Amen, amen. Y'all, what an incredible story of faithfulness and this is going to be something that helps us out today.
Hey, before we do anything else, we're going to be in a series called Make and Multiply. It's week two, but some of you guys might not have been here for week one or you forgot your book or whatever. If you need one of these books right here, you don't have it today, would you raise your hand across all of our campuses? And I know it's a little awkward, but there's a good bit of you.
If you can just keep it up, our volunteers are awesome volunteers at all of our campuses. They are going to get to you. All right, so just keep your hand up. And if you need another one, whatever, these are our guidebooks for the series. There's a place for you to take notes.
There's a place for you to go to your group. And so, man, we can do that as they are handing those out. Let me say this to you just quickly. I know that some of you guys, I don't know if you watch the news much or whatever, but I don't know if you realize there's an election this week. OK, and so some of you guys might know that. And I have been asked, hey, are we going to do like a politics sermon?
And here's the thing you got to know. Three weeks ago, I did the politics sermon. It was on godly leadership.
I just didn't say the word politics so that everyone could actually hear me and hear what I was saying. All right. So for us, it's very it's really this simple, man. We believe that the Bible is inspired by the Lord.
We believe that it leads to flourishing in our life. You take that book and you line it up with whoever you think is going to create policies that are most in line with that book. And we believe that's who you should vote for because it's going to trickle down into our lives, even in our civic arena. OK, and so, man, it's in our opinion, it's really just not more complicated than that. So that's the politics sermon roasted. All right, here we go. We're going to be in Acts chapter 16 today and we are going to be talking about salvation stories today.
OK, salvation stories. So there are five areas of influence that we believe that the Lord has given us just a unique calling in. His hand is just on us in these areas. And what we've been talking about through the deeper initiative, y'all, is that for the last two years under some of your brand new to this. So this is a little catch up for the last two years. Man, our church has been on this journey.
Hey, we want to invest deeply for two years in our relationship with the Lord and in our financial resources to set up ministry for the next 10, two for 10. OK, and we are coming to the very end of that two years now. And some of you guys have just gone all the way to the bottom. Some of you are brand new. We want to give you a chance to jump on.
But this is the reality. The deeper initiative was primarily about our heart posture, but it also had an outflow of it that was a financial commitment. And we said, hey, if we could set the table here over the next two years, God can do some incredible things in our church over the next 10. It's a little bit like a company that's trying to scale.
All right. It's like, hey, you've got to build the infrastructure and then you get a chance to see the scaling happen. And that's a little bit like what we've done over the last couple of years, raise the money for that infrastructure part so that we can scale the ministry wide.
Now, our church came together and we rallied around a vision of 30 million dollars over two years. And guys, we're in the two minute warning time. OK, this is this ain't the last lap. This is like you come around the last turn at Martinsville Speedway and there's a checkered flag right up there. I mean, it's the last straightaway here and probably where we're at right now is about twenty five million dollars of the initiative has come in two months left of the year.
There's a big end of the year component to that. And so I don't know what God's going to do. It looks like it might be a stretch, but we're going to pray that God does more than we can ask or imagine here because and here's the point, because we really believe helping get there is going to trigger some things in our church that are influential in these five areas.
OK, now I only go through them again. OK, we have salvation stories, missions, college students, chosen ministry and family ministry. That means kids, marriages, parenting, all of that. We believe these are the five areas where God has given us an influence. And I think if we open our hands, much like what we saw in that church video of the ridge, you know, right now, faithfulness creates a future impact.
You have no idea what it's going to be. They didn't know. They just wanted to do with their five loads of two fish, what God had for them next right thing. Open your hands and look what God has done with it. So today we want to talk about salvation stories.
All right. We believe that God is just he's he's given us an influence in this area. People are getting saved. We've seen that for 12 years now. Praise God.
I can't do that. Lord has to open the heart. But it's happening all around us. We saw over one hundred and sixty people raise their hand last week. Brother Pastor Clayton came preaching to say, hey, I've prayed a prayer to receive Christ. We've seen almost 2000 baptisms in the last 12 years.
And we have college students coming to Christ. Guys, I want to show you this summit system. I did that last service to Mercy Hill in Espanol.
