The Walking Dead

good morning everyone thank you Bryce I want to start off with a question for you and the question is why do we exist um which sounds like a Phil philosophical question of like why why are you um but I'm no philosopher I'm just asking a simple question of why as a church do we exist and as we always say continue to say the district Church exists to treasure Jesus and to help others follow him that's kind of the easy repeatable language that you've heard me say and use multiple times the the application that flows out of that the the kind of more of the rubber

meets the road is what we mean by treasuring Jesus and helping others follow him is intentional discipleship that increases evangelism and so that's where kind of all of the ministries of the church are going to flow out of and so you're going to hear me say those two things a lot but the plainest way I could say it would be you so loving Jesus that in love you tell someone about him like at the end of the day like that's what we're doing as a body of Christ is we are so in love with Jesus that we want to tell someone else about the love

of Jesus and that it's in love why we do that and at the very core of a growing church is people who love Jesus and they want to tell others about him that's that's how churches grow and multiply period like it's it's not via marketing strategies it's not via um resources it's not via the Ministries that are developed it's not putting Church in a box and just shipping it somewhere and then unloading the box and then um having it all work out perfectly like that's not what actually grows and multiplies churches even though all of those things might have um a purpose everything else becomes

support for that Ministry for that specific thing everything serves the one thing of loving Jesus and sharing that love with others and honestly like when we started the district Church eight years ago eight and a half years ago however long it's been now um I I we'll be celebrating nine in August I I do know that um but when we started the church again we could go across the country and look at thousands of different models for how to plant a church and you could even look at different models within different context and so if you're going to plant a rural Church here's how you

plant a rural church if you want to plant a Suburban Church here's how you plant a Suburban church if you want to plant an urban Church here's how you plant an urban church and if you wanted to plant one that was going to grow fast then you go to the suburbs and do it but if you want to plant one that is going to reach a city in an urban context then it's going to be it's going to look a lot different in that regard and over the district church for us like planting this church it was going to look a lot different in an

urban context than what it might look look anywhere else and one of the things that we've kind of always struggled with by way of comparison is that our church is in four different networks you've probably heard me talk about that especially if you've gone through our membership process uh but we're in four different networks and in those networks there are guys who have planted at the same time that we planted eight nine years ago um who like this is smaller than their staff meetings and and that's okay I mean there are guys that planted the same time that we planted who right now are trying

to figure out how do we like do we do four services on a Sunday or do we do five services on a Sunday do we do we plant multi sites or do do we video feed or do we raise up someone else like like what do we do and I'm sitting in those um conversations and we're like well we're just trying to figure out like how do you keep a mic working on a a regular basis and the difference between us isn't the capacity that they have or the resources that they have the difference a lot of times is context but the thing that is

similar and same between us is one thing Jesus like do we love and treasure Jesus and is that being what is Multiplied in our context and to give you a little bit of vision forward for our church and where we're going in these upcoming months and this will tie into to the message that I'm going to preach today this is part of it so this isn't just like a random intro but vision for us moving forward is we've been in our context with who we've um gathered as a church has been in a lot of ways Christians who have graduated from college College who got

married who got jobs who moved to the city wanted to live in a cool part of the city and found our church that's a lot of our context what a lot of our context has not been is reaching those who are lost in our neighborhood that have been here for 30 40 years but don't know that a church is on the corner has no interest in engaging the church that is on the corner I mean I'm I'm not kidding I walked down this street um about a few weeks ago and I went door too and I just asked questions I said hey do you know

what goes on in that building in the corner up there one thought it was a school one thought it was a dental office um which is always funny because that's what I joke I say if you feel like you're walking into a dental office then you you're in the right place that's our church um but others thought it was a vacant building because they're like we don't ever see anybody there and then um and and I can't remember what the fourth option was I think they thought it was like a money laundering scheme or something um but they had no idea that that there was

a church that met here and I think there's there's this idea in Western American Christianity that if you have a building people just come that if you put a church sign outside then people will come to it that that that's how the Lost get reached or if you do a Facebook ad people will come or if we just like and I'm like if we just get someone who's a good communicator who goes up and just preaches like people will come like that's happened one time in history and it was Jesus but even that you could argue it wasn't him just finding a platform and just

