Judgement Worse Than Sodom
To watch the sermon Judgement Worse Than Sodom | Matthew 10 9-15
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Well, I had all of Sukkot to put together this message. So I just would like you to remember as I preach that I had no knowledge of what just took place when I wrote these notes. So if you feel convicted by that, or if you feel like I've preached at you, then it wasn't me. Might have been Cam, but it wasn't me. So Cam will take it.
Yes. Awesome. So two weeks ago, I know last week we were out in Ardmore. It was a little bit warmer than I would like for the Feast of Tabernacles. But, you know, I guess if you're going to have to take a forecast, I will take that versus the rain.
And so two weeks ago, we looked at Jesus sending out the apprentices for the first time. I've been in sports, I've been in management a lot in my life, been in ministry, all these different things. And it doesn't really matter what area of your life you're in, whether it's a job or it's your home or it's a church or sports, really anything there is this season of life by which the Lord is training you, raising you up, preparing you. You know, if you're a baseball player, you didn't just wake up one day and have all these talents. That's a movie.
It's called Rookie of the Year. And as quickly as it came, it went when he broke his arm. And so you have to put in, in the work and the effort of life to grow, to get to those goals. And normally, whether it's sports or it's a profession or whatever it is, the moment that it is your time, the moment they punch your ticket, they call your number, you have the position, whatever it is, you want to run as fast as you can. This was me for many, many years.
I wanted to run as fast as I could. I felt like I had absorbed as much as I possibly could in life in a discipleship apprenticeship program. And just like any discipleship or apprenticeship, when you're doing life with somebody, you learn not only the things you don't like, but you learn also the things that you do like. And both help you to grow into a well rounded person. Now, when you get to the scriptures, there's a difference than the emotion or the feeling of what you like or you don't.
God really doesn't care what you like. And I, and I hate to break that to you, God does not come down from heaven and dwell with us to say, you know, Mikal, I really want your opinion on how the Fruit of the Spirit should work. Brent. I was really worried about whether or not I should amend the English translation of this Greek word at this time so that it could give you a completely different concept. Those things don't happen.
God institutes his perfection regardless of what you like or not. And so when we get into what does the Bible say about furthering the kingdom of God, which is ultimately your job in any place, any place you go, your grocery shopping, your profession, your marriage, everything is supposed to advance the kingdom of God. Your opinion on the matter really doesn't matter. And I know this has gotten me in trouble a lot as I've led people from a more spiritual, religious standpoint, because people will say, well, you know, Pastor Chris, I just don't like that you said it like that. And there's no other way to say it.
You sinned, you were an idiot. We need to do something different. Well, I don't like that you're gonna do this. And it's like, well, I mean, what do you want me to do? The word of God says this.
It doesn't matter what I think on the matter. It matters what the word of God says. And if I'm doing my job, if Jesus was doing his job, he was apprenticing people to fulfill the Torah and the prophets through the things that they did, how could they do that? By having this spirit of Jesus inside of them and following Jesus as king. So when he comes and he sends his people out to go start making disciples, to make apprentices, it doesn't matter what Matthew thought about what John thought.
It didn't matter what John thought about what Philip thought. It didn't matter what Peter thought about what Matthew thought. It mattered about. How did this align with the Word of God, the character of God and the nature of God? And that's hard sometimes because we live in America.
America has thousands of denominations. Judaism has lots of denominations. We have lots of opinions. We have all of these types of things. And so what is right?
I don't believe that we fully know that. I believe what is right is God. And we're just trying to do our best through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, to be apprenticed, to understand and to move forward. What is right in this season might be different than what is right in the next season. And ultimately, as long as we have breath in our lungs, we should be pursuing to become more like the character and nature of God.
If you have arrived, you have arrived at a place that was never the destination. Sorry. Brantabraicfamily.com by the way, we had a joke going around Sukkot. We moved all of our emails over to a different URL. So I'm pretty sure that that Brant at Hebraic family doesn't even go anywhere anymore.
So my apologies to that. I mean, you can still send an email there. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm not lying to you. He's never gonn so two weeks ago, we watched Jesus commission his apprentices for their first mission.
