No Breakfast In Hell | Mark 2:13-17 | Special Guest Alex CdeBaca

In No Breakfast In Hell, special guest speaker Alex CdeBaca unpacks Mark 2:13–17 and challenges us to rethink who we're reaching and why Jesus came. Discover God's heart for the lost, the danger of becoming too comfortable in our faith, and the urgency of living on mission every day. This message will inspire you to make room at the table for those who need Jesus most.

Transcript

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Well hey, my name is Alex, uh and I just want to quickly introduce myself. If I haven't met you yet, um I get to serve as the next gen director for Southern Idaho, uh, which basically means I get to serve your pastors here at this church. Uh and how many of you guys know you have great pastors here at Powerhouse? Come on. Yes. Uh I I believe it. Uh not just say it, it's not just something I'm obligated or required to say, it's something I truly believe. We love your guys as pastors here. We got a chance to hang out with them last night, uh, several of them at least, and just getting to eat some good food. Uh we had some killer fried rice. Uh I don't know if you guys know this, but there's some good fried rice to be had here. Um, and I'm not gonna like throw anybody under the bus, but if you need somebody, uh you might need to talk to Pastor Kyle and see if he'll allow you to have permission to request a good fried rice. But anyway, uh we had a great time yesterday, uh, and it's good to be with you guys again. This is my third time getting to be with Powerhouse Church. Um, and so uh I feel like this is starting to become a little bit of a home away from home. Uh, but I love getting to be here. I love American Falls. It's a beautiful area, it's a beautiful place. It was a windy drive-in yesterday from Nampa, uh, but it doesn't keep me from showing up. So I'm excited to be here. I'm gonna do a couple of things. Every time I preach, I say two things because I believe them uh and because it's important to me as a reminder to myself. Uh, but one is this is I believe that readers are leaders and note-takers are world changers. The first things you need to hear from me is that I don't care if you write a single thing I say down. Uh nothing I say will ever trump a single word from heaven. But we do want to pray in a second that God would speak. Uh I don't have the most eloquent words. I'm not the most fantastic speaker, and if I spent my whole life trying to craft the perfect sermon, God could speak a single word, and it would be better than anything I could ever put together. So we're gonna pray to hear from heaven. Not to hear from Alex, not to hear some things I put into a tablet, uh, not to hear some things I studied from God's word, but we're gonna pray to hear from heaven. And then I want to challenge you today uh not to be listening for what sounds interesting or cool, but to say, God, what do you want to speak to me? Because when we hear from heaven and we write it down, I believe we remember it well. And this is one of the things we see at the beginning of the time. We see that when Adam and Eve were in the garden, the devil came in and caused them to question a word from God. So the reason we write it down is when the devil makes us question or causes us to be like, wait, is that really what God was telling me? Uh, we can go back to something written and say, this is it, this is what he said, and this is when he said it, this is where he said it. Um so we're just gonna pray and ask God's hand on this message if that's okay. So, Father, thank you for today. Thank you for the opportunity to be in your house. God, I pray that you would just do amazing things today. Father, you would speak through your word. And Lord, that you would help me to get out of your way. I pray, God, that you would speak powerfully today, and that you would give us hearts that are open to your word, ears that are ready to listen, and lives that are ready to leave change. God, we pray that you would use this time to speak your truth and you'd help us to be a better uh representation of you as a result. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, well, if you have a Bible, awesome. If not, we've got a, I believe, on the Sky Bible. We're gonna start in Mark chapter 2. You guys, last week you were starting uh just before this, uh, the first couple of verses here. And now we're gonna start in verse 13. Uh last week, Pastor Ty preached a message on how you can have like five important things you need to know to find a good friend. Uh, and if you took notes during that, you found some good quality traits of some friends, which we looked at the story of the four friends who dropped their friend through a roof uh so that they could see Jesus and that he could get healed. Uh, and I love that story. It's a great story, and today we're gonna take it a step further than just how to find good friends. Uh, we're gonna find out how we can reach people who need Jesus. Uh and it says this in verse 13 then Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. And as he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaus, sitting at his discip at his tax collector's booth. Follow me and me be my disciple, Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him. Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as a dinner guest, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. Everyone says disreputable. That's a weird word. We don't use that word often, but it just means shady people or not good people, okay? Disreputable sinners. And it says this in the NLT it says, There were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers. That's important. We're going to come back to that. Verse 16 says, But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked him his disciples, pardon me, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with such scum? That's a very intense word. And verse 17 says this When Jesus heard this, he told them, Healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners. How many of you guys are grateful that we serve a God who didn't come for the people who didn't need him? We came for a God who came for the broken like me and like you. The Bible says everybody has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, right? So today we're going to talk about it. And the title of my message that I put in here is There is No Breakfast in Hell. That's a weird statement. It's a reference to an old newsboy song. For those of you who know old newsboy songs, uh, the song is called Breakfast. Look it up on your drive home. It's a weird one, but it's a fun one. It's got a reference to Captain Crunch waving farewell and all these other strange things in it. But how many of you guys like breakfast? Does anyone like breakfast? Any breakfast fans? Breakfast is my favorite kind of meal. I love breakfast. In fact, as a family, on Wednesday nights, we have breakfast. At least one time a week on a dinner time, we eat breakfast. I could eat breakfast almost any day of the week for dinner. In fact, one of my favorite things to do when we moved into our house, we were gifted a like a black stone kind of grill, you know what I'm talking about? One of those flat grills. You don't need one of these for it. But what it's really fun to do is take a bunch of eggs and hash browns and meat and vegetables and bell peppers, cook them all up on there and make these giant burritos, these breakfast burritos with sausage and bacon and eggs inside. And I like to put in the hash browns inside as well. You got the press on top and just let it sizzle there for a little while. It's amazing. Breakfast is the best meal. It's like a good comfort meal. Uh, in fact, one of my favorite things to do is make breakfast for my family, because while I can't cook much, I can cook breakfast. It's one of the few things I can do, right? One of these uh days, actually a couple years ago, my wife went to go visit some family, and something I like to do when she comes home from a trip is all I like to clean the house for. I like to make sure that everything is spotless so that when my wife gets home, she comes into a fresh home that's clean, that the uh everything is kind of picked up and tidy, the laundry's done, the carpet's vacuumed, the floor's mopped, so that when she gets home, she doesn't go, Oh, I have a ton of work to do. Oh, this house is a mess. Like she can't rest the moment she gets back. And so I was trying to be a special, like have a special moment for my wife. So I get all the things put together, and then my my wife's favorite thing is her family's waffle recipe. It is a from scratch waffle recipe. And I grew up in the kind of family where we made everything by the bag. You know what I'm talking about? The box that says just add water, foolproof. So when I'm saying I'm good at breakfast, what I'm really good at doing is adding water to a mix. Uh, it's not that impressive in the end. But uh, I wanted to try to make her family's recipe for. So I get out the recipe, it's one of those little like cards and I handwritten by someone like 50 years ago, and I start to put all the ingredients, I'm carefully measuring it, I'm making sure I don't mess it up. Because how many of you guys know breakfast is good, but who you spend a meal with is always the most important thing. So my wife's on her way home, she's been traveling, she's tired. I'm trying to make this a good breakfast for her, right? She gets home, house smells like bacon and candles because I lit candles and everything. The kids and I are ready, we're so excited to see her. She's been gone for a few days, and we sit down to enjoy, and I watch as she takes her first bite of the waffle, and a face appears on her face. A smile is drained, her eyes get big, and she looks at me and said, What is in this? Have you ever made something for somebody that absolutely terrified them? And I've never seen such horror on her face. She's like, What is in this? And I was like, I followed the recipe. She's like, What did you put in the waffle? And I was like, going through everything, and she looks at the counter for proof of what I had added in, and it turns out baking powder and baking soda are different. They both have baking and they feel pretty similar, but if you put an absurd amount of one over the other end, you can poison somebody. It's not that hard. But as a man, that's a that's a foreign language. What do you mean it just says baking? It's all for baking. And you know what's crazy? The waffles look the same. They came out looking just fine. How many of you guys know you can put a lot of ingredients to make something look good on the outside, but it can taste bad on the inside? As Christians, it's possible for us to have what we believe is the ingredients to present something good, but miss something good on the inside. We can be poisonous on the inside, even if we smell right, even if we're golden brown and we think we're all put together, we can still be full of poison. It's possible to fake it. How many of you guys have seen something and been confused by AI in the last couple months? I saw something and was like, wait, wait, no, is that real? I'm questioning everything I see on the internet right now, right? And so I immediately panic and go, oh, I'm so sorry. I messed this up. All of my grandiose plans to prevent uh