The Unveiling

Amen. Praise the Lord.

Praise God. Glad to be here with y'all. My wife and my son, Deuce, will be coming a little bit later.

They're running on Mexican time, which we're Mexican, so you know, my African American brothers always say CP time, Mexican time, kind of same thing. You know, we kind of just contextualize to the rhythm of wherever we are, right? My two daughters are back in Kansas City with family, and so I'm so privileged, man, to be with y'all. I'm a little old school, so can y'all do me the pleasure of standing with me as we read the Word of God? If you have a physical Bible, I don't know if y'all remember these things, but a physical Bible, 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 8, that's going to be our text. If you're new school and you got a device that you type it in, 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 8 is where we're going to be at this morning. The title of the sermon is The Unveiling. It's identifying and addressing three blind spots in evangelism and discipleship, and man, I just have a heart to see saints in action with gospel stewardship, sharing the gospel and themselves with saints and sinners, and we'll unpack, I think, how Paul modeled that for us to catch cues from on how we can literally live out this by the agency of God the Holy Spirit who lives inside of us. And so as you've turned there, I want to read the passage, and then I want to pray.

1 Thessalonians 2, verse 8 says this, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us. Now let me run it back one more again. Run it back one more again in Spanish as otra vez. In the Queen's English, it means I'm going to repeat the affirmation statement that was just mentioned previously.

So all that to say, let me run it back one more again. Here it goes. 1 Thessalonians 2, 8, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us. Let's go before the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, what a joy it is to be gathered with the saints. What a privilege it is to unpack the truth of your word, which is timeless. And Holy Spirit, I pray that you would leverage my heart to be nothing more than a microphone used to amplify your word and your truth to the hearer on this day. And it is my heart's desire that you would mobilize each and every one of us, regardless if we know you or not, to focus our attention on the cross of Christ and the work that was done on our behalf so that we can share this unique, powerfully packed message of the gospel with those who are around us that know not the affections of our God or that are immature in this faith called Christianity. So Lord, we'll be careful to give you the praise, honor, and glory. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. So I know we would all agree that there was a sense of urgency in regards to the need of sharing the gospel message. But then at the same time, there's that tension that we have of just doing life. I mean, we have task lists, we have deadlines, we have stuff we have to get done, we got to run errands. Half of us got to pack up half of our kids in one vehicle and take them to gymnastics. The other got to go to soccer. The other got to go to football.

The other got to go to art school. Whatever it may be, life is a reality and there's things that we have to get accomplished if we're going to be good stewards of our day. Often we are burning the candle at both ends and we're living in a rhythm of burnout and we don't even know it because that's the normalcy of our everyday life. And the whole thing is that when we're moving so fast and we're caught up in the rhythm of life, it's easy to forget the reason why God has called us to the cross of Christ to embrace His work in our place and that is to go out into the world and do life, but while we're doing life, make disciples. And if we ever divorce the reality of the gospel message from our discipleship making, we're not making disciples. And so there is this reality of getting recalibrated to the heart of God to have a sense of urgency to unpack the gospel message wherever we go.

I have a conviction that every believer is a missionary and every piece of ground that you walk on from the college campus to the grocery store to everywhere in between, that is your mission field. And if that's the case, then we have to have this urgency to see the immediacy of the lostness that is surrounding us. And when we forget that and people are not in our peripheral because the busyness of life is holding us hostage, we ain't worried about their eternal condition.

And so we lose that urgency. And I believe that that puts three blind spots in the normalcy of our everyday life that we're going to unpack through this passage today. So if there is a thesis statement, if there is a filter I want us to grapple with as we work through this passage, it's this. Our hearts will be more prone to share the gospel with saints and sinners when we get engaged with our context, give eternal contributions of ourselves and our Savior and grieve every day over the spiritual condition of others.

Now that's a lot, so let me run it back one more again. Our hearts will be more prone to share the gospel with saints and sinners when we get engaged with our context, give eternal contributions of ourselves and our Savior and grieve every day over the spiritual condition of others. Now the reason I say the gospel is needed for both saints and sinners is because that's another conviction I have. Because I'm prone as a believer in Jesus Christ to be swayed towards what I call self-induced legalism, which means I will put this law on myself that nobody else gives me.

