Alright, so let's go ahead and begin. First of
all, thank you to your professors for forcing
you to come here or dismissing class and saying
you get credit going to class. I appreciate
that. That's very nice. Nice to see so many
young people. Let's begin with a word of prayer.
Thank you God for this great day and we just
praise you for your power and your love and
we thank you for this time to look into your
word, to talk about Jesus on the margins and
to also be challenged to also be a people on
the margins. Alright, in Jesus' name, amen.
Okay, so turn in your Bibles to Luke 19. While
you're turning there, we'll watch
this brief introduction. Alright, and we pay
money every month for a group to do that so
they got the stuff to me last night so I've got
to show it once. Alright, but I'm Ron
Clark with the Agape Church of Christ in
Portland, Oregon. The book Jesus Unleashed, the Gospel
of Luke for Emerging Christians was supposed to
be out this time, it's not. But if you're
on your way out, there's a flyer of some of the
other books we've done. Volume one was
on the prophets. Mark Hamilton gives a nice
plug on this book. Mark Hamilton, Shane Claiborne,
Michael Frost are writing some nice
endorsements. So if you want to take a sheet or
take a card
and we'll let you know when the book comes out
or just take a card if you have any questions
more about what goes on and what we're doing
with the Gospel of Luke. But I'd like to start
with Luke 19, alright, the story of the ten
coins. And if we're in Luke 19:11, we've
been talking about Jesus being on the margins,
reaching people out in the community. We've
talked a lot about the work that he's done,
he's doing with the poor, the oppressed, kind
of intertwining with our work at Agape that we
do with women in prostitution, with homelessness,
trafficking with Johns. Guys busted for
soliciting prostitution. I work with the police
and working
with Occupy groups. In fact, I was talking
yesterday about some of our work with Homeless
and Occupy group and I got a text after class
from some of our interns and then our formerly
homeless people. They said the Occupy camps,
they've done a sweep and removed them all
from downtown. So they're kind of this week
rushing all over Portland trying to find our
camps. We have connections with people who are
camping in Portland and it's interesting
to think about vulnerable people for a moment
because as we work with the police, for instance,
the police officer will go and they'll find
someone who's camping under a bridge and some
of them are really nice men and women and they
do a good job. But what they'll do is
they'll take this person and they'll have to
take him down to the jail to cite them.
So they'll put him in the car, put their
backpack in the car, they'll leave their possessions
behind. The person goes downtown, five hours
later they decide that they can't hold him
for anything and what happens when the person
goes back to their site? Stuff's gone. Their
house is gone. Imagine going back to your home.
Imagine getting pulled over for a speeding
ticket and they take you down, do a
breathalyzer, you're okay, everything's okay.
They say,
well, we just kind of thought something was up
but it's okay, you're released and you
go home and your home's gone. There's no house.
Or somebody else is living there and they've
taken all your stuff and maybe some of that
stuff was, you know, the little handkerchief
you had that you've held in your pocket for 20
years and it's the one thing that you held
onto when your dad physically beat you and it's
the one thing you could hold onto to
get you through and you rock back and forth
every night saying, keep it together. And
that's gone. What are you going to do? And so
you're mad, you're angry, maybe you go
out and use, get high, get drunk, you know, you
just, you know, because your whole world
has come crashing down around you. And we try
to talk with the police about, you know,
thinking about those things as they're trying,
you know, what can you do there to let the
person stay there, you know, or what can you do
to have the person move all of their things
or maybe as we're finding out you can call us
and we'll go down and watch their stuff
or we'll hang out there or we'll go and get
them some new stuff. These are things that
we want to think about as we work with
vulnerable populations. And the Gospel of Luke teaches
us to be thinking about that. Or another
situation, I donate plasma at the Plasma Center near
me and one reason is because one of our guys
from church said, hey, if you all donate plasma,
because we were really low on our
contributions, he said, if you donate plasma,
you can increase
our contributions, you know, by giving that
plasma money to Agape. And we thought, well,
that sounds cool. But then he said, there's a
lot of people there that just don't go to
church and they could use someone to talk with.
And so I started going to the Plasma
Center and all of our ministers go to the
Plasma Center. We've baptized people from
there. We've made these great connections. But,
you know, one of the things that I find
is that the Plasma Center, the pay is different.