a catastrophe have all happened. So what do I do? I go grab the mixing bowl, put the water blazing hot, and start scrubbing it out. I'm feeling like an idiot. I'm angry, I'm upset about myself, and so I scrub out the bowl and then I grab my classic pancake mix. The two ingredient pancake mix. The mix plus water equals good. And I throw the hot water in there in the pancake mix and I grab some chocolate chips and toss them in there and try to mix it up. Do you know it's possible to mess up two ingredient pancake mix? It is possible. In fact, the only instruction that it adds into the two ingredient pancake mix is it asks you to use cold water. But I was hot, I was heated, and my water was heated because I was trying to clean something up. And I challenge you with this. If you are trying to fix something, you better cool off first. Because the problem was I started to melt the chocolate chips in there and it became a mess all over the spatula, and it tasted fine, but visually it was a little bit messed up. And here's what I need you to know is that Jesus, the Savior of the world, sees each of us. He knows the people who are broken on the inside, even when they look good on the outside. He's aware of the people who are a mess all over, just like me. He knows the people who are struggling with addiction, with fear and anxiety. He knows all of our worst things about us. And he still chooses to sit with us, to love us, to forgive us, and to redeem us. What I don't need in this world is another pursuit of perfection. What I have found in this life is a Savior who eats with scum. And I challenge you in this, no matter what side of the brilliant spectrum you might believe you're on, Jesus sees you, he will be close to you, he's not afraid of your mess, and he loves you. And so this morning I just have two points. I know sometimes it's a three-point pastor thing. One time I came out here and I tried like four or five points, that was a bad idea. Uh so I'm dialing it back in an effort to make it so that you guys might invite me back one more time in the future. But I just have two points because I really look at this message and I see the person of Jesus and I see the way the world saw him, and I look at the character that he had. And I think that as Christians, our goal in life should be to be like Christ. When I was younger, I was told that's what it meant to be a Christian was to be Christ-like. And so when we see and observe the actions and behaviors of Jesus in the Bible, I think we should take notes of what he did and how he lived. And I think we should also take note of who we loved. Because sometimes we have a hard time forgiving ourselves, even though our Savior already did. So the first point that I'm gonna kind of challenge us with this morning is I call I challenge you to check your batter. And we'll say check your batter. You gotta check your batter. Here's what I mean by that. I'm not talking about a baseball batter. I'm talking about mixing batter, like when you're cooking something up, when you're making a meal, right? Check your batter. What I'm saying is to check the status of your heart. What have you mixed in? What is the what is the kind of life of your heart look like? Have you accidentally replaced something good for something poisonous? Have you accidentally allowed certain things that are not the fruit of the Spirit to become accompanied with something of Jesus? See, the problem with the church is that we can become really excellent at presenting something pretty on the outside. But if we're not careful, we can only give Jesus certain parts of our heart, right? See, Jesus came not for those who knew they needed help, uh, sorry, for those who knew they needed help, not for those who thought that they had it all together. Healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do. I have come to call those who, not those who think they are righteous, but those who think they are sinners. The first thing we have to start with this morning is remembering it doesn't matter how long you've been saved, we all desperately need Jesus. There's not a moment where our salvation automatically or gets to a point where we think we're righteous enough that we no longer need his salvation. Every day I wake up and that I have breath in my lungs is a reminder that God cares about me, he loves me, and he forgave me. It's not like God gets me to the beginning of the starting line, and then if I'm good enough, I can get to the place where I no longer need Jesus. I always need Jesus. The Bible says that there is no action in this world that can save me. I always need a Jesus. And I want to challenge you. Sometimes if we've been going to church for a long time, we can think we no longer need Jesus. Even if we wouldn't say it, we can act like we no longer need Jesus. When we listen to sermons, we go, I've heard this a thousand times. We hear worship songs, we go, this isn't my favorite song. And then I remember, this song isn't for me. This song is for Jesus, right? And I can walk around in places and dress or speak in such a way as to kind of exert my spiritual dominance, like, well, actually, or um actually, did you know? Or we begin to elevate ourselves in a place of righteousness where Jesus isn't a part of our story anymore, he was a part of our past. Can I remind you, Jesus wasn't just supposed to be a part of your past story, he's supposed to be a part of your present story. And when grace accompanies us into difficult places, we recognize that Jesus wasn't something we needed, he's something we still need. So it doesn't matter if you've been a Christian your whole life this morning, you need to be reminded that we all need Jesus. The Bible says that everyone has sinned, like we said in Romans 3.22. This is the famous verse that's from. I'm gonna read you two verses from it, and then I'm gonna read a couple verses after. I want you to hear this. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. Simple, solid theology. How were we made right? How is our sins forgiving? It says, we are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone. Everyone's a everyone who believes, no matter who we are, for everyone is sinned and we have all fallen short of God's glorious standard. Yet, God, I love that. If there's a verse, one of the things that we hear a lot of preachers say or a lot of speakers will talk about is the word but in the Bible. It takes a very strong statement and it does a 180 on it. And this yet holds that same power. It says, Yet God in his grace freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sin. And then verse 27, this one is something we don't always read in reference or in connection to this. It says, Can we boast then that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No. Can I boast if I have a theology degree? No. Can I boast if I speak on a church platform? No. Can I boast if I dress like a trendy youth pastor? No. Can I boast if I've accomplished some great things or have some certificates? Or maybe I've read through the Bible three or four times this year? No. Can I boast if I prayed with somebody and they got saved? No. Hey, but those are all good things. They're not evil things. Can I boast? It says no. Because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law. Can I challenge us? The Pharisees were really good at understanding the knowledge of the Word of God. They had it figured out. They memorized it. They committed their life to it. And I was talking to a friend yesterday on a phone call on my way over here. And as I was listening to this book, I like to sometimes listen to books while I drive. I don't know if anybody is a big book fan in here, but it's one of the ways I know that if you're a hardcore reader, you hate people who listen to books. You're like, those are not reading. And I'm like, I have the same information as you. I'm equipped, just no, just kidding. It is different, but in the same way. That's one of the ways that I help keep me engaged while I'm driving. And the interesting thing is there's a mentor in the book that I was reading, and the mentor looked at this young prince and he said, Hey, you might know a lot of information, but you haven't learned a lot of lessons. How many of you know it's possible to know something but not learn something? I can know a lot about something. Like, for example, I can know that if I touch a stovetop that is bright red, I can know that will burn me. But some of us like to learn the lesson ourselves, right? That's why we have little kids. My daughter, she's she's just over a year old, and every time we open up the oven, we have to like surround her. We cannot open an oven without having a protection service in place. Because if she is anywhere near that oven and the oven opens up, she freaks out and starts scurry-crawling towards it like a moth to the flame. And I'm like, girl, don't run at that. She might have heard the information, but she's never had to learn the lesson. And obviously, I'm never gonna let her learn that lesson because I love her too much. The reality is it's possible to know information about God, but not have learned the lesson about how we're called to live like God. There are plenty of Christians who know about Jesus, but don't live like him. See, my life should never be a testimony of my goodness, my talent, my success, or my righteousness, because my life will always be about Christ, not me. Isaiah 64, verse 6 says this we are all infected with impure sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sin sweeps us away like the wind. See, the best recipes start with a clean slate. If you're checking your batter, if you're trying to figure out whether the recipe of your heart is in a good place, sometimes we have to remember that it's okay to start fresh and clean. That's what we asked Jesus to do at the beginning, and it's okay for him to come and do it again. Some of us have become comfortable with our Christianity, and maybe some of us need to say, Jesus, I need a reset in my heart. Okay? So the best meals don't start with leftovers, and a healthy faith doesn't start with leftovers either. How many of you guys would have a guest over, a fancy guest, and go, Oh, big deal, huge, important person. Let's get our best leftovers from last week out. Let's get them out. This is a this is a royal guest. We're gonna have some royalty over. Let's get the leftovers. Well, they were really good seven days ago. Can I challenge you? Sometimes you look at seven years ago's faith to provide what you need for today's mission. You allow what God did seven years ago to keep carrying you. God has something fresh for you today. God has something new for your life today. What he did a long time ago is the cross is always good enough, absolutely. But we can't just rest on a one-time experience and said, Hey, yeah, I encountered Jesus seven years ago. I don't need to meet with him anymore. I don't need to talk with him anymore. My prayer life is fine. It's fine. I've talked to him a week ago when we prayed at the end of service. My Bible reading is fine. I've read through the Bible once, I know what it says. And we can't wait for last year's faith or last month's faith or last week's prayer to continue to refresh us. Daily, Jesus wants to walk with us. Romans 6, 6, and 7 says this. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ, so that sin might lose its power in our lives. See, we are no longer slaves to sin. For when we die with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin. See, our world is obsessed with image. We like presenting well. I like presenting well. Why do you think I put on shoes that were kind of fancy-ish? I asked my wife if I before we left if I was supposed to scrub them, if they looked tacky or if they looked okay. I asked my wife to make sure that the shirt still fit okay. I made sure that when I got here, my hair was done over just so that it wouldn't look out of place or unkempt. I want you to think that I'm interesting or that I'm put together. The reality is everybody likes to be liked. Everyone wants to be perceived well. Everyone wants others to think that we've got our life together. See? We like to doctor images or post the highlights or wear things that will be considered cool. We care about how we're perceived, and we all want to be perceived as good, happy, wealthy, and successful, right? And there's nothing evil about those things, but here in Scripture we see that Jesus is letting people know that the restorative work of the cross that was to come was not for those who didn't think they needed it. It's not for those who feel like they have done enough good without it, but that it was for those who knew they needed saving. The cross is for those who desperately need it, which is all of us. Salvation requires us coming up to Jesus. You notice how uh there's a moment where Jesus called Levi and he said, Hey, should you come and be my disciple? If Levi sat there and said, Okay, sure, but only when I feel like it, and only once a month when we're not busy on the weekends. No, he had to get up and do something about the call. There is a response to the call of Jesus. How many of you guys know that every single one of you, Jesus, has looked at you and said, Son, daughter, I see you, I know your story, I care about your future, I care about your past, I know what's going on, I love you where you are, and I love you way too much to leave you where you are. I want to call you to a better place, a better future. But it requires Requires us to take a step in response. The love of God has been offered. We have to choose whether we're going to take a step to Jesus. He's not far. And the last thing with this little point is that we need to be aware of the breakfast club. We need to beware of the breakfast club. See, if we aren't careful, we can make the church a breakfast club full of righteous people who attend based on preference, comfort, or program. The Pharisees and religious leaders of the law knew about God. They knew his word, but they allowed what they knew about God to impact how they lived for God. See, if what we know about Jesus ever impacts how we live for Jesus, then we have missed the point and our heart needs correction. When was the last time we prayed and said, Search my heart, O God? Search my heart, search my faith life, search my prayer life. See, religion that separates us from others, separates us from our need for God, or separates us from those who need saving is selfish at best and in direct contradiction to the heart of God. See, the redemptive saving work of the cross does not remove our need for it or our responsibility to bring others to it, but it calls us to live humbly, walk freely, and give generously the love that Christ first showed us. So the first thing I told us to do is we need to check our battery. We'll say check your batter. Come on, stay awake with me. Say check your batter. See, we gotta make sure that our heart's good, that we haven't mixed poison in with a good word, right? And the second thing we need to do is we need to eat with scum. Eat with scum. That's a everyone's like, ah, it sounds bad. It smells, I already can smell it. I mean, if you have if you have kids here, raise your hand. If you have kids, anybody have kids? All right, I got a baby girl right now, and I have potty trained four times. Well, three times. We're about to start the fourth in a couple years, okay? Hang in there. It is not the best season, right? In fact, yesterday, uh my sons were all playing, and then I watched as they were enjoying time with their little sister, and then they immediately evacuated the space. Something smelled, something was off, right? They had to move away. And this is how we see the Pharisees treat the non-religious people of the time. They saw Levi, a tax collector, which was a thief, somebody who stole, somebody who didn't, who was not well received in that society. He was considered an outcast by every single Jewish person. And here comes the Savior of the Jews, the Savior of the world, Jesus, and he looks at someone that the religious people and non-religious people had said, We don't want anything to do with this guy. Jesus sees them and says, I want something to do with this guy. This is what you need to hear today. If the world has called you out and pushed you away because you're not good enough, because of your pastor, because of your failure, God sees you and still calls to you. He sees you and says, That's my son or that's my daughter. I don't care what the world says, they're mine first. I love them, I see them, and I want what's best for them. Jesus didn't look at Levi and do what the Pharisees hoped he would do, which is to say, Look at that sinner. Have you seen how righteous I am? I'm the son of God. He said, That's my son. I want him to follow me. Some of us look at the people around us and go, I hope they never come to church. I hope those kinds of people never walk in the door. I know Pastor Ty's heart, and I've known he's even talked about