A Relentless Pursuit

Well, welcome to the Summit Church. My name is Jason Gaston and I'm the family ministries pastor here. It's amazing that whenever someone that is not Pastor JD gets up on the stage and the lights come on, the look of sadness that comes upon your face never ceases to amaze me, but it's me. Here I am. I want to give a special shout out to our folks over at the Blue Ridge Campus who have just completed their first weekend of doing Saturday evening services and Sunday morning services together.

That's huge. Right now at Blue Ridge and wondering if you should go to Saturday night service, the answer to that is absolutely yes. Get there. Now, today we're going to talk about the search for something that has been lost.

Okay? The search for something that has been lost. Let me just ask at all across our campuses if you feel like you are the type of person that constantly loses things.

Just throw your hand up right now. You constantly lose things. Okay, a good indicator of that would be if you are a parent, you have already lost the sticker to pick up your children and some of kids. Okay? That's probably a good indicator that that's you.

All right? I lose things. I lose things all the time. I constantly lose the TV remote at my house.

Okay? And when we lose the TV remote, we go looking for it, don't we? I can remember several times where I can't find it. We've torn out all the cushions off the couch, looked everywhere you could possibly find it, looked in the laundry room, and finally it ends up with me lifting up one end of the couch while my wife is on her hands and knees scrummaging underneath. And it's there that you found like 15 other things that you've lost throughout the year. Right? You're like, it's all there underneath the couch.

It's crazy. Maybe you've lost a wedding band and you spent endless amounts of time looking for a wedding band. Maybe you are a parent and you are still looking for your sanity that you have lost.

Okay? After raising multiple children and wondering what happened to a normal life. Or maybe, maybe this has culminated for you in the losing of a child in some capacity. Maybe you've been out in public and you have looked down and noticed that your child is no longer where you thought they were. That actually happened to me I have three kids. I have an eight-year-old named Holt, a five-year-old named Annie, and a three-year-old named Parks. When Holt was three years old, I decided that on Black Friday, after I got out of the deer stand, I would go to Lowe's. Now some of you guys have lost your man card.

That is the recipe to help you get back. Okay? Go deer hunting on Black Friday and then go to Lowe's. If you need help with that, our Alamance County campus can help you out.

Okay? I went to Lowe's because I thought it would be a great idea to take the kid out of the house with my wife after having family around on Thanksgiving So I was on the hunt for an air compressor. And so we go to Lowe's and there it is. I see it in the middle of the aisle and the back end of Lowe's.

It's the air compressor I saw on the ads. And I start to have a conversation with the sales associate who usually knows nothing. Okay? And I begin the conversation with him. I'm talking with him.

And what went on from like a two, three, four minute conversation probably ended up in somewhere around ten to fifteen minutes. And then I had totally forgotten that my kid was walking next to me. And I looked down and I noticed he was going to be gone. All right. Missing a child is one thing. Losing a child in Lowe's on Black Friday is a whole different deal.

Okay? And so I did what any good parent would do. I tried to play it cool. I'm like, oh, oh man. Hey, bro, have you seen my kid? He's like, didn't know you had a kid here. Which really scares me.

It means he's been gone longer than I thought. So I start walking up and down a few aisles. I'm starting to get a little bit more panicky. Anybody ever been in that boat before?

Okay? I'm starting to get a little more panicky. And then I caught a glimpse of him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. I started running full steam towards him because I had found him. And I started to throw my arms around him.

And then it was then I noticed that something about this picture wasn't right. You see, Holt was three years old at the time and he was potty training. And the kid had to pee. And he saw a toilet in the back of Lowe's and he said, that's where I need to go. So he pulled his pants down and he sat down on the floor model toilet at the back of Lowe's and thought, no time better than now.

Let's get this done, baby. What once was lost has now been found. Today we will be in the Gospel of Luke. Chapter 15, where we are going to look at one of the three.

