and seeing you all again, thank you God for you, your care for us, your care for others, your care for each other is powerful testimony in a world that needs to know that King Jesus reigns, and that his kingdom continues, his kingdom is expanding, and what I wanna do with you today is perhaps challenge you, but encourage you a little bit of something you may already be doing, I've got one of these, but this is warm water, and where I come from, we don't drink cold water, so thank you for this. And the point you somewhere that may be an encouragement to you to remind you, I grew up in a time when, some of the expressions I heard were things like, am I supposed to be behind this camera so you can see me? Sorry for that, sorry, I will go back here in a moment. Where we're in the day of small things, we're just a remnant, it's all, you know, we gotta hold on to the end, you're figuring out hopefully you have a good grip, no.
This thing's expanding, this is beautiful, what God's doing in the world is phenomenal, and I'm not even discouraged by COVID, in fact I won't go into details why, but there's some aspects of it that we've thanked God for because it's pushed us way outside of our bubbles in our box, and bubbles is not the right word maybe, but it pushed us outside of our, some of the, you know, may just rethink some of the things we were doing, and God has used it and is using it. I can't share with you everything I'd like to share with you, and that's what happens when I wanna get to be get here, like it was two years ago by mom's 20th birthday, yes, Feb 29th, so it was her 20th birthday when I was here the last time, and I would love to have come back before that, I was doing it come back before that, but although, you know, we got, I touched it positive back a few months ago, and had to cancel flights, but I'm all clean, I'm all good now, no worries, you know, vaccinated and just had it, and so it's all good, so I'll go. I'm gonna read some verses with you eventually, but I want to, based on where Joan and I come from and the things that we are doing, I work with a vast array of people, a lot of the work we've been doing, some of you that know that you're my friend, if you wanna be my friend on Facebook or Instagram, you can see some of that stuff, is working with a lot of the people that are very marginalized in society, people on the outskirts of society, people that are, you know, very deep into addiction, people that live in what we call spandylongos, which is basically piles of garbage, and make their homes out of that, and I have, you know, when we were able to get us in our building because of COVID, we were renting and renting, and renting, and then we just said, no, we're not renting, and so we moved out of that, and began to hit the streets in a much bigger way than I ever did before, I began to immerse myself into their lifestyle, not lifestyle, but at least into their areas, got to know them, got to live with them, got to share with them, and as you get to see the lives of these people, you see the burdens they have, the addictions, the pain, the trauma, not that which happens to you, but that which happens in you, as a responsible happens to you, when you begin to work with these people and you see that they're made of the image of God, Genesis 1 is a foundation we never wanna forget, they have intrinsic value, and we need to recognize that, and embrace that, and for that reason, we will go after them, we will pursue them, to the same degree, to the same extent that you are pursued by Jesus, we need to pursue others, and so this is what it means, is taking the gospel to people like that, that we're living in a society here, and I know that I love the work, my dear brother, friend, John, and many of you do more, and others do here in this city, on the streets, and that is so wonderful, we come here to embrace each other, to worship, this is wonderful what we just did, and people can come in, and one of the aspects of our gospel reaching out is to have people that don't have a relationship with God, that don't really know who Jesus is, that don't know what this is all about, they can come in and they can experience this, it's not just sitting in the front row, as I sit there, I've got some verses, I wanna quote you, and I wanna preach at you, no, let them come in and experience what it means to be part of the community of faith, and the community of believers, but when you go out and you see people, you work with people here that undoubtedly, some aspects of it with what I work with, but there's things that are different in society in which we live today, the secular society in which we live, and so what I wanna think about, they asked me to have a title for this, why I had three or four things I wanna talk about, and I took bits of everything, and threw it together, and my mother would call it hash, but we're just gonna see what it is when we're done, but it's kind of thinking about how we reach or share, or preach if you wanna use that word, the gospel, when hope seems to be fading in a world that is changing, where do we go from here? Because the foundation has been torn apart a bit, the rug has been ripped out from underneath us, am I talking too fast?
Good, thank you, I don't know how to slow down. So the question is, when these insurmountable barriers seem to come and the ways we've historically worked, or focused going back 20, 50, 100 years, when those ways have, we've got more barriers for that, how do we continue forward? You think of the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, and Billy Gran Cruz says, and you feel arenas, still an option, but there's not the same ability for that in the society which we live in today. The same response is not there, I may talk about that.
You know, if you look in theological terms, I'll talk about S1, S2, and S3 from a secular society, and the way society has moved, and what used to respond to pure conviction, they now need something more, and now we're moving in a post-Christian society, where religion and Christianity is actually toxic. Like, it's not a matter of what please talk to me about this, because I have a framework that understands there's a God and a creator, and I'm ultimately accountable, but my life is really messed up, but thank you for sharing with me the gospel, reminding me that I'm a sinner. That's true, but we're working with a lot of people that just hang on and say, who are you talking to, what are you talking about, and what are you even a sin? And we live in a society today that's questioning these very standards, and so the way that you will approach them is going to have to be sometimes modified, as you engage and bring them in the relationship with you.
Gone are the days, I grew up in times when you would have, you know, when I was a kid, when the people would come, the teachers would come, and they'd be gospel series for 10 weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks. I remember one guy, he was Mr. Holder, I'd never tell my mom, he was just a holder forever. You know, and it was, that's the way it was.
I'm not criticizing that, God works through that, miraculously, marvelously, marvelously, surprisingly. But, you know, that's not just what we can go back to the same way, right? And now when we come in to look at COVID, while COVID is done, the world is different, and I think we all can attest to this fact, we're not going back. There's no return to whatever you thought was normal.
