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Paul says, let's worship. Good morning, everybody. Great to see you all. If you all wouldn't mind standing up and singing with us, we're gonna kinda get ourselves gathered, kinda unite our hearts and our minds and our soul. We're gonna just get in line this morning and praise God this morning that you're all here.
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Welcome. If you're visiting from out of town, we're glad you're here and we're gonna join our voices this morning. To God be the glory. 56 in your hymnal. If you wanna sing a part, if not, just belt it out with me and we'll praise God this morning.
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Amen. Good to see y'all.
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To God be the glory great things he hath done so loved he the world that he gave us his son who yielded his life and atonement for sin and open the life gate that all may go in praise the Lord praise the Lord let the earth hear his voice praise the Lord praise the Lord let the people rejoice oh come to the father through Jesus the son and give him the glory great things he has done great things he has taught us great things he has done and great are rejoicing through Jesus the son but purer and higher and greater will be our wonder our transport when Jesus we see praise the Lord praise the Lord let the earth hear his voice Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Let the people rejoice. Oh, to the father through Jesus the son and give him the glory great things he has done. Amen.
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Are you stirring? Is is your
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spirit stirring this morning? I hope so. Sanctuary is a great worship song. We're gonna slow it down a little bit and just allow God to just wake you up this morning. Spiritually, this is a great worship song and our bodies, our temples, our our temples of the Lord.
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So, that's what this song's reminding us about this morning. It's a good one.
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Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary pure and holy tried and true with thanksgiving I'll be a living sanctuary for you. You want sing that again, Judy? Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy tried and true with thanksgiving I'll be a living sanctuary for you
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lord
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prepare me to be a sanctuary pure and holy tried and true with thanksgiving I'll be a living sanctuary for you I'll be a living sanctuary for you
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Amen. Amen. Alright. Thank you, Scott. Hey, I've got a few announcements.
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We'll get right into em.
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Have a seat.
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Go ahead and have a seat. Yes, thank you. So, just first off, Carl had back surgery this week. If you don't know who Carl is, he is our associate pastor. He also does worship for the 09:00 service and we missed him this morning.
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We had a motley crew of people up here making the worship happen but if you can keep him in your prayers as he recovers from having some scar tissue cut off of herniated disc. Yes. So, he'll be recovering for the next couple of weeks and also Ray is in Georgia today. He went for a quick weekend. So, you won't be seeing seeing him this morning either.
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So, you're stuck with me and Scott and Eric's going to be speaking later but we'll get into just a few announcements here. There is nursery available downstairs for zero through five aged kids. There's also a new nursing mother's room right across from the nursery. So, if that applies to anybody in here, feel free to take advantage of those resources. Monday nights is still going on.
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06:00 in the fellowship hall, meal, music, and message and with Carl out, we have Blake speaking on Monday. So, if you want to hear Blake speak, come to Monday nights and he'll give you the good word. Right, Blake? That's right. Alright.
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We have a confirmation. Solid Rock, a few things if you got middle school or high school aged kids, a few things that are going on that we have some deadlines coming up. So, I wanted to announce somewhere. A trip to Denver. We're going go see Colorado Rockies game and then go to Elich Gardens.
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It's a theme park down there. If you know of a middle school or high school that would like to attend that, have them contact me. The deadline to sign up is next Monday. Not, I guess, a week from Monday. Is that how you'd say that?
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The July 25 so that we can make sure that we've got enough transportation. I think we've got 12 seats left. And then the cutoff for our lagoon trip is gonna be August 15. We're gonna take middle school, high schoolers down to Lagoon as well. So, just a few things to be looking forward to.
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Any of that information can obviously be found online or in the bulletin and I have a little nook corner there with all of the youth information as you walk into the fellowship hall. You can get all that over there as well. So, if you know of middle school or high school that's interested, have them contact me and then for everything else, check your bulletins. There's a bunch of things in there. So, read through those so you know what is going on but other than that, why don't we stand up?
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Let's greet one another and Scott will bring you back with music.
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Here's an old classic. This song is an old classic. I love old classics. Alright, let's sing with me if you're if you're in tune and if you're tapering off, you're you're welcoming and worship. Taper off because we're going to sing.
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We're to get back into worship. Ready?
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Rock of a. Oh, wait a minute.
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She's doing a kick off. Hold on. See? Okay. Here we go.
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Rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin a double cure. Save from wrath and make me pure. Could my tears forever flow?
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Could my zeal no longer know? These for sin could not atone. Thou must save and thou alone in my hand, no price I bring, simply to the cross I cling while I draw this fleeting breath, When my night shall close in death, when I rise to worlds unknown and behold thee on thy throne, rock of ages cleft for me let me hide myself in thee.
