COME TO THE TABLE (SHARE)

400 names!!!

communion elements if josh forgot, gluten free

Luke 14:12-15 if you want to find it

It’s week 3 of prayer care share. Prayer is easy right? It is! We might forget to do it or not emphasize it like we should, but I think we were all ok with that step. Dear God open my friends heart to the gospel. Step 2 challenges us a little more because we have to take some action. We have to actually DO something. Maybe we haven’t been the DOERS we should be. I hope a bunch of you got over that hurdle this week. But today, we talk about sharing our faith… oh boy. What if they ask questions? What if I don’t know the answer? What if I mess it up? HOLDING UP BOOK Chapter 6 of this book empowers you to tell your story and articulate the gospel message. Many feel inadequate or unprepared, this chapter gives practical instruction to help with that. And since you have that in your hand and Dr. Earley laid it out so well, that’s not the direction we are going to go this morning. Instead i want to try to motivate you to take that step through a story that Jesus told about inviting others to come and have a seat at the table with us.

COME TO THE TABLE Luke 14:12-15, paraphrase 1-11 for context

Before we get to verse 12 I’ll set the scene. Again we find Jesus eating a meal. He is hanging out with pharisees on the sabbath, those are the religious leaders, and while He’s there he heals someone there with a horrible disease. Him healing the man on the sabbath ruffles some feathers because Jesus was “breaking the law” by doing so. He then starts to tell a parable, a story with divine meaning and says, hey when you come to a party like this sit in the back not the front so that you can only be exalted rather than ask to move to a lesser seat. You know it just occured to me yesterday that He had to be making some interesting eye contact with the ones that fought for the good seat at the table right? So after sharing how to behave at a party, He then goes on to give instructions on how to throw a party. Let’s look at verse 12.

Luke 14:12–15 “Now He also went on to say to the one who had invited Him, “Whenever you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor wealthy neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you to a meal in return, and that will be your repayment. But whenever you give a banquet, invite people who are poor, who have disabilities, who are limping, and people who are blind; and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Now when one of those who were reclining at the table with Him heard this, he said to Him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!””

Right out of the gate this morning I want you to get that this passage instructs us that we are...

CALLED TO HOST

If you are new to cap city and haven’t heard, the way we do life together is through our thrive group ministry. And whether you are familiar with thrive groups up to this point or not, you may not know, but we want you to know that the end goal is that our groups meet outside of the church. It’s not because we don’t want you here, but that we want you doing life together outside of the church where it’s easier to invite people in. Did you know that in EVERY church the greatest excuse to home groups that people have, is the consistent hosting in their own home. This is especially true if you have children because… you want the house to be clean. Right? More kids you have, the greater the challenge. If you’re a neat freak today maybe you don’t have this concern, or maybe because you’re a neat freak you never think your house is clean enough.

Anyhow. It takes work to keep the house clean, and I wonder if many people don’t want to invite people into their spiritual lives because they know the house isn’t as presentable as they would like.

Jesus didn’t give us an option to host others in a literal or figurative sense… He said WHENEVER you host, not IF you ever…

Hospitality is supposed to be a term synonomous with people of the faith. But we aren’t inviting people in because our house isn’t in order. If we are struggling to invite people to get close with us because we aren’t living out our Christianity, we need to ask God to help us live the life we claim to have, because inviting others in is something we are called to do. So maybe reason one that we don’t share our faith is because of how we are not living out that faith.

The second reason is that for whatever reason we just plain out don’t want to share our faith with others. We need to learn to share the wealth.

SHARE THE WEALTH

In today’s story Jesus said don’t just do things for people who will reciprocate that kindness to you. I see this played out alot when we do things for each other as Christians, which I’m not at all condemning, we want to take care of each other. But of higher priority, are those that are not aware of, or have not yet accepted the love and reception that they can experience in a relationship with Christ.

