We started a series last week, which is part of our, what we'd like to do each year, and that is to begin the year talking about our vision and mission both as a church and as individuals. And this year we're calling that you are welcome here. And we're talking about two things here over the course of this month, who are we called to be as a church? And of course that means being a welcoming body, but also who are we called to be as individuals.
And so what we believe is that being a part of the church means that we take on the mission of our church. I mean, just think about it, those two things go hand in hand. The church is the body, the people. And so for the church's mission to flourish and succeed every person who's a part of the body has to take on that mission as their very own.
So here's the thrust of our series. God has called us to reach our community for Christ. And so we see our community as Northeast Louisiana. This is a part of the world we live in today that people don't just necessarily go to a neighborhood church when that's closest to them.
There was a day in time where that was true, but now the truth is that people go where they feel connected. They go where they have some relationships. They go where they feel they fit. And people will travel.
People will pass dozens of churches to get to the place where they feel that they fit. And so as a part of our mission for reaching Northeast Louisiana, Foundry has a very tangible specific part of that to strategically here focus on reaching this section of Northeast Louisiana, Stirlington, Bastrop and Farm reveal. And the truth is we have people that come from Monroe. We have people that come from West Monroe to come here.
And so we're talking about welcoming people. That's the series, welcoming people. And here's what we're talking about. OK, we're not talking about recruiting people to be greeters.
What we are talking about is all of us being bringers and inclooters. Now what does that mean? Well, bringers means that we are inviting people in, to church, in to Christ, into community here. But we don't stop there.
It's not only about inviting. It's about being inclooters. That's so critical. We have to be inclooters.
That means that we need to be people who are making room for others, who are following up with guests, who are helping new people who visit Foundry to find their place and gain the sense of community that all of us enjoy here. And so today, we're going to be talking about this in the context of studying the book of Acts, mostly in chapter 9. Now, Acts chapter 9 is a dramatic story. It really is about the conversion of a man named Saul.
Now, we know him mostly as Paul, but he used to be Saul before he became a Christian. And here's a quick overview of the beginning of Acts chapter 9. Saul is on his way to a town called Damascus, and he does not have good intentions for his trip to Damascus. And yet on his way, he and little entourage that were with him suddenly are stopped in the road by a bright light and a voice that comes from this light.
And Saul drops to his knees, and out of this light, he hears the voice that says, Saul, what are you doing with your life? And Saul essentially says, I don't know who are you? And the answer from that light is, I am Jesus who you are persecuting. And everyone else, now Saul heard this clearly.
Everyone else heard some noise. They couldn't make out exactly what was happening, Saul could. And Jesus told him, go into Damascus, hold yourself up in a room there, and I'll deal with you in a couple of days. So his buddies, his entourage, whoever they were, took him on into Damascus, dropped him off there, and got out as fast as they could.
And so here, Saul is left for a few days, and that's where we'll pick up on our story this morning. Now, the primary focus here of our story is about Saul. But we're going to focus on the other character here. And that other character is a man by the name of Ananias.
And God pulled him into the story of Saul. And God gave him a very, as we're going to see, uncomfortable assignment. He didn't ask for it, and he didn't want it. But God called him into it anyway.
And so here's our big lesson today. Our big lesson is when God says, go welcome them, our fear doesn't get to vote. So guess what? We're looking specifically at this man, Ananias, because Ananias is us.
God called Ananias into this uncomfortable mission. They didn't ask for it. Didn't sign up for it. Didn't really want it.
But God didn't really worry about that, because Ananias needed to be involved in this mission. And we're going to talk about three ways this morning that God pulls us into this uncomfortable mission. OK, so let's get started. Dig into this story.
Here's the first thing that we're going to see in it. God calls us to include everyone in his faith family. OK, so let's read a few verses here in Acts 9. So Paul's already had this experience bright light.
He's been blinded, by the way. He can't see. And so he's alone for three days here with no food, can't see. And he's just been praying.
And here's where we pick up in the story in Acts 9, verse 10 to 12. Says, now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision calling. Ananias, yes, Lord, he replied.
The Lord said, go over to straight street to the house of Judas. When you get there, ask for a man from Tarsus, named Saul. He's praying to me right now. I've shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him so he can see again.
Now, let's talk about the Saul for a second. Who exactly is this dude? Now, we're real familiar with him as the name Paul, but Paul, previously Saul, started his career in a very different way. Here's how he's described.
We've got some manuscripts from early church history that describe Paul's appearance. And here's what it says about him. It says, he was a man of middling size and his hair was scanty and his legs were a little crooked and his knees were far apart. In other words, he was short, bald and bowlegged.
Sounds good to me. Now, here's what's interesting. He doesn't sound very physically imposing. Does he?
He doesn't sound very physically intimidating, but make no mistake, the Christians of the first century were terrified of him. Why? Because Saul began his career as a protector of the Jewish faith. He persecuted the new Christian church.
