Transcript
All right, destination. , you're maybe going to get excited for that football game later. I actually saw a video. This is not in my message notes.
I saw a video earlier this week where the wife was taking footage of the husband watching a football game and he was like they muted it and so he was like doing all of these hand motions and then she put worship music over it and I was like, "Oh, that's that's so good. " So, , I want you guys to like, you know, kind of hoot and holler for the rest of it like you're at a football game. Maybe not that much.
Okay, I don't want to skull chant while I'm up here. But, , destination, let let me ask you a question. Do you believe that that God can do extraordinary things through ordinary people. >> Absolutely.
>> Do you believe that God can change lives. Do you believe that God can use those changed lives to then in turn change other people's lives. So, we got a couple of people who are like, "Yes.
" And the rest of you are like, "I I don't know. So, wherever you're at, this message is for you. Because by the end of it, I want you to see how God uses ordinary people to reach one more person. To change one more person's life, to change one more person's course towards eternity. And today specifically, we are talking about invitation.
We are take talking about how your invitation to something or to accept the invitation has the potential to change someone else's life or even to change your life. And so, , I want to kind of give you an example of where we're going biblically, , with a little bit of a story first. , I would after our 10-minute tour like to invite this entire room out to lunch with me. Do you want to go out to lunch to today. >> Some some of you are like, "Yeah, we haven't caught up.
" Some of you are like, "I got to check my plans. Some of you are like, "Dude, I don't even know you. Why are you inviting everybody to lunch from stage. But let's say I wanted to take you, some of you know where I'm about to go with this.
I want to take you to my all-time favorite restaurant that I love to talk about just as much as well, it's it's lower than Jesus, but it's up there. This restaurant is called Cool Cats Cafe, and it has the best, and I mean the best burger you have ever had. It's got a pineapple on it, which I don't care what you pineapple haters say, it belongs on this burger, okay.
It's on this burger and it has this sauce. Oh my gosh, it makes my mouth water. , and it is so good. Like, it is easily the best burger you will ever taste. You guys want to go to this place with me.
It's It's going to be amazing. Only catch is the nearest one is in California. So, here's what I'm going to need you to do.
If you want to go to lunch with me, , we're going to have to buy plane tickets. , you're going to have to probably get a hotel room because we're not going to get this accomplished in 24 hours. You're going to have to get a rent a car because there's not a airport nearby this.
, oh, and by the way, like I'm a broke church planter, so I need you to to pay for me if you wouldn't mind. You still want to come. >> That's like one person.
Yeah, let's go. There's my adventurer. This is the thing. So many times this same scenario happens to us that we hear an invitation but we hear the parameters around that invitation and we kind of change maybe what our answer or our reply is. And I want you to see that this is why a lot of Christians will stop sharing the good news of Jesus, why they'll stop inviting and why some of us who have maybe found Jesus haven't dove deeper into our faith.
Because once we accept the invitation, we see maybe some of the terms and conditions or parameters around that invitation. Here's another point in case for you. How many times as a motan have you had this scenario happen where you have somebody say, "Hey, we should get together sometime.
" And they say, "Yeah, that'd be really great. " And then they pull out their phone and they're like, "Let's put something on the calendar. " Have you ever been in that scenario. And then the other person has that like blank stare on their face like, "Oh, we're being serious about getting together.
That's not just something nice we're saying. That's that's like the classic motan thing, right. But we do the same thing in our faith. We do our the same thing with invitation.
Just look at some of the hard facts just for a second. One in three churchgoers never invite anyone to church. One in three of you. And the number one barrier to that invitation is just knowing who to ask.
But yet there's so many people who are closest to you but furthest from Jesus. And probably the biggest fact in this is that 96% of everyone who doesn't go to church would come if somebody simply asked them. 96% would say yes.
And yet the invitation still feels intimidating. And yet we still maybe struggle with the invitation. And so wherever you're at in your faith journey this morning, I want you to see how Jesus has a seat at the table for you and how you've been given an invitation to give to somebody else about life change. And so today's big kind of question that we're looking at is how one invitation can change one more life.
And to answer that question, we're going to pull open the word of God as we do every single week. It is in Luke 14 on page 897. By the way, if you don't have a Bible, this is part of what your giving goes towards.
It give it goes towards giving these Bibles away. We've given over 200 of these away into people's hands that are being transformed by the truth of the word. And so, thank you so much for making that possible. If you don't have one, take it with you.
