The Lamp, The Seed & The Kingdom

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. Following the scripture reading from Pastor Greg Taylor, Pastor Thomas Terry will deliver his message entitled, The Lamp, the Seed, and the Kingdom. This message is part of our ongoing series at Trinity called Follow the Son, which is teaching through the Gospel of Mark. Thanks for joining us. Here’s Greg. If you have a Bible, please open up to Mark chapter 4. I’m going to read from verses 21 through 34.

He said to them, Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. And he said to them, Pay attention to what you hear. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.

— Mark 4

(ESV)

For to the one who has, more will be given. And from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And he said, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come. And he said, With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts

out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. With many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. In fifth grade at the elementary school that I attended, every other Thursday immediately following lunch there was this event called Religious Release. Now this was a public school, but for whatever reason, Religious Release was for any student to attend. It was optional. For those students who were religiously inclined, they would get excused from class to go to this kind of class on wheels parked outside where they would talk about religion. Well in fifth grade, I had no interest in religion. I wasn’t raised in a Christian home.

Seeds of Faith

In fact, I didn’t care about much of anything in fifth grade except for Nikki Schafer, who was my fifth grade crush. Yep, I had a crush every year. It just so happened that Nikki Schafer attended Religious Release on Thursdays. So I decided that I would begin attending Religious Release so that I could learn about religion. Now I don’t remember much about my time in Religious Release except for the fact that the teachers were very nice and they talked a lot about Jesus. I didn’t quite understand much, but I do remember this one time they gave me this little orange Bible and at the time I thought that was pretty cool. Then there was this one time when I was 12 years old as I was walking through the park on my way home from 7-Eleven, there was a sea of kids that swarmed around me like

bees with these little pamphlets in their hand. This one kid approached me and asked me if I was born again. And I remember thinking to myself, what are you crazy? Who could be born again? You can’t be born twice. So he proceeded to tell me that because of my sin I was going to hell unless I became born again. So I took his pamphlet and I thought to myself, this kid is absolutely crazy. And then I just headed home and finished my Slurpee. Then there was this one time I was invited, in high school I was invited to my friend’s church youth group. Now I’ve never been to a youth group, but my friend told me that there was going to be games, grub, and girls. So I went. Now I don’t remember much about that night except for this one thing.

We were in a classroom and there was this massive cross on the youth group floor. And a youth pastor handed out these little 2x2 inch pieces of paper and push pins. And he asked us to write down all of the bad things we had done on these papers. And I remember thinking to myself, on this little paper? I’m going to need like 300 more pieces of paper. But whatever. So after we had written down all the dirt that we did, the pastor instructed us to take the paper and pin it to the cross so that the pieces of paper were touching each other. And then the youth pastor, like some magician, came along and he lit the bottom of the paper and poof, all the paper just immediately like lit up. And I thought to myself, two things, this seems like a fire hazard.

And then the second thing is that how did this paper burn up so quickly? It’s just, you know, most paper burns slowly. Well, I would later find out that it was flash paper, which is paper that has burning powder in it. And then finally, there was this time when my mother’s close friend, Elaine, invited me on a picnic to share the good news of the gospel with me. And when she shared it with me, it was the first time that it made sense, where my ears were open to the truth. Jesus died for my sins to bring me into this right relationship with him. And it was that day when I began to trust in Jesus and follow him as my Lord and Savior. What is sometimes confusing for me on this side of God’s grace is who was it that sowed the seed? It seemed on the surface that it was Elaine who worked the seed into the soil of my heart,

but maybe it was the nice teachers in religious release who cared so deeply about engaging kids in elementary school that they offered the message of Jesus freely. Maybe it was the crazy kid in the park who was bold enough to tell me that I needed to be born again to be saved from my sin or I was going to hell. Maybe it was the awkward youth pastor who tried so desperately to somehow illustrate the beauty of the great exchange, all of my sin on the cross as Jesus died in my place. The truth be told, I’ll never know on this side of eternity who it was, humanly speaking, that planted the first seed into my heart. Maybe it was a community effort, but whatever it may be, I’m eternally grateful for the seed that was sown in my life, whoever it was. And while I’m grateful for whoever planted the seed, I’m even more grateful that the

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The Light Revealed

growth of the seed was not dependent upon me, that the growth of that seed was not dependent on the person who originally sowed it because none of those people are in my life anymore. I don’t know where I would be today if the growth was dependent on me. Without the growth and the maturity being entirely dependent upon God himself, I would be doomed. And this reality of the seed being sowed, being solely dependent upon Jesus for growth is actually what we see in our text this morning. Through the art of illustration and parable, we actually begin to see this beautiful picture of what the kingdom of God is like. And not just what it’s like, but how it works, how the seed is sown, how it spreads, how it grows, and how it matures. And so this parable this morning and last week’s parable in many ways are connected.

