Each One Bring One [A]

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Transcript:

All right, turn with me first of all this morning to John chapter 1. We’ll be there for just a little bit. But you know, one of the first recorded things that God said in the Bible, if we were to turn back, you don’t have to, but if you were to turn back to the very earliest pages of recorded history, as they’re found in the beginning of the book of Genesis, one of the first statements that God has recorded making is that it was not good that man should be alone.

You know, there may be exceptions. I think that was a general principle, a general statement he’s making. There may be some people who are better off with no one to bother them and no one to inflict themselves on.

I’m just kidding. But for most of us, it’s not good to be alone. I think that’s why God created us as social beings.

Even those who say, I don’t want to be around people, I think get lonely from time to time. I think that’s why God put the church here. As we talked about in Sunday school, God gave us the church.

Because the Christian life would be too hard to live on our own without the help and support of each other. And it’s instinctive, really, to want to bring people along. Whether we’re talking about spiritual things, whether we’re talking about life in general, it’s instinctive in us, I think, as we’re born, as God has made us, to be social and to want to bring someone else along with us in what we’re doing.

I mean, we can see this in little kids before they grow up and get cranky like us and don’t want people to bother them and don’t want to bother other people. Yesterday, I took my kids to a barbecue in sort of in celebration of one of my oldest friends had a baby a few weeks ago and there was a barbecue or a baby-Q as they called it celebrate and have everybody out to see the baby and just enjoy being together. I was trying to sit there and enjoy my brisket.

Just wanted to eat and talk to grown-ups for a change. And my daughter kept coming and pulling on my arm. I’m sitting there and she’s pulling on, what do you want?

She wanted me to come with her. I don’t know what she intended on showing me. I finally got up and went with her and we wandered around the yard a little bit and wandered around the garage.

I don’t know if she just wanted me to wander with her, if she had something intended to show me and forgot, but she just wanted to bring me along. Just come with me. My son, finally, I got back to my brisket and adult conversation.

And I was sitting there later and my son came along. Daddy, daddy, daddy, come with me. Daddy, come with me.

He’d had cake. So he was 90 to nothing on the talking. Daddy, daddy, daddy, come with me.

Come with me. Come with me. I’m not even doing justice.

How fast? In a minute, in a minute. Two minutes later.

Daddy, daddy, daddy. Okay, fine, I’m coming. He wanted to show me the little drainage.

We’re from the city, so I don’t know what they’re called. When you live out in the country and don’t have the city sewers, you have the ditch across your front yard, and then you have the round thing that goes under the driveway so the water can go through. What’s that called?

What? Tinhorn. I heard a couple different names.

I’m as confused as I was before. He wanted to show me these things. Yes, that’s fascinating.

And he’s trying to get down in the ditch and look at them. Daddy, what’s in here? And he just wanted me to come look at these things with him.

And I had to, I told him, I didn’t realize until later, I just lied to my son. And yes, I’ve already repented. And I told him, oh, no, because I’ve heard stories about kids getting stuck in those things.

And I told him, no, you can’t get near those. There are big monsters that live in there. And they will eat you.

Why? Because little children are delicious, apparently. Why do they live in there?

Because that’s their house. And he found some more of those, some more drainage things. He’s like, later on, some of my parents came to me and said, why is Benjamin obsessed with cave monsters all of a sudden?

I have no idea. I didn’t say anything about cave monsters. But then he’s wanting me the rest of the night to come with him because he wants to look for cave monsters.

He wasn’t going in there, but he wanted to see if he could catch them when they were not in their house. Then he wanted me to come with him to stand on the old tree stump that he said the cave monsters can’t get you when you’re on the tree stump. And then he and Madeline had to take me and show me the cows.

I said we’re from the city. They’re still amazed by cows. Y’all may think, I don’t want to see another cow.

They still think it’s cool. So all night, they’re dragging me from one thing to the next. Come look at this with us.

Come with us. Come here. Do this.

I just want to eat my brisket. But you know what? It’s natural for them.

See, they’ve not grown up enough to be cranky and cynical like the rest of us to where they just want to be left alone. It’s natural for them to want somebody to come with them. It’s natural for them to want to bring somebody along in their adventures.

It’s natural for them to want to say, come with me and see what I’m doing. I think God created us to be that way, and we think we get too old to act that way. I’m not saying you want to run up to strangers on the corner.

