Gather and Go
You Belong • Sermon • Submitted
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· 23 viewsGod uses all of us, even those of us outside the circle.
Notes
Transcript
Welcome / Introduce Series
Gather
Groups
Gifts
Give - Baptism
Opening Story
Car with Check engine light – Stops 3 miles from our destination.
Duct tape coving the check engine light doesn't fix the problem; it just makes it so that we don't see it, ignore it, and eventually forget about it. If we are not careful, we begin to ignore the problems (check engine light) of the world and eventually forget about them.
God didn't call the church to sit on the sidelines and worry about the world; God called us to step into the world and make a difference.
I believe it's the gospel and the church that can significantly impact the world. That's why it's up to us, the church, to take the gospel into the world.
*Disclosure: Small children may want to leave.
Historical context
Were about to read about a city with a severe problem
After the rule of Solomon, Israel was divided into two kingdoms, the Northern Kingdom, which consisted of ten tribes and maintained the name Israel, and the southern kingdom, which consisted of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin. The southern kingdom was called Judah.
The kingdom of Israel was at war with another nation called the Arameans.
This nation marched its army and laid siege to the city of Samaria, which was the capital of the Northern Kingdom.
In the ancient world, when a city was under siege, the army would surround the city, cut off their food supply, cut off their water supply and try to starve them out. The hope was that eventually, the city would surrender, and it would spare lives instead of losing men in battle.
Things in the city had gotten terrible.
*Disclosure 2: What I'm going to read next is disturbing.
It's not something you'll get on a flannelgraph in Sunday School.
It's not safe or sanitized, but it is in the Bible.
As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”
The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”
She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”
When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and they saw that, under his robes, he had sackcloth on his body.
This is not a metaphor; things had gotten so bad in the city that they were eating children.
Everyone can agree. That's about as bad as it gets.
In our world today, thankfully, it hasn't gotten to the point where we are eating children, but let's look take a broader look at what's happening. People were so concerned about satisfying their appetite that they disregarded their neighbor.
For example, last year, when I was in line buying an entire aisle of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, I wasn't thinking about my neighbor.
We bought toilet paper like it was the cure for the Coronavirus.
It was almost like we thought if we spread toilet paper over our doorpost, the virus would pass over, and we'd be safe.
King upset with god
The king of Israel was mad at God, so he decided he would kill Elisha, God's prophet.
Side note: It's interesting that many times when bad things happen, we blame God. We are all guilty of it, including me.
Killing Elisha wouldn’t fix the problem, it just shifts the blame. Duct Tape
Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.”
Everything will be different
skepticism
The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?”
“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat any of it!”
This leader who was with the king told Elisha, "I know what you are saying; it just seems impossible
Can’t see the power of what God can do because we’re focused on our current situation.
The situation seems impossible, but with God all things are possible.
" Sometimes it's easy to look at our situation, and look at God's promise and think, "This is impossible."
My marriage can't get better; my financial situation can't be fixed; PARENT CHILD RELATIONSHIP God can't use me; I'm too far gone. It's easy to look at our situation and think God can't change it, but we serve a God who does the impossible.
God has called you to go into the world and make a difference. I know it's easy to scratch our heads and say “I don't know, I'm just one person, I don't know if I can really make a difference in the world.” Even though things may seem impossible at times, you are a people of God, called to make a difference in the world, and if you take God at his word, he can use you to do seemingly impossible things. The best is yet to come!
Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die?
Many of us don't know anyone with leprosy today. It was a skin disease that would often start as a rash and eventually, your skin would rot away and fall off. Inch by inch, their flesh would deteriorate.
When a person had leprosy, they would often try to hide their condition. If it was discovered that you had leprosy, people thought that the reason you were suffering physically was because there was something spiritually wrong with your life, and it was God's way of punishing you. They were no longer able to associate with their friends and family. They were no longer able to worship in the temple. They couldn't get prayer; in other words, the church would turn their back on them, so they tried to hide what they were going through, out of fear of being judged.
Some of us don't have to imagine what it's like hiding what we are going through out of fear of being judged, out of fear of being gossiped about in the form of a prayer request. So we hide what's going on in our hearts and our lives. We're programmed to give Christian answers. People ask us how we're doing, and we provide the Christian response, "I'm blessed and highy favored, the head and not the tail, too blessed to be stressed, I’m to anointed to be disappointed, God is good all the time and all the time."
Yet, deep down on the inside, we're struggling with fear of rejection. "If people knew what was going on, they would reject me!" So just like the lepers, we hide our feelings, we hide who we are, we hide our struggles, and often like the lepers, we find ourselves outside the gate.
They had to yell unclean unclean
Before they know what’s inside my heart i’m already labeled.
Al the alcoholic, Chris the Crack head.
we hide whats going on out of fear of being labled.