The agriculture motif tethers together this week’s text and last week’s text. Last week we saw that the seed that is sown is the word of God, and as it’s sown or as it’s preached indiscriminately, it lands on the various soils of the heart, and the condition of the soil determines the fruit. God’s word, when preached correctly, providentially lands on hearts that have been conditioned by God to receive it. It sovereignly lands on hearts that have been prepared to receive it. And this week what we’ll see is how the seed that sovereignly finds its way into good soil supernaturally grows. It doesn’t grow by the work or the hands of the farmer or by the wisdom of other people or even by the environment in which the seed grows, but by the work of God himself. This morning we will see how God is not only responsible for conditioning the human heart,

making it ready to receive, but how God is in every way responsible for the growth, the maturity, the protection, the preservation, and the fruit of that conditioned heart. It’s not just that the seed happened to land on some amazing soil that causes it to grow, but that God is intricately involved and ultimately responsible for the entire growth process. He is the cultivator of the heart. He is the developer and protector of the plant, and he is the producer of the fruit, which means that providentially God is the ends and the means, and he is everything in between. And one of the means that God uses to continue advancing his kingdom is the very people whose hearts have been conditioned to respond to God’s word. Those who have been given eyes and ears to hear and to see the light of God’s word. Those would be the people who would shine the light in the darkness so that others might

come to see the beauty of the light as God conditions their heart to receive it. And so in verse 21, Jesus begins with this illustration of a lamp to show that the purpose of the lamp is created to bring the light that shines in darkness. Verse 21, and he said to them, is the lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand? Here Jesus gives us these two rhetorical questions concerning the lamp. And just to be clear, Jesus in this verse is speaking directly to his disciples. He’s addressing the insiders, those who have been given spiritual insight. So Jesus begins with two rhetorical questions, one negative, one positive, and it’s couched in one sentence. Now the original language structures these rhetorical questions a bit differently, and I think it’s important for us and it’s helpful for us to understand the original structure

so that we get the most out of it. The Greek structures these questions like this, does the lamp come in order that it might be placed under a basket or under a bed? Does not the lamp come to be placed on a lamp stand? So this might sound a bit overly technical, but what it actually cues us to is the fact that the lamp is not an object, but a person. The fact that the original language uses the definite article, the lamp, and the fact that the original language uses comes into, rather than brought into, points to the fact that it’s a person. Because an object is brought into a room, whereas a person comes into a room. And we know that the person Jesus is making reference to is himself. Because John 1, 5, speaking about the person of Jesus says, the light shines in the darkness

and the darkness has not overcome it. John 8, 12, Jesus himself says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. So Jesus is not speaking of some ordinary lamp or some axiom of impersonal truth that brings illumination or intelligence into a dark room. He’s speaking of himself as the light. Jesus is the lamp of God who brings both light in the darkness and the revelation of God to his people. So the question is asked, does Jesus come into a dark place to be hidden away, or does he come into the dark place to shine, to reveal, and to illuminate? The question carries the same rhetorical tone that we heard a few months ago when Jesus was talking about a patch, a new patch being put on old garments, or new wine in old wineskins.

It’s the same type of rhetorical question, but with a different picture. Just as Jesus cannot be a patch on an old garment and cannot be poured into old wineskins, neither can Jesus, the light of the world, be hid under a bed or a basket. It would be ridiculous to do that. It would make no sense to hide light in a dark room where it’s so desperately needed. And of course, the reason why Jesus gives them this image of a lamp in a dark room, the reason he gives it to his disciples is because, remember, his disciples have just heard from Jesus about concealing and hiding the truth of the kingdom of God, specifically from the religious leaders, from the outsiders. Jesus, in his concealing of the truth, was pronouncing judgment on these religious leaders because of the hardness of their heart, because they made accusations against him that he

was somehow in collusion with Satan, and because they were plotting to kill him. So Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to get the wrong idea. Jesus in many ways is training these men and women to do the work of ministry, and he wants them to know, my ministry of the kingdom is not about hiding the truth, but about revealing the truth. Yes, Jesus sometimes conceals the truth because he uniquely can read the human heart, and he uses the hard heart of these religious leaders for his divine purposes. The job of Jesus is to conceal the truth if and when he deems it appropriately, and if it fulfills his divine purposes. But the job of his disciples, the followers of Jesus, you and me, is to reveal the truth. Jesus has moved these men and women into personal evangelism 101. The light that shines, it’s a reference to personal evangelism.