This is our mercy on Espanol turned three years old two weeks ago. OK. Hey, 40. Listen to this. Yeah. Praise God. Forty of their people. Now, we started with about 30. OK, so you see what's happened.
Forty of those people are saved and baptized in the last three years. They've come to Christ. Now, this is what it's about.
This is what I want you to hear. OK, when we get in this, we're going to act 16, act 16. Salvation stories. That's what we're going to be today. This is the primary mission of the church. Is to see people go from death to life and then see them raised up where they help other people go from death to life.
That's it. That's our primary mission. We have to be so clear about this today.
OK. And I know this could even rub some people or whatever, but I'm going to tell you, we're going to shoot it straight. The primary mission of the church is not to feed the homeless. The primary mission of the church is not to end abortion. The primary mission of the church is not racial reconciliation. The primary mission of the church is not to adopt kids.
Now, let me ask you something. When people get saved because the church is doing its primary mission and they are going from death to life. What do you think happens in a society?
Awesome stuff happens in a society, right? But it's not the primary mission. We've got to be careful of mission creep. There is a primary thing that we're going after. And it is to see people go from death to life, from orphan to son, from in a pit of miry clay to having their feet on a solid rock. That is what our primary mission is. And that's what we're going to get into today. Here's the big idea.
God gave us the church, the mission of helping write salvation stories. Now, we can't do it. God's got to do it. I wish I could do it. I can't. All I can do is put the jars out, put the word out.
God's got to do it. But we get a chance to play our part and do our job in the mission. You guys know Bill Belichick, the famous coach for the Patriots or whatever. The one quote, the famous quote from Bill Belichick, do your job.
It's the greatest thing for a company, a football team, a church. We all have different roles to play. Right. We have different giftings, different wires, different passions. You guys aren't all preachers. And I'm not on the marketplace. All right.
You guys live in neighborhoods. You know, God's wired you up in different ways. Like, there are so many things that God has given us each to do.
If we do our job, then we have an opportunity, y'all, of seeing God do some amazing things and seeing other people go from death to life. Do you remember when you went from death to life? If you're a Christian. Some of you were a kid. I was a kid. I got saved in a Winn-Dixie parking lot in the front of my dad's truck when I was six years old after a Church League softball game.
You don't get any more Southern Baptists than that. OK, I'm just telling you right now. All right. Maybe you were a kid. Maybe you don't remember a whole lot about your life before that. You kind of have been I had this moment and it's always been like Jesus with me. That's a little bit of my story. Maybe that was yours. We hope that's a thousands of people's story for Mercy Hill.
That's what we've prayed for our kids at Mercy Hill. But not everybody's that way. Maybe you came to Christ in college when you were seeking truth.
Some of you guys right now at High Point at Clifton. Maybe you're trying to seek truth. Maybe you went out into the world and you saw that this is pleasurable for a season, but it turned into ash in your mouth. And you realize there's got to be more to life than this. Maybe you are like many of our awesome young parents.
We have a very thriving young church, young families. And here's what happens. I've seen this so many times. You're kind of like thinking you're a Christian until you start trying to teach your kids what it means to be a Christian. And you realize you can't teach them because I don't know if I really know. And man, we've done the whole church thing and we try to be good people, but there's more to it than that. And you know that. And then all of a sudden you realize maybe I'm not a believer.
And you go back and you're trying to, I don't, listen, I don't know the moment you went from death to life. But here's the thing. What happened in your life, that is the mission that we have to see that happen in other people's lives. And it is the primary thing in our church. It's one of those influences that we have. I think that God has given us a unique calling. Every church is called to try to make disciples. But it seems like this one area of salvation moments is something God has given us and we want to double down on that. And y'all, if we do deeper the right way and we can finish this thing out, I think we're going to see fruit long term in this area. Let me dive into an awesome story in Acts 16. It's a very, man, you're going to see this.
It feels run of the mill. But God is doing incredible things in it. Look what it says, Acts 16. So setting sail from Charles, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace.
This is the Apostle Paul. And the following day to Neopolis and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city in the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. We remain in this city some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside where we suppose there was a place of prayer. We sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. If you guys remember Paul's idea is you go to the biggest city in the region and you find the synagogue and you start to talk about Christ there.
But in this city, there wasn't a synagogue. And so he's figuring out where people are congregating to talk about God. And they're all sitting down by this river. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods who was a worshiper of God.
