

But here's the deal.

I met this kid, and it wasn't the desperation of this slum that stuck with me.

It was the impact of the love that I saw in an orphan boy named Oliver.

Oliver was 19 years old.

He'd lost both of his parents and he'd grown up as a sponsor child with World Vision.

Well, in 19, he's graduating out of the program.

And without some kind of intervention, he would just be turned out to the poverty once again of his community.

So World Vision understands that about young boys and girls as they come through the program, that they need to be prepared to be able to provide for themselves.

And so they taught young Oliver business skills, basic business skills, and through microenterprise gave him a small loan to start a business.

Now it might surprise you to learn that Oliver did not grow up in Soweto.

He actually moved there because he saw a business opportunity.

So he set up shop in a tiny little six by nine cinder block building at the heart of Soweto.

And out of that building, he sold mobile phone covers and lanyards and rechargeable minutes for phone.

And I can remember, I can remember this day so vividly, and I'm looking at his shop, and I'm just thinking, I can buy everything in this shop with the money in my back pocket right now.

So his supplies are meager, he doesn't have a lot of stuff, but he's making his money this way.

But his big claim to fame, his moneymaker, was a power strip.

And when I noticed a power strip, I noticed that he had several phones plugged into that power strip already.

You see, what Oliver did, the way he made most of his money through his little shop, was to charge people cell phones for a living.

Because Oliver had electricity and most people in the slum did not.

So they would just come with their phones and they would plug it in for an hour, two hours, however long it took to fully charge the phone, and they would pay him a few pennies to charge his phone.

That's how he made most of his money.

What Oliver told me next, I wasn't prepared to hear.

He introduces me to a young orphan like himself.

This young boy is 16, maybe 17 years old.

It's his apprentice, and he is teaching him the business and sharing the profits with him.

And the moment he said that, I knew who was rich and who was poor.

You see, if I grew up on the town garbage dump and I didn't have a mom and a dad, and I made my living pennies at a time, charging people cell phones for a living, I wouldn't dream of sharing what little I made with another soul.

Oliver was rich and I was desperately poor.

You know, he was rich in compassion, he was rich in generosity, he was rich in sharing, he was rich in love.

I had money.

So I reached out my hand, and I can remember this so vividly.

I reached out my hand, and as I reached to shake his hand, I prayed, Dear God, don't let me spend the rest of my life not having what this kid has.

So God spoke to me in his still small voice, to an orphan boy in Soweto.

You need what this boy never lost.

And what seemed to be an insignificant encounter with an orphan child in the heart of Soweto Slum in Nairobi became the catalyst to transform my life in this church.

You see, God used Oliver as a mirror, a mirror held up to my sick soul.

When I looked at him, it forced me to look at my own life, and I didn't like what I saw.

Oliver thought he was selling cell phone accessories.

That wasn't his main business.

His main business was selling hope.

And God used that business to speak to my heart, my desperate lack, my starving soul.

You see, Oliver taught me I was living for small purposes.

That being, I bought into this lie that church was about growing numbers and the cult of celebrity and big buildings and impressive weekend service and endlessly catering to our own wants and desires.

That way of doing ministry was killing me inside.

And God said, I want to show you something that will give you life instead.

So it was a moment of radical clarity for me.

I'd lost sight of what was really important, what was missing in me and what was missing in Spring Creek.

Now, when we talk about caring for the poor, caring for people who are hurting, who are hungry, who are thirsty, who are broken down by life, it causes different reactions in different Christians.

There are some Christians who treat this as something good to do if we can get around to it.

Others treat it as something entirely optional because they say, well, the business of the church is saving souls, and that's that.

Still, others don't believe in it at all and call it the social gospel, and they say the church has no business even operating in that sphere.

But what I want to show you today is that caring for the poor is an absolute essential in the spiritual life.

It literally spells the difference between Christ's true followers and those who are pretenders.

And we're going to see this from Jesus.

Jesus himself in the gospels, in the gospel of Matthew, the most extensive place that he speaks about the final judgment is Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

This is Christ's teaching.

He says he himself will be the judge.