He was feared and loathed among the early Christians. So by his own admission, he says, in Acts chapter 22 verse 4, it says, I went after anyone connected with this way, went at them hammer and tongs ready to kill for God. Now one of his infamous moments that is captured in the book of Acts, is in Acts chapter 7. And there's a man by the name of Stephen, who was a leader in the Christian church in Jerusalem.
And he had been preaching the good news of Jesus as the Messiah, the Messiah that had been predicted in the Old Testament. There was a group of people who circulated a lie, stirred up a crowd that one day all picked up rocks and began to stone Stephen. And here's how it records it, in Acts chapter 7 verse 57 and 58. It says, then they put their hands over their ears and began shouting, they rushed at Stephen and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.
His accusers took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul. Now, what does this tell us? Saul was apparently the one who planned, instigated and presided over this murder of Stephen. It's a brutal way to die.
You can just feel here the guttural intensity. You can picture the bloody violence of this scene. You can hear the angry shouts of men as they pick up rocks. It's a brutal kind of a thought that there's angry mobs surrounds a guy.
You're helpless. They pick up rocks and begin throwing them at you. And just the sound of the dull thuds of those rocks hitting every part of your body, your head, and you fall on the ground and they continue to pummel you with rocks until you die. That's what happens.
And Paul planned it, organized it, and presided over it. So Saul was an ugly human being at this point in his life. Now he thought he was doing something good. But of course it's something terrible that he was doing.
Now they hoped their goal here in stoning Stephen to death was that they would instill a kind of a fear in this young Christian church that would cause it to splinter and this whole movement to die. And that's not what happened at all. The church continued to grow and grow and grow. One church leader from the early centuries said that the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the saints.
In other words, the more they persecuted the church, the faster it grew. Now did that discourage Paul from his activities of trying to stop this new movement of this young church? Not at all. He continued to persevere and he even raised his intensity.
On this particular day in Acts chapter 9, he's actually traveling with an entourage with a warrant in his pocket that gives him the right to arrest any Christian that he finds meeting for worship and bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. And this is the man that God told Ananias to go and visit that day and welcome into the kingdom. Here's the fact. God calls us to include everyone in his faith family.
God wants everyone to be safe. In fact, Jesus says that's why I came. And that means the very best of people and the very worst of people. Even murderers like Saul.
And so it's critical to the DNA of a congregation, a faith family like we are here, that we have the understanding that God calls us to reach all people. The very best and the very worst. Whoever God brings to us, we welcome them with open arms. This is really good news for us because the truth is that what it says is no one's fallen too far.
No one's gone too low in order to be welcomed in God's kingdom and his faith family because we all need God's mercy in our lives, every one of us. And God said to Ananias, go to that guy. Yes. That guy Saul, which leads us to point number two.
God overrides our objections with his mission. Now, let's get back to our passage in Acts 9, verse 13 to 15. Okay, so here it goes. But Lord, there's the beginning.
But Lord exclaimed Ananias. I've heard many people talk about the terrible things. This man has done to the believers in Jerusalem. And he is authorized by the leading priest to arrest everyone who calls upon your name.
What the Lord said, go for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings as well as to the people of Israel. Okay, so here's the vision Ananias gets. It's super specific. Go straight to straight street.
Ask for Saul of Tarsus. Now, let's just stop right there and get the weight of that command and try to feel it like Ananias felt it. Straight street was the main thoroughfare through the city of Damascus. It's still there, by the way.
It's called straight street at the time because it's very unusual. In ancient cities, most streets were real curved. This was about a mile long when straight through Damascus. I got a picture that I want to show you here.
Here it is. This is one of the first pictures taken back when photography was new is 1860s. And this is straight street in Damascus. As you can see here, it's not in good shape.
But it still is probably a pretty good picture of what it would have looked like in around 40 ish AD when God told Ananias, that's where I want you to go. Straight street. It's the house of a dude named Judas and asked for Saul, the dude from Tarsus. And the full weight of that, we need to feel.
This is a place at the time, a public place bustling with people, easy to find. And God gives the GPS coordinates for where to go find Saul. And of course his internal response is, wait a minute. Are you kidding me?
This was his good health and life that he's risking here. To go to a man who has a very clear reputation in the first century. It's not a minor ask. And the instinct that Ananias had was to run the other way.
If God doesn't back down, he says, no, I need you to go. Now our story here of Acts 9 really focuses on Saul, but the lesson is for Ananias than for us. Okay. So I want you to note this important detail.
God chose someone to go. He was afraid. Don't want us to skip that. He chose someone who's afraid.
Was there someone who's a tough dude who would have been, I got this? I'm sure he could have. But he didn't. He chose someone who was afraid, not someone who was comfortable.
Okay. And Ananias goes. And something shifts when he does, because who does he meet there? He doesn't meet Saul, the persecutor.
He meets a blind, broken man who's been fasting and praying for the last three days. That's who he meets there. So when Ananias meets the real person who's vulnerable and humbled and seeking God, his fear gives way to compassion. Okay.