, but we are usually going through a kind of a book series, but this one's a little bit more topical for this week and next week. And , I kind of want to give some context because it's crucial when we're just pulling up open the Bible and going to a random passage. Okay, so this is what's going on. Jesus is eating with a group of people called the Pharisees. Now, the Pharisees, you'll see this word a lot throughout the Gospels in the New Testament.
And the Pharisees were these people kind of like ultra religious people who were just judgmental towards Jesus and wanted to call him out on all these different things and criticize him. And so what Jesus is doing is he's sitting down to dinner with some Pharisees. And for the first 11 verses of Luke 14, he's talking to them about humility, about making sure they're not thinking of themselves higher than they ought to. And then what Jesus does is he launches into this this language.
We call it a parable. It is a it is a re reality, but it's illustrating like a deeper spiritual truth. It's kind of like what we would call is like a metaphor. And what Jesus is going to do is he's going to give some language called a he's going to give some language around a great banquet. But he's not really talking about a banquet.
He's talking about something deeper. And we'll get to that in the end. But we're going to start at verse 12 just to kind of ramp into this parable, this story. So follow along with me in verse 12. And it says this.
Then Jesus said to the host, "When you give a lunchon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors. If you do, they might invite you back, and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.
Although they can't repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteousness. When one of those at the table heard what Jesus said, he said to Jesus, "Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God. " Now, we'll get back to Jesus's response to this statement.
But here's what I want you to see before we get into the parable is our first big point on how one invitation can change one more life is it shows us in this little passage who to invite. And here's what I want to encourage you with. The harder the invite is, the bigger the testimony, the greater the testimony is going to be. God is going to do something in that difficult person that you're maybe not seeing as receptive to that invitation. Let me explain what I mean.
You might not have caught this, but Jesus is actually making this dinner really awkward for the Pharisees. What he's doing when he says, "I want you to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. " when he's saying that, , what the Pharisees viewed those people like is that they were less than. And so Jesus is kind of making this awkward for them because they've never been told this before. And what Jesus is really saying here is he's saying, look, don't just invite people that will be receptive.
Don't just invite people that are going to pay you back. Like an invite for an invite. And what he is encouraging us to do is to go after whoever God puts in front of you, who is closest to you but maybe furthest from him. And if we're being honest, we kind of take the seat of the Pharisees sometimes in this. Sometimes more than we'd like to admit, we don't want to invite or talk about our faith because it might make things awkward.
And I hear this all the time. I'll tell you one of the things that just like always makes my ears kind of perk up as a pastor when I'm talking to somebody and they they have somebody in their life that they really care about. Maybe it's a co-orker, a friend, a family member that that doesn't know Jesus and they're like, "Man, I would invite them, but they're just they're not a church person.
" And I'm like, "Well, it sounds like you have a perfect opportunity then, right. You have a perfect opportunity to be a representative of Jesus because maybe some non-believer is never going to pick up this this Bible, but you can be that Bible in real life to them. You can be sharing the word and you can be inviting them in to some kind of life change. And here's what I want you to hear this morning. If you are here on an invite and this is like this is all new to you, this is a whole new experience.
Church-wise to you, I want you to know that someone was praying for you. Somebody has been praying for you and somebody has taken the time to invite you. And what I want all of us to be on the same page of is what Jesus is trying to teach us here is that the person that you invite to church does not need to look like a church person.
Okay, let me explain what I mean. I think so often in Christian culture, we have the idea, like this story that I just shared, that we have to clean somebody up and then we can bring them to church. We have to clean someone up and make sure they got all their political views right and their swearing is down and all of that and then we can bring them to church. But listen to me. Our job is not to clean someone up and introduce them to Jesus.
Our job is to introduce them to Jesus and he does the cleaning. And so for us, our job is to extend that invitation to somebody who might not look like a church person. And when I say that, let me be clear because yes, the church will have people in it that clearly appearance-wise do not look like a church person. But there are people that walk in that look like they have their lives all together on the surface, but behind closed doors, it is an entirely different story.
And so for us, that means who to invite is whoever is closest to us but furthest from Jesus. And here's another important truth that you need to hear in this. A lot of people think, "Well, I gotta invite that co-worker or that friend or that neighbor or whatever. " And and you think that you need to necessarily build a longlasting relationship before you even extend that invite.
And some of that could be true. But let me just say, the random stranger that you invite to church at the grocery store may be more receptive than the person that you've been working on for the last five years. Here's my encouragement.