how it's okay when messy people come in here. We should celebrate when messy people come to church. We should celebrate when people who don't smell like us or talk like us or dress like us come into church. Are we more offended that our church is free of sinners when they show up and we get offended? Or are we more offended when there's not broken people here because it means we're missing the point? Is our heart grieved by a lack of people who need Jesus? Or is our heart grieved when people who need Jesus show up? I challenge us if we get upset because someone sat in our spot, because someone said something we didn't like in the foyer, used a word we should never listen to in church. If we get offended by that, we might be missing the heart of the Father. Because Jesus ate with scum. Jesus had breakfast with sinners and lunch with sinners and dinner with sinners, and the religious people of the time saw it and went, How dare he? How could he? Does he know who that person is? Does he know what they've done? Can I tell you, Jesus knew better than anybody what Levi had done? Jesus knew everything Levi had done. He knew more than anybody else the problems of Levi's past. But Jesus saw Levi and said, I don't care about his past. I want to help him see a new future. And if you're here today and you've got a broken past, you need to know that Jesus doesn't care about your past. He's here to redeem your future. And he's calling you to look at other people who need redemption. And he's saying, you need to be my hands, my feet, my heart to this world who needs Jesus. We're not called to wait for some pastor to go have breakfast with them. He's calling us to go do it. He's calling us to make sure because here's what we know there's no breakfast in hell. And Jesus wants everyone to celebrate in heaven. Do you know that hell was made for the devil? And Jesus came so that everybody could go to heaven, including your enemies, including the people you have a hard time praying for. Man, I almost want us to get offended when we see someone show up in heaven because we're like, how did they get here? Because how many of you guys know that without Jesus, we wouldn't be there either? Without Jesus, we wouldn't be in there either. Romans 5.8, one of my favorite sets of scripture says that even yet while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't say, once we stopped sinning, Christ died for us. It says, while we were still sinning, Christ died for us, right? So Jesus ate with scum. He went to where the people were. His perfection didn't keep him from people, it drew him to people. The verse 13 says, Then Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were going, that were coming to him. He did this all the time. It was an often occurrence. See, Jesus didn't cleanse you to keep you away from people. He didn't clean up your life so you could stay away from messy people. He cleaned up your life so you could go help heal messy people. Right? That was the purpose. And as a church, we have to be willing to bring our faith with us into the world. We can't just wait for the lost to magically appear at church. If you are somebody who has been outside of the church, the church can seem like a condemning place full of hateful or perfect or uh whatever you want to say, like nitpicky people. It's a place of condemnation if we don't allow it to be a place of grace. It's a place of condemnation to those who don't know Jesus. But it should be a place of hope. It should be a place that where the broken get excited because they can know that's where I can go and see Jesus. See, according to a recent study, Barnes said eight out of ten students who are invited to church will say yes. Eight out of ten. So the question isn't whether or not they're willing to check it out. The question is, are we willing to be brave enough to invite them? When was the last time you invited somebody to church? In fact, really quickly here, how many of you guys have come to church because someone invited you? How many of you have come to church because someone invited you? Okay, look around. Your pastor is here because someone came to church and invited him. Adon is here because someone invited him to church. Would you guys ever want Pastor Ty not to be here? No. Would you want Adonot to be here? No. Heaven wants Adon here. Heaven wants Ty here. Heaven wants all of you here. And it's not because somebody was perfect. It was because somebody was willing to invite somebody when they weren't perfect. If someone was willing to love somebody when their life was messy, if we miss this part of the faith, we go, I want church to be my place, a place where I can feel safe, not a place where a sinner can feel safe. Can I challenge us? If that's our heart, we're missing it. See, Jesus ate with people who were messy. Matthew 23, 25 says this, what sorrow awaits, you teachers of religious law, and you Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are care for you are careful to clean the outside, the cup and a dish. But inside you are filthy, full of greed and selfish indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first wash the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will become clean too. What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law, and you, Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside and filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly, you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. Can I challenge this? I don't want to be a whitewashed tomb. I don't want to be somebody that the world looks like. They've got it all together on the outside, but inside their heart's poison. It's dead. They tell