You know, depending on the value of plasma,
a guy will get on his bike and ride all the way
from Vancouver, Washington, across the
river 10 miles. He shows up, stands in line 40
minutes, finds out they dropped the price
of plasma, $5 for the first give and then $10
for the second give. So now instead of
getting $65 a week, he's down to how much? That
must be Bible majors, not math majors,
$50 a week. $15, is that that much? For him it
is, or for her it is. Or they ride their
bike across and they stand in line and because,
you know, they were running a little late,
their blood pressure is up a little bit and
they say, oh, no, your blood pressure is too
high to give, so they flag them and they go and
they sit down and then 20 minutes later
you go in and they retest you and they say,
man, your blood pressure is too high, two
strikes and you're out. So now he's got to get
on a bike and ride back to Vancouver and
come back tomorrow. But the thing is, he's on a
Monday or Thursday schedule. So if he
comes back on Tuesday, he's got to come back on
Friday and his whole schedule is mixed
up. And then we look at guys like that and we
say, just get a job, man. He's trying to,
man. And so I talk with some of the men and
women at the center and I listen to them and
I say, man, that's got to be really, really
tough, you know, and we have these great conversations
but when I find out from them what it's like to
be vulnerable, I realize that I don't understand
that. See, it's easy for me to get in my car
and drive there and go give because I'm getting
ready to go to work and so I can read or talk
to people. But I forget how vulnerable many
of them are in this situation. And that's why
Jesus hangs out with the marginalized
because God lives among the oppressed and God
is able to represent the case of the oppressed.
And this is one of those stories. Let's look at
Luke 19:11, alright. Can we see in the
front row, okay? Are we alright? Okay, alright.
While they were listening to this, he went
on to tell them, turn there, this parable
because he was near Jerusalem and the people
thought the kingdom of God was going to appear
at once. So here Luke has been talking about
the journey theme. You know, the first part,
Jesus is building the case and Luke is building
the case of Jesus working with the poor. The
next theme, he's delegating, he's got the
disciples joining him. Now, on the third one,
he's approaching Jerusalem. This is where
the journey supposedly will end. So he's
heading there. People think the kingdom of
God's coming.
God is going to Jerusalem. The kingdom of God
is here. And he said, verse 12, a man
of noble birth went to a distant country to
have himself appointed a king and into return.
So he called ten of his servants and gave them
ten coins. Put this money to work, he
said, till I come back. But his subjects hated
him and sent a delegation after him to say,
we don't want this guy to be our king. But he
was made king, however, and returned home.
Now there's a part of the Jewish history where,
I think it was Archalus, one of the Jewish
rulers actually went to Rome and received the
right to rule Jerusalem from the Roman
Caesar. And then when he came back, the people
that rejected him, he killed a lot of them.
So this is fresh in their mind. This is a story.
They're familiar with this. So then
he sends for the servants to whom he'd given
the money in order to find out what they'd
gained with it. The first one came and said,
Sir, your coin has made ten more. Well done,
my good servant, his master replied, because
you've been trustworthy in a very small matter.
Take charge of ten cities, because I'm going to
wipe these people out and now you get to
be in charge of them. The second one comes and
says, Sir, your coin has earned five more.
His master said, oh, you take charge of five
cities. Then another servant came and said,
Sir, here's your coin. I've kept it laid away
in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you because
you're a hard man. You take up what you didn't
put down, you reap what you didn't sow. His
master replied, I'll judge you by your own
words, you wicked servant. You knew that I'm
a hard man, taking out what I did not put in
and reaping what I didn't sow. Why didn't
you put my money on deposit so when I came back
I could have collected it with interest?
Then he said to those standing by, take the
coin away, give it to the one who has ten.
Sir, they said, he's already got ten. He said,
I tell you, everyone who has more will be
given, but as for the one who has nothing, even
what he has will be taken away. Those
enemies of mine who did not want me to be king
over them, bring them here and kill them
in front of me.
All right, so if we look at this story, what
are some things about this story that kind
of click in your mind or jump out at you?
What's happening in this story? What do you
think? What do you think? All right. What jumps
out at you in this story? What kind
of comes out as you read this story? What's
this about? I know you want to speak. I have
a 21-year-old, okay, so I know how to work with
you. Come on now. I'm going to take your
allowance away if you don't answer my question,
all right? What is the story about? What are
some things that you hear in this story that
tell you some things about Christianity? Yes?
God wants us to use our... It doesn't really
have to be money, but if you look at this
and using our talents or ways to get people to
God, and He wants us to use those, but
for those of us who don't, He's not going to be
very pleased.
Okay, so a positive spin would be God wants us
to use our talents, our gifts, or the things
that we have, right? Okay, good, good. Yes?
I think that if we try to, like, if you don't
use your talents or what's been given to you,
you're absolutely useless. Like, there's no, I
guess, reason for you not going to contribute
to, I guess, your tasks given at hand or
anything like that. So, I'm going to take it
away and
give it to somebody else.
All right. If you don't use it, it will be
taken away. So, if we need to use our talents,
our gifts, what we have. Okay, good. Anything else?
I think it's interesting that, like, he was
scared. You know, he buried it, and so that,
like, relates to a lot of us because we're not,
like, bold enough to, like...
Invest them or use them. Okay, good, good. When
we read the story, it's basically kind
of like, you know, a mafia, a head of a mafia
coming in, and it's a very brutal story.