For example, I'll be very honest with you, if I set my alarm to wake up at 5.30 to get up to have my cup of coffee, to pray, and if I sleep until 7, I naturally wake up feeling like for that hour and a half I've been living in sin and God is displeased and there's disconnection with me and God. That's self-induced legalism because the gospel reminds me that me, who was a dead sinner, was given the ability by God the Holy Spirit. As I heard the gospel proclaimed, when I heard the message that I was born dead in sin, separated from God, illegitimately spiritually, I was not a child of God spiritually, though he was my creator. That was the condition of my reality because Psalm 51 5 tells me that while I was being formed in my mother's womb, guess what was present?

Not just my organs, sin. Sin was already woven into the fabric of my genetic makeup. Psalm 58 3 clearly tells me that from the womb, the wicked come forth speaking lies.

So all of our native language is lying. Nobody had to teach us how to sin. It's natural because like what the old boy in the world, J. Cole, said, we're natural born sinners.

That's the reality of who we are. And the gospel puts us up on game that that's who we are, but then it contrasts that with the righteousness of God. But then it doesn't just highlight the righteousness of God. It says that Christ himself, who was fully God, made the willful conscious decision to step out of eternity into time, clothe himself in human flesh like we're rocking our garb today. And he added to his full deity, full humanity, uniting the two natures for all of eternity so that he could live all of the in obedience to all of God's commands that you and I could never do.

Nobody on this side of eternity could ever live fully with full obedience to full commands of God. But not just that, that he would get up on a cross in the substitutionary place of sinners like you and I and become a sponge to absorb the totality of the cup of God's wrath down to the last drop in a matter of three hours. He took my eternal sentence in three hours on that cross. And then he was buried and then he resurrected literally visibly and physically three days later and he walked amongst witnesses who saw him. He chopped it up with them.

He told them what the next cue would be and then he went up to be with the Father. He is interceding for us today and we await that literal, visible, and physical return when he cracks the sky to come back for his bride. That's the gospel message.

And I need that every day. But when we talk to sinners, they heard, well, Jesus is this jackpot Jesus for a pie in the sky, and if I need a job promotion, he's gonna let me make it rain if I say my prayer the right way. If I give enough tithe and offering, then I'm gonna be on Jesus' good side. He's one of many options that God is like a cake and Jesus is one slice of the cake.

Absolutely not. The gospel says we're in complete opposition to those false philosophies and false ideologies that have been conjured up in the minds of sinful human beings. And so that reality is what needs to be unpacked to both saints and sinners on a daily basis. So that's just my mozzarella sticks and the artichoke shrimp dip for what we're gonna get into this morning, right? That's the appetizer. So here's the blind spots.

Blind spot number one. Here's the real talk. We are disconnected. We're disconnected.

We're disconnected in two ways. There's a spiritual disconnection and a physical disconnection. The spiritual disconnection is the gospel highlights is this reality. We were once, according to Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1, 2, and 3, when we were dead in our sins separated from God, we were a part of this worldly system that is being orchestrated by the prince of the power of the air who is the master conductor himself, and that's Satan.

And he leverages the sons of disobedience, which in the Greek to English literally means those who refuse to be persuaded by the truth of the gospel. He allows them to leverage that world system to suck us in to living a life of complete selfishness and contentment away from God. So the reality of that condition is what we were once in, that's what every human being outside of Christ has been born into.

So there's an immediate disconnection from conception. And to the time we are born and to the time we die from God, we are disconnected all because, not of race, not of socioeconomics, not if you're SEC or ACC, it has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with sin, that we inherited and we are participants in playing out on a day-to-day basis. But praise be to God, when we heard the gospel, and the Holy Spirit supernaturally caused us to be made alive in Christ, which is what Ephesians 2, 4 through 10 tells us. We're saved by grace, through faith, not of our works. And the reality of that now sets up a connection with God, but a spiritual disconnection from the worldly system we were once a part of. And that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing, because now through Christ being the bridge, we can now reach out to those who were disconnected from God through the gospel ministry and bring them, if you will, into the position where they can now be confronted by the reality of the cross. But there's a physical disconnection that that spiritual disconnection leads to when we are now in Christ, there's this level of comfort.

We get a little bougie on them, man. We think we too good now for the people we used to be around. And early in our walk we have the tendency to be like, I ain't on that no more.