Don't limit it to just one. Getting one more doesn't mean your circle should be one more. Getting one more means that one out of the 10 people I just invited are going to come to life change in Jesus. And you do not know who that person is. Some of you might say, "Well, I don't I just don't feel like Christian enough to be able to like confidently extend an invite.
Like I said, none of us are perfect. The job is not to do this perfectly. It is just to extend an invite.
You get excited about movies, about restaurants, about different things, right. And you can talk about them. So just get excited about Jesus.
Just get excited about your church and share that excitement with somebody else. And don't let that excuse excuse you from what God wants to do through that invitation. Here's the thing, though. The tension for us is that Jesus knows that we're naturally going to give excuses when it comes to growing in our faith or to invitation. Let me show you what he responds to this man with.
This man kind of speaks out of turn and he says, "Well, you know, everybody's gonna gonna be good, okay. Everybody's going to come to this banquet. And this is what Jesus responds with.
Look at verse 16. He responds with a story. He says, "A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.
At the time of the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, "Come, for everything is now ready. " But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, "I just bought a field, and I must go see it.
Please excuse me. Another said, I just bought five yolk and oxen and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.
Still another said, I just got married so I can't come. Okay, this is what this teaches us. This teaches us what happens when we invite or when we're invited into something is that people will be excused by excuses. They think and we think that just because I have an excuse that gets me out of this scenario. And so a couple of things about this story that Jesus is telling.
First of all, the way that a banquet worked is you would get a first invitation to the the banquet to the dinner party. Think of it almost like a save the date for a wedding. So you'd get that first invitation and you would know that this is coming up between this day and this day and then a servant would come to deliver the second invitation but it would almost be a little bit more spontaneous. He would say come it's not prepared.
Okay, you can all you can join us for dinner. And what's happening here is these people are giving excuses and two things to note about these excuses. Number one, they are extremely ordinary. And number two, they are somewhat comical. Okay, let me show you what I mean.
The first one says, I bought a field. He's really just saying, I've got better things to do. I got to go home and mow the grass, right.
Like mowing the grass. That's Sunday mornings for me, right. The second one says, I've just bought five yolk of oxen and I'm on my way to try them out.
This person's just saying, I'm too busy. I just got a new truck and I want to drive it around. Okay, that's literally like the the modern-day translation there.
Okay, the last one says, "I got married, so I can't come. " And what he's saying is, "I got what I need. " Okay, let me just rephrase this. What wife would not want dinner cooked for her and her family, right.
Like this is, see the comedy here in the excuses. Have you ever been given a silly excuse like that when you can't like be together with somebody or when you invite somebody into church. I call it the get out of evangelism free card.
Have you ever played Monopoly before. Let me rephrase that. Have you ever been stuck in an RV in the rain and having nothing to do but Monopoly.
That's the only time you play Monopoly. If you play it at home just casually, I have questions. How long does it take to get you through a game.
Anyway, there is a card in there called get out of jail free, right. And so if you get put in jail, you use the card get out of jail free. And I feel like a lot of people that we extend an invitation to pull out their get out of evangelism free card. And so it's like, hey, you want to come to church with me.
, well, I grew up Catholic or Lutheran or I was raised in a Christian co home or I go to such and such church. Okay, that's great. But can you tell me about your relationship with Jesus.
>> Can you tell me how you're involved in your church. And if they are, great. Let them be involved in their church.
We're kingdom people, okay. And so we want people just to have a church home and to have people around them where they're growing with and that care for them, right. But for us, sometimes we need to not be so hasty to give up on the get out of evangelism free card.
Sometimes it's good to ask a couple of follow-up questions. Tell me about your faith. Tell me about the ways that God has moved in your life. You see, the truth is is when we're given those excuses, it's kind of like a hand on the stove kind of moment for us. It scares us off from ever giving an invitation again.
And so, we don't share our faith in the way that we should because we've been crushed by an excuse. I'll give you another illustration of this. I had a friend growing up. His name was Johnny. He was a good friend of mine.
And you you might have heard this story before. I've told it once a long time ago. Long time ago.
We've been at church for like a year. But I had a friend named Johnny. And I knew him in elementary school.
And I'm having to teach my son these same lessons now. That's why this is relevant in my mind. And every time I would hear Johnny's coming over, I'd get super excited about it.
