[00:00:01] Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] After serving several years as a missionary, Kurt and his family decided to move to Kansas City, Kansas. And the neighborhood that they decided to settle in was right next door to a man and his family. There was a man named Hector. He and his family were a Hispanic family that had moved into that neighborhood several years earlier. And so over the course of time living together in that neighborhood side by side as neighbors, Kurt and his family began to be really good friends with Hector and his family. Hector was an incredible neighbor. In fact, Kurt remembers times where he was pulling into the house after a day of work and Hector, after he was cutting his own grass. He was cutting the grass of his neighbor. He also remembers certain times that if he was out of town, he'd even have to ask Hector. Hector was watering his flowers and taking care of his garden. But then Hector even sometimes would surprise Kurt and his family because they owned a produce stand. They would put that produce on the front porch to use for him and his family.
[00:01:45] And so that friendship continued. But then one day, Kurt heard some very devastating news when Hector shared with him that he and his family were going to have to move.
[00:01:56] And so Kurt asked the question we would all ask because he's thinking, listen, I don't want another neighbor. I like having you nearby. And he said, why in the world are you moving? He said, well, it's just gotten too expensive and I can't afford the rent.
[00:02:10] And so he decided to ask a question that is a question truly we don't usually ask. And it's this, well, how much are you paying? And he then told him the amount that he was paying. And then Kurt said, wait, that's way more than I'm paying.
[00:02:24] And then he said, well, have you even tried to maybe, like, buy the house to see if that would help? And he said, yeah, but I can't afford it. And he said, well, what did they try to Charge you for the house. And he couldn't believe the amount that he was being charged because it was more than he paid.
[00:02:40] And so he had this idea. Kurt ended up calling the property manager. He said, hey, I was just curious if you wouldn't mind telling me if this house next door is for sale or if anybody would consider selling it. It? And she said, well, I'm just a property manager. There's this, like, behemoth of a company that owns all these neighborhoods on this street. You're going to have to ask them. She said, but I can ask them for you, if you don't mind. I mean, what would you think the house would be worth? And so he decided to think of a price. And the price he landed on was one third of the price that Hector was being quoted. And she said, okay, that's fine. And so what she ended up doing is asking the people in Texas, and she called him back a week later and says, your offer was accepted.
[00:03:30] So what Kurt then did, without Hector knowing it, he purchased that house. And then he told Hector, here's what I want you to do. I want you to pay me back every month, and the house is yours.
[00:03:45] Wow.
[00:03:47] Now, if you're sitting here this morning, maybe a guest or a member, and you hear that illustration, you might be thinking, I guess what the message is about today is I'm supposed to buy the houses in my neighborhood. That's not what I'm saying.
[00:04:00] What I am wanting us to really get to, though, is the heart behind what would get somebody to do something like that.
[00:04:11] And in the heart of Kurt, if you think about it, is very similar to the heart of Hector.
[00:04:19] See, both Kurt and Hector, what they did was this.
[00:04:23] They did not see themselves as most of us in North America see ourselves in our neighborhoods, and that is this.
[00:04:31] They didn't just see themselves as citizens.
[00:04:34] They saw themselves as neighbors.
[00:04:38] You know, there's a big difference in seeing yourself as a neighbor versus seeing yourself as a citizen.
[00:04:45] See, a neighbor thinks from the responsibility standpoint, while a citizen thinks about, well, that's my right.
[00:04:53] That's my ownership. I deserve that.
[00:04:57] And what's really interesting is the Bible speaks to this mindset. Even back in the Old Testament. In week one of this series, we went to Jeremiah when God was saying, listen, I understand, man. You're in a very pagan community, in a very pagan world. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to plant gardens. And that was the idea of multiplying in order to help other people. He said, listen, I want you to have a family, to infiltrate the community and to make a difference. And then we get to Luke 10. When that young man came up to Jesus. He said, what must I do to have eternal life? He's basically asking, what can I do to experience heaven? Jesus answers back. He said, it's not about something to come. What I'm letting you know you can experience heaven right now.