preaching and people flocking to it it was him going to them and sharing the good news him going into the villages to do that and so even though we have the intentional discipleship peace that is comfortable for us and that we love and that we enjoy and that is helping us grow in our walk with Christ it's it's helping us deal with uh The Works of the Flesh and it's helping us identify where we fall short and it's helping us cling to Christ and walk in step with the spirit as we crucify The Works of the flesh like absolutely that's all a part of what

intentional discipleship is but if what we're doing in intentional discipleship is not increasing evangelism then we're not doing discipleship period like you're actually not maturing in the Gospel of Jesus Christ if it is not increasing your love for him and your love in or for others in taking his love to them if it is just creating this separate subculture in our culture called Christianity but it is not engaging the culture outside of it then this subculture is not Christian that's just reality so for us what we wanted to do in in helping with this language of treasuring Jesus and helping others follow him him intentional

discipleship that increases evangelism is we want to again just as much as we show intentionality here we want to show intentionality here as well and that's why for the next couple of weeks we are going to be putting before you this idea of what it looks like to evangelize what it looks like to share your faith because even though we want it to be an overflow over your heart even though we want it to be an overflow of of your worship of Christ you want others to be able to see him as well and treasure him as well there's also training and equipping that needs

to go into that like there like just just because you know Jesus and love Jesus doesn't mean that you're just able to perfectly share that with others we want to help you do that and so what we're going to be doing over the next couple of weeks is again and as you've heard me mention that is we're going to be building up towards an event um on June 8th where we are going to do neighborhood evangelism where we're going to be taking our discipleship Duos the women that are set up in discipleship Duos the men that are set up in discipleship Duos we're going to

pair them together so that it's a couple of women and a couple of men who are going out and we're going to be giving you literally a neighborhood map with blocks on it and we're going to say here are the houses that we want you to go to and there's going to be a combination of it if you just happen to see someone who's out and about then we want you to go and talk to them at the same time we want you to go and knock on doors we want you to introduce yourself to people we want you to tell them that you're in

the neighborhood that you're a part of the district Church all that we are going to ask you to do we are going to help train you in what to do and if you're like when is that going to be that's going to be on Friday May 31st Friday night May 31st and you're if if your schedule doesn't work out for it it's totally fine but if right now your schedule works out for it then I want you to prioritize it I don't want you to have like well let's just wait and see if something else comes up I don't want you to do that I

want you to prioritize it because again what we're after is if Christ has shaped your life and has saved you and he is your greatest treasure and he is your greatest love we want to help you get that to others and we're going to help train that and so that's going to be May 31st so that it's so fresh on your mind a week later we're going to put it into play put it into action so that hopefully it begins to snowball um for others as you're out and about walking on a daily basis you don't have to wait for an event on a day

where we schedule for you to go out and do evangelism training you just begin doing it because you're trained in it and you want to do it because again you see Jesus and what he has done for you intentional discipleship that increases evangelism it all starts with someone who Treasures Jesus sharing with someone else their greatest treasure and because I don't want to assume that everyone always knows what it means to treasure Jesus and help others follow him anytime the scriptures reveal it I want to just highlight it like I want you to point at it and say this is it this is what it

means um to to treasure Jesus this is an example of what that looks like and that's what our passage today is Luke 17 as we're continuing to walk through um The Book of Luke we're in the 78th message of Luke and uh again Lord willing by um 2032 we'll finish Luke Luke 17 verse 11 we're going to go verse 11 through 19 today it says this on the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee and as he entered a village he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying Jesus Master have mercy on

us when he saw them he said to them go and show yourselves to the priests and as they went they were cleansed then one of them when he saw that he was healed he turned back praising God with a loud voice and he fell on his face at Jesus's feet giving him thanks now he was a Samaritan then Jesus answered were not 10 cleansed where are the other nine was no one found to return and give praise to God except this Foreigner and he said to him rise and go your way your faith has made you well real quick we again we've been in Luke