And his parents and his family were really non-committal. And so they would be hours upon hours late or they would just call and cancel plans last minute. So much so to where it eventually started to crush me as a kid, right. I would just be so excited for him coming over and then he wouldn't show up. And my dad started this this saying and and he said don't count on Johnny until you see the whites of his eyes.
Which meant don't believe it until you see it. Don't believe that he is there until you see him there. And for some of us though, we still sit in that crushed feeling of excuses that man, when am I ever going to have this play out successfully. Maybe I should just not invite somebody to anything anymore. Here's my big thought here.
Don't let an excuse excuse you from what God wants to do in your life through your invitation. And this goes beyond. Maybe if you're a newer Christian and you're just not ready to to start sharing, you're still exploring faith.
I want to tell you that there is an invitation open to you right now to grow in your faith. Our mission statement is to help people find and follow Jesus. And so that is the invitation for us to follow Jesus.
And the way that you think of that invitation is so vitally important. Let me just explain that for just a second, too. When you invite somebody here, you are not just inviting them to a building.
You are inviting them to life change in Jesus. You're inviting them into their marriage growing closer. You're inviting them into real hope and peace that can only be found through the name of Jesus. When you invite somebody, when I extended an invite during announcements when Joshua did to growth groups, it's not just to put something else on your calendar.
It is an invitation to you to grow deeper with other people and to grow deeper in your walk with Jesus. When you give, it is not just an invitation to give a donation. It is an invitation to change somebody's life for Jesus. And the same thing is true about destination day. When you're giving an invitation to destination day, it's not just about, hey, come to this thing.
We got free food trucks. It's not about destination day. It's about their day changing and their destination at the end changing. See what I did there. It's about eternity.
Your invite has the the power and the potential to change somebody's situation to change somebody's life to affect generations to come. And so here's the ask to you. Will you do that same invitation.
Will you accept the invitation to growth groups. Will you extend that invitation to serving to destination day to all of these things. You have been given the opportunity.
The table at the great banquet is set. Are you going to give an excuse or are you going to come and show up. See, for us, the tension becomes what happens if I invite someone and they say no.
What happens if it gets weird or what do I do. I want you to remember this. It's the last point for today.
There's always room for one more. Look at what Jesus says to finish up this parable. He says, "The servant came back and reported to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered her servant, "Go out into the streets and alleys of the town and bring the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.
" "Sir," the servant said, "what you have ordered has already been done, but listen to this. But there is still room. " Then the master told his servant, "Go out into the roads, into the country lanes, go out into tell and compel them, it's not in there, okay, I was just seeing if you were paying attention. Tell them to come in so that my house will be full. I tell you that not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.
" This is what I want you to get out of this. There's there's a lot of different things we can we can pull out here, but I love this line. But there is still room.
There's still room. There is always room for one more. And so I want to encourage you to not let invitations stop just because somebody has made you an excuse.
Don't stop inviting and pursuing people. Because here's the truth. Jesus doesn't stop pursuing you. And so we should then pursue people that don't know Jesus.
And what are the repercussions anyway. Like literally, let's just think worst case scenario for a second. If we extend an invite to somebody growing in their faith, to experiencing real life change, here's the three scenarios.
Either scenario number one, you're ghosted. That person just doesn't talk to you again, right. I am the king of being ghosted.
Nobody wants to talk to the pastor unless something's going on, right. Reason number two, you're the weird Christian. Do we hate that that label.
Be the weird Christian. I I'll get to that more in a second, but I want to get to reason number three. Reason number three is you're just bugging them. And here's the thing. I I said this in week one.
I would rather have things get a little awkward and weird in a relationship that I have than to hear that that person just died in a car accident and I have no idea where they ended up. I want to know that everybody closest to me but furthest from Jesus has a place a room in eternity with Jesus. And that same fire, I gosh, I'm praying that that same fire is lit in your heart to know that your friends, your family, everybody that is closest to you, you've been given an opportunity to invite them into the lifechanging power of Jesus.
That you, if you are sitting here today, have been invited into the lifechanging power of Jesus. I told somebody this yesterday. You can be a church person. You can show up and be in the chairs almost every week and still miss Jesus. I don't want you to miss that.
I don't want you to miss the life that Jesus has for you. So accept the invitation. Give the invitation to people who need it. And I want to encourage you with this is that when Jesus is talking about this great banquet, he's not actually talking about a dinner party.
He is talking about something so much deeper because throughout the New Testament when they use the term great banquet, do you know what that means. That means eternity in heaven. That's what Jesus refers to when he's referring to the great banquet. He is referring to eternity in heaven.