And this is actually part of their history.
This, the idea was when the guy came back
and he was, and when Arcellus was made king, he
went back and he just brutally, you know,
started beating down people in this area
because the idea was, you didn't like me,
I'm taking it out on you. And when we read the
story, it's not, well, God is this very
violent thug. That's not the point of the
story, okay? The point of the story is really
in the person that has only one coin. And
you're right about the investing, but when
you think about it, it's tremendous risk for
the other two to have invested their
coins because notice where they are. They were
expected to trade, now notice that,
verse 14, in a land of people that didn't like
the king. So they were supposed to go
into this very hostile territory. And if you
ask how can you take one coin and cause it
to grow to five or grow to ten, I don't know
that we can say that they were gambling,
but this was a very risky thing that they did.
I mean, they basically went in and said,
let it ride, and they came out, you know, with
ten and with five. The third person
played it safe, and that's really the point of
the parable. He was playing it safe, right?
I didn't want to lose your coin. I know that
you're a very ruthless person. I know
you're a very harsh man, and that you expect
something in return, but I decided to
play it safe. That's the point of the parable,
okay? And you are the one who said
over here, you are right in that you said he
was afraid, but the point of the parable
was he decided to play it safe. And what Luke
19, and see, Luke 19 is different than
the story of the Talents in Matthew, okay?
Matthew 25, the idea of Luke 19 is that
the kingdom of God is about taking risks, all
right? And, you know, standing here as
a person who, you know, one man hid his
responsibility. One man played it safe.
And I want you to know, you know, Lori and I,
seven years ago, I was preaching at a,
you know, you would call it a small church. It
was 500 in Portland, so that would be
a big church in Portland, but it would be a
small church here in Evelyn, I don't know.
But we were preaching at what was a large
church for us, and here I was in my mid-40s.
We had three boys. I was teaching at a school.
It was published, and I was just
frustrated because there was just a lot of work
we were doing in the community that
wasn't being embraced by the church where we
were at. You know, and it's just hard
for their paradigm was very difficult to get to
where we needed to be. And we were
asked about planting a church by Cairo's Church
Planting. Yeah, they're here
presenting as well. But we were asked to
consider that, and so we resigned with no
job, you know, believing that we needed to go
to Portland. We needed to plant
something in inner city. And, you know, through
that, God, you know, found a
congregation in Tulsa that supported us. God
put together a lot of pieces, and
then we were able to do that. But my son, my
middle son, he's 10 years old.
Hunter and I were sitting on the trampoline
this summer talking, and he said,
what did you learn about in class? He said, we
learned about this story. And so
he said, I was kind of wondering what it was
about. So we talked about it. We
talked about taking risks, and I said, hey, do
you remember back when mom and dad,
you know, planted this church? We started in
our home with a handful of people and
all this. He said, yeah. And I said, you know,
that was really risky for us because
we left very nice setting and a youth group for
you and your brothers. He got
to thinking, and I said, who would we not have
met if we wouldn't have taken that
risk? And he started naming all these people at
Agape that we've had, you know,
college students, former drug addicts, women in
prostitution, people who've come
in with struggles. And he started naming all
these people and naming all the
places he'd been and said, you know, if we
wouldn't have taken that risk, you
would have never gotten to do that, would you?
And it was getting him, this little
ten-year-old mind that wrapped his mind around
this, that the kingdom of God,
ministry, church, is not about playing it safe.
And I know some people say, well,
what about, you know, sometimes you can be too
reckless. The kingdom of God is
about taking risks. And the conversation that,
you know, I've been having with a
lot of church leaders has been over the issue
of playing it safe. And I always
ask, do we get anywhere by playing it safe? At
what point do we take risks? Now,
you all are younger people, so you're all
always taking risks. You know, you're
always thinking about things like that. And I
think that's great. We love young
people at Agape. We work with young people.
Younger people do great work with
some of the people we work with. But the one
thing that worries me is that through
time, that Spirit's going to be killed. And
who's going to end up killing that
spirit? Okay. I'm going to say older people,
but people who want to play it
safe, right? So I'm not saying, you know, oh,
you know, I'm an old guy. When I
turned 50, I got to be a cranky old man. It was
kind of nice being 50, because
now I can express my opinion. When I was
younger, I was always told, you know,
this is not the way it is. But now that I've
gotten older, I've begun to stop
and think, you know, as older mature
Christians, we have to model taking risks
for the younger generation. And we need to be
encouraging you to take risks. The
kingdom of God is about taking risks. In fact,
when we go to Jesus on the cross,
the cross is a great risk that God has. God is
able to get close to people
enough to suffer, okay? Now we've got John and
Dorothy Emerson here. They were
elders when I was at a church in Missouri.
