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Well, if you're a visitor today, there's good news.
I won't be back.
You'll hear some good preaching maybe next week.
And from my friend Bo Bradbray, who is the pastor here at Willow Ridge.
And we go back a long way.
And he is an incredible leader, not only in this church, you get to see him all the time, but also in our state.
And so I know he probably doesn't let you know this, but he's kind of a big deal, okay?
In fact, in our state, he provides some tremendous leadership among our pastors, really trying to help us be focused on really making disciples, and especially in the realm of missionary deployment.
And you got an incredible reputation around the state of South Carolina.
And that is a reputation where you care about those who are not yet here.
You care about the broken, you care about those who are sometimes overlooked, and you also care about those who other people might not even know are in the state of South Carolina.
People from other nationalities, people from other walks of life.
And you're willing to go, you're willing to go on mission around the world to be able to do that.
And I'm so thrilled and thankful that Bo is on vacation and that I get to come here and hang out with you.
When I was thinking through what Willow Ridge has meant to me, there's been a lot of friends who have come through here.
Personally, I've been able to engage with on the football fields here at River Bluff and the baseball fields at River Bluff.
And so it's great to be here and a part of this family.
I am one of your missionaries from the South Carolina Baptist Convention of Missionaries.
And I just wanted to thank you, too, out of 2011 Baptist churches in the state of South Carolina that just voluntarily pull resources together.
We're just a big family.
And sometimes in families you got crazy uncles.
You're not one of them, but you know who they are.
But we're one big family that is just trying to pull resources together to send missionaries around the world to people like Kim.
Kim was baptized in the ocean this past year because a new church, South Carolina Baptist Church, was started and they befriended her.
Megan heard the gospel in a small group from a church that had pretty much dwindled down to nothing.
But they made some dramatic steps in revitalization, had another church like a Willow Ridge come and help them out.
And she was sitting in the floor at a person's house in a small group, heard the gospel and came to know Christ or Jamal from Bangladesh.
He heard the gospel for the very first time at the University of South Carolina, through the Baptist Collegiate Ministries and through the international lunch that they do.
And Lucy, she's the first of 100 Imbms to be launched in what they're calling Project 3000.
I can't even tell you her real name because she's going to a place in the world where she could be persecuted if not killed for her faith.
She landed last month.
She took a bus 10 hours.
And this Project 3000 is trying to go to the last 3000 unreached people groups in the world.
She's got a book bag, she's got a journal, and she's got a translator.
No church, no missionary to go to just to try to figure out who's in the area, what the languages are, what the culture is like so that she can come back and map maybe a way for us to be able to get the gospel to those individuals.
These stories would be radically different without us cooperating together, actually be unified together.
Not the division that we see on social media or in our country, but to be different than the other organizations and say, hey, you know what?
Despite our differences, despite the things that we might disagree on, we rally around this one sacred effort of getting the Great Commission finished, that we could actually get the message of the gospel to all peoples around the earth.
And because of churches like yours, we're able to do that.
So I just want to tell you thank you right out the gate for your commitment to people outside the walls of this church.
Let's pray together.
Father, we just thank you so much for a time for us to get together.
And just ask, Lord, that as you speak to us from your word today, that we might not just see this as a Sunday where we just are relaxed and are kind of in the middle of vacation season and just kind of checking it off the list and join fellowship and time with one another.
But we might see it as a day where you want to speak to us from your word and father that we might be encouraged but also challenged to take a risk.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Well, I'm just coming off a vacation.
I don't know if you call it vacation.
This is the extended family vacation.
You know what I mean?
That's where all your brothers, your aunts, your uncles, your sisters, your grandma, your grandfather, they all pile up into a beach house and they say, we're having a good time.
Anybody do that?
Still few of you?
Okay, I called an endurance test.
And if it wasn't for the fact that my brothers are all like me, I think we'd all get along.
But we get in this house together, we have a blast, we talk, and then we get mad at one another.
Bound Wednesday, then we separate for about a day.
We try to rally back together to make it that final push to Saturday.
And all the cousins are hanging out.
They're all like piled up and just sleeping on top of one another.
It's just a great time.
They call it vacation.
So I'm very refreshed now after loading up two cars full of stuff with chairs and tents and everything else that you would take if you go to the beach.
And then I passed by a bo.
He looked very refreshed.
He was going to vacation and I think we were going near the same place.
And he said he gave up extended vacation a long time ago with the family.
