Speaker 1 0:49

[inaudible]

Speaker 2 0:53

Well, good morning. How's everybody doing today? Online. They're with us. How are you doing so glad you guys are here with us today? Um, yeah, I'm excited to Oscar just shared a couple of things that are coming up. Um, and I wanted to give you just a , a bit more of a preview of may. Uh, I can't even believe I'm saying we're in may. This is crazy. We're running into summer, like real fast. Um, so next week, like talked about as mother's day, baby dedications . We're going to do two services just for that week because we know, you know, like this is the one thing mom wants for mother's day is to do church and do community and see the babies that are dedicated. So show up with your mama . That was a good thing to do in church. So you have two services do that the following week. Um , what we're going to do on May 16th is we really wanted to try to figure out how to create some more community and some community spaces that safe, but yet seen each other. It's just been so much fun , um , to be able to see each other and share and just catch up. And so on May 16th, we're going to have a food truck up here on the Benicia campus , uh , after service. And we're gonna have music , uh, outside because the weather has been beautiful. And so we're going to enjoy some tasty food because that's why we show up. We like food and some music and hang out and do those sorts of things that week. Just another encouragement for those of you like food, we're going to have snacks during service. I'll tell you about that in a minute. I know, I know we're really going all out. That's crazy. Then on the 23rd, we're ending this conversation we've been having about embracing the new with a worship Sunday service, where we're just going to sing music. We're going to call the worship and then we're going to have baptisms. So those of you who have signed up to be baptized and that expression , um, we're so excited to take , um, just take part in that with you. And so I encourage you all to show up for that day. It's going to be really rich and special, and then geez , we're onto June swimming . Great. I will give you one last preview for you, something to something to be thinking about in August. I know I'm talking way ahead here, but in August and August 15th, we're going to do a celebration of life service. So for those of you who, during this last 18 months have lost a loved one, or we've lost a loved one in this faith community, or, you know, someone in this community, the whole community, that's lost a loved one. We want to be able to gather on a Sunday morning and we want to celebrate them and lament together group together, but then celebrate who God is through that. So if you know someone or that , something that you'd be interested in helping participate in that and share photos and , um , to celebrate who they are, we're going to give you more information about that in the coming weeks. As we kind of put that together over the next couple of months, and really want to offer that to the whole community as just a gift. So we can come together when it's really meaningful in those ways. So onto today, we have been having a conversation called embracing the new more we're talking about, Hey, there's new things going on and the new things that are going on , or also just an expression. If we see it as an opportunity to look out and see what God is doing, and that he's doing a new thing in every day , he can do a new thing in us. And we've used different art pieces , um, to express this , um , you know, we talked about water and living water, and we have a fountain in our campus and Dominica campus out in the lobby. And so we talked about what living water looks like. And then last week we talked about a stump. There's a stump out there. And how so many of us can feel uprooted or chopped off. Like, we're just kind of beat up from this last season and how in Isaiah, this Davidic line kind of , they felt like it was dead and lost. It was chopped down a new, a new shoot grew out of that. Something new came of that. And so we got to discuss that a little bit this week, I'm going to skip real quick, but next week, we're going to talk about comfy chairs. You guys are sitting in comfortable chairs if you're here on campus and what that looks like as we bring people in and how that can actually connect to scripture and who God is for us. And then we're going to talk about this is the snack week taste and smell and how that works with the Lord. And we can taste and see that he's good, or those are different ways that we all get to connect with who God is. And then finish that off with baptisms and this worship service where we get to say, Hey, this is something that we want to Mark as a faith community as this new thing that's happening in us, through us, around us and hear testimony about that . So this week we're going to talk about this prayer wall. If you've been on this campus, we have a prayer, the wall out in the lobby, and we're going to have this per wall up there, the rest of it . And this is something that we all get dissipated in . As in , like you can participate, you can walk past it. Yeah . You can read the different prayers or praises where we get to carry one, another stuff. Maybe we can even see how enact change or a tangible, like response to someone's prayer or what's going on in their life. It's also a place for you to put up your own prayers of what's going on and updated stuff. And so we'll just see that thing get packed out through the rest of this year. And so we want to talk about what does scripture say about prayer or communal prayer and how can we embrace that