for for a while now and we've covered a lot of ground um to kind of give you a context of what's going on in story of of The overarching Narrative of of Jesus in his life and his ministry um Jesus was born in Bethlehem just outside of Jerusalem he eventually goes to Jerusalem uh on the eth day to be consecrated at the temple uh and then he kind of goes to Egypt for a little while and then comes back and when he comes back he ends up settling in Nazareth which is up in Galilee region so it's like Northern Israel and that's where he grows

up at once he grows up when he gets gets to the age of around 30 years old he comes back to uh Jerusalem he ends up getting baptized just to the east of Jerusalem at the Jordan River once he gets baptized he's then going to start his three years of ministry and so he actually then goes all the way back to Northern Israel to the Galilee region he goes to Nazareth first but they don't accept him because no Prophet is accepted in his hometown and then he just begins doing his work in um his three years of ministry in the northern region of Israel then

he knows again passover's coming he's going to have to get back down to Jerusalem at some point in order for everything all of human history to culminate at the sacrifice of him being the true Passover Lamb so now in his three years of ministry he is now working his way back to Jerusalem and as he's working his way back to Jerusalem if you know anything about the geography of it Galilee is on the northern part as he's working to Jerusalem Samaria is in the middle now Samaria is a straight shot through if you want to go but the Jews don't like the Samaritans so they're

going to go the long way and always go around the region um in order to get to either the northern Israel or back to Jerusalem Jesus never does that Jesus goes straight through why because Jesus loves all people he wants all people to know him and treasure him and love him something that the Jews would do is those who were Outcast those who were disease ridden those who were Samar itans those who were not pure blood like they were they would send them to Villages that were in the Samaritan or outskirts of Samaria region and so as Jesus is working his way back through he's

going to continue building his case for why they hate him basically by what he is going to do in interacting with those who are outside of the skirts of Samaria as well as the Samaritans that are there and that's exactly what Jesus is doing as he's now working his way down he enters into what it says is an unknown Village it's an unnamed Village and as he entered a village he was met by 10 lepers who stood at distance and lifted up their voices saying Jesus Master have mercy on us now before I get into describing what the lepers are um I want to First

say this how did they know who Jesus is well if you go back to Luke 8 and Luke 9 and Luke 10 if you look at the first verses of Luke 8 Luke 9 and Luke 10 Jesus did something that's pretty incredible not only did he show in Luke 81 what it means to go into Villages and towns and share the good news of him being the kingdom of God that is near but in Luke 9 he pulled the 12 disciples and he said I want you to go and do the exact same thing and then in Luke 10 as those disciples went out and

actually shared the good news brought in a more uh brought in more disciples because they were effective in the ministry of going and sharing the love of Jesus with others that in Luke 10 he then sends out 72 disciples to go out and do the exact same thing how do they know who Jesus is because someone has told them about him before someone's told him about him this is again one of the biggest reasons why we're not just going to be up here on a stage preaching about Jesus and hope that somebody comes in and hears it but that we have to take the message

of Jesus out so that they can hear about Jesus and know who he is so that when they're introduced to him they see him and they know him these lepers have heard of him they know him and they call out Jesus Master have mercy on us now lepers are not a type of big cat so don't think that these are people who have a horrendous debilitating disease leprosy which is mentioned nearly 70 times throughout the Bible is a disease of the nervous system causing the tissues to degenerate and deform your body it's a slow process that is just brutal some of the symptoms include disfigurement

of the Skin and Bones twisting of the limbs and curling of the fingers the ears thicken and your nose can literally fall off one of my mentors uh used to sing this song that I'm sure he probably heard elsewhere uh but I could just never get it out of my my head anytime I hear of leprosy I'm not going to sing it but it basically it was leprosy my skin is falling off of me I'm half the man I used to be since I contracted leprosy um it's it's a terrible song uh but but there's truth in the song like it's that is what happen

like you literally as um anod day are falling apart and that's why the the Jews viewed leprosy as a physical representation of a sinful individual like on the outside it's showing how sinful you are on the inside just not realizing that they themselves are whitewashed tombs dead on the inside but appearing clean on the outside and so what the law actually gives us in Leviticus this is that lepers had to represent themselves as unclean because you could catch this and so if anybody came in contact with lepers the lepers had to call out and yell out to them that they're unclean I mean talk about

