Okay, my name is Gregg. I'm one of the pastors
here at the house. If we've never met, I would
love to meet you. I would love to buy you a coffee
or a soda or a drink, something like that. Just
put it on the connection card at the end, and
I would love to follow up with you and connect
with you and make the habit. I would just like
to hear your story and get to know you a little
bit. Today we're wrapping up our series that
is called Follow Me Because Jesus Said What?
Follow Me. I'll try that again. Jesus said what?
Follow me, right? And so this is how he called
his first disciples. He walked around and he
said, for the kingdom of heaven is near. Come
and follow me. Week one, we saw how Jesus was
calling dramatically different people, fishers
and tax collectors, people from opposite ends
of the social strata and spectrum to be disciples
together, to be in relationship with each other.
We talked about how we are called to do. The
same thing, to create a community of God's kingdom
that is full of people that the world would not
put together. Week two, we saw Jesus teach his
followers that you have to eat my flesh and drink
my blood. I said something most Christians and
most pastors don't admit. That's weird. That
is weird to hear that if you've never heard that
before. And he was giving this hard lesson to
people to see if they would keep going, if they
would keep trying to understand, if they would
hear something difficult and continue to follow.
And that's the same thing that we get asked.
Will we continue to follow God when he says something
or when we read something or learn something
that we don't completely understand? And today
we finish up this series in Matthew 28 in Acts
1. And so I'm going to ask you to go ahead and
grab your Bibles. We're going to open up to Matthew
28 or Acts 1. You can open to both or just one
of those, okay? If you don't have a Bible, we
have Bibles on the tables, and then there's also
the same Bibles out on the bookshelf in the lobby.
You're welcome to take one of those home if you
need a Bible. Otherwise, you can download a Bible
from any of the digital app stores. It goes Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans in the New Testament
or the Second Testament. And so if you see any
of those, you know you're in the right neighborhood
for Matthew and Acts. And then during the sermon,
when the passage is read in the context of the
sermon, we like to give that our full attention.
You can do that in whatever way makes the most
sense for you, but you're also welcome to stand
with me as I read. Ready? Here we go. Matthew
28, starting in verse 16. Matthew 28, 16. Now
the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the
mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When
they saw him, they worshipped him, but they doubted.
And Jesus came and said to them, All authority
in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching
them to obey everything that I have commanded
you. And remember I am with you always to the
end. That's what's known as the Great Commission.
Now we're going to jump to Acts 1. Acts 1, verse
4. when you will restore the kingdom to Israel.
He replied, It is not for you to know the times
or periods that the Father has set by his own
authority, but you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be
my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth. Let us pray. God
of every tribe, of every tongue, every color,
of every nation, we thank you for your scripture.
Thank you that we still have it, that it has
persisted throughout millennia, that we have
it to consider, to learn from. I pray that whatever
you have for us to learn today, I pray that it
would stick, that it would become a part of the
framework of our faith, that our faith would
become stronger as we become more like your son,
Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thanks, y 'all. You can have
a seat. Y 'all know that feeling when you don't
know what comes next? Maybe it was graduation
day. Maybe it was that feeling you had when a
job was coming to an end. Maybe you just moved
somewhere new or it was the first time that you
fell in love. So much has led up to that moment.
And you just weren't sure what would come next.
You're thinking, now what? I think that's where
the disciples are when we get to the end of the
Gospels, when we get to the beginning of Acts.
They've spent all this time with Jesus. They
have seen him crucified. They have seen him resurrected.
But now he's leaving? They have to be thinking,
what do we do now? The guy that was telling us
what to do this whole time isn't sticking around.
And so Jesus tells them. These two passages,
Jesus tells them. He says, go and find. He says,
go and keep going. He says, go and I will be
with you. All right, but real quick before I
jump all the way into all that. I put these passages
together because many scholars believe that these
two passages are actually the same event. But
if you look at them, one of them happened in
Galilee on a mountain, the other happened more
than 70 miles away in Jerusalem. So I want to
say something about the Bible. If we think that
the Bible is like a stenographer in a court of
law, writing down every single syllable exactly
the way that it happened, then the Bible is going
to let us down. In the Bible, two different writers
can quote Jesus from the same event and use different
words, even include new ideas. They might change
the location or the timing. They might even change
exactly who was there. If you read all of the
Gospels, if you read the resurrection account
of who was there at the resurrection, all four
stories give a different list of who was there.
