I've been thinking this week and I know that there has to be some fun stuff but is anybody ever met a celebrity like a famous famous famous person and if it's when watch talk here is Robert's don't count. I have the copy I got. Who's you met Mr. Burta?
Oh Robert Pointless. You win? Okay I'm in quiet. We'll see y'all next week.
Have a great week. Dang. That's what I'm about. I met Richard Simmons in an airport in high school.
Not going to tell you that story I told you before. But have you ever, when I was a few years ago my favorite Robert Plant still is blowing my mind here. When my family went to New York City a few years ago my dad ran the New York Marathon my sister and my mom and Mary did you go to the show with him? Like you go to the line and you think you might see somebody famous.
Every time I go to the airport not the Monro airport. A real airport. I think like who am I? I might see somebody really important here.
This morning we talked a story about a person who made the decision that they were going to meet Jesus. They put themselves in that situation. They knew Johnny Cash in the song on the Night Hank Williams came to town. This person is like I'm going to meet Jesus today and it's a story in the Gospel of Luke.
Early this year when I was planning out preaching for the year I made the decision that on these Sundays they're kind of their own thing. We're not in a series. I want to preach from Luke and I want to preach from Isaiah. I want to preach from Luke because it's stories of people encountering Jesus.
I want to preach from Isaiah from the Old Testament prophet because he tells stories about what the world is like when people encounter the Messiah. This story today I've preached this passage before at Foundry but I think it's really important for us right now and really important for where we are and I'm going to share more about that later on this time. Let's open our Bibles up. The book of Luke we're in chapter 18 and we're at the very end of the chapter starting in verse 35.
This is what Scripture tells us is Jesus approached Jericho blind beggar with sitting beside the road. We heard the noise of the crowd going past he asked what was happening. They told him that Jesus the Nazarene was going by sleeping in shouting Jesus son of David have mercy on me. Be quiet the people in front of him yelled.
But he only shouted louder son of David have mercy on me. When Jesus heard him he stopped and ordered the man be brought to him. As the man came near Jesus asked him what do you want me to do for you. Lord he said I want to see.
Jesus said all right receive your sight your faith is healed you. And instantly the man could see and he followed Jesus praising God and all who saw it praised God too. This is a short story. There's a couple of different people that are here a couple of different things going on and we've got three characters kind of.
Now the first one is Jesus obviously. He's part of the story. But we have this is a story of recognition of how people see Jesus and what they call Jesus how they respond to Jesus. Because we have the crowd and we have this this blind man.
The crowd is an interesting thing in Scripture all throughout the gospels we read of this crowd that is encountering Jesus. And the crowd is kind of made up of a few different groups of people. The disciples were originally came out of this crowd. So you have people who are following Jesus deeply.
They're hanging on every single word he says because there's just something about what he's seeing. And they say and then there's opposite side of it. And they have the people who are following him around everywhere who are hanging on every single word they're saying because they're trying to find something to catch him up on. There's no reason the Pharisees and religious leaders know what's going on because they've infiltrated.
They've got a mole in the crowd. They're listening. And you have all these people in the middle that are just warned to be part of something big going on. So you see this crowd just moves with Jesus for three years all across the place.
And I imagine some people come on and come off and let's go do the crowd thing with Jesus for a couple of weeks. I just was kind of thinking when I was in college and I didn't go to class for three weeks and followed to fish around. That wasn't a very good idea. But you just kind of come on and come off.
And there's people who are following Jesus. They're wanting to know what's going on. Every single thing he says matters to them but it matters for different reasons. And we have this blind beggar.
The scripture says it's on the way to Jericho and he's outside of the city gates. And he asked people what is this? What is this commotion? What's going on?
Jesus is the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth. A very basic way to identify Jesus. This person, who says, oh it's Jesus from this place.
But this beggar he responds really differently. If you look in the scripture he doesn't holler out at him. Jesus of Nazarene, the son of David, he gets it. The fact that he's saying Jesus is the son of David.
He's recognizing that this prophecy is the comm of this Messiah, this anointed one that's promising all these things. This is that person. Jesus is the son of David. You're the king.
You're from this line. In this sentence he's saying I understand every single thing the Old Testament tells me what is to come and I know that you are that person. He says have mercy on me. That's the vocation of the Messiah.
In the middle of where I am, all this stuff is going on in my life. Please see me and have mercy. The crowd is trying to quiet. Shut up.