as this new thing, as we're walking through this season that we're in right now? See the thing is, is that prayer allows us to participate with God in bringing about the change of history. But one of the primary changes in history that prayer actually wants to affect is the change of our hearts. We are part of this change or new thing that prayer actually brings about. They're the kinds of prayer that primarily changes us. There's a kind of prayer that focuses for specific needs of others or healing or breakthrough for spiritual warfare. And we get to learn from Jesus and the scriptures, the Jesus prayer, or the Lord's prayer, where we're called into worship and adoration and praying for God's guidance in our own life and praying for daily bread. Our basic needs. In fact, in the future over this next year, we're going to spend a couple of weeks just breaking down and going through the Jesus prayer specifically in the context that we see of Luke's gospel. We learn that when we pray for our daily bread, that we're really praying for more of the Holy spirit in our lives, so that we'll be able to serve others around all the more that's what we do here at church on Sundays, we gathered together, we get to learn from scripture. We can live more like Jesus, and it's not just about a one day a week thing, our Christian faith, or at least it shouldn't be we gathered together so that we can feel more equipped and inspired to go and to make it an every day thing as we follow Jesus. And part of this is going to be praying every day, the way that Jesus taught us to pray. And today we're going to talk about how we can actually blend together our prayer life and our evangelistic life, or our outreach life together, this evangelistic thing. And this is a evangelism. This is where we're sharing the good news of the gospel, our own testimony with others who don't know who Jesus is, or don't know what Jesus provides. And so we get to blend these two together, our own prayer life and our outreach life together, where Jesus teaches us how to do that. In fact, he actually calls us in the passage that we're going to be looking at today. Some of you right now might actually be saying, well, this is going to be interesting because I don't have much of a prayer life and I don't have much of an evangelistic or an outreach life. Well, great. You've come to the right spot to grow in both areas today and see how they actually feed one another. When some of you here, maybe you're not even a follower of Jesus, and you're checking this out, or you were bought by a friend and you shut up online today. And I just want to actually just say welcome right now. I'm so glad that you're here. And what's great is that right now, you're going to get kind of like a peek behind the scenes today behind the curtain of what it would be like to be a follower of Jesus and what Jesus wants from us. And part of that, part of that would be that you're praying to him, to partner with him in all that you do in your life. And so we're going to talk for a few minutes through a passage, and then we're going to pray together. And then we're going to pray, will having communion or the Lord's supper or the Eucharist. And we're going to turn that into kind of an enacted prayer by the end of the message. So that's where we're headed for the next few minutes. So if you need to grab, if you're at home or you're joining us virtually, if you need to grab something to take commuted with, this is kind of your opportunity as it going to continue through this message. So we're going to be in Matthew chapter nine today, when he get you guys kind of familiar with our app, you can hop on our app and there is a Bible there's also to follow along. There's some fill in notes there. You can check that out. We're going to be in Matthew chapter nine. This is in the new Testament. This is the first book of the new Testament. It's just past the middle. If you're looking through your Bible, trying to figure out what this is at, and this is in chapter nine, starting in verse 35. It says that Jesus went through all of the towns, villages teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. So Jesus went through these towns and villages and he mentions three things that he did here. These are the three that tri-fold ministry right here of Jesus. It's teaching in their synagogues. It's proclaiming the good news of the kingdom in his healing, every disease and sickness. And so we look at this good news of the kingdom right here, and we realized that this good news of the kingdom, what it does is it actually invites us to participate as citizens of this kingdom. So that we're a part of this new culture, this new culture, this new way of living with love at the center. It's this whole new way of living. Secondly, it's not only as citizens, but as an ambassador's that we have the privilege to participate in and invite others to join in the kingdom and what that looks like. The good news of the kingdom. Isn't just, I'll go to heaven when I die. The goodness of the kingdom is that I can start a heavenly life here and now with Jesus has my King and everyone together, living out this beautiful life of love, starting now. And it gives life purpose and fullness now. So he's preaching to people who are on the outside, who aren't invited in, and maybe aren't particularly religiously, and they're not showing up at the synagogue services. And he's saying, I'm letting them know about this message of purpose for your life. And then he also healed diseases and sicknesses. And so he practically met people's needs. And we get to do that as well. We can be like Jesus here and practically helping meet