Bring People To Jesus

We've been in a series all summer long called People.

We have not been taking a break from talking about Jesus.

It's just that in our minds those two are inseparable.

The entire concept of Jesus is that God became a person.

And so forever we have this idea in our minds that our God, the God that we worship, the God that we serve, became one of us, understands what life is like being one of us.

And Jesus made it abundantly clear that there's no way to love God if you don't love people.

There's no way to serve God if you don't serve people.

And so people and God are forever connected.

And it's the way that we view people, it's the way that we believe in people and about people that actually reveals what we really think about God.

And so as we've been talking all summer long about our opinion of people, that shows what our heart toward God truly is.

In order for today to make sense, we've got to go back a couple weeks.

Two weeks ago, I think if I've got my calendar right, I don't know if you were here or not, but but we had a pretty simple statement, something that's not earth-shattering to say in church, but but is earth-shattering to say in our world in general, and that's that's this.

It was simply people need Jesus.

People need Jesus.

And I want to say this, I know that we've got a lot of different people here from a lot of different places, that we're all at different points in our journey.

This has always been a place, it will always be a place where everyone's welcome, regardless of where you are in your relationship with God, even what you think about that.

Maybe you're here this morning and you've been following Jesus for 20 years and you say in your heart with conviction, people need Jesus, I need Jesus.

Maybe you're here this morning and you're not sure where you stand on Jesus.

You're still figuring that out.

I'm so glad that you're here.

I really, really am.

And I do my best every Sunday to try to speak to everybody, to try to speak in such a way that every single person here, no matter where you're at, can get something out of it, can be included.

Obviously, I want to do that to a degree today as well.

But but more so than a normal Sunday, today I want to specifically speak to those of us who have the conviction that people in this world need Jesus, that Jesus is the answer.

We talked a few weeks ago about the fact that we don't believe our world needs something.

We believe our world needs someone.

And that someone is Jesus.

And if you hold that conviction, if you hold that belief that you actually believe people need Jesus, I really want to talk to you this morning specifically.

Because I have a question.

If you believe that, if we believe that, that people need Jesus, how do we believe people in this world who don't know Jesus are going to find him?

If you believe that this world desperately needs Jesus, that your neighbor, that your brother, your sister, your parent, your child, your friend, your coworker, your boss, your employee, if you believe that people in your life need Jesus, the question this morning is, is how are they going to find him?

Paul asked a similar question when he spoke to the church in Rome, this early church that Paul was so influential in.

He began by making the declaration.

This is really the gospel.

This is the core message of Jesus.

Romans 10, chapter 9.

He says, if you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And maybe you asked this morning what does saved mean?

Look, being saved means that we are freed from the consequence of our selfish decisions.

Being saved means that we get the unearned love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, and favor of God.

It's an awesome thing to be saved.

But he continues, for it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you're saved.

As the scriptures tell us, anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.

Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect, meaning it doesn't matter where you come from in life or where you've been or what you've done, we all have the same Jesus.

They have the same Lord who gives generously to all who call on him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

But then Paul continues.

Very next verse.

But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him?

And how can they believe in him if they've never heard about him?

And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?

And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent?

This is why the scriptures say how beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news.

And we can read that and think in our world, man, well, everyone knows about Jesus.

We live in Cherokee County, Georgia.

Like, Georgia.

If there's a Bible belt, we're on the buckle, right?

And so, like, surely everyone by now in this area has heard about Jesus.

And I think everyone has heard about a Jesus.

But I have a lot of different conversations with people who have not heard about the real Jesus.

They've never been introduced to the real Jesus.

And honestly, I think sometimes it's it's more of a hindrance to live in a culture that talks about a Jesus, this stained glass religious Jesus, and to think that you know who that Jesus is and to have said, no, I don't want that Jesus.

By the way, you should reject that Jesus because he's not the real Jesus.

It's a lot harder sometimes to come to know Jesus in a culture like this where there's so many different variations of Jesus being thrown at you than it is to live in a place where you've never heard about Jesus at all and then just be introduced to Jesus with absolutely virgin ears and eyes.

That's it's harder sometimes to decipher the real among the fake.

There are so many people in this community in our lives who have been told about a Jesus, but they've never been introduced to the real Jesus, the one who loves them, the one who came for them.

And Paul is saying, look, if you follow Jesus, you've been sent.

I mean, Jesus said before he left, he said, go.

And so if we wonder, have I been sent, the answer is yes.

Jesus has sent all of us into this world to bring him to people, to bring people to him.

