If there is a better scene in a better movie, I do not know it.
Oh, the audacity of squints to fake drowning.
Fake drowning to kiss Wendy Peppercorn.
If you have not seen that movie, it's called The Sandlot.
If you have not seen it, then you need to cancel your evening plans.
Find a friend who has The Sandlot.
You guys need to watch that together.
If you do not have a friend that owns The Sandlot,
I have some, I don't know how to break this to you,
but you need some new friends, okay?
Because it's that kind of movie,
and you need to spend that kind of time with it.
So, I'm kidding.
My name is Josh, and I'm one of the pastors here.
And I'm glad you're here.
We're starting a new sermon series this week
that's going to go four weeks long, and it's called React.
So audaciously normal.
And this word audacious means adventurous, daring, recklessly bold.
It means faking like you're drowning to kiss the lifeguard.
That is audacious, but normal means everyday ordinary.
Of course I did that.
And so when they say squints, were you, like, what were you doing?
You said, man, I've been planning that for years.
That was really normal.
That was audacious, but incredibly normal.
And so in thinking about normal and recognizing that not all of us know each other,
I thought if you guys would be okay with it,
I was going to take you down a little memory lane with Josh, if you will,
on some norms of my life growing up.
Okay, so I grew up in the greatest decade of American history,
which was called the 1980s.
Right?
So I'm kidding.
You obviously don't know it or you're embarrassed about it.
So either way, this is the closed people war when I grew up.
I want to show you this.
I have some slides.
Right?
That's not an event.
That's Tuesday.
Like I had a lot of that in my closet going out doing my thing.
So that's how people dress.
Here's the kind of toys we played with.
You ready for this?
This is called a slinky.
Right?
This is all you do.
Put one in this hand, one side of it.
Then you pull it over this hand and move your hands up and down.
Hours of entertainment.
If you have a friend that's really good and has stairs in his house
and he can make it do the thing, you go to your friend's house.
You do this.
You watch it go down the stairs.
Glorious afternoon spent with a slinky.
Okay?
Next thing we have is called the light bright.
Engineers, listen.
Engineers.
I don't know how they did this.
Gold idea, right?
So you're going to take these little things and put them in a little board
and they're going to come to life.
We're going to make smiley faces in houses.
And again, endless entertainment.
When you get bored with a slinky, you go to the light bright.
This was the pinnacle of my entertainment.
This is called an Atari.
Right?
What you did with an Atari is you had one button.
See the little red thing?
That's a button.
I've seen some of the games you guys play with first person shooter
and you got to use your left ear and your elbow to control them.
All you have there is a joystick and a button.
And Miss Pac-Man needs to be saved by Mr. Pac-Man.
That's the extent of the game, right?
Run fast, press your a button, move your joystick.
Okay?
You guys need it.
That's like pretty hipster now, right?
Oh yeah, I have an Atari in dress like that.
Yeah, cool.
Okay, whatever.
The greatest boy band in the history of planet earth.
Ready?
New kids on the block.
Right there.
Mr. Timberlake, pay homage, right?
Pay your respect.
If you're into R&B music, you had MC Hammer.
It was normal for me growing up.
Famous for the song and the phrase, you can't touch this.
You probably have heard that before.
My after school life was enthralled with the drama
unfolding at Bayside High School
with this show called Saved by the Bell.
Zach and Kelly, then Zach and Jesse, then Zach and Lisa, oh man.
Slater and Kelly, Slater and Lisa.
What is happening in this show?
What are we watching?
Mr. Belding and Screech, this was my life.
Saved by the Bell was normal for me.
This last thing, if you're a young person in the room,
high school or in college, I'm going to show you this.
This is crazy.
You ready?
For the quintessential thing of the 80s.
Here it is.
That's called a telephone.
You didn't have it in your pocket.
You had someone's home and you had to call their home
and talk to their parents and say, hey, it's so and so there.
Could I speak to them?
That dials people's homes and that's how you talk to humans back then.
Now we don't even know how to talk anymore.
I know, I'm not going to.
Okay, moving right along.
So that was culturally normal.
Here is spiritually normal.
Picture me.
I need you to keep going with me.
I'm 13 years old.
I'm at a summer camp.
I have just got interested in girls.
I probably have a lot of gel in my hair and we're in a calculator
watch, right?