Like, I don't need to pop bottles, I don't need to do this, or I don't need to cheat on my taxes. And we begin to express our convictions, but sometimes they may come off condescending. And to be honest with you, look, we're going to offend sinners when we live the gospel and proclaim it with our lips and our lives. That's why Paul said in Galatians 5-11 that the cross is an offense. The reason the cross is an offense is it removes every brownie point you think you could stack up in the eyes of God to earn salvation. The cross tells us you can't work to earn the right relationship with God.

You have to come as a sinner saying, I'm guilty, I need the plea bargain that Christ is offering me right now to say I'm fully guilty of my sin and I fully accept what He did in my place that I could never do, add or take away from, in order to be brought into a right relationship with God. So when we get disconnected physically from that world, we get in the Christian bubble and we feel comfortable around believers. And we're uncomfortable around non-believers. And we don't know how to engage with them as much, and then there's that tension of no longer having a urgency to share with them the Gospel. So rather than being swayed into a Christianized world where our fluency is now Christianese jargon that they have no idea what we're talking about, what I love about this passage is it puts us up on game and that Paul wrestled with that same tension. And Paul did two things in order to get engaged with his context.

So because we're disconnected, that's the blind spot. But the addressing is let's get engaged with the context where God has us. Here's what Paul did. One, he forced himself to be around non-believers so that he can stay in the conversation with Gospel proclamation. He would go to the synagogue where the religious Jews were, hit them off with the Gospel. He'd reason in the synagogue for weeks until they tried to murder him or kick him out. And then when they got done with that, he would go marketplace to the Gentiles. He went wherever sinners were in order to unpack to them the glorious truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But the second thing he did is not just stay in a conversation with the world, that when God would save individuals and bring them to the knowledge of Christ and cause them to be born again by the agency and the ministry of God, the Holy Spirit, guess what Paul did? He stayed in community with those who embraced Christ Jesus. So there was that balance that we must need. Because sometimes we wrestle with, I'm just going to go full blown into the world and I'm going to isolate myself from the Christian community.

That's not healthy. God did not save us in order to become isolated. God has simultaneously always existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God's very nature is community. So He didn't save us to live in isolation. He saved us and created us to bring us into His community. So that we as the body of Christ can live in community together and do life together, both on this side of eternity and throughout all of eternity in the presence of our God. And so now what Paul says is, not just going out into the world, but not just staying clicked up in community, but both. Because eventually I want to see these people come here. And then I want to mobilize these people to go there so that back and forth, back and forth, we're seeing more people brought to the knowledge of Christ to receive salvation. So looking at this internal disconnection, we got to ask God to provide us with a desire to engage with the non-believing world.

This is what Paul says. So being affectionately desirous are you. That phrase affectionately desirous is what I call pregnant.

Like imagine a lady who is 10 months pregnant and her due date was three weeks ago and she's one sneeze away from dropping that bundle of joy wherever she stands, right? Like that's the reality of how just enormous, not the lady, but enormous this passage is packed with truth. So that phrase affectionately desirous, it means this. It means to have a strong desire to be with someone that you're discontent until you're with them. And in the Greek it's written in what we call the present tense, which means this is an ongoing desire. It's not just a one time thing like, hey, let's get it in man and we spent two hours together, great catching up and then I'm on to the next one and I won't talk to you for another two years.

I don't really don't for real, for real need to be around you as much no more. It's not that, it's this continual pursuit of putting yourself in the intersection of life with that person that you desire to be around. But in addition to that present tense, it's written in what we call the middle voice. The middle voice is this internal desire and a willful action that matches it, that we have such a strong desire that it motivates us to do something, right? So it's that consistently putting myself in the intersection of rhythm of life with that person so that I can consistently be around them. This word is packed with emotion.

It was used in two ways in the then known world. It was used to be imprinted on the headstone of children whose parents just wanted that child back. This said, you're gone too soon. Oh, I desire to hold you again. I desire to eat lunch with you again. I want to walk you to school again. I want you with me and I'm discontent because now you're gone forever. So that was one usage of this word.