We’ve said multiple times recently that an unshared faith is no faith at all. Why would we not share the wealth of this good news? I put this question before God, and the Word I heard him give me back is… selfish. Maybe YOU’RE not selfish, but I sure can be. So let’s sympathize with each other for a moment. We are living in a culture in America today that is conditioning us exponentially to be more self-centered. In fact the whole focus of the last 5 years of schoolwork I did was the idea that the church has to do something to overcome the individualism in our culture when for the most part the church just seems to mirror it. It turns into my faith, my personal relationship, and we somehow think that Jesus is ok with us just doing our Jesus thing on our own.

I hope when you make a great meal and have extras you at least shoot your neighbors a text… In the same way when we don’t share the wealth of a meal with a neighbor it ends up getting thrown out, so too our faith begins to deteriorate when we don’t let the overflow of His spirit be used to bless others.

Here’s an extra half of a teaching point within this point for you. In another parable Jesus gets upset when people who are invited don’t come to a party He throws for people so He says go round up all the poor people and bring them in.

The rich won’t think they need this gospel message. The middle class might not think they need this gospel message. Really anyone under the blessing of living in America today could think they are without need of the gospel message. But the poverty of America today is not financial or physical, it is indeed Spiritual. Church, there is a deep sense of hurt in our culture today. Would you just pause right there for a moment and be honest and connect with the hurting in your life. Seriously, let’s be quiet for about 30 seconds and connect with that hurt that you are dealing with right now and then we will pray over it.

Pray for their hurt.

Now can I tell you something? Almost unequivocally I can assure you that in this very room there is someone dealing with that very same hurt that you are. You need to be in community in a way that you can share your hurt with others, then share your story to help each other heal from those hurts. Your very unique and personal story is the greatest tool that you have in sharing the gospel message of Jesus Christ. We can teach them John 3:16 later, but the book of revelation say we are overcomers by the blood of Jesus Christ and the words of our testimony. Let me drill down there for a second. I almost never here anyone talk about that passage and say who or what we are overcoming. But that passage in Revelation 12 tells us that we overcome the devil, the accuser of the brethren, the enemy of our souls. Folks today you can know that the devil just as real as Jesus Christ, and He wants you dead! Not quickly but slowly and completely emptied of your salvation and your hope. When you share the words of your testimony, not just how you are saved, but how God keeps saving you in your pain, and your hurt, and brings you victory, you are literally and instantly tearing down the work of the enemy. Because sharing our testimony is part of the two part plan. The other part is the blood of Jesus, and it is constant, eternal, and unstoppable. That was God’s contribution to us having victory in our life. We experience that victory when we do our part and continually proclaim the testimony of God’s activity in and through our lives. When… not IF… you throw a party, share the wealth with those who need victory.

Transition: Embrace the calling to invite others in, be generous both with material goods and the good news, and the end result with be that we get to experience blessing! And even better we get to experience blessing together!

EXPERIENCE BLESSING (TOGETHER)

Verse 15 of our story today said Luke 14:15 “Now when one of those who were reclining at the table with Him heard this, he said to Him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!””

Anyone in here just by uplifted hand, want to NOT be blessed? That’s why the sermon on the mount we talked about a few weeks ago was such a powerful message that Jesus preached. The people had grown up studying the prophets of the Old Testament, and there was a lot of gloom and doom, Jesus finds a place on the mountain and starts looking around the crowd saying… You get a blessing, and you get a blessing, over and over then say he gave out blessing to 9 different categories of people inside of like 90 seconds. And it was people who thought they were dead and now they are alive, it was people who were out and now they are in, it was people who were down and now they are up. And do you know what’s really cool about these blessings, Jesus wasn’t handing them out to individuals in the singular sense but groups of people in the plural sense. Blessing is meant to be experienced in community! Blessing without community is nothing but gluttony… no I did not just call you fat. Gluttony is exemplified in a lack of self control and greed. It’s hoarding anything that was meant to be shared. It’s spiritual gluttony, it financial gluttony, it’s saying I’m going to make sure I’m blessed!!! I assure you that when you aren’t tithing to God you are limiting the way He truly wants to bless you. You might feel like you have control, but faith means releasing control.