And this, I'm at summer camp and this is what I hear.
Josh, you're a sinner and sinners go to hell.
So what you need is Jesus to save you from hell.
And then you get to go to heaven.
And in heaven, you go fishing a lot and maybe your grandpa's there
and your dog and you just have a good time riding rainbows and
playing on raindrops and doing whatever you want.
So you don't want to go to hell.
You don't want to go to heaven, right?
Josh.
And I said, yes, I would much rather go to rainbow land than
the bad place you explained.
So Jesus is what I need.
Personal Jesus in your heart, that takes you to heaven.
So I was into that.
So the first thing I got in church culture was the gospel of heaven.
That when you die, you go to heaven.
The next thing I immediately got was the gospel of don't.
Don't cuss, don't steal, don't smoke, don't have sex.
Don't watch that movie.
Don't listen to that music.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
In the end, you get rainbows.
Remember we talked about this, Josh?
That, that was normal for me when I was 15 or 16 years old.
Now imagine I have a car, probably a sound system in the back.
I can't remember.
You know, I'm just breaking five feet tall and I hear this crazy story.
I know, I know.
I hear that bad skin likely.
I hear this crazy story of if, if you really want to love God, you go
tell other people about him.
So I'm 15 years old and I hear about mission trips.
So I go to Johannesburg, South Africa as a 15 year old.
And I explained to them the gospel of heaven.
I'm 16.
I go to Venezuela, explained to them the gospel of heaven.
Still not fully recognizing what I'm supposed to be doing in the
meantime, but just, this is all I know.
So this is what I'm sharing.
Now picture me 20 years old at a Christian college, East Texas Baptist
University.
I'm learning to play guitar, woo the women, right?
So eventually it worked.
Amy, she didn't go to school there, but eventually it worked.
But I'm 20 years old.
I'm at Christian college.
I'm starting to take classes my sophomore year that are into my
major and I'm majoring in church planting, right?
So I'm in a church planting class and I'm sitting in the back of the
room and my professor tells me this.
He says, students, you were not saved to go to heaven.
Students, you were not saved to be moral.
And up until then, all I'd ever known was I'm saved to go to heaven.
I'm saved to be moral.
Excuse me, professor, what in the world am I saved for then?
And he says, Josh, I'm glad you asked.
Our textbook for this class will be the book of Acts.
So if you have a Bible, I'd love for you to grab it and turn to Acts
chapter one.
So I'm going to pretend you just asked me that.
So for this evening, if you have a Bible, I'd love for you to grab it
and turn to the book of Acts chapter one.
And we are going to look at what in the world are we doing with this
glorious truth of salvation that God has given to us.
When I use the word saved, I mean that God has rescued us out of this
dominion of darkness by the cross and the resurrection.
But listen, if we're not careful, we say last week as Easter was, yes,
no more death.
We get to go to heaven.
Okay, let's do it again next year.
Yes, no more death.
We get to go to heaven.
Easter's friends is not the end.
It's the beginning.
And in Acts chapter one, we're going to look at what happened after
the resurrection, how these people reacted to the resurrection with
some audacious normalcy.
So Acts chapter one, verse one says this in the first book,
Otheophilus, I have dealt with all the things that Jesus began to do
and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given
commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen
to him, to them, he presented himself alive after his sufferings
by many proofs appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about
the kingdom of God.
And while staying with him, he ordered them not to depart from
Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he
said, you heard from me for John baptized with water, but you will
be baptized, but with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.
Verse six is, this is good.
When the day they had come together, they asked him, Lord,
will at this time you restore the kingdom of Israel.
And he said to them, and this is where we're going to spend today,
it is not for you to know the times of the season that the Father
has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the
earth.
So my professor read that and I began to think about that and I
said, listen, if this is based on Acts chapter one versus one
through eight, is this normal?
I started doing some research like, okay, I read this, I believe
the truth of scripture.
What does that mean for me?
Is this normal or is this God 2.0?
Right?
Post resurrection, God's like, I'm going to start sending people.
Is this normal for him?
Is this his MO always or is this after the resurrection?
Here's what we're going to start doing.
And as I researched, I found this throughout history.
And here's why I'm going to share this with you.
Throughout history, God has been sending people and I know this.
If you do not believe what I'm about to tell you, then your
actions will never change due to what I'm about to tell you.