But that doesn't mean that we're gonna live under a cloud, and we're waiting for the impending doom. No, that's not what this is about. This is weird, the kingdom of God advances, and so I wanna maybe underscore for a minute what Jesus really meant when he talked about the good news. We love the gospel, and I just loved some of the verses of the things we sang here, and just when John started singing at the end, what can wash away my sin, or my stain, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
The second line of that incorporates a part of the gospel that we often forget. What can make me whole again? The wholeness of life, of body, of emotions, of state, of mind is more than just my sin cleaned, is what God does. Justification even does that.
Justification, that right standing before God, God is setting the world at rights. But in doing this vertically with God, through the death of Jesus Christ, and what we've received by his shed blood, righteousness, that is not our own. What God is really doing, he's setting us right on this level as well. The very first reference to justification and description is in Galatians chapter two, and that is, from a timeline perspective, likely the first thing that Paul wrote.
And as he's writing that, it's in the context of broken relationships between broken communities, and justification is going to bring them together. Being right with God means we must be right together. Peter had a big issue when he did not want to sit and eat with people that were Gentiles in the presence of other Jews coming. And Paul says, no, this is what brings us together.
So justification makes us right with God, but an expanded perspective of justification makes us right with each other. And this is what the gospel needs to do. Jesus came and he says this, he announces the good news. Okay, you and Gellion, that Greek word that just says the good news, we translate it to the gospel.
What is it? Repent the kingdom of God is at hand. It's here, it's now. We refer to it as inaugurated eschatology, the now but not yet kingdom.
We see it in evidence, we are living in it now. We are bringing that to a community that doesn't know anything about our King, anything about our Lord, anything about our God. The glorious consummation of that, we await when the Lord Jesus himself returns. But we see this in forms, in small ways now, the invitation that comes from the Lord Jesus himself through the gospels is this, follow me, come with me.
Learn of me, not about me. We're really good sometimes on Orthodoxy, okay? You get all the facts, all the details, they get all down. We're not so good about the orthopraxy, the praxitously, they're walking with Jesus.
And that necessitates the orthopathy, the heart posture, the position of our hearts before God and towards others. And so the Lord Jesus comes and he invites this. And so I just think this is what the gospel gets at. There are so many beautiful, majestic, we can dissect this gospel, we can get into the cross and we can try to plummet depths so we can see what transpired through reconciliation and adoption and the true justification and being brought back and brought in.
But on it's, looking at it as a whole, this is an invitation to participate with God in what he is doing, through the destruction, through what sin has caused, God is in the process of recreating this, he's bringing back a new humanity. He is starting with you, he's starting with me, who have recognized who Jesus Christ is, 2 Corinthians 5, 17, in Christ Jesus, we are participating in that new creation. That needs to flow from me and emanate to others, but it does it most and it does it best in community. That's where we need to demonstrate the gospel, not just proclaim the gospel.
So how do we communicate the gospel here and now in a world where most people are hostile to it? I was just read a quote, I'm gonna read to the quotes, so I got my phone out here too. This was just thinking about how we reach out to these people, Derek Rishmali wrote this. He said, as the quote I'll take in this full quote, put it another way, we all know sane, rational people, living much the same as we do, yet believing radically different things.
Your Sikh neighbors, your Buddhist Jim buddy, your atheist co-worker, all by groceries at the same niche food shop, they catch the same Marvel franchise of super-hero flicks, they watch the same things and they love their families, but none of them goes to your church on Sunday. There are no more singular, monolithic obvious takes on the world, belief has become less of an on off switch and more a series of dials, you can set in various degrees, post secular, humanist, romantic, libertarian, eco-feminist and so on and on, and he explains this, it's very interesting, some different books on cultural apologetics and really the society in which we live today. But this is a challenge, I think, as you get into, I look at what's happening in Canada, as I watch from a long way away, and I see what's happening in the major cities of the world in the US and even in Mexico, in other places, this is the challenge that we have now. People are looking for freedom as he gets on, there's freedom from anything outside of the self, from the larger society, from the previous generation, from religious authority or political authority, people want, it's all about self, it's not about others anymore, it's not about society, it's about me.
And so how we speak to this is so, so important. We just can't start up what we always once did. I think of my own perspective, which is a series after series of series, of nightly one hour gossiping, where I stand up and I take a gospel verse from the letters of Paul or something that the Lord Jesus said, and I apply it most often, and I just bring a truth about the fact that you are born and sin, you have neither of a savior, Jesus Christ, is the answer, it's kind of like the three hours we talked about years and years ago, and not just years ago, we still talk about that, it is the essence of this, in a sense, our ruin, God's remedy and your responsibility, but there's more to this. And the gospel is bigger than that, that is the core of salvation.
But we don't need to just focus on salvation, we need the entire gospel message, which is bigger and broader and wider than any of that. All of these things, you know, and we look at it, and we can have a bigger internet presence, we can have better podcasts, options, we can work with a coworker and give them thought provoking books by Tim Keller or C.S. Lewis, Mayor Christianity, give those books out, please. But how are we really, how are you in your circle?
Okay, using that famous COVID terminology from the Maritimes I keep hearing about, your bubble, how are you going to impact others for good, for the kingdom of God, for the advance of this kingdom? How are you going to see people brought into relationship with the Lord Jesus? That's what I want to challenge you with today. And I thought the way we could think about that is we could think of two examples, both from the life of the Lord Jesus and what Paul ultimately got pushed into doing.
I think it's incredible what Paul got pushed to do. But think about the Lord Jesus. What if the majority of our evangelism was around tables, meals, and hospitality? What if the majority that was based on that?
Not forsaken the other things, okay? But what if the majority was based on initiating and engaging relationships with people? I love when I read of the Friday that I work in some of the interesting communications and contacts and people that are made as you begin to get into relationship with people because that is what you need. You have to engage people on that level and relationships take time to forge and to form.
What if it was through acts of service? What if it was through very good works on a very public level? What if this was a testimony of a group of believers that reached out to a community that showed what it means to belong to Jesus and to be part of a kingdom? What if living together, the way we engage, the way we share life together, not just on a Sunday, but through the week?