So if you don't get anything out of my message, get this. When you invite people to Jesus, you're inviting them into eternity. I want you to think with that mindset.
Not I'm inviting them to, you know, just fill up a seat in the room. I'm not inviting them to to make things weird. I'm inviting them into assurance that at the end of their life they have followed Jesus with so much love and and just following and disciplehip that at the end of their life everybody sits in that celebration of life and says I have no doubt in my mind where they are right that is what we are inviting people into that is what we are about as a church helping people find and follow Jesus. And there is always room for one more.
Look it you some of you have a seat next to you. There is room for one more. Look in the back of the room. You see that curtain.
That curtain goes up. And there are more chairs. There's room for one more.
One more life changed. Let me just end with just one more story. I told you about my favorite burger.
I'm going tell you really quickly about my favorite movie. Okay, this is just a day full of favorites. , my favorite movie is this movie called Hacksaw Ridge. Okay, if you've never seen it, I highly encourage it.
Just be ready. It's pretty violent. , and what Hacksaw Ridge is about is it's about this man named Desmond Doss.
And Desmond was a medic in World War II. And it was based all on a true story about Desmond Doss's life. And Desmond Doss was the first conscientious objector.
He had had some trauma with guns in his life and refused to carry a firearm. And so throughout his basic training, he was beaten up by his fellow soldiers. He was ridiculed. He was put on trial and he was just basically left to die at the end is kind of what they said. Does this kind of sound familiar.
Kind of sounds like somebody we know from some book. I don't know. But it it was really a hard thing because they had basically just wrote this guy off as he's just going to die, right. And so they get to Japan and their objective is to take Hacksaw Ridge.
And so they have to go up this giant ridge and battle Japanese forces and take that territory so they can move closer to the inner city. Well, one night, , Japanese troops just come out in full force and they force most of the Americans off of Hacksaw or leave them up there to to die. And Desmond Doss, as he's about to get off of the ridge, begins to pray.
And he prays this prayer, and maybe you've seen this in the movie. I I dug deeper into it. He prays this prayer.
God, what do you want me to do. And at that moment, he heard the screams and cries of soldiers that were bleeding out, that were in pain and suffering, yelling, "Save me. " And so he went after one more and one more and one more. And he changed his prayer. Instead of saying, "God, what do you want me to do.
" He says by about the second or the third person he started praying God help me get one more. Help me get one more. That night Desmond Doss saved 75 lives. 75 generations changed because one man prayed, "God, help me get one more. " I believe that God has put that life-changing power in each and every one of you.
That God by his Holy Spirit can give you that same lifechanging invitation to saving somebody's life who is who is quite like spiritually, emotionally bleeding, right. You have that invitation. Please don't waste it.
And so, here's kind of your action steps for today. I believe that from a message like this, everybody has a next step. So, I'm going to invite the worship team up and I just want to invite you to bow your heads and close your eyes. I know we're just a little over on time.
Apologize for that. I just really feel like God has three steps for for each of us. For some of us, it might just to be to start praying for and inviting people now.
So, who is closest to you but furthest from Jesus. And maybe for you that is the action to start praying for and inviting that person. Number two, for some of us, I know for me, we need to repent for the excuses that we've given that sometimes there is plenty of times where I've given God excuses to sharing my faith or to going deeper in my faith. And I want to encourage you not to excuse what God wants to do in your life.
And number three, maybe for some of you, you've never actually said yes to the invitation that matters. Jesus is inviting you to a seat at the table for the great banquet. This invitation is a is a an invitation for a full life in Christ. It's the hope that you're seeking.
It's the peace that you need. It's the love that you so desperately long for. It's not found in a person or a place in this world. It is found in Jesus.
And so if you want to say yes to the invitation to say, "I want to follow Jesus. " Would you just so boldly, just for a second, raise your hand so I can see you, so I can pray for you. If you want to accept that invitation to Jesus, you keep your hand raised up high.
And if that's you, I just I want to just lead you in a simple prayer. The Bible says that whoever believes in Jesus and declares him as Lord will be saved. And so this is the starting point for you and for all of us.
And so let's just pray together. God, I thank you so much for the yeses to accept your invitation. God, I pray that this would not just be a moment, but this would be the start of many moments of many yeses in obedience to you.
And I pray that for the people who are diving deeper into faith with you, that we would stay focused on you, that we would repent for excuses and say yes to your invitation in Jesus name.