That's how strong it is. But the other use is a mother who desires intimacy and connection with her newborn baby. As I said earlier, I have two daughters, a 10 and a six year old and God blessed my wife and I with a baby boy last October. So he's nine months old. His name is Damon Junior, but we had to give him a hood nickname. So that's my homie Deuce. So we call him Deuce. And the crazy thing about Deuce is this, when he was born, I watched the most amazing thing take place after the birth situation. And so with that, the nurses and the team ministered to the needs of my wife and they were cleaning Deuce off and immediately my dude got street cranked because they put a Scully on his head and I'm like, I gave him dap and was like, that's my G. And they put him in a diaper, wrapped him, and then they put him on the chest of my wife and they laid skin to skin. They dimmed the lights, put some nice serene music on, kicked everybody up out that piece except for my wife, Deuce and I. And they bonded. They fell asleep at the same time. Their breathing patterns matched and I felt two types of ways at that moment. I was like, one, how can a brother kind of get in this thing?

Cause I want to experience that too. You know, I'm like the outside of like, ah, I don't want to mess it up. You know, men are prone to mess up moments like that.

You know, we're just clumsy man. And the second thing is I'm just like, I'm just enamored by the reality of man, this is beautiful. So after the hour was over, the nursing staff came in and they continued to minister to the needs of my wife, preparing her to help get ready to nurse Deuce. And Deuce at this moment is woke up, he's frustrated, he's taking shots at the nursing staff, like throwing bows. And again, I fell two types away.

One, I'm a proud dad, like this is my dude dawg, don't take that. But then the second time I'm like, okay, calm down G, you got the rest of your life to fight people off, man. Like, don't show all your sin nature right now, right? And so they wrap up Deuce and I'm like, can I hold him? And they're like, absolutely. So I hold him and I'm like, man, what's good little homie? Like, that's how I literally talk to my kids.

I'm like, what's good homie? Like, you my G dawg. Like, man, I'm your dad. And I began to plan out my homie's life. Like just two hours before he was born, I was like, nah, man, I'm going to raise him in an environment where he's going to have the ability to make rational decisions and I ain't going to do what was done to me. And man, I'm sitting there like, dawg, you're going to go here, you're going to do this.

Everything I said I wouldn't do, now I'm doing it, right? And my dude won't stop crying. And I'm like, come on, homie, like, it's me, dawg, it's your dad. Look, man, like, he's like, ah. I mean, dawg, don't swing on me, man.

Like, what's wrong with you? And my wife says, Damon, which is my real government name, she had a right to call me that. She was like, Damon, let me hold him. And I'm like, girl, go to bed, man, you had your time. It's my son.

Can a brother have his Mufasa Simba moment with my son? Like, go to bed, give us some Vicodin or something. You know, like, I'm like, eh. And she's like, Damon. Now, when my wife says these, when she says this phrase, for real, for real, I know my wife is for real, for real.

She's a hood chick, all right? So she's like, Damon, for real, for real, give me dues. Now, in that moment, I had two options. I could just run out the hospital and it's just me and him for the rest of our life.

We're going to join a circus or something, homie, like, we're going to make it happen. Or I can surrender him to my wife. And this boy is throwing a fit. And I'm like, all right, babe. So I hand him over to Alicia. As soon as her fingertips touch this brother's swaddling clothes, guess what happens? This brother goes, ah.

He chill. He locks eyes with Alicia. She begins to nurse him. Now, in that moment again, I felt two types of ways. I'm like, number one, how are you going to do a brother like that, dude? After all we done been through? You going to turn your back on your dad? That's messed up, brother.

Product with son already. I mean, it's just like that whole thing, right? But then I asked my wife, there's going to be a dumb question. Forgive me, I'm a man.

So I think that gives me a pass to ask this. Like, did you miss him? Did you want to be with him? She said, yeah, I did. And I'm like, it's amazing to me that in the time you had that you bonded with him, that it was so intimate, it was so precious, it was uninterrupted that he equally desired you the same way.

They affectionately desired each other. That's what Paul is saying in this. This should be our posture towards those that God has called us to reach with Christ, is that we should desire to be intersected with them, to consistently make gospel investments in their life. To those who are walking with Christ already, this is what our desire for community should be like. That, man, my week is discontent. Like, I'm befuddled, man, by all the things that I got going on.

I need to connect with the body of Christ to get acclimated to the rhythm of community throughout the week, not just on a Sunday or a Saturday. So we have to have balance and stewarding our time with people. So when we find ourselves in these intersections, that kind of gives us another blind spot. That second blind spot is we're dichotomized. We're dichotomized.