Basically, all we're doing now is
the same thing we were doing back then with the
Joy Bus, you know. I mean, we had
a Joy Bus back then. We were going into homes.
And I'm thankful because we're
where we are now, because John and Dorothy, as
elders, you know, were leading
a church where we were able to go. And I, as a
young man, was encouraged, see,
to go and to be around people and to connect
with people and bring
them to church. And they would love them.
Dorothy would teach the grade school
class. And I know she wanted to show kids once
in a while, but she never did.
She was always very nice and very caring with
them. But I remember, you know,
as a youth minister, that's where Lori and I
met, you know, a lot of the
ministry that we do now was formed back then
because that was a church that
wanted to take risks. You know, it was a church
that did risky things. And one
of the things that we learn from this parable
is that God expects us to take
risks. God doesn't, you know, don't we need to
be safe and don't we need to be,
you know, careful? Sure, there's points to that.
But basically, Christianity is
about taking risks. It's about willing to, you
know, I have people talk about,
you know, I don't want to, I'm afraid I might
lose my faith if I talk with an
atheist. If you lose your faith talking with an
atheist, that's your own fault.
Okay? You should be strong enough in your faith
that you can talk to an
atheist. If an atheist can shake you in one
conversation, you need to go back
and really start reflecting on your faith and
study more and read. Atheists
are struggling in their faith. That's why many
of them are atheists. Only one
percent of people in witnessing, only one% of
people are actually hostile
to the Christian faith. Research has been done.
The majority of people just
don't know. In fact, Thomas Rainer did some
research and he said, 85% of
people who don't go to church would go to
church if a Christian invited them.
And he said, this is the sad news. Of that 85
percent, over 83% of them,
wait, no, I'm sorry. Okay, so 85% of people who
don't go to church would
go to church if someone invited them. 83% of
Christians don't invite
un-churched people to church. So what's
happening? We're not taking risks.
There's this huge market, oh, market's a
terrible term, okay, there's this huge
surplus of people who need God and who want God
and who would be willing to
listen to God if someone who loved God would
share it with them or would invite
them to church or would bring them to Friends
Day or would say, hey, I'll pick
you up, let's go have breakfast. I remember
when I was in college, you know,
I got baptized in college and I ran cross
country and track and I remember,
you know, just always going and saying, hey,
let's go to church and I'd bring
people to church with me and I baptized, you
know, probably more people then than
I did as a minister. But it was exciting
because we would stay up late in the
dorms and have these long discussions. I went
to a state school, it wasn't a
Christian college, but I just remember the
excitement. But I also remember how
many people would say, sure, I'll go to church
with you. And then you'd get to
talk and nobody's invited me to church. You
think, really? You live in Missouri,
nobody's invited you to church? Yes. But that's
what the research says. The owner
expects them, God expects us to take risks. And
so asking the question, are we
taking risks in our lives? Are we taking risks
as Christians? Are we willing to
stretch our faith in trying to help someone to
grow so that they might come
to know God? And the parable, yeah, there you
go, that's us getting our church
planning certificate. Darker hair and lighter
weight to go? Yes, okay, alright.
But the kingdom of God is about taking risks.
Jesus takes risks. When we read the
next few parables and the next few stories,
Jesus goes to Jerusalem, his home.
And instead of welcoming him, his home rejects
him. His home turns on him. In the
ancient world, whenever a king came to a city,
they were supposed to be met by a
group of leaders, delegates. When Jesus goes
over the Mount of Olives, who are
the ones meeting him? The common people, the
crowds. And they're screaming and
they're saying, you know, Hosanna, you know,
save us Lord. Blessed is the one who
comes in the name of the Lord. And the leaders
are saying, tell these people to
shut up. And Jesus says, man, you know, if I
told them to shut up, the rocks would
cry out. Why? Because the leaders aren't out
meeting us. The corrupt leaders at
that time were not out meeting God. They were
rejecting Jesus. In fact, he even
goes on and as he draws near the city, he weeps
over it. Would they you, even you
had known on this day the things that make for
peace. But now they are hidden
from your eyes for the days will come upon you
when your enemies will set up a
barricade around you, surround you and hem you
in on every side, tear you down to
the ground. You and your children within you,
they will not leave one stone on
another because you did not know the time of
your visitation. And as he goes
and he talks about the destruction of the
temple, he's referring to the Romans who
were going to come in and destroy Jerusalem.
Why? Because they rejected
Jesus. Jesus came home and they shut the door
in his face. Jesus came knocking on
the door and said, let me in and they bolt. He
heard the deadbolt go across.
Jesus knocked again and they turned on the
security alarm and called the police.
They drove him out. Jesus was coming home and
the city wouldn't accept him.
