before we, open up Matthew
nine, I want to highlight a couple in our church.
David and Sandy, open golf.
The, at our men's breakfast we honored had a competition, honored some people.
And one of the,
ones we honored is the person who has been married
to the same person the longest amount of years.
Of those who are present.
And David and Sandy, one that David said
that they've been married 50 years and six months.
And so we honored them. We honored him.
And one of the ways we honor them is
we gave them their own little parking space out front.
And it's on a little sign, says David and Sandy.
50 years, six months,
and we're going to keep that parking space for them for about three months or so,
just as a way to honor them and their commitment to the Lord.
Their commitment to each other 50 years and six months is a big deal.
And one, yeah, you can clap for them. Absolutely.
And so anyway, I want to highlight them.
They're there the, the the mess, the sermon they preach without saying
a word is, is good for us to pay attention to,
especially as married ones who are still going through it.
And every year in marriage, you figure it out again
and every year you figure it out again
and you have to keep figuring it out if you're going to make it 50 years plus.
Right? Right.
And so it's a great message.
They continue to speak to us who ought to honor them, because we honor marriage
between a man and a woman and the and the length and legacy of it
that it speaks to us as a church and to our children and a model for us.
So anyway, you'll see that out there.
I, I was like, David, 50 or 6.
That's awesome man.
So that's your parking space for three months.
And he said, that's fine, we take separate cars to church.
I said, well, that's the secret.
That's the secret right there.
Sometimes you need some space.
Anyway, I don't know who gets the parking space, but they can.
They fit.
They figured out everything else for 50 years.
They can figure that out to,
Matthew chapter nine,
to wrap up this chapter today.
And just just recap, as Bible students,
Matthew and John are two of the four gospels
that were written and recorded by actual disciples of Jesus.
Mark and Luke were not disciples of Jesus.
They told the story the account as they interviewed people about Jesus.
But, Matthew and John are disciples,
each writing from a very different perspective.
John writes from an eternal perspective,
and that's why John doesn't have a birth narrative about the birth of Jesus.
John starts in eternity.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God,
and the word was God.
The Word of God was with God in the beginning.
So there's no birth narrative in John.
He wants to go all the way back
and talk about Jesus as a messiah for the entire world.
Matthew is a different perspective, same account,
same Jesus, different perspective.
And Matthew is writing from a very Jewish perspective
and highlights Jesus as the Messiah of the Jews,
the one the Jews were waiting for.
Messiah is a translated word from Hebrew, which means the Anointed one.
The Greek translation of that is is Christ.
So Jesus the Christ or Jesus Christ?
That's the way they translate the Old Testament word Messiah.
Matthew
is writing from the Old Testament Jewish perspective as Jesus, as the Messiah,
the King, the Anointed One, the one that had been prophesied
about for thousands of years and and had now come upon the earth.
And as a result, Matthew uses a lot of Jewish verbiage,
language, understanding, and he just kind of writes stuff as if
his Jewish audience knows everything that's
associated with his account, because they did.
We don't.
And so to get the depth and the breadth and the beauty of the book of Matthew,
they require some Jewish historical explanation.
And so I'll do a little bit as we go through Matthew.
But I just want you to understand that that's where
Matthew's perspective is coming from.
It's very, very, very Jewish. And we'll see that today,
at this point in chapter nine, and we'll wrap it up in the next couple weeks.
In chapter ten, we've been through three sections of the book of Matthew.
Matthew one through four.
Matthew presents the person of Jesus revealed to the world,
Matthew 567
and I had to do that because my grandson Miles
is probably going to watch this, and he'll get a kick out of that.
So Miles, Matthew 567
it it deals with the the principles of
Jesus Explained, which is the sermon on the Mount.
And then Matthew eight 910, Matthew reveals
the power of Jesus that's revealed into the world.
And so in Matthew eight 910, there's ten
miracles recorded in those three chapters.
And we're going to look at the last of those miracles today as we wrap up
chapter nine, before we get into chapter ten.
Matthew nine is not
just about the power of Jesus.