[00:05:39] We said, well, how do I do that? He said, well, be like that Samaritan. Go and do likewise. Be a neighbor.
[00:05:47] And then you get to first Peter. And Peter is trying to encourage a group of Christians that are scattered across Asia Minor. And in order to encourage them, he said, in the meantime, here's what you have to know. Your job is to love all the people around you because your citizenship is in heaven.
[00:06:09] I love what he mentioned in his book Next Door as it is in heaven. Lance Ford said this.
[00:06:15] Our identity is formed by how we see our neighbors.
[00:06:24] You know, this is a theme all throughout Scripture. We read about it this morning. Paul said in 1st Corinthians 10, Let no one seek his own good but the good of his neighbor. Paul speaks to it. And what's interesting is when Paul speaks to it, the larger context is Christ crucified. And I love what you shared in the communion this morning, because the selflessness of Christ is seen in this. Because he's saying, listen, let that be reflected in your own selflessness. Not looking out for just your own interest, but looking out for the interest of others. Have this mindset. That's what it's about. I told you, in an identity, a mindset among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.
[00:07:03] So last week we introduced the topic of hospitality. And if you were with us in week one of this series that we're calling home, what our shepherd shared with us at the very beginning of the year is the two areas we as a church in 2025 want to focus on is fellowship and hospitality. Fellowship is the connection, the time we spend together as brothers and sisters in Christ. But then hospitality is that time that we spend, as you can see on the screen here from the term, with the guest, the stranger. And I love what Brandon shared last week as he introduced this idea that the ultimate goal of fellowship is really hospitality, that what we're able to experience here, that it's so rich, it's so real, that we start thinking in our time together. I want them, I want those in the neighborhood, I want those in my community to experience what we have in this place, that the fellowship we experience is something that we want other people to experience too.
[00:08:04] And so before we get into the real how to, I always like to try to think of the why. Let's think of why we need to be hospitable. Let's think of what our motivation is to do this.
[00:08:16] Well, part of it is we look back, we look around and we look forward. Let's start by looking back.
[00:08:26] A few weeks ago I asked you guys this question, that if you go back in your family story and look at how maybe your granddad, your great granddad, or your parent or even you became a Christian and you look back in that past, I said, was there somewhere along the lines where somewhere maybe someone knocked on a door, they invited you to something at a worship service or a church activity, hands went up all over the auditorium.
[00:08:57] And I share with you, that's my own story too, that my mom was raised in a single parent home.
[00:09:03] They prayed before a Thanksgiving meal every year. That was it.
[00:09:09] No church connection whatsoever. Yet someone invited her to a vacation Bible school when she was a little girl. And I know I would not be where I was without that person's hospitality. We all look back in some personal sense and see that we owe to where we are to someone's act of hospitality. And so, yes, it's personal, but what I want us to also see is this is spiritual of nature, that do you remember when Jesus was sitting around the table with his disciples? He knew he was about to die, but you also know what he was getting ready to celebrate. And that was the Passover.
[00:09:44] And the whole point of the Passover was to remember to look back at how God brought this group of people that were alienated, that were strangers and are bringing them home to a promised land.
[00:09:56] And in order to remember this, he says, you gotta look back. And so, you know, it was at that table, right at that table there was a lamb.
[00:10:06] And in the middle of that table was a lamb to remind them of the blood of that lamb that was put over that door as that angel in Egypt passed by their homes and saved them.
[00:10:18] But you know what was also on that table? There was salt water.
[00:10:23] There was salt water in cups and they would drink that salt water to remind themselves of the tears that they shed when they were in Egypt. They would have this paste like substance that was on these cinnamon sticks and they would partake of it to remind themselves of the bricks that they had to build when they were living in Egypt. But what he's doing here is he's letting his disciples know that they're Going to have a look back story too, that every single Sunday, guys, you're going to share this until I come back. And around this table are deniers. Around this table were tax collectors. Around this table are sinners. There were fishermen, people that nobody else would have picked. But yet you remember that I allowed you a seat at this table. And then we get to these texts where God reminds us that because of that Passover lamb, we look back and we understand we were rescued. We see in Ephesians 2 that we were all dead, but now because of Jesus Christ, we were made alive. What I'm saying is our motivation for hospitality is because the great, amazing hospitality of our really, really good God.