Be quiet. And he hollers even louder to get the attention of Jesus. I've read this story for years. I used to think that it sounded like Jesus was a little agitated at him.
But I don't think that anymore. What I actually think is Jesus agitated the situation where this person who has actually figured out who he is is trying to be shushed and put in the back. I think you can catch that tension inside of the story. That Jesus frustrated the situation that has led to this man having to do these things.
He's persistent. Just continuously. He's persistent. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
He gets it completely. As though this blind beggar is saying to Jesus, I know who you are and I need you to be who you are. So Jesus hears and finds out and comes to him. He says this phrase to him.
I used to think that this was Jesus being agitated. I don't think so anymore. But, Jesus, kind of pointed directly at me, what do you want me to do for you? I know when I say that phrase, it can be one of two things.
I can say that phrase in exasperation or I can say that phrase in compassion. Think about how you might say that. What do you want me to do for you? Or what do you need me to do for you?
I think Jesus realized this man knew exactly who he was. He's not saying this out of exasperation. He's saying this out of decompassion. But he's a loaded question.
I'm saying, what do you want me to do for you? Because I think with the situation of this man, he's blind and he's begging, which tells us, we've talked about this kind of the role of the people who are needy in the Bible. Like the fact that he's blind, that he has a physical infirmity means that society naturally believes that him or his parents or his grandparents committed some egregious sin and that he is unclean and should not be allowed to be a contributing member of society. But the fact that he's begging tells us he has no family to take care of him.
So he is solely responsible for himself and he's been outcasted. He's been dehumanized. And as a person with this physical infirmity, he has treated subhuman by the culture around him. He's also outside of the city gates.
Now, y'all know there's places that we know that people who are asking for money go to around town, right? Like we know in front of Walmart here in Monroe or the exit on the mall on I-20, like there are places that you go to to have to sign up. That's not a new thing. Like in scripture, outside of the city gates, that's where you went.
So this man is there for a reason because that's where he goes to get the small amount of money and to rely on a compassion of other people. So Jesus comes up to him and says, what do you want me to do for you? There's multiple options he could have taken here. He could have said, hey, can you give me like enough money to not sit out here by the gate for a week?
Or like, can you do this for me? He could have asked him some very small things, very practical things, things that if you look at his station and his situation in life would have provided tremendous relief. But by the way, he's calling on Jesus' name, Jesus. Son of David, have mercy on me.
And this phrase, have mercy on me. It's like the first century equivalent of a cardboard sign that says we'll work for food. There's very specific language there. But as that phrase is used for a very simple economic reason, it's also a deeply loaded phrase because mercy is something significantly different than alleviating a temporary burden.
Think about what mercy actually is. So he's saying, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. He gives us a hint at what he's going to ask for. He has Jesus.
He says, I need to see again. Like he went for it. It was full tilt boogie. It's as big as it can go.
I need to see again. And Jesus' simple response, your faith has healed you. Go. Your faith has healed you.
This man properly identified Jesus. He fully knew who Jesus was, what Jesus came to do. The way that he's interacting with Jesus is saying, I know who you are and I need you to be who you are to me right now. And Jesus is simple.
Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has healed you. As we think about this story, we think about this. You know, this person had a physical infirmity, but he was willing to ask Jesus to heal him of the thing that stopped him the most.
For him it was his blindness. He was willing to be a completely different reality in life. His blindness led to him being outside of a family. His blindness led him to being subhuman in his culture.
His blindness led him to have to be camping outside the city gate, hoping and living off the compassion of other people. His blindness led him to where he was at that point in time. That physical infirmity was the thing that stopped him the most in life. But each of us, we have things that stop us the most in life.
For some of us, there might be physical. Luckily, we live in a society where we instantly don't put people who have physical infirmities in the place like the society 2000 years ago. But we all have things that stop us. We all have anxieties.
Fears. We all have worries. We all have these things that keep us from living a full life. And sometimes they might seem really silly to other people, but to us, they are absolutely terrifying.
I'm pretty free with my greatest fear in life is I'm scared of fish. People laugh at me, but there's a handful of people in this room who have seen me when fish get into the equation. Like, there's silly things to me. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm going to fish with you, but I got to trust you first.
You got to trust that you're not going to pull that whistle of a bass on Chad's stunt. It doesn't work out well. It's a silly fear to me. It's really legitimate.