It's also about what kind of people come to Jesus.
And my hope this morning is that we'll see ourselves in one
or multiple of the people who come to Jesus
and who are blessed by his mercy to receive an outpouring of his power.
The big idea for this morning, I want you to get this
is that faith isn't just believe in Jesus can help.
Faith is the result of admitting nothing else can.
Faith isn't just
believing that we believe Jesus can't.
Faith results from admitting nothing else can.
And all of those who come to Jesus that we see in Scripture,
they're going to come to Jesus because there's nothing else in the world
that works. There's nothing else in their life that.
Works.
Nothing.
And so many times, this is where God wants to get us to
the realization and the admittance that all the other things
that we might rely on and count on fall apart.
And so we have no other option.
It's the words of the disciple more to whom else will we go?
You alone have the words of eternal life.
I mean, if we had an option to go somewhere else, we would.
That's the implication.
And oftentimes when we have options
and we have other plans,
we don't have to go to Jesus
because we trust in our plans.
And so many of our prayers reside on God.
Give me another.
Give me another option.
Give me another, give me.
And and I think sometimes God says, no, I don't want to give you any other options.
I don't want to give you any others.
Because if you have another option,
you'll take it.
And we have to understand that there are times when God lets
everything else in our lives run out
so that we will run to him.
And if you've ever been in that place in your world
where everything else that used to you used to count on
that used to be reliable, that when you use as your identity,
that you use as your hope, when all of that is taken away,
sometimes that is God's act of love
because we've built our lives
around these other things,
and we have to get to the point
where we say that I got nothing else.
And that's a that's a scary and a difficult place to get to
because because to answer that question, you have to say, okay, who am I now
when all this other stuff is falling apart, who am I?
I got nothing else.
Everything.
I thought that was who I was of my life.
My hope, my.
It's gone.
So who am I now?
And when we don't know who we are in Christ.
It creates crisis.
You follow
Hmhmm.
And so sometimes it is a sheer act of love
for God to say, I'm going to strip everything away now
we're like, oh, wait, wait, that's not I'm not loving
it says, no, no, no, I want your love.
And so it's loving for me
so that you will run to me.
And so
chapter nine, starting in verse 18,
I've resisted this as long as I could.
Any of you old people ever watch
Happy Days when it was like, first rule with Fonzie?
Do any of you remember the episode when Fonzie got glasses?
You bet.
Everyone's got glasses.
He's like, that's not cool.
I'm not wearing glasses.
And right, nobody shows my age.
Yeah, well, here we go.
They.
Okay.
Verse 18, and while he was saying these things to them, behold, a
ruler came in and knelt before him saying, my daughter has just died,
but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.
And Jesus rose and followed him with his disciples.
This ruler
that God is talking about here is a he's the synagogue leader for the area,
and as the synagogue leader, he is the he.
He's at the top of the pinnacle of religion for the for their community.
He's the he's the synagogue.
He has the answers. He has the authority.
He's got the scripture to back him up.
And everybody looked at him like, okay, you're you're it.
And and he's has his daughter.
And other accounts over the Gospels are telling the same account.
They say that she's near death.
Matthew says she's actually died.
And so this synagogue ruler is in crisis.
He, he
he's in absolute cry because this is his child
and she's on her deathbed.
And I want you to understand
that this synagogue leader
had Scripture,
this synagogue leader had the synagogue
had status, had religious authority,
but he had nothing in his life that could help him.
And he realized he was at that point that we just talked about
where God revealed to him all this other stuff
that you think is your security,
that you think is your future, that your ideas are wrapped up.
All this other stuff
does, you know, good right now.
You can't hope in any of it.
He has no answers for you,
and that's why he said this is what God allows us.
Oftentimes
he allows crisis.
So that we
will learn that we have nothing to rely on.
But him.
The synagogue leader is is coming face to face
with all of my religion, and all of my self.
Reliance is worth nothing.
See, religion informs about God.
Jesus meets us as God.
And so this religious leader
was relying on all of his religion and all of his self-righteousness
and all of his authority that he thought he had in this world.