And this is so important. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized and her whole household as well. And she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.
And she prevailed upon us. This is, if you talk to church historians, a pretty revolutionary, revolutionary moment in the early church. And this is, this is a kind of a hallmark of Paul.
Y'all in a world certainly that denigrated and pushed women to the side. What you have is you have the apostle Paul who has many women that are elevated and they are doing ministry alongside of him in a lot of different ways. And we are very complimentary in church. What that means is we believe that the office of a pastor God has reserved for men. But what we don't believe is that God has reserved different giftings only for men. And that's a big distinction.
Okay. What we see here, I think is along, along the lines of the apostle Paul, that God has given gifts to the entire church. And all of us, men and women are to be leaders.
We are to be people who are getting after it for the mission. And the reason I said this about Lydia is because most people, most church historians will tell us that Lydia, it was kind of a big deal that she got saved. I mean, she was a big deal. She was a seller of purple. She was wealthy. She was probably a widowed or single. She was a business owner. And now she gets saved and God does different things.
You know, depending on who you're reading, God does different things potentially with her ministry. Now here's what I want you to see. This is what I love about this story.
You ready? Okay. I love this. This story, and this is why I chose it. In Acts 16, this story is an average run of the mill, nothing out of the ordinary, generic even, salvation story. And God was using it to change the world.
You know, God has used generic, average, run of the mill, salvation stories to propel the church for the last 2,000 years. And this is one of them. It's like, man, this just kind of, I mean, it looks, what does this look like on the outside? One pastor said it like this. This looks more like a Sunday afternoon picnic than it does a revolution.
Why? You got a couple of men, you got a beat up Jewish guy, a couple of men, a couple of women sitting by a river, but what's happening? Man, God's changing the world one life at a time. Listen, it's generic, it's run of the mill, church, it's our heartbeat. These are our neighbors. These are people that we love. These are people in our families. These are people that God has put in our sphere of influence to be able to share the gospel with. It's generic, but it's our heartbeat.
It's run of the mill, but it is part of the revolution of what God is doing in this world that Lydia gets saved. It's so simple. Man, they're sent. Okay, they're mobilized. They're faithful to share. And then God blesses. Actually, those are the three buckets that I want to talk about today.
All right, so the first bucket is this. They were mobilized for the mission. Look at verse 11.
So setting sail from Truss, we made our direct voyage to Samothrace and following day to Neopolis. Now, I want to try to build a point here out of context so it's a little bit less verse by verse for this section, but the context is here. I just want you to see that Paul was on a mission, and you and I are on a mission if you're a believer. Now, if you're not a believer, I don't know what the true north of your life is, okay? I'm sure you've made one. That's what it means to be a human.
You will make something in your life, something that you worship and go after. Maybe it's your kids. Maybe it's your marriage.
Maybe it's your job. I don't know. Okay, if you're a believer, what our true north ought to be is this, that we glorify God with our life, and a huge part of glorifying God is seeing other people come to know him. We are sent. Remember I told you I got saved in that Winn-Dixie parking lot, okay? You know what happened? The second I was saved, I was also sent.
There's no saved one that's not sent. We are mobilized. God has given us things to do. Now, one of the things I want to say about this is as we are going about our life with things that God has called us to do, we've got to remember that we make plans and strategies, but they're all subject to God changing, and they're all in his hands.
You can say it like this. Our plans are in God's hands, and I think that's important to say here. You know why? Because Paul going to Philippi was not in his original plan.
That wasn't what he was going to do. In Acts chapter 13, Paul and Barnabas are sent on a missionary journey. They go all over the world preaching the gospel. A bunch of people get saved, okay? Acts chapter 15, they decide, we're going to go back to those places that we preached, and we're going to see what God has done, and we're going to strengthen the believers. So that's the mission that they're on, and then Acts 16 comes along, and Paul is given a vision of a, they call it the Macedonian call.
Hey, come over to Macedonia and help us. This wasn't part of the plan. This wasn't what he was supposed to be doing, but you know what? He's following what the Lord is opening to him, and I wonder about us sometimes. Guys, I see Christians fall off of both sides of this, and I want to make sure.