So we're disconnected, but then we get engaged. But when we get engaged, now we have to wrestle with this dichotomy. Dichotomy is this. We will either, A, give the gospel and withhold ourself, or give ourself and withhold the gospel. It's one or the other. We force this natural dichotomy. But what Paul shows us, and what God is calling us to do, is that when we're with them, when we have that time, when we have those precious moments, we need to give eternal contributions of ourselves and our Savior.

So it's a both and, not an either or. See, relationships are risky, and we've been hurt. Every single one of us will admit that.

We build these walls of self-preservation that will only allow people to get so far until we become vulnerable, and we want to stack these bricks of self-preservation so that they cannot penetrate our heart and hurt us like other people have done in the past, and like how we have done other people as well. So we force this dichotomy. I'll share the gospel. I'll tell them they're a sinner and they need Jesus. I'm okay with that. But share my life and my struggles?

I don't know about that, bro. That's a little too much. Or it's, I'll share my life with people, but I got to tell them about the cross? I don't want to offend them.

I don't want to jack up our relationship. So it's that dichotomy, man, that we wrestle with. Our world needs to see God at work in the lives of His saints' present tense. One thing I consistently challenge people with and become vulnerable when I preach is that we need to stop the days when we only talk about before I was saved sins and when I was a babe in Christ's struggle. It's the reality of, no, I still sin and I still struggle, and this is how God is still working on me.

When the world sees that, they're gonna be like, okay, there's some saints that keep it 100, which means to be authentically transparent. So it's like, okay, so your God is working on you. That's why we taught my daughters this song that my mama taught me when I was a little boy coming up. It says, he's still working on me to make me what I ought to be.

Took him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth, and Jupiter and Mars. But how loving and patient he must be, because he's still working on me. He reached into the depth of the hood and saved this dude when I was 15 years old, and I've been walking with him for 19 years now by his grace, but here's the deal. 19 years later as I stand this very morning, he's still working on me. He sees the struggles, he exposes my sin when I'm in the Word, and he still loves me the same.

And our world needs to see and hear that. No longer should there be the facade Christianity, which says everything is perfect, everything is right, that's not real life. Real life says now everything is still jacked up, but there's coming a day when sin is no longer going to be a wrestle. There's coming a day when pornography is not going to be a tension.

There's coming a day when molestation is no longer going to scar me. There was going to come a day when I'm with him and sin is not there, and you can be with him and sin not there if you embrace the reality of Christ. So Paul felt that same tension, and his response is what we can put into practice. This is why he says in our text, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves. That phrase, we were ready. In the Greek it's the imperfect tense, which kind of sheds light on a past action that was reoccurring. So it was a consistent, like if you watch a movie and you put it on replay, it's that repeat, repeat, repeat.

That's the reality. Paul is saying we were always ready, and you know you can track with us. When we were with you, when we were with you, we consistently did this. We consistently shared the gospel and ourselves, but it's in the active voice, which means this, that Paul and his team made the conscious, willful decision to repeatedly do the same action over and over again. That when they were connected in rhythm in life, we gave the gospel, gave ourself. Gave the gospel, gave ourself. Gave the gospel, gave ourself. And if I could translate that, we were ready, I don't think that's a good translation in English. I think a better translation would be, man, we took delight in doing this. It gave us pleasure to give the gospel and ourself. We took joy in becoming transparent and vulnerable every time we were with you, because it was an investment of eternal proportions. And that phrase to share with is a desire to give somebody something, to break them off a piece of something, give it to them, let them have it while you don't give it all away.

And when you walk away, they still have it. There's a story that my wife helped me find that took place right here in North Carolina. A 13-year-old precious baby girl was healthy, vibrant, and living and active. All of a sudden, her eyes begin to turn yellow. She went into the doctor, she had these flu-like symptoms, and they found out that she had liver disease, and it was so rampant in her body. The only way she could live was with a liver transplant. And they said, this has progressed so fast under the radar, your liver's consumed with it, you will die unless you have a transplant. So they put them on a list, searched family members, and found that her older brother was a perfect match.

But the issue is, her older brother's still alive. And so he became voluntarily what is called a living donor, where he was able to go under the knife and say, you can cut a part of my liver out of me, give it and put it into her body, and because it is still a living organ, it will regenerate itself while it is still doing the work that it was created to do. And so that procedure went forward, she got a piece of his liver, imparted into her, he kept the remainder of the liver, and by God's grace, they're still living and thriving to this day. And the crazy thing about it is when they asked him, how did you feel when you did this?