[00:11:35] But we also look around, and as we look around, we see its impact.
[00:11:41] Some of you might, when I put this on the screen, it might ring a bell from something in the 60s and the 70s that was highly publicized, and that was what is called the Rosetta Effect.
[00:11:53] There was a common occurrence in the 60s that on the news, maybe it's the newspaper, maybe it was on the radio, that some of the people in America that were living the longest, they kept noticing a common theme. They lived in Rosetta, Pennsylvania. And so there was this doctor from the University of Oklahoma that was like, well, let's go figure out what's going on there.
[00:12:17] And in his mind, his idea was, maybe we can learn about their diet. We can learn about, like, their exercise strategies and things. We can, like, come up with a plan so other people can live as long as the people in Rosetta, Pennsylvania.
[00:12:31] And so one of the things that they did is they went and they studied the people and they noticed a few things.
[00:12:37] They noticed that cardiac arrest, which was at the highest in America at that time, between the ages of 55 to 65, was the highest killer of men, was almost at a rate of 0 in Rosetta, Pennsylvania.
[00:12:52] They also noticed that in this community there was zero applications for public assistance.
[00:13:00] And it was way higher the death rate on average than the national average.
[00:13:06] And so they thought, well, it's got to be the diet. Well, then they start going home to home, these two doctors interviewing people. And here's what they found out, being that it's a mainly Italian community. They were just eating an Italian diet. So it wasn't that.
[00:13:18] And I love Italian food, but that's one of the things that just like puts me to sleep right after I eat it. So it wasn't that.
[00:13:24] But the other thing that they really noticed, as they stood out and were amongst these people, they noticed the way that they spoke about their community.
[00:13:36] They noticed that the reason why these people had healthy hearts is because they had a heart for one another.
[00:13:44] Whenever they talked about their neighborhood, they never used he said territorial terms like they or them.
[00:13:52] Whenever they spoke of the neighborhood, the community, they spoke of us and our.
[00:14:00] If you've ever been to another country, you see this a lot. The support that there is within these communities and the longevity of life that is also there. Connected. It's an amazing thing. So they noticed that there was a few things that happened. Number one, that they noticed that there was this directness that the people had which was like that face to face time with one another. There was proximity by contact.
[00:14:24] I shared with you guys a few weeks ago at the very beginning of this series that one of the books that Brandon and I have been going through challenged me in a big way. Because one of the things that he talked about is don't just assume things about your neighbor where you've never asked, okay? And it should have not taken this, but we had this neighbor, he's an older gentleman that lives two houses down.
[00:14:46] And right after we moved into the house that we're in, I was noticing that he was cutting his grass. And I could tell he didn't even have a self propelled mower. Like he had the original thing and he's an older gentleman and he was cutting it. I kept wondering like, should I ask, should I offer? But at the same time, y'all know what, y'all been there before where you don't wanna like insult the guy. So you're thinking, well, should I even mention it? Should I say anything? And I was like, no, I'm not gonna say anything. And then it took this series and a book for me to actually talk to the guy and to ask.
[00:15:15] And that's not good, by the way. And so I went over and finally was like, hey, I'm Andrew. He said, yeah, I know, we met after you moved in. And I was like, hey, I was just gonna mention this. I saw you out here cutting your grass. If you need. And by the way, you can tell also what I was offering. I said, if you need my son, I didn't offer myself, but I said, you know, if you need my son to come over and cut it, he would be more than glad to do that. And he said, well, I really appreciate you offering that. He said, I actually enjoy getting to do this because the way I look at it, if I stop moving, I'm gonna stop moving. So this is kinda like the one physical thing I do, so I'm gonna keep doing it. He said, also, weren't you the preacher? I was like, yeah, I'm one of the preachers. And I told him where I was at. And he then started telling me his story. And he asked, well, how did you get into ministry anyway? Long story short, we ended up connecting with this guy. I didn't even offer him that service that I came to, but we connected.