This isn't the main point. I'm going to get back to mobilization. This is important for your Christian life. You don't want to be too planned, and you don't want to be unplanned. This is what happens sometimes. Some people, they don't even make a plan because God is in control. But other people make a plan, and then when God exerts control, they're like, no, no, no, I already made a plan. And many of us are that way. If you're type A, if you're driven, it's like, no, no, I've got my ducks in a row here.
God, I'm not trying to get off onto something else. This is what I'm going to do. And listen, I want you to know, I love plans. Paul loved plans. Paul had a plan every time.
Go to the biggest city, preach the gospel there, and watch it go out into the surrounding communities. He had plans. He had strategies. I have plans. I have strategies.
I've got three year this and one year this for family and for the church and all that. But at the same time, I've got to know that those plans are in God's hands. You know why? Because there's a million parts of the plan that even if I think I've planned well, that I have no idea how it's going to go. You guys know at Mercy Heal, a lot of times I'll talk about, you've heard me use this language, black and white areas and gray areas. You've heard me say that before, like, man, there's some things that are just we know and there's some things that it's OK to be debatable. Right. OK. So one of those black and white areas is that Kevin Costner is the best actor that America has ever produced. OK.
I affectionately refer to him as the K-man. OK. And, you know, Dances with Wolves for the love of the game. You ever seen that one? I know everybody wants to bring up Waterworld. Just forget about Waterworld.
OK. But I think about the reason I bring it up. Some of you guys may have seen the movie Open Range. OK. Open Range, Robert Duvall.
It's a Western actually a really good Western movie. Like every good Western at the end of the movie, there's a big shootout. But I think about this because Robert Duvall says to Kevin Costner because Kevin Costner is telling him how it's going to go. We're going to do this. We're going to do this.
We're going to do this. And Robert Duvall says in the movie is kind of a famous line in the movie. He says, this seems like you have this all figured out.
And Kevin Costner says, yeah, except for the part where we don't get killed. Now, I don't know if you've ever had a moment like that where you're like, man, I've got a plan. But you know what? There's a million pieces here that I can't control. And I just want to encourage you and I'm going to get back to mobilization here.
This is just a little bit of an aside. Hey, make a plan for adoption next year. Make a plan for foster care next year. Make a plan to be on a mission trip. Make a plan to try to take an area of your business into some kind of nonprofit endeavor to try to fund something that God has put on your heart. Make a plan for these things. Make a plan to start a group.
Make a plan to host a group. All right. But remember, man, our plans are in God's hands and we don't know exactly what he's going to do. And that's OK. That's part of following him. Right. We've got to be willing to move and be a little bit flexible when the opportunity for something kingdom wise comes knocking for us. OK, but let's get back to mobilization.
Look. So setting sail. This is my whole point. They were sent.
I know I'm building a little bit from context here. They went out. Acts 13. They go. Acts 15. They want to go back.
Acts 16. God calls them to Macedonia and now they're going again. They're sent. They're mobilized. We make a voyage. We're going to go to Neapolis.
So many people in our church are sent just like this. And we need to take joy in that. All right.
Man, one of our awesome families right here. The last day of deeper two years ago. Big financial goals, all that stuff. The last story from deeper that I heard. I was I was I was dead tired. We've been doing so many events and all this stuff. And the thing is over. It's buttoned up and I'm walking to my truck and an awesome family that I've known that you guys would know if I said their names. Many of you would comes up to me and they say, hey, can we can we tell you our deeper commitment? I'm like, man, I'd love to hear it.
The last one. I'm literally getting in my truck ready to go. And and they say, hey, we're going to we want to do a financial commitment. But what we feel like God has called us to the nations through what we've been preaching about through the through the deeper initiative. And do you know they're in South Asia right now? That family's in South Asia right now, two years later.
Man, Sharon, I got right here with the unreached. They were sent. They were mobilized.
You guys know one of your incredible college students here comes. OK, goes through our college ministry, does city projects and all that stuff, ends up going through our residency process here. Now she has been mobilized. She's in a different part of South Asia.
And because of God's divine hand, remember, we have plans, but they're in God's hands through his divine appointment. She has now gotten in relationship with some members of an unreached, unengaged people group. And she is studying the Bible with some of them, a college student from right here. They are sent.