So just his family is getting down there and do that.
But we've got three or four boys in my family and I have a son who just graduated from high school at River Bluff High School and we're super proud of him.
He was student body president at River Bluff and he's fixing go play football at Anderson University.
But that's not what we're proud of him about.
We're proud of him because this year he jumped in the pool without a swimming zone.
It was just so encouraging to see him dive in and just enjoy the time in the swimming pool.
Now he's been doing that for years, right?
But there was a time where he had to have the swimmies on which were bigger than his entire body.
You remember that if you got small kids, you remember that, right?
They get right up to the edge of the pool and then they get their big toe just kind of dangling off the edge and then you're telling them to jump to you and you know that you're going to get out of the way and they know you're going to get out of the way too.
And it's a bad trick you dads do, okay?
But we're trying to coax them into taking a risk because we don't want them as seniors in high school with a football scholarship, jumping off the diving board with swimmies on.
It just totally ruins the girl game, you know what I mean?
And so we want them as a four and five year old to take a risk and to actually take that leap of faith.
Some of you will experience that this year.
And they'll get to the edge and you'll let them see them jump.
And then once they finally do it one time, you can't get them to stop, right?
And they just keep going on and on and on and on.
Now he still has a little bit of development.
This son Connor of mine.
I mean, he was putting the swimmies on one of his cousins, and they're four and five years old, three or four years old.
And I looked over there and I said, are you trusting him to do that?
I looked at one of my nephew, he was like, what?
I said, look at the swimmies.
He actually had the bar that's supposed to come across your chest was, like, almost around her head, so that when she went in, it actually flipped her upside down.
You're like, she's up like this.
And I stopped him.
I said, whoa, whoa, you got it all wrong, man.
You got it all wrong.
You got to button that the right way.
Listen, Jesus did not die on a cross for us to play it safe.
He did not die on a cross for you not to take a risk.
If you want to live a comfortable, gutless, risk free life, then you need to, this summer, go buy you some swimmies and go paddle around in the shallow end.
But if you want to join a risky business, if you are a part of the family of Jesus, then you better throw the swimmies off, because you're about to go into the deep end, and really, the only thing holding you back is the edge of that pool.
Turn with me to Acts chapter five.
I want to speak to you today from a passage that's maybe familiar to you.
I want you to see this early church birthing up and what we're supposed to look like.
I want you to see a group of individuals who were probably the closest to Jesus for three years and what they were willing to do.
And then ask yourself, what's holding me back from jumping in the deep end?
Acts chapter five.
We see this group of disciples doing some incredible things.
We see through this passage leading up to verse 17, the apostles are performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.
People are starting to gravitate to them to try to figure out what's going on.
It was taking some of, actually, the limelight off of the religious folks who were the leaders in the communities.
And so there was some dissension that begins to build up and some jealousy.
In verse 17, the high priest rose up and all who were with him.
That is part of the Sadducees party of the Sadducees, which these are religious groups within this area, and it's filled with jealousy.
They arrested the apostles, and they put them in the public prison.
Following Jesus is uncomfortable.
In fact, you're about to face probably the most extreme opposition that the church has ever faced.
You will find in your lifetime that sin will become more and more normalized.
And the more normal sin is, the more abnormal Jesus following will be.
For the first time in American history, there are more people who do not go to any religious organization than who do.
And the fastest growing religion in this state and in this country are the nuns.
Not affiliated with any religious organization.
And that's not to be confused with nondenominational.
But I'm a Jesus follower.
No, these are individuals that would say, no, I don't follow.
Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, none of them the non affiliated in religion.
Now, why is this important.
It's important because you're in the land of democracy, the home of the brave, the land of the free.
And in the midst of that, we do vote for things right.
And a democracy works when the majority of people got sense.
So here's what's going to happen if the church doesn't do their job in going into the world and sharing the gospel with people, seeing them cross over from death to life, to actually help them walk like Jesus would walk, and to actually do things like Jesus would do and actually consider policies and things that Jesus would consider.
And by the way, it wouldn't be Republican or Democrat.
At the end of the day, what's going to happen is they're going to begin to vote for their own selfishness.
And I believe it was Ben Franklin that said, whenever the democracy realizes they can vote money into their pockets, the democracy will fall.
So the reason I'm telling you this is because you should not be surprised that you're slowly seeing opposition in your life based upon what the scripture says.
So at the end of the day, for you, your role is not necessarily in government and politics.