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She's leading us right into this classic. Amen. Y'all know this one. Let's sing it out. Uniting our hearts and our voices and our spirits together to worship our father.
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Amen? Alright. Classic here. Amazing
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grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believe through many dangers, toils, and snares. I have already come his grace hath brought me save thus far and grace will lead me home we're going up when we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun
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Well done. Well done. Have a seat. We're gonna have our frontline team come forward. We're gonna ask Bob Wales to say a prayer to bless our offering this morning if you would Bob.
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And Florian, why don't you come on up? We're gonna have some special. Okay, after that. Okay. Frontline team, come on up.
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Bob, would you mind? You want to do it from there? You want to do it from up here? Uh-huh. Alright, we're going to bless the offering now.
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Amen. Here we go.
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Our father, we're thankful for the many blessings that you have given us. We're thankful for the amazing grace that passes our understanding and that is always available. We recognize our failure before you. And in that, we also recognize your consistency and provision for us on a continual moment by moment basis. We're thankful for this, Father.
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We're thankful for the abundance that you have given us. And we thankful for this opportunity to give back a portion of that which you have so generously given to us. This we ask in Jesus precious name, Amen.
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What a privilege to be here again. Amen? I'm so blessed to be part of the First Baptist Church in Jackson Hall, Wyoming. Thank you, miss Judy, for giving me the privilege, the opportunity to serve through music. I really love I love to sing and I love to play.
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Thank God I play by ear, and then the pressure is low. The type of person that I like music, the rhythm. But this song I cannot do that because it's so great and has such a beautiful message. It says, I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus. When was reading through the song, I felt like the author of this song kind of knew me.
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I said, wow, I identified so much with this song. So I'm going to just play and sing kind of slow. And I hope you'll be blessed. And I'm sorry about my accent and I might miss out a lot of words here. I jump from verse one to verse three or something like that.
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I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus. Since I found in him a friend so strong and true, I would tell you how he changed my life completely. He did something that no other friend could do. No one ever cared for me like Jesus. There is no other friend so kind as here.
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No one else could take the scene and darkness from me. Oh, how much he cared for me. All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me. All my heart was full of misery and woe. Jesus placed his strong and lowing arms around me, and he led me in the way I ought to go.
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No one ever cared for me like Jesus. There's no other friend friend so so kind kind as as he he
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is.
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No No one one one cared ever for me Jesus. From me. There's Oh, how much he cared for me. Every day he comes to me just why he came to save me till someday I see blessed face above. No one ever cared for me like Jesus.
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There's no
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That's my Jesus. Amen. And I think when we look at this wonderful type of song and we understand what Jesus means to us, I think we have to spread that beautiful good news about him to others. Either that's at work, when we're driving. Yes, when we're driving.
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Wherever we go to present God's love. And I'm so thankful for this church because I can feel that here, I find love and kindness the one that comes from Jesus.
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Amen. Thank you, Florian.
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Thank you.
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No one else but Jesus. We are twins. Separated at birth. Well, for those of you that may not know me, my name is Eric Wachob. I'm one of the elders here at First Baptist and Ray is, as Renzi mentioned, Ray's in Georgia this weekend.
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And he's been going through the book of Romans for the last many weeks. When he comes back next week, we'll jump right back into Romans chapter eight. But this week, in his absence, we're gonna spend a Sunday looking at the book of Luke. If you're visiting First Baptist for the very first time, we're really glad you're here. Welcome.
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It's a pleasure to have you, and I'd say come back next week because the regular guy is way better than I am. But for those of you that know Ray, I'll, I'll try to throw in a couple of y'alls, maybe a grammar lesson, and you won't even notice he's gone. Also, if you're a visitor, I apologize. I'm gonna take just a a brief moment and talk about a little bit of church business. One of my other roles here at the church is the moderator, which means I'm one of the guys that's responsible for looking at the budget.
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So I wanted to draw your attention to there's a new announcement in the bulletin in the middle there. Ray, pastor Ray rarely addresses the budget or giving from the pulpit, but since I'm up here and, it kinda falls in my job description, I thought I'd I'd take a moment just to point out that our our congregational giving has not been quite what we had, had hoped that it would be when we developed the budget. So I would encourage you, to look at your personal giving if you're a regular attender. This is for this is for those of us that are here every week. Look at your giving and see if there's a way that that you can help us close that gap.