I held my first fish two years ago with my five-year-old niece made fun of me for it. I had to wear a glove the whole time. But I'm also scared of crowds. Like, crowds really freak me out sometimes.
I remember having an anxiety attack on a water park once like three or four years ago. That's a stopper for me. It's called problems before. I'm scared of not being able to pull something off like something, because I'm weird in the fact that I like to do, think of absolutely just wild, enormous, outrageous things, but then I'm terrified that I won't actually be able.
I mean, we all have these fears that have the ability to stop us. But what if you are willing to let Jesus heal you of something that stops you the most? Like, I've got fears. I'm not going to tell you about this one.
Because they're so scary. I don't want to give a word to them. I'm willing to be made fun of for being scared of fish, but we all have something stopping us the most. What do you have that stops you the most?
It causes you to act out. It causes you to shut down. It causes you to not want to leave the house. It causes you to make excuses.
It causes you to make the vera. What is that thing that stops you the most? And the reason that I felt it was important for us to talk about this today as a church. We're moving into a completely new, different season of life.
It's a season where we need to be willing to overcome those things that stop us. When I think about fears and this issue with fear, I think about a story that my friend Drew Causey told once that this part of his childhood, but it's amazing. It's my favorite story about fear in the world. But Drew grew up at a really big, big, big Baptist church in Baton Rouge.
He was my age in 38. And so, how many of you grew up when you had revival meetings in church? There's a way revival meetings where revival meetings go for three or four days. You bring in a guest speaker.
You bring in some money to do the music. And everybody kind of comes for a few days in a row. And I used to work these things for a living. I know it's a little bit inside baseball.
There's always going to be that one night in revival meeting that people in the business call Cry Night. Okay? It's tonight that everything's going to get just rough. And it's tonight that you make sure you got extra folks down front.
You have the ability to stretch the surface at another 30, 45 inches. It's just the way this works. And this church, this revival meeting that's going on for seven or eight days. Keep it stretching and stretching and stretching out.
And one of the last nights for revival, this guy, he'd been there every day. And the first day he showed up, he was in the back row and he kind of kept moving forward every day. Everybody was aware of it because it's a nice, very preem and proper church. And this is like an old nasty biker.
And like every day he kept moving forward and forward. As a, the rumor mill at church, he's like, he's got back. That's how it's convenient story. I mean, he's like stories and stuff.
And the last night on Cry Night, like Joker comes to the altar. As soon as it happens, like nasty tears, like sloppy crack of the snot bubble crying. You know, I'm talking about like Jerry Clower crying. Everybody, everybody knows what's going on.
And like, I mean, it makes a, it makes a, it makes a profession of faith. Hold on, you're just scheduled to baptism. Big, big, big deal. The next morning, like he's at the church when the door opens, like knocking on the door to the office.
It comes in, it talks to the preacher and everybody knows who this guy is. So of course, and it gets back, gets in the pastor's office and sits down and says, hey, listen, my life has been incredibly difficult. His last 12 hours are unlike any of every experience before my entire life. Whatever you need me to do, I will do, I will move the yard.
I'll trim the bushes. I will clean the bathrooms. I'll do sheet, whatever you need me to do, I will do. Please give me something to do.
I want to serve Jesus. And he says, I've got something for you to do. And he hits the button on his telephone and the secretary says, I need you to bring the children's minister in here. And children's minister walks in, sees the biker and is kind of figure what's going on.
And the preacher looks at this guy and says, I need you to teach third grade boys Sunday school. I've never been to Sunday school before. I've never been to Sunday school before. I've never been to Sunday school before.
I'm not going to ask the brothers a book. You just read the book and teach the book and she'll get the book for him. He's teaching third grade boys Sunday school. And it first sounds kind of crazy, but I have to have people in this room where third grade boys at some point in time.
And I imagine you might need a character like this to corral 30 or 43rd grade boys. We've got folks here that serve in our kids ministry sometimes back in the hall. You probably like a guy like that every now and then. So Sunday morning comes around, take a big Baptist church, late 1980s.
He got comes in, the words of Christopher Staufferson's wearing his cleanest dirty shirt. It took his best off. It took his best off. He tried to feel kind of weird without that on.
It's always third grade boys dressing their Sunday best, sweater vest and busta browns. You had a pair of those. Come on. And so like, Tony Gordon-Shares, semi-circle, and he started doing Sunday school.