At some point in time in life, you not only have to learn about something, but you actually have to do something. This is where we come in Matthew's gospel. We've come to their first mission. He didn't send them out into the nations. There was no nil money.
There was no this big grandiose plan at this point. He tells them, don't go to Samaria, don't go to the nations, don't go to the Gentiles, not into Rome, not to the Assyrians, not to the Greeks, but to the house of Israel. Go and cleanse your house first. Go and prophesy to your house first. Go and make your house a what Light to the nations, his people, his house.
Because the kingdom order always starts at home, like I've said for years. And you guys just keep proving to make me a prophet, which is ironic in all of those things. If you've got problems in your home, it's going to manifest in the church. That was a prophecy I could double down on. Why?
Because ultimately, if you have a problem in your home, it is going to manifest at your workplace, it's going to manifest when you're at lunch, it's going to manifest at the church, it's going to manifest at the events you do, it's going to manifest everywhere. Why? Because everything that's done in darkness will be revealed in light. So where is the first kingdom mission? It is first inside yourself and then yourself is supposed to be in your home.
Then your home is supposed to come together with other homes. And when other homes come together, then you go out and impact other homes in the community and so on and so on. And this is the multiplication of the fruit of the kingdom. Your fruit is not for you. Even though so many people will study and they'll study and they'll study.
Did you know the Greek word? Did you know the Hebrew word? All of these things. So they can eat of their own apples and they can eat over their own apples until they die of the disease and the poison of their own fruit. Your Fruit is to be edifying for the multiplication of the kingdom for somebody else.
And this is why the home mirrors the community, which mirrors the impact on a global level. Before you reach nations, you have to confront your household. Before you can preach to others, you've got to let the gospel preach to you. And Jesus sent this message both, both with an announcement and a confrontation. The kingdom of heaven is near to people who probably believed that they were the greatest manifestation of all time in that era.
Remember there had been occupations and there had been wars and all these types of things, and yet they had somehow worked with Rome. They'd somehow figured out how to get the temple back operational. They had a taxation system, all these things. And God says, the kingdom of heaven is near.
And he didn't send them out empty handed. He gave them gifts. The kingdom righteousness is always about giving. And before somebody says, oh, you know, pastor, you know, I don't have anything to give, then you obviously don't know the scripture because it says that God gave a gift to everyone before you were born. So you don't even have to know what your gift is yet.
You don't even have to be walking in your gift to realize you already have a gift. That gift was given to you, which means it was given to you by somebody who's smarter than you, smarter than me, God. So what, you could do something by giving it back to his kingdom. And he gave them the authority. He gave them heaven's signature power to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.
I love the Torah, I love the prophets. When you read through the Torah and you read through the prophets, there's not an awful lot about casting out demons, healing people, doing these types of things. We see some pretty cool miracles, right? There's a whale that shows up and he eats a dude. Somehow he survives.
He gets spit out on a dry land, decides he's gonna throw a pity party under a tree. God separates the sea for all my fishermen out there, they're walking through and they're like, there's a walleye and a small bass just floating next to me. And on dry land they go, they get to the other side, and as soon as they get to the other side, all of their enemies, the water closes up on them and they're like, yay, the power of the Lord. All these things have been miraculous there. But what we see in the gospels versus what we saw in the covenants before is that the kingdom power is here to help manifest the kingdom testimony, which the kingdom is near.
Heal the sick. Cleanse the leper, lepers, Raise the dead. Cast out demon. Why? Because the kingdom of God doesn't just talk.
It doesn't just talk. It actually transforms. A lot of people can talk. I've watched, I've watched some YouTube videos of a guy who wants to do these, like, baseball drills or whatever, and it's meant to be funny, and it is. And he's like, oh, if you really want to increase the power of your arm, then you need to do these things.
And then it's redeemed. Like, it's like there's no way in the world what he's doing is going to increase the velocity of the arm. But it's funny. And yet how many of us not going to a satire guy's page or whatever, how many of us will turn around and we'll listen to individuals and we'll live a life that's based upon the testimony of them when you clearly can tell they don't have any idea what they're talking about.