Paul is saying, hey, how are people gonna know about Jesus unless the people who know Jesus bring them to Jesus?

Tell them about Jesus, share Jesus with them.

One of the most amazing concepts in Scripture is something that God said to a prophet named Jeremiah centuries before Jesus showed up.

It's a promise about what our relationship with God will be like once Jesus arrives, once Jesus accomplished what he accomplished, and and God said, I will be their people and they will be, or he said, I will be their God and they will be my people.

So there's this joint ownership.

God says, not only will they be mine, it's very easy for us to think about us belonging to God, but he says, I will be theirs.

I will give myself to them.

We have we have an ownership of God, he belongs to us.

We belong to him, but he belongs to us.

Jesus belongs to you if you've given your life to him, but he doesn't belong to you for you to hide or for you to keep to yourself.

He belongs to you for you to share.

And so, yes, people need Jesus, but people also need the people who have Jesus to share Jesus.

And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

A few weeks ago, I pulled up at home and uh my neighbor was outside.

I have a neighbor named Steve.

He's a he's a great, great guy.

Our kids play together a lot, and so Steve, Steve's one of those guys who's always in his yard working, always, always working on something.

I'm the guy who's never in my yard working, like at all, not once.

Um, I mean, I've done it a few times and I've said, not for me.

And so uh so I feel for Steve.

I see him sweating, I see him working hard, and I'm like, man, I'm gonna go to my basement.

I'm gonna, you know, I'll watch a show about about lawn maintenance or something, you know, a yard makeover and go, I should tell this to Steve.

I should share this with him.

But uh, when I see Steve, he's outside and we get to talking like we we often do, and he lets me know that his roof is in need of repair.

Uh, that he's got some roof issues, and I'm I'm like a doer.

That's my personality.

Megan always says that I'm like the phrase ready, aim, and fire.

If you took the ready and aim off.

Um, I'm just fire.

That's all I do.

I just go, I just fire, fire, and sometimes it's haphazard, and sometimes it's ineffective because I'm just like, let's do something.

I don't necessarily stop and think through how to do it, I just do it.

It's gotten me into a lot of trouble.

Sometimes it's a benefit.

So I I like to do things, but I'm not a do-it-yourselfer when it comes to home projects.

And I've talked about this ad nauseum.

If you've been here for long, you know that if something is wrong in your house, I'm the last person you should call.

Like, like you should pay me to stay away from your home.

That's what you should do.

Because I just I I just I break stuff.

I'm I'm a breaker of things.

This is a picture of a wall in my house right now.

You guys can put that up.

And you might be asking what happened.

And I talked about this a few weeks ago, but you haven't seen it yet.

Um, I hung a shelf on a wall.

That wall was perfectly fine before I hung the shelf.

And what happened was I hung the shelf and I put a screw through a drainage pipe.

Uh, and then the water from the drainage pipe started to leak out a few weeks later once the screw rusted out, and then water got all into the drywall, which caused mold, and that's what I saw.

And then I had to open up the wall whenever I pulled the shelf off, which was really easy because when I pulled the shelf off, the wall just sort of came with it because it was all wet and soggy.

And and I gotta figure that out.

And it's so it's so frustrating because we're gonna have to replace all that drywall, which means I've got to paint that, but it's like this one spot in our kitchen, and there's no way I can just paint that one you know section of the wall.

I'm gonna have to paint the entire wall, and then Megan says that means we're gonna have to paint the entire kitchen and the entire like living room and everything, because it's all one connected room, and it's just it's maddening.

I just hung a shelf.

It wasn't even my shelf, it was Megan's shelf for her coffee that I don't drink.

And so that's all that happened.

I just I do that a few years ago.

I wanted to surprise Megan.

She was at work, I was at home.

We have days off that don't always line up, and so I'm at home and I'm like, man, our our kitchen, this is two years ago, was just in need of repainting and some touch-up.

And I'm like, man, when she gets home, I'm gonna repaint this whole thing today.

She's gonna come home and she's gonna go, wow, look what you've done.

Like, look what you've done.

And so I went and I got paint, and I brought the paint back, and I put it on the kitchen counter, and I got a screwdriver to open up the top of the can, and in doing so, I knock the can of paint over onto the ground and it spills out all over the floor.

And I'm trying to clean up the paint, and you know, paint's kind of hard to clean.

I don't know if you've noticed that.

It's it's not like you just get a paper towel and wipe it up, it sort of smears everywhere.

So it's just getting worse and worse and worse, and I'm getting super frustrated in my frustration.