Your role is to make disciples of Jesus and then you will begin to see what happens around you.
But the Bible tells us that when we follow Jesus, it will get uncomfortable as they go into the prison.
In verse 19, during the night, an angel of Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.
And when they heard this, they argued with the angel and they said, no, don't you know that just got us beat and thrown into prison?
No, that's not what your scripture says.
That's what we would do, by the way, because I'm praying for comfort.
If I'm in the prison, I'm trying to get out, you know what I mean?
But no, they get their prayers answered, they get out of prison, and then he says, no, go stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.
And when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and they began to teach the next morning.
As soon as the sun's coming up, they're being obedient to go put themselves back in the position that made them uncomfortable at the very beginning.
Now, God is more interested in rescuing the lost than catering to your comfort.
God is more interested in seeing the broken come to Him than catering to your comfort.
Yet that's all we pray about, isn't it?
Lord, heal me of this ailment.
Lord, would you just help me get a good grade on this test that I didn't study for?
Lord, will you just give me a girlfriend?
Lord, will you please get rid of my current boyfriend?
Lord, just give me a job so I can make a lot of money and be comfortable, lord, will you just bless me?
We're constantly craving this comfort.
We want Jesus's stuff more than we want Jesus, and that's a dangerous place to be.
It's the same spot that the prodigal son was in.
The religious leaders show up, though, and realize that they're gone and they're preaching and teaching again.
And then they go and they bring them back under the trial in verses 21 through 26.
And when they had brought them back in for trial, they set them before the council.
And the high priest questioned them, saying, we strictly charged.
You not to teach in his name.
Yet here you are and have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.
But the Peter and the apostles answered, we must obey God rather than men.
We must obey God rather than men.
Following Jesus is uncomfortable, but following Jesus is gutsy too.
It takes guts intestinal fortitude.
And for some of you, you are shy to speak up about the faith in your circles of family, circles of friends, or even in your workplace for fear of what it would do to you, not hope for what it would do for them.
Following jesus Takes guts.
When was the last time you said to yourself, I must obey God rather than men?
And I'm going to make this decision today.
Just think about it.
Just think of the last two weeks.
What have you done other than come to this church today that separates you from those who say they don't follow any God?
And I guess my question is, who are you following more than God himself?
You'll know this by just the time you spend.
Just look at your time, how you spend your time.
You'll also know this by your money, your talents.
See how much you're spending.
That is God really?
Your God?
So in verse 30, they just lay the Gospel out when they said, we must obey God rather than men.
They just have a straight, flat Gospel conversation in a few sentences, and they just lay it out knowing that they could potentially be killed on the spot because this is what they said.
The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.
First of all, you need to understand that every single one of you killed Jesus with your sin because of your personal sin.
It drove Jesus to the cross to pay the punishment on his own shoulders that you should have had to pay.
Every single person outside of these walls nailed Jesus to a cross.
It's offensive if you don't realize that your sin is separating you from God.
The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.
This resurrection is what separates Jesus from all other religious leaders.
So in essence, a Gospel conversation could almost be wrapped up in that one verse.
Verse 30 if you just wanted to underline it in your Bible.
Because here's what the gospel is.
The gospel is the good news of the saving, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A gospel conversation is simply a dialogue or a conversation where the gospel is presented.
Hey, this Jesus died on a cross because of your sin.
He was buried.
He took the full punishment on his shoulders and he was resurrected.
Defeating death and giving you away to follow Jesus.
It's not that complicated.
Yet for some reason, we talk ourselves out of gospel conversations all the time.
God exalted him in verse 31 at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
And we are witnesses to these things.
And so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.
Listen, 100 college grads are being employed right now by the IMB to go to the last 3000 unreached people groups in this project.
3000.
The very first one was a female from South Carolina that was in the Palmetta Collective.
Boldness to say, I'm willing to go.
Why not you?
For some of you who are in college or about to go to college, maybe God wants you to be pressed to go to the foreign mission field.
I guess my question is, are you bold with the gospel or bored with the gospel?
It and I know that we got a really bored generation right now, right?
You know that because you can watch on the cell phones, right?
I mean, you're constantly, if there's ever a minute of boredom, you look at your cell phone so you can see all the people looking at their cell phones.
They're bored.
And this is how I know the top two viewed TikToks of 2022 was a giant chocolate giraffe and a squishy chipmunk stuff in its face with nuts.