You're not going to go to a bank and ask them to feed you. You're going to go to a bank to withdraw money or to put in money. You wouldn't go to a person who is struggling in areas of their life and say, hey, I know you're struggling in areas of your life, but can you invest in my life in those areas so that I can excel? Even though you've not overcome them, you wouldn't do that. Why?
Because when the kingdom of God comes in and you listen to God and you allow God's spirit to dwell in you, you are transformed, which means you no longer have the same problem. It's not just an abstinence. It's not just, okay, I don't struggle with anymore. The kingdom transforms you into deliverance. The kingdom of heaven doesn't leave people in bondage, but it breaks chains.
And where religion leaves people harassed and helpless, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Jesus is not like that at all. The kingdom of Jesus is here to raise you up and to heal you and to make you whole, plain and simple. When the kingdom shows up and the power of the kingdom comes, rejecting it isn't just a neutral stance. It is a rebellion against the fact that God knows what, who and how and why is for your benefit and for others benefit and why we need those powers and actions. And many of us don't do well with rejection.
We then carry that rejection on to our next assignment, to our next church, to our next Relationship to our next engagement. The kingdom of Jesus doesn't negotiate with comfort. It demands your dependence upon the king.
Turning to Matthew chapter 10 this week, starting in verse 9 and 10. Don't take any money in your belts, no gold or silver or even copper coins. Don't carry a traveler's bag, extra clothes, sandals or a walking stick. In Jesus day, the Pharisees had turned faith into a financial safety net. There was taxation based upon if you came into the temple courts and you wanted to go give an offering, there was a tax that was there.
And not only did Rome take its tax, but but then also the religious leadership applied a text to it as well so that they could have multiple walking sticks, so that they could have multiple nice things, so that their garments were very nice while other people were just in rags. They had used the people by which they were supposed to empower and raise up into the kingdom mission as a safety net for them to have, dare I say it, large houses and fancy cars and 20 airplanes. That's what it looks like today. It would have been more like 20 donkeys. They might have had the Bentley version of the chariot.
It had a hand cranked fan on it. I can't substantiate that with any historical facts, but it was the upgraded model for sure. It wasn't pleather for sure.
They trusted the system more than they trusted the source. And it speculated that God's power and presence had not even been dwelling in the temple for some prolonged period of time. And so it at least implies that they potentially knew that God's source of power was no longer residing in the house by which they had asked for permission to build. And yet they continue to operate in this system to take advantage of the people who were looking for God's favor, mercy and justice. But Jesus wanted his apprentices to learn about radical dependence not on wealth of the systems that they had seen, but on the fact that Jesus and Jesus kingdom was always knows better than we do.
What you carry can easily become what you trust. Jesus told them, take nothing but your faith. Do nothing that will provide for you. Allow me to be the resource for you. He was teaching them that the kingdom's economic law was about give, not get.
The world says hoard what you can before someone else might get it. And yet the kingdom of God was saying give, because there's more where that came from. Brent has talked about this numerous times in a series, so it makes me feel not quite as awkward when you talk about giving. But the church in general always has a giving Problem, and I don't understand why, because this is exactly what we're dealing with in the Gospels, is that there was a hoarding of the temple tax, there was a hoarding of the temple money, there was a hoarding of these things that let us control these things, let us hold on to these things, let us help you with these things when they really weren't. There was always strings attached to those things.
And yet Jesus, as he's sending out his apprentices into the next level of discipleship, he's telling them, don't take anything. It's not even don't ask for something. It's not even don't collect something. It's don't take what you already have and allow me to not only prove to you that I can give you what you need, but I can give you more than what you need. And I can do that for literally every single person you come into contact with.
Our culture and our country, the last couple of election cycles has gotten to a place where we're constantly debating political ideologies on, well, you know, the top 1 need to do this, and what would it be like if all these people gave back to these people and gave back to these people? Meanwhile, there is a group of people, individuals in our country. I don't know exactly what the percentage is, but there's a group of people in our country who don't want to work, they don't want to give back, they don't want to be an active part of society. And so we have this scarcity mindset in our economic culture. This isn't new.