I just went from a kid peeing on a toilet at Lowe's to Luke 15. Okay, we're going to look at one of the three parables that Jesus tells in a row about finding something that has been lost. You see, in Luke 15, Jesus is continuing a conversation with a group of people and he's continuing to unveil to them his purpose, his vision and his mission for coming to the earth through the telling of these three parables.

Let's read this together. If you don't have your Bibles with you to be on your screen. Luke 15, verse one. Now the tax collectors and the sinners, that's going to be an important piece of this passage and we'll get to it a little bit later. We're all gathering around to hear him. You see, Jesus had a knack for creating crowds and the crowds weren't always the type of people that we would normally associate with. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, much like most religious people like to do. We like to mutter about things.

Now, at this point in the story, things are already getting a little tense, okay? To welcome someone to your table was not just to sit down and enjoy a meal with them, it was actually a sign of acceptance. When you go throughout history and you read stories and you look in the scripture, the breaking of bread and the dining together around the table has always had significance to it and it's usually a sign of acceptance.

It's like extending your right arm and saying, I welcome you here. And the fact that Jesus was doing this with the tax collectors and the sinners was really ticking off the religious right. And in fact, what's happening right here is actually building off the story that Jesus tells one chapter prior in Luke chapter 14. You see, Jesus tells a story about a man who has prepared a feast around a table and he sends out an invitation to some well-to-do people, but all the people had something better to do. Well, the table has been prepared, the food is ready, let's just send out our people into the back roads and go out into the alleyways and the country way and get all of the riffraff and bring them around the table to eat and enjoy the feast. And then now, in Luke chapter 15, Jesus says, I am that man and these are those people.

Let's keep reading. He calls the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it. And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and he goes home, calls it a day. Life is good, found what was lost. Then he calls his friends and his neighbors together and he says, rejoice with me.

That's gonna be key a little bit later too. I have found my lost sheep. Now I tell you that in the same way, there will be many, many more rejoicing in heaven. Over one sinner who repents.

Then over the 99 righteous people who do not need repentance. You know, one of the great things I love about the reading of parables is that they usually don't need a ton of explaining. There's not a lot of hidden meanings in it because a parable is taking a spiritual truth and making it tangible for you and I to understand.

It's like every youth pastor's dream come true, okay? The reality of this story is this. We have a sheep that is lost. You have a shepherd who goes after it and you have a celebration that gets through. Now when you survey the Old Testament, you see some pretty intriguing things about the people's understanding of God as a shepherd. You have Psalm 23, the one that many of us hear at funerals and we hear quoted on things and put it on coffee mugs. The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want. Isaiah 40, verse 11. He will tend his flock like a shepherd and he will gather the lambs in his arms and he carries them close to his heart. This is the verse. That inspired every Southern Baptist Church's stained glass window, right? Jesus, the shepherd, hair blowing in the wind, sheep in his arms petting it.

That's it. That's the verse right there, okay? Ezekiel chapter 34, verse 6. God's actually rebuking the shepherds of Israel and this is what he says to them. He says, my sheep have wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill.

They were scattered over the whole earth and no one searched or looked for them. The shepherds were too busy worrying and caring about themselves. Now it's interesting, you think what shepherd would do that? In 2005, I read this, in 2005 in Turkey, 400 sheep plunged to their death after walking off a cliff. 400, they just walked off a cliff. 1500 of them actually just said, hey, I'm following that guy, let's go. 400 of them died, the first 400 to fall. The rest of them landed on top of them, it saved them. You know what the shepherds were doing? Eating breakfast. They were indulging themselves.

It was a $100,000 mistake. And you know, it's funny, in this Ezekiel 34, God makes that indictment on his shepherds, but then he gives this beautiful answer in verses 11 and 12. He said, hey, my shepherds aren't doing what they're supposed to do, so, for this is what the Lord says, I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so I will look after my sheep.