So in researching this and in recognizing the truth of this
and what it meant for me as a 20 year old, I started to believe
it.
And once I believed it, it affected everything after that.
So in light of what I'm about to share with you, I need you to
believe this because if you believe it, I think it will affect
your entire life and your entire worldview.
So in doing some research, here's what I came across and I'm
going to fly through this stuff.
It's like smokey in the band.
We got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
Are you guys excited about this little journey?
Okay, I'm going to move on.
So we're excited.
Okay, great.
In Genesis chapter three, God sends a future one who's going
to crush the head of the serpent.
In Genesis chapter four, God sends Cain away for killing Abel.
In Genesis chapter seven, God sent rain to flood the earth
because everyone was wicked, but he sent a word to Noah saying,
Noah, I'm going to preserve you and your family and all the
animals and we're going to start this thing over.
Genesis chapter 11, the tower of Babel is built because all these
men got together and said, let's build something really tall
because that's what men do.
And we said, God said bad idea and scattered them throughout
the earth.
One chapter later, Genesis chapter 12, God sends Abraham after
calling Abraham out to be the father of many nations.
That's just 12 chapters right there.
Fast forward.
Genesis chapter 50, you have all of Abraham had Isaac.
Isaac had Jacob.
Jacob had 12 kids.
One of his kids' names is Joseph.
All of Israel is struggling through a drought and a famine.
And Joseph in Genesis chapter 50, he has been sold into slavery.
He's gone through all these crazy things.
In Genesis 50, 20 says this, what man intended for evil God
intended for good.
And he sent me forward beforehand to be a rescuer, a savior of
the people in this way.
Keep going.
In Exodus chapter 3, all of Israel is enslaved to Egypt.
And God tells Moses, I'm going to send you to Pharaoh and tell
him to let my people go.
And Moses says, who am I supposed to say sent me?
I don't even know your name.
And he says, you tell Pharaoh, I am who I am sent you.
And there's consequence to this if he does not let my people go.
Pharaoh does not let the people go.
God sends 10 plagues in Exodus chapter 5 through 11.
Exodus chapter 12, God sends news that there is going to be an
angel of death coming in the Israel lecture to put blood on
their doorpost so that death will pass over them.
And God sends salvation to them.
Exodus chapter 23, God sends an angel before his people to
guard them.
Right before that in Exodus 20, God sends the 10 commandments.
Leviticus 16, you have all the people of Israel and they
recognize their sinning and they need to be saved from their
sin.
God sends them one scapegoat who takes the sins and is sent
away from the people to recognize that their sin is now gone.
Are you still following this?
Okay?
We're just in the book of Leviticus.
I can keep going.
I will.
Great.
Let's have a mic.
God sends the prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah.
He sends them two people telling them the news of God in
Isaiah chapter 6, which I submit to you as one of the boldest
things that you'll see in all of Scripture.
God looks at Isaiah and says, whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?
And Isaiah looks back at God and says, here I am.
Send me.
I'll go.
And he didn't stand on the stage and yell that he is down,
face down, lips on fire, burning from this interaction.
He just had with God and he said, here I am.
God, send me.
Jonah is sent by the Lord to Nineveh in one of the most
great, beautiful revival stories in all the Scripture.
He is sent to Nineveh to tell them the good news.
I might be asking, Josh, why is all this sending happening?
What's the point of this sending when Daniel chapter 7?
Daniel has a vision of God sending a servant called the
Son of Man.
And this Son of Man is going to come.
And he will be a glorious ruler and all the nations will come
and worship him.
In Micah chapter 4, it says, many nations will come and they
will say, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the
house of God of Jacob, our Savior.
The one who has sent us a Savior in Zechariah 8, many people
and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord,
God Almighty.
And this is just the Old Testament.
So is this God 2.0 or is this God regular?
It would seem this is God regular.
So then you get to the New Testament.
God sends Jesus, born of a version.
God sends John the Baptist to testify about him.
God sends Jesus for 40 days to be tempted in the wilderness.
And when he's tempted by Satan at the end of 40 days, Jesus
sends Satan away.
John 3.17 said, God did not send the Son into the world to
judge the world, but rather he sent the Son to save that the
world might be saved through him.
John 4.
Jesus says, my food is to do the will of one who sent me.