the needs of others. And we want to talk about scripture with people who are open up their Bible with us, and if they don't and if they want , we want to at least let them know that their life has purpose and meaning. And they're called into the kingdom of Christ. And then we also want to say, how can I serve you? What are your needs? What's going on? And we can do this as individuals and our daily lives, but we can also do this in ways that are collective, where we collectively pool our resources all together in ways that we wouldn't be able to do singularly as individuals, right? That's a beautiful example of like the dollar club or later on this year, when we're going to have a all service day where we're all going to go out and serve the community together, collectively, you can just look out at the prayer wall out there and you can see how we get to not just do things as individuals, but collectively carry the weight, the burdens of the stuff that's going on in other people's lives. We can even get this. We can even walk by there and see a need and be like, Whoa, I could like tangibly do something about that right now. I have an answer to that. Maybe God has gifted me in a way to be able to come alongside of and respond to that. These are things that we get to do when we come together as a community. Then in verse 36, as it continues, we see that when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, harassed and helpless. Those are the two words that he used to describe them. It's interesting in the original Greek, I think these translations actually kind of these ones right here, kind of tone down the nature of these words that he uses right here, this sheep, without a shepherd that they're actually like sheep that have been attacked and the shepherds have run away this first word harassed. And when it's translated actually is this word that translated to school school, which means to be skinned alive, right? We don't get that from the word harassed, but the word he's using here in this specific incidence in this Greek language was schooled to be skinned alive, that when an animal goes in like filets and other animal, when it's ripped apart by that , cause I'm an attacking animal and the sheep have been under attack right here. And their flesh has been ripped open at the very least. What we see right here is that they're broken, they're bleeding, they're hurting in Jesus sees that this is what he sees him in . And one of the first things that we do when we pray evangelistically, when we get our prayer life and this evangelistic life together is that we begin to actually see people the way Jesus sees them. And we see that often behind the veneer of having it all together , that there is a lot of brokenness out there. There's a lot of people who are hurting. And sometimes certain people, they look like they have it all together, right? And that's just because of that, they have more money to spend on looking good, or they have this deposition or personality that can play it off and make it look like everything is okay. Different people have different kinds of defense mechanisms. Some of us it's easier to actually spot the person who's hurting, but most people are hurting in some significant ways, even if they aren't able to build a larger veneer. And so Jesus sees through this pretense, he sees their pain right there. That they're not only scolio , but the word for being actually wounded. But they're also this next word, helpless. And this word helpless that he uses right here as Rippetoe, which means to actually be mask off or thrown away. So there's people like that. You know, this, maybe you've been there, maybe you're living there right now where you just feel like garbage. You feel like you're useless. He sees people, friends who feel wounded and people who feel useless. He says, they're like sheep without a shepherd. And going to say, well, where's the shepherd like what's going on here? Well, throughout the old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures say that the leaders of Israel were like shepherds to God's flock and they had scattered. And this is actually an indictment against the religious leaders. At the time Jesus was speaking right here to Israel, to Jewish people saying they're like sheep without a shepherd. And this is indictment against the religious leaders. In fact, the religious leaders have either fled or some of them in some cases may have actually been the ones causing the wounds. These are people who have been hurt by religion and religious leaders in life. And Jesus sees that as well. And what he does is he wants us to partner with him on a rescue mission and a reality of mission to wake up to the truth of God's love. And to call them into this is healing. Community is healing community, which is what the church should be about. And Isabel , when it's at its best. And so he says in verse 37 to his disciples, he says his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into the harvest field here, Jesus says, pray for the in gathering of people who have needs. He's mixing his metaphors right here, right? First there are sheep who are wounded, but then they're also in harvest who is ready to be gathered. Cause that's what you do with a harvest. And so it's kind of missing these two metaphors cause no one metaphor can carry the weight of the full reality of saying that these people they've been hurt, that there are people who've been wounded and feel tossed aside and just have to come together to get them. And the metaphor then shifts and brings and talks about bringing them in and giving them a safe place where they can heal and where they can