people they love Jesus, but they never told me they love Jesus. They tell other people they love Jesus, but they've never invited me to church. If we love God so much, we should share God to people who need Him. So who are you inviting to breakfast this morning? Who are the people that you can think of in your life that God has called you to invite? And even Adon and I, before service, we're talking just for a second about this idea of like how we invite people. Some people don't need you to walk up to them and be like, come to church. And like be scared at them. Like, hey, do you know Jesus loves you? And if you don't go to church, you go to hell? That is a great way to terrify somebody. Can you notice how Jesus came up and talked to people? Here's one of my favorite things. I believe this wholeheartedly. I think that first you should lead with love. Because how many of you guys know people will look for truth in places that they first find love? How many of you guys have ever looked for somebody to tell you the truth that you didn't feel any love from? Man, if someone is really hateful at me, I have a hard time going, I hope they can give me a good opinion. Man, this person is so mean to me, I can't wait for them to tell me how to invest my finances. This person is super harsh on my parenting. I can't wait for them to tell me how to live, how to, you know, organize my marriage and my life. We don't look for hateful people to give us advice. We don't. And I don't look for truth from people who hate me. I'm not interested in that. Can I challenge you? One of the best things you can demonstrate first to somebody is the love of God. When I look at the way that Jesus met with people, he didn't look at Levi and say, Hey, Levi, unless you get out of that booth, you're going to hell. He said, Levi, I want you to be one of my disciples. Come and follow me. And even Jesus' best friends, his 12 disciples, one of those betrayed him. Jesus didn't wait for the people who cleaned up, and sometimes even after they started following him, they still messed up. Can I challenge you? Jesus has enough grace for your life, for your past, and for your sin. So this morning I want to close in a word of prayer. I want to pray for those who maybe need to make a decision to follow Jesus, but I also want to pray for those who've never followed him before. And I want to pray for people here today that we would have a heart to be evangelistic. We were talking this morning about what an evangelist is, but in the reality is that every single one of us has been called to carry the good news of the gospel. Every one of us is called to be evangelists. Every one of us is called to share our faith. It's not just for preachers and pastors and worship people or people on staff at churches. It's the commission for all of us. The Great Commission is not limited to religious staff. So can we pray this morning? If you're here, would you mind closing your eyes and just bowing your head for a moment? If you're here today and you've never made a decision to accept Jesus into your heart, I just want to pray for you. I want you to know that there's a God in heaven who's real and who is crazy about you, that he loves you so much, that there's no amount of mess in your past that is too great for the grace that he carries. And maybe you're here today and you said, Yeah, once upon a time, I was following Jesus. But I've gone a different direction and I need to get my life back on track. If that's you today, if either of those things are you and you say, you know what, Pastor Alex, I need to follow Jesus. I'm tired of running this life on my own. I want to come home to the Father. I'm tired of this sin in my life. I want to be forgiven. I want to be set free of my addictions, I want to be made new. I want a fresh slate today. If either of those are you with every eye closed and every head bowed, if that's you, would you just raise your hand so I can know I'm praying with you? That's awesome. Hey, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else today? Can we do this? Can we all just stand together? I know your eyes are closed. We can open them for a moment. We can all just stand together. I want to pray this prayer with everybody in the room. And then I'm gonna pray a prayer, and I want to challenge you to think this week before you go, who's one person who I can share the love of Jesus with? Not just who's somebody who already knows Jesus, not somebody who already goes to church, not somebody who's already got their life together, who's somebody that I can bring hope, the love of Christ. Let's pray. Would you say this prayer with me? And especially if you raise your hand, I want everybody in this place to pray, but if pray this prayer, but if you have never prayed this before, I want you to meet it with all your heart. Say this, say, dear Jesus, thank you that you love me. God, I admit that I'm a sinner and that I need you. God, I believe that you sent your son Jesus to die on a cross for my sins. And that he rose three days later. Defeating sin, death and the grave. Jesus, I confess you as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Father, today I pray for this church. I pray that you would challenge us. We don't want to be whitewashed tombs, we don't want to be looking good on the outside, but full of sin or full of strife or full of addiction or full of brokenness or angriness or bitterness. God, help our fruit of the spirit not to become shriveled and dried and discarded. Help us to daily walk in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Help us to bring your love to a world who needs it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.