John 5 says, I truly, truly say to you, if you hear my word
and believe the one who sent me, then you will have eternal
life.
John 17, you sent me into the world and now I will send them
into the world.
John 20, as the Father has sent me, so I send you.
Over 60 references of sending just in the book of John.
I'm out of breath because of all of God's sending.
Acts chapter one, verse eight, when he says, you will be sent.
Everyone there went, yeah, that's probably normal.
Absolutely.
You've always been sending.
Acts chapter one, verse eight, you're going to be sent to
Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.
But wait until power comes, when the Holy Spirit comes, that's
going to empower your sending.
If you fast forward a little bit, Acts chapter eight, verse one,
is the fulfillment of Acts chapter one, verse eight, where
persecution hits the church in Jerusalem.
And when the persecution hits, if you have your scripture, you
can read this, Acts chapter eight, verse one, the people of God
are scattered.
And you know where they're scattered to?
Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
You know who's scattered them?
A young man named Saul, who eventually becomes Paul.
You know where Paul goes for the story?
Paul goes to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth with
this story.
God used Saul to become, or God used Saul to scatter people,
then God used him to become Paul to send people to the ones
that he had sent away.
God sent Paul to the ones he sent away.
And all of the epistles that you read, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians,
Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, all of these are letters sent from
Paul to the churches that he was sent to start, and then sent
away to start other churches.
And in the book of Revelation, you have all of this coming into
a great consummation when the course of human history comes
to an end by Jesus being sent back into the world to be the
great redeemer, to be the great finish.
The theologian John Stott says, the God of the Old Testament
is a missionary God.
The Christ of the Gospels is a missionary Christ.
The Spirit in the Acts is a missionary spirit.
The church in the epistles is a missionary church.
And the book of Revelation is a missionary consummation.
So it should come as no surprise to us, church, that Acts chapter
1 verse 8 says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
There is a global God who has invited his people to be a
global going people with the message of this global God.
You were not just saved to go to heaven.
You were not just saved so that you might have inner
transformation that leads to a moral life in a world of
non-morality.
You were not just saved for heaven.
You were not just saved for morality.
Friends, you were saved to serve a global God who has always
been going and has invited you to imitate him as you go.
So I hope you're still in the book of Acts because I want to
explain something to you.
Acts chapter 1 verse 1, it says in the first book, Otheophilus,
I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.
Now Luke, the guy that wrote this, he was a doctor.
And a lot of people would say he was the smartest writer.
He used the best Greek and all the New Testament.
So you've got the smartest guy writing this and his title for
this book is action.
I don't know what else to call it.
We'll call it, they did stuff.
Let's call it go.
I'm just going to write about it.
They went.
So the book of Acts is the story of their going, of their
acting, of their movement, of their actions and their fourth
right taking of this message.
And verse 1 says what Jesus began to do and teach.
Church, if we see this, if we have eyes to see this, this is
insinuating.
This is suggesting that in the gospel of Luke, he taught what
Jesus began to do and teach.
And in the teaching of the book of Acts, it is the invitation of
the church to continue and finish the work that Jesus has
invited to do in the world.
So in Acts chapter 1 verse 1, all that Jesus began to do and
teach, you may think how is it possible to keep doing things
because Jesus has ascended now.
It's possible because the church has been invited to continue to
do and believe and live in the work of Jesus.
Acts chapter 1 verse 3, you see that the apostles, they were
listening to Jesus for 40 days, talk about the kingdom of God.
Jesus did not come to them and say, okay, for 40 days, I'm
going to teach you how to go to heaven.
He didn't say for 40 days, I'm going to tell you about heaven.
He said this, he probably reminded them of the Lord's prayer,
which was, God, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The point of Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God was
not in 40 days, we're going to go up there.
And then if you move on to Acts chapter 4, he said, wait here
and I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to you.
He doesn't say, wait here, the Holy Spirit is going to come
and take you to heaven.
So I'm not harping on this for no reason.
I'm trying to get you to believe this because if you believe
this, you'll act differently.
And in Acts chapter 1 verse 6, I think the disciples are still
a little confused because they asked this.
They say, Lord, will you restore Israel?
Are you going to use your power now?
And Jesus responds in a way that says, yeah, I'm going to give
you power.
I'm going to send power to you, but it's not going to be power
so that you can overthrow Rome.
It's going to be a power so that you can overthrow darkness.