Come with me, come with me, come with me, look at what I’m doing. No, you might get the police called. You might get a restraining order.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve decided as adults we don’t need anybody. We don’t want anybody around. We don’t need anybody around.

I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and I can handle it myself, and I’ll go by myself, and that’s what we think we’re supposed to do. But God, I think, has created us to be social beings and to want to bring people along with us in what we’re doing. A few years ago, the first time I filled in here for really just a few weeks, but it was about four years ago, three or four years ago, when I was BMA of Oklahoma missionary in Norman, And Steve Puckett and I had a saying that we used when we were working in the mission work in Norman that we don’t do anything alone.

Now, sometimes that was a safety thing. If we were going to go knock doors, you don’t always know what’s on the other side of that door. And so you don’t want to go to somebody’s house that you’ve never met alone and go knock on their door to tell them about Jesus.

You don’t know what’s going to be waiting for you on the other side of that door. So you always take somebody along with you. But it was more than that.

You need to be taking somebody along whatever you’re doing. If you’ve got a neighbor who, as an act of ministry, they can’t take care of themselves or their house, they’re sick or something, and as an act of ministry, as an act of service, you’re going to go mow their yard, bring somebody along with you. If we were going down to work at Mission Norman and take people through there and counsel with people who needed to come in and get food, take somebody with you.

And the reason for that was not only so that you’ve always got somebody there to lean on, but also so you’re always training and encouraging somebody to be doing what you’re doing. Tried to put this into practice a little bit in Fayetteville. We had college students, and one young man in particular was interested in ministry.

I said, come spend the summer. You’re not doing anything this summer. Come spend the summer with me, and we’ll go do some things, and we’ll talk about how to teach and just drove around some together and said, just come spend time with me.

Didn’t do anything earth shattering. It said, if you’re curious about ministry, let’s go do some hospital calls. Let’s look at what it means to put a lesson together.

Let’s go visit some people. As we should never, as Christians, doing things alone should be the exception. We should find joy in bringing people along in what we’re doing.

Bringing other believers, especially those who are younger than us in the faith and saying, let me show you what I’m doing a taste of ministry. I probably would not be doing what I’m doing today, but for Mike Mobley and Doug Brewer up at Southgate, who when I expressed an interest in ministry, specifically an interest in pastoring, let me as a high school student bug them for a whole summer and then beyond. Just hang out with them at the church, doing hospital calls.

A lady came in and we worked on her car one day, a church member, because she didn’t have. . .

It was ministry. And just getting to see what they do and do it with them, getting a taste for ministry. And we wonder why we hold these ministries that whatever we do, whether it’s going and visiting people, whether maybe you send cards to people as your ministry, maybe you mow the church lawn.

I don’t know. Everybody should have a ministry, but we hold on to these things so tightly and say, well, that’s my ministry. And then we wonder why other people come into the church and don’t have a desire to serve and don’t have a desire to serve in the ways we do.

it’s because we’re not giving them a taste of it. We’re not sharing with them the joy that comes from ministry. I’m not saying it’s always joyful.

I’m not saying it’s always exciting. But we’re not bringing people along in our journey. Not even just ministry.

We don’t share with people what God’s been doing in our lives lately. We don’t share with people, hey, let me show you what God showed me this week. It’s really amazing.

Some of you may be thinking, who talks that way? You know what? If God shows you something amazing, you shouldn’t be able to keep it to yourself.

I’ll be honest. Sometimes I can go through the week and read the Bible. I think, oh, okay, well, I did my Bible reading this week. But then there are times where you just don’t feel like you get as much out of it as you do other times.

And then there are other times where you read the same passage that you’ve read 60 times before, and you think, I have never seen that before. And I’m going to be able to use that. That applies to a question I had in my mind about what I’m supposed to do.

We should be sharing these things with people. We should be bringing them along with us in the journey. Brother Shank asked me a few weeks ago to talk this week about each one bring one, with that being the theme of this morning.

We’ll talk about three areas this morning where we as Christians should be bringing other people along in what we’re doing. I’ve already hit on it a little bit, but we’re going to start in John chapter 1. Even though it’s just three points, I’m going to try to have to move through this as quickly as I can.

Starting in verse 35, John chapter 1. Again, the next day after John stood, that’s John the Baptist, and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.

Then Jesus turned and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, which is to say, being interpreted, Master. Rabbi, where dwellest thou?

He saith unto them, Come and see. And they came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two which heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.