It didn't just show up with the United States of America and a bunch of white guys with white wigs. It didn't show up there. This has taken place throughout all cultures. All cultures hoard wealth. And Jesus is saying, how can you hoard what I can create?
If you are hoarding away, whether it's your resources, of the gifts you have, or your finances, this is not just money. If you're hoarding it away, then you're saying that you don't trust God to empower you and to empower all the things you and everybody else needs. That's rebellion against his ways, against his plan. Jesus always had enough. He always will have enough.
If you need more joy, he can give it to you. And he doesn't need to steal it from trolling in order for you to have it.
He doesn't need to steal from Sarah so April can have. He doesn't need to make sure that the Frankies are taken care of at the Avery's expense. He has the ability to develop and to give without scarcity. And this is part of the kingdom. Some people walk in church and they're arguing about whether I can give 10% of my time or 10% of my tithe.
And Jesus is like, maybe that's all I'm going to give to you from now on. Why? Because the kingdom of heaven in general is about trusting God as provision for joy, for everything. If you think you can outgive God, you got another thing coming.
You can never outgive love of Jesus. You never hung on a cross. You can never out give finances. He's got the whole world in his hands.
I'm a billionaire. He's got the whole world in his. That means you too kind of humble, right? There is no scarcity. And we saw this being alluded to when he was talking about the harvest.
Because the scarcity was not the crop. The scarcity was the laborers to reap the crop. So in God's kingdom, the scarcity isn't the ability to take care of you. It is that there isn't enough people to produce and reap the harvest that he has already created. It didn't even say, like, they had to wait.
Jesus isn't telling them to wait. He didn't tell them not to go in the nations because there was a timeframe. He needed to produce the harvest in the Gentiles, and it wasn't their time yet. The harvest was already plentiful. But he said, hey, look, you don't even have enough people to do this one field.
And sometimes we allow greed to get in our way because we have that scarcity mindset. It's like, oh man, what's going to happen? What's going to happen when I get old and I don't have enough money to play shuffleboard at the nicest shuffleboard place ever?
What's going to happen? Don't you think he can take care of that? I mean, the scripture says over and over again he took care of things even before we see him raising the dead, healing the sick, casting out the demons. In the Old Testament, he's literally moving mountains and seas and all kinds of things.
The problem isn't what God can do. The problem is how much we trust him to do it.
When you accept the hospitality, you don't just receive, you allow others to manifest the Zedekah, the righteousness of God which is giving. It is a generosity in how heaven can break into the human space. Imagine if the church had practiced hospitality over their suspicion and their generosity over their greed and abundance, over their anxiety, we wouldn't be talking about church hurt all the time. We wouldn't be talking about pharma and all these other things. Oh, well, I'm struggling with anxiety.
Why? Because you don't feel like God's going to do what he's going to do. You don't trust God to take care of that in that situation. And I understand there's exceptions to the rules, so don't think I'm putting down mental health or anything else. But if we practice generosity over greed, we wouldn't need as many benevolence funds, would we?
If we practice generosity over greed, we wouldn't need as many government funds, would we? If we practice hospitality over suspicion, then everybody wouldn't be a serial killer who walk through our door just based upon what they're wearing.
This is why we see. What we see in our culture is because we're practicing the Chris culture, the Mason culture, the Madison culture, We're practicing our culture rather than his culture. And this is what Jesus is telling his people, his apprentices, his disciples to war against. Take nothing. Because if you take it when you have a bad day, you're probably going to look for two mats.
Why do. Why do we. Why do we think that? Well, because the Sabbath day was supposed to be a beautiful day by which you were to dwell with God, dwell in the cool of the day, in the garden, and then when they get taken in the wilderness, what's the first thing they do? We're not going to get enough food.
We're not going to get enough food. What are we going to do? God literally opens up the heavens and rains down manna. And then he says, hey, guys, on the Sabbath day, teaching you guys how to be free, people don't go out and collect. I'm going to give you twice as much food on Friday.