He’s instructing them, your burden, your job, is to shine the light of Jesus into this dark world. That’s my mission for you. He says in verse 22, for nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. And the point Jesus makes here is that the very reason something is hidden in the first place is so that it might be revealed or found at the right time. This is an axiom that everyone in this culture would have understood, and it’s not too far from our cultural understanding. We see this all the time during Christmas or birthdays, when we take a gift and we wrap it up to conceal it so that it’s hidden for a moment. But when the time is right on Christmas morning, or maybe it’s Christmas Eve for your family, on your birthday morning, the gift that is concealed in wrapping paper will be revealed

to the person who opens it. The very fact that it was concealed was so that it might be revealed at the right time. And of course, this is what Jesus is getting at here. Right now, the truth of his message and his mission, the truth concerning his kingdom is not universally known to everyone and is somewhat concealed, but it’s being revealed. It will be revealed to those who are open to the kingdom of God, better stated to those who are opened to the kingdom of God through the shining of the light. And then again, in verse 23, Jesus says, if anyone has ears to hear, let them hear. We heard this last week, again, Jesus reiterates that the revealing of the kingdom of God is determined by God. The disciples job is to shine the light, but it is God who unlocks the human heart.

You Get What You Give

Again, you see God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. And in verses 24 and 25, he gives us this framework to help us understand how God’s sovereignty and human responsibility works in the sphere of personal evangelism. So in verse 24, and he said to them, pay attention to what you hear with a measure you use. It will be measured to you and still more will be added to you for to the one who has more will be given. And from the one who has not even what he has will be taken away. Here Jesus is essentially saying, you get back what you give, you get back what you give. And this is a principle that we see in other parts of scripture. In Matthew seven, we see this principle negatively in terms of judging other people. Hypocritically, Matthew seven says, judge not that you be not judged for with the judgment

you pronounced, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So this is what Jesus is getting at here. To the degree that you give your ear to the message is to the degree that you will get back from it. He’s telling his disciples, yes, God opens the hearts of people, but they are responsible to give their ears to the message. If they give their ear to it, they will get back the truth in equal measure. But Jesus goes beyond this equal measure principle, this even exchange, because he wants to accentuate the reality of God’s generosity. God is overwhelmingly generous to those who hear and respond to the word of God, to those who take it in, to those whose hearts are soft towards the word, they will receive not only what they invested in terms of hearing the truth, but they will receive far more

than what they expected. This is God’s generosity. If we would incline our ears to his word, it will bless us back in abundance. It gives us not just the truth concerning the kingdom of God and our salvation, though that would be sufficient and good. It also gives us wisdom, discernment, peace, comfort, hope, encouragement, and direction. God’s word saves, but it also blesses us and prospers us and causes us to grow. But the opposite is also true. For those who do not listen, who do not respond to the word of God, whatever they thought they had in terms of their spiritual perspective, they will lose it. And of course, to get the full scope of this statement, you only have to look back at what we talked about last week with a parable of the sower, the seed, and the soil. For those who have good soil, who give their ear to it, the harvest that is produced is

not equal measure of what is sown. It’s not a few seeds and then a few pieces of harvest. We saw it. It’s actually a few pieces of seed and then the harvest is 30, 60, 100 fold. This is the generosity of God’s word grown in good soil. But for those who have poor soil, failed soil, they will not produce any fruit. The seed that landed on hard, shallow, or dangerous soil, that harvest will be a complete loss. They will get back nothing in terms of what they invested. They will not get back anything. And the point here is that you must give yourself entirely to God’s word. And if you do, you will get back from it entirely. It means that if you are consistently and carefully listening and responding to the word, you will get back lasting fruit and overwhelming abundance. But if you do not give yourself to God’s word entirely, if you are not consistently

and carefully listening and responding, you will forfeit what you thought you understood about the kingdom of God. Now why does Jesus break this down to his disciples? Why the detour about God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? I thought he was talking about personal evangelism because his disciples need to know precisely how people will respond to their evangelistic efforts. They need to be able to say with a clear conscience, with complete confidence to everyone they preach to, you must listen to God’s word. You must respond to God’s word. Yes, God opens up your heart to receive it, but you are still responsible to listen and respond to it. You see, if it was only God’s sovereignty and no human responsibility, then there would be no reason to shine the light of the gospel in dark places. This is one of those things that I can’t stand about some reform circles, not all, but some.