He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messiah, which is being interpreted the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon, the son of Jonah, thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone. The following day Jesus would go forth into Galilee and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.

Now Philip was at Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did right, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?

Philip saith unto him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and saith of him, Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile. And Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me?

Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. And Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou?

Thou shalt see greater things than these. Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. Now there’s a lot that we could talk about in this passage, a lot that I have talked about in the past on this passage about the nature of Jesus, about his godhood, his being God, and his ability to do things that just put people continually in awe.

But what we need to see here today is how Andrew was with John the Baptist as one of his followers, and the entire purpose of John’s ministry was to point people to the fact that Jesus Christ was coming. His entire reason for being, his entire reason for preaching, which I maintain that any preacher worth his salt, that should be the reason for his ministry, just like John the Baptist, is to point people to Jesus Christ. It wasn’t about John building a following. It was about John pointing people to Jesus Christ. And so Andrew, as one of John’s followers, was with him one day, and then John sees Jesus, and John immediately says there, you need to follow him.

He says, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Everything that I’ve been preaching up to this point about God coming and forgiving sins, right there. Right there, it’s him.

Follow him. And so Andrew goes to follow Jesus, but the Bible says he does something else first. He goes and finds his brother, Simon. He says, you need to come see the, you need to come meet the guy that John just pointed us to.

The one that we’ve been waiting for for 4,000 years. The one that God has promised for 4,000 years that he would come and save our people from their sins. The one that he promised would come and redeem us, would deliver us, would set us free.

The one that God has promised for 4,000 years. He’s finally here. We found him.

You need to come and see. What did he do? He brought his brother to Jesus.

And there was a man named Nathaniel. I’m sorry, from Philip. A man named Philip.

From the same town that Andrew and Peter was from. They might have known each other for all we know. And Jesus found Philip the next day and said, follow me.

Well, Philip decided he was going to follow Jesus. But before he went, he did something else. He went and found his brother Nathanael.

He said, you know the one that Moses has written about in the law? You know the one the prophets talked about? We found him.

He’s Jesus of Nazareth. We found him. You’ve got to come and see.

And Nathanael came and met Jesus. And Philip and Andrew, both of them found the Messiah, the Savior that they were looking for. And what was the very first thing they thought to do?

Go and bring their brother to meet Jesus as well. Fellow Christians, is that our first thought? Is that our first thought on meeting someone new?

You’ve got to come and see the one I found. So the whole world is looking for a Savior, whether they know it or not. I think we all instinctively know something is lacking from life.

I remember, it has to be 20 years ago, hearing a preacher talk about an interview with Robin Williams and saying how Robin Williams, even 20 years ago, was saying he was the most unhappy person he knew. I remember at the time being about eight years old and thinking, but he’s so funny, how could he be unhappy? And when we got the news that he’d killed himself over the summer, that was the first thing I thought of was that interview from 20 years ago.

Loved by millions, had made a fortune. one of the funniest, I’m not saying everything he did was funny, but in a lot of ways, one of the funniest people of our time, and yet so unhappy. And it’s because something’s lacking.

And we hear all the time about rich, successful, popular people who say they’re just not happy. Folks, it’s because something is lacking in life and we know it. We know instinctively that we try to fill life up with things.

We try to fill life up with pleasure. We try to fill life up with other people and it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t fill the longing that God has created in us.

It doesn’t solve the problem that we have. Folks, we have this longing because we are separated from the God who created us and created us for the very purpose of having a relationship with him. I have a pasta machine that was given to me several years ago, a little one that you turn by hand and make your own pasta.

and I feel guilty every time I see it. And the reason is, you’re thinking, where is he going with this? I feel guilty and a little sad every time I see it because somebody gave it to me because they knew how much I like pasta.

And when the kids and I lived in Arkansas, I made pasta probably three nights a week, different kinds because I just love it and it’s something that they would eat too. Only a few times though, somebody went out and bought this for me and only a few times have I ever made pasta. I love it.

I love it. I love to, but who has the time? I have two tiny screaming people that want to hunt for cave monsters.

I don’t have time to roll dough and make pasta. But somebody went and bought this for me, and that thing was created for the sole purpose of making pasta. And yet for years it has sat either on my cabinet or in my cabinet, not fulfilling its use.

And I know it’s stupid. I know. Guys, I know it’s stupid.