I will view them from the places that they are scattered. On top of that, the Bible has plenty to say about us being sheep, specifically Psalm 100, verse three, which says this, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Isaiah 53, verse six, if you grew up around church, we love to quote this verse a lot. It's a beautiful verse with great truth. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us turning to our own way, but God has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. There's a beautiful, beautiful truth here in that God has always been about the task of pursuing what belongs to him, even when we fall short. You see, Jesus shows up in this parable and he says, guess what? I am that shepherd and you are that sheep.

If you're taking notes today, the primary thing that I want us to see is that our shepherd pursues us as we wander in the wilderness. You know, one of the primary flaws of the religious leaders was that just like the early rabbis, they believed that a sinner had to seek God first. And when a sinner then believed and repented and conformed to the commands of the rabbis and the Pharisees, it was then and only then that they would be restored into God's favor.

But aren't we grateful, church? That that is not the way that God operates. You see, Jesus taught something completely different.

He says this, I do the pursuing and you do the surrendering. You see, the God we see in Scripture from Genesis to Revelation is one who loves despite. He's one who loves despite our sin. He's the one who loves despite our waywardness, despite our efforts, no matter how great they are or how great they are.

Or how terribly short they fall. He's one who loves despite our failures, despite everything. From the complaining under Moses. You guys remember the story in the Old Testament, the people were complaining about Moses's leadership. And they're like, we should go back to Egypt, the place where we just came from, to the rejection of God as king.

From the idolatry under the kings to the compromise under the Romans, God across thousands of years has pursued a stubborn people that we call the church. And when all else fails, he appears in the flesh, he knocks on the doors and he dines at their tables and he says, I've come for you and I will not let you go until I find you. You know, that's a beautiful truth that I don't want you to miss in this parable. Look at the end of verse four. Look at this beautiful statement that Jesus says about this parable. He says, he searches for the sheep until he what?

Until he finds it. You know, maybe you're here today and you're the sheep that's lost in the pain of a marriage gone bad. You need to know that your shepherd is pursuing you. Maybe you're joining us online, you're live streaming this and you are locked up behind bars. Or maybe you have a family member that is in prison or jailed. And you are wondering, could a loving God ever forgive the wrong that I've done? You need to know that he is pursuing you relentlessly.

Maybe you've lost it all in your business practice because of bad ethics or you lied or you cheated somebody out of money or you've been scheming money for the government for years. You need to know that your shepherd is pursuing you and he is pursuing you and he will not stop until he finds you. Number two, a little celebration would do us all some good. Now, okay, in case you guys haven't figured out, I'm a pretty loud person, okay? It's just the reality of my life. I'm not angry at you.

I'm not overly optimistic about life in general. I'm just loud, okay? In fact, I coach baseball in a league here in the West Raleigh area and I have parents tell me all the time that they can hear me from the parking lot on the lower field, okay? It's not that I'm screaming down an eight-year-old's throat. I'm just excited that the kid ran to the right base, okay? I'm just excited about that. I get excited about little things in life, man.

I get excited when my kid goes to the bathroom, not in his pants, but in the toilet, alright? I get excited about things in life, man. What jacks you up? Like, what gets you excited? What really just gets in your gut and makes you scream with joy?

What is it? Is it that your college team is in the top five in the country right now and you're pumped up about it and you see national title hopes? Listen, I'm an NC State fan. That's never going to be true for me, okay?

Maybe you're a bad guy. You're a basketball fan and you're like, man, my team this year, we got the five-star recruits and we're rolling. I can't wait for the season and then five games in when they lose to some D2 school. You're like, our season is over, right?

Like, what is it that jacks you up? What do you get excited about? Because a little celebration in life would do us all some good, would it not?

I mean, it really would. I recently heard from our college pastor, Dave Turner, that in the last four and a half weeks since move-in, 20 college students, okay? Catch this. 20 college students, not kids that grew up in church and said they were Christians for their whole life, right? 20 college students who were far from God have recently professed Christ on college campuses in Raleigh-Durham in the last four weeks, people. Four weeks.