He said, I took pleasure, it gave me joy, it made me happy. Because of this, I was able to give a gift of life to my sister, and she's still with us today. And if I had to do it again, I'd do it a second time.

If I had to do it a third time, I'd do it a third time. If I had to consistently keep doing this, I would keep doing it so that she could keep having life. But my question for us is this, if a brother is willing to save the physical life of his very own sister, how much more should we be willing to make gospel investments of the gospel message and ourselves and impart it into the hearers that we are in the rhythm of life with on a consistent basis, not for physical sustainability, but for eternal life? And that's the urgency that believers must run with is because we have this misunderstanding that eternal life begins when we die.

Where did that come from? Eternal life begins the moment we hear the message of the cross and we're broken and shattered and say, I need thee, oh how I need thee. Pass me not, oh gentle Savior, hear my humble cry, while on others thou are calling, do not pass me by. That we beg and plead to be saved in the moment that we're saved, that's the moment that we are given life eternal.

So eternal life begins the moment that we are born again in Christ by the ministry of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But the problem is our internal reality is not reflected on our external reality. So we walk around burdened, we walk around frustrated, irritated in the complaining life, if you will, cycle that everything is irritating us and we're complaining and we're not living and showing a display. We're not billboards for eternal life, we're billboards for the rhythm of this world. And I'm guilty, that's why I use the inclusive we.

This is a consistent struggle I wrestle with. So if non-believers are looking at my life and say that's what eternal life looks like, I'm happy you're doing me now versus putting my trust in what you're saying because you look more down than I do. So as believers we have to show them, man, yes the cares of this world are tough and trying and burdensome, but that's when he says I can cast my cares upon him.

His joke is easy and his burden is life. So that we can show them this is what living life in Christ looks like on this side of eternity. So as he, the brother, took pleasure in giving that to his sister, we too must take pleasure in giving this to those who were not believers and those who are believers, these gospel eternal investments. But that phrase, not only the gospel but our own selves, that phrase our own selves literally means the totality of one's being. It literally means I gave all that I had to you, my mind, my will, my emotions, my time. It's not about dying for someone, it's about living with them.

That's what people need in our life, people that will just live with them. It's about sitting there in the moment of suffering silently with them and weeping when you don't have the answers and you're not embarrassed to say I don't have the answers, I don't understand, I don't have the mind of God, I don't know why this keeps happening, I don't know why he's allowing this. And I'm not going to try to over-Christianize and throw a few passages of scripture to serve as a band-aid for your gaping wound, but I will remind you of the sovereignty that we see in the scriptures and I will sit here and weep with you in the middle of this fire because I love you.

It's that moment when we think, well my suffering resume does not match the resume of their suffering. In one situation when I was pastoring there was a couple that had a miscarriage. My wife and I, by God's grace, have never suffered that pain of a miscarriage or the loss of a child and I've walked into that hospital room thinking I can't minister to them, I've never endured this, I don't know what this is like, everything I feel like I'm gonna say is superficial. So I couldn't say anything at all and I sat there for over an hour. There was another time when a precious family in our church, their father passed away and he was a believer, he was a pastor and God did great things and I sat in that room with them. My dad has never died, I don't know what that tension is like, but I sang hymns with them and I wept with them and for even though it was a moment in time to me and it was awkward as all get out, both of those families came to me after and said, you know what, though it was only an hour, man you inject the joy for days in our lives, the fact that you would just be with us. See, they didn't check my resume, say, hold on, has your dad died? Okay, then you can't minister to me.

They didn't do that. They were so needy for ministry in that time of need that the body of Christ needed to be mobilized to meet them. We have to walk in sensitivity to the Spirit of God. When we're not walking in sensitivity to the Spirit of God, we're going to miss those moments to be the church, to the church and to the world. It's about providing biblical counsel in the moments of chaos and calamity and confusion. It's about reminding them the eternal truths found in the scriptures.

It's about highlighting our present tense work. So we dissolve that dichotomy when we give eternal investments and contributions of the gospel and ourselves in the lives of people who are precious. They are going to spend eternity in one place or the other either in the presence of God or in a place of eternal conscious torment known as the lake of fire. One of two destinations is every person's reality.