And I love that was the attraction to others that look on that are observing and they say that is part of what I want. I'm getting at the nature of the method, not the content of the gospel message, that is unchanging. But I wanted to think about how we reach out into others. The Lord Jesus seemed to do this.
He focused on individuals. He focused on homes. He focused on tables. One, I think as Keras is the theologian, the commentary writer who writes that Jesus was either going to a table, at a table, or coming from a table, it looks gospel.
More than any of the other gospel writers combined, he's talking about the Lord Jesus in homes, at tables, at meals. So much so they called them a glutton and just a wine biver. You are always, you've got the wine out, you've got the bread out, you've got the meals out, you're sitting at tables, you're hanging out with the wrong people, you're out with publicans and sinners, you're hanging out with prostitutes, you're bringing in the most outcast of society. He actually goes on to say, and I love this quote, take it in context.
He says, the Lord Jesus got himself killed because of the way he ate. He hung out with the wrong people. He associated with the wrong people. He actually got into the places where people are experiencing pain, where there was broken, is where people were alone.
We live in a very lonely world. And the Lord Jesus, if he teaches us anything, and he does, he teaches us that on mitigated love towards those that consider themselves to be the most unlovable, are the ways in which we can walk. I'm gonna say in post-day, that's a Spanish term, walk in the footsteps, I guess, of the Lord Jesus. He, he came close to those that were broken.
He welcomed them and brought them in to his circles. And what he did with these same people is he set them loose, post-air resurrection to go and do the same thing. And I think that's exactly what we see as you begin to go through the acts. So we live in this lonely world.
I think it's undeniable, in fact, if we were to look into the hearts of people that are here and I don't know you, you don't really know me, and the likelihood is none of us know each other as well as we should, but there is pain. There is heart. There are stories or incidents, there are things in your past, things in your present, things that you anticipate with fear in your future. And they bring you to a place of pain.
The Lord Jesus addresses that pain. The Lord Jesus comes near and he touches people and he physically touches them too, which is beautiful. Do that, you gotta pray for somebody, put your hand on them even. Feel that, my dad always, we're kind of got in trouble.
My dad always, what he grabs you by the elbow and he wants to talk to you. So okay, that's my dad. And I'll bless you dad for doing that. You know, I'm gonna tell this story because I told this story yesterday about knowing people.
I went with a walk, this is not part of my notes or my thoughts, it's just the way my head works. We went for a walk two days ago and we walked up about eight, nine, 10 houses and a set of stairs to go down by Oat Hill Lake and go walk around Oat Hill Lake. And as we walked out the door, and we started walking out the street, you know what he did? He started with this first house and then that house and that house.
As we went, he named every single neighbor, their kids where they worked out on the bench in Canada, how many times he brought them flowers and he brings in the creation of God. He doesn't go overtly with that gospel, but he brings this in and then he goes, every single house, he knows every single person. He knows where they're from, where they're going, what they're doing. He nearly knows what they have for dinner last night.
Okay, you know what that is? Gospel work. That's evangelical. That's what it means to live and breathe this.
In your circle, he's got a big bubble, okay? But in your circle, you reach out, you touch others. Now I don't know, you're all gonna do that, okay? But in whatever way you can, this is how like the Lord Jesus did, he reached out and he touched people.
Often those that were abandoned, rejected or isolated. And the Lord Jesus just embraced them, he visited them, he loved them, often one meal at a time. According to the Center on American Life, which is reflective of Canadian life and American life, people who say they have no close friend. The identify, I have nobody that I can't, I can't, I close then.
That quantity of people has quadrupled in the last three decades. 54% of us or Americans or Canadians say that either sometimes or always they feel that there's no one that knows them well. No one that really knows who they are and what they are about. 40% say this, I have zero close friends.
I have nobody. Like the man of John 5 and the Lord Jesus comes, I have nobody, I have no man to put me in the water. There's so many people that are hurting, loneliness, solitude, I mean I'm a firm believer in the rule of life and the monastic style of living and silence and solitude and stillness. But this is not the kind of solitude we're talking about.
These are people that are burdened because they are definitely just alone. And the more alone they are, the more out, the more in the fringe society they become and what is the natural tendency of what you do when you see somebody on the fringe, you don't actually look. I don't know if we think it's embarrassing for them or we think it's embarrassing for us. Maybe if I look and make eye contact, I'll have to speak.
Maybe I'll have to connect. I might have to open my pocket and give them something or maybe to share something or buy them a doughnut or a coffee or sit with them and take three minutes to say, what's your name, where are you from? How's life? But this is how we reach out to people.
This is how we engage with people because this is not the people I'm talking about 100 feet from the US border that are living in absolute, not just poverty but in brokenness as they inject themselves and they take any kind of ways and in a lot of ways you can get meth or heroin or mixtures or that or other kinds of weird drugs into your system. I'm talking about people that live right next door to you. These are the people that are broken. These are the people searching for significance.
These are the people living without meaning and meaning and significance comes through relationship. It comes through community. Every one of us has a need to belong and that is why the essence of Christianity in my terminology at least, and I believe I have Biblical authority for this, is community. It is being together.
So, Trinity is a community ever before the world where created God lived in community. That's where we see this. And he brings Adam and Eve in community. He institutes the families and then he brings us and he goes right through to the church and we see community.
This is what we need. This is what everyone needs. And often the pain, the loneliness that's experienced by so many others comes because of a lack of this. We see young people that are going pretty dark and it's about two weeks ago or less.
I spoke with a young person who grew up and could have quoted many of the verses in your Bible. And he's become extremely, I'll just say, the word that keeps coming in is just dark. He's looked at the loessness of the world society, the things that are happening. And he's just drifted in his approach.