I'm going to give you a power that you can overthrow sin.
You can overthrow sicknesses.
I'm going to give you a different kind of power under a different
kind of kingdom.
So if I could say this any clearer, I would.
This is the thing as clear as I can say it.
And if you're a note taker, here it is.
We're going to put it on the screen.
You were saved by ascending God to be sent into the world to
tell them about the God who saves.
You were saved by ascending God to be sent into the world,
back into the world to tell them about the God who saves.
God drew you in, rescued you to send you out to speak about the
rescue.
You were drawn in to be sent out.
You were not drawn in to have a personal relationship with Jesus
who personally lives in your heart with personal quiet times
and personal devotions and personal prayers and personal
everything.
This is not, okay, I'm in.
Jesus, I'll see you when I'm 70 and I die and then I'll go to
heaven.
No, no, no, this has always been about I have brought you in to
send you out as my image bearer.
I've brought you in to send you out as my witnesses.
The entire task of the church is summed up in this phrase,
you will receive power and you will be my witnesses.
And the Greek that word will is, we would use the word must.
You must receive power and you must be my witnesses.
And this word witness, we translate it to be the word martyr.
And that doesn't mean that we're going to all go die for the
faith.
That is a statement of value.
You will be my witnesses.
You will hold on to this truth, even if it costs you your life
because this truth is life.
This truth is more than life.
They can take your body, but this truth says they cannot take
your soul.
So of course we get heaven one day, but in the meantime,
we have a mission.
Of course we get to go and be with Christ because what Christ
is teaching all throughout the New Testament is that you do
not have to wait to go to heaven to get heaven.
The entire message of Jesus is that it is available now through
Christ.
They're right now in Pullman, Washington, living and breathing
in this city, doing life here.
We can experience heaven on earth because heaven is the
presence of Christ and we get Christ.
We don't have to wait.
That should stir up in us a desire fraction.
We do not have to wait, but here's the truth.
We're not simply witnesses of a religious experience.
We're not saying, hey, I've witnessed some stuff that we
should talk about you being a more moral person.
Hey, I've witnessed some stuff, so now you should stop doing
sin.
It's not clean up and then belong.
No, no, we've witnessed something that says if you start to
belong to us, you'll change.
It'll only be a matter of time, but for so long it's clean up
and then you belong.
And this message of a kingdom says, I invite you to belong
and trust me, you'll clean up because God's going to affect
your heart and He's going to change you.
So here's the definition of the kingdom of what we're
witnessing that I want to put on the screen.
It's by a guy named NT Wright and it says this, when he talks
about the kingdom and what we're witnessing, he says we are
the ones who have observed the enthronement of the world's
true Lord.
Man, what a sense.
We are the ones who have observed the enthronements of the
world's true Lord.
And now we have been charged to tell the world who this Lord
is and the glory and the consequence of the nature of
his kingdom.
This isn't walking around saying, if you died right now,
would you go to heaven or hell?
This is I have witnessed the enthronement of the true Lord
of this world.
And I'd like to tell you about that.
This is much broader.
This is worldview stuff.
This is not so much so about one little thing.
This is about everything coming into focus under this kingdom
of God.
So for the next three weeks, we're going to talk about how
this breaks down.
So I'm just trying to get you to believe that God is
ascending God who has sent you into the world.
And for the next three weeks, how this is going to work out.
If you're a note taker, there's some new normals that start
to happen when you follow the kingdom.
When you start to believe not only the gospel of the kingdom,
but the gospel that says heaven is available now.
And the first is a new normal of truth.
Right after this, when the Holy Spirit comes upon them,
Peter preaches a sermon.
It's a pretty harsh sermon, but he tells them the truth.
He says, this Jesus who you crucified, he's the Lord.
So you should repent.
You should put your faith in Jesus.
And 3,000 people believe that day.
And right after that, you read in Acts chapter two, the second
truth.
So the first is this new normal of truth based on God being
ascending God.
The second is this new normal of community.
So these men and women gathered around this truth.
They started devoting themselves to the apostles teaching.
They started devoting themselves to prayer.
And there was, you can read this in Acts chapter two.
We're going to talk about this in upcoming weeks.
There was said of them that everyone in their congregation,
no one had need in their congregation.
No one had need in their community because they were so
recklessly generous.