From the waiter that is filling up your cup at the restaurant, to the person that's taking your ticket at the ballpark, to the person who's playing basketball on TV, to the people whose story is being exploited all over the news. They are going to spend eternity in one of two places. And what are we doing with the concern about their eternal state of being? See, non-believers and believers can shut us down from talking to God to them. So they can say, I don't want to hear the gospel, I don't want to hear your religious mumbo jumbo. They can shut us down, but what they can't do is shut us down and us talking to God about them. And so when there is no leverage in relationship, we can still take them before the throne room of our God.

And if I could give you one other piece of advice before we move on to the last point, it's this. Sometimes in our lives, God calls us to a season of perpetual plowing, planting, and watering, and we won't see increase. And that is frustrating.

That is irritating. I have fought bouts of depression as a pastor because it's plow, plow, plant, water, plant, water, plow, plow. Where's the freaking fruit, God? What's going on, man? Is there hidden sin?

What is it? I'm serious. For years, it's labor, labor, and then here's what happens. God would transplant me elsewhere, and I'm plowing, I look back, and then there's the fruit tree. And I'm like, nah, nah, nah, time out, run that back flag on the play, holding, clipping, three shots. Jesus, what is going on? How you gonna play it, brother, like that, God?

How you gonna have me plow all this time, then dip to plow again, and then all of a sudden now there's the fruit tree cats are eating off of? And that's when I have to go back to the scriptures to be corrected in my flesh. I'm playing my role.

I'm running my lane. He's the one that brings the increase in his own sovereign time. So rather than seeing that as contention, I need to say, man, praise you that you did this. Praise you that the times that I get to see fruit from ministry, it's not because of me. It's because I'm walking in somebody else's work, that he moved on and at the right time planted me there, and there's fruit. And it's like, to God be the glory. This is not my work.

This is your work because somebody else labored before me. So if you're in that season where you're planting, plowing, and you're watering, and you feel like that non-believer or that believer is not getting through that season of time, man, don't give up on them. That was me.

That was me, both before Christ and after Christ. And oftentimes that is me. That's my hardened heart. Don't give up on them. Keep plowing. Keep planting. Keep watering.

Keep showing them the hope of Christ. Keep opening your life. Keep making those investments. Don't stop. These are eternal contributions.

They don't have an expiration date on them. So don't give up on people. The third blind spot is this. When we give up on people, we become desensitized. We're desensitized. So often, for those of us who have been walking in Christ for a while, and we're what we would call biblically, spiritually mature, it's hard for us to sympathize with the struggles of sinners and younger saints in the faith. The things that they wrestle with in the newness of Christ that they're trying to shed their former way of living, we're like, man, I haven't felt like that tension in 15 years.

I'm so divorced from that. Man, it's hard for me to get in that mindset again. So then we become super, super spiritual, right? And it's easier to default and say, well, man, just trust in Jesus and say a quick little prayer. And like, I'm praying for you.

I'm praying for you. We may be or maybe not pray for them. We're desensitized. Or our coworker that we know how they're living because they put it out there every single day. They're unashamed of their lifestyle for sinfulness.

And we don't share with them the eternal words of God. We're desensitized. I got to get my work done. I got to get my work done.

So the way that we actively remove that blind spot is this. We grieve every day over the spiritual condition of others. I have to ask God on a consistent basis to deposit and impart in my heart His grief for the lost people in my city. Because if I don't, the busyness of life is going to divorce me from compassion. It is.

And when we're divorced from God's compassion, we're divorced from the Great Commission. That's the reality of our life. It reminds me of my homie Deuce, man. With Deuce, he's learning how to crawl. He does this little army crawl and then does this alligator roll. Like it's crazy, man. Like I'm 34 years old. I don't remember what it's like crawling on the ground doing alligator rolls. Like I don't. Like I don't remember what it's like being a nine-month-old kid.

I don't. And so often in the busyness of life, my wife is cooking dinner. My older daughters are coloring or watching TV. I'm on the phone. I'm sending emails. I'm doing some sermon prep. And Deuce is sitting there frustrated and irritated because he can't get from point A to point B.

And he's not saying, okay, time out, standing up. Look, y'all, a brother down here struggling. Can anybody help me out? Like I mean, what's good with him? I'm hungry. I'll put some more sauce on now. But like, mama, come on. I'm struggling. Help me.

It's not that. We're doing life. And we forgot about his struggle.

We're desensitized because we are divorced from the reality of his struggle. You know what makes my little homie Deuce light up with joy? It's not if I coach him, hey, bro, one foot in front of the other. Come on, homie. Come on now.