And so what I want to do, I want to share with you just the entire section of what he says, and then we'll look at it more individually as we move through the message.

I'm not going to have a slide for this.

It's much longer than I would normally read, but this is Matthew 25, verses 31 to 46 from the NIV.

Matthew 25:31–46

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on the left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat.

I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you invited me in.

I needed clothes and you clothed me.

I was sick and you looked after me.

I was in prison and you came to visit me.

Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?

When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?

When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?

The king will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of these, the least of my br these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you who are cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat.

I was thirsty, you gave me nothing to drink.

I was a stranger, you did not invite me in.

I needed clothes, and you did not clothe me.

I was sick and in prison, and you did not look after me.

They will also answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, or a stranger, or needing clothes, or sick, or in prison, and did not help you?

He will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of these, the least of these, you did not do for me.

Then they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

Now I'm sure that you can remember when you were in high school or college, and your teacher gets up and says, What I'm about to cover is going to be on the final.

And at that moment, everybody snaps to attention, and you hear pages ruffling, and you hear pens clicking, and everybody's paying close attention and writing everything down that the teacher says, because it's going to be on the final, you're going to be tested on it.

That's the exact same reaction we should be having as we hear Jesus speak about the final judgment.

We need to hear what he's about to say.

Jesus is telling us this is going to be on the final exam.

So pay attention to what I'm saying.

Take good notes, because Jesus himself says he will be the judge, and he's going to describe the basis for the final separation.

So there's several things to learn from this passage.

I'll walk them through one at a time.

Number one, in the end, all humanity is divided into two categories, the sheep and the goats.

This is what he said when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he'll sit on his glorious throne.

All the nations will be gathered before him.

That's everybody in the whole world.

And he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

He will put the sheep on his right and the goat, right on the on his right, and the goats on the left.

So, first, this analogy of sheep and goats, where does it come from?

Well, it would have been familiar to anybody in first century Palestine because the illustration of sheep and goat arises from the practices of those days.

During the day, sheep and goats always intermingled.

But at night the shepherds would separate the sheep from the goats because the sheep like to be in the open air, out in the countryside.

The goats like to be warm, so they like to be taken together into a small pen of some sort where they could share one another's body warmth.

So they would, the sheep are left out in the field, the goats are gathered together and brought in.

Second thing we notice from Jesus' description in Matthew 25, it's a judgment scene, not a courtroom scene.

The Bible says, then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

Now, like I say, what's peculiar about this passage, it's not a courtroom scene.

In other words, there's no testimony given.

There's no witnesses, there's no question.

No one is standing and pleading their case before Jesus.

Everything is already known.

There's no new evidence that needs to be introduced.

The verdict is announced, the great separation takes place.

So Jesus doesn't ask anyone to present their case or to argue their cause.

He asks for no new evidence.

He simply extends an invitation to one group come, blessed am I Father, and to the other, depart.

Then he explains the basis for this choice.

He simply notes that they had an opportunity to help someone in need.

Listen to what he said.

To the sheep, for I was hungry, you gave me something to eat.

I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.

I was a stranger, you invited me in.

I needed clothes, you clothed me, I wasn't sick, and you looked after me.

I was in prison, you came to visit me.

The king will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

Then to the goat, he says, For I was hungry, you gave me nothing to eat.

I was thirsty, you gave me nothing to drink.

I was a stranger, you did not invite me in.

I needed clothes, you did not clothe me.

I was sick and in prison, you did not look after me.

He will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.

So get this.

When I was a kid, they used to hand out gospel tracts.

And maybe some of you are older like me and you remember these.

They give out gospel tracts that would kind of lay out the plan of salvation.

And there was this one kind of track called chick tracks.

And in particular, there was this one track called This Was Your Life.

These tracks were designed to scare the bejeebers out of you.

Okay, you would you would start reading this thing, and this particular one is about some guy who's going to have to stand before Jesus, and all of a sudden, on this great big screen, his entire life is played out.

Everything he's ever done wrong, and he is dying of embarrassment, he's raising objections, and then as a teenager, a teenage boy, there's this whole section about he gets caught lusting after a girl.