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But our purpose together this morning is to worship God. It's to learn from his word. So let's turn to to Luke chapter nine. In this chapter, we're gonna see and discuss two big ideas. Now a real preacher would probably give you three points in a sermon.
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I'm an amateur, so you only get two. The first one is we're gonna look at how Christ approached his mission, his purpose, here on Earth. And second main idea that we're gonna look at is how we, as Christians, should view our mission, our purpose on Earth. But before we do that, let's pray. Father God, we thank you for how richly you've blessed us.
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We thank you for the mercy that you bestow on us, the amazing grace that only you can give. Amen. We thank you for dying on the cross. Thank you for living a perfect life, for dying a perfect death, for raising again, showing your, your victory over the grave. Father God, I thank you that, as you were in the garden on your knees, struggling with with knowing what was coming, your death, approaching.
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Lord, I thank you that you that you continued, that you held fast to your purpose, that you moved forward knowing that you would die, knowing that you would rise again on our behalf. So we we thank you and praise you, Lord, that you are a servant and yet the most high God at the same time. Lord, I pray that that you would help us through your Holy Spirit to live out the purposes that you have for us. The live out the high calling to which you call us. I ask these things in your name.
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Amen. So I actually I wear glasses. I typically wear contacts, but, I can't see all that well, without my my contacts in or my glasses on. But I haven't always needed to wear glasses. When I was about 18 years old, freshman in college, I went down to university in a big lecture hall.
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The board was kind of a long ways away, and I I couldn't really read what the professor was writing. And, you know, I was talking to the guys next to me, and and they didn't have any problem reading Avogadro's number up there on the on the board, and so it couldn't have been that the whole state of Colorado was fuzzy. So I came home on Christmas break. I went to the eye doctor. You know, they measured your eyes and gave me a a new pair of glasses a couple days later.
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And I can remember sitting in our house in Rafter J, and I put on my new glasses, and I looked out the window at the mountains up above the highway there. And I thought, there's trees on those hills, and those those trees have branches on them. Wow. It just it just changed my whole life to be able to see clearly. A few months ago, not not long ago, I noticed I wasn't seeing quite as clearly as I'd like.
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So just a a week or so ago, I went went back to the eye doctor and turns out my prescription had changed just a little bit. I needed just kind of an adjustment there. So I got a new pair of contacts and with a slightly different prescription. I see better now today than I did just a few weeks ago. I still need my glasses to see clearly where I'm going, but it's a little better.
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And it turns out, if your mother and your father need glasses, you probably will too. This is a picture of my daughter who also just recently got glasses. Now our spiritual life lives are a lot like that. There comes a moment in everyone's life where we look around and we say, you know what? I can't see clearly.
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I can't see clearly. The the great news is the encouragement to me and I hope encouragement to you is that Jesus has healed a lot of blind people since he last walked the earth. Sometimes, when we've been walking with Christ for a while, we realize that our our perspective, our our spiritual perspective isn't as clear as it should be. It's not as clear maybe as it once was even and we need we need to in that case fix our eyes on Christ as the author of Hebrews tells us. But Luke chapter nine reveals something to us about our savior.
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Christ never needed glasses. His focus, his mission, his purpose, they were never fuzzy. He understood who he was. He understood what his mission was, and he put everything else secondary to following his father's purposes for his life. So we're gonna look at at Luke chapter nine.
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I would encourage you guys to read the whole chapter. It is a phenomenal chapter. There is some classic, great, rich sermons in there. We're gonna we're gonna look at just a few select verses out of Luke nine, and let's start with verse 18. Now it happened that as he, Jesus, was praying alone, the disciples were there with him, and he asked them, who do the crowds say that I am?
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And the disciples answered, yeah, they think you're John the Baptist. Others say, Elijah, and others that one of the prophets of old has risen. But then Jesus said to his disciples, who do you say that I am? And Peter answered, you are the Christ of God. Now, Jesus knew who he was.
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He he wasn't asking his disciples so that he could figure it out. The the context makes that abundantly clear but when Simon answers this question, he gets it right And Matthew, the book of Matthew chapter 16 gives us a little more information. It says that Jesus responded, blessed are you. And then Jesus commemorates that moment for all time by renaming Simon Peter, by renaming him Rock. The truth of that statement, you are the Christ of God, was reaffirmed to Peter for the rest of his life.
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Everyone every time someone called him Peter instead of Simon. Christ knew exactly who he was. Do you know him? Do you know who he is? Now, Christ knew who he was.
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He also knew what his mission was. Moving on in Luke verse, verses twenty one and twenty two, Jesus says, he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, the son of man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, rejected by the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day, be raised. Boy, that sounds like a triumphant king, doesn't it? But we gotta remember, what was Jesus's mission? What was his purpose?