And as Lucas moved on this journey and the
disciples have come with him, Jesus
comes home and they reject him and the
disciples are saying, this is the price
of discipleship. This is the risk that God has
called us to take. This is the
direction where we are to be. He's consistently
said throughout the Gospel,
I'm going to be rejected at Jerusalem. They're
going to turn on me. I'm going to
walk in and they're going to try to crucify me.
And when I hear people say,
is this kind of a new thing? That Jesus was the
rejected God? Actually,
Jesus is God who's always been rejected. As you
read through the Bible, people
of corrupt religious leaders, corrupt faith
people have always turned their
back on God. There are groups of people who
follow God. There are groups of
people who are faithful to God, but
consistently there are corrupt leaders
who reject God, who turn their back on God, who
hurt God. The God of second
chances, I wrote that book about describing God
as, imagine God gets in a
car and drives and goes to a hotel and the
prophet's next to God and God gets
out of the car and walks to the hotel door and
knocks on it and the door opens
and there's God's husband, God's wife, God's
spouse standing there, wearing a
towel around their waist or a towel around
everything. And they look back in
the corner and there's another person in bed
saying, come back to bed. And there's
clothes on the floor and there's lip prints on
the wine glasses. And what does
God say? Does God look and say, oh, I'm sorry I
bothered you at this time. I'll
come back at a more convenient time, right? Is
that what God would say? Is that
what a person would say in that spot? What
would a person in that spot say that
you could repeat in here, right? What would a
person like that say? What do you
think? What's going on in here? What else might
they say? How dare you? What is
wrong with you? I always have people who have
been through divorce ask me, have
you ever hated someone enough to kill them? I
said, oh, yeah, I mean, is it wrong
to do that? And I'll send them to the prophet
and say, I want you to read the
prophets, not as if you're the person receiving
the message from God, but as if
you're watching God with a spouse that has hurt
God. And they always come back
and say, I know exactly how God feels. What are
the things that that person would
say? A lot of things that maybe you can't take
literally. Did you literally say
that? Well, yes, I was mad. When we read the
prophets, God is venting. God is
angry. I'm going to blow you up. I'm going to
send an army in. I'm mad. I'm angry.
And God is hurt. But the interesting thing
about the prophets is that the
prophets are not meant to be read from the
perspective that we're the person in
the hotel room. The prophets are meant to be
read from the perspective that we're
standing there with God watching this
conversation. Jeremiah is like a marriage
therapist watching God and Israel have this
argument. And Jeremiah is upset
because God is hurt and God is angry. And
Israel is going, oh, yeah, I don't care.
I want to sleep around with somebody. I'll
sleep around with whoever I want to.
And Jeremiah is just out of his head. He's
angry. He's over talking to the bride
saying, what is wrong with you? And then other
times he's talking to God saying,
man, ease up, God, okay? Give him a chance to change.
Habakkuk is a great book to read as a person
who's an advocate of the guilty.
God, you're a little extreme in your punishment
here. The prophets stand
between God and the nation of Israel. And the
prophets stand there. And they're
trying to be in the midst of this argument. And
they're trying to bring a
sense of peace and hope. And as I talk about
the prophets, we're kind of in the
role of the prophets. Now, I remember sitting
at a booth at a restaurant and
this guy, Michael, was sitting across from me
and I was just furious at him.
I mean, we had taken his wife down to get a
restraining order. He'd hurt her in
front of the kids. The district attorney told
me because that happened he goes to
grand jury the next day, which is good because
he gets charged and then he comes
to me and we're able to hook him up with a
better intervention person that's going
to make sure he's okay. And so Michael's
sitting across the table from me and I'm
just furious at him because he stood me up at
the last meeting. And I'm looking at
his head down at the table and I'm saying, the
next time you stand me up, you
can just figure out I'm not going to stick with
you in this. When I ask you to
be here at five, I need you to be here at five.
I am a busy person. I take my
time. I was upset. And he sits down there and
he says, I know. And he starts crying
and he goes, man, I lost my wife, my three boys.
And then he places the
stack from the restraining order, 12 pages. I
can't even make sense out of it.
And he goes, I don't know what to do. I don't
know where to go. And at that point,
you know, I kept thinking about Habakkuk and I
thought, man, this guy either needs
an advocate or I'm just going to continue to
beat up on him like everybody else
is. And I think that's the idea of being a
prophet. That's the idea of being with
God, being with Jesus in these instances that
taking a risk means that sometimes
I'm going to be an advocate of the person who's
guilty. I may stand with them
and say, I'll walk with you. And he went, they
weren't able to get back together,
but he's gotten better. He's gone on. He went
through the counseling and he's
done well. And I walked with him through that.