be infused with the truth of God's love for them friends. We, we have the privilege to participate with God in all of this. And interesting. He said that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few . There's a lot of work out there to be done. There are people who are ready. The problem what's the problem. The workers are there. Few. He said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send out workers into the harvest field. So the first movie you were , here's two things that he did not say. He doesn't say the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore start recruiting you guilt if you have to , but get people out there, right? He doesn't say that it's not the first thing he does. What does he say? The harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. Start with prayer, ask the Lord, integrate your outreach life with your appreciate life. Because when you're inviting people to come in to join, you're inviting them to join something that we should, that you should be experiencing yourselves already. Right? So start with that experience. Start with the intimacy that you have with your father and praying with him about even outreach. And I said there was two things. So the first thing he doesn't say as he doesn't say, go and recruit, he says, first pray, ask the Lord. The other thing that he doesn't say is so simply pray. He doesn't just say so simply pray, Lord, bring the harvest and sweep through this mighty land and bring revival. Amen. Right. He doesn't just say that God's , that's like telling God to go and do it yourself. Like, Hey, I'm going to ask you to do that, to take care of that. When he just told us to do that. So it's like our prayers were saying, nah, you do it. Here's the irony is we're praying to God. And we want to see this harvest brought in, but we understand that laborers are the issue and it's not your involvement. It's our involvement at the end. And we pray that you would motivate us God, that you would empower us. And in Bolden us to partner with a things that you're already doing. And then that's when we realize, and we go, Oh, I'm just going to pray. I'm also going to be a part of the answer to my own prayer. Did you know Jesus only instructs people on how to pray with any kind of detailed twice? Only twice. One is the Lord's prayer and the other one is actually this right here. He models it. He refers to it. There'll be one-liners about prayer throughout scriptures, as you read that, but in any kind of detailed teaching on how to pray is the Lord's prayer. And then there's this, that the harvest is plentiful that the workers are few and ask, pray to the Lord to send out the workers to the harvest field. So with this in mind, I'd like to challenge us on how to pray this week and moving forward and through this year. And we're going to close at the end of this and have time for communion. So how to pray moving forward, there's 10 thoughts, 10 points. And we're not going to walk through them all, but I'm going to read them all to you. And then I'm going to kind of land on a couple of them here. So let me just go through these real quick this week, meditate and pray through Matthew nine 35 through 38 every day, this week read through that, understand what that looks like, meditated on the ask. God what's going on with that. I'm going to pray for opportunities to evangelize in-person or an online, what are the needs? How are others wounded, three, open your eyes, God, that you would open my eyes, that we would wake up to what you're doing all around us for in conversations. Ask lots of questions. When you're having conversations with friends, ask them questions for genuine spiritual curiosity, and also look for signs of their awareness of their need for the love forgiveness purpose. And we all want this one rest that only Jesus gives every six. If someone shows interest, share your own experience, share your story, share the stuff that you've carried that you're going through and what God does with that. You can invite them to listen to Jesus for themselves through church or podcasts, books, Bibles. However, they can listen to this, take a come and see approach. You know , come and see this. Now I'm just going to tell you about everything that's going on and what this is actually like number seven, don't feel pressure. Excuse me. Don't feel pressure to win an argument, introduce them to Jesus and let him convince them. Think of it. Like you're the ultimate assister . You're not going to score the dunk or the layup. You're going to pass the ball right here. Let him convince them. You are a dating service, not a salesperson. I will come back to that. If they're not interested, sir them in other ways, or just move on. There's some freedom in that, serve them in other ways or just move on. And if appropriate, let them know that you'll be praying for them. So the first and second looked like this, we'll go back to one and to meditate and pray through this every day, this week, I'm inviting you to meditate and pray through this passage every day, this week to meditate and think through it and then pray it every day. This week, and Jesus will begin to open your eyes and your mind to seeing people the way he sees people. As you look at and understand an instance of how he saw people and understood them, the family members, the friends you'll start to see them. You'll start, your heart will begin to change and you'll start seeing through different eyes. And then you can begin to pray for those individuals that come to mind. But in general, you can pray for yourself to see people the way that Jesus sees people and then be motivated to be the