And so everybody, his family, everybody who knows him, is seeing him lusting after this girl, and I'm just thinking, oh, I'm mad for, you know, I have no hope whatsoever because that's happened to me, right?

And so they were designed to scare you half to death.

But what you see from what Jesus says here, that's not the scenario that Jesus is portraying.

What Jesus makes plain in the final judgment, everything's already decided.

He's simply pronouncing sentence.

He's not listening to people plead their case.

J.D.

Greer is a pastor, he said there's two ways to tell what you believe: what your mouth says and what your life says.

And one of them never lies.

Isn't that the truth?

So the question becomes: what does your life say about what you truly believe?

I'm not asking you what you profess to believe.

I'm not asking what you call yourself.

I'm asking what does your life say about what you value?

Because our life doesn't lie.

They say you can know a fruit, a tree by its fruit, right?

So what does the fruit of our life say about the sort of person we are?

My friends, when the books are open in the end, the issue is not primarily what you believed, but whether your faith has transformed your life and inspired your love.

Jesus is clearly saying the ultimate mark of an authentic Christian is not their creed, it's not their faith, it's not their Bible knowledge, but the concern they show for the least of these.

Here's a third principle we learn from this passage.

It's not primarily about our faith, but whether our faith manifests in works.

So suppose on the judgment day you stand before God and God asks you the question, why should I let you into my heaven?

This was a question popularized by Billy Graham.

He said, one day God's going to ask you that very thing.

And he told people, we all ought to answer the same thing, that, you know, with this theologically wonderfully correct answer, I believe in Jesus Christ alone for my salvation, he's my Savior and my Lord.

But then suppose Jesus were to say, okay, let me ask you another question.

What evidence is there that you really believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

What would you say then?

Because Matthew 25 is speaking to that issue.

In this passage, Jesus is addressing the true evidence of a believer and the false evidence of a false believer.

So something that makes this final judgment unique is it is about works.

It's about our actions, not our words, not our beliefs.

When the king introduces the evidence upon which he makes this judgment, he doesn't say a thing about faith, salvation, grace, the new birth, accepting Christ, trusting Jesus, being born again, having eternal life, participation in baptism, or the Lord's Supper.

There's nothing in here about whether you were a Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Church of Christ.

None of those things are even mentioned.

In this judgment scene, Jesus points out not what people claim to believe, but what their lives reveal, based on the best evidence of what he sees in their life.

John makes the same point.

Listen to what he said.

But whoever has this world's goods and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Now this doesn't surprise any of us who know our Bible, because we know the Bible makes clear that the end judgment is based on works.

Paul says this in 2 Corinthians, all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that we may receive recompense for what we have done.

Not what we believe, what we've done.

Revelation 22, this is Jesus.

Behold, I'm coming soon.

I will give everyone according to what he has done.

So here's the truth.

We're saved by grace through faith, but we're judged by our works or lack thereof.

Now you might have noticed that the sheep and the goats have nothing, uh when you read this, nothing is mentioned about what the goats actually did.

So there's nothing about them to being murderers or rapists or abusers or thieves or liars or depraved.

They're just said to be people who did not love.

That's it.

And by the way, both the sheep and the goats show surprise for the same reason.

When we're responding to other people in their neediness, we're responding out of our primary identity.

So it doesn't occur to us that we're doing anything special or unusual.

It isn't that caring for the poor, the sick, and the hungry makes you into a sheep instead of a goat.

Caring for the poor, the sick, and the hungry simply shows whether you already are a sheep or a goat.

So the way you respond to the least of these demonstrates where your true identity lies.

Here's a fourth thing we discover from what Jesus says here.

It's not about a relationship to believe only to believers, but all people everywhere.

You see, a lot of people debate what this verse means when it says, you did for the least.

Of these brothers and sisters of mine.

Some people say, well, that just means people who are Christ followers, because they're brothers and sisters, they're in the family of God.

Other people say, no, when Jesus says least of these brothers and sisters of mine, he means all people everywhere all the time.

So what does he mean?

Well, you know, sometimes we're like the lawyer who came to Jesus, and Jesus is talking to him about neighbor love, about the great commandments and everything, and then the lawyer says, Well, what exactly is a neighbor?