And we've watched those videos over and over again.
What are we doing, man?
What are we doing?
We're bored out of our minds.
And instead of filling our lives up with the things that Jesus wants us to fill our lives up with or actually, like putting the phone down and going and talking to somebody about Jesus or just hanging out and becoming a friend with somebody who's far from God, we end up filling up that boredom just with a scrolling screen just to kind of numb it to get us through the day.
What if you leverage the power of your digital space to be bold?
What if instead of scrolling, you begin to actually send messages to people that are your friends on those digital spaces to begin to start conversations about Jesus?
And here's what I know that many times, even in today's culture, you'll start a digital conversation before you'll start a face to face.
So go ahead and start the digital conversation and then say hey, let's get together for lunch or coffee or hang out and let's talk about it some more.
You'll be surprised at how many people are open to do it.
Jesus following Jesus is uncomfortable.
Following Jesus takes guts to do that.
And finally following Jesus is dangerous.
It's very dangerous.
Jesus said in this world you will find trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.
Those who were closest to Jesus, of the twelve disciples, one of them killed himself.
There were eleven left.
Of the eleven.
They did not live rosy, peachy comfortable lives.
They were about as close as you could get to following Jesus.
And so you would think that if they were the closest that you could get to following Jesus that their lives would be awesome, but not by the world standards.
No, their awesomeness was they were able to go down in history as the first martyrs for the faith.
In fact, ten of the eleven disciples historically if you go and look at it, ten of the eleven died a martyr's death for their faith.
One of them was banned to the island of Patmos, but he was also bold with bowling ole.
It just didn't kill him.
Following Jesus is dangerous.
And we get in verse 33 when they heard this they were enraged and they wanted to kill them.
And if it wasn't for one of the leaders, gamilial, they may have been put to death right then, but they prolonged it, which allowed the church to multiply before they were put to death.
Instead in verse 40 it says when they called the apostles in they beat them or flogged them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus.
And then they let them go.
So they let them know if you speak the name of Jesus you're going to get beaten here's, your beaten with rods to the point of death.
And then they let them go and put them to the test.
The apostles would have known that moving back to the temple courts to preach about Jesus would result in this type of punishment.
And they also saw the eventual end, which was what they did to Jesus.
But they were courageous instead of cautious.
They ran towards danger like some of the first responders that we would see even in this own community.
They moved towards danger because they knew they were part of a risky business.
We've been through this pandemic the last couple of years that has put this phrase as a normal phrase.
When we speak, you ready for the phrase in an abundance of caution.
We never used to say that before.
We never said that before.
Think about it, those of you who are over the age of 45, 50, you remember a day when you did not wear a bike helmet.
You remember, I mean did your mama not care about you?
Did they not have items of helmets we had football helmets, never a bike helmet.
I mean, I'd ride around.
I mean, we'd jump in hills that were, like, this tall, just praying to God in the air that we would land.
Now, every little kid I see has a bike helmet on.
Now, I'm not, hey, listen, I put a bike helmet on my kid because I know my kid, and I saw the things on social media of people that got hurt on a bike.
It'd be like one person out of, like, 2 million, but it gets shared 100,000 times.
So it looks like everybody got hurt on a bike.
I was in the other day, I was speaking up there in the upstate, and I saw five kids on a bike.
They all had on bike helmets and one kid pushing his bike with a bike helmet on.
I thought to myself, you pushing your bike.
Take a risk, man.
Take off the helmet.
Or some of you guys used to play BB Gun War.
You remember that?
Yeah, you remember that?
Your friend pumping the BB gun and you had a rule like, you couldn't go over five pumps, and if they had a lever action, no big deal.
I mean, we didn't wear eye protection for that.
But you were in BB Gun Wars back in the day.
Now, if your kids are playing Nerf Gun War, they've got on goggles.
It happens in my house.
My dad made me drink out of a hose.
Y'all been drinking out of a water bottle all your life?
My mom let me lick the spoon, knowing full well that there were raw eggs in the cake batter.
What's she doing?
Your mom has you on a gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, taste free life.
And that's okay.
That's okay.
Some of you got allergies.
I get it.
When I left the yard to go play all day, I never had a cell phone, and my mom never knew where I was.
In fact, I'm not sure if she cared if I came home.
There were so many boys in my house.
It'd free up some space right now.
Teenagers.
Your mom is tracking you on Life 360.
That way she knows if you go to the bathroom right now that you're not lingering around.