And if you were to teleport one of them here from Acts chapter
two and stand them on the stage and call them first century
Frank and say, hey, first century Frank, how in the world did
you guys do that?
And first century Frank says, what do you mean?
That's not that weird.
We, we of course did this.
And we start to talk to first century Frank for instance.
And he says, what, what do you mean by personal Lord and say,
what do you mean by personal?
And he doesn't understand because their community was so holistic
under this new governing of a kingdom.
So there's a new normal of truth and there's a new normal of
community that these people gave themselves to each other and
they gave themselves to teaching.
What's beautiful about this is that God has always invited
his community to image bear him.
So we have a responsibility as a church to be bearers of truth,
to be witnesses of truth, to be witnesses of community.
And lastly, we have a responsibility to be witnesses of
purpose.
And God's called the church to be the goers.
You look at Acts chapter one, God sent Christ, Christ sent the
spirit, the spirit sent the apostles.
The apostles started the churches.
There is a new purpose for this.
And God called the church to be the means by which he rescued
the world.
So here's what I mean by that.
We have an amazing responsibility of purpose in our city.
So the lostness in Pullman is not necessarily a God problem.
It's a resonate church problem.
The lostness in our state is not a God problem.
It's a local church problem.
The lostness of our country is not a God problem.
It's a pastor problem.
It's a local church issue that we've seen this enthronement of
this new Lord and we have a new normal for truth and we have a
new normal for community and a new normal of purpose.
And God has invited that and he always knew that was the plan.
God saved you to send you and that was always the strategy.
My favorite singer-songwriter who's no longer with us is a guy
named Rich Mullins.
And Rich Mullins says the scary thing about God is that he
doesn't have a plan B.
He has a plan A.
And that plan A would send Christ to the cross, living a
homeless life, vicariously dying our death, the death we
deserve.
He died that in our place, was put into the grave, showed his
power over sin and death in the resurrection, and then he
sent the church in power to tell the world.
And then he said, that's a great plan.
So you look at God and go, OK, good story.
What if that doesn't work?
He says, trust me, it's going to work.
Christ accomplished his mission.
The church has been invited to accomplish theirs.
And God looks down on us and says, trust me, it's going to work.
We have been invited to imitate our sin in God.
And this has got to be normal.
I think there's so many times we look at this and we go,
Acts chapter one was for the special people, Josh.
That whole thing is for the special people.
Like you're preaching a mission sermon.
No, no, I'm preaching a normal sermon.
You're preaching a sermon about the nations.
When are we going to do a fundraiser?
We're not.
This is just a God's sermon.
This is just normal reaction after the resurrection.
And this has been going on for years.
In 1871, there was a missionary named David Livingston.
And he spent his life in Africa telling men and women about Jesus.
And this is a true story.
But when they sent his body after he died,
when they sent his body back to Britain,
there was a request that his heart would be taken out
and buried in Africa because that's where his heart belonged.
He had given his life to these people.
And when they talked to David Livingston about sacrifice,
he scoffed at the term.
He said, don't talk to me about sacrifice.
He says, this is an honor.
Because I submit to you when a human king gives an order,
a human king gives an order.
Men gladly run to follow through on the assignment.
Yet when the high king of heaven and earth himself,
Jesus our Lord commanded us to go.
Somehow we call that sacrifice.
He says, no friends, what Jesus did is sacrifice.
What I did is simply fulfill an assignment.
What Christ did was sacrificial.
What I did is normal.
But David Livingston, that's so audacious.
He said, audacious is what Christ did.
What I'm doing is normal.
Of course I gave my life away.
Because I have been invited to honor an assignment.
How could I not honor this assignment?
This is incredibly simple for me.
There's another story.
In 1955, in September, there was a man named Nate St.
who was 31 years old, and he was a pilot.
And he and Jim Elliott and Ed McCully and Pete Fleming
and Roger Yadirian, they flew over the jungles of Ecuador.
They already lived in Ecuador.
They had their families there.
Their wives were there with them.
But they started trying to engage with this unreached people
group in Ecuador.
And they would fly over for three months.
They would put a rope and a bucket,
and they would bring gifts to the Aqa Indians.
And sometimes they would go well,
and the Aqas would put stuff back into the bucket.
And there was this great exchange of gifts and connection.
And you start to think, okay, this is starting to go well.