Pretty simple, right? Everybody here is like, you know what? They're going to pay me twice as much on Friday so I don't have to work on Saturday. Yes, please. What's the first thing they do?
They go out of their tents and they go gather. Why? Because they were afraid they wouldn't have enough.
Why?
They already had enough. So it is ingrained in us. To what? To not trust God as our source. Don't tell me it's not.
It is a war that happens inside your mind, inside your life, every single day. Something, oh, Trump did this. I might lose my job. Oh, if somebody did this, I might lose My car. We're always worried about how the cause and effect of this society, as if Jesus is.
When did he get bound by cause and effect in our society? Okay, just checking. Matthew 10, 12, 14. When you enter into a home, you are to give it your blessing. If it is worthy, let your peace rest on it.
If not, take back your peace. And if any household or any town refuses to welcome you, shake the dust off your feet. This is Jesus counsel to not take your rejection to your next assignment.
So how does that work in life? Okay, so you have a friendship that goes awry, goes really, really bad. Dust off your feet, do what you can to restore, but don't take the hurt into your next friendship. Or guess what? What does science tell us happens?
That friendship, the new one, is going to be influenced by the hurt, the rejection of the other one church hurt. How many people come in here through the doors of this church? I've never met them, never had an interaction with them, like, well, I don't know. Pastor Chris, the last pastor did this. I was like, never met the guy.
I've never done it. So why do I have to prove to you that I'm not like somebody I haven't met? Because we couldn't dust off our feet. The. The issues.
The issues that human beings do and not immediately project that onto other people. Guess what? I've had some bad interactions with some individuals who call themselves holy, but I don't enter into my relationship with Brent and be like, well, now you need to prove to me that you're not like, so and so. He would be like, see ya.
Don't take rejection into your next assignment. Leave the dust behind. Don't carry an offense. Don't carry disappointment. Don't carry resentment from one mission to the next.
Because when you carry the dust, you cannot walk clean. When you carry rejection, you will lose your direction. And when you carry bitterness, you will block the blessing of God in your life and in others. Our job isn't to judge the harvest. It's to be laborers in it.
And you cannot reap with your hands when they're clenched in anger and frustration. How good is that barley? I ripped that barley out of the ground and I crushed it right there in the field. Oh, good. You just wasted the barley for somebody else as well.
You have a job. You need to stay in your lane, and you need to try to stop swapping places with God or with others. Many people have a savior complex. They want to be the savior.
We are not. We're not the savior. You are A messenger. And if you are doing the calling, like Jesus is saying in Matthew, you are not bringing your message. You are bringing the message of the king, the king's character, the king's nature, and the king's words and decrees.
We will never be the Savior. We will always just be the messenger. The dust that you shake off is the soil God will use for his next miracle. But unfortunately, some of us, when we dust off that, that. That unhospitable place, we want to be the one who redeems it.
It is Jesus who redeems all things. So the dust that gets knocked off of my shoes might be the place for Jeremy to have the miracle. But we struggle with that sometimes because we say, well, God, I was there, I put the work and I did all these things. How come I can't reap the blessings and the benefit of that? And sometimes he says, you can't reap the blessing.
And the benefit of that is because you're not giving me the credit for the blessing and the benefit. You're trying to take it yourself. So I'm going to take Chris out and I'm going to put Jeremy in. I'm going to take Tim out, and I'm going to put Jacob in. It's all for God's glory, so that we don't boast.
Matthew 10:15. I tell you the truth, that it would be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of Judgment than for that town. That's not even a hyperbole, it's a warning. It's rejecting the message of the kingdom is not just rejecting the preacher, it's not rejecting the messenger. You're actually rejecting the King himself.
So it's not. If Tim comes and tells me something that aligns with the word of God and the nature of Jesus. If I reject Tim, I'm not actually rejecting Tim. I'm actually rejecting Jesus by which Tim is operating. This is why back in December, before we even got into Matthew, I did a teaching that was somewhat controversial because people didn't want to face the fact that what you do matters.