And God strips all of that away
through the sickness and death of his daughter.
And if any of you have been through real crisis, you understand
how everything else.
Doesn't do any good.
And this religious leader has no other option
but to reach out for Jesus
and see all of his religion.
Told him that to reach God, we climb higher.
And finally he's realizing
that we reach Christ by collapsing lower.
It's falling apart.
And I got no
no other option but to get on my knees.
Jesus.
And admit I got no other option.
And so he comes to Jesus,
says, my, my daughter's dead.
But come and lay your hand on her, and she'll live.
He's given voice to his faith.
It's not just something he's starting to believe in his heart now.
He's giving voice to it.
And in the middle of this happening,
watch what happens.
Verse 20, and behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood
for 12 years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment.
For she said to herself,
if I only touch his garment, I will be made well.
Jesus turned and seen
her, said, take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.
And instantly the woman was made well.
Now you have this religious man
who, by his estimation, deserves
a touch from God because he's a real religious guy.
Jesus agrees to go help his daughter
and he's Jesus is interrupted by this woman.
What do you think this religious man's thinking?
Woman wait your turn.
Like I got here first.
Like a nice guy.
I kind of deserve this.
After all, I'm.
I'm Jewish, man,
and I'm a Jewish religious man.
And so I'm kind of.
And you, after all, are a woman,
And not only that, you're,
like, super unclean. So.
And Jesus interrupts
this Jewish religious man's request to deal with this woman.
Now, this is an interesting thing.
She's got this, this, this issue.
This went on for 12 years.
So she's experiencing social isolation.
She's she is completely ritualistic, unclean,
and she's under financial ruin because Mark chapter five tells us
she's spent everything she had to be healed and the doctors couldn't help her.
So she has nothing left.
Except.
Jesus.
And she comes.
She doesn't make her request.
She reaches out for
she makes no request.
What for? So ever.
But she reaches out for.
And the act of reaching out for provides
a touch point to release her faith.
So the act of her
reaching like she had faith already inside, but it was unspoken
and unaffected on the fact that she reaches out and touches, provides
a touch point to release the faith that she already knew in her heart.
It was just follow me now.
There are many of us who have faith that God can,
and some of us have faith that God will,
but that faith remains isolated and internal
until it expresses itself in a touch point
of public profession
and without the touch point of public profession.
By this woman, that faith would have gone on, activated
those she believed and had faith.
Faith without works is dead.
And so sometimes what?
What the?
It's the need to express the faith
that we have in a touch point that says,
God, I believe, and I'm not going to
I'm not going to live in the silo of my own belief.
I'm going to invite other people into the expression of my belief in you,
and provides a touch point to release the faith that she already has.
There was nothing magical about the robe that Jesus wore,
except that it provided the expression to release the faith that she already had.
Let me take this story.
Back quite a
few years, I was doing some ministry in Costa Rica
and I got the chance to preach in.
In the capital of Costa Rica, thousands and thousands of people was a hotbed
for demon ism and witchcraft and possession
and prostitution and drugs.
And I got to preach at the end of this whole big thing.
And all these people accepted Jesus and gave their lives
to Jesus and repented of their sins.
That was just incredible move of God. It was beautiful.
And this one man walked, was ushered up to me because he was blind.
And through the translator, he said, this guy is blind.
He's been going blind progressively for years and years and years.
And he spent all his money he had on doctors,
and they can't help them, and he can't see a thing right now.
Sound biblical?
And I said, well, what do you want from me?
And this guy said, the interpreter said, I believe God wants to heal me right now.
And I believe that he wants to heal me through you.
And I'm like, well, good luck with that, because that's
I'm not ever done anything like
I said, do you believe that God can and will?
He said, absolutely, but I believe that
it's through your prayers with me and said, okay.
So I put my hands on him
and I prayed over him and just kept praying.
But with the authority of the name of Jesus
that he would be healed right then.
And when you start to get a little shaky and he just went over backwards
and his friends didn't even catch him,
and he hit
the ground, and I jumped on top of him and kept praying.