They are so consumed with God’s sovereignty that they fail to practice any personal evangelism. They functionally believe that if a person is on the list, well, then they’ll get the memo. The problem is they’re never in the business of sending memos, so they get the theology right when it comes to God’s sovereignty, but they miss the theology of human responsibility and they miss God’s command for the great commission. And of course, the opposite is also true. If it was only human responsibility and not God’s sovereignty, what a soul-crushing, burden-inducing, hopeless and dreadful effort. What a horrible experience to feel, like you’re on your own when it comes to evangelism. How scary would that be? This is why I embrace reformed theology, because when you have a right view of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, it will not only motivate you to be aggressive with God’s command

to make disciples, but it also gives you the assurance and peace that comes from knowing that God is with you as you evangelize, that he will be doing the work for you, that he will be working through you and in you, in the hearts of his people. His disciples need to know, and you need to know. You’re going to shine the light of the gospel into dark places, and to the degree that people give their life to this message is to the degree that people will have eternal life and the abundant life. But to the degree that people reject God’s word is to the degree that they will be rejected by God. And that’s a lot of weight to bear for these disciples. That’s a lot of weight for you and I to bear. We shine the light of the gospel in dark places, and their response to what we say about the

gospel determines either eternal life or eternal death. Some hear this and immediately start to freak out. They start to question whether our presentation of the gospel is good enough or effective enough. Can we give them the words of eternal life, or does our ineffectiveness of our presentation of the gospel lead them to eternal judgment? If what I say determines how people respond to it, what if I’m not clear enough? What if I don’t know my Bible well enough? What if I leave out some important details? What if I’m too anxious and scared and I freeze up? Will my efforts to shine the light ultimately lead them down a dark path? Will I be more hurtful than helpful? Those feelings can feel overwhelming and potentially cause for you to not engage in the work of personal evangelism out of fear for failing. You might bail out because you feel like you failed before you even start.

The Supernatural Grower

But listen, God understands those feelings. He understands it, which is precisely why he gives us this verse 26 through 29. He gives us this picture of the sower and the certainty of the grower to help us see that it’s not about you. It’s not about you. The responsibility to bring the growth lies entirely with Jesus. Verse 26 and 27, and he said, the kingdom of God is if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not how. Here Jesus again tethers together the parable of the sower and this parable of the grower. And this gives us a beautiful picture for understanding how evangelism works. Our job as Christians is simply to sow the seed. We sow the seed, but the job of Jesus is to grow the seed. And you see, this takes away all the pressure of performing evangelism perfectly.

It takes away all the stress of having all the right answers. It takes away the stress of feeling like the fate of those you share Jesus with lies completely in your court. It doesn’t. The fruit or the lack of fruit is not dependent upon you. And the work of evangelism is in every way a supernatural work. It’s mysterious and paradoxical. The work that uses humans to share the gospel is also the work that grows people in the gospel, independent of the humans that shared the message to begin with. This means that the fruit of the gospel is not owing to us, but to God. And this is one of the greatest comforts for you. This is one of the greatest instruments of humility for you. In an age of church growth strategies and ministry formulas, this is our greatest comfort that the church is not built off of our strategies, our formulas, our pragmatics, celebrity culture,

or human wisdom. The church grows by the power of God alone. And this is a great humiliator because no amount of skill can unlock the human heart. Your giftedness, your knowledge of the scriptures, your ability to contextualize your communication style, your understanding of culture or philosophy, and even your relatability isn’t what brings people to Jesus. It’s Jesus who brings people to Jesus. It’s a supernatural work of God alone. Romans 1 16 tells us that the gospel is the power of God for salvation for all who believe. So we ought not be ashamed. We ought not be ashamed of your inabilities, your lack of communication skill, your social anxiety, because God’s work of saving people and maturing people is owing all to the power of God. You simply speak the gospel. And it’s not just the conversion process that God is responsible for. It’s also the sanctification and preserving process, which simply means spiritual maturity

and sustaining work of God. Look here at verse 28 and 29. The earth produces by itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once, he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come. The process of the Lord’s work is from start to finish. This means that Jesus will complete what he started. Now think about that for a moment. He will finish what he started in you. You are not on your own for your spiritual growth. You’re not. He’ll finish what he started. This is what’s called the preservation of the saints. If you are his, if you are truly his, he is faithful to finish what he started through you. Jesus gives us this parable so that we can know the mechanics of how the kingdom of God works, how it works itself out in the lives of people, how the seed grows and who grows