Is this really the God who reaches out, communicates? I don't see it in my interrelationship with others. And I don't feel what I've gotten back from others. And he's come to a point now, not just beyond agnostic, probably even atheistic, probably or a blend between those things.
Now he's in the deeper research of other philosophers. He's reading Frederick Niche and he probably nihilists. Frederick Niche says the germ philosopher, he's influenced a lot of modern thinking and even still is today. And he's the one that says inside a Darwinian worldview, which was his own worldview, the only two rational decisions.
The only two things you can rationally come to decide are this, live in moral depravity or suicide. That's your choices according to that worldview. Is it any wonder that suicide rates have gone up by 33% in the last two decades? Is it any wonder that major depression, I'm not talking just minor bouts, but major issues with depression amongst youth has gone up by 63% in recent years, like last few years.
The world and everyone around us, people that you encounter, they are in pain. And so preaching the gospel, sharing the gospel, bringing the good news that the crucified Messiah is now Lord of life and glory. He is the king of the universe and his kingdom has come and he rules and reigns and will return and he will embrace you and there will be blood that will wash away your sin, but it will make you whole again. It will cover everything that you need.
This is the news that we need to bring more than just a transactional moment in life where you say this is when it happens, but something that resembles literally becomes following Jesus. The mandate of the Lord Jesus at the end of Matthew's gospel was what, to go, that's the only verb there. Then you have other words, you know, part of the participle is actually show you what you do, but he's talking about making followers, bringing people with you. Is it any wonder that the believers, before they're ever known as Christians, or those that belong to Christ and Antioch, before they were identified as people of the what?
People of the way, people of the way. The way they lived was different. The way they engaged was different. The way they shared what they had was different.
The way they opened homes and welcomed and took people in. The way they broke down cultural divides and barriers. That was unique and different. There was something that was diametrically opposed to the societal norms even of their day, as they claim that not Caesar is Lord, but Jesus is Lord.
This is the same way in which we need to live. It may require a little bit of rethinking, a retooling of the way we look at life and the way we even look at how we communicate and engage with others when it comes to the truth of the gospel. This is what the Lord Jesus did. Ultimately, this is what Paul did.
You're saying, Dan, you haven't even opened your Bible yet. Let me read Luke 19 and show you something that the Lord Jesus does here. Some people here have told me that you guys don't use clocks, only calendars, but I don't know, that's true. I say that about where I come from, but I am cognizant, I'm semi-cognizant of the time.
So you can holler at me if you think this is going long. My apologies. Luke 19, you know the story, I'm not gonna go deep into it. They're gonna put it up here in the NIV for me, but they're not putting it up there right now.
I only have it ESE with me, so it doesn't really matter. But notice what this story is about. The Lord Jesus just come and he's come into Jericho. Remember, he's come past a beggar, another beautiful story, a beggar, an integral part of Jewish society.
He had a role to fulfill. Okay, he's on the outside, the Lord Jesus comes in, and he continues to go right through Jericho. In fact, he's gone out the other side. We know that because it was a sick and mortry that Zacchaeus was in and sick and mortry he's weren't allowed to be within the confines of the community based on Jewish law.
Had to be at least 15 qubits beyond the edge of the city. So Jesus actually come through, gone out, and this guy Zacchaeus comes up and he's waiting for the Lord Jesus. It's really interesting, it says in verse four, he ran ahead and climbed into a sick and mortry to see him before he was about to pass that way. And Jesus, when he comes to the place, he looks up and he says to him, Zacchaeus, hurry, come down.
I must stay. I'm gonna go stay at your home today. Jesus didn't have a home to invite people into, but he invited himself into other people's homes, which was very, very interesting. Do it, but be careful doing it, for all I'll say.
He hurried and he came down and he received him joyfully. When they saw it, they all grumbled. They weren't happy about this. This was not a good thing.
The Lord Jesus was identifying and associating with people that should not be identified with or associated with. They grumbled, they complained. He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. Zacchaeus stands and he says to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor.
And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it for fold. And Jesus says to him, today. Now this is very interesting. I might not get out of it right now, I'm gonna wanna come back to this, and remind me if I don't.
Think of what Jesus says and what it means when he says this. Today, salvation has come to this house. Salvation today has come to this house. All the Luke's gospel you see is the Lord Jesus has come looking for people like this.
Luke 734, the son of man has come eating and drinking. And you say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Luke 15, what was the accusation against the Lord Jesus? Verse two, this man received sinners and he eats with him.
And that's what you see of the Lord Jesus. We see him sitting with others, we see him welcoming others, we see him receiving others. Hospitality requires that. And I wanna encourage you and talk about this for a second.
Hospitality means and involves welcoming. It involves creating space. It involves listening, paying attention and providing. Meals slow everything down.
They force you to sit across the table and look at people. You don't sit at a table like this. And you shouldn't sit at a table with this. You sit at a table and you engage with the people that are in front of you.
You validate their human worth. You validate who they are as an individual. And you engage with them. But I wanna point out that hospitality is different than entertainment.
On Tuesday night, I was entertained. I went to my dear brother John's house and it was lamb chops and it was steak and it was a beautiful salad and there was other stuff there. And it was just phenomenal. And I was thoroughly entertained.
John's a very hospitable guy. But I wanna just draw a distinction between hospitality and entertainment. Because I, we were like a bosom buddy, we're kinda drawing at the hip and many senses, okay? But hospitality, the word, the literal word is the exact opposite of the word that we get.
Xenophobia from, fair strangers. It's not just the people that you love, the people that you like, the people of your cultural community, the people that you can readily identify with, the people that you walk with live with. This is reaching out beyond. This is going to those like the Lord Jesus and the parables when he says, go out.
The invitite, the invitite, the invitite. The invited ones didn't come, go out to the highways and the byways, compelled them to come in. Look for the main, look for the broken, look for the blinds, look for those on the margins. Bring them in.