Good news for you, okay? We're doing baptism starting next weekend. You want to talk to somebody about what it means to be baptized? You feel like the Lord's been pressing that on your heart to follow Him through obedience, through believers' baptism?

We would love to talk with you after the service and let you know how you can get plugged in with that. But the reason, listen, we don't celebrate numbers just for the sake of numbers. We're not passionate about numbers at the summit. We're passionate about people because we really believe that people are the mission. And the reason that I get jacked up when I hear that 20 college students have recently come to faith in Christ and 100 kids and students have been baptized alone this year already is because every person represents a story. And every story started as the sheep that was wandering in the wilderness and a beautiful shepherd that pursued them and restored them.

How do I know that to be true? Because I was once that sheep wandering in the wilderness. My parents didn't take me to church. We weren't bad people. We just didn't go.

I never willingly ever stepped foot into church on my own ever up to this point. Seventh grade rolls around. I got the hots for a girl, okay? Middle school romance.

You all know what I'm talking about, right? You're like, hey girl, you want to go out with me? Where are we going to go? Okay, I can't drive. I can't take you anywhere.

But my parents can take me, right? I got the hots for this girl. And she comes up to me and she says, hey, there's this thing going on at my church. This guy's going to be preaching or a speaker. She didn't use the word preaching. This guy's going to be speaking.

He used to be a chaplain for a collegiate football team. There's going to be pizza. You should come. I'm like, football, pizza, chicks.

I'm in. Let's go, right? It was that girl's invitation to me that got me in the foot of the door in the first place. What she didn't know was at that point in my life, I'd already broken into two houses. I was in the backseat of a police car when I was eight years old. The trajectory that I was on in my life was not leading to a great place.

It was leading to prison. And that night I showed up to a church for the very first time and I heard a guy preach on the sower of the seeds and the soil that it landed on. And I remembered for the first time thinking, my heart is hard. I'm a sinner in need of the grace of God. I am the sheep wandering in the wilderness and there is a great redeemer that pursued me. I stepped out in faith and she went after me and I saw the glory of Jesus for the very first time.

I know that to be true because that was me. You know, we use this phrase a lot around here at the summit. We've been asking our students in our student ministry this a lot. I asked you this several months ago when I stood in this pulpit. Who is your one? Who is the one person that you are pleading with God to save this year? Who's the one person that you are asking Jesus to save?

The one person that you know is the sheep wandering in the wilderness? That you are asking God to pursue relentlessly and go after? The reason we narrow that thing down to one is because so easily and so often we get caught up in this idea of movements. We are in a movement driven generation. We love the idea of movements. We love social justice. We love great causes. We love things that we can be a part of but we forget our place in it.

We love movements as long as everybody else is doing the work. You start with the one. Who is your one? Who is the one person that God has laid on your heart that is wandering in the wilderness? Is it your coworker in your workplace? Maybe it's the person on your team. Maybe it's the person that lives in the cul-de-sac that you can't stand.

Maybe it's the family member that you dread having conversations with over and over and over again. Maybe it's someone in your community organization. Whoever it is, who is the one?

Listen, and this isn't just an idea. I just got a text message last night after our services from one of our student pastors at our North Raleigh campus from a student that said, hey dude, do you have a Bible? And our student pastor said, yeah, why?

He goes, because I found my one and led him to Christ last night. Come on y'all, that's good stuff. Now, I think that a lot of us don't get excited about the lost coming to faith for various reasons but one of the reasons primarily is I think we've either simply forgotten the work of God in our lives or we don't believe that what he's done in the past he can do in the future. Now, I'm about to go on a little bit of a tangent, okay? And so if you're here today and you are not a believer, I am so pumped that you're here. We are glad that you're here. What I'm getting ready to go through is gonna probably be the primary thing you think why Christians are weird, okay? But I'm gonna go off on this tangent because I feel like I can't go through this without hammering this home.