Now here's what makes this uncomfortable. God's call for us to be bringers and inclooters, stretches, all of us. All of us. I know some people are thinking, well, I don't have any friends who don't go to church.
Well that's a problem. It is. You need some friends who don't go church. And that's a part of your mission.
And if you're only surrounded by people who are wonderful, Jesus loving Godly people, then you are not fulfilling the mission that God has called you to fulfill. Now we need to have people around us who are wonderful, loving, God fearing Jesus followers. But we also need some people in our lives who are lost, feeling alienated from church, who need purpose and need to be brought into or back to a faith family. Because that's a part of our mission.
And some of you that may mean cultivating that. Now there's others who you got those people in your life. You're just a little intimidated about really being bringers and inclooters. So just stack that up to Ananias who was asked to go and visit Saul of Tarsus who sat there and planned, organized and watched with a smirk on his face, the stoning of a young man by the name of Stephen.
And maybe we shouldn't be so intimidated. Now part of what we should see here is that when God calls us into a person's life, there's a real good chance that God's been there first. See Ananias, what are all his fears based on? His fears are based on the fact that he's going to be first to show up in Paul's life.
And what he didn't realize is that God had already gotten Saul prepared for someone to come into his life. And he wasn't the big, bad man Saul. He was the broken, blind and battered Saul. And what he was waiting for is someone to enter into his life.
Now here's what we learned from the passage. If you're reserved, the idea of reaching out to anyone feels terrifying. Understand that? If you're retired, maybe you think, yeah, well my time's done and this is a job for the younger folks.
Or if you're locked down busy, then the thought is I just don't know if I've got margin for anything else in my life. Or if you're new to this whole business, you're like, well, I don't know anything. How am I going to be a bringer and includeer? And you see what happens real fast?
That's everybody. Because everybody's got an excuse to say not me. And so here's what we learned from this passage. Part of God's plan for each of us is to be part of his mission, to be part of the church, welcoming people into the kingdom.
Ananias wasn't a pastor. He wasn't an apostle. He wasn't even particularly brave. He just there.
And he said, okay, I'll go do it against his better judgment. Which leads us to point number three. And that is God uses our obedience to transform everything. So Ananias goes.
And here's what happens. And so Ananias went and found Saul. And he laid his hand on him and said, brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road has sent me so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Instantly something like scales fell from Saul's eyes and he regained his sight and he got up and was baptized.
Afterward he ate some food and regained his strength. Okay, now this is super important. So hang with me here for a minute. This is why we exist as a church right here.
So here's what I want you to get from today. Ananias is not just about a moment with Jesus. It's about becoming integrated into community. Okay, so transformation is not complete until it's been witnessed and affirmed and supported by the church.
Now Paul had this miraculous thing happen to him on the road to Damascus. But it wasn't finished until Ananias went and laid his hands on Saul and then he became Paul. His mission is not for us to have some supernatural moments but for us to have a supernatural moment that ends in our becoming a part of a local faith family, a home, a family in the future. And I don't want to miss this.
Ananias obedience didn't just change. Saul changed the world. The world. Saul became Paul who in the end wrote 13 letters and nearly about half of the New Testament.
And his theology carved out in those 13 letters shaped Christianity for what's now been 2000 years. Now, did Ananias have any idea who he was being asked to visit? Of course not. He didn't know he was welcoming the future apostle Paul.
He didn't know that this blind man on straight street would become one of history's most important figures. He just knew God said go. And so he went. And here's the principle.
Never know what God will do through the seemingly smallest acts of being a bringer and includeer and welcoming people into a faith family. Now speaking of that, we believe that being a part of a church is an important part of our life because it's a statement, this is where I belong. So I want to invite Dylan to come on up here. This is Dylan Schillage.
Am I pronouncing that right? No? Okay, say it for me. Schillage.
Okay, come on up here. This is Dylan and Dylan's coming this morning to say I'm here. I'm going to make this my faith family and I'm going to dig in here. So we're welcoming him today.
Yes. Now we have a few questions that we like to ask kind of just formal questions. And so I'm going to ask those two this morning. So first, Dylan, have you turned from your sin, been baptized and made a commitment as a follower of Jesus.
Awesome. Do you pledge then in your life to stand for what is good and true and right as a representative of Jesus in a dark world? Great. So a part of what it means to be part of this faith family is that you make a promise to offer your church your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness.
Make that commitment. And we make the commitment to support Dylan through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and our witness. All right. So if you welcome Dylan into the faith family here, give him another round of applause.
Awesome. Thank you, man. Good. Good.
Welcome. Thank you for being a faithful example of someone who did just that and inviting her friend Dylan here who has found now a faith family he wants to plant himself in. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this opportunity today to study your word and be challenged by it.
Thank you for what you're doing here in our faith family. And we pray you continue to bless and anoint us as we work to build your kingdom here and influence the little piece of this earth that you've placed us in. For it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Amen.