They are mobilized. But here is the thing. This is what many of us do. I've been guilty of this, too.
What we think is, oh, yeah, there's preachers, there's missionaries. There's people that go out and do that kind of stuff. But I'm just kind of a normal run of the mill man.
Run a business. I'm just kind of this. I'm just kind of that. Well, yeah, you're Lydia. Yes, she was, too.
But yes, she ends up having a massive impact. The gospel came to Paul on its way to somebody else, and it looked like big missionary endeavors and preaching. And the gospel came to Lydia while it was on its way to somebody else, too.
My point is this. Every Christian is mobilized for the mission. Some of us are going to go to the nations. Some of us are going to go to our neighborhood. Some of us are going to cross oceans. Some of us are going to cross just right into that next workspace so that we can invite someone to church, tell them our story, sit down and read the Bible with them.
All it is all of it, depending upon how we are wired and put together. I want you to read. I want you to hear this. OK, Ephesians 2 10 is a bedrock verse in our church. And here's what it says. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Every single believer. God has put things in this world for you to do based on the way he's wired you up. Your passions, your past experience. Some of that's good. Some of that's bad. Some of that's hard. Your spiritual giftings that you got when you became a believer.
He's wired all that stuff up for what? So that you can walk in these works that he has for you to change the world one life at a time, to help write salvation stories. And this is what we're called to do. It ain't just a pastor. It's not it's not just a missionary. This is for every single one of us. This is the body of Christ.
Like I said earlier. OK, you don't have if all you had was body parts, if all of our body parts were the same and you put all them together. They were all the same thing. Everyone's an eye. Everyone's an ear. You wouldn't have a body.
You would have a monster. The body is formed when all of the things come together. And that's how it is. Every one of us, spiritual gifts, wirings, passions, history. And he all that's a mix. And now there's things that are in front of us.
Yeah. For some of us, you go on a mission trip. For some of us, you preach for some of us. We did a business really, really well.
And we leave things on the edges for our employees to be able to glean. If you understand that from the story of Ruth and Boaz, then we invest things. Hey, we we some of us are really good at one on one evangelism. Some of us aren't. Some of us are. We're all faithful. We need to be faithful to it. But some of us are just really good. You're anointed in this.
Yes. Spiritual gifting it. You can share about Christ. You can share your testimony. You can tell people your story. It's easy to invite people to things.
Man, I don't I don't know. Some of you have influence with your kids friends. Some of you have influence in your neighborhood. Now, what is it?
God has put you together in a certain way. And a certain way is to be mobilized, sent for his mission. Now, I've shared this story before.
I think for some of us that that might wonder if we are specially called, you need to hear this story. OK, so June 9th, 1973, the horse secretary lined up at the Belmont Stakes. Now, the Belmont Stakes was the long race of the Triple Crown. There hadn't been a Triple Crown winner in maybe 20, 25 years. And the country was very interested in this because secretary had a chance to win the Triple Crown by winning the Belmont Stakes.
But here was the problem. The Belmont Stakes, if you know anything about it, is the long race. It's a mile and a half. And so some horses can last when they're really hot and they're very fast.
But can they last for a mile and a half? And many people really believe the secretariat was not going to be able to do it. Hey, the horse comes out too fast. He's too hot blooded. He's too fast paced.
He's not going to be able to last. And some people even thought that disaster could strike. They were worried that secretariat had such a will to win that if he actually got behind in the race and needed to start fading because he couldn't keep the pace, he wouldn't stop. They thought his heart might explode. He might run himself to death right there on the track. Well, they lined him up at the Belmont Stakes. The whole country was watching June 9th, 1973, and the gun goes off.
And what many people who knew anything about it thought would happen is what happened and people thought it was going to be a disaster. Secretariat came out hotter than he ever has. He was flying through the first pole and the second pole and the third. And as he continues to make his way around the track, he's doing nothing but gaining more and more and more speed.
And people have their hands on their head. This is exactly what we thought was going to happen. Now, he either needs to fade and pull it back or we might be seeing a significant injury here from this horse because no horse can keep up this pace.
You know, June 9th, 1973 was a historic day though. You know why? Because Secretariat did nothing but gain speed all the way through the last pole. The big call was, Secretariat is widening now. He's moving like a tremendous machine. They thought it wasn't possible, but when he won the race, he had run a mile and a half and two minutes and 24 seconds flat.