You know, because he he he wants he wants Jesus to define that term in such a way that it limits his obligation to love.

And Jesus tells him the story of the Good Samaritan.

If you remember this story, there's a man who's beaten and lying by the side of the road, and it tells us some factors about him.

Number one, he's unconscious.

Number two, he has no clothes.

So you can't tell if he's a Jew, a Samaritan, a Gentile by how he's dressed.

You're not gonna hear in his language and his vocabulary or his accent what kind of person he is.

All you know is he's a desperate human being who's been beaten up by the side of the road.

And Jesus doesn't define neighbor for the lawyer, does he?

Because he's not gonna let him off the hook.

Instead, he says, To whom are you a neighbor?

That's the point.

To whom are you a neighbor?

That's what neighbor love is all about.

So we're here in the same place.

Sometimes Christians want to turn this into, well, I'm obligated to love my brothers and sisters in Christ, but I'm not obligated to pour people everywhere.

You know, even in the New Testament, even if you come to a different conclusion than I do on this, the New Testament never allows Christians to restrict their compassion just to Christians.

Even Paul said this, therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who are the family of believers.

So Paul says, yes, we prioritize our own and our family.

We don't want to neglect them to care for other people, but we care for the people of the world.

So when Jesus talks about caring for the least of these, I think he means needy people everywhere.

And by the way, this is the way the early church understood it.

What we know in history is the Romans practiced a different kind of abortion.

It was a post-birth abortion.

It was leaving children out that had been born that were unwanted, leaving them out to the element to die.

The early Christians, you know what they did?

They scooped up these children that were abandoned by the rivers and out in the elements, and they raised them as their own, and they loved them.

This is the church being the church that's loving the least of these among us.

And not just that, you know, there's this in history, there's this emperor, his name is Julian the Apostate.

He was an emperor in Rome, and he wanted to go back to paganism after Christianity had taken root in the Roman Empire.

And so he wanted to go back to the days of paganism.

But he had one big problem: that the pagans themselves didn't care for their own people, but the Christians did.

And this is what he wrote.

We have this in history, he wrote, for it is disgraceful when no Jew ever has to beg.

And the impious Galileans, so he's talking about Christians, the impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well.

All men see our people lack aid from us.

So the Christians were out loving the Romans.

They were showing up and they were caring for Romans who are not a part of the church family, but they love people who were in need.

And when this pagan emperor wanted to return to the roots of paganism, he says, the Christians are showing us up.

They're showing up and they're loving our people.

And so people want to become Christians.

They don't want to go back to paganism.

Paganism never gave them anything except abandonment when they were weak and infirmed and couldn't be of help.

The fifth thing we learn from Jesus is this it's not just about the needy, but seeing Jesus in them.

So what Jesus uses this description of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and those in prison, all of those conditions are conditions of desperate need, right?

I mean, they're conditions where these are needy people.

And this is so important, that description is mentioned four times in Matthew chapter 25.

Matthew 25 · chapter mention

Jesus goes even further.

He says, He so identifies with the needy that to feed the hungry is to feed him.

He said, I was hungry, you fed me.

I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.

I was naked, you clothed me.

So Jesus takes up residence in the desperate, which means all of us have direct access to Jesus Christ through someone in need.

The day that I met Oliver in that slum outside of Nairobi, he was Jesus showing up in a disguise to give me what I desperately needed.

It was said about Mother Teresa of Calcutta, she always sought to comfort Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor, which tells us that Jesus is constantly showing up in our lives incognito.

When I'm with pastors across the around the world and even on this Central American tour, I often use this illustration.

That in churches we gather together, just like we did this morning, we worship, we raise our hands, and we say, Jesus, come be with me.

And we know Jesus comes and joins us in our worship because the Bible says he inhabits the praise of his people.

So God shows up in a powerful way when we worship him.

And sometimes our need is desperate, so we fall on our knees and we say, Jesus, come be with me.

And he does, he joins us in our desperation because the Bible says God is close to the brokenhearted and near to everyone who's touched by grief.

But if Matthew 25 means anything, it means we never have to wonder where Jesus is.

