Alright, so starting off with a little introduction here.
Alright, when I went to school, I was playing basketball.
A lot of it.
You won't believe it.
Full time job, six times, six days.
Alright, now through those times playing basketball, I have learned a lot of things
not just about the game but about myself.
Right now applying that to this, as you get further and further away from the hoop, it
gets harder to score.
Right, now when you have a defender on you, it becomes so much harder to score.
I'm 5'8", so once I'm 5'8", I'm 6'6", and when somebody who's 6'6", is guarding
me, I'm 6'6", and when somebody is guarding me, I'm 6'6".
So now when you're having somebody who's defending you, you need a relief.
Right, you need a good teammate.
Alright, so this teammate is going to help make things easier.
That's you and your flow.
Keep you cool, under pressure, and help your team win.
So the title of my message today is about standing in the gap.
We'll get more into what that means in a little bit.
But for right now, I want you all to stand up and look at your models to look 18 and
19.
When you have the same map.
Now we'll read this word in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself.
God, I thank you that I'm not like other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like
this tax collector.
Now another verse that I have is Luke.
Verses 12 and 13.
Alright, so now a little background on this one.
Jesus telling the tax collector, collect no more than what you have been ordered.
Alright, so that's the reading that I have for you.
So put the first thing that we have in mind, alright?
And see that there's an obvious disconnect.
People in taxes.
Why do you have to be told that not to do more than what you're doing in business?
You're dishonest in doing business.
You're exploiting people.
They can't even manage you.
Now something that we don't know about tax collector is that they had turned on their
own people to get themselves rich.
Alright, so Jews did not like Romans.
They didn't want to serve their gods.
They thought they were the scum of the earth.
So just being a Roman was bad enough.
Not bad.
Now imagine your tax collector.
Or you turn on your own people.
Alright, so these people hated them and they were rich.
They were traitors.
The people hated them and they were traitors.
Alright, so they're basically scum to everybody and they were rich.
So the tax collectors, what they did was that they widened the gap between Rome and
the Jews.
Alright, they couldn't connect with one another.
The person in the middle of the gap was taking advantage of the power and taking advantage
of the people for their own gain.
Now we've heard this story a thousand times, right?
Of God leaving the 99 for the long.
We've heard the story about being the prodigal child.
But I've never heard it that we're the tax collector.
We take advantage of people for our own upbringing.
We turn on our own people so that we can get glory.
We do things in God's name, but for us.
Alright, now Luke 19 too.
It says, and behold, there was a man named Fikia, which was a chief tax collector and
was wealthy.
And it happened that a Baron called Saquiao, who was a rich and poor people, these are
the two things that we want to be.
Powerful.
We want status and money.
Followers, sponsorships, endorsements, and we want platform.
Alright, we beat people down to put ourselves out.
Whether it's for a promotion, whether it's for getting a raise for a job we think we
should have gotten, but we're on a sports seat and we think we deserve a spot.
But everything that we're doing will beat people down to put ourselves out.
That's why we're doing that.
So many people have left the church because of our doing.
People get hurt.
They get fired at us and we tell them, right, we see the need and we don't help.
We see all the reason that people leave the church, not we see them as invalid, even
no more of the problem.
Right, we don't realize the damage that they've done.
We use what God has given us for our own money.
We pray like God, you know, I pray that you can use me during prayer.
But we also hope that the church is full of work from the bottom.
We pray, God, I know that you're going to use me.
Allow me to be powerful in every path.
We're thinking about the money that we're going to receive.
We look at a govah where we've taken our cameras out and everything, on a video that
don't even matter.
Wow, we don't realize when our hearts aren't set on Christ, our vice is not at the center.
When Christ is at the center we hurt people, Isaiah 64 verse 6 says, our righteousness
is the filthy rags.
Nothing we do matters.
It's not going to get us to heaven.
It's not going to get us saved.
Nothing we do matters.
It's not going to get us to heaven.
It's not going to get us saved.
It's not going to bring us more crowns and more glory or anything like that.
How much money you make doesn't matter.
How many followers you have doesn't matter.
It also doesn't matter how many people you bring to church.
It doesn't matter how many people are showing up.
It doesn't matter if the benches are full.
It doesn't matter if the working figure is fantastic.
None of that stuff matters.
The posture is not solely for Christ.
None of that's going to get us in the heaven.
And the issue that we have,
why there's a big gap in the church,
and why we can't minister effectively,
is because we have a bunch of people who think that we're saved.
And who are coming to church regularly,
but we've got nothing to give.
We have a lot of people showing up,
but we're not developing into powerful criticism like this.
Right? Last, be exploiting people.
Exploit people with needs and your impact.
When people walk into the door,
instead of giving them what they open up,
look them up and down with judging eyes.
God has blessed us with so much,
and we still don't give.
He gave you a raise in your job.
No, we can't give to nobody in him.
He gave you a new house.
No, we can't host no dinner for the money.
We get that new car,
but we won't give nobody no ride.
We have great clothes,
but we also won't donate.
We can't minister effectively
because we close ourselves off
to all the things that God has given us
and take credit as if it's something we've done.
We turn on our own people
and we get ourselves up.
I realize that we left the trail of them on the cross.
The trail.
Our lack of trust in God
and wants your control
and put us in a position
where we're ineffective in the industry
because God is not the center.
So you have the tax collector
and I gave you that example.
Now look at when Jesus was in the gap.
When he was working for the kingdom
and he was uplifting people,
what happened was they came together.
Jesus wasn't what I think it got.
When you allow God to work
as a vessel,
I work in you
in the show process of the trail that you've gone on.
Things will be so much better.
I can use you so much more.
I knew I had much more given to you
than if we're like the tax collector.
When we allow God
and we take the love that he's given us
and we receive it,
we can be so much more effective
than if we close ourselves off.
And if everybody in your friends group
only agrees with what you agree on,
all we believe is what you believe
and we have all the same beliefs and everything.
Where's the accountability?
Where's the growth?
We can't minister to people who are homosexuals
or we can't minister to people who are dealing with abuse.
We can't talk to the people on a brink of divorce.
We're real quiet right now,
but that's not what's going on.
We can't minister to those people
because you know what?
They're not holy.
They're not in church right now.
You look at them like they're on touch.
You see the example of Jesus,
these are the ones that he was called.
You didn't see Jesus sitting with the rich.
You didn't see Jesus sitting with the leaders.
He was sitting with people with the blue chat.
He was sitting with the low people.
These are the people that need our help.
These are the people who we need to minister to.
These are the people we need to be shown what God likes.
I'm challenging you today
when you're standing in the gap,
use what God has given you,
close the gap,
bring people together,
let's develop one another.
We're all on the same team.
We're all playing for the Kingdom of Syria.
Thank you.