I want you to think about that. How could he do that? Well, years later, Secretariat, when he passed away, they did an autopsy. You know what they found? A normal thoroughbred horse's heart weighs nine pounds. Secretariat's heart weighed 22 pounds. The doctor said, it's not pathologically enlarged. It's just huge.
That's what they said. You know why he could run faster than everybody else for longer than everybody else? Because he was wired to do it.
He was created to do it. And this is what I want to tell you today. You may be a CEO, a stay-at-home mom. You may be a pastor that's here on furloughs, some kind of way. You might be a missionary. You might be a business owner.
I don't know what it is. You might be a teacher, a nurse, whatever. You might be married. You might be single. You might be a teenager. You might be a senior citizen. I have no idea where you are.
Here's what I know. If you're a Christian, there is some area of your life where your heart is three times bigger than everybody else's. God has wired you up, Ephesians 2.10, for things that you can do. Now, my question for you is this. Are you hunting that down? Are you chasing that down?
God, what do you have for me? Are you serving in different areas so that you can see the one that begins to pop, where you feel that electricity of your wirings matching up with those things that God has out there for you? Many of you are talking about this in community.
I hope that you are. We are all mobilized. Secondly, we are faithful to the mission.
Alright, so we're mobilized. We built that from some context here. But let's go right back to the scripture because this is actually what it says. We sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. And the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was being said by Paul.
That is very important. They were mobilized for the mission, but they were faithful to the mission. And you know what the mission was? It was to speak the gospel in a way that then the Lord would empower those words, the Spirit would breathe on those words, and hearts would be changed.
And after, she was baptized. You've got to hear me again say this, y'all. I'm not trying to poke the bear. I'm just telling you that many churches get off mission. We call it mission creep in my world. And here's what we've got to understand together today.
So let me just say it plainly as I can. The mission of the church, its primary mission, it is not to feed the homeless. The primary mission of the church is not to end abortion. The primary mission of the church is not, you know, to adopt children. The primary mission of the church is not trying to solve every social justice issue, so-called social justice issue that's out there. The primary mission of the church is to preach this message so that people's hearts are changed.
Death to life, orphan to child, miry clay to feed on a rock. This is our primary mission. Now, when we are doing that well and people are getting saved, you meant all kinds of things in our society. Christians begin to be salt and light in the world. And that's awesome.
That's a good thing. Told you one of the five areas of influence for us is chosen ministry. That's adoption, foster care, issues of life, pregnancy network. All that's kind of in that.
OK, so we got we want to be very involved in much of this stuff. The primary mission is that we would preach this message that we're faithful to the message, not faithful to every single thing we could do, but to share the gospel. Romans 1 16 says this, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It is the gospel message that is the power. You say, well, what is the gospel message?
Let me tell you very plainly. OK, you and I are separated from God because of our sin. And you can't work your way back into a relationship with God because, number one, it doesn't really work like that. Our our works become pride. They become things that we're doing to earn something from God.
But number two, all the good works in the world don't erase anything that we've done in the past. I mean, just think about it. If you walked into a courtroom and they're like, hey, you're accused of stealing something. Did you do it? And you say, well, yeah, I stole something. But you know what? I've also helped a lot of little old ladies across the street. And I went and got me a little puppy from the pound and all that. And I'm trying to do the right thing.
And I recycle. OK, well, what would we say? We would say, what does any of that have to do with that? Like, I'm glad you got you know, you're trying to do whatever. But this this is what we're here for.
We're here for the theft. And what you've said is you did it. Your good works don't cancel out what you've done in the past. And you and I and our sin, we are separated from God for all eternity.
We needed someone to come and stand in for us. And that's what Jesus Christ did. The member of the Trinity, the son, the eternal son of God, he has come down and he's been incarnated into this world so that he could live life for all humanity.
And he did. And he never sinned one time at the end of his life. He could have reaped reward, but instead he laid down on a cross and he took the wrath of God. And he took death that we deserved in order that we could participate in his resurrection.
Three days later, he burst forth in a new life. And you and I have a chance through admitting our sin, believing in what Christ has done, confessing him as Lord, as being reborn into a new humanity through Christ. And that's a spiritual thing now, but it turns into a spiritual and physical thing for all of eternity in the new heavens and the new earth. Y'all, that is the message.