And I can't explain it, but this stuff kind of poured out of his eyes.
And I said in English, he didn't speak English.
I said, open your eyes and see in the name of Jesus.
And he opened his eyes.
I can see trees, I can see birds.
I see you.
And God completely healed him that day.
Completely
incredible move of the spirit.
Here's thing, it wasn't me.
It was his faith.
But had he not acted on that faith as the touch point,
that faith would have done him no good
to understand?
Many of us, and I believe God can absolutely.
But you leave it siloed in your own heart,
and you don't ever reach out as a touch point of your faith.
You know why we have these people who say they'll pray with you
for you to say, this is the faith that I have,
and I want you to touch the throne of God with me.
Well, we will find mercy and grace
to help us in the time of need, what the Scripture says.
And so you are my touchpoint before the throne.
So let's approach God together in prayer right now.
To understand that
it almost sounds biblical.
So she reaches out for the tassels.
There's nothing in the Bible that says
if you reach the tassels of a Jewish rabbi, there's power there.
There's there's there's nothing necessarily in that.
And what we may see from her is that she's it's just this superstitious belief.
It's kind of bad theology.
On one hand,
it's superstition at best.
If you just look at the what she's doing.
But it's a faith to reach out,
and it's a faith that releases her faith.
It's interesting.
There's
there's something else going on here, though, that I want to point out to you
that it might not be just pure superstition.
There's a there's a Bible verse in the book of Malachi, Old Testament,
I like to say he was the first, I tell you, Prophet Malachi, I see
Malachi says this, but for you who fear my name,
the sun of righteousness shall rise with what healing in its wings
you shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.
When Malachi writes this healing in, it's in his wings.
What do you.
In in the Jewish conscious or Rabbi, if they would wear these shawls,
and in
each of the four corners of the shawl, there would be four threads of blue yarn,
and that would remind the Rabbi of the priority
and prominence of the Word of God in the law of God.
And they would wear this as stand, and that the the edge of the garment
would have these four tassels on the four corners
to remind them of the priority in the Word of God.
That word for tassel is literally the Hebrew word sits it.
Okay, now I learned this from a brilliant man named Chuck Missler back in the 90s.
So 30 plus years ago I learned this from him.
I thought, this is this is so like God to do this.
And it's it's interesting for me because I'm old and I start
hearing all these new podcasters and insta pastors and stuff.
They're they're talking about this stuff as if they discovered it
on, like a bunch of plagiarists that you didn't discover any of this stuff.
And so my mind goes back to and this is what Chuck Missler,
he said this, that word sets it that, that literally.
That's a Hebrew word for
not just wings, but corner.
That word means both of those.
And so when you look at Malachi four two,
he will rise with healing in his wings.
Another translation he will rise with healing in his corners.
What did the woman reach out for?
The corner of his garment?
Because she knew perhaps, the prophecy of Malachi
that one would rise with healings in his corners
and her reaching out for the corner of his garment
was a proclamation that I believe that you are
the Messiah that's been prophesied about for hundreds of years.
And this is my statement of faith, that I believe you have the authority
to do what it is I need, that I believe you can do.
And it wasn't a superstitious only belief to reach out for the corner.
It was a proclamation of faith that Jesus, you
and you alone are my source of help and healing.
To understand.
So she wasn't just superstitious.
She was making a statement that you are the Messiah.
And you made that statement.
You are the Messiah and you alone can help.
It is on the way, ready to raise up this 12 year old girl.
And he stops to heal a woman with a 12 year issue.
And one of the things I learned from that is this.
That God's never too busy to respond to desperate faith.
He's never too busy.
He might have to strip everything else away in your life first,
but you'll get desperate.
And God usually steps in when we reach out.
Not before.
And so I want to encourage you, friends
today, reach out.
With someone else as a touch point to your faith.
And perhaps by the mercy of God.
See, the.
The lesson that I learned in this part is weak.
Faith in the right Savior is stronger than strong faith in anything
else.