how humiliating that might be not only do you have to go through the physical ailment of leprosy and literally have your body just become deformed and disfigured and fall apart but you also have to go through the humiliating aspect of telling others that I'm not allowed to be near you so it removes them from Community it REM removes them from society to where they would have leprous colonies that they would just go and just basically they were The Walking Dead just go and just die somewhere be together with the other lepers and just die there if you remember there was actually another passage where Jesus

um goes to a leper and the leper again calls out that I'm I'm a leper like I like according to the law what I have to do and no priest would actually touch a leopard because again they're the wiw tun like we're clean we we're good we don't want anything to defile us or affect us we don't want to be rendered as you are and so they're going to avoid the situation but in another event Jesus touches a leopard and cleanses him where sin is a spiritual Distortion and perversion of God's righteousness leprosy is like the mascot for the poisoning of the image of God

but this is what Jesus does is he he doesn't walk around and avoid these communities he steps into them and he goes to them and when he saw them he said to them go and show yourselves to the priests now ha Ironsides comment explains that in Leviticus 14 when a man was healed of leprosy he was to go and show himself to the priest now the reason for that was if there was some type of of miracle in which they were healed of their leprosy the only people who would allow them back into the Community of Faith the congregation and also the community or Society

at large were the priests so the priests held the keys to whether or not this individual could be considered human again essentially and so again abiding by the law Jesus gives them the law hey if I'm going to heal you go show yourself to the priests the priests are going to give you the opportunity to come back into the Community of Faith and to come back to into society at large so that you would have the full benefits of everything that is involved in that but something really interesting happens because all 10 of them they listen to what Jesus tells them to do they also

follow what the law in Leviticus 14 instructs them to do but one of them follows the instructions differently than the other nine and that's what I want you to see today the command from Jesus and the command from the law because Jesus is not contradicting the law is to go and show yourselves to the priest so that again they can show you as physically clean and they would even offer a sacrifice on your behalf to officially cleanse you in order for you to enter back into the community that's the command so let's see what happens and as they went they were cleansed then one of

them verse 15 when he saw that he was healed turned back praising God with a loud voice and he fell on his face at Jesus's feet giving him thanks this one was was a Samaritan one of these lepers heard the command he started out obeying the commands but came to a realization that going to the priest might not be the actual fulfillment of the command the priest weren't the true priest the sacrifices the priest would offer wouldn't be the true sacrifice the cleansing the priest would give wouldn't be the true cleansing so the one leper turns back to go to the true priest he turns

back to go to the true cleanser he turns back to go to the true savior to worship Him and treasure him above everything else this past week my sons were in the backyard trying to get a sprinkler on um so that they could play in it and instead they ended up busting the hose pipe which is what you call the thing that connects to the spet it's a hose pipe all right so if you're like what's a hose pipe um for those north of the South it's a water hose okay um but they were trying to play with it and and ended up busting it

because it busted it was just spewing water out everywhere around um the hose pipes and so but it created just a big mud pit and so they were just covered head to toe arms mud and and here's the thing they love playing in it but if you throw it on on the other then all said now it's an issue um but I walked out because I knew we had community group that we were about to go to and and I was like all right I've got two options I can either hose them off right now and then tell them to go get dressed or I

can tell them to go up and take a bath now I could hose them off and they're going to look clean but if they just get dressed and go on to to a community group there's probably going to be a bit of a stench to them because they're not going to be completely cleansed but by going up and jumping in the bath and actually applying soap and and and shampoo they were not only cleansed but they smelt clean like they were actually cleansed that's what's playing out in this narrative here is that the nine go on to continue just getting hosed off by the priests

they might appear to be cleansed but are they actually cleansed the one who realizes who actually has the ability to cleanse them turns back and he falls at the feet of Jesus and Jesus tells him one thing rise and go your way your faith has made you well see the other two called out to Jesus which is a great thing to do they called out to Jesus and they said have mercy on us will you cleanse us and Jesus healed them now Jesus has done that many of times for many of people throughout the Scriptures it might even look elsewhere in other things of them