That's hospitality. It's going out and it's loving strangers. It's opening up, it's risking, it's giving, it's investing. It's making contact, it's stopping people on the street and it's encouraging them, it's getting to know them, getting their name, loving them, making contact, offering ongoing contact.
That is where kingdom growth comes from. That is where I think in this S3, third stage secular society, we are going to have to get, it's not just now about the conviction of sin, it's about the beauty of Jesus, but the beauty of this path, it's not just the warning of what awaits a person who doesn't come in the relationship with God, but it is the attractiveness of the very creator himself. This needs to woo us and bring us, not to woo us and bring us in, it needs to woo and bring others in. Hospitality is inclusion.
Entertainment is really exclusion because it says you but not others. Hospitality is service. Entertainment can just be an opportunity to say here, look what I got. I can't entertain, we don't have a nice dining room set, we don't have money for lamb chops mistake.
I can't, I can't do that. You can't, sometimes you have lamb chops mistake, right? But you can give what you have, you can share what you have. You can work where you are.
You can look for the ones, ask God the spirit, do I direct your path? When you see someone, you're going to speak to them or not speak to them, engage with them or look at them or salute them, ask God to guide you through this and God will open up pathways. He will put you into contact with people and the impact you will have on others, you will never ever fully grasp this side of eternity. Sharing a meal is not the only way to build relationships but I do believe it's likely number one on the list.
The Lord Jesus moved in with people in their physical pain and their emotional pain and their rejection and their exclusion and I could go right to Luke's gospel. I'll look more than any other, I think this, you know how many times 51 times there's at least references to Lord Jesus eating or being at a table or engaging with people like this. It's just filled with it. Also happens to be the only writer Luke who engages and uses more references to the Spirit of God than anybody else.
All the other guys who are writing is combined, Luke writes more about the Spirit of God and it's also about the Lord Jesus engaging personally with people in their lives and every Jew. So when they come here and you see Zacchaeus, every single Jew in that Jewish community would have known the social limits. They would have known that what this rabbi is doing, what Jesus is doing is not coach, it's not right. He should never be going in there.
He could have to make a journey up to Jerusalem just to purify himself because the feast day is coming and he won't even be able to participate in that because he's now defiled himself by going into a home with this particular guy, Zacchaeus. The Lord Jesus is not worried about that, neither bothered by that. In fact, he shows an alarming indifference to all of the ceremonial laws of Israel and he gladly eats with everyone, frequently with those that were forgotten, they hate it, they ignored the dirty of society, the prostitutes, the swindlers, the robbers, the despised, the defiled. These were the ones that the Lord Jesus frequently sought out.
And so this is what happens when he goes to Zacchaeus home. Think of the meal that he has with him. When the Lord Jesus has a meal, you know, the word companion, where it comes from, Latin, calm and pan is with bread. Companion, it means to be, it's already what it means, it's the one with whom you share bread.
That's what this means. There's a very interesting, I mean, if you just have some research on what's referred to as table fellowship within the world of Judaism and what it refers, even within the Roman civilization, table fellowship means so much more than what we think about it as eating a meal. I tend to eat very, very quickly. But eating a meal and sitting on a table was much more than what's on my plate and how good does it taste and is it going to fill me.
Table fellowship and sitting on a meal was something that was to engage with others and create relationships and bind people together. It was a statement of who you accepted and who you welcome. And those that did not see that sit at your table, that meant something else. You just think about bread and wine with the Lord Jesus, it brings and institutes.
That is companionship, that is table fellowship. That's what he's saying. That is making a statement I eat with you, I share with you. I bring you in.
We come from a society that it wasn't too long ago. You could go past restaurants in the south of the US in certain places and the signs would be on the door. No blacks allowed. You could go to part of the United Kingdom, you see, Irish, no blacks, no dogs.
We come from a society from a world from a concept that is racist sometimes. And these exclusions or classes of people is something that is in our heritage and is ugly and is nasty and is wrong and yet the Lord Jesus and Christianity about anything else demonstrates. There are no exclusions, there are no barriers, there are no boundaries. This is one and we need to be brought together in that table fellowship.
So the Lord Jesus offers that. There's a really, I mentioned the Robert Kerris, he writes this and I'll just share this with you because it gives deeper understanding of what I mean when I talk about table fellowship and hospitality or entertainment or bringing people in and engaging with them. He says that in Judaism, table fellowship means fellowship before God because the eating of a piece of broken bread by everyone who shares in a meal brings out the fact that they have all shared in the blessing which the master of the house had spoken over the unbroken bread. Thus Jesus meals with the publicans and sinners are not only events on a social level but had an even deeper significance.
They are an expression of the mission and the message of Jesus. The inclusion of sinners in the community of salvation achieved in table fellowship is the most meaningful expression of the message of redeeming love of God and in just subplot which no time to go into this. Justification I believe includes this. We see justification in its pure, on varnish essence as what it is be cleared right before God but it goes horizontal as well.
Just some very interesting things if you wanna go study or Google it the new perspective on Paul. Look at some of the deeper study into how the word justification is actually used. It doesn't eliminate anything we've always appreciated about it but it actually expands it to something that brings others in. In other words he says, Jesus table fellowship with all and with sundry was an act it parable of God's unconditional acceptance.
This motif comes across to a certain extent to Matthew Mark but Luke emphasizes it and deploys unique material to this end such that the command to invite the poor, the name, the blame, the blind, the banquets in chapter 14 verse 13 for both Jews and Greeks these were the undesirables but with Jesus they were welcome at the table. What I am getting at? I'm not telling you you're not doing this. I know your hearts.
I see. I know some of you. But this is perhaps the way that we will only, probably one of the ways at a minimum if not I want to suggest to you the chief fight in which you will see growth. You will see others brought in.