Jesus in my place. The primary mission of the church is to share that with people. Now, good works and things that we do, sometimes they can be signs of that. For example, our primary mission partner in terms of disaster relief is Baptist on Mission.
And one week after the Hurricane Helene, they had served, and many of you guys were on trips like this, a hundred thousand meals in western North Carolina. Is that awesome? Yes. Is it a testimony? Yes. Is serving a meal the gospel?
No. The gospel is a message that we share, that we tell people. You ever heard this kind of silly thing Christians say sometimes? Share the gospel at all times, use words if necessary. You heard somebody say that?
It's a little bit like this. That'd be like saying, hey, share with me your phone number and use digits if necessary. The gospel is a message. Now your life, I understand what's meant by it, y'all, and I've said that too. What's meant by it is our life can help open people up. It can be a sign. That's awesome.
We need to. But the message itself is what they were faithful to. Paul was faithful to share. I'm asking you, are you faithful to share?
You say, what do you mean? For some, that means, hey, there might be some relationships, literally sharing what I shared. Jesus in your place. Others, it might be your testimony. You might want to read the Bible with some people, or you might want to invite them in. Many Christians, it's like, dude, I want to invite somebody to church.
This church has changed my life. Invite them in. Somebody else will share with them. We do it every single time that we preach. We share the gospel very plainly. That's the mission, okay? Faithful to the mission. And the third thing we've got to see is this.
It's very simple. Mobilize, faithful, God blesses the mission. It is all for naught if God don't bless the mission. One who heard us was named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, selling purple goods. She was a worshiper of God.
That means she was seeking, y'all. It's like Cornelius in the book of Acts, also. There's people that, man, God is stirring in their life. That might be some of you here today. Somebody said, why are you at church today? You're like, man, I don't really know, honestly. I don't know. God's like, there's something going on.
That happens every week at every campus. I bet there are people that are like that. You're a worshiper. You're seeking. You're trying to figure it out.
Okay, what happens? The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said. Now, I mean, Christians love to debate this stuff. Are we free? Is God sovereignty?
How does it work? Is it salvation? Then every once in a while, you'll talk to somebody who acts as if they have the whole, our freedom and responsibility versus God's sovereignty. They think they've got it nailed. They'll tell you, this is this point of this. Man, I know exactly how this works and how our responsibility and God's sovereignty interact.
I would tell you, if you get around somebody like that, you might as well just go ahead and watch them because they're probably going to lie to you about other stuff, too. Nobody knows, man. What we know is, God has given us, we are responsible for our sin. We're responsible for our life. We're responsible to choose Him.
Some kind of way at the same time. Y'all, if the Lord don't open the heart, it don't matter. God's got to do to a heart what a flower does to the sun.
It opens up and drinks in the rays. God's got to do that because if He doesn't do that, it's not going to change. Now, look, we help write salvation stories. We do a lot of stuff, y'all. We're going to try to do things that help get people in environments.
But at the end of the day, God's got to move. If you have a teenager, tonight is First Sunday for our students. A student center is going to be rocking. We have hundreds of kids over there. We can throw the party. We can make it awesome.
We can tell the kids to invite. We can do everything we can do to make it safe. We can do all of that. But at the end of the day, you know what we can't do?
We can't change one of those kids' hearts. God's got to do that. We help. We share. We're going to preach.
But God's got to do it. Last week, y'all, or two weeks ago, I'll get more into this next week, but I'm just going to tell you, there was a spiritual moment. The fire of God fell in our college service two weeks ago, Tuesday night. I'm not even going to tell you exactly what happened until next week. We're going to talk about college students. But I'm going to tell you something.
The fire fell down from heaven, okay? Here's what we can do. We can take the kids on fall retreat. We can set something up for them on a Tuesday night. We can make sure that there's a band there. I can make sure we got a young guy that knows how to preach.
Open his Bible and share. You know what we can't do? We can't make the fire fall. We get ready.
We prepare the jars. We do everything that we can do. Listen, I'm thinking about Christmas. We can have Christmas at the Ridge. I pray to God, okay, that we can have Christmas at the Ridge. Because if we don't, we're going to have about 37 services here, okay? And that's going to be hard, all right?