saying saying hey we're hungry will you feed us and Jesus has fed 4,000 people on One incense and another 5,000 in another incense he's met whatever their physical condition was and he provided something for them that made them in the moment whole or full but might not have been something that was eternal or satisfying to the degree that Jesus is really trying to get at the same thing is happening in this passage with these 10 lepers nine of them are receiving the physical healing and going on to just kind of work itself out with with the rituals that are in play in order for them

to reap the benefits of the healing but they're not seeing Jesus and treasuring Jesus and they're missing the whole point one of them reaps the benefit of the healing but comes to his senses that if he can do that which is incredible there must be something more to him than just the fact that he removed my leprosy so I'm going to turn back I'm going to go to him who I believe is the true priest who I believe is the true healer who I believe is the true cleanser and I'm going to submit my life to him by falling down at his feet praising him

and worshiping him and giving my life to him Faith LED this man to return to Jesus and it says that faith is what actually made him well not just healed but made him well he doesn't say the other nine even though they were cleansed does not say that they were made well they missed it they missed it and what's unfortunate is that in our again Western culture what we can do is we can be very similar to these 10 lepers where we come through and we start a church and we start a Ministry or we start preaching and teaching and people sayi want that Jesus

I want Jesus but what they do is they just start coming to church they enter into the community of the faith they go through the membership process they join the team they they start serving and they start giving and they start participating in the whole thing but they're just like the nine who wanted to be cleansed and inter back into the community and the society and reap the benefits of that but they miss Jesus the entire time they're actually not treasuring Jesus they're still just like everything else they're treasuring the stuff that Jesus provides and that's what we're doing as a Humanity the reality is

that not only is Humanity doing it to the nth degree and just enjoying the materialism that Jesus has provided but you can actually do that in Christianity and still miss Jesus and what I want to say to us as a church is just like the questions Jesus asked is were not 10 cleansed where are the other nine was no one found to return and give praise to God except this Foreigner to kind of contextualize that for us are we all treasuring Jesus did did we not all receive Christ did we not all find forgiveness in him and healing in him did we not all crucify

The Works of our flesh to his cross and then receive the the the work of the spirit and the spirit of God in our hearts that that gives us desires for him and and hatred towards the things of this world do we not all receive that are we then only now functioning as if we received it and said thank you but try to work it out in our own lives or are we actually living out a posture of falling at the feet of Jesus and submitting to him and treasuring him and loving him and then doing all of the things that he's commanded us to

do I think it's so easy and I think this is the work of the enemy I think it's so so easy to do Christianity and not be a Christian I think that's the the one strategy the enemy has that affects everyone because what the enemy is not going to do is simply come in and say you know what they they have seen something that's better than lust they have seen something that's better than materialism they have seen something that's better than jealousy and envy and rivalry and dissensions and they have seen something so what we need to do is we need to shift our strategy

a little bit we need to now take what they've seen and we need to work it into some type of system in which they worship those things rather than worshiping the one who created those things so now they love worship so let's create a system involving worship that they now worship rather than the object of the worship they love his truth so now let's create a system around his Truth where they worship His truth rather than the one who speaks the truth they love his people so let's create a system in which they worship His People rather than worshiping the one who created the people

you see where I'm going you can worship and abide with Christianity as a church and still miss Jesus and if you want a church that's not going to grow then do that do that if we want a church that is just comfortable with it being the status quo Us in this room then let's just get really good at Hospitality let's get really good at Community groups let's get really good at just music let's get really good at those things for us and enjoy it but if we don't treasure Jesus we'll never care if anyone else comes in and experiences it as well if we don't

love Jesus then we won't respond Like Jesus Does which is going into the unnamed villages to go to those who actually need him you're probably wondering who are these names on my shirt I'm glad you asked I I told someone earlier they're my illegitimate children that are just run running around somewhere um not true but we went to as I said earlier we're part of four different networks one of those networks that our church belongs to is the summit collaborative um which is a a based out of a church in Raleigh North Carolina um JD Greer his church The Summit Church started planting churches 20

years ago um started doing residency in their Church to just their whole thing was let's raise up let's train up leaders and let's just continue multiplying we love Jesus here but we want to get Jesus out and so he wrote a book called gaining by losing and so what they would do is literally every year on their staff they kind of played this game where it's like uh hire fire send and so it's like who who do you want to hire who do you want to fire and then who do you want to send and usually um the one that they want to fire stays