And I stopped and think about what
Jesus is talking about as being prophetic, as
taking risks in ministry, as
being willing to walk with Jesus even at the
time when the city rejects him,
to stand with him. Sometimes it calls us to
hurt with God, but to understand the
passion and the love that God has. You know,
even in a plasma, you know, this is
Damon from the Plasma Center, man. Damon's
funny. Every time I go in there,
he's like, hey, Pastor Ron. And I'm like, I'm
not a pastor. And then I'm like,
I'm trying to be Incognito here. But he's like,
good Sermon. And people are like,
oh, you're a minister? Yeah, I'm trying to be
Incognito here. But you know,
Damon's a great guy. He started coming to
church. We baptize him in our, I love
this, baptistry. Isn't that amazing? It's a
horse trough. You know you're in Oregon
when you go to a cattle feed store and you sit
in one of these and say, I'm
looking for a feed trough to use as a baptistry.
And the guy goes, what? I've
never met a country boy that doesn't know what
a baptistry is. And the other guy
stands next to him and goes, oh, that's the
thing them churches do. They dump
people in the water. Oh, okay, I thought you
were like going to all drink out of
it or something like that. But you know,
Damon's one of those that just by being
in the Plasma Center, by being around people
who have got issues, you know, and
the first time we started studying together,
we're sitting here and the
technicians are great. They don't make a lot of
money. But they're there. They're
always sticking us in the arm. And one of them
came up and she said, why are you
going to meet with that guy? And I said, well,
he kind of goes to our church and
he wants to talk about baptism and his faith.
And I said, so we're going to kind
of meet at, I said, Burgerville, you know, for
hamburger. And she goes, are you
like a minister or something? Like a priest?
And I go, I'm a priest that can
get married. You know, I'm a minister in a
church of Christ. And she goes, oh,
okay. She goes, I'm Catholic. And she started
talking about not being in church
and not liking churches. I said, okay. And then
she comes back and then she comes
back over about two minutes later and she goes,
Red Robin. And I said, what?
She goes, Red Robin. They got better hamburgers
than Burgerville. I think you
should take him out to get a Red Robin burger,
you know. And she was excited
when he was baptized and she talks with him.
But, you know, just thinking about
being in an environment where people are very
vulnerable, people are on the
margins is what Jesus has called us to do. It's
about taking risks. And do people
become negative about those who take risks in
the church? Sure, that happens.
But the joy is that we see lives change. The
kingdom of God is about taking risks,
about trying to reach people. Now, I want to go
to chapter 24 in just a moment,
kind of move as we're kind of ending this
section out. As we know in the story,
Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem.
A lot of people have asked
about, you know, his discussion about Jerusalem
being destroyed and clouds
open. They say, well, is that really about the
end of the world or is about the
destruction of Jerusalem from Rome? And my take
is, like, if you were to be at
the Twin Towers on September 10th, let's say,
and somebody were to walk up to you
and say, you know, and you were to say, wow,
these towers are huge, they're big.
And they were to say, you know, tomorrow they
won't be here. I mean, is this going
to be rubble? Is this going to be a lot of
lives left? There's going to be
explosions? And you would think, are you crazy?
I mean, what kind of cataclysmic
event would cause the destruction of the Twin
Towers? And, of course, the next day
the airplanes, airliners crash and the
buildings crumble and people lose their
lives and the whole country is devastated. At
the temple, when the disciples are
telling Jesus, look at these stones, and Jesus
says, these stones are going to all
fall down. This is going to be rubble. It blew
their mind. You know, what kind of
an event would this be? Rome is going to come
in. They're going to destroy it.
It's going to be an awesome event. It's going
to be horrible. It's going to be
scary because the people of God rejected God.
And there's these lessons that Jesus
teaches in the temple and eventually, as we
know, they hang them on the cross,
they crucify them. But there's this wonderful
story in Luke 24 that I'd like
you to look at. Luke 24:13. After he's risen
and he's shared that he's
risen and they're all kind of aware of this
story, verse 13, now that same day
two of the men were going to a village called
Emmaus, about seven miles from
Jerusalem. They were talking with one another
about everything that had
happened. As they talked and discussed these
things with each other, Jesus
himself came up and walked along with them, but
they were kept from
recognizing him. Why did they not recognize him?
Don't know. Maybe he had a
hoodie on, the Justin Bieber look. I don't know.
Maybe they were so overcome
with stress that they weren't paying attention.
Maybe the idea that Jesus
looked so much like a normal person, an average
person, that he looked like
everybody else. Maybe he kind of hung his head
down so they couldn't recognize
him. We don't know. The story doesn't tell us,
but it will in just a moment.
And this is why they didn't recognize him. He
asked them, what are you
discussing together as you're walking? They
stood still with their faces
downcast. One of them named Cleopas asked him,
are you a visitor to Jerusalem
and you don't know the things that have
happened in these days? What things,
he said. About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied.
He was a prophet, powerful in
word and deed before God and all the people.
The chief priests and the rulers
handed him over to be sentenced to death and
they crucified him. This has
occurred like six times in the Gospel, or five
times in the Gospel of Luke.