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It was to save the world, to offer the world redemption through his death on the cross, through his resurrection, through his triumphing over death. Praise God. So then why did Jesus want it to be a secret? Was it supposed to remain a secret forever? No, definitely not.
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But the the popular idea of that day was that the Messiah would be a political savior. That he would overthrow Rome, and he would elevate the the Jewish nation. Instead, Jesus' very clear mission was to be a personal savior, was to overthrow sin, and was to elevate his chosen people, Jew and Gentile alike. We see it in Luke, Jesus notes his future suffering, spells that out for his disciples, six different times with parallel accounts in the other gospels. Luke, chapter 13 verse 31, Jesus says, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following.
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For it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. See, Jesus knew his mission in a very practical sense. He knew just exactly what he was supposed to do. He was going to Jerusalem to be killed, and then he would raise again. Skipping forward to, Luke nine verse 51.
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When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. He set his face towards his mission, set his face towards his purpose? What do you set your face towards? You know, in Jackson, we see this played out in a real practical sense. There's a lot of homes, fancy homes that are built here, They're situated to face directly towards the Grand Teton.
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In my work, we regularly survey lots for big fancy trophy home development. And when we do that, we always take a survey bearing right to the top of the grand. We mark that down and it goes on the drawing. The architect takes the drawing and designs the house and will orient that house so that wherever you are, you're looking out the window, you're looking right at the grand. As a culture here in the Teton, we set our face to the grand.
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We set our face to adventure, to the leisure, to recreation. We set it towards tourism. What do you set your face towards? Sometimes we make mistakes in how we, in where we set our face. How often do you see a tourist walking along maybe on the square, maybe driving in the park?
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You've got the Teton soaring above you, 7,000 feet above the valley floor. And this guy has his face right down here on a little four inch screen on a smartphone. What is he missing? What is he missing? We do the same thing spiritually.
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We miss we miss the grandeur of God for a small poor substitute. What do you set your face towards? Looking back here at verse 51, the verse is a really important verse. It marks a hinge point for the whole book of Luke. Kinda pivots on this at at this verse.
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From this moment on, we see Jesus move purposefully and inexorably towards the cross. In the book of Matthew chapter sixteen twenty one is a is a parallel passage. And again, Matthew gives us just a little bit more information. And there it tells us that from that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer, be killed, and on the third day be raised. And it says, that Jesus admonished Peter to set his mind on the things of God, not the things of man.
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What do you set your mind on? Now, also here, we see that Christ subordinates everything to his mission and purpose. We'll skip forward to verse 57, 58 in Luke chapter nine. As they were going along the road with his, larger group of disciples, a man said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. Wherever you go, I'm going with you, Jesus.
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But Jesus said to him, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Now, what we see here is a man who hadn't really thought through following Christ with his whole self because people are not called to an easy life with him. Now, absolutely, there is hope, there is joy in Christ but do you remember Ray's sermon last week? We are promised heartache and trial and tribulation and this particular man hadn't fully counted the cost of following with Christ. He was, perhaps overenthusiastic.
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In Jesus' response, was he whining? Was he saying, you know, this is kind of a dusty road, and it'd be really nice if somebody could get us a reservation at the Hampton Inn. No. Certainly not. But he was pointing out that nothing is more important than his mission, not home, not property, not family, not the family carpentry business.
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By extension, none of those things should be more important to us than the purposes to which God has called us. We see this illustrated a little further, stepping back a chapter in Luke. Luke chapter eight verses nineteen and twenty one. Then Jesus' mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd as as he was preaching. And he was told, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you.
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But he answered them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and who do it. For additional perspective, we can turn to, Mark chapter three verse 21, where, again, we get a little bit more to the story. And that tells us that, Jesus' family was basically staging an intervention. They were saying, you're crazy. We are going to take you away.
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That's what they were prepared to do. Because you've gone off the deep end, Jesus. I tell you what, sometimes following Jesus, we will appear to have gotten off the deep end. We see from this passage though that that Jesus ordered his life according to to to put God's mission for him first, ahead even of his family. And before we jump to conclusions based on this passage alone, it's important for us to remember, to to balance this passage with, for example, the compassion that Christ showed to his mother as he was hanging on the cross.
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So it's not the family is unimportant, but clearly, God needs to come first in our lives. Let's go back to Luke chapter nine verses 59 through, 61. To another man, Jesus said, follow me. That's a that's a that's a command. But the man said, lord, let me first go and bury my father.