He's in every hungry belly, he's in every thirsty soul, he's in every battered woman, he's in every abused child, he's in every ghetto and slum and favela around the world, and he's crying out to his church, church, come be with me.

Come be with me.

Join me where I am.

Come and have this encounter with me.

Whenever we dry a tear, we offer a word of hope.

We're serving Jesus.

When we go the extra mile, even though we're dead tired and frustrated, he sees what we've done and he marks it down as if we've done it for him personally.

Another thing, it's not only about what we've done, but also what we fail to do.

In this judgment scene, there's no mention of sin, at least not in the way we expect.

The judgment that we fear in the end is that somehow Jesus is going to drag out all of our sins for the world to see.

And we're so ashamed of those things and we want to hide them forever.

In this passage, the only thing Jesus talks about is how we're blessed to serve him through these small acts of love and kindness, to the least of these.

Matthew 25 is striking, not because Jesus doesn't mention sins of commission, but that the sins he exposes are the sins of omission.

The goats are not condemned because of what they did, but because of what they failed to do.

Here's what you have to remember: there are two kinds of sin, sins of commission and sins of omission.

In this judgment scene, what counts is not the wrong we did, but the right we failed to do.

That we failed to love the lowly and the needy, and as a result, did not love Jesus.

So now we begin to understand what we mean when we say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved.

What does believing really mean?

Believing is not just accepting a set of doctrines, or that we go through life and observe certain religious rituals, or we've made a decision for Jesus, or we've taken out fire insurance for the final day that we never have to even think about until judgment.

It means that we follow him.

It means that we meet him in the least of these, his brothers and sisters, following him in self-giving love.

There's a wonderful book.

It's called The Greatest Thing in the World.

It was written by Henry Drummond.

My friends of Bill W.

in this room, though the people who've been in AA and NA and all the different help and 12-step recovery groups, y'all know Dr.

Bob.

Dr.

Bob loved this book, The Greatest Thing in the World.

In fact, he loved it so much that he would tell a recovering alcoholic on their first day of sobriety, get this book, read it through it in its entirety, every day, 30 days in a row, and you'll be a different person in 30 days.

You see, this is a book, and by the way, you don't have to buy it.

It's actually, it's in the public domain.

You can download it for free online.

It's a quick, it's an easy read.

This book is about 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter.

And as Drummond is wrapping this up, he begins to talk about Matthew 25.

I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in prison.

And he tells us that one day the sheep and the goats will be separated.

And the basis of that separation makes all the difference in the world, that Christ's sheep will have fed the hungry and clothed the naked and cared for the sick.

So the question in the end is not, how have you believed, but how have you loved?

So the final test of religion is not religiousness at all.

Listen to Drummond explain it.

I love this.

This is such a powerful word.

Sins of commission.

Things I've intentionally done are not even referred to.

But sins of by sins of omission, what I failed to do, we are judged.

It could not be otherwise.

For the withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew him.

It means that he inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not near enough to be seized with a spell of his compassion for the world.

It means that I've lived for myself.

I thought for myself, for myself, and none beside, just as if Jesus never lived, as if he'd never died.

Now we know what love is.

We know what love is.

You know what love is in marriage and dating relationship with your children.

Love is not the words you say.

Love is a demonstration.

We don't believe flowery, beautiful language where somebody's telling us how much they love us and yet they're never there for us, and they demonstrate no care or concern about our lives whatsoever.

We believe behaviors, we don't believe words when it comes to love.

Well, same thing here.

And the great thing about this story is that the ones who give evidence that they've been touched by the love of Jesus, they love the people that Jesus loves.

The final truth I'd share with you about this passage, it's about simple things anyone can do, not about the spectacular.

In the end, Jesus is not impressed with mighty works and miracles as evidence of faith.

Instead, it's about responding with compassion to the hungry, and giving drink to the thirsty, and housing the stranger, and clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and the prisoner.

No great intellect is required to do any of those things.

You don't have to have a degree in theology, no great act of piety.

It's simply responding to one another with God's love.

So it's about visiting the jail, volunteering in the soup kitchen, standing up for the defenseless, the unborn and the disabled.