Jesus said, I'm going to Jerusalem, I'm going
to be handed over, I'm going to
be crucified and die. So they're saying what
Jesus has been saying through the
whole three years. But notice what happens, and
you can see Jesus going,
yes, yes, yes, you're almost there. You're
almost there, verse 21. But we had
hoped that he was the one who was going to
redeem Israel. And what is more,
it's the third day since all this took place.
In addition, some of our women
amazed us. They went to the tomb this morning,
but they didn't find his body.
They came and told us they'd seen a vision of
angels who said he was alive.
Then some of our companions went to the tomb
and found it, just as the women
had said, but they did not see. And so they're
quoting what Jesus has been
saying for three years, but they get to that
one point about the resurrection
and they say, yeah, but nothing happened, he
died. And we've got a bunch of
stories running around. Nobody really knows
what happened. And you can see
Jesus like, no, you're almost there. Instead,
verse 25, he says, how foolish
you are and how slow of heart to believe all
that the prophets have spoken.
Didn't you, did not the Christ have to suffer
these things and then enter his
glory? And beginning with Moses and the
prophets, he explained to them what
was said and all the scriptures concerning
himself. As they approached
the village to which they were going, Jesus
acted as if he was going farther.
But they urged him strongly, stay with us for
it's nearly evening. The day is
almost over, so he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them,
he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began
to give it to them. Then their
eyes were open and they recognized him and he
disappeared from their sight.
What is it that caused them to open their eyes?
Well, he offered communion to
them, part of it. The other part is they
welcomed the stranger. They welcomed
the stranger into their home. And one of the
points Luke is making is that,
not just for them, but the people of God will
never see Jesus until they
welcome the stranger. We will never understand
the concept of carrying our
cross, denying ourselves until we welcome the
stranger. We will never clearly
understand the whole purpose of the road to
Jerusalem, the rejection of
Jerusalem, and the resurrection until we
welcome the stranger. And what will
happen is, when you get into the book of Acts,
which we'll have finished next
year in the book, next year on Acts, the idea
is the church welcomes the
stranger and recognizes him. Now do you think
that's true today that we can't
see Jesus unless we welcome the stranger? How
are some of the ways that our
churches, that we welcome the stranger so that
we can see Jesus? What are some
of the ways that we do that in our churches? Yeah?
There's a lot of churches that are inviting to
us the non-believer.
Or Interfaith services or a church for the
Un-church, per se.
Okay. We try to go and welcome people that are
Unbeliever, don't know Jesus,
people who are struggling, and in that we see
Jesus. All right. What are some
other ways that we as churches can open our
eyes to Jesus through welcoming the
stranger? What do you think?
Some churches have homeless centers.
Where there was like a meal every night. And
during the winter, like one or
two nights a week, there was a place for a
natural stay when it was cold.
Okay. Using the building to reach homeless.
Okay. Or working with homeless agencies.
I mean, think about where you go to church. I'm
assuming you go to church.
Thinking about where you go to church. Have you
ever sat down and thought,
you know, I struggle in my faith, but maybe
there's a ministry here that's
trying to help homeless people or feed people.
I guarantee if you would start
serving there, you'll see Jesus.
Because you'll welcome the stranger, you'll see Jesus.
What other ways can churches open their eyes to
the stranger and see Jesus?
What do you think?
How about some of those groups that go to those
nursing homes, right?
We try to stay away from those, don't we?
Because we don't want to be reminded
of death. But we need to be there.
You know, I grew up, my boys grew up going to
the nursing homes.
And, you know, they're very outgoing, very
loving, very caring young men.
I mean, it was hard, you know, they're three
years old and they're walking in.
It's like, let me give that little boy a kiss,
you know.
And I'd see Nathan sometimes running and an
older lady in a wheelchair,
let me give you a kiss. He's like, Dad.
And I'm like, we're going to leave in 30 minutes.
You know, just keep on running. It's a circular hallway.
But, you know, taking, you know, and my boys
would tell good stories from that.
You know, sometimes that, you know, being in
places where people are vulnerable
and lonely is a way to see Jesus.
And we think, I don't want to do that ministry.
That's not fun.
If you're struggling in your faith, if you did
something like that,
I guarantee in a few months you would see Jesus
because you would suddenly
welcome the stranger, right?
What are some other ways that we can open our
eyes to the stranger
in our churches? Yes?
Our congregation offers ESL practice.
For national students here.
For anybody, anybody too.
So many of them are not believers.
There might be atheists from different countries.
Well, just anybody that struggles to speak
English, man,
there's some great opportunities to be a part
of ministries to teach English.
And why are we teaching English?
Because we're helping people in their communities.
I know in Portland we did an ESL ministry
because, you know,
we have this huge Russian population and we
have this huge Hispanic population,
which is funny because in high school they
always told me,
take French and German, you'll never use Spanish.