It absolutely baffles me. That we can show up on a weekend for worship and be non-responsive to the great love that we have in Christ. That we can sit in our chairs or in our pews or whatever campus you're in, whatever type of seats you're sitting on, okay?

That we can come in, put our hands in our pockets and spectate. And watch. And never engage in the grace of God extended to us through Christ through rejoicing in worship. Listen to what happens in Luke 15. Verse five. He says, when he finds it, he, the shepherd, joyfully puts the sheep on his shoulders and goes home. And then he calls his friends and his neighbors together and he says, rejoice with me. For I have found my lost sheep. And I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over the one sinner who repents than over the 99 righteous who do not need to repent. Can you just catch something here for a moment? What's the domino effect of joy?

Just look at this. Joy starts in the heart of the shepherd and it trickles down to the church. Paul noted this in the New Testament and Jesus picks up on it as well. And basically what he's saying is it's out of his joy, God's joy, he extends grace to his people.

Nothing else on the face of the planet should thrill our souls more than the realities of the gospel. That he sought me, that he sought you when we were the sheep wandering in the wilderness. That the shepherd laid down his life and he came after us. It made us, it took us from death to life. Did you hear that? We're alive, church.

Why is it that so many of us live our lives like we're already dead? Augustine was an early church father. And he said, oh that thou would enter into my heart. Now I know some of y'all just urged it a little bit because Pastor JD wrote a book. Stop asking Jesus into your heart, okay?

Just listen to this, okay? He says, oh that you would enter into my heart and inebriate it. He means literally fill it to the brim. Overcome me. Take me over completely. That I may forget my ills. That I may be so overwhelmed with your glory, with your truth, with the beauty of the gospel that I may forget my shortcomings.

That I might forget my failures and I might be embracing you, my soul good. Listen, rejoicing, it doesn't start with us. It starts with God. God initiates it.

Worship is just our response to the great truths of who he is. Okay, so what we're gonna do might make some of y'all really uncomfortable and I want you to know that that's okay, all right? That's okay. But we're actually gonna put this into practice for a second, okay? Some of y'all are like, oh this is gonna be good. Some of y'all are like, I can't. He's gonna ask me to respond, right? To raise a hand up. You can even just lift up a finger, okay, right here. If that's you, that's good, all right?

That could be your sign of rejoicing. That's fine. I'm getting ready to read off a list of truths and these truths should cause our hearts to come alive because of the beauty of the reality of God. Okay, you can do a Chris Gaynor. Come on, come on, that's good.

All right, whatever it is you want to do, okay? We're about to do this right here. You guys ready?

Are y'all ready? All right, here we go, here we go. John chapter one, verse 12. Although I may have been orphaned, God now calls me his child. John 15, 15. I was once an enemy of the cross, but Jesus now calls me friend. Romans 5, one. I was once at war and at odd with God, but now I have peace and I've been made right through Christ.

He would one day lay down at the gate and take the bite from the enemy. He would lay down his life for his sheep to bring about their salvation. 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 27. Although you were once alone in the wilderness, in Christ you now belong to the body. Hebrews chapter four, verse 14 through 16. Alienation from God was your anthem, but now you have direct access to the throne of grace through Christ. Romans chapter eight, verses one through two. Condemnation is no longer upon you, but freedom is upon you.

Freedom is your song. Romans 8, 28. Did you know that God is working all things together for your good?

Did you hear that? Not a couple things, not a few things, not a thing here, not a thing there. All things together, not for your bad, not to hinder you, but for your good and his glory. Philippians chapter one, verse six. God has started a work in you and guess what, church? He ain't done. He's not done. Whatever the issue that's been going on in your life, he has started that work in you and he will not stop. He will not stop until it's been made complete. Philippians chapter three, verse 20.