It's about people who listen to women who've had abortions, and those who sponsor people in recovery from addiction.

It's about tuna casseroles taken to grieving families.

It's about visiting the elderly when no one else will.

It's about being hospice caregivers.

These are the things that count in the end when the kingdom books are open.

Think about it.

The things Jesus commanded, they're so simple, so basic.

Little ministries, not big miracles.

It's not healing the sick, it's caring for the sick.

It's not liberating the prisoners, it's visiting them in jail.

It's not miraculously feeding 5,000 people, it's sharing your sandwich with a poor, hungry child.

So Jesus picks out what anybody can do.

I was hungry, you fed me.

I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.

I was a stranger, you took me in.

I needed clothes, you clothed me.

I was sick, you looked after me, I was in prison, you visited me.

Simple actions just help others.

Some of these things are so simple, I think maybe even we forget, we do them from time to time.

But one day, long after we've forgotten the frustrations of this life, Jesus will remember it, and we'll be rewarded for it.

It all comes down to this Jesus forgets what we remember, and he remembers what we forget.

I'd like to wrap up with a story about a boy I met 10 years ago this summer.

His name was Gabriel.

I was going on a pilgrimage, my first ever pilgrimage.

This was outside the city of Fortaleza, Brazil.

Fortalesa is considered the fourth most violent city in the world.

And so as we would go on this pilgrimage, we were literally walking 20 miles a day, and then we would stay in the homes of the poor and eat with the poor, and often have a community service around their homes or in their neighborhoods.

It was a wonderful experience because you it's kind of like West Texas, really arid, very dry.

You're walking across very desert type climates, 20 miles a day.

We'd meet for lunch in the middle of the day.

When we would arrive in the home, we would stay with the people.

But it was about the conversations you'd have on the road.

It was about encountering the poor and eating with the poor and getting to know them.

And on the second night of the pilgrimage, we stayed with a family out in the country, very poor family.

Um, and in the home was a mother with two children.

I was told the father had died several years prior.

Of course, practically everybody on this pilgrimage spoke Portuguese but me.

Uh there were like a half a dozen people who were bilingual, and I kind of leaned on them to translate when I was talking to people who spoke Portuguese and I didn't.

But there was a little boy there, and this little boy's name was Gabriel.

And he was the oldest orphan boy, and he felt it his obligation to help this poor, ignorant American.

So he knew I couldn't speak his language, and so he took it upon himself to figure out how to communicate with me and help me understand his words and communicate with other people.

And so if I was hungry, he'd say, you know, are you hungry?

You know?

And then if I wanted something, he'd name each food.

And if I would say it, the one English word he knew was good.

He'd say, good.

You know, he was so happy that I could pronounce his Portuguese word.

And then I was thirsty, you know, he was always making these gestures, trying to help me understand his language and help me to kind of get along with everybody else.

Well, throughout the night, he kept doing this, pointing to things, defining words, asking me to repeat it.

When people think you can't speak their language, they also think you're deaf because they say it real loud and real slow.

Uh and so he's doing that.

Well, comes nighttime and we're gonna sleep, and the Brazilians all sleep in hammocks, at least most of them do, especially in the country.

Hammock sleeping is one of the most comfortable ways to sleep, but they told me Americans don't know how to sleep in a hammock.

When we string up a hammock, we lay in it long way, so our feet are up, our head is up.

It's the most uncomfortable way to lay in a hammock.

And they they taught me the proper way.

You don't lay at a 90-degree angle, you lay at a 45-degree angle.

And so, just off-center, if you do that, you'll lay perfectly flat in the hammock.

Did you know that?

It's true.

Try it.

And so that's what I did.

Most comfortable way I've ever slept in my life.

But what we would do is we'd drive in their homes, you know, and we'd hang up these hammocks either between trees in the yard.

Sometimes they had hooks on their porch where you could hook it up on the porch.

And I happened to be out in the yard.

And I was having trouble sleeping.

And the honest God truth was, I was thinking, what if there is a spider in this tree above me?

So I'm looking up in the leaves and I'm just thinking about that thing slowly descending and landing on my face or something else.