It won't be because some stranger walked to the door and happened to sit in a service and heard a message and never heard before. That may happen and God the Holy Spirit still works like that. It may not just because you proclaimed truths from a corner and somebody heard it and caught a word and went with it. God still does that and that's powerful.
But what really counts is when you get down and you get to have these individual conversations. I'm sure if you were to go follow, okay, good news preaching here in Halifax and see what these guys are doing. The real, the thing to bring us in that excitus is when they tell us about the personal conversations, personal conversations. That's where the real stuff is done.
And I think if there was a way for us to move that forward as you not just share conversations in the moment, but actually see that brought forward into engaging with them over a coffee, a coffee stand, a doughnut at home or keeping that relationship open, that is the way you will see people ultimately brought in. But it's going to necessitate the welcome of the stranger. Not just those that are known, it's bringing in the people that really make you a little bit uneasy. I used to feel a little bit uneasy in the places I go.
I don't now at all. I feel more at home. I feel more safe in the darkest of the night where I can't see my hand in front of my face and I walk into a burnt out building and the smell and the stench is powerful. But I know that inside that area, there are countless numbers of souls.
Sometimes I just go in there and I call out names and people I know, sometimes they know me and they call me El Canadiense, the Canadian El Calvo, the bald guy. And I feel welcomed, I feel at home and they stop. And every now and then it happens to me once every two months, maybe every couple of months. So one of them will look at me and say, why do you come here?
Why? You're from Canada. We know Canada is beautiful. Why would you come here?
And coming here, why would you come here? One of them asked me to say, like if something happened here, because it's all kinds of, like you guys don't see nothing on the news but the people that are killed and the slaughters of the gun shoots and bodies that are taken and their organs are robbed because they sold in the black market and you guys don't see none of that kind of stuff that happens literally right on the border. News can't report it from the US, from the Mexican side because the vast majority of news reporters are slaughtered. The moment they say anything that has any essence of going against cartels or any kind of corruption, they can take it out.
So they don't report it. And you don't get any of it even from far right wing, they go from a Fox News to CNN. You don't get reported what happens there. And they look at me and say, Dan, if something was to happen, one of them asked me this, it was Carlos, with like tear drops, face painted, grew up in Seattle, deported, lost his family, lost his wife, lost his kids, lost everything.
He's now having him to meth, been 18 months on the street. And he says, like, would you protect me? I said, I will try. He said, I just want you to know that we would protect you.
We're here for you. They had a weird sense, okay? They were just learning about who Jesus is. They're just learning a little bit about what it means of this God who has invested in them immense value by forming them in his own image.
But they are sensing community. They have, you know why some of them, when they get out, like I've opened up a, I don't call it a halfway house. I don't like that name. I call it a fellowship house.
But I rented a house, I outfitted it with everything. And I, you know, beds and kitchen stuff and everything's in there. We built a little business on hamburgers outside to help sustain some of them at least. The reason I did that is when they even come out of it, they come out of a detox program.
They come out of the Christian drug sector that I'm invested in and working with. And they don't have anywhere to go. The likelihood of them going back to what they came from is just super powerful, not just because of the attraction of the drug, although there's all kinds of things to change in your brain. Dr.
Gabor Maté, who worked with drug addicts in downtown Vancouver for 11 years, has written a book called Hungry Ghosts, which is fascinating. Shows what happens in the remapping, in the rewiring of the brain when you're subject it long term to these substances. But they go back because of the sense of community. They belong.
They know they will get accepted. Yes, it's painful. Yes, it's ugly. Yes, it's dirty.
Yes, it has all kinds of other horrors attached to it. But they belong. People are looking for community. And what we have in Jesus Christ is community.
We have acceptance with God and acceptance with each other. And the beauty is if we can bring others in. That is what this is about bringing others in. In a society that has divided over so many issues, over race, over politics, over religion, over perspectives on a vaccine or a disease or a virus or whatever, we have become distracted.
And what matters is the kingdom of God. What matters is the fact that Jesus is Lord. What matters is that we are pointing towards something that is big and beautiful. And I'm going to have to move on because I just want to bring in something else about Paul learned.
And show how this is meant to encourage us. As we move forward, we say, where do we go from here, Lord? I'm not going to go deeper into what the Lord Jesus does here. I'll talk more about how he loves strangers.
But I'll leave that. I just remind you before I transition into what Paul learned from the same thing, Romans chapter 12, practice hospitality. First Peter 4, love everyone deeply or love each other deeply, love covers a multitude of sins. How does it do that?
Offer hospitality the one to the other without grumbling. He was 13. Keep on loving one another. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, to strangers, for by doing some kind of hospitality to angels.
First Timothy 3, Titus 1. What is it? It's a requirement for elders, leaders, deacons in the church. Ever see a pastor or an elder or a deacon removed because of lack of hospitality?
No. For other things, yeah. But not because we need to talk to you because we've been analyzing your movements over the last year and we recognize that you're not fulfilling what the Scriptures say. You're not being hospitable.
You've got to go. We're serious, sorry. We love you. And we're going to have some people come around you and pray for you and work with you to help you learn this very important part of what it means to belong to Jesus.
No, we don't do that, do we? No. And yet this is why the Lord Jesus lived. This is what the early church was born out of.
They were in each other's homes. Actually, so they had not shared it. This is at the heart. This is in the genetic makeup, if you will, of who we are as followers of Jesus Christ.
Paul, the end of Acts, who is he? Paul, the end of Acts, is the foremost church planter, Evangelist number one. He has covered a period of 1,500 miles where he has fully evangelized, he says. All our hopes and anchors, if you were a first century believer, view said, who are the chief men among the brethren?
We would have said, dear Paul is our guy. But what does God do? Paul gets shut down. We think he gets shut down.