on staff the one that they uh want to send isn't willing to go be but the one that they want to hire the one that they want to keep the one that they feel is going to bring the most value to their staff and to their church is the one that ends up being called out and they're like ah we don't want it to be you we want you to be the one who stays because you you provide so much value for us but what they found was every time they took that person that individual and they sent them out to go PL another church

in another context they call it the they call it the 20 to1 rule every time they would send out one it would return um an investment of essentially 20 different people that that were getting connected to the body of Christ and so they were like if you're if you look at any type of business growth model like no one's winning better than that just about um but when it comes to these names as they were sending out churches and planting more churches that began planting churches it created this Synergy of now we've got like 20 that are out now we've got 30 that are out

now we got 40 that are out I think we were number 44 that came into the mix of the summit collaborative um now there's closer to 200 churches that have been planted and their goal in the next like o since they started 20 years in 40 years is to plant a thousand churches and so the names that are on here are the names that have been called out of their Church to go and plant over the next year so these are the ones that are finishing up the residency who literally in the months ahead are planting churches um all across the US and the reason

why I bring that up is because if we are going to be serious about pushing out and going out like this is the end goal like we want to go out and share the gospel with someone so that they come to know Jesus and treasure him and we want to get them involved in our body of Believers here at the district church we want them to engage in discipleship that helps them see Jesus even in a greater way and in a more understanding way and be able to worship him rightly we want them to abide in Jesus so that as they are walking throughout their

life they're able to say no to sin and yes to Jesus on a daily basis like that's all that's everything that Titus 2 is teaching you for the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to people training them to renounce ungodliness and worldly passion passions and to live self-controlled lives like that's what discipleship is and that's what we're doing in this room right now is training to renounce ungodliness and to and to live self-controlled lives that are in Jesus as we do that it also means that there will come a day that someone in this room might not be at the district in the next

couple of years because if we are serious about worship and treasuring Jesus and falling At His Feet it so changes you that you want others to experience that and so what we're going to be doing on that Friday night of May 31st and what we're going to be doing on June 8th is just the beginning stages of what we want to see as a church collectively is that we are multiplying ourselves so that not just for the growth of the district church but for the growth and expansion of the kingdom of God that we want others coming to know him and that we want to

gain by losing that we want to gain by sending people out in order for them to come to know Jesus just like this leper who turned back and said I don't want to miss the source of my healing I don't want to miss the source of my forgiveness I want to lay my life down at his feet and I want to worship him and him alone because Jesus for him now acts as this Foreigner's priest you see something that was interesting for the nine if they actually got to the priest and revealed themselves to him to them what those priests were going to do were

then examine them see if there's still any physical ailments and if they consider them clean based on those physical ailments then they got to deal with the spiritual component of it and so they're going to offer up a physical sacrifice where they're going to slaughter an animal and they're going to shed its blood and then that blood is going to cover their spiritual condition so that they would be considered clean as they move on until the next year and then until the next year and then until the next year when they come together for Passover and they continue doing all of those cleansing ceremonies what's

interesting is Jesus tells this man that he's well without doing a sacrifice how was he able to do that Hebrews 9 11-15 and this will be how we enter into our time of communion Hebrews 9 11-15 says this but when Christ appeared he appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come then through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands that is not of this creation he entered once for all into the holy places not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood thus securing an eternal Redemption what he's saying there

is Jesus showed up on the scene not in the same way that the blood of boat of goats and calves and and Bulls was showing up on the scene he's entering in externally from Heaven to Earth not of the creation like what we were but but coming in a foreign sense to bring something to us that's going to be once and for all not just something that was temporary for if the blood of goats and Bulls and the sprinkling of the defiled persons um with the ashes of a hepher sanctify for the purification of the flesh how much more will the blood of Christ who

through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead Works to serve the Living God what this man this leper is experiencing In This Moment is Jesus knowing what he's on his way to accomplish like he is the Lamb heading to the slaughter he's going to be the once and for all sacrifice that allows him to tell this man hey your faith has made you well you're good to go from here on out and for eternity no longer do you need the blood of bulls and goats and calves and heers for the purification of your sins I'm purifying you because