This woman, perhaps
superstitious faith, probably some bad theology,
perhaps.
But weak faith on the right Savior.
That's what gets it done.
Look at verse 23 through 26.
I promise we're going to get through it.
And when Jesus came to the ruler's house,
he saw the flute players in the crowd making a commotion and said, go away.
The girl isn't dead. She's sleeping.
And they laughed at him.
But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand,
and the girl arose.
And the report of this went through all the district.
So he that Jesus goes to the finally gets to the ruler's house
and respond, probably like finally.
And the girl's dead,
and she's all these mourners outside.
Now, by Jewish law, you had to have at least one flute player.
And like a couple people who would wail on your behalf and
and that was like you had to mourn and they would hire
professional mourners to, to because it was part of the law.
And, and if you were wealthy, it hire a bunch of mourners
to make it look like you really loved your loved one who had passed.
And that's what Jesus is seen here.
And he walked up, shot up.
She's not dead.
She's sleeping.
What did they do?
They laughed at him.
They just laughed at him. You know why?
Because sometimes unbelief often sounds like logic.
They had more faith in death than they had in Jesus.
And so logically they're like, well, Jesus, that doesn't make any sense.
She's dead.
Please understand
that unbelief often sounds like logic,
and people try to logic you out of God's move
because it doesn't make sense.
Do you understand?
Something.
What does Jesus do there?
I'm believe.
Sounds like logic. So what does he do?
Look at your Bibles.
What do you do?
Before he took. But,
before he took her by hand, he did something.
He kicked them out.
He said, shut up.
Get out.
If I understand, this is really important.
Now, sometimes faith requires removing other voices.
Sometimes faith requires removing other voices.
And we let so many other voices in our head
that try to convince us and tell us
that that might have been the way it was back then.
But today's today stuff changes.
There are some times when God says, listen,
you can't hear me right now because you got so many other voices
in your head, and sometimes you got to kick them out.
There are some voices in your life, some voices in my life,
that we have to kick out of our head and out of our life.
Some of it will mean quit listening to other voices here all the time.
Some of it will mean there are some relationships you got to get rid of.
Because faith
requires removing those other voices
to understand.
And once you remove
those other voices, then he did what if you're going to
take her by the hand and heal her?
Some of you cannot hear the voice in authority of God,
because you got other voices speaking in your head,
and you will never experience the hand of God raising you up.
Because you got a bunch of lies rolling around
that sound like logic.
It's really just unbelief.
You with me?
So far? Yes.
Verse
27 and as Jesus passed on from there to blind men followed him.
That's just funny to me.
How? Can you imagine this or do this route?
They kind of took, like, have you seen Jesus? Have you seen Jesus?
And, I'll come back to that.
It's not that funny, but call out.
Have mercy on us, son of David.
When he entered the house, the boatmen came to him and said again,
Jesus waits until he gets inside,
and they gotta find their way through the door like,
I don't know, I just I wonder what Jesus was like.
Watch this man, watch this.
They're looking for me.
Let's go inside.
Yeah. Okay.
Get you like Jesus knows what he's going to do.
But can you like.
I just imagine Jesus having fun with people sometimes.
I like.
I just can't imagine Jesus like.
No. Knock it.
Shut the door.
All right?
I just I just think I like, at some point,
like, you're the son of God, you know, we're going to the cross.
You gotta have fun along the way at some point, you know, I don't know,
when I,
he said to them, do you believe that I am able to do this?
They said to him, yes, Lord.
And he touched their eyes, saying,
according to your faith, be it done to you.
And their eyes were open.
And Jesus sternly warned them, see that no one knows about it.
But they went away and spread them throughout all the district.
So you got these two blind guys?
I seriously thought, well, how do they follow Jesus?
They're blind. And this is what I thought.
This is why I thought they stayed close enough to Jesus to hear him,
both his voice and his footsteps.
They were close enough
to Jesus to hear his whisper.
And they were close enough to just hear his footsteps.
That verse should be first Peter 221, not 27.
I want to make that correction.