If it's just the public heralding of the gospel in an open platform, Paul gets shut down. Hang on a second, what's going on? That's dangerous. Why would this happen?
Like we need Paul. The church starts with an explosion, evidence of the Spirit of God, right at the beginning of Acts, as Luke writes a sequel to his gospel. And you come to the end, and it just seems like, I mean, if you didn't know better, you'd think, wow, things are really crowding in here. We have a Roman imperial government that is now actively seeking to destroy Christianity.
They are actively seeking to kill, to incarcerate, to shut down anybody that is connected with King Jesus. Now, you can worship Jesus as a God. All you want it, that didn't matter. I mean, come on, it's the first century.
We're modern, we got lots of gods. You can have Jesus as a God, no problem. You just can't say he's Lord. You just can't say he's King.
There's one Lord and a Caesar, right? Ever since Julius Caesar, when he dies in Octavian, he's adopted son one year later, in the remembrance of his death, sees the comic going through the sky, and he declares that he's ascending with the gods. From that time forward, the Caesars were like deities. And there could be no other Lord but Caesar.
If you go back and read any of the beautiful stories of the martyrs, what's the one in 200 AD? Her name begins with P. But as she was taken and she was gonna be thrown literally to the lions and the gladiators, her family pleaded with her because her only recourse to escape certain death was to walk up to the altar, take a pinch of incense, drop it on the altar, and say Caesar is Lord. And with that, they would be removed.
So there's no problem with being religious, but you couldn't actually live like Jesus was Lord. You couldn't actually live like Jesus was King. You couldn't talk about a coming kingdom. You couldn't talk about different standards.
We were here to imbibe Roman standards, not to project and propagate Jesus' standards from the kingdom. So here's Paul at the end of Acts, Acts 28, just jumping forward. Two years, he's appealed to Caesar. He's brought into Rome, not the way he wanted to get to Rome.
He was gonna go to Rome. He says he was gonna go to Rome to evangelize. He went so many things he wanted to share with him. He wanted to actually bring to them a spiritual gift.
Actually, it's only work time that spirituals and gifts are actually connected to the scripture. Is Paul is actual spiritual? Other than that are just spirituals. But they connected their Paul himself, becoming the gift to them.
But he doesn't arrive to Rome that way. He arrives to Rome and chains. And he sets a day and he calls people of his own nation together and he sets a day where he's going to expound before them what he refers to in verse 20, as for this reason, therefore I ask to see you and speak with you since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain. And he points a day and Paul lays out, you just imagine what it would have been like to sit and listen to Paul.
I think we could have listened to him for a day. And he expounds and he goes through, he was a master understanding the Hebrew scriptures. And he unveils the truth that this Jesus of Nazareth really is a Messiah. He really is Lord.
This is exactly what God was projecting, what he was prophesying, what he was pointing to, all down through the ages. As we sang, he is the king of the ages. Okay? And what's the result?
Mm, not sure Paul. Some said, maybe some said, no. There was actually a division about him, there was a discussion about him, there was an argument about him. They don't all buy into this.
And here's Paul, you say, well, hang on a second, the Roman church is being, you know, slaughtered, they're being incarcerated, they're being destroyed. Our foremost guy is in jail. His own countrymen that he's come and expound, they're not buying it. I guess we're in the day of small things.
I guess we're ready to wrap it up. It's not going good. The future doesn't look bright. Do you ever feel that way looking at the world, how it's changed in the last 18 months?
You ever look at it and say, you know what, churches? And reaching out to the communities? it's not going good guys. Like cross our fingers so we don't, it's not based on that, but we're just saying, amen, even comes to Lord Jesus, get me out of here because you know what, things are just gone.
That is not the perspective that I believe our Lord wants for us. If you were to go through Luke's gospel and go through Acts gospel, you would see the exact same trajectory. Luke writes both as gospel and his sequel, the book he acts the same way. 24 chapters in Luke, 28 chapters in Acts, several hundred years ago, some guys came together and said really should it just be six chapters.
We artificially divided the books of the Bible into chapters and verses, right? They said six chapters or six movements would have been better. And they all start with the same kind of thing. In Luke's gospel, they start with a prophecy about who the Lord Jesus is, or start with a birth story about the Lord Jesus and you have two women, Mary and Elizabeth, one old, one young, a virgin.
They start with a prophecy, Jesus, Luke four, taking up the scroll of Isaiah, says here's what he's gonna do, free the captive, heal the blind, he's gonna preach the gospel, he's telling what he's gonna do. And then you have this movement as he comes through the proof of that, where he actually does what he says he was gonna do. But then you come to the point where there's a problem. As Jesus has so many people that love him and follow him, suddenly there's also a massive opposition to him and it comes to a trial.
And then it comes to an ultimate tragedy where they reject the Lord Jesus. And the one who had the power of life and death literally submits himself freely and willingly into their hands. He passed through their midst before, this time he says no. And he goes, let them take them Peter, put your sword away.
And the Lord Jesus, you know, and they got it, he gives himself over to them. And it just seems like it's all ready to crash and burn. In fact, everybody is done. The disciples scattered in fleet, Thomas is full of doubt, he runs away, Judas goes and hangs himself.
The woman, they go and buy spices because his body needs to be anointed. Nobody was anticipating what was coming next, the resurrection. Nobody was anticipating the resurrection. And yet we come from the depths of despair to the glory of new hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Luke does the exact same thing at acts. It starts with the birth of the church, by the power of the Spirit of God. More than three times more than his gospel, he talks about the Spirit of God at acts. And then he comes to the prophecy, Peter stands up and quotes Joel.
And then they go and do the exact same thing they said they were gonna do and people are being healed, healed, those manifestations of the Spirit. Even in Ephesus, they're taking handkerchiefs and parts of the clothing of Paul because he couldn't be in two places at the same time and they bring it into people that are sick and they are healed. Like that's an Ephesus, we're quite a ways beyond Pentecost now. And this is happening.