I take the screwdriver that I used to open up the can of paint, I throw it at the wall, it hits the wall, makes a hole, drops into the wall, and drops down into the base of, you know, in between the drywall.

It's still in there, it's still in the wall.

And so instead of Megan coming home to this beautifully painted kitchen, she comes home, and now there's paint all over the floor in a giant hole in the wall, and she said, Wow, look what you've done.

Same words, just different meaning behind them.

That's just this is what happens when I do anything.

House related.

So I say all of that so that you know when my neighbor, Steve, says, My roof needs fixed, I understood he was not saying, Justin, will you please fix my roof?

Okay?

If you can't hang a shelf, you shouldn't even be on a roof.

Like that should just be a rule you live by.

I'm never gonna get on a roof.

Why would I do that?

But I still wanted to help.

I still wanted to help him, and it just so happens that I have a really good friend named Juan Reyes.

Juan's a part of our church, not sure if Juan's here this morning or not.

Travels a lot.

Juan is one of my absolute best friends.

And Juan is a roofer, and Juan owns a roofing company, and Juan and I have got to know each other really well over the years because if you've been at his hands long, you know that our roof has lots of opportunities as well.

Like, I have prayed for God to send us a roof, but we don't really need one right now because God sent us Juan.

And Juan, for the last seven years, has either personally come out here himself or has sent a crew to fix the leaks in our roof every single time that it rains, and we get a leak, which is every single time that it rains.

Uh I'm talking hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of roof fixes at no cost to the church.

Juan just does that.

He's an awesome guy.

And when I first met Juan, some of you guys were like, I need to meet Juan.

How can I become friends with Juan?

Buying breakfast, he loves Jay Christophers.

I'm just saying.

So uh when I first met Juan, I I knew him by reputation.

He had been here for a while, he'd been fixing our roof, and I just heard about this guy that was fixing our roof all the time, but we hadn't met yet.

I'll never forget the first time that we had a chance to talk.

I'll I'll never forget this because Juan showed me what real generosity actually looks like.

I I kind of felt guilty that he was having to work on our roof so much, and so I I walked up to him and I said, Man, I thank you.

I just I don't know, you know what else to say.

I just you you you you you do so much, I don't I don't know how to show my appreciation.

And Juan said, he said, you know, I kind of view it like this.

This is my father's house.

It is an honor to fix my father's roof.

And uh I was just like, whoa, that that is what real generosity looks like.

That perspective.

Juan is an awesome guy.

And so because I have Juan in my life, because God has been so good to give me such a good friend, I don't really have to worry about roof issues.

You know, I I know that if something ever happens to my roof, it's not like, ah, who am I gonna call?

I'm gonna call Juan.

And so here's my neighbor Steve, and he's telling me all about these problems, and I'm just thinking to myself, man, I'm so glad I'm not him.

I'm so glad I have Juan.

And then I went into the house and I just prayed, God, thank you for Juan in my life, so I never have to be like my neighbor Steve, stuck and I don't know what to do.

Like, thank you, Lord, that I'm not him, right?

No, no.

Like, how much of a jerk do you think?

Don't answer that.

Don't do that.

Uh no, I I of course not.

I didn't do that.

I didn't go, man, stinks for you.

And then I walked in and text Juan, Juan, you're awesome.

Thanks for all you do.

No, I told him about Juan.

Like I just sat there and said, Oh, I know what you should do.

You should call Juan.

You should call Juan Reyes.

He, pro roofing, you should call him, and he'll come out here, he'll take care of it.

I know that he's fair, I know that he's honest, I know that he stands by his work, I know he's he's the guy you need to talk to.

I told him about Juan.

Because I care about my neighbor.

I care about his roof enough to share the person who I knew could solve his problem with him.

But then I have to ask myself, how much do I care about my neighbor's soul?

Now, just so you know, Steve's good.

We talk, he knows the Lord, he's active in church, he's an awesome guy, so so he's good, but I've got other neighbors that I don't really talk to that much.

I wave at him.

I've got other neighbors who who I don't I don't know.

I have no clue whether or not they know Jesus.

I live like feet away from them.

I'm a pastor.

If God, if God puts a pastor as your next door neighbor, maybe God's trying to lead you to the Lord.

I don't know.

But I don't often think that way.

I don't I don't think about it like that.

I've got people that I I know and love, and I'm not sure where they stand with Jesus because I've never had that conversation with them.

And I have to ask myself, like literally, look in the mirror and say, Justin, do you care more about your neighbor's roof than you care about your neighbor's soul?

And sometimes I do not like the answer to that question.

How in the world are people going to know Jesus?

If the people who know Jesus won't share.