So I uh and Gabriel sees I'm not asleep.

And he comes out in the yard and he wants to check on me, he wants to know if I'm okay, wants to know if I'm hungry, if I'm thirsty, whatever.

And of course, I can't tell him I'm deathly afraid of spiders, and I'm afraid there's one in the tree.

So, you know, eventually he just goes back in the house.

Next morning, wake up.

Gabriel wants to show me his chicken pens.

So he's got chicken pens, got two chickens in there and one goat.

And he he goes through there and he's he's given me the grand tour, and there's a couple of other Brazilians in there.

And when he gets done, I said, Oh obrigado, which is the Portuguese word for thank you.

And uh and and he beamed with this huge smile and he said, I taught him that word.

You know, he was just so happy that I was learning.

Well, it was about time to go.

Every day we after we ate breakfast, we'd get on the road, because I mean it's 20 miles of walking every day.

And um, and I'm looking for Gabriel, and I can't find him anywhere.

And I think, you know, three-quarters of the group have already gone.

I don't need to be the lone straggler, especially since I can't speak Portuguese.

What if I get into trouble?

I'll never be able to explain to anybody.

So I felt like I had to get on the road and I couldn't see him.

So I left.

At midday, we meet for lunch and we're having lunch, and one of my fellow pilgrims who came later came up to me and I said, I didn't find Gabriel when I was ready to leave.

Did you see him?

He said, Yeah, when you left, he went inside to cry.

And uh he said, He wanted you to have something, and he sent me this gift is a small stone with little crystals on it, his prized possession.

He he wanted me to have that.

And I have this little keepsake box on my nightstand.

Often with my grandchildren, I would just open it up and I tell them the memories associated with these little trinkets, and I tell them the story of Gabriel, the little boy, who wanted to be included.

You see, what dawned on me is this was a child of vulnerability.

And because he was a child of vulnerability, he could recognize easily vulnerability in other people.

And this kid who had every reason to ask of me money, help, assistance in any way, never asked a thing of me, only wanted to give to me, only wanted to make sure that I was included, only wanted to make sure I felt special.

That's who Gabriel was.

You see, I went on this trip thinking that I was gonna spend time with this guy named Carlos Cinheiros.

He was a former national director for World Vision in Brazil.

Wise man.

Love every word that comes out of this man's mouth.

I think I gotta spend a whole week with him.

And God says, No, I got I got something better than Carlos for you.

I've got Gabriel.

Gabriel's gonna be your teacher of compassion and generosity.

He was the one sent by God to minister to me.

It was Gabriel who appeared to me in my isolation and drew me into the circle of love.

I mean, that's that's what pilgrimage is really about.

It's about the Christ encounter.

So Jesus met me in a little boy named Gabriel, and I'll never forget him for as long as I live.

But it makes me wonder how many times has Jesus shown up in our lives and we didn't even recognize it was him.

Maybe he was hiding in a distressing disguise.

Maybe the need seemed to be too much and we didn't want to get involved, or maybe we just didn't have the time.

To me, ministering to communities that are mired in deep poverty can be extremely challenging.

Challenging because of the nature of the need, challenging sometimes to get Christians in America to care, or to feel like maybe we do have an obligation to our brothers and sisters overseas.

Challenging because the need seemed to be never ending, but in every challenge, I continue to meet Jesus disguised among the least of these, and that's what keeps me going.

The Christ encounter.

So many years ago, I made a discovery that I had impoverished my own life by not having relationships with the poor.

Because in them I meet Jesus.

And you know what I've discovered?

You never come away with it from a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ, the same person you were before.

I got back from Central America two weeks ago.

The first week, like I said, was spent in the mountains with the indigenous people of Guatemala.

They live a hard life, and I'm I'm not kidding you, it's hard.

They face constant drought.

They're in a particular region of Guatemala called the Dry Corridor.

Many of these people don't know much water.

What water they have, they come from cisterns and wells and usually have to walk miles to retrieve it.

They will even lose entire crops.

This year's crop is completely wiped out because there's been no rain during the typical rainy season.