So in January, these five men, they decided,
we're going to actually land the plane,
and we're going to try to connect with the Aqa Indians.
So on January 3rd of 1956, they land the plane.
They set up camp.
They have their first engagement with the Aqa Indians.
And they are incredibly encouraged by it.
It went really well.
And they start to believe, okay, I'm going to tell these people
about Jesus.
It's going to be Acts 1-8 right here in 1956.
Five days after January 3rd, on Sunday, January 8th,
the entire team of men was killed when a group of Aqa Indian men
stormed the beach with spears and ran them through.
And they took all of these men's body,
and they wrapped rope around them,
and they put their Bibles in their gospel tracks,
and they tied them to them,
and they put these men in the river.
And when news went back to their wives,
who were already in Ecuador with their families,
when news went back that these men were martyred for their faith,
every single one of the wives of these men,
all five women,
went back to the Aqa Indians,
and told them, you killed our husbands, we forgive you.
And that was such a moving act
that the hard, cold hearts of these Aqa Indians,
they were incredibly intrigued now.
So all five of these women go back,
and eventually this message starts to take off,
and people start to believe,
and if you were to go now,
the most-reached people group of the Indians in Ecuador
is the Aqa Indians,
because these women went back,
and the story keeps going even further.
Nate St. had a son named Steve St.,
who was five years old when Nate St. the dad was martyred.
But because the women went back,
and other missionaries started to go back,
and tell the people,
the men that murdered the missionaries became believers.
And these families moved into the tribe with the Aqa Indians,
it just became normal for them.
And Steve St. is five years old,
and he grows up around the Aqa Indians,
and eventually this is crazy.
Steve St. starts to follow Jesus as he gets older,
and the man that killed his father, Nate St.,
is the man that baptized the son, Steve St.
Are you kidding me?
You would look at that into these women,
and you would say,
that's audacious,
and they would look back at you and say,
no, no, that's normal.
That was in the books the whole time.
We were gonna go to the Aqa Indians,
we were gonna tell them the story,
and we have a picture actually now,
this is Steve St. with the Aqa Indians now.
That's the son of martyred Nate St.
You know, Nate St.'s sister went as well,
and now Steve lives with these guys,
and he traveled for a while with the man that killed his dad,
and he would help translate,
and that guy's a preacher now,
he's saying on Christian albums,
it is a crazy, crazy story,
that if you start to talk to them about it,
they go, not really that crazy, just normal.
The audacity of that.
So friends, I need you to believe me,
because if you believe me, you'll live different.
We were not saved just to go to heaven.
We were not saved just to be moral.
We were saved by ascending God,
who sent Christ to us and rescued us,
so that we might be sent back into the world
to be bearers of this good news.
When I was 20 years old,
sitting in the back of class,
and my professor told me that,
and he started to make sense of it all for me.
It changed for me,
and I started to believe different,
and that led me to act different.
So for the last 10 years,
for the last 10 years,
I have lived and breathed under the absolute belief
that the most significant thing happening in the world today
is the planting and establishing of local churches.
I am giving my life to that mission.
That the most significant thing happening in all the world
is the planting and establishing of new churches.
That the greatest way to reach the world
is to go plant new churches in cities,
to go plant churches among the Acha Indians,
to go plant churches in Southeast Asia.
The hope of the world is in the church,
and it's always been the strategy.
Christ did His part well,
and He's inviting us to take part in the second part of this.
Listen, it does not break my heart
that everyone in Pullman is not a Christian.
It breaks my heart that everyone in Pullman
who's not a Christian knows a Christian,
and they're not telling the story
because they believe the gospel of don't,
and they believe the gospel of heaven one day.
They don't believe the gospel that rescued them and sent them.
God has invited my wife and I to reach State Street,
and He's put the weasers on Thomas Street,
and He put Drew and His brother Kyle
in the Outlook Apartments,
and He put some of you in the SIGEP house.
Some of you, there's a Greek house, Christian,
and every Christian in every Greek house.
Some of you are engineers on purpose.
God has put you there on purpose.
Many of you are in insurance.
Many of you are in the middle school.
Many of you are in the high school.
Acts chapter 17 says,
God has set the times and the places
for men and women to live and breathe and move
to tell the story of the God
who enabled us to live and breathe and move.
Are you starting to believe this?
Because if you believe it, you'll act.
I promise.