Guess what? Your citizenship used to be as an alien in the far country, but now, oh now, your soul has a new citizenship with the king and his kingdom. 2 Timothy chapter one, verse seven.

Fear is no longer your MO, but now you have a spirit of love, a sound mind and power. Ephesians chapter two, verse 10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works. He is forming you. He is molding you.

He is making you to be the man and the woman that he is calling you to be. And when you hear those truths, what do we do? Yeah, we golf clap.

We should celebrate. Psalm 134, verse two. Lift your hands in the sanctuary and bless the Lord.

Some of y'all are like, lift my hand, are you crazy? Lift your hand in the sanctuary. Bless the Lord. Psalm 32, verse 11. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, oh righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. Psalm 44. Psalm 47, verse one. Clap your hands, all you peoples. Shout for God with the voice of triumph. We hear people shout and we're like, what's wrong with him? Ezra chapter three, verse 11. And they sang responsibly, praising and giving thanks to the Lord for he is good and his steadfast love endures forever towards his people.

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord. Now what I'm not saying, I'm not saying this, please hear me, okay? Some of y'all just sat in your chair and you're like, oh no, this could go terribly wrong. We need you to bring your worship banners and run up and down the aisles doing Zumba dancing, okay? We don't need that, we don't want that.

In fact, 1 Corinthians 14 tells us that there is order that should be had in the worship service. But what I am saying, okay, I'm just gonna step on your toes for a second. What I am saying, in the name of all that's holy and sacred, do something. Respond to the great love of Christ. Respond, don't stand with your hands in your pockets. Lift a finger, throw a hand up. Smile, do something because what was lost is now found. I got seven minutes, I got to roll.

Number three, we are better together. Now, if I were to ask you about what you perceive to be the significance of the lost sheep in this parable, we'd probably get a few different answers all across the room. That's all in my head. But what Jesus says the significance of the lost sheep is, it actually might surprise you, okay? The sheep that was lost wasn't significant because it was the president or vice president of a company.

Or it had done an incredible work for some local outreach team. The significance of the lost sheep was simply that it was lost. That's it.

That's it. And to be lost from something means you've gone away from where you were supposed to be. I don't know, maybe the sheep in the store, just a dumb middle school boy sheep who did something stupid that his friends dared him to do. Or maybe the sheep was a sheep that got some bad marriage advice from sheep number 73 in the sheep pen.

Decided to go out on his own and try some new things and now all of a sudden he's lost and he's up to his neck in sin. The reality is that the sheep was lost and alone. If you find your place in a place of isolation, if you find yourself in a place of isolation, it's probably a good indicator that you're not where you're supposed to be.

Okay? And this sheep was alone. Isolated and in danger. And it needed to be brought back.

But brought back to where? Brought back to the relationship with its shepherd and to the sheep. It's actually setting himself up for a serious showdown because Jesus is talking to two groups of people. And they could not be more different from one another. You've got the stuck up religious right who's the actual intended audience and then you have the tax collectors and the sinners. Now, the tax collectors and the sinners had no value in the kingdom of God in the eyes of the religious. They had no business at the table and the fact that Jesus associated them with him himself in their eyes was actually an indictment on his sinfulness. Why did the religious leaders think that about these people? It was because they did not follow the ways of God like they did. They did not obey all the rituals, all the laws and all the ceremonies. They lived heathen lives, they were stealing, robbing lives of free sexuality, all of those things.

things. And the history tells us that the tax collectors were one of the most hated groups of people on the planet. They were hardened criminals in the eyes of the Jews. One scholar says this, he says, in Jewish culture, tax collectors were formally cursed because they were turncoat Jews who had sold their souls to buy Roman tax-gathering franchises so they could prey on their fellow Jews. They were loathed in every single way. Synagogues wouldn't even accept their offerings. Their testimony would not even be received in a Jewish court. They were considered worse than the heathen themselves.