They often have homes that lack basic sanitation, which also complicates everything because not only do you not have clean water to drink, but also you can't wash your hands before you prepare food, and kids get sick of diarrhea, and diarrhea is fatal in the developing world because there's nothing to stop it.

Diarrhea just runs rampant until a child is completely emaciated and they die.

And so I was among these people, and I gotta tell you, I came away from these communities more inspired than when I left, and that's no exaggeration.

They breathe life into my weary heart.

They showed me what was possible when people come to believe that they're made in the image of God and given abilities that they can harness to change their future.

Much like Oliver, these people, although they were selling corn, onions, and cauliflower, they weren't really selling that.

They were selling hope.

And I wanted to come away from that experience with as much of it as I could carry.

They spoke deeply to my heart.

I'll never forget.

I didn't tell the first service this, so don't tell them I didn't tell you, okay?

We were standing, this this one community.

If you've ever been in the Rockies, you know some of those trails can be super steep.

And that's the way this was.

Two mountains that came down to this tiny little valley.

There was a stream in the heart of the valley, and it was almost dried up, but the people would bathe there and they'd wash their clothes there, and there was a well, and that water did not come from the stream.

It was some other separate water source, so they would go down there to get the water.

But they'd have to hike to the bottom of this mountain, get their water, and then hike up an hour, two hours to their house, up these super steep trails, carrying these huge jugs of water on their back or their head.

And they asked us if we would pray for them.

And one member in our group volunteered to pray.

Uh, he comes from a Presbyterian background, so what's about to happen is going to shock him to no end.

Uh, as we gathered in a circle, the indigenous people came to the middle of the circle, they fell on their knees, and as he started to pray, all of them prayed at the same time.

Now, in Presbyterian churches, you still do that because everything has to be ordered and everybody has to take their turn, and and and they're all praying at the same time.

I have no idea what they said.

Because it wasn't even in Spanish, it was their indigenous tongue, and they're crying out to God.

But I was just overwhelmed by the Spirit's presence in that moment.

And I found myself weeping and saying, God, whatever it is they're asking, please give it to them.

Please give it to them.

Help them make that possible.

Help to make their dreams a reality.

They're not asking for much, they're asking to live.

That's what they're asking for.

And I'm joining them in that prayer.

Of course, I walk away from that, knowing that not only they cried out to God and God has heard them, but they've cried out in front of me, and I've heard them, and I know the need.

I say, God, I don't know what you want me to do with this.

I'll do whatever I can.

I know this.

God showed up in that tiny prayer circle by that stream with a lot of people crying out to God, and I'm sure even blessing our lives for being there.

If you've ever received a widow's blessing, an orphan's blessing, you need to know.

God hears those prayers, and your life has truly been blessed.

And I've been blessed by widows and orphans around the world.

It's the only reason I can think that God's blessing my life now.

36 years ago, we planted a church.

Somewhere along the way, God began changing the church we planted.

Today we're not celebrating simply surviving 36 years.

We're celebrating the church God is forming us into.

So as we begin year 37, I hope to become more fully that church.

A church that keeps looking for Jesus, especially in the places where he told us we can find him among the least of these.

And I'll tell you from the heart, I'm committed to that task, and I hope that you'll join me in it.

Let's pray.

Father, I just want to thank you for this time we have together.

This is your holy word, and this is what you tell us, God.

That in the end, what really matters is have we been available to those people that are so near and dear to your heart, who live so close to need.

And God, as we move into those spaces, even though there's fear, even though there's concern about our own inadequacy, even though, God, we feel sometimes overwhelmed by the magnitude of the need, what we know is while we're there, we are blessed because we find you in every hungry belly.

We find you in every thirsty soul.

And we want to join you where you are.

And we want to not get so focused on what is peripheral and unnecessary that we forget what's essential and needed.

And that is simple acts of kindness and love toward people who are hurting all around us.

And that may look different in all of our lives, and that's okay.

We don't all have to be doing the same thing.

But to be about the Father's business is to care about the broken who surround our lives and the people that God has allowed to enter our life.

So I thank you, God, for what you've done in me.

I know you're going to continue that work.

Do that in all of us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

God bless you all.