Story I’ve never told, 2 things something I did and money, but part of my testimony 16%, 40k, 7 churches led me here, learned to live with less…

In the same way I assure you that when you aren’t sharing your faith you might be satisfied with the level of relationship you have with Jesus, but you are failing to experience the true riches of a relationship that is available with Him when you are experiencing the significance and purpose you will find in helping others find their way to Him.

He wants to BLESS you! Not just you, but y’all! We have ruined the word blessing by attaching material and financial emphasis to it.

Any blessing you have received has been given to you for two very specific reasons. Number 1 is so that you return praise to God, and number 2 is to use that blessing to bless someone else. And there’s no greater blessing we have received then our salvation through Jesus Christ. One day we will sit in heaven dining with Jesus and the question I should pose for you, is who do you not want at that table?

Here in a moment we are going to take communion, and communion is a time of fellowshipping together in honor and remembrance of Christ. This communion is something we want to expand and share with all those in our circles so that God’s will would be accomplished through us. The team is going to come and I want to give you a few different directives for prayer this morning.

Response and Prep

The first directive is one of confession and examination. Communion is a wonderful time to invite the Holy Spirit to come and examine your hearts and minds, to ask God to search you, to confess those things in your life that need to go, and intentionally ask for God’s forgiveness and strength to move away from sin.

The second directive is to invite the Holy Spirit to bind you to this fellowship. To bring unity in this place as we come together and celebrate and remember the work of Christ both past and present, and anticipate His future work in His life.

The third directive is that you would bring your prayer card to the altar. That you would specifically call out to God again for the names on those cards. That God would continue to open pathways for you to minister to those people, and share your story with them.

Let’s take these next few minutes to pray and worship together.

Communion

Invite Allison and Amber

If you are seated alone or if someone is seated alone this morning will you come together. Communion is something that represents fellowship and should not be taken alone. As a few of you move towards someone else this morning you may also go ahead and do the work of opening the elements so we are ready to go.

This week I was reviewing the Lord’s supper in the various accounts given in the gospels, which are the first four books of the New Testament, and I gave my attention particularly to the words that were recorded when they had finished taking the bread and the cup. What you may or may not know is that we believe the author Luke to have written in away to give the most detailed account of what they saw happening, and in His account we see two significant conversations take place. The first is that right after Jesus foreshadows His own death sentence speaking of His body and blood, He says the one that will betray Him to death is seated at the table. The disciples question that for a moment, and then the transition to a conversation about who among them is the greatest.

I share this with you this morning to help us understand, that even though Jesus shared this communion directly with the disciples, one still had the capacity to turn their back on Him, and the entire group was still susceptible to a concern about their position and rank.

This morning as we take this communion in remembrance of Jesus, could we bring our focus to defend against these two ideas? First that we do not take this ceremony lightly but recognize that this body was broken for our sin and that as we move forward we must not betray this body by continuing in sin. Ask Him to strengthen your body so that you would no longer use it as an instrument of sins but as Romans 6 instructs us offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness.

PAUSE

Jesus broke the bread, and gave it to them. Then He said This is my body which is being given for you. Do this and remember me. Let’s take the bread.

As we move towards the cup, let us take the cup this morning with a prayer for unity among the believers. His blood is the unifying factor in the Christian faith. It is the overcoming power that we spoke of early, and under the banner of His blood we can defend against division and concern for who is the greatest.

PAUSE

He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in My blood.” Let’s take the cup together

Prayer

Chorus

Post response

400 names!

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Friend day etiquette, could be every week. Parking out, sitting in, be here for your friend, don’t complain about it being crowded, I’m hoping for it to be standing room only in heaven. 13k people, top row of the Schmitt and it was sweaty hot. I sat next to an 11 year old girl who hit me every time she lifted her hands, and hurt my ears every time she shouted and I just said God im so thankful she’s praising you