It's a hard thing to do, I know.

We we we've probably all been in a position, if you've been following Jesus for long, you've probably known someone and you want them to know Jesus and you just don't know what to say, you're worried about offending them.

Maybe someone else has shared Jesus with them in a really ineffective way, maybe a really judgmental way, and you don't want to add on to that, you don't want to, you know, you don't want to mess with all that, and so you struggle because you're nervous, eh, and you don't want to do it wrong.

And so sometimes in that nervousness and that confusion, we just don't do anything.

And that would that would be like a doctor who has such good bedside manner that they never diagnose their patients.

Like, as a doctor has the best bedside manner in the world, they just never tell people what they need.

Right?

I mean, think about that.

If if you're a doctor and you know that someone needs a surgery, you know that the surgery would solve their problem, solve their issue, and you're sitting there like, I don't know how to tell them that they need the surgery, I don't know how to tell them that the surgery even exists and what the surgery I've had the same surgery.

I don't know how to talk about my experience with them in a way that's effective, and I don't want them to be upset, and so I just won't, I just I'm just gonna say, hey.

Right?

That'd be crazy.

Probably malpractice, I would imagine.

I'm not a doctor, so I don't know.

But sometimes we get ourselves so worked up and so so nervous about the idea of just sharing Jesus with people.

We convince ourselves that if we can't find the 100% perfect way to share Jesus, that we just won't share him at all.

And then we live in this world where we're surrounded by people that God has put into our midst so that we can be the one that brings the real Jesus to them, but we just don't do anything.

We don't share him.

I don't know about you, I don't want to hoard Jesus.

I don't know how heaven works in a lot of different ways, but I don't want to show up at the front door and say, Justin McTear, party for one.

I don't want to go alone.

I don't.

So I thought a lot about this this past week.

Like, what is it that holds us up?

What is it that keeps us from from truly sharing Jesus with the world?

Not just loving people and smiling at them and being like, I'm gonna be a nice person to them, and hopefully one day they'll say, Why are you so nice?

I mean, actually loving them enough that we're moved to the point of action with a sense of urgency that they need Jesus.

What is it that keeps us from that beyond just the butterflies in our stomachs?

As I thought about this week and prayed about it, I really feel like it's two things.

It's something that we underestimate and it's something that we overestimate.

Something that we underestimate and something else that we overestimate, and the combination of those things keeps us from just openly sharing Jesus with the world around us.

Number one, I think it's very easy for us to underestimate how much we actually need Jesus.

It's easy for us, even Jesus followers who've been following Jesus for a long time.

Sometimes the Jesus thing becomes kind of routine for us, and we forget just how absolutely lost we would be without him.

And we just sang that in a song.

I'd be lost without you, I'd be lost without you.

Do we actually believe that?

That we would be lost, clueless without Jesus.

I'll tell you something interesting about Jesus, about Scripture.

Is that Jesus himself and the people who followed Jesus never underestimated how desperately the world actually needs Jesus?

Never.

Jesus says this in Revelation chapter 1, verse 8.

Revelation 1:8

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord God.

This is Jesus speaking.

I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come, the Almighty One.

I mean, Jesus is not really holding back in terms of his importance to the world there.

Paul said this to the church when he wrote to the church in Colossae, he said, Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

He existed before anything was created, he is supreme over all creation.

For even for through him, God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.

He made the things we can see and the things we can't see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.

Everything was created through him and for him.

He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.

He holds all creation together.

Why is this world existing right now?

Because Jesus wills it so.

Because Jesus wills it so.

When he makes statements like that.

He's not underestimating his necessity.

And sometimes we treat Jesus like he's this addition to life, this nice little add-on, the cherry on top.

But he's the foundation.

Like if we're talking about a house analogy, Jesus is not the addition that you put on your home that gives you a little bit more space, that makes it just a little bit better.

He's the foundation that your house is built on.

He's that.

So when it comes to how badly, when it comes to how badly we need Jesus, what he's telling us is literally, if you don't have me, you're lost.

He's not saying this in judgment.

He's not he's not saying this, you know, to make you feel down.

He's not he's not putting you down.

He's begging you to be lifted up.

He's saying, You need me.

You need the one who creates everything.

You need the one who invented you.

I had a conversation with a young man just a few days ago, and he's in his early 20s, and he's telling me, man, I just I'm lost.

I don't know who I am.

I can't figure out who I am.

And I told him, Yeah, I don't know who you are either.

And sometimes I don't know who I am, but I know the one who knows who I am.

Because I know the one who created me, I know the one who wired me the way that he did.