They basically took, a tax collector did, as far as we can tell, they took around 90% of the household income and sent that money back to Rome to fund the mighty Empire's army. Y'all catch that? 90%. You think you'd be ticked off? Like, I get ticked off during tax season. 90%?

I'm punching somebody in the throat, okay? These people were crooks. They were literally the modern-day version of Bernie Madoff. Like, Bernie Madoff was these men. Then on top of that, you've got another class of people called the sinners.

Now, this is big because it's not just a, bless their heart, he's just a little sinner. Like, that's not what he's talking about here. This is an entirely different class of people. Think slave traders and strippers. These people were immoral in their business practice, but then on top of that, it wasn't only their business practice, but they were socially not accepted. These were people who were born with deformities, had mangled faces, eyeballs gone, arms ripped off.

Think about the the beggar on the streets of Delhi. These two crowds could not be more different. One wears the button-up dress shirt, khaki pants, ties their 10%, they're involved in a summit small group, they comb their hair from left to right, and they use hair product, they drive a nice car, and they wear Sauvage cologne, and they know it. The other group? Could you imagine just for a second the stench around the table with Jesus?

Now, let me ask you a question. When you think about the church, which group of people do we have more in our mind? I think the reality of this passage is that most of us are more like the religious right than we are like the tax collector and the sinner.

We stand from afar and we mutter. How could we associate ourselves with this? You see, Jesus, listen, he is not after a people that fit our depiction of what the church should be. The kingdom of God is far greater than what we can imagine. Jesus is passionately seeking after you, and he's seeking after those in our communities that are orphaned, that are at risk, that come from a different racial background than you do. Who are unwed mothers, widows, strippers, alcoholics, drug users, adulterers, workaholics, thieves. They come from good moral families across the street.

His kingdom knows no boundaries and limitations. Why do we put them on them? You know, there's two different ways that we can look at community. I saw this illustration the other day from a buddy of mine named Brad, and it rocked me, and I want to leave us with this illustration today. There's two different ways that we can view community. The way that the world views community is something like this. You've got a group of people who come from different backgrounds, different ages, different races, right? And they unite around something. Let's get together, guys.

I don't know what it is that we get together on, but let's just say it's a sport team. Maybe it's a cause. Maybe it's something that's driving them forward. And they're huddled around it. They've got that thing that's identifying them. But there's two problems with this way of looking at community.

Number one, it's inward-facing. All they can see are the people that are in their group. Sounds a lot like the religious leaders. And you know what?

Here's the other issue with this. You know what the world sees? You know what the lost sheep on the hill in the wilderness sees?

Their backsides. I wonder if that's an indictment on the church today. You see, the reality, if I'm reading the scripture correctly, of what God has called his people to looks nothing like this. But God has called us to be a people that unite.

You guys go ahead. Let's show them. A group of people that unite, that lock arms together, and we are united around one thing. That's the centrality of our salvation that's found in Christ alone. That the confession of our faith is that Jesus is Lord.

But we are no longer a navel-gazing community looking more like a country club, but we are an outward-facing group of people living lives on mission, looking for the one. That means you no longer pull up to the stoplight in your city and turn your face away from the beggar. You smile at them. You show them the love and grace of Christ. It means you no longer walk to the other side of the hallway at your workplace because you don't like the person or their sexuality, but you look for them, and you run hard after them, and you pray that God would bring them to a place of repentance.

We can't see the one when we're inward-facing. God has called us to be a people that have set our hearts on him and our feet to the hills. Lord Jesus, would you make us that type of people? God, we long to be a people that unite around the beautiful truth that you are our shepherd. That you pursued us in our wilderness.

You laid down your life for us. You redeemed us, and you call us by name, and we are yours. But God, we repent of our idolatry. We repent of our greed and of our selfishness, and we want to be a people that turn our eyes to the hills so we can see those that you are pursuing as well. Make us that people for your name and your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.