The Rock Church is a place where you don't have to hide; you don't have to be outside the gate. We're not a museum of perfect people; we're God's people walking through life together, and when we fall, we pick each other up, and we walk together, not to judge one another but to encourage one another, in both the good times and the bad times. So the church should be the one place where you don't have to hide who you are out of fear of being judged.
hypocrisy
Going back to the story, we find the lepers outside the gate because they were considered unclean. Isn't it amazing to see the hypocrisy even thousands of years ago? The people inside the city who were eating children still thought they were better than the lepers. Self-righteousness is one of the most dangerous things in the world because it will always cause us to look at what's going on in other people's lives without dealing with the things going on in our own lives.
Some of us may feel like the lepers. Because of hypocrisy, you've been put outside of the gate, outside the gate of certain circles; maybe it's because of our past, maybe because of something that was done to us. But, no matter what the reason is, if you feel like you've been outside the gate, I'm here to tell you, you can be outside the gate, yet inside the will of God.
This is what we see in verse 3.
Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”
There are two groups gathering, one inside the gate, and the other outside the gate.
The people inside the gate are forming their holy huddle, isolating themselves from the people that aren’t like them, and judging the people on the outside.
The people outside the gate, the lepers are simply saying, let's not just sit here and do nothing. Let's do something!
This is one of the most encouraging things in the scripture. It's a bunch of people who were left outside the gate, starving and desperate, they were counted out by a society that said, “hey, let's not sit around and do nothing about the world's problems, let's do something.”
That's what the church is all about. It's not for us to just make a point; it's to make a difference. There are 7 billion people on the planet, and they're about 3 billion people who know Jesus. We're not here to judge the qualifications of people taking the gospel to the world. We're here to encourage people to step off the sidelines, go into the world, and make a difference.
At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, no one was there, for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!” So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.
They decided to get up and walk into the enemy's territory.
On their way, God caused something to happen, and the enemy fled.
At that point, all they had to do was step into the work that God had already done.
So many times, we're waiting on God to move, and God has already moved and is waiting on us to take a step into what he has already done.
They had to take a next step! God has already done the work. What’s your next step.
Don't miss this. The lepers were put outside the gate. However, if they had not been put outside the gate, they would not have been in position to take what the enemy had left behind.
For those who feel like you have been put outside the gate, it may have seemed like punishment, but perhaps it was preparation for you to be able to step into something that you would have never seen had you stayed in the place you were.
What people have used to harm you, God can use for good. Just because they had bad motives, doesn’t mean that God can’t use it.
God has already moved. He is doing great things, and we're going to reach more people for Christ than we ever imagined were possible.
*I love how the Bible is honest about the condition of humanity.
The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp, entered one of the tents and ate and drank. Then they took silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
Their first thought wasn't to share what was good but to hide it for themselves. But, unfortunately, that's the condition of humanity, we want to take what we've got and keep it to ourselves.
Buy all the toilet paper. I’m not telling you where I got it.
I remember serving at a church and preaching about winning our, city and the worship leader sat down in the office with me after service and said, that's a problem. We have a tight group, here and if we start inviting more people in, it's going to mess up what we have.
I get it. They had a comfortable thing going, but Jesus loved people far from God, and so should we.
if we’re not careful, we can be guilty of the same thing. "we've got something good, let's hide it!" But then something happened that's unbelievable.
Then they said to each other, “What we’re doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.”
Good news, Why was it good news? Because the people in the city didn't have to live the way they were living anymore, they could stop starving, they could come out and take what the enemy left behind.
It's good news! We've got to take the good news to the city. There are people that are desperate for good news, starving for good news and we as a church have to take it to them.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Here at the Rock Church, we're going to go and tell the good news to as many people as possible. Jesus cared about people far from God, and so do we.
I admit it. I'm just a leper who has been put outside of the city gate, dissatisfied with the situation and saying, I can't sit here and do nothing about people far from God. That's why we are here at The Rock, because we’re not content putting duct tape on the condition of the world when God has called us to step into the world and make a difference.
If you're here today, maybe you feel like one of those lepers. Perhaps you feel like you've been put outside the city gate. Perhaps you feel like you're not good enough and feel like God can't use someone like you.
You feel like the Leper
I'm here to tell you that as we search the scripture, the people that God used the most were messed up people. People that were unqualified but were fully surrendered to him.
Maybe you feel like there's no way I could do anything for God, that God wouldn't want anything to do with me. If that were true, then why did God lead you here today? It is not a coincidence that you are here.
It's God saying, I want to use your life, just like I used these lepers. God want’s to use you to do impossible things. That’s why we gather, we’re just group of lepers, that were left on the outside saying, let’s go and tell the world the good news.
PRAY