Because how we think of historical narrative,
The Gospels are what we think of as historic
narrative. When we think of that in our modern
minds, it is not exactly how the Bible writers
were thinking about how they were meant to write
down their narratives. Instead, these guys were
thinking about what people needed to know about
Jesus and how that could be shaped for a theological
purpose. So the writer isn't always worried about...
quoting Jesus exactly word for word. Instead,
the writer is thinking about intention for intention,
meaning for meaning, purpose for purpose, and
context for context. And newsflash, they did
not have us in mind. When they were writing these
things, they did not have a modern American mind.
in the context of this is who I'm writing this
for. They were writing it for the people that
were immediately around them in that day with
their kinds of minds, with their kinds of logic,
with their kind of contexts. They didn't think,
well, what happens if some people on the other
side of the earth 2 ,000 years from now get frustrated
that I didn't quote it exactly the same way the
other guy did? They were just trying to tell
the story in the most compelling way that they
could because they wanted people to believe in
Jesus. So now maybe you're hearing that concept
for the first time, and you're saying, well,
now what? See how I did that? I brought it back
around. What comes next? How am I supposed to
read the Bible now if I don't even know if it's
an exact quote here and there? Well, I'll give
you two quick things. And this is especially
for the kids and the youth in the room, the students.
I want you to listen to this, okay? Because you're
at the beginning of your life of reading the
Scriptures. I'm going to give you two things.
When you read the Scriptures, read it spiritually
and read it practically. Reading the Bible spiritually
means listen to the Holy Spirit when you are
reading. Listen to the Holy Spirit when you are
reading. Because you're not just reading the
Bible for content. You're not trying to figure
out, well, how many days were there between when
he crossed over the border of this and went through
Samaria and talked to the woman at the well,
and then when he went and he healed. That's not
the primary thing that you're looking for. You're
looking for the Holy Spirit to show you what
it is that you need in your life. Because, listen,
the Holy Spirit was involved when this was written,
and the Holy Spirit should be involved when we
read it. Amen? Let the Holy Spirit show you what
you need and then hide all of that in your heart
and carry it with you. And then read it practically.
Practically meaning you should ask this question
when you're reading the scriptures. How does
this cause me to love my neighbor? When we read
the scriptures, we read it spiritually and then
we ask, how does this cause me to love my neighbor?
Because the Bible is ancient, but it is not a
relic. It still speaks to our lives today. So
read it spiritually and then live it practically.
All right, that's sermon one. Sermon two. Jesus
said, go and find. He said, go and keep going.
And he said, go and I will be with you. If you
are here right now, you are here because somebody
heard Jesus say, go and find. And they came and
found. This makes me think of a guy named Tom
Williams. I probably saw, whether I knew it or
not, I probably saw Tom every Sunday of my life
between the age of 4 and 18. I saw Tom, and I
knew Tom because he was one of the adults at
the church that I grew up at. Tom was shorter
than me, 5 '4", 5 '5". Not tall, a slight man,
balding, like my dad. But he was a wonderful,
wonderful man. I got to poke, right? So I knew
Tom really my whole life leading up to college.
Actually, he taught me something I wanted to
teach you guys. Wallace, come here for a second.
So he taught me something I call the Holy Spirit
handshake. So Tom taught me this. It's right
here in the middle so it's on the camera. Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost. There you go. Thanks. Tom
taught me that handshake. I carry it with me
to this day. Now, the number one reason that
I noticed Tom growing up was because he sang.
He didn't have the best voice, but he would sing.
I don't know how many of y 'all grew up in church,
but who remembers when a church would have a
special? All right? I grew up in a white church,
so that meant that a special was a cassette tape.
You went to the Christian bookstore and bought
your favorite karaoke version of the Christian
song you heard on the Christian radio, and it
had like maybe four keys on it, and you would
sing along to it at home, and then you would
take it to church, and they would put it in a
little tape deck, and it would go through the
rinky -dink sound system that they had, and you
would sing to it, and that was the special. That
is the number one way I remember. time from when
I grew up going to church was he special because
he was the only one that I the only adult I can
remember doing a special other kids I felt like
it was the parents opportunity to use it as like
a second kind of piano recital for their kid
or something like that you're like hey get the
kid up there and play play that piano piece I've
been paying for you to learn how to do now after
after high school I went away to college at Judson
in Elgin, Illinois, about three hours from now.
And my mom called me one day, and this was not
a regular occurrence. And then you also had to
be in your dorm room in order to get a phone
call back in those days. So my mom had called
me, and she said, hey, I've got big news. And
she says, your dad became a Christian. Now, my
dad didn't become a Christian until he was 50
years old. And so this was not something that
I saw coming. Asked the obvious question. I said,
how? How? She says, well, Tom Williams works
at John Deere with your dad. And he asked, hey,
do you want to go hear this guy? He's an ex -Hell's
Angel. And he's going to tell his story and he's
going to give his testimony. And for whatever
reason, my dad thought, you know what? That sounds
okay. I'll go to that. And that night, my dad
became a Christian. See, Tom heard Jesus say,
go and find. And Tom went and found my dad. A
couple years later, Tom... died from cancer.