And like 10 minutes later, he's done. And everybody in the room's confused because my friend Drew is one of these third grade boys. So this is what his level of experience catches him. You'll see in a little while while the story has echoed throughout eternity.
And so they're all confused because nobody's ever finished Sunday school early. If you're a kid growing a Sunday school, anybody ever finished Sunday school early? I mean, everybody's dumb and the boys are like, well, you got to teach us another lesson. He's like, I just know this one thing.
What happens when I finish this early? Oh, boy, nobody ever finishes early. This one, how it works? So they kind of go back and forth for a while.
And the biker guy finally said, OK, well, I mean, your teacher, you're a teacher, you're a teacher, you're a teacher, you're something. He's like, well, I know about two things. And heck, I'll let y'all pick what you want me to teach you about. I know about bushhogging, and I know about knife fighting.
Which one y'all want to learn about? That room for a third grade boys did not pick out bushhogging. So he's perceived to teach room full of third grade boys had a knife fighting. He's like, first, roll a knife fight.
Sorry, you're going to get cut. Roll a knife fight. Sorry, you got to pick your blocking hand. Mine's my left.
And he holds up his left hand. I'm like, oh, the biologist in here can tell me what this piece of skin is. His wasn't there. It's like pop marked with holes and whatnot.
He's like, you always make sure you always button the cuff of whatever side your blocking is. So you can do this. He takes his shirt off like in three seconds. He has it wrapped around his arm.
Well, 30 minutes go by, and all the mamas come pick up their little third grade boys and their sweater vest and bust their browns. And they come around the corner in the room, and their 40 third grade boys all like doing this with the fat crayons. It's the most famous Sunday school class in the world. But I love that sort of teaching something about fear.
You know why reasonable people do not get into knife fights? Because they don't want to get cut. Well, according to this guy, the first rule of knife fights are you're going to get cut. It's genius if you think about it.
He's accepted the inevitable. You know, the first rule in healing is you're going to get cut. That when we invite Jesus to heal us of these things that stop us the most, it's not going to be an easy process sometimes. If it was easy, it wouldn't be something that stops us very hard.
It'd be something that we can stop very easy. If we invite Jesus to heal us of those things that stop us the most, he has to cut away some stuff. We've got scar tissue in places. We've got fears in places.
We've got all these things that my sister's a wound care specialist. And she explains to me how it's tough when you get cut, that when it's in heels, it just doesn't stretch like it's supposed to. It doesn't move like it's supposed to. It messes with your mobility.
When you invite Jesus to come in and heal us of the things that stop us the most, he has to do some pretty major work on us sometimes. But when we're healed of that, when we're moved past all that, when we're understanding what forgiveness, because healing means forgiveness. Healing means recognizing there's a part that we play. There's a part that Jesus plays.
There's a part that other people play. We rewrite the stories of all of those things. And Jesus calls us. This is why we had to have this conversation again today.
When Jesus calls us to new places, to go in new directions, to go to new levels, there's things we have to do to gain the mobility, to make that journey. If we're going to stretch high, we need to make sure our knees are working okay. That we have the emotional readiness for what Jesus is going to ask us to do. We have the awareness of these new places that we're creating in our heart for him to go to.
These new places for him to inhabit. And Jesus heals us of the thing that stops us the most. It only happens when we're able to recognize even more fully who he is. If we want to go to new places with Jesus, we can't simply say, well, this is Jesus than Nazarene.
We have to learn what it's like to say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for being someone who lets us be honest. Thank you for being big enough to handle the stuff that we come up with.
And if the things that we need, thank you for your willingness to go wherever we need in life. Lord, I pray for every person in this room to exercise honesty between ourselves and you right now. I'm not going to ask to put it on a piece of paper and tell somebody. But for us to have a moment of brutal honesty together, which we, ourselves, and the person who can change everything.
Lord, please heal us to the thing that stops us the most. Please help us to understand that this has a tremendous bearing on our life. That this isn't just a Sunday morning thing. This is a Tuesday afternoon thing.
This is a Monday morning thing. This is a Friday night thing. This is something that really has the ability to change the scope and shape of our life. So Jesus, we willfully invite you into those spaces to do that work.
To do that work of healing. And when we realize the places that we're going with you, the things that you're calling us to are new and are bigger, and we want to be ready for that. We want to be fully prepared so we can fully experience who you are. Let's end your son.