Because for the last 10 years, I've believed this.
And listen, this is not intended to make you feel guilty.
This is intended to make you feel invited.
If you feel guilty right now that it is not of the Lord,
the Lord wants you to feel invited into this.
The Lord wants you to feel encouraged into this.
The Lord wants to prompt you into this.
He wants your eyes to be open to the fact
that He strategically puts you everywhere,
all throughout this city.
Men and women are living out their lives among non-believers,
recognizing that Acts chapter 1 verse 8
absolutely applies to us.
You can't just say, I'll just give.
You can't just say, I'll just pray.
We've all been invited to go.
And this is incredibly normal.
I'm not saying you have to buy a plane ticket.
I'm not saying any of that stuff.
I'm saying you have been saved to be sent.
And you have to believe that.
Because in the end, we're going to stand before God,
and it's going to be a beautiful thing
when we get to go and be with Him forever.
But in the meantime, we have an incredible amount of work to do.
And the great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon,
says, if you have no concern for the people in your life
who do not know Jesus, then friend, I submit to you,
you do not know Jesus.
We should be concerned about this.
We should be normal for us.
It should not be guilt inducing.
It should be encouraging to you.
You should right now be thinking of men and women in your life,
and you're like, hey, maybe God's sending me to this guy.
I didn't know that before.
Okay, God, I'm starting to believe that.
What does that mean for me?
God saved some of you in this room to be church planters.
He rescued you so that you might be sent to Ellensburg.
You might be sent to Cheney.
You might be sent to Missoula.
You might be sent to give your life away anywhere that you are.
God saved you to send you, and that was always the strategy.
And if you believe that, you'll act on it.
And this is not.
Listen, if you take this sermon and you put it as number 10
on your Christian checklist, then you missed the whole point.
This isn't on the to-do list.
This is worldview.
This is the lens by which you see everything.
That God saved you to send you, and that was always the strategy.
And there's no plan B.
We're all Pullman has.
And God thinks that's really good news.
God loves it.
He goes, man, in Pullman, I got a lot of churches and resonates a part of it.
What if we believe this?
What would this mean for our region?
What would this mean for our nation if our church believes that we were saved to be sent?
I think it would mean a lot.
I think God could do incredible things if our church got on board with this.
So in response, here's all we're going to do.
We have, as we have here a lot, we have communion available.
Where we can remember the fact that Christ's body was broken and his blood was spilled so that we might be rescued.
And so as the band comes up, we're going to sing a little bit more.
But here's what I want you to think in response.
If there's feelings of guilt, I want you to quickly say,
okay, God, I repent of anything that might be bringing this guilt.
And I want you to push that aside.
And I want you to be encouraged and invited.
And I want you to ask yourself, God, who are you sending me to?
And where are you sending me next?
That's the response.
I want you to ask yourself, God, who are you sending me to?
And that should be pretty easy.
And then, God, where are you sending me next?
God, what do you want from me?
Because again, the prayer of this person, this worldview Christianity, the prayer of this is not,
okay, God, thanks for saving me.
I'll see you one day.
The prayer is thanks for saving me.
Now, take my life and let it be all for you and for your glory.
Take my life and let the glory of God be made known in everything I do.
Because in the end, when we stand with God in heaven, we will get to see His glory.
And for us to be a part of sharing that glory to the ends of the earth is the greatest ambition,
should be the greatest ambition of all of our lives.
That we want God to receive more glory.
And when people come to know Him because we're sent to them, God will receive more glory.
And that is good news.
So friends, I'm inviting you into that.
I'm inviting you to recognize that God has sent you to people.
And He's excited about sending you to people.
So maybe we get our minds around that this evening.
Lord, I pray for our church.
God, I pray that we would recognize that you've saved us to send us.
God, I pray against guilt right now.
I pray against checklist right now.
I pray against, okay, I'm going to try harder.
I pray against all that stuff.
And God, I pray that we would get our hearts and our minds around the fact that you love us to send us.
And God, it's normal.
I pray that it's just normal for us to go.
God, may we not get caught up in checklist and try harder and feel guilty.
And this is a mission sermon.
No, no, no.
God, may we just get our minds around a worldview that you've invited us to be bearers of truth,
bearers of community, and bearers of purpose, God.
And that you saved us to send us.
And that encouraged us this evening, I pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.