He'd had it a couple other times in his life,
at least two other times. He had been on what
people believed to be his deathbed, but we believed
that he had been healed. Years would go by. So
I'm grateful that in the time between, that he
went and found my dad. I think there's three
things that Tom taught me. He taught me the Holy
Spirit handshake, of course. He taught me that
a man can stand in front of a congregation and
sing. And he taught me that no one is too far
away to be found. For 2 ,000 years, people that
believe in Jesus have been going and finding.
You are here right now because someone went and
found you. And you are here because Jesus said,
go and keep going. And so someone went and kept
going. If you'll take a quick look around just
for a second, just look around at each other,
you might notice that this is not Jerusalem.
We are not in Israel. We are not on the other
side of the world. You aren't here just because
someone went and found you. Here because someone
kept going. Because Jesus had taught them that
your neighbors aren't only the people that live
next door to you. Your neighbors aren't only
in your hometown or your city or your county
or even only in your country. Your neighbors
are all along the way. So go and keep going.
He says, all the way to the ends of the earth.
And y 'all, don't you think that Jesus is saying
the same thing to us? Isn't this still for us?
Go and find. Go and keep going. Maybe we feel
like we don't know how to do that. It reminds
me of Moses. In Exodus 33. There's been a lot
that has happened by the time that you get to
Exodus 33. Moses, if you go all the way back
to Exodus 3 is where you see Moses meeting God
in the burning bush. By the time you get, and
it says take your shoes off, you're on holy ground.
By the time you get to Exodus 33, the relationship
between Moses and God had changed. There was
relationship. There was a closeness. Moses is
asking, can I see who you are? But in this moment,
even after Moses has seen everything that God
has done, after everything that Moses had done,
after all of the miracles that had happened in
Egypt, after they had fled Egypt, after they
had gone through the waters, at this point now
they've been wandering for a while, and they
know they're supposed to go somewhere, Says this
to God. See you have said to me. Bring up this
people. But you have not let me know. Whom you
will send with me. And this is how God responds.
God said. My presence will go with you. And I
will give you. Moses, the great Moses. Even Moses
was nervous, wondering, maybe even a little scared
about what would come next, what that next step
would be. And Moses is given the same promise
that Jesus gives to the disciples. God says,
my presence will go with you. Jesus says, and
I will be with you even to the very end of the
age. So listen, the how of going is believing
that Jesus is with you. It does not matter what
you are doing. It does not matter what you have
planned. It does not matter how simple or intricate
all of the details are. The answer to the God,
how do I do this? The answer to that is believe
that I am with you. So go and find. Go and keep
going. Go and believe that I am with you. As
I close, I just want to talk to the students
again. Grade schoolers, middle schoolers. High
schoolers, I know you all just started a new
year. Some of you guys are in a new building.
You've got all new teachers. You've got all new
friends. You've got new hallways. But listen,
Jesus is with you. Jesus is in that building.
Jesus is all around you. Jesus is already in
the room before you walk into it. Jesus is on
the property. Jesus does not need a badge to
get through the door. Jesus does not have to
go through a metal detector. Jesus is already
there. And he loves you. Because we know that
he loves you, we know that he loves every other
person that's in that building. And God has said,
go and find. Go and keep going. You are not too
young to walk in the presence of God. You are
not too young for the kids around you in school
to know that you are a Christian. Or to know
that you believe in Jesus. St. Patrick. lived
his life somewhere around the late 4th or early
5th century. He was kidnapped from Ireland when
he was 16 years old and taken to Britain as a
slave. After six years, he escaped and he went
back to Ireland and he became a cleric. It's
what we would call a priest now. The Catholic
Church was in its very early stages. It's what
we would call a pastor. And he became the great
missionary to Ireland. He became a saint. And
as we close, as I close this and just say a final
prayer, I want to pray over all of you, the students,
but each of us as well, the prayer that you've
probably heard parts of that is attributed to
St. Patrick. Let us pray. Christ with me. Christ
before me. Christ behind me. Christ in me. Christ
beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right.
Christ on my left. Christ when I lie down. Christ
when I sit down. Christ when I arise. Christ
in the heart of every man who thinks of me. Christ
in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me. Christ
in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear
that hears me. Amen.