It's not that. It's literally getting down there, eye to eye level with him on the ground. And as soon as I do that, we lock eyes. And this is what he does. He smiles. He gets excited. He starts hitting the floor. He gets this motivation to start, like the Ninja Warrior in him comes out, right?

He's just like, you know, he's going hard after crawling the meat. That's what new believers in Christ need. They need seasoned, mature saints who are going to pop their knees on the way down and get in the struggle with them. Not just coach them from afar, but say, no, let's lock eyes.

Are you good? Come on, man. Let's get that encouragement, baby.

Let's get this thing together. That's what babes in Christ need. That's discipleship.

One mature believer grabbing the other mature believer by the hand and saying, let's walk in maturity together. That's all discipleship is. It's doing life and growing in Christ.

That's what it is. So what allowed Paul to go forward with this type of a reality is this as we close, because you had become very dear to us. That phrase, very dear to us, is centered around the agape of God. The agape love of God is self-sacrificing, unconditional, unwavering love. And there's two realities of his agape love. One, it's demonstrated in action. God's love is not just a noun. It is a verb.

It is demonstration. John 3 16, if I would translate it from Greek to English, the emphasis puts the focus on how God loved, not who God loved. So a better way to say it was God demonstrated his love by sending his son that whoever would believe in him should not die. It's that parallel of Romans 5 8 that while we were ungodly, separated from God at our lowest point of ever existing, we were sinners at that moment. Christ died for the ungodly. So it's love demonstrated to those at their lowest. If he did that for us, how dare we withhold that agape love from those who were at their lowest, either in Christ or outside of Christ. Because it was while we were outside of Christ that he died and demonstrated his love for us. We need to replicate that reality in the lives of people. Next, it's experienced in relationship.

So not only is it demonstrated in action, we experience and we grow in the knowledge of God's love for us as we live life with him. It's the same thing for my homie Deuce. When I held him, I began to tell him how much I loved him. He couldn't understand the words that were coming out of my mouth. He didn't understand all the things I was telling him, but you know what?

Now that he's nine months old, when he's hungry and me and my wife feed him, he's starting to understand this is what love looks like. He's getting the reality that we're with him. So when he scrapes his knee and he gets older, we'll be there to say, we love you. We're still with you. God forbid, but when he has his first heartbreak, we'll be there to help him on that rebound and say, man, God is still with you. We are still with you. When he swings and he misses and it's strike three and they lose the game, then he's going to see daddy has not abandoned him in his lowest point.

Daddy and mommy are there. We are there to say, you experience the depth of our love one layer at a time. Crisis after crisis after crisis after crisis, you see that our love keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper. But if a evil man like me can give a good gift to my child, how much more can your perfect father in heaven, whose love is infinite, bathe you in the depth of his love every breath you take. That's what you show to the world.

That's what you show to the body. So as the worship teams come up, the world is trying to force us into a rhythm of life where we remain disconnected, remain dichotomized, and remain desensitized. But God is saying to believers on this side of eternity, I have given you one job description. From the newest convert to the oldest saint, one cough away from glory, we have the same job description. As you're doing life, make disciples of all ethnicities.

That is our only reason for breathing on this side of eternity now. And that is not a reality unless we share the gospel, we share our lives, and we do life in transparency with those God intersects with the rhythm of our life. So your heart and my heart will be more prone to share the gospel with saints and sinners when we get engaged with our context, give eternal contributions of ourselves and our Savior, and grieve every day over the spiritual condition of others. Would you stand with me as we pray?

Father, I've done my best to just unpack your word. You are the only one that supernaturally can move on the heart to the people as I have desired to make the gospel as clear as I could. There are those who don't know you, Lord.

There are no those who have been living disconnected from you. And I pray through the proclamation unashamedly of the gospel message that they would see their own sinfulness and their own lack of ability to get into a right relationship with you. Therefore, the need to declare dependency on the person and work of Jesus Christ. And for those who do know you that are immature, may you put a desire, Lord God, of growth from milk to meat, and may they want a desire to be in community with saints who are mature that can live life with them. And then equally I pray that you would mobilize the mature saints to get down ground level with those who are in their infancy crawling in Christ to say we are with you, I love you, let's mature together. Father, answer my prayer in accordance to your will in Jesus' matchless name. Amen.