it. We sow the seed of the message. We shine the light of Jesus into the world. We simply tell people the truth of the gospel. God opens up the hearts. God draws them in. God saves them. God matures them. God keeps them and God carries them to completion. What a marvelous and comfortable place to sit in. How comforting is this for you? This is so encouraging as you bring the light of the gospel to bear on your friends, your coworkers, your extended family and your children. This is one of my greatest comforts in life. And parents, this should be your great comfort and a great relief to you to know that your responsibility is only for sowing the seed with your children. Your job is to shine the light of the gospel in your home. That’s all you can do. There isn’t a formula to make your kids followers.

It’s God who saves. It’s God who ultimately grows the seed. It’s God who brings the maturity and parents, we should pray to that end. We should pray to that end. God, please supernaturally intervene and save our kids. Save our kids. Keep them from having hard hearts. Keep them from having a shallow view of you and your word. Keep them from the love of money and the love of the world. And keep us daily dependent on you. Keep us begging you to sow the seed and to shine the light that is fruitful and attractive with our kids. And most importantly, keep us from hypocrisy. Help us to model our own desperate need for the gospel. And listen, you might be here this morning and you don’t have kids. You don’t care to have kids and that’s fine. But as a part of this covenant community, you are responsible to pray for our kids.

Small Seed, Great Kingdom

You pray that God would supernaturally intervene and save our kids. And then finally, Jesus gives this parable of the mustard seed in verses 30 through 34 to paint this picture of the smallest seed and the greatest kingdom. Verses 30 and 34. And he said to them, what can we compare the kingdom of God? Or what parable shall we use for it? It’s like a grain of a mustard seed, which when it’s sown on the ground is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. The mustard seed is roughly about the size of a grain of sand. Now the mustard seed is not really the smallest seed on the earth. There are lots of other seeds that are smaller than a mustard seed.

But in a Palestinian culture, the mustard seed was universally understood as a reference to smallness. So Jesus is not teaching a class on botany or giving us some scientific study of seeds where he’s misleading us about the size of seeds. He’s using proverbial language that his Palestinian audience would easily recognize. See, the truth be told, through the eyes of a first century Palestinian culture, the mustard seed would have seemed like the smallest seed in the world. And what’s perfect about this mustard seed, the thing that’s unique about the mustard seed from all other small seeds, is that when it grows, it becomes massive. It’s brilliant, Jesus’s illustration here. It grows, this seed grows almost tree-like, sometimes taller than 10 feet. So it sits far above all the other garden plants in the garden. And the image here is that it’s much higher than everything else.

It’s so high that even birds that fly in the air can make their nests in their branches and still receive shade from the branches above. You start to get this image that Jesus is painting here. The kingdom of God in its inception seems small and insignificant. It begins with Jesus condescending, coming as a baby in a very humble state. He takes on human flesh. God takes on human flesh. Everything about his kingdom seems small and unimpressive. Even the people God chooses to spread his kingdom are the types of people that other kings and other kingdoms would not choose. The types of people he chooses are unimpressive. They’re fishermen, they’re social outcasts, they’re tax collectors. He doesn’t choose the elite or the sophisticated. He doesn’t choose the scribes, the very smart ones, or the politicians to advance his kingdom. His kingdom begins small and seemingly insignificant, but grows to be the greatest kingdom the world

has ever known, a kingdom that is greater than all other earthly kingdoms. And you see this perceived smallness of the kingdom is precisely what the Pharisees and scribes didn’t get about him. This is why they were antagonistic towards him. This is what kept them outsiders, because their perception of the Messiah would be a great king, a conquering king who would overthrow the Roman government. But in their spiritual blindness, they completely missed that this king is a great king, that he is a great God who would make himself small in every way to conquer the world’s greatest enemies, to conquer the world’s greatest threat to human flourishing, and that is the seed of sin that sits in your heart. Jesus emptied himself. He made himself small so that he might come and die for our sins, to bring us into this great kingdom, this everlasting kingdom.