And I found that the more I get to know him, the more I get to understand me and who I'm supposed to be.

And so I just told this young man, look, I I could throw you a few self-help books, but I can just say this with conviction: if you know Jesus and you grow close to Jesus, you will know yourself.

You need Jesus.

Like we we need him.

And see, when we when we underestimate who he really is and how necessary he actually is, we just don't have urgency when it comes to sharing him with the world.

We think sometimes, man, it'd be so nice if people knew Jesus.

And I don't say this to add shock value.

That would be looking like looking at someone who's drowning, saying, It would be so nice if they could breathe right now.

It's no different.

We are more than flesh and blood.

Like I have a body, but I I'm not a body.

This body will die.

The spirit will not.

And there will be a day when my earthly body will be long gone.

But my spirit will still be alive.

And my spirit depends on Jesus.

He is the oxygen for my soul.

And we have to understand that.

We have to believe that Jesus is not this nice thing, this extra benefit to life.

That if you have Jesus, it's like the final piece of the puzzle.

No, no, Jesus is everything.

And if we believe that, if we actually believe that, we share him because he's necessary.

We cannot underestimate the necessity of Jesus.

When we underestimate that, we just have no urgency to share him.

But number two, there's something that we overestimate.

We overestimate how hard it is to actually share Jesus with people.

We do, I actually hear people often ask me, I how do I share Jesus?

I don't know how to do that.

And I look to scripture and I don't see like the five easy steps to sharing Jesus.

Sometimes we try to make it a formula, and that's helpful sometimes to have like a game plan, I guess.

But when I see a movie that I really love, I don't sit and go, man, how am I going to share this with my friends?

Like, okay, I could start.

Maybe I start by saying, dude, I saw a movie, no, no, I don't want to do that.

That's like, that's too straightforward.

I should maybe kind of go, hey, have you seen any movies lately?

Hmm?

Anything?

It's like I don't struggle with that.

If I eat at an awesome restaurant, like an amazing restaurant, and I I'm pretty accepting of food.

And so most restaurants to me are amazing.

Like I just have, I don't know if it's low standards or I've just, whatever, I like food.

And so when I when I eat an awesome meal, I don't sit there and go, oh my goodness, if someone's like, oh, I'm really in the mood for a steak, I'm like, I know a good steak place, but I don't want to say it.

Like, I don't want to offend them.

What if they what if what if me saying you should eat this steak makes them go, whoa, hold on there?

I think I know something about steaks.

Like, no, I just say, oh, you should eat at this place.

It's very simple.

I think sometimes in our minds we overcomplicate what it actually means to share Jesus.

The beautiful thing is the Bible doesn't give us a formula, but it does give us a model, someone we can follow in this regard.

Really, really simple.

It's a guy named Andrew.

Andrew's awesome.

He's one of my favorite people in the Bible.

He's only mentioned like a handful of times, three or four times.

He's one of the disciples of Jesus, but every single time, every single time Andrew is singled out and mentioned, he's bringing someone to Jesus every time.

And it's always very, very simple.

If you know anything about Andrew, he's uh the brother of Peter, whose name was Simon.

Jesus changed his name to Peter.

Sometimes he's Simon, sometimes he's Simon Peter.

It's confusing, sometimes he's just Peter.

And Peter's like, he's the superstar of the disciples, he's the one, he's the captain of the team.

And so half the time, whenever Andrew's mentioned, it has to give him the qualifier, the brother of Peter, which must be frustrating.

Like he can't even stand on his own.

He has to be Andrew, you know, Peter's brother.

But every time he's mentioned, he's bringing someone to Jesus.

And so, for example, there's this story in John chapter 6, it's the feeding of the 5,000.

John 6 · chapter mention

Jesus feeds over 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread, a few fish.

You've probably heard this story.

It's pretty famous.

And he does this because this little boy in the crowd happens to have some fish and some bread.

But check this out John 6, 8 and 9.

Then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up.

He says, There's a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish, but what good is that with this huge crowd?

Notice here that Andrew is not filled with great faith.

That Andrew has no idea what Jesus is about to do.

He's not like, I know exactly what's about to happen.

And I went and found this boy who has some fish and some bread.

He just found a boy with fish and bread, and he's like, Yeah, I don't know what good this is, but I know one thing.

Let's just bring him to Jesus and see what happens.

He just brought this boy to Jesus.

And if he had not brought that boy to Jesus, this miracle would not have happened.

There's another story.

In John chapter 12, first few words of this are actually really powerful.