The Bible says faith
comes by hearing, and hearing by Scripture.
You got to stay close enough to Jesus
to hear his voice.
If any of you are thinking, how do I hear the voice of God?
I'm going to tell you, you read the Bible
and you stay so close to him
that you actually walk in his footsteps.
See the lesson?
The lesson is this faith is simply walking toward his book.
It's.
And what is it?
They cry out.
What title do they use in addressing Jesus?
Son of David, son of David?
That's a Jewish messianic title.
It's the first time it's used in the New Testament.
Son of David.
And what they're doing is I believe we believe that you are the Messiah.
You are the Lord.
You are the one we've waiting for.
You are the one.
This is their confession and profession publicly of faith.
They have come to faith in Christ now.
That's why they use that title.
It's very Jewish and it comes with an incredible statement
that we are yours because you alone are God.
And the moment they make that
profession of faith, their request is what?
Son of David, what have mercy, have mercy us.
They make a profession of faith, and then they say, have mercy on us.
They do not ask for healing.
They never asked for sight.
What they said was, we believe that you are
the Son of David, the Messiah, the Anointed One,
and so have mercy.
They trusted themselves to the mercy of God.
They didn't just ask for God's hand.
This for me is profound.
Then this is they said, God,
I trust your plan for my future in Christ.
I trust your love.
I trust your heart.
Be according to me, according to your mercy.
That's enough for me. Wow.
What would we say their greatest need was?
Sight.
They knew their greatest need was mercy.
And they were willing to trust
the mercy of God rather than make a request.
They didn't say, we're following you, Jesus.
We're blind because we're following you.
We deserve sight. They didn't say that.
All they said was, give us everything that your mercy will allow,
and that'll be enough.
Can you say that?
God, I have this list.
This is my prayers.
This. I want your hand to move.
Rather.
Can you say you know what God?
You know.
Give me all that your grace allows, and your mercy allows.
See, here's the lesson to learn.
If there's mercy.
Seekers receive more than miracle seekers.
Book of Lamentations says your mercies are new every morning.
Father, I'm going to wake up today. Thank you.
Give me all that your mercy is going to allow.
Let my life exhibit how great your mercy is.
That'll be enough.
And Jesus
says, what to them do you believe in?
What do you believe? They're like?
Yeah. Then what do you say
I bring you?
Yeah, according to your faith, in other words.
Yes. Well, then, since you believe.
So Jesus is response in our lives is not determined
by the size of our faith, but the object of our faith.
He doesn't say, well,
because you believe a whole bunch, you know, healing sites.
Good.
That's a lot of faith because you believe enough, I will.
He doesn't say that.
Don't anybody ever convince you or tell you that your faith just isn't big enough.
Jesus said you got the faith the size of a mustard seed.
You can move a mountain. It doesn't take much faith.
The issue is not the size of your faith or the amount of your faith.
The issue is the object of your faith.
And you said, since you believe in me, you didn't talk about the size.
He talked about the object
because of your view, because you believe in me.
Absolutely.
It's beautiful.
And some of you tried to muster up more faith,
and you're thinking by you mustering up faith, God will respond.
That's nothing but a religious response.
And it fails before God because it's about what you can produce.
Rather than saying, God, I don't have much faith,
but my faith is in your son.
Be to me according to your mercy
to understand.
Do you see how revolutionary this whole thing is?
So some of you might get it free today.
I only in danger of having a whole new transformed
life.
Verse 23 or 32 and 34.
As they were going away, behold, a demon a a man was who was mute
was brought to him.
And when the demon it be cast out, the mute spoke, and the crowds marvels.
And never was it anything like this seen in Israel.
But the Pharisees said, no, he does it by can't by.
But he's possessed himself.
Oh, come an explanation.
He cast out demons because he's got a demon.
That's what they say. That's how they explain it.
Now this is he.
This is part of the Jewishness of Matthew that we don't understand.
Jesus
cast out this demon, and they're they're like, what?
That has never happened in our whole nation's history before.
Well, yet did we've seen it in the book of Matthew.