answer to this prayer for you and go and begin to actually talk to others. And that's number two, pray for opportunities to evangelize in person or online. Pray for these opportunities. There's a few things that you saw there like three and four, I'm going to jump to number five and we're five . Look for signs of their awareness of their need for love, forgiveness, purpose, and rest. That only Jesus gives. There are some people who just aren't ready to have a spiritual conversation and that's fine. But when you are looking for signs of their awareness, you're your or walking with a limp, you know, that's what you're asking. Are you walking with a limp right now? Do they show signs of being aware of their own brokenness and whatever season that they're in right now, their needs will often reside in these four primary areas. These are four significant needs of the human soul. Your human soul needs love. It needs forgiveness. It needs a sense of purpose and it needs rest, love, forgiveness, purpose, and rest that only Jesus gives your four basic needs. Our need for love and acceptance from other people, our need for forgiveness from the freedom or the guilt and shame that we carry our need to have a purpose so that when we get up in the morning, we feel like we have a purpose to this life that we were doing something our need to find rest, even rest from the religious treadmills that some of us have grown up on Jesus in a couple of chapters, just after this, he's going to say, come to me. If you're burdened down, if you're heavy Laden, if you're carrying a heavy load in , I will give you rest. They was talking about the religious loads, that many people carry the loads of guilt and shame. Lastly, I just want to mention number eight when you're having these conversations with people and you're looking for these needs and you're just trying to help them see how the gospel might actually fit those needs. Don't feel the pressure to win an argument. Maybe that's like a weight off of your shoulders right now. Don't feel the pressure to win an argument. If they want to start an argument, that's not why you're there. You don't have to feel the pressure to win anything in this moment. What you want to do is you want to introduce them to Jesus and let him convince them. And I say this right here, you're more of a dating service, not a sales person . In other words, you're not just trying to convince them of this product that you've got. You actually know someone that you think would be really amazing for them and who loves them already. And you want to introduce them and let Jesus do all the convincing. And so if there's any way to help them move from this investigation time with Jesus or begin reading the Bible for themselves or a different book about Jesus or listen to a podcast, invite them to church. These are things that you want to do to help them begin to connect with the teaching of the person in the example of Jesus himself, and allow him to begin to convince others and to convince them in their own heart. Say, if anything, there's a faith community right here. You can say, have a faith community where you can show up where you can show up like all of you

Speaker 3 28:55

And they are going to love you. And that you're not alone. In a moment we're going to sing. This song is called. I am not alone. But first, what I want to do right now is I want to ask you to grab your communion. And we're going to pray with our bodies right now. We're going to actually like an act this with all of us. Cause that's what this community represents because Jesus gives us baptism and communion as ways to enact a bodily prayer, baptism, where we can say, I accept you, Jesus, I am cleanse . And I declare and I'm birthed into a new life as they come out of the water. And we're going to be doing that in just a couple of weeks, like I said, and you haven't would love to have you sign up, but in communion, we get to say, Jesus, thank you that your death, your brokenness, you, you took on the human condition, including the scars that the school, Leo, the Greek word of being under attack or the tearing apart that you took that on yourself, that you became a wounded sheep. And so with that, that's really what represents the bread. If you want to take that bread, he said, this is my body. That's going to be broken for your brokenness. That's going to be ripped apart. It's going to be beaten and torn. And I'm going to give that, I'm going to take that on for you so you don't have to. So as you take the bread today, take that and remembrance that Jesus died for us. He took on this full human condition, including yours, yours, and my own pain and suffering. And we want to say Jesus right now, I thank you for that. Your blood, this juice, what it represents your blood was spilled. And I think God's love through death . And I see the forgiveness you offer through this . I see you as King ascending to your throne through this, I see you as the flesh, sacrifice that chuffed down religion and brings rest through this. I see it all. And so I want to say, thank you for what you've done for me. And we take it in. When we take this in, in just a few minutes, swallowing this, digesting it into our whole body. Our body actually gets to participate in this prayer. And so as we sing the song, you can have your own quiet time, your space with the Lord and remembrance of this blood, this flesh sacrifice that was for, you know , for me. And as we respond in worship and singing this song, I am not alone. I see to participate in this enacted prayer through communion, on our own remembrance of who he is and what he's done for you. You can take the juice.