Evil has a way of invoking fear, but the church should be on the offensive, not the defensive.
Never before in the history of humanity has the tolerance for risk been so incredibly low.
We are in desperate need of risk takers.
And so what is the Lord urging you to do that might be dangerous?
Maybe loving somebody that's different than you.
Maybe befriending somebody that has different values than you.
Maybe messaging a friend today and starting a gospel conversation.
Maybe changing your major, your career path.
Maybe accepting a call to vocational or full time missions.
For some of you, listen.
For some of you, it's just stopping being a chameleon.
You know what a chameleon is it's a lizard that changes with its environment.
And so you've learned that when you come here, you act one way.
When you leave and you're around some other friends, in the friend groups or whatever on the weekend, you act a different way and you talk about things there that you don't talk about things here.
And for some of you, maybe taking a risk is just shedding your skin and actually going public with your decision to follow Jesus ultimately to the waters of baptism.
In verse 41, these apostles left the presence of the council.
They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus.
And every day in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus running towards danger.
I want to close and let you tell you about a story this past month.
Two months ago, I took a group of our Palmetta Collective college students to Los Angeles.
And when we were there, we went down into the sewer subway.
We went down the steps into the subway to try to share the gospel with homeless people in addicts and try to pull them out of the subway, give them an opportunity to actually go to a rehab center for two months that was funded by Sin Relief, which is funded by the North American Mission Board, which is funded by you.
And so we go down in this area and there's this guy, and his name ironically, is Christian.
He's kind of shivering and he's huddled up and he's humped over and they go up to him and these missionaries begin to talk to him about Jesus and why he's there.
He said a week before he was in Arizona and he was just going to try to make it big and just get away from some problems.
And so he comes to Los Angeles, runs out of money, finds himself down in the subway, and now is just destitute.
And so they asked him, do you want to get out of here?
And he said, yes, I do.
And so they said, Here, stand up and follow me.
And so they started walking towards the subway because we had a van that was there and a church that was waiting on them that we could actually take them to.
And there was going to be a dryout center where they would go and have three meals a day.
They'd sleep on a cot, and they'd have six to 8 hours of Bible study conversation with people for two solid months.
And so as they start to approach the subway, we were already on the subway and the doors began to close and we pulled the emergency and it started sounding the alarm.
And the missionary looked at him and said, Run, man, run.
And so they're running through the subway and they jump onto the car as soon as the doors go to shut and.
That guy Christian looked at him and said, we're in Hollywood, by the way.
And he said, Am I in a movie?
Is this a movie?
They said, no, man, this is real life.
And we get to the top of the subway, and when we did, we put him on the van and we drive him to this church.
And we get to the church, these guys that they don't look like you and I, they have on these vests and bunch of patches all over them.
Some of them had purple hair, some of them had shaved heads.
They had tattoos all over their face, many of them.
And all of them had been on the street and actually had gotten off.
It's called set free church.
And and they get out, and the guys embraced him and said, hey, man, he said, what are you here for?
And they told him, they said, okay, well, listen, you come back in the morning and we'll get you processed.
The guys will be here to be able to do that.
We'll make sure you got a bed.
And the guy said, well, what am I supposed to do now?
And the missionary said, well, with all due respect, what were you planning to do before I sat down next to you in the middle of the subway?
And it just got real silent.
And the guy looked down and then he looked back up and he said, you want to know what I was going to do?
And he said yes.
He said, I was planning to kill myself tonight.
In just a few minutes.
They had him a cot.
They had somebody that would stay with him overnight.
And when we left at the end of that week, he was still in rehab.
He had had more Bible study than you'll go through in an entire year, all because there were people that cared enough about him to live a little dangerously, to not be comfortable, to take a risk, and to go after him.
Hey, listen, that guy, he's got a mom.
That guy, he's got a grandmom, probably praying for him.
These people are real people, and so they're worth our risk.
Father, we come before you and ask as we go into a time of worship that if there's something that's on the heart of the individual here in this congregation that you want them to do, to make a gutsy call or to step out in faith and follow Jesus even to the point of the waters of baptism.
Or maybe they are sensing that you might be calling them to have a conversation with a friend or maybe full time ministry or missions.
Lord, I pray during this time of worship that they seek out someone from this church and they're able to have a conversation with them, for them to be able to pray for them.
In Jesus name we pray.
Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willeridgechurch.org or by searching for Willowridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.