Restoration 2013: Jesus.

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Restoration Ministry

Mark Howard

Jesus: The Recruiter

Father in heaven, I thank you today for the Sabbath day.

I thank you for clearing your schedule for your people.

I pray, Father, that all of the distractions that have come into our mind through this past week would be cleared out this morning.

I pray that our minds would be focused and our ears would be tuned to hear your voice, and that our hearts would be geared and able to respond to your voice this morning.

I ask now, Father, that you would speak to us in the name of Jesus and for his sake, amen.

I want you to take your Bibles this morning.

Actually, I'm going to review something this morning.

Instead of going through all the passages, I want to talk for a moment about parting words.

When you are leaving somebody that is very dear to you, perhaps a wife or perhaps a girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, family member, brother, sister, and you're parting for a while, Maybe you're going to some mission service.

And you know you're not going to see them for a while.

And so you get together that last time, and you're going to share those parting words.

Are those parting words important to you?

Or do you just kind of say, oh, whatever, you know, I'll see you later?

You know, some of us, of course, and I hate partings.

I've been told by some people I have poor leaving skills.

You're just like, oh, I hate goodbyes, you know?

And you don't want to say the wrong thing.

When we go into the Gospels, without exception, every Gospel...

Now, I've mentioned to you this in our series here that there are the 3 gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke called the Synoptic Gospels.

They're very similar as opposed to the Gospel of John.

The stories in Matthew generally appear in Mark and Luke and vice versa, but not necessarily in the book of John.

Yet without exception all 4 Gospels end with the same closing, parting words of Jesus.

In Matthew he puts it this way, go make disciples and baptize them.

In Mark he puts it this way, go preach the gospel and baptize.

In Luke he puts it this way, preach repentance and remission of sins in my name.

And in John he puts it this way, feed my sheep and feed my lambs.

Without exception his parting words said I want you to go and share the gospel.

Was it just something off the cuff for Jesus?

Parting words are special words, they're important words.

And the most important thing to Jesus, the thing that consumed his mind and attention when he parted, was the work that was not yet done, that he expected his church to do.

We know that if we were to sum up the life of Jesus, and I can't think of a better passage than Luke 19, verse 10, that says, The Son of Man came, or has come, to seek and to save, what?

Was that not where every energy of Jesus was put?

Everything that he did, the whole reason he came, every energy of his life was ultimately for the purpose of seeking and saving the laws.

When he was sitting there and talking with the woman at Jacob's well and he was hungry and the disciples brought back food, he was thirsty by the way, you remember he asked the woman for a drink, He never did get his drink.

The disciples came with food and he said, I have food that you know not of.

His whole Being was consumed with seeking and saving the lost.

Even in his prayer in John 17, he prayed to his father, Father, my will is that those who you've given me would be with me where I am.

The point is that There is nothing that consumed the mind of Christ more than the salvation of souls.

And he said in John 14, that great promise, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am what there you may be also I mean, this is the burden of Christ's heart.

This is what consumed the life of Christ.

Listen to me carefully This was and is what should consume the life of every true follower of Christ?

If a disciple seeks to be like the master, what was it that consumed the life of the master?

The very same thing that should consume the life of the disciple.

The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians, turn there with me, 2 Corinthians chapter 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 14.

I think you know this verse, most of you.

2 Corinthians 5 14 says, for the love, what?

The love of Christ constraineth us in the King James, compels us in the new King James that I'm reading from.

For me and for every person on this planet.

The love of Christ, in other words, when I come to Christ and I experience the new birth, the heart of Christ comes into me and I begin to feel what He feels.

And the love of Christ for the lost compels me forward.

There's a story of a family, mother, father, and daughter.

They were downtown New York around holiday season.

They were shopping in a big downtown mall.

The time came for the mall to be closed, and they had told their daughter, stay with us, hold our hand, don't leave, but in the mix, in the crowds, in the hustle and the bustle as they were going out into the street, out of the mall way, They got parted.

And they yelled for their daughter, and she was yelling for them, but the problem is there were so many people and so much noise, they couldn't find her.

And as the crowds were dispersing, another couple, friends of the family, as they were driving away now, and they were driving past, and they saw the crowds, they saw that little girl.

Oh, Look, there's so-and-so's daughter, Mary.

And the little girl was never found by the parents, but found frozen to death the next morning.

How do you imagine those parents felt when they knew that their close friends could have done something and didn't?

I had somebody tell me recently, Seventh-day Adventist church member, I don't understand why we got to be guilted with all these things we should do.

Why can't worship be, why can't we just come in, I think the Lord wants us to come into church on Sabbath and just bask in the glory and the love of God.

Just come in and bask in His love and enjoy it.

Let's switch this perspective a little bit.

Look at those parents who had their lost daughter out there on the streets.

They're looking for her, they're trying to find her, they're desperately concerned.

You happen to see them and you come up and you say, hey, I just want to tell you guys I love you guys so much, You're such good friends of mine.

In fact, I love you so much, would you mind if I start singing some songs to you?

There's no such thing as worship for us to come into the church and have no burden for God's lost children.

Those parents would say, if you love me, help me find my daughter.

And God says, if you love me, help me find my lost children.

The heart that stirred Christ, the 1 all-consuming theme of seeking and saving the lost, should consume his people.

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Jesus: The Recruiter

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