[00:16:09] And as I think about this, I didn't know this till this past week, that part of the point of the movie Sandlot was to tell that story about how we perceive our neighbors.
[00:16:20] If you've ever watched it, not promoting the movie, just telling you a narrative to help explain a truth is, there's a young boy named Smalls. And Smalls moves into this neighborhood and he's new. And his mom keeps encouraging, hey, go out to that baseball field with all those other boys and play. The problem for Smalls is this. He's not athletic. And the time he even tries to throw a baseball, he gets hit in the face.
[00:16:44] He kind of acts a little awkward. He's got a really long billed hat that can tell that it's not a real baseball hat, all those kind of things.
[00:16:51] And so he finally goes out there and when they're playing baseball, a baseball is hit over this fence. And on the other side of this fence is a dog that they labeled the Beast. And this dog is so big in their eyes and in their mind, it's like elephant size. It's a behemoth of a dog. And then the other thing is, in their mind, the guy that owns the dog that lives in that house is just like this really mean and hard to deal with neighbor.
[00:17:18] And so then Smalls says, well, it's okay. Don't worry about that baseball. I have a baseball at my house. And so he goes to his stepdad's room and grabs one off the shelf, brings it, and they hit that one over the fence. And he's like, oh, no, oh no, this is not good. This is not good. They're like, well, what's wrong? He said that baseball was signed by somebody.
[00:17:37] And then the guy's like, why did you bring a signed baseball out here? And who was it signed by? And Smalls says, well, it was signed by some lady named Babe Ruth.
[00:17:47] And they're like, babe Ruth, the great bambino, the Sultan of Swat. Like, you brought that baseball out here.
[00:17:54] And so in their panic, here's what they start to do. They start to create all these different contraptions and all these different ways to get over that fence and to bring that baseball back.
[00:18:08] And then at the very end of the movie, one of the guys suggests, well, why don't we just ask the neighbor about the ball? Right? We can't do that. Like, he's a scary guy and all that. They knock on. Notice this as a point in the movie, that when they got near that dog, the dog shrunk, the dog didn't really shrink, but their perception did when they went next door.
[00:18:40] The reason why I say that is we all have different perceptions. And a lot of times we base other things on myths, perceptions. That's what directness is about. Transforming a relationship from just a mere perception or a myth or a preconceived notion into reality. I'm telling you, those things start to shrink the more we start to actually see people. We're going to see that from Jesus in just a second. The second thing was this continuity.
[00:19:08] They made time and we're going to talk about doing a margin audit in just a second. But here's the third thing.
[00:19:17] They noticed that there was multiplexity. The idea of multiplexity is this, that they noticed that the people, Rosetta, were connecting church life, home life, their kids life, their work life all together kind of into one thing.
[00:19:30] And so I decided to make a graph. There's two different ones. There's one for people at maybe my stage of life and those at a different stage of life, just to kind of give us an idea of what this looks like. And I want you to put yourself at the center, you being the Christian there in the middle, that we have a responsibility to connect these spheres together, the sports team, the neighborhood, the work, all together and to overlap.
[00:19:56] And in fact, one of the things that's been really neat is how I've seen this happen at Madison.
[00:20:01] Some of you already know this. We have a family here that anytime we have a church activity for the community, they go get the church bus, one of them get the keys to it. They go and pick up kids from their kids schools and their kids sports teams, and they bring them here.
[00:20:20] We've got people that teach piano lessons, teach swim lessons, and they use those lessons to overlap people from the church and people from the community with their work.
[00:20:32] We have young men that when we have FCA at their public school, that they're inviting their friends so they can meet their minister.