And I say, well, I feel sorry for an inanimate object. But I think how sad it is, somebody went out and bought that for me, and it’s not getting used for its intended purpose. Folks, God created us for a specific purpose of having a relationship with Him.

And I think the reason for so much unhappiness in the world, the reasons for so much depression and violence and everything else, is sin that separates us from a holy God and keeps us from having the relationship we were made to have with Him and keeps us from fulfilling the purpose we were created for. And you know what? Jesus is the only answer to that problem.

We hear preachers and we hear singers say that Jesus is the only answer. Jesus is the answer to all your problems. And from a cynical standpoint, it doesn’t sound like that should be right. What, you’re saying, I’ve got a problem with drinking and I just turned to Jesus and the problem automatically goes away?

Well, for some people it does. For some people it takes longer, but Jesus is able to help them with that. A cynical world would say, oh yeah, poverty, violence, that just goes away with Jesus.

I tell you what, if everybody in the world was as committed to Jesus as they’re supposed to be, there wouldn’t be violence and we wouldn’t have people starving in the streets because we’d take care of each other. So in a way, Jesus is the answer to every problem. I’m not really concerned about that.

I’m concerned with the biggest problem we have, which is separation from a holy God. It was a problem, ladies and gentlemen, that the world’s going to look at and say, We have bigger problems. We have poverty. We have global warming, if you believe in that sort of thing, Brother Shane.

We have all sorts of things that the world looks at and says they’re more pressing now. We have Ebola. We have ISIS, like I talked about last week.

We have all sorts of problems. Why are we worried about something spiritual? Because it’s at the root of all of it. And because these things are temporary.

You know what? One day there will be no more Ebola. One day there will be no more ISIS.

But what happens spiritually has eternal implications. there is an eternal heaven there is an eternal hell and sin is a big enough problem that Jesus Christ was willing to die for it in the most brutal way I can’t imagine a problem so big that I’d be willing to get myself killed on a cross to solve it can’t think of any but sin to him was that big of a problem because he sees and he knew what it does to us what it does to the human race and so he came and he died each one of us has sinned against a holy God each and every one of us have disobeyed God. Everyone who’s ever lived, the best people that we can think of who’ve ever lived, have sinned against the Holy God.

We’ve disobeyed him. We may not be as bad as we possibly could be. I’m not as bad as I possibly could be.

There’s a lot of stuff I don’t do. I live kind of a boring life. I know that’s shocking to you all, that I’m not running the streets and having all kinds of fun.

I live a pretty boring life. I’m not as bad as I could be. You know what?

I’ve still sinned against the Holy God because there are things in his word that he said you need to do this and I’ve not done them and there are things that he said you don’t do this and I do them anyway and we’ve all done that we’ve all told a lie we’ve all taken something that doesn’t belong to us we’ve all done any number of things and it separates us from God because God is holy God is perfect God is so holy and perfect that our sin is offensive to him our sin disgusts him and God would be completely justified in saying you know what I’m through with you. I think I’ve told you before, my grandfather, who’s 90 years old, when he gets mad at somebody, he just says, rain on them. And that means I’m done with you.

Never again. God, you know what? God would have been justified.

He’d been completely right if he’d looked at us and said, because of our sin, rain on you. I’m not dealing with you anymore. You can die and go to hell if you want to.

But in spite of the fact that we disobeyed him, that we’d sinned against him, that we’d spit in his face, basically, God still loved us when we were unlovable. He still loved us enough that he sent his son to die on the cross for us. And now Jesus is the answer to the greatest problem we have of sin.

He is the great answer to all the greatest longings of the human heart because every ache, every longing we have stems from that separation from God. And so now we as Christians have a responsibility to bring people to Christ and the salvation that he offers. That Christ, their first thought was that they had enough love for their brothers, they had enough compassion on their brothers, and they had enough excitement about Jesus Christ and who he was and what he was doing that they couldn’t wait to go run and tell their brothers.

They couldn’t wait to bring their brothers to Christ. So the question I have to ask myself is what is it that they had that I’m lacking? Is it all of what Christ did? Is it a lack of amazement at who he is?

Or is it a lack of love for others? Because I don’t always tell people the way I’m supposed to. My first thought is not always to bring one.

And Brother Shank mentioned last week that if each of us. . .

I thought it was funny that you had to point this out. I’m not making fun of you in saying that. If each of us brought one this morning, that we’d have twice as many people here.