John 12 · chapter mention

It says, Some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration paid a visit to Philip, another disciple, who was from Beth Seda in Galilee.

They said, Sir, we want to meet Jesus.

That statement's pretty loaded because at this point in time, Jesus has really only ministered to the Jewish people.

And they were a very separate people.

They lived a very separate life.

And so Philip and the rest of the disciples, they had grown up being taught that the Messiah was for the Jews alone.

The Messiah would come to rescue Israel from oppression and then set Israel up over all the other nations in the world.

They did not have the understanding that Jesus came for everyone.

Even though that had actually been spoken about many times in Scripture, they just didn't see that.

They weren't taught that.

And so Philip's not really sure if it's okay for these guys to talk to Jesus at all.

They're Greeks, they're not Jews.

He doesn't know what to do.

And so Philip goes to Andrew.

Verse 22, Philip told Andrew about it, and they went together to ask Jesus.

Now here's the awesome part of that.

Philip's like, I don't really know if these guys can talk to Jesus.

If Jesus would want to talk to them, is that okay?

It's not normal, it's not our culture.

So he goes to Andrew.

Andrew was one of the very first disciples.

And so Andrew's like, yeah, I don't really know either.

That's a good question.

I bet I know who knows.

Jesus.

And so even though Andrew doesn't look at Philip and go, you idiot, of course he's gonna talk to the Greeks.

He loves everyone.

Have you not been paying any attention to him all this time?

Andrew's like, yeah, I'm not sure.

Let's go to Jesus.

And so Philip comes to Andrew, and Andrew takes Philip to Jesus.

He's bringing someone to Jesus to solve a problem.

And this in turn leads to these men being introduced to Jesus, and Jesus actually spreads his message, his mission, it spreads faster in the Greek community than it does in his own home place.

All that happened because Andrew brought someone to Jesus.

Maybe the best example is his brother.

John chapter 1, verse 40.

John 1:40

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of these men who heard what John said and then followed Jesus.

Andrew went to find his brother Simon and told him, We have found the Messiah, which means Christ.

Then Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus.

And so Peter, this leader of the early church, would not have known Jesus if Andrew hadn't cared enough to share Jesus with his brother.

Andrew meets Jesus, he's convinced he's the Messiah, he's convinced he's the way, and he says, I've got to go, I've got to go take my brother Peter and bring him to Jesus.

Notice that it says he doesn't send Peter to Jesus.

He doesn't simply just tell Peter about Jesus.

He takes Peter and he brings him to Jesus.

But he recognized the necessity of Jesus and he cared enough to share him.

Do we care enough to share Jesus with our world?

Over the last few years, I've gotten more interested in news and events than honestly I'd like to be sometimes.

So every day I check different news sites.

I kind of like that, by the way.

If you ever want to have an interesting take on the world, just check like CNN and Fox News and MSNBC.

And they all believe the world is falling apart.

That is shared among all of them.

The world is a bad place, apparently.

It's just a question of whose fault is it?

That's all.

You go to different websites, like it's this person's fault, it's this person's fault, it's that person.

Right?

It's just that's the only thing that changes.

The world's terrible, just who are we pointing our finger at?

But you will see absolutely no help suggested.

There's there's you know, every once in a while there'll be a candidate that shows up and everyone will get all excited that maybe this candidate, you know, will change things and blah, blah, blah.

That's just dumb.

Like if you've been paying attention to politics over the years, like if politics was the answer, Jesus would have run for Senate.

That's what I'm saying.

Like Paul, Paul was, by the way, Paul was actually a Roman citizen.

Paul was actually a Roman citizen.

Paul could have run for the Senate.

And you don't see in the legislative church, you know, Paul saying, hey, get out there and campaign for me.

I'm running for Senate, because man, if we can get a Christian in the Senate, we can really change things.

That's not how it works.

Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.

A mustard seed is a weed.

It's illegal to actually, in Jewish culture, it was illegal to plant mustard seeds in gardens.

It was illegal.

If your neighbor planted a mustard seed in the common garden that you shared, you could have him like, fine, because the mustard seed would just take everything over.

We have something in Georgia like that called kudzu, right?

It's just, it just spreads.

And that's the illustration Jesus used to talk about how his message would spread.

It's a ground-up movement.

It's a grassroots movement.

And so, you know, Christians should worry a lot less about getting a Christian elected as president.

They should worry a lot more about whether or not the person they live next to knows Jesus.

Because if we share Jesus with the world, like it kind of takes care of itself.

But we have to ask ourselves, do we care enough?

And this is, I want you to pray on this.