[00:20:42] That's kind of what I'm talking about. That mentality, that identity is formed very young and it only continues to grow. Maybe you're Older. And this is what it looks like for you. It might be the gym, the golf course, your grandkids, teams, their activities in your neighborhood, trying to figure out ways to make those things overlap. And as you think about that, I want us to all individually and us as a church, to collectively think about what are we doing, that I can make these spheres overlap, that I can connect my neighbor to. And as you have this mentality and it becomes a part of your identity, you start treating everything not as an owner, but a steward, which is our call from the very beginning anyway, until heaven arrives, until we're there, we live as neighbors and stewards, choosing responsibility over my rights.
[00:21:32] But our other motivation is because we look forward.
[00:21:35] We looked in Isaiah 25 in this series, we looked in Ephesians, we looked in Matthew 8, and we looked at all these different examples of one day when we are in that heavenly home, we're going to be at this amazing banquet feast. And here's the thing, it's going to be people that look different than us, that have a different background than us, have a different story than us.
[00:21:56] So our motivation comes from the fact that we look back, we look around, and we look forward. So what does it look like? How do we do this?
[00:22:03] Well, it first starts where Jesus always started. And it's when he first chose to behold people.
[00:22:12] Behold always comes before compassion. I'll give you an example. Turn with me to Mark, chapter 10.
[00:22:19] In Mark 10, Jesus gets this question again, and it's from a very rich young man.
[00:22:25] And this rich young man comes up to Jesus and this is what he says in verse 17. Hey, good teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?
[00:22:34] And Jesus says, why do you call me good?
[00:22:37] He says, no one is good except God.
[00:22:40] And then he says this in verse nine, he starts to spit off some of the commandments. He says, you know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother. And then he made a statement, verse 20, that I think all of us that grew up in the church connect with a little bit. Well, teacher, I've kept those since I was a little boy, since my youth, because we all, not that we were perfect at them all, but if we look at the Ten Commandments, generally speaking, or maybe even some of the 600, we find in the book of Leviticus, for the most part, we look through those and we're like, yeah, I mean, for the most part, I've done most of those.
[00:23:21] And then Jesus takes it another step and it says, this Jesus first. What looked at him.
[00:23:33] Some of your translations say, behold him.
[00:23:36] Then he loved him and said to him, you just lack one thing.
[00:23:41] I want you to go and sell what you have and give that money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.
[00:23:50] He said, listen, you've done all the things since you were young, but I want you to understand that you can have heaven on earth now. But I want you to notice what got him to that mindset, to connect with this young man, to see behind even his request.
[00:24:06] And I know we have several people in here that like to like, maybe underline in your Bibles or you like to highlight on your iPad or phone. I want you to highlight that word in verse 21 in some of your Bibles. It's looking at him. Some of your translations, it says, beholding him. I like the word behold. And the reason why I like the word behold, it fits better with the Greek because the Greek word for our English word here, for behold, was the idea of as one would look at the constellations.
[00:24:38] Have you ever been in a. Like, an area where there was, like, no lights around you and you could just see the sky and you're looking at the stars and you're like trying to connect Orion. You're trying to connect the Big Dipper, you're trying to connect the Little Dipper. Like you're connecting all these dots. You're really intently observing. That's what the Bible says, that this the way Jesus was looking at him.
[00:25:01] He was looking behind the request. He was looking behind what he saw on the outside to truly look at this guy. Have you ever seen somebody look at somebody like that?
[00:25:13] Barry Smith mentioned something in the communion this morning that reminded me of when I was growing up. I experienced my granddad pre Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's.
[00:25:27] And once he got Alzheimer's, he was put in a nursing home. And the mindset, by the way, that I'm about to share you, is not good. I'm just letting you know that I know that you know that it's not good. Okay?
[00:25:40] But whenever we would go, the first thing that I would think was, this place stinks. And it had such a smell to it. And this odor that I just didn't enjoy.
[00:25:50] On top of that, I did not like seeing my granddad like that.
[00:25:56] And then we would go and I would tell mom and dad, like, he doesn't know what we're saying.
[00:26:02] And maybe it was my way. I was trying to cope with it all. I really, truly, just being frank with you. Didn't kind of want to be there. It was hard to see. It was hard to experience. And I was saying, he doesn't understand us. He's speaking things over and over again, the same three things.