So I'm praying we get into the Ridge. But we can do, I mean, we want to, why do we do big Christmas? We've been doing it. We do big Christmas. We want to do.
If I could do it all, I would do it all. I want lights. There needs to be an ice skating ring and polar bears over there, okay? And we need to have the biggest Christmas tree outside of New York City that you can ever see.
I want to do all of it. Why? Man, we want to make, because there's a lot of people at Christmas time that love the cultural part of it. They don't know. They're going to come to an event. Yeah, they're going to hear the Christmas story in the Bible.
But then you know what? Well, let me tell you a story. There was a guy in our church three years ago. They came to Tanger for the first time. They've been in church their whole life, not a stream like ours. They had never really heard expository preaching. They had just started hearing a little bit of it from a different preacher in our area, great preacher in our area.
They came to the Tanger Center and they heard an expository sermon for the first time. And for whatever reason, God grabbed them. It's three years later. You know what? They're saved. They're baptized.
They're rocking and rolling in the community group. And now they're starting to take on some serious endeavors in terms of some ministries that we have coming up right here. We can do the lights and the Christmas tree. We probably can't do the polar bears, okay? But we can do all that stuff. You know what we can't do?
I can't grab that dude's heart. God has to do that. So what do we do? We mobilize.
We're faithful to the mission, the words of the gospel message. Don't water it down. Man, don't hide behind it.
None of that. Man, we're not milling off about it. This is the hope of the world. But at the end of the day, we've got to beg God.
God, you've got to fall because if you don't move, none of this stuff matters. So here's what I call you to do. Y'all play your part in God's mission.
That is the application for this weekend. Play your part in God's mission. Hey, if you're not a Christian, there's not a part for you to play yet. So the first thing you need to do is get on the team. The first thing you need to do is go from death to life.
I've shared the gospel as plainly as I can today. You've got to figure out a couple of things in your life if you're not a believer at one of our campuses. Is there a God? You just walk outside and you look around and you've got to figure that out. If the answer to that is yes, then you've got to figure out how do I interact with Him?
Because in your heart, you know this, you're pretty jacked up. You're pretty sinful. If there is a God who's holy and righteous, how am I going to interact with Him?
It's not going to be through your works. There's a preordained way that He has prescribed that we come to Him. Y'all, it's His world. We are His creation. And He has told us to come through Him, come to Him by the blood of His Son. I pray you'll do that today. You can pray that prayer today with us. And if you do or you were one of the hundred and something that last week that prayed, hey, you know what, text baptized to 87217. We're going to be baptizing at our Christmas services. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a Christmas service with baptisms?
Well, we are seeing this concept of going from death to life. Man, we want you to get baptized at the end of this year. I pray that you will. Christian, what about us? Who do you need to share your story with? Who do you need to invite? Who's coming to your mind? God's put people in our heart.
Somebody you work with, somebody you coach with, and somebody you're in a relationship with on the ball field, your kids, some of their friends, teenagers, friends, some of your college students live on your dorm. I don't know. Who's God putting on your heart? And then the last thing I'll say is this. Y'all, go back to that story with the Ridge, okay?
They opened their hands, not knowing what God was going to do, and look what has happened. And that's the moment we're in now with Deeper. Guys, we're not there yet. We got a little ways to go. But what I'm praying is that many of us would say, you know what, I haven't been here for the whole thing, but I'm going to jump in. Or I've been here, and I'm going to be faithful to do what I said.
That's where my family's at. Two years ago, we made a commitment. It was big for us. And it's going to take us all the way down to the wire to do it. But others of you, God has blessed in incredible ways over the last couple of years. And you have an opportunity to sow into. It's right now faithfulness. Man, you know, things like the Ridge, things like our staff, things like they all kind of work together as the machine that helps.
And seeing people come in, it helps life change happen. And so I pray that you'll make an investment in that. All right, let's pray.
Father, come before you now. We pray that you'll blow on this. God, we're going to put our hands out. We're going to put the jars out. But we need you to blow on it. And Lord, I just ask, God, that you would make our church give us a legacy, give us a heritage of just thousands and thousands of people in our community, tens of thousands of people in our community, come into faith here and through churches that we plant. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