And you see how wonderful this is, what a great comfort this is when you think about personal evangelism, that God is in the business of using small and seemingly insignificant people, sinners who have been saved by Jesus, to spread the light of the gospel, to sow the seeds of Jesus and his word so that others might believe and be added to this everlasting kingdom. The very principle of Jesus’s ministry reveals that we don’t have to be great to be effective in his ministry, that God is in the business of using small things to make amazing things happen, that God chooses people like you and me, small and insignificant, to spread the message of the gospel, to shine the light of Jesus into the dark world while trusting and knowing with full certainty that Jesus will do the supernatural work of opening up the hearts of his people.

He does the saving, he does the growing, he does the maturing and the preserving. And this is the right perspective to have when thinking about evangelism. In your weakness, in your frailty, in your smallness, God powerfully and supernaturally works to save and to grow, which means you just got to speak, you just got to shine the light and let God supernaturally work to save and grow. Now some will respond, some will reject it because of their hard hearts. Determining which ones will receive and which ones will reject it is not your business. It’s not. It’s God’s. Your preoccupation is to preach and to shine the light. Jesus preached the same message, his followers heard it, the religious leaders rejected it. And even when the message was rejected, he still used it to bring about his divine purposes. And he still does the same thing today.

And this is why in verses 33 and 34 we see this. With many such parables, he spoke the word to them and they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples, he explained everything. Jesus spoke in parable for two reasons, to keep the kingdom pressing forward through the opposition of those who would reject the message and to keep the kingdom pressing forward through his followers who would receive his message. This is how God works. God speaks in parables to conceal certain kingdom realities from outsiders for his purposes, but to his followers, he explains the truth concerning these kingdom realities. And this means that if you are his, you will hear it. And if you hear it, you must respond to it. This is why Jesus spoke in parables. Now I want to close this morning by addressing some of you here this morning who are not

followers of Jesus. And I’d like to reiterate this truth that was spoken early this morning. You get back what you give. You get back what you give. If you are here this morning and you are not a Christian, I want to encourage you, give your life to Jesus. Give your sin to Jesus. Give your trust to Jesus. You do that and he will give you back life more than what you could possibly know or imagine. And not in the superficial or material ways, but in the most significant and meaningful ways. If you would give your life to Jesus, he will give you back life, but he will give you back eternal life, peace with God and the forgiveness of sins. Listen, there is no other way for you to have eternal life. There is no other way for you to have peace with God and the forgiveness of your sins.

Those are uniquely and exclusively found in Jesus Christ. And you can take him by faith this morning, right where you are. Right now, you can give your life to Jesus in the quietness of your heart. Ask God to help you believe. Ask God to forgive you of your sins. Ask God to save you. Ask God to be your God. And I’m confident, I have every certainty that if you ask him to save you, he will meet you in the same way he met me and in the same way he met most of these Christians in this room this morning. Ask him to save you and he will do it. He’s in the business of doing it. He’s in the business of unlocking hearts. If you hear his message this morning, respond to him. And if you want to follow Jesus, if you want to be a Christian, then please, I would encourage

you come and speak with any one of the pastors that you’ve seen up here this morning. We want to help you to follow Jesus. We want to help you give some perspective to what it looks like to be a Christian in this world. We want to help you flourish as a Christian. So please don’t leave this morning without coming and speaking to one of us. If you have ears this morning to hear, please listen and respond to him calling you. He’s beckoning you this morning. Embrace him by faith. Let’s pray. Lord, we are so thankful for the seed that is sown, that you use people to spread the message of the gospel, to sow the seed of the gospel, and that you use people to shine the light of the gospel. And it is so comforting to rest in the fact that you do all the work so that we don’t

have to be smart enough. We don’t have to be talented enough. We don’t have to be gifted enough to unlock the mysteries. All we have to do is rest our complete dependence upon you and you reveal your truth to us. And so Father, I pray that you would continue to grow us, that you would continue to mature us, that you would continue to cause us to be fruitful for your kingdom. And God, I pray that you would mobilize us to be busy with the business of evangelism, that you would put the burden in our heart to go and to sow seed and to shine the light in this dark city. And I pray, God, that as we shine the light in this city, that you will meet us, that you will attend our efforts, that you will do all the heavy lifting and all the supernatural

work so that others might come to trust you, love you, follow you, and obey you. And I pray, God, that we rest our confidence in you. Help us to be bold because the outcome is not dependent upon us. Help us to not be fixed on our methods and our strategies and our formulas, but help us to be wholly dependent upon you. And Father, I do pray for those here this morning who do not know you. I pray, God, that you would open up their ears, that today would be the day that they come to trust you and follow you, that today would be the day that they understand what you are calling them to. Open up their eyes and ears to see you and the beauty of your gospel. And we pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon.

If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.