[00:26:19] But dad would always say, no, he knows what's going on. There's something behind there that understands what's going on. And so I'll never forget that the three things he always talked about was he was always routinely speaking about being concerned, about worrying about the farm, what's going on on the farm. And because that's part of farming, there's always a next thing. He was always concerned about Martha. That was my grandma, well, how's Martha? Where's Martha? Where's Martha? And then he was always concerned about the kids, which were seven of them.
[00:26:50] And so I'll never forget my dad when he would make us sit in that room. And while he was repeating all these things hours on end, dad got down on his knee, grabbed Granddad's hand and said, hey, listen, I want you to understand, Daddy, everything's okay at the farm.
[00:27:10] We got it taken care of.
[00:27:13] Martha is doing great.
[00:27:15] In fact, Martha's right here.
[00:27:18] All the kids are okay. This is Dennis.
[00:27:22] Dean's okay. Joe's okay. John's okay.
[00:27:26] Helen's okay. I'm telling you, there's a lot of them. I could keep going, but.
[00:27:30] And I remember when he did that to him, this guy that I didn't think knew what was going on at all, tears started going down his eyes.
[00:27:39] You know, when I think about beholding somebody, that's exactly what Jesus was doing. He was looking behind what he experienced and what he was seeing.
[00:27:48] And this is a common theme from Jesus. You see it in Matthew 9:36. It says this. When he saw the crowds, then, he had compassion.
[00:27:58] It said, when Jesus landed, he saw a crowd and he had compassion. And we just read it in the text. He beheld the guy and then loved him.
[00:28:11] The second thing is this.
[00:28:13] When he start doing maybe more of a margin audit.
[00:28:18] What is margin?
[00:28:19] Margin, as one person put it, is that space in life between load and limits, between fatigue and vitality.
[00:28:29] And if you want advice on how to better manage time and margin, I am not your person, but I have come a long way. And I will say I've said no to some stuff recently, and it has really freed me up and freed us up.
[00:28:48] But the thing that I think about with all of us, as we look at our time and the importance of what we choose to make Priority. Think about Luke 10.
[00:29:00] Do y'all remember when Jesus gives the example, the Good Samaritan, and he points out that this one guy, this Samaritan, that he stops? But did you. You heard about the people that passed, right?
[00:29:17] It was two religious people and what we understand and the reason why they didn't stop, guys, yet they had a really good reason they were going to do religious things.
[00:29:30] Yet to Jesus, that was not a good enough reason to not stop and see the neighbor. And so as I was thinking about that this week, I'm thinking, man, if what I'm putting before God is my reason is just a good thing, my kids things, my stuff.
[00:29:50] I mean, here he is giving an example of even religious things that ended up getting in the way of a neighbor.
[00:29:59] And could it be that if we're not careful with our time, whether it's our kids, our family, or us, that what we're doing is we're filling our schedules up with so many good things, but maybe it revolves around us, maybe our kids or whatever it is, that we're not giving us enough time, not giving them enough time to have opportunities to serve.
[00:30:18] And so maybe we need to do a margin audit to get real about our time and our space. And here's the next part. This is where we invite people to the table, where the beast that we saw on the other side of the fence starts to shrink the moment they're invited to the table.
[00:30:36] You know, it's really interesting when you go through the Gospel of Luke. Did you know that it's the gospel that mentions the word save and salvation more than any other gospel?
[00:30:46] It's not even close, ironically, but I think very purposefully. It's also the gospel account that mentions the word table the most, too.
[00:30:57] Don't you think there's a connection between save and salvation? And table.
[00:31:04] Starting March 16, we're going to do our week of hospitality where we invite our neighbors, the non Christians, into our homes to have a meal.
[00:31:15] And so that way we can have that directness of contact, that continuity, but also we can have the opportunity to have multiplexity, where we connect spheres together.
[00:31:29] You know, you start to wonder, how in the world did the early church do it? We talked about it in week one. That was the most diverse group of people that put a church together.
[00:31:38] They did so without podiums and platforms and PowerPoint. And I told the early crowd, if you think about it, pews too, that's a lot of P's. But, you know, they did it without all of those things. Well, how in the world did they do it?