And I'm like, what?
Where are they thinking?
Get those counselors out.
But, you know, in Portland we have high Eastern
European and high Asian
and high Hispanic populations.
And in teaching English with many of them, man,
I mean we'd have like once a year we'd have
student teacher banquets.
We'd have like 50, 60 people there and they'd
bring their own native foods.
You know, Chinese cook, the Russian people, the
Albanian people.
And man, the food was excellent.
But we'd sit at a table and talk with them
about how their English is going.
Because so many of the younger people grow up
and they don't,
they only learn English.
And then the parents and the kids can't connect.
And now we have this huge gulf between the kids
and the parents.
And suddenly the kids start doing poor in school
and the teachers can't communicate with the parents
and the parents don't know.
And these kids are in the life.
We have a lot of Russian gangs in our, in my neighborhood.
And so there's a lot of young kids that get
caught up in this
because they forget the ways of their country,
the ways of their home.
Nathan, when he was in eighth grade, taught a
Russian couple English.
And we would go and have dinner and I'd go with him.
And then we'd have dinner afterwards.
And the couple was my age.
And one night we got to talking about living in communism.
And I remember talking about how, you know, honestly,
when I was a kid we hated you guys.
I said, whenever I played with my soldiers, the
bad soldiers were Russian.
Whenever we had sports competitions, like,
oh, you've got to be the Russians, we're going
to beat you.
And they were saying the same thing about us.
And they said, and then the lady, Natalia,
looked at me and said,
why did we hate each other?
We loved each other's country.
So I'm in the car with my son and Nathan was in
eighth grade at the time
and he said, what was that all about?
And I told him and he said, well, that was stupid.
I said, yeah, it really was, wasn't it?
But he got to see Jesus through the eyes of
another family, you know,
and what it meant to be Russian Orthodox
and what it meant to be in a country where
they're vulnerable.
You know, I just want you, at least, as we
close out, Luke,
to stop and look at the church you're part of.
If you're struggling in your faith and you're
struggling to grow,
oh, I could read more Bible and maybe I could
pray more,
but I would really like to encourage you to
find a ministry that welcomes strangers.
I'm not saying, you know, judgmental way, I'm
just saying people who are vulnerable,
whether it's, you know, nursing homes, kids.
Do you know that the highest age for sexual
abuse is females age 12-14?
The second highest is 8-12 females.
One in six boys is sexually molested.
One out of four young ladies is experiencing
date rape
or violence in a dating relationship.
If you worked with kids, you would hear some
stories of people who are very vulnerable
who need you in their life and God will put you
in their life, you know.
But these kids also need to be around people
who love them,
who touch them appropriately, who respect them,
who say, you know what,
the reason 12-14-year-old females are the
highest percentage of abuse
is because we don't listen to 12-14-year-old females.
We just assume how they're making stuff up, you know.
So these kids need people who get in their
lives and say,
tell me what's going on in your life, how's
school going?
Human trafficking, they've done all these
studies on human trafficking.
I know in Portland, the human traffickers, the
way that they deal with it
is they're going into the high schools and the
junior highs
and if you sign up to take special education,
nobody can monitor your schoolwork.
And so there are these 19-year-old pimps who
are in our school systems
under special education, you know, and I
believe that there's people that need that,
but these are using the system.
No money monitors their class, they go one time,
they find the kids who are disconnected from
their family.
They get them in a dating relationship, they
have sex with them,
they get them to have sex with their group of friends
and pretty soon they got them up on I-84
shipping them across the country
or I-5 shipping them down to Mexico or to Canada.
That's how human trafficking works.
It works by people going out and saying,
who's a vulnerable person whose parents ignore them?
Just by being involved in children's ministry,
Youth ministry, teen ministry,
listening to kids, volunteering to help kids
after school,
you're going to see Jesus by welcoming the stranger.
So I'd like you to think and pray, and I'll be
praying for you,
as you're back in your church, ask the question,
how can I be part of a ministry that welcomes
vulnerable people?
Or ask the question, here at ACU, what can we
do in Abilene
to create a ministry to welcome vulnerable people
so that we as students and others can open our
eyes to see Jesus?
All right, let's close with a word of prayer.
Thank you God for this great day.
I just thank you for everybody's time and attention.
I just pray that as a people we will not be
afraid to take risks
because we know that you will bless us for
taking risks.
I pray that you will, right now your spirit is
stirring in hearts,
and there's people right now thinking, man, I
could do this.
You have called us to be a people who welcome
the stranger,
and in that we will see you more clearly.
And I just pray that you be with everyone here,
that Jesus will be unleashed in lives,
and Jesus will be unleashed in our communities.
Lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.
So if you want more information there about the
book or email or whatever,
thank you for your time.
Have a good week.