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And Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. The time to follow Christ is now. It is today, in this moment. On the surface, it seems like a reasonable request.
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Hey, let me go let me go bury my father. Jesus, though, clearly knew more about the man, more about the circumstances, more about the man's heart than than we have presented here in scripture. And he called the man to follow him right then. Would you go? Would you follow him?
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Reading on, verse 61 says, yet another man said, I'll follow you, Lord, but first, let me say farewell to those at my home. Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. Now if you're plowing particularly behind an animal and, you've got your hands on the plow, but you're looking backwards, pretty soon that mule's going wherever he wants and you're just plowing in in circles here. Have you ever driven down a, a state highway or a county road in corn country? You look out the windows and of your car as you drive, and you can see the rows of corn neat and straight, and they're just whizzing by.
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And if the farmer has planted those rows nice and straight, it looks like you can see halfway down the field through each row. Few years ago, I was driving down the road with my friend, Kurt. Kurt was a farmer, And the the rows of corn were just almost a blur as we're going by. Then we came past one field, and the rows were all over. It looked like it had been planted at night in the dark by a 12 year old on his dad's tractor.
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And Kurt, who, like I said, he was a farmer, he was he was almost offended by this random field that was all crooked. And and for good reason, when it comes time to irrigate that field, to apply fertilizer and pesticide to that field, when it comes time to harvest that field, when those rows aren't straight, it makes the farmer's job much more difficult. But turning back to the passage here, again, this is same as before. It's not an unreasonable request. Let me just go say goodbye to the folks at home.
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But what Christ is doing here, sees exposing a divided heart. He's asking, with whom is your loyalty? You see, Christ demands that we put him first. And if he wasn't the almighty God of the universe, that wouldn't be just. But the fact is that Jesus did fulfill his mission.
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He died on the cross for your sins and mine. He rose from the grave showing his power over death. And for those reasons, it is both fitting and just that we put him first. So with all this talk about mission and purpose, what is your mission? What is your purpose?
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Well, there are two great mission statements for Christians in the New Testament. The first is the great commandment found in Matthew chapter 22. Jesus is speaking. He says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
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And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Second great mission statement is the great commission closes out the book of Matthew. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, the Holy Spirit. Teach them to observe all that I've commanded you.
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And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. There's another great mission statement from church history, a great answer to a great question. What is the chief end of man? It's to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Here at First Baptist Church, we're not we're not content to leave well enough alone.
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So, we say, with all we are, loving God and loving others through Christ. There are four mission statements there for you. They define a high high calling, a difficult calling, a noble calling. But there's your mission. If it wasn't on the screen here in front of you, could you define your mission and your purpose for your life?
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Jesus could. As Christians, we often struggle to keep God's purposes for our lives clearly in our vision. We need to keep checking God's eye chart, his word to ensure that we're seeing him in our lives clearly. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. We need to take up our cross.
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We need to follow him regardless of where that leads us. Let's finish our morning together with a song.
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Thanks, Eric. Let's all stand and sing. Take the name of Jesus with you. Two thirty five if you wanna grab a part in your hymnal.
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The name of Jesus with. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
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Wait if we got the wrong words up there. There they are. Okay. Don't hide back there behind your screen. Let's kick her off again.
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Take the name of Jesus with you child of sorrow and of woe it will joy than comfort give you take it then where you go precious name oh how sweet hope of earth and joy of heaven Precious name. Oh, how sweet. Hope of earth and joy of heaven. Take the name of Jesus ever as a shield from every snare if temptation round you gather breathe that holy name in prayer precious name oh how sweet hope of earth and joy of heaven precious name oh how sweet hope of earth and joy of heaven oh the precious name of Jesus how it thrills our souls with joy oh the precious name of Jesus and his songs are tongue employed thank you precious name oh how sweet Hope of earth and joy of heaven. Precious name.
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Oh, how sweet. Hope of earth and joy of heaven. At the name of Jesus bowing falling prostate at his feet kings of kings in heaven wound him when our journey is complete precious name oh how sweet hope of earth and joy of heaven precious name oh how sweet hope of earth and joy of heaven
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let's bow our heads. Heavenly father, we want to thank you for drawing us near to you today for Eric and his willingness to share from the word today. May the teaching penetrate our lives and our hearts and make us mindful of your presence in our life and father, help us lead us as we follow you and make you the priority of our life and your will for our lives. Make it ever present on our minds. Teach us to love one another as we learn to love you more each day.
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Heavenly father, we are blessed to be in your presence today and fill us this week as we go. Bless those that are here visiting as they go and Lord God, we thank you in Jesus name. Amen.