Like, do you care enough to inconvenience yourself and potentially embarrass yourself to share Jesus with someone?

Do you care enough to share Jesus with a world desperate for Jesus?

Our world recognizes that it needs to be saved.

Our world just doesn't recognize the Savior.

Do we care enough about our community, about our friends, about our family, about our neighbors to share Jesus with them, or are we going to keep him contained?

There's a story in Luke chapter 5 about these four friends who bring a friend of theirs to Jesus.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

This friend cannot walk.

And it's funny, they go to the house that Jesus is preaching in, and it's so packed they can't get through the door.

That also means that the people who were there to learn about God were so focused on their own learning experience that they didn't pay attention to the people behind them who were desperate to get in.

And rather than just move out of the way and let this man through to Jesus, they just said, Well, stop.

And so these men don't say, you know what, we tried, we did our best.

They come from miles away, they didn't go back home with their heads low.

They climbed the roof and they actually broke through the roof and lowered their friend to Jesus.

Can you imagine?

Like, I don't know how the law worked 2,000 years ago, but I'm pretty sure vandalism was still a thing.

And, you know, holes in roofs were very inconvenient.

I'm sure that that was not like no big deal.

But they they essentially vandalize a person's house.

They break in to get their friend to Jesus.

That's how much they cared.

And I have to look in the mirror and ask myself, am I willing just to have a conversation?

You know, Paul said this when he wrote to the church in Corinth.

He said, When I first came to your dear brothers and sisters, I didn't use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God's secret plan.

For I decided that while I was with you, I'd forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.

I came to you in weakness, timid and trembling, and my message and preaching was very plain.

Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit.

I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom, but in the power of God.

So Paul's saying, look, I didn't know what to say.

I was timid, I was trembling, I was nervous, but I just trusted the Holy Spirit.

You have the Holy Spirit.

If you believe in Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit.

Like He's in there.

Sometimes we have to learn how to access that and walk in the power that the Holy Spirit gives us.

But you have the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus actually promised us that one of the things the Holy Spirit would do would be to give us the words when we need them.

Our mission as a church is to love people to Jesus.

That doesn't mean that we don't tell people about Jesus.

Love is like the microphone that amplifies the words that we speak.

But it's pointless if we don't speak the words.

I love this church.

This church is, if you're here for the first time, these people are amazing.

Like, like I get a chance to brag on this church so much, and it blows me away the generosity and the love that you guys display.

And I believe God wants to use this church for something really powerful, for something really important.

And and I think one of my favorite things about this church, and and worship team, if you guys want to come on out, we're about done.

But it's that when people come here, we make it clear that they need Jesus and nothing else.

Like we will not let people stop at church.

We will not let people stop at you know, even just belief.

Like there's more.

When people are here, it's it's clear that Jesus is the answer.

This church is not the answer for your life.

I I hate to break it to you.

I am, I am, whoo.

Uh just talk to Megan.

Like, there's one solution for this world.

It's Jesus.

He is the Alpha and the Omega.

He is the one who is and who is to come.

And frankly, I think about the love that exists in this place.

I think about the fact that there are so many people in church history who have told the world that the world needed Jesus, but they didn't love the world enough to have any credibility when they spoke.

And one of the hurts that the church in America has caused in years past is that the church cared more that people acted like they knew Jesus than actually knew Jesus.

So the church really cared that the world acted like a Christian.

And so when a movie would come out, you know, when Hollywood would make a movie that's offensive, can you imagine Hollywood making a movie that has things in it that don't line up with the Bible?

Like, oh, let's picket them, let's boycott them, let's not buy tickets to those movies.

Okay.

Let's love them.

Let's actually care that they don't know Jesus instead of being offended by the fact that they're acting like they don't know Jesus.

Why would we expect people who don't know Jesus to act like they know Jesus?

That's stupid.

That's the only word I can think of.

It's stupid.

So, so like it if we care more that our world acts like a Christian than actually is a Christian, what we're essentially saying is, look, I don't care whether or not you go to hell.

I just you I just don't want you to offend me.

Like, Christians should be the hardest people to offend on this planet.

Like, it should be so impossible to offend us.

But I'll tell you, I'll tell you what should offend us.

What should offend us is if our heart does not break for those that don't know Jesus.

When I pulled up to my neighbor's house last week and I saw Juan's trucks in his yard, I was filled with so much joy.

I felt like I fixed his roof.

I really did.

Like I was like, well done, Justin.

You've done your part.

You know?

I wasn't on the roof.