Why do they say that?
Good.
Okay, I'll tell you why.
Because they're Jewish.
Religiousness said that in order for a demon to be cast out,
you had to call out that demon by name.
You had to call it out by its name so you can have authority over to
cast it out.
Well, a mute demon, a press man can't speak.
So you will never know the name of the demon because the demon is muted.
The man.
So that man, that mute possessed man
was, was, was cursed for the rest of his life.
There was no hope. There was no way out.
Nobody had authority to do anything because he was a mute, possessed man.
They could not know the demon's name, so they could not cast him out.
And so when Jesus cast out this demon not using any name but his own,
they're like, what is going on?
And who is this man?
So much authority to understand?
They marvel at their thought in the power of Jesus, and in my mind,
I go immediately to Philippians two, verses nine, ten and 11,
which says, Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him
Jesus the name that is above every name, even things that don't have a name,
so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow
in heaven and on earth and under the earth in hell itself.
And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
That's the one. That's the object of faith.
That's the one that I say, God, I trust you in the authority of His son.
Be it to me, as you have said, according to your mercy.
That's enough.
Everything that has a name
must bow before the name of Jesus.
And in these passages,
God waits for the expression of the faith that I claim as a touchpoint
to release the authority of the name of Jesus,
to move
in miracle ways.
It's incredible.
This is the cloth
from which our faith is cut.
Is this the Jesus you believe? It?
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages teaching their synagogues
and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom
and healing every disease and every affliction.
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them
because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without shepherd.
But then he said,
his response, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Therefore pray
earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
He looks at all these people,
and he's so overwhelmed with compassion
because he sees how much they need.
And the Bible uses word his rather harassed.
And what that means is they're torn apart.
They're skinned alive.
The this is this tense and relentless torment
and spiritual abuse that they're they're living under.
Then they're harassed.
They're helpless men.
They're cast aside, they're dejected.
They're unable to help or heal themselves spiritually.
They got no hope.
They just jump through these religious hoops hoping that God will, you know.
They're sheep without a shepherd means this.
They're without guidance. They don't know where to turn.
Lost.
Don't know what the path is.
Someone please tell me they're suffering under religious leaders
who have failed in their spiritual duty
to point of the Jesus and the power of the kingdom.
And Jesus looks at them.
And he says, listen,
these fields are ripe, man.
There's so many people around us
that need to know about me.
Jesus says,
and the power of the kingdom of God.
The fields are ripe.
And so what he's saying, he said, the time to wait is gone.
Now. Is it time for action?
He says, so, you guys, you pray that the Lord of the harvest
will send workers out into the harvest field to to reap.
And we're going to see just in a couple chapters here,
those who prayed that prayer, those the ones he sent out.
So be careful.
You pray for harvest workers.
Guess what?
Tag you're it.
Did you realize that unharvested produce or dies in the field?
Every person in
chapter nine came to Jesus for different reasons,
but none of them left the same.
And so the question that I'm left with that you're left with is,
which of these people do we must identify with in our life right now?
The religious person who's realized
your religion has no solution.
The desperate woman who suffers
year after year after year with no relief.
The blind who just
said, Lord, I just need your mercy
and that'll be enough.
Is it the one who is left with with only problems and no hope?
Because nobody's been able to help?
Is it just the confused crowd?
I just don't know. God.
So different people
came, a different problems.
But they came to the same conclusion.
Jesus.
When everything else runs out,
the friend too is that you?
I want to give you a chance to run to Jesus today.
But let me wrap up with this the next thing, and I want to take
a little bit extra time for this, because this is for our church
in the last two decades.
This is just been my experience on the ranches and the last two decades,
our community has been in a no growth scenario, no growth.
And that's why many of us moved out here.
Maybe extrapolate the data.
Maybe 20 years ago there was one birth every week.
That's no growth.
But now
our little community explosive growth.
And many of you are here because of that explosive growth.
And that's good
GBU, ISD,
our school district, if it's not the fastest, it's
one of the fastest growing school districts in the state of California.