I wouldn’t have even thought to point that out. That’s true. One times two is two.

Two times two is. . .

Okay, this is how numbers work. But it’s true. Do you realize why Christianity spread so fast in the earliest days?

Do you realize why. . .

Not just Christianity as making people act right. Do you realize why the gospel spread so fast in the earliest days of Christianity? It’s because everybody went out and brought somebody to Christ. Because everybody went out and told somebody.

Think about it. How incredible it is that this. .

. In the earliest days, the Roman and Jewish authorities referred to Christianity as a cult. We started as a cult.

Surrounding a carpenter who got killed as a common criminal, executed in what the Romans held to be the most shameful way possible. And yet within about 200 years, there were so many people who bought into what this man taught and believed that they began changing the Roman Empire, the most powerful empire known to man at that time. They began changing the Roman Empire from the inside out.

Not that our goal here with Christianity is, I mean, not that the whole reason for preaching the gospel, not that the whole reason for bringing people to Christ is so that we can change our country. Hey, I want our country to act right as much as you all do, but that’s not the main goal. But it was because the people believed and they were passionate because they knew what an incredible thing that Jesus Christ had done for us. And they had enough love and compassion, even on people that we shouldn’t care about, I mean, from a human standpoint, to share with them.

We talked about that in Sunday school this morning in the men’s class, that the passage in Acts chapter 1, where it says, you’ll be witnesses of me in Jerusalem and to Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world. We look at that as just concentric circles going out, and we could easily say you’ll be witnesses. You’re supposed to go and share Christ in Lindsay and to all of Oklahoma and to the United States and to the uttermost parts of the world.

But that Samaria in there, that’s not just a bigger region going out from the circle. That’s kind of off here to the side. The Jews and Samaritans hated each other.

And I think it was Jesus’ subtle way of reminding us that the gospel is for everybody. We should bring one from everybody. We should bring one even if it’s somebody that thinks they’re going to be judged or looked down on when they come in here.

Somebody that we would say, I don’t want them. And we shouldn’t say that about anybody, should we? As I told them, we all have either individuals or groups that we don’t like.

There are people that I’m not especially fond of. Individuals. Nobody in this room.

So you’re all safe there. But there are people that I just don’t particularly like. I got a call about a year ago saying, would you go talk to so-and-so?

He really needs somebody to minister to him. No. I’m not doing that.

You know what? We all have groups of people we don’t like, but that doesn’t mean the gospel’s not for them. It doesn’t matter if it’s somebody we like, somebody we don’t like, somebody we don’t know.

It’s our job to be thinking of who we can bring to Christ. And it’s not our job to twist their arms. It’s not our job to argue them into it. If you’re here this morning and you’ve never trusted Christ, you’re not a believer, I hope you’ll trust Christ, but I also hope that you’ll feel safe being in here because I realize it’s not my job to beat you over the head with the Bible until you trust Jesus, okay? That’s between you and God.

Now, I will talk to you. I’ll answer your questions. I’ll pray for you but I’m not going to I’m not going to beat you over the head or twist your arm or guilt you into doing anything the Holy Spirit has the job of getting people to trust Christ that we should at least give them the introduction guys I’ve got two other things that two other points we could get into this morning about each one bring one we may just save it for tonight of what we’re supposed to bring people to because I really want to focus this morning just on this first point that as Christians each one should bring one to Christ and the salvation he offers Each one should bring one to Christ and the salvation he offers.

It’s not necessarily about bringing people to church. That’s a good thing, though. But just having people come sit in church is not a substitute for introducing them to Jesus Christ. Now, you should be secure in the knowledge that if you bring a guest with you, they’re going to hear about Jesus Christ. I’ll make that commitment to you.

Guys, it’s our job as Christians not to pack the church. I’d love it if the church was packed. It’s not our job to be able to tell the people down at First Baptist or whoever else, well, we had this number in church this morning and compete with them.

Guys, our job is first and foremost to bring other people to Jesus Christ, to introduce them to the one who died for them. If we’re not, if we’re not, there’s a problem. I’ve already shared what the problem is.

It’s either that we have lost our awe about Jesus Christ and what he’s done, or we’ve lost our love and compassion for the people we’re supposed to be reaching. It’s our job to bring one to Christ every day. I don’t mean by that, I’ve got to get one person saved every day, or I’m not doing my job.

But I mean every day it’s our job to go out and think, who does God want me to introduce to His Son today?