[00:31:53] They had the simplest of these two things.
[00:31:56] The message, which was Jesus Christ and him crucified the cross.
[00:32:01] And the second part was this.
[00:32:04] They had something that 99% of us in this room have, and it's a table.
[00:32:09] There's a true story of a lady named Rosaria Butterfield. She was a professor at Syracuse University. And what's interesting about Rosaria, she was very outspoken about two things. Number one, she was living in a same sex relationship, and she was very outspoken about that. The other part for her is that she was very outspoken against Christianity, that Christians are hypocrites. And one of the things that she tried to focus on in her, even her schoolwork was trying to expose the hypocrisy of people that follow Jesus.
[00:32:45] And so then there was this family, Ken and Floyd Smith, that invited Rosaria over to their house for a meal.
[00:32:55] And what ended up happening from her perspective, she thought, oh, this will be great. This will be good material because I can use this to talk about the hypocrisy of Christians. I can use this to kind of prove what I've been saying all along. And she said, oh, I'll accept your invitation.
[00:33:11] So she shows up at this house, sits around the table with their family, gets talking to Ken and Floy and their entire family. And as she does, little by little, that picture she had of them starts to shrink.
[00:33:26] And then what happens is she starts to really like them. They come over for another meal and then another meal. And then in 1999, she left her lifestyle. And in 1999, she left her viewpoint to.
[00:33:39] And what she ended up doing is becoming an evangelical Christian. In fact, she wrote a book about it that some of you may have heard of. It's called the Gospel Comes with a House Key. It was about her own story about how she began a relationship with God. I want us to think about this from our perspective. What can we do? Well, number one, let's open the door.
[00:34:00] Let's open the door, walk through that door, and then see what God is going to do.
[00:34:09] If you're here this morning and you might think, you know, I love this idea, and I'm kind of even like, Rosaria, I've been a little skeptical. Mine's not maybe been to the extent of her, but I've always wondered certain things. Would God welcome me back? Would God give me a place at the table?
[00:34:29] You know what I love about what we're going to be talking about in the next few weeks? Brandon and I are Going to be talking about the I am statements in the Bible. And I love that 1 in John 10 where Jesus, Jesus says this, I'm the door.
[00:34:41] And the door was a picture in that time of an opportunity. Just walk through the door. And here's what's neat. If you are here this morning and you make the choice to choose Jesus, and you walk through that door, here's what it says. There's a shepherd waiting for you in that field.
[00:34:56] You walk through that door, there's a shepherd waiting for you.
[00:35:00] But what I also know about Jesus indoors, the book of Revelation says this. This is the sense of urgency to. To that relationship with Jesus. He says he's knocking. He said, I'm knocking at the door.
[00:35:12] So our responsibility, knowing that is we have to also answer it.
[00:35:18] So maybe you've never answered that call. You've never walked through that door. Jesus has it open for you, ready for you to walk through, to shepherd you from here on out, helping you grow. So maybe you've never made that decision to put on Christ in baptism. Please do not let another day go by without making that decision today.
[00:35:37] There's also maybe some of you that we can relate to some of these things we talked about today and we think, man. I've kind of viewed myself from the standpoint, more of a citizen, not as a neighbor.
[00:35:48] And the idea of rights and ownership has caused me to miss people, to not see people the way I need to. I will tell you this, no matter what side you fall on or where you feel like you're at, if you come forward this morning and you request prayers, there are other people in this room that have been in the exact same boat and feel the exact same way. You are not alone. But I also want you to understand that if you come forward or maybe walk to one of the back doors and share your hurt and share your heart with one of our shepherds, you will receive such a warm welcome. You will experience grace and love. And it's not because we're doing anything special. We're just reciprocating the very hospitality that we all experience.
[00:36:28] So if you're here today and you want to take advantage of that opportunity to give your life to Christ this morning, or maybe what you want to do is to get your life right and to change how you view yourself or even view your neighbor, please come forward while we stand and we sing the song together.