It's unprecedented what we're going through right now.
One pray for our board and our superintendent, our teachers.
But because of that, what that means over the next ten years,
our school district will explode to over
7000 new students.
7000 just in the Riverstone
and Tesoro communities alone, over 35,000 new residents
just in those two communities, not counting the Hill, Liberty Acres
and all these others that are, I've already been approved.
In the next ten years, our little community
will explode to 50 to 60,000 people total.
Of that growth,
7,070% of the students will be elementary school,
30% will be junior high and high school.
It's unprecedented.
For every 100 people that move in our community,
40 of them will be school age kids.
You know what that means.
The fields are ripe for harvest.
If anything else popped into your head before I said that,
you need to change your perspective.
Now, not all of them will be harassed
and help us like sheep and our shepherd, but many of them will be.
The fields are ripe.
Did you know that the number one
contributing factor after someone comes to faith
in them, continuing in community of faith and in continuing in their faith,
is their connection with people at a local church.
So number one factor.
So what that means for us.
One, as soon as God
allows it, we need to hire a full time connections pastor.
A full time person whose job
is from first exposure to
small group involvement and ministry.
That's their job.
And we gotta hire that person A.s.a.p..
Fully committed to that.
And it means we need to move our to a full time children's lead
with a full time children's ministry, including a midweek program.
Like in a want to type thing, we have to 7000 kids.
70% of my elementary. Are you kidding?
But listen,
the parents of that, those kids will not be the ones running that program.
Primarily.
Do you hear what I'm saying?
And we have to move in an increase next gen ministry, especially serving
our junior high and high school kids because one person can't do it all.
The fields are ripe for harvest.
Pray a little harvest for harvest workers.
Tag your it
and we will do all of this.
I want you to stand financially.
We will do all of this on 80% of what comes into this church,
because we've already agreed off the top 10%.
The church plants 10% to our local and foreign missions work.
We live and function off of 80%.
We say all the time, you don't give to us.
You give through us.
I don't know of another church in this country,
American church that does all of its ministry,
everything facility, staff, program, everything off 80%.
You guys are amazing
and God is doing amazing things.
So Matthew nine is not only referring
to at referencing the miracles of God,
it's also about the responsibility of God's people and God's church.
The fields are right.
See, the
problem is not the size of the harvest.
The problem is the workers not doing their job.
To understand.
Understand? Yes,
we must press into the harvest and a harvest.
In this harvest.
So if you have not yet
established the fact that Jesus
is the Lord and pledged your allegiance to him, that's step one.
And the moment you do that, you become God's
Plan A for someone else to do that
through the local church.
See, the fact that we are a growing community
means that that growing community is our God given assignment.
Now. Follow.
Why don't you pray with me?
Please.
First things first.
Jesus, you are Lord.
If you've never made that statement yet, I want to encourage you in this moment
to admit that Jesus is the Lord
and the Savior of your life and your eternity,
that he
died on the cross and rose from the grave so you could be forgiven.
And I want to invite you in this moment
to make that decision and that assertion.
Jesus, I believe that you are the only way
I am ever made right with God.
I accept what you did on the cross.
I accept the forgiveness that you offer,
and I pledge my allegiance to you
and you alone.
Today I choose to be your disciple.
Make that decision.
Once you've made that decision,
now your prayer is according to the Bible.
God, send me out
as your worker into your field.
Because I know you.
I want everybody else to know you.
And I choose this day to be your worker in harvest.
Tell him, say God, you know my needs
and I trust your mercy.
Give me all that
your mercy and grace will allow.
Because I come to you
and you alone as my help.
Father, we love you.
Thank you for your word.
Thank you for what you're doing in my life, in our lives, in our church.
Give us faith to follow more passionately.
We pledge allegiance to you and Kingdom.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
In your name I pray, Amen.
It's an I love you. I'm proud of you.
Thank you for hanging with us as our went super long this week.
Read Matthew nine and Matthew ten to get ready for next week.
You got it? Yeah. One more song, Ali. Thank you.