It's what's so funny, is if I hadn't shared this, if I didn't care about my neighbor, and if I didn't, if I didn't care about the solution, the only thing I probably would have thought whenever I pulled up and I saw I saw roofers on the roof and trucks was like, oh great, it's probably gonna be really loud for the next few hours because they're gonna hammer and all that stuff.

But no, no, I pull up and I'm like, yes, go on.

You know, I was so, so excited.

There's great joy when you share with people and you see them enjoy the benefits.

On uh Thursday this week, I got to sit and have lunch with some awesome people in our community, and one of these men uh is a man named Dave.

Dave works over at the Hope Center, he's an advocate there.

He he meets with men who are part of crisis pregnancy situations, and he encourages those men to step up.

And he was telling a story about a man named Juan.

Not the same Juan.

There's more than one Juan in the world.

And uh and he said that this man came in, this man didn't know the Lord, and then over the course of several weeks he started to share Jesus with this man.

And he watched as as Juan accepted Jesus.

And he watched as Juan went from being this distant father to the children he already had, and a man who didn't even want this child that wasn't born yet, to a man more dedicated to his family than virtually anyone he'd ever seen.

And as Dave was sharing the joy that that came to him from witnessing this young man that he shared Jesus with, accept Jesus and grow in Jesus, tears were in his eyes.

There is a joy in sharing what matters most for people.

There is a joy in sharing Jesus.

And I'm telling you, church, you are so good at loving people that if we as a church would become passionate about sharing Jesus, the love that we have here would amplify that message so drastically that we would see we would see thousands of people know the Lord.

I believe that.

But we we've got to care enough to share.

So we're gonna we're gonna pray, we're gonna sing one more song.

But I want I wanna I want to challenge you this morning.

I'm challenging myself, by the way.

Blessed are the bringers.

That's what that verse said.

Romans.

How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news.

Blessed are the bringers.

Do we have any bringers here this morning?

Do we have any any people who who will stand and say, I'm not, I'm not going alone.

I'm not keeping Jesus to myself.

I'm not gonna hoard him.

I'm not gonna sit idly by while I watch people suffer and struggle, while I watch the storms that Jesus spoke about wash their lives away.

I'm not gonna sit on the bedrock that I have and just wave at them as they as they wash away in the storm.

I'm gonna I'm gonna go to them, I'm gonna bring them to Jesus, I'm gonna bring them to the one who's the answer for life.

I'm gonna tell them about everything that Jesus has done for me.

I'm gonna show them that, hey, I'm a person, I've got problems, I've got issues, I don't know what to do half the time, but I know Jesus and it's changed everything.

I am going to be a bringer.

Is anyone else gonna be a bringer this morning?

Let's bring people to Jesus.

Don't overcomplicate it.

Just love them and share.

If you will pray today, God make me a bringer.

God, make me a bringer.

Get ready.

Because you're gonna have conversations with people and they're gonna say, I'm just struggling.

And you say, you know, I look, I don't take this the wrong way.

I don't know how you want to intro it, whatever.

I struggle too.

I have this relationship with Jesus, and for what it's worth, it's changed everything.

If you ever want to talk, I'm here for you.

How dare you! Right?

Maybe, I don't know.

I doubt it though.

Blessed are the bringers.

Let's let's be a church of bringers.

Let's bring people to him.

Let's bring him to the world when we walk out these doors this morning.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for your love.

Thank you so much for everything you are, everything you do.

We love you, Lord.

We need you.

Father God, I pray that you would help us to not underestimate how much this world needs Jesus.

Father God, help us not overestimate how difficult it is to share.

Jesus, help us be a church of Andrews, a church full of people who can say, I don't really have all the answers, I don't know the exact thing to say, but I know the one who has the answers, I know the one who is the answer, and I will bring the people in my life to Jesus.

I will not be callous and cold when it comes to the needs of those around me.

I will not enjoy a relationship with God and the favor of God.

While I watch others do without, I will share what I've been given.

I will share the gift of Jesus with the world around me.

I will be a bringer of good news.

God, fill our hearts with compassion and care for the world around us.

Move us to the point of action this morning.

I pray that as we walk out these doors in just a few moments, that we don't walk out of here saying to ourselves, man, that the music was good this morning, that we don't walk out of there saying, man, Justin's terrible at fixing things, that we wouldn't walk out of here this morning saying, that was a good message, I needed that, that we would walk out of here saying, Who does God want me to bring?

That we would walk out of these doors today on a mission, God.

Ready to bring you to the world around us, ready to share you with everyone that you put in our path, God.

We believe that.

Make us bringers.

We love you, Jesus, and we pray all this in your name.

Amen.