And if you are Torah observant or Jesus observant, you must bear fruit. This is how you know if the king and the kingdom is in you, you are bearing fruit. It's not just because you profess that you believe with Jesus. Many people profess with their lips that Jesus is Lord, but they don't live a lifestyle that testifies to the power of the Kingdom inside of them. And so this is the difference between Being an apprentice of Jesus and a professor of Jesus, there has to be fruit.
Why? Because that's how you know the king is alive in each and every one of your lives. People say, well, I struggle with patience. Are you better with patience today than you were before? Then the king is in your life and he's working.
So many of us don't even recognize most businesses have a three year plan. You're lucky. You're fortunate if in three years of your life, your business plan breaks even or turns a profit. But somehow when we're giving up an addiction or we're giving up an anger or we're giving up something like it didn't work in the first minute, duh.
This is part of what Jesus is doing with his disciples. He's doing life with them and giving them grace so that they can understand this isn't going to happen overnight. And what traditionally happens when you go slow and steady, you don't revert.
You don't revert your falls, your setbacks are smaller. You learn more and more and more until you have the ability to go and teach other people.
Jesus, when you reject the message of the messenger, you're also rejecting the king. But yet we know that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it, as John 3:17 told us. He also declared that the rejection of the salvation carries a greater weight than the fire that fell on Sodom because the light rejected is darker than darkness ignored. Let that sink in for a second. Sodom's messenger was sent to proclaim to them to repent.
But the light of Jesus Christ operating in the kingdom of heaven in their midst, at that moment when Jesus is sending out the apprentices to testify about his kingdom, the light is greater, the gift is greater. When the darkness increases, the light increases, and we need to walk more boldly. But we must understand that the rejection is greater too. People are saying, all these people in Christianity, they profess Jesus with their lips, but they reject the Torah. What is worse?
Rejecting the Torah, rejecting the one who gave the Torah? I'm sorry. The Bible says when you reject Jesus, it is greater when heaven knocks. And we say, no, we aren't turning away the messenger, we're turning away the mercy. And Sodom burned with fire.
But rejection burns with accountability.
Rejection hurts, it stings, it tempts us to lash out or to retreat. Jesus knows this, and this is why he is instructing his disciples what to do in those situations, because he knows that they are going to be rejected. He knows that it's going to sting. He knows that they're going to be tempted to lash out or to run away. But rejection in the kingdom is never wasted.
They rejected Jesus. They will reject you too. But rejection is where resurrection's power gets revealed. Worship team, you can come back. All the interactions of Jesus, all of the testimony of Jesus, and yet he went to the cross.
And there was thousands upon thousands who did not recognize the Jewish Messiah on the cross. They did not recognize him as the Mashiach. And yet God. God's rejection in that moment wasn't the end for many. Why?
Because at Pentecost, in Acts chapter two, we see that the spirit of Jesus fell upon them. And all of their tongues and their dialects they were speaking and they understood. It was like they had Duolingo before Duolingo. It was like they had Google Translate before Google Translate. And they could all understand what was being said.
And they were bewildered. What in the world is going on here? And Peter gives an impassioned one of the apprentices of Jesus the one by which he says he will build upon that rock for his church. One of those apprentices preached a very impassioned sermon about how these very people had rejected the Son of God. And then he declared, God has made this Jesus whom you've crucified.
He's made him both Lord and Mashiach. The crowd was cut to the heart and 3,000 repented and were baptized that day.
Sometimes we believe that if we feel like God has called us to a field with a calling and a mission we struggle with when our time is done, surely God called me to go minister to this person. So when I minister to this person and this person tells me that they don't know Jesus, surely my job here in the calling is for this person to convert and believe Jesus salvation. What if my calling for this moment was to plant a seed for somebody else to come along? You know, kind of like volleyball, you know, everybody wants to spike the ball. But what if my job was just to set the ball up for somebody to come and spike?
But too often when we find ourselves in a situation and God's doing something, we emotionally attach ourselves to it and we say, we've got to do this. But what if your job is never to do that? What if your job was to take the order at Chick Fil A and not to serve at Chick Fil A? What if your job was to come and sweep the floor so that somebody else could come in whose job was to sweep the floor and cry because they were overwhelmed that day? We don't understand what the kingdom is doing at all points in time, but we feel like sometimes we need to.