I'm on my way to lay my life down and to sacrifice myself on your behalf so that my blood when it's spilt it pays for your sins once and for all so that you don't have to spill your blood and you don't have to have other animals spill their blood on your [Music] behalf because if if if in the Old Testament if they actually understood it there's two things that they should understand one is why do we have to keep killing things for our sin it's because death is the payment and if we have to keep doing it every year what happens when we die

does it continue doing it for us or does our death become the payment at that point and if our death becomes the payment at that point does it have to be Eternal as well see they're not asking these logical questions if they were to come to that understanding all of a sudden now maybe they might be thinking this system's not good this system's not going to work out for us in the long term how how are we going to deal with it after we die and Jesus comes into the scene and they miss it Jesus comes into the scene and he says once and for

all my death is going to be so perfect that it's going to satisfy the wrath of God towards your sin so that for eternity you will be in his pleasure his Delight his relationship you can fall at his feet and you can worship him forever and treasure him forever and love him forever because there's nothing that can separate you from the love of Christ nothing that can separate you from that because his death his sacrifice was perfect perfect therefore he Jesus is now the mediator of a New Covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised Eternal inheritance since death has occurred that

redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first Covenant his death P for everything that we need and this one leper I just pray that we're like him I pray that we're like him this one leper saw his condition wanted relief just like the 10 called out and said Jesus have mercy on us but when Jesus healed him he thought logically and said not only do I need physical healing I need spiritual healing if he can do this for me physically he can do this for me spiritually I'm gonna go back to him I'm gonna go back to him I'm gonna praise him I'm gonna

lay my life down for him and I'm gonna I'm gonna sit at his feet and I'm Gonna Worship Him I'm gonna treasure him and that Faith healed this man and he's well I think we want to be well right I mean all the self-help books right now it's it's it's emotional well-being mental wellbeing like we want to be whole we want to be well and there's only one place at the feet of Jesus treasuring and loving him that will change you and it'll change everything around you let's pray together father we thank you so much for your goodness us we thank you for the story

of the 10 Lovers we thank you that you show us that it's so easy for us to receive a blessing from you to receive something good from you and then run away from you just reaping the benefit of that thing but not actually get into treasure you and be in relationship with you I pray that we are like the one leper who that we see everything that you've done for us and instead of running away from you we run towards you to fall down at your feet to treasure you to love you to worship you and that we also don't just hold it for ourselves

but we look around at those near us next to us in our neighborhoods in our workplaces in our families in our relationships that we look at them and we see them not not just as as lepers but we see them as people who are longing for a savior may not know it but their soul is longing for God and we have the answer we have the truth we have the way we have the life that we can give them by sharing with them the good news of Jesus God I pray you strengthen our faith and our boldness to do that very thing just to just

share with someone what we love what we treasure that's what evangelism is so father I pray you increase that among our people as we continue treasuring you and loving you it's in your name we pray amen I'm going to go ahead and ask you to stand as you stand as I just shared in that Passage of Hebrews nine we come to this table because Jesus was that great sacrifice for us all the Bulls and the goats and the heers and the Lambs they they were all meant to be a typography of Jesus they were meant to be a foreshadowing of the one great sacrifice who

would come and that's what Jesus is for us and that's what Jesus does in uniting us as a congregation is he brings us to to the table together because this one thing is what brings us to him it's one thing that he gives us to remember all that he did for us and we treasure him and we worship him through this act through this meal and it you know you eat to satisfy yourselves right like you eat to become full and that's exactly what Jesus has done in offering his body and his blood for us is that he becomes spiritual meal for us so that

we are made well in having our sins forgiven that we are made well in being spiritually filled up in gratitude and thankfulness and that that energy that he has given us goes out in the life and Ministry that he has called us to on a daily basis so that even though our physical bodies may feel like we're wasting away and we're exhausted and we're tired spiritually we're vigorous and we're vibrant and we're thriving and we want to share his good news with others this is where we come and get that Source from that strength and so if you believe that Jesus Christ died for you

on the cross to forgive you of your sins to take your punishment and your penalty for you if you believe that message then I invite you to come down front to grab the elements bring them back to your seat and we will remember his sacrifice together