And when they see the marvelous expansion of the church, the expansion of the kingdom, things are going great. And suddenly there is opposition, massive opposition. Paul's taken, he's incarcerated, he's going to go down hill. He goes through the exact same people, same offices of the Lord Jesus face, exact same offices of different people now, but the exact same offices.
He's bounced from the gendellic works to the Jewish courts. He goes through the exact same thing that Lord Jesus does. Luke tells a mirror image, his gospel and the book of Acts that are mirror images of each other. And then you come to the end, it seems tragedy, tragedy.
And it looks gospel, it was the death of Jesus at the cross. In the gospel, it acts, what is it? Paul's in prison. Our number one guy, the guy in whom our hope is invested for the advancement of the kingdom and the expansion of the church, the preaching of the gospel, and he's in jail.
And not just in jail, he's going to lose his head. How does Luke finish? Luke never tells us the end of the story. Luke leaves us hanging just like a bad sequel in a TV series.
He doesn't, you know, you don't get to watch the rest of it. You're left hanging. But here's how Luke does finish. After Paul quotes the Old Testament prophet, you know, to his own people that had divided over the truth that he was giving to them, he comes to this point and he says the first 28, 29, and 30.
He says, therefore, let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles. They will listen. He lived there two whole years at his own expense. He's not allowed to go inside and preach.
He can't come and have a gospel meeting. He can't do any of the other myths of evangelism, but what does he do? He welcomed all who came to him. He brings him into his home, hospitality.
He brings people in. And for two whole years, he preaches, what does he preach? Proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and look at the very last word that Luke writes. It's a word that only occurs once in the scripture.
Aka Lutos, unhindered, without obstacles. So just when you think, just when you think it's all done, just when you think it's time to wrap it up, just when you think there's probably no good way out of this. Things are crashing, the walls are coming in, the sky is falling, things are dark. What does Luke end with?
Unhindered, without obstacles. You go forward, you advance the kingdom of God, you live where God has you, you do what the Lord Jesus did, you welcome people in, you foster a form of relationship, you bring them into your home, if you can, if you have one, or you invite them to a coffee shop, and you sit on a curb, and you sit right where they are, you enter into their pain, you ask them their name, you ask them questions, you listen to them, before every share, and you will find, just as Luke says at the end of Acts, we are unhindered. God is not just wrapping up things, he's not like it's coming in, I don't think I can sustain this any longer, I've held out for 2,000 years, I think I'm gonna have to quit really, really soon, I can't keep this going, no, that's not our God. Things are advancing forward, God's kingdom is expanding.
If you were to go all over this globe, you would just see what God is doing in marvelous, marvelous ways, and we counted to John in his home, and I'll do this with this, I'll end in 30 seconds, I was with a dear brother two weeks ago, who is in a leadership position in a church in Ontario, and he talked about being in the building one day, and a young Iranian girl, while a teenager came in with her dad, he didn't speak any English, he did, and she came in, she translated for him, and she said, my dad says he wants to be baptized, and she said, well, okay, like what, save what's your background, no, he didn't know anything about Christianity, but he had met Jesus, wow. So he related the story that just before he came over in Iran, he had had a dream and a vision, and in this vision he had actually heard and seen the voice of Jesus, and then he sees Jesus, he's leaving a path into the water, telling him to come follow me, look, you need to be a follower of Jesus, he goes into details of what that's about, I won't share all that with you right now. The truth of it was this, here's a man coming from Iran, he gets over to Ontario in the city, he's in and he googles church, and the first church that came up was the one that he actually went into, where my friend was, and he goes in there, and he relates this story. Over in parts of the Middle East right now, outside of mosque, there's actually a campaign to put up little small signs, in the street, but there are signs that says, if you have had a vision of Jesus phone this number, is God working in crazy ways or way outside my box?
Yes, does God speak in those ways and bring people into contact with those that can share them from the glorious truth of the gospel, who's the person who Jesus Christ? Yes, God's not wrapping things up, things are expanding until the King returns, don't get discouraged, don't think, there's nothing we can do, don't become insular, don't just try to pull in everything and pull the shades and lock the door and say, we're just gonna hold out and make it come tonight. No, go forward, smile, do community, love your community, live in community, share what you have with others, welcome them and bring them in and when they ask you why, you'll be ready to tell them because this is what it means to become a follower of Jesus. Jesus lived it in Luke's gospel, Paul was forced into it and acts, and I wanna encourage you and I to live that way here in this day and in this age, may God bless you and encourage you and I'm gonna end.
Father, thank you so much for your investment in us. We could never ever calculate nor recount the ways in which you have blessed us, but we thank you most of all for our Lord Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, that you were willing to literally take our place, that you gave your life to bring us in. You entered into darkness that we might live in life.
You experienced true loneliness that we might live in community, and we want to thank you for that. The Spirit of God who is at work in our lives, we ask that we will be directed in the past that you have prepared and laid out for us. May we be willing followers, may the way in which we live and the way in which we relate with each other and the way in which we engage with the world around us, may that be the testimony that will point others to the reality of who the Lord Jesus is and the distinctiveness of the Christian faith. We are thankful that your kingdom is expanding.
We are thankful that Jesus will reign from short to short, and we await with anticipation that moment when we will see him. We love him, give you thanks for him, and ask you to part us with your blessing today. Remember every family, remember those that are ill, remember brother Dave with his cold or whatever he's got going on today. Remember others Lord that are going through trials and difficulties that they have maybe not felt comfortable yet opening up with others.
Help us to live in violent honesty and transparency that went with each other. Help us to live in such a way that we're willing to visibly see you in our midst. We wouldn't be shocked, but we would actually enjoy your presence. We ask this as we give thanks for the Lord Jesus in his lovely name, Amen.