And Jesus tells us in the book of Acts, through the writings of Luke, that there was thousands of people who had rejected Jesus as the Messiah. And even though they saw all of these things, but in this moment, after the fact, after he ascended and sat at the right hand of the Father after the fact, they saw something that they. All the other seeds that had been planted in their life overwhelmed them. And they professed that Jesus was salvation and they were baptized. So when you think that some.
Now you've planted a plant and it's been dead. What if God's job for you was to plant the plant and he wanted somebody else to come over to water it so it would grow? This is the kingdom of heaven. Drawn near.
What looked like rejection had become a revival. And what felt like failure had become fruit. What seemed like a loss had become a harvest.
Rejection is not your failure. It's just another field waiting for you to harvest.
And what you see as rejection, God could be setting up as redemption.
But you can't be redeemed. When you got all that Ardmore dirt on your Nikes, you're walking around, they didn't recognize who I was. They didn't understand what I was doing.
Dust it off. And in Oklahoma, you gotta get the dust off your shoulder too. For me, I had to four times condition my hair when I got home. Man bun is a. Is a trap for dirt.
People are like, man, your hair is lightening up. No, just happened to be the dirt color. I didn't even have to go to Nicole and get it died. It just is what it is.
Your job is obedience. Your job is not the outcome.
In the kingdom of God, you are not the CEO, you're unemployed. With the best benefit its package there is.
The 401k is killer. Some translations say there's a mansion. Just saying, just saying.
Yet the kingdom of God and becoming an apprentice of Jesus is about starting your home. Not every time you do something are you going to do it well.
We get tired, we get frustrated sometimes because we do something and we don't do it well. And then we want to carry that dust around us and say, you know, let's carry this with us. Jesus instructs his disciples to push off the dust and to move forward because he absolutely expects them to have dusty feet. Probably more times than not.
You cannot carry your redee, your rejection into the future redemption. And you have a lot of say so in that everything that we see isn't the end game.
Sometimes we see things that have nothing to do with what God wants in the moment. And sometimes things have been revealed to us not for that moment. We have a tendency as humans, we see this in the culture of the Gospel of Matthew, that humanity takes things too far. And Jesus is doing what? What do we do?
He's setting them up over here because they had lived over here. And both sides of the guardrail lead us to what? Crash the car?
So he's saying, in order for you to go from fully trusting in the world, fully trusting in your system, you must come over here and fully trust in me, and I will bring you somewhere in here. Sometimes where he brings you is blessings beyond what the system could ever do. Sometimes he keeps you in a place or in a space of your life because he's still trying to teach you how to learn things. In the end, it doesn't matter if God gives you a mansion in this life. It doesn't matter if God gives you a nice car in this life.
Because this life is not the goal for God's kingdom. It is a means, the ends to invite you into the kingdom, as many people as humanly possible. This isn't about having the nicest building or the nicest LED light wall. This isn't about any of that. This is about how many souls can be kept from being destroyed by the adversary and redeemed and given life by the Savior.
Some of us attempt to find hospitality and welcome in places that we know that we'll never find it. And we're staying in homes that we know that we should have taken the blessing on and moved forward. But yet we're. We've gotten comfortable there. We're dusty, we're beaten, we're bruised, and it's time for you to pick up.
You dust yourself off and move on. Don't curse the dust, just shake it off and move forward. Because the kingdom keeps moving even through the places of your life and the others in your life that people have said no. And this is the power of the mission of being called apprentices of Jesus and being sent out is that as long as you carry your stuff with you, Jesus isn't going to give you his stuff. As long as you, you interject your mission, he's going to withhold some of his mission.
And I believe in the power of the gospel to change the world. Already has. Every person in this room is here because of that. Do your part, do it with excellence. And when you find rejection, flush it down the toilet and move on.
That's the CJF version.
Because in the end, one failure might be somebody else's success. And we need to stop trying to figure out whether or not we know what God's doing and just do our part, if you will. Will you stand with me and let's respond.
