Now that you are comfortable and situated, Im going to make you stand. Lets stand together and open our Bibles up to Luke 4. Pastor Jerry left off with Verse 30. Were going to read Verses 18-19, and then well jump over to Verse 31 and read through the end of the chapter and talk about it. As you recall, Jesus is in His hometown and He is reading His purpose statement, Here is what Im going to be about. Here is what I was sent to do. Here is what I have been anointed to accomplish. Then were going to read in the subsequent verses that He starts right off the bat, right from the get-go to live out the purposes for which He was sent. He begins by reading in the synagogue the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and says [in Luke 4:18, page 1018 of pew Bibles], The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lords favor. Understand as Jesus says those words, He means those in the literal, but also the spiritual, sense. Not only is He going to free blind eyes to see, but blind minds to understand truth. Hes going to release the oppressed: those who are possessed, those who are sick, those who are in bondage to sin. He is going to set them free. What Jesus is saying, in essence, is My ministry is people, and I have come to minister, to set people free, to love people. Ive not come to conquer Rome. Ive not come to establish an earthly throne. I have come to minister and love people and set them free. Verse 31, Jesus begins His earthly ministry with a bang, and notice everything He does-from teaching to deliverance to healing-is all a part of the mission that He declared when He declared the prophesy of Isaiah to be fulfilled in His coming. Verse 31, Then He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath began to teach the people. They were amazed at His teaching, because His message had authority. In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are-the Holy One of God! Be quiet! Jesus said sternly. Come out of him! Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him. All the people were amazed and said to each other, What is this teaching? With authority and power He gives orders to evil spirits and they come out! And the news about Him spread throughout the surrounding area. Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon… (or Peter) Now Simons mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. So He bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them. When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying His hands on each one, He healed them. Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, You are the Son of God! But He rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew He was the Christ. At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for Him and when they came to where He was, they tried to keep Him from leaving them. But He said, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent. And He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. Well stop right there and minister, so go ahead and have a seat. Years ago, I watched a movie called City Slickers. Did you see that movie with Billy Crystal? He and his friends are going through a mid-life crisis, similar to the gentleman we watched in the video. They figure a little trip outdoors is going to help, so their leader is a man named Curly who is played by Big Jack Palance. They head out on their horses to find themselves out in the wilderness having one of those chats around the campfire conversations, talking about the meaning of life. Getting very philosophical, Jack Palance raises his big old hand, and he says, Life is about this, and he holds up a finger. Billy Crystal goes, What? About your finger? He says, No, no, no. He said, Life is about one thing. Billy Crystal goes, Yes! But whats that one thing? He says, Thats for you to find out. Thats for you to find out. Jesus, it says in Verse 18, was anointed for the purpose of His life. Well, we have been given gifts as well. We have been given purpose by God. We have a one-thing. We have a giftedness. We have a contribution to make to the world. Theres a reason why God put us here. If you have not found that out, you need to. God will show that to you. If you can identify with the man sitting at the church bench, saying, You know what? There has to be something more to life than this. Maybe just the routine of life: we work so we can get money so we can buy food so we can continue to work and live. Sometimes through the monotony and mundane routine of life, we start to ask ourselves, Is this all there is? Its like the story I heard of the lark and the canary. Im not sure if this is a true story or not, but, apparently, a lark came and started talking to the canary. She came down to the window and saw the canary in the cage. He said, Hey, what are you doing? The canary said, Im singing. The lark said, Why are you singing? He said, When I sing, they give me food. The lark said, Why do you need food? He said, Well, when I have food, Im strong. The lark said, Why do you need to be strong? The canary said, I need to be strong so I can sing. The lark said, Oh, I get it, so that you can get more food, right? He said, Right. Even the canary began to recognize the boringness of his life. He said, You know theres something more to life. You could be flying over trees. You could be flying up near the clouds and enjoying the adventure of life. The canary said, How do I do that? He said, The first thing you have to do is you have to get out of your cage. That could be a threatening thing to people sometimes. Sometimes we like our cage, our boring cage where everything is the same. Life is always the same, but we know our rut. We sing. We eat. We get stronger, and we sing, but maybe God is calling some of us to step out of our cages, to step out of our comfort zone. Sometimes we dont. We are afraid. I was walking at The Athletic Club this week and saw a poster that had a basketball on a court and said, You miss 100 percent of the shots you dont take. I read that, and Ive read it before, but I really thought about it this time. I said, No, you dont. Thats not true. If I didnt take a shot, how can I miss it? You cant miss a shot you dont take. I understand the gist of the poster. Its saying, Dont be so afraid that youre going to miss a shot that you dont take. Dont be so afraid to miss that you dont take a shot. Sometimes fear keeps us from doing what God has called us to do. Sometimes other good things distract us from what God has called us to do. Maybe theyre good, but maybe theyre not the best that God has called to you. Until were doing what God has created us to do, there will be restlessness inside. There will be a question inside that says, Is this all there is? Should I be doing something more? Should I be doing something different? Even if were doing something good and right, if its not Gods best, that restlessness will be there. If its God, it wont go away until you act on it. I can remember being hesitant. I grappled with the decision to leave Rockford long before I told my wife. The big nagging fear was what if nobody comes? What if we never have our own church? What if we never have a staff? What if we just fall miserably flat on our face? How embarrassing that will be to come back home with our tales between our legs and say, We failed'? Failure is not an embarrassment. I have learned from every failure Ive had. Some of the best lessons Ive learned are from my failures. When it came down to it, I said, You know what? Id rather try and fail than to spend my whole life wondering what would have happened if I had tried. President Roosevelt gave this speech in Chicago. Theres a certain portion of that speech Id like to read for you this morning. He said, Its not the critic who counts. Its not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. Do you have any of those critics in your life? Sure you do. They will always be there to tell you how you could do things differently or you should have done things better, to second guess you. Its part of life. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error… Thats important to know. …and shortcoming…who does actually try to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails daring greatly. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the great twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. We dont want to be one of them. If you are, you can change. Jesus began His ministry right off the get-go because He knew exactly what His purpose was. He knew what His destination was. If you know your destination, if you know where youre going and you have a map to get there, you dont have to meander. You dont have to wander. You dont have to waste time; you can go right to your destination. Jesus does that. Jesus moves with purpose. At every stop and every point, His mission is accomplished. Gods purposes are lived out through His life, but you have to get out of the cage. Find out what it is, and pursue it and keep pursuing it until the mission is accomplished. There will be signs along the way. Notice that everywhere Jesus went, when He prayed, there was a sign that followed. When He spoke, there was a sign that followed. Lives were changed. When you are doing Gods will, there will be signs along the way. Some of those signs will be internal signs. Some of those signs will be an inner-confirmation that says, This is what God wants me to do. This is what Ive been created to do. Its the counterpart of not doing something and having a restlessness that says, I should be doing something. When Im doing the will of God, even if Im preparing to do something that hasnt happened yet, Ill feel a sense of Gods confirmation, an inner sign. Then there will be outer signs where doing Gods will, what we do, will edify. It will produce results. If you say, I think God has called me to be a leader, and you look around behind you, and nobody is following you, theres a problem. If you think God has called you to sing, and when you sing, people start doing this (plugging their ears), theres a problem. There will be an outer confirmation that you are on the right path. People will affirm, This is what you should be doing or you need to do more of this or thank you. That really ministered or blessed me. Sometimes there are supernatural confirmations that were on the right path, things that only God can do. I could share a bunch of them with you. One of them was last week. We do a ministry in Monterey, and my wife was going to pick up some children. One of the children said, Hey, weve got some cousins that want to come with us. Do you think theyll go? So Brenda said, Well, well ask. So she took the church van over there. She was thinking to herself, How am I going to get this mom to send these three children with this stranger to go in this van? Who is going to do that? Who just sends their children off with someone theyve never met before and says, Yeah, sure. Go to the 12-Step building with my children. Shes coming up the sidewalk, and another woman meets her. Shes bringing formula. She says, Hi! Hi! Im just bringing formula. They are in need of some formula, so Im making an emergency, spontaneous unplanned stop here. Brenda said, Well, our church has a ministry in this neighborhood every Sunday, so Im here to try to pick up the children. She said, Well, I know. We go to the same church, Faith Community. I go to Faith Community too. So when they get to the door, the lady of the house knows the formula lady from our church. She thinks shes wonderful and great. Shes happy to see her. So when she finds out Brenda goes to the same church, and Brenda says, Can I take the children? she says, Sure! Absolutely! Brenda comes home and says, What are the odds that walking up the sidewalk at the exact same time as somebody from our church she already knows would be there, and she would say, Absolutely they can go with you? Last Sunday, Pastor Jerry spoke. Sometimes you think if Im not speaking, Im on vacation, and thats not true. There are times when I have other things to work on. This week I did a lot of work for Phase III. Pastor Jerry spoke, and on Sundays [when I dont preach], sometimes Ill maybe come to the service here or go to another church and see what other churches are doing, see what I can learn. I pull up to another church, and the pastor sees me. He looks up to Heaven and says, You have a sense of humor. I said, Whats that about? He said, I had a day today. I got some really bad news today. I kid you not, I was just thinking to myself, I wish Jeff were here so I could talk to him. I know he went through something similar like this when his ministry first started, and Id love to hear that story again and how God provided for him. He said, And then you came up, as Im thinking this thought. He said, God really has a sense of humor. These are little supernatural signs. There are more that I could share, but you will see signs. Thirdly, I want you to look at Verse 42 again. It says, The people were looking for Jesus and when they came to where He was, they tried to keep Him from leaving. So they are going to say, You just need to stay here. We want you to stay here and just minister to us. They were selfish that way. When we get sick, we know were going to get better because Youre here. Theres nothing to worry about. It would be a good thing to stay and minister to that group, but that was not His purpose. When you know your purpose, you learn to say a magic little word called no. Even if its a good thing, if its keeping you from your best, the answer has to be no. So Jesus says, because He knows His purpose, I must preach the good news of the Kingdom to the other towns also because that is why I was sent. So because He knows His purpose, He is not going to be sidetracked. Hes not going to go on a detour. Years ago, I used to speak all the time. The jail would say, Can you come and speak? Schools, colleges, camps, nursing homes, churches, and I was speaking all the time. I would ask, Whats the subject? Okay. What am I talking about? So I had all these messages spinning around in my head, and it was starting to deter me from my weekend message. I was living my life at a state of continual message prep. Finally, I began to say, even though those are good things, what God has called me to focus on is our church. So I began to say, No, no, no. I cant come to that release time. I cant do that university. I cant do that camp. No. Were those bad things? No. Those were good things, but I had a purpose that God had given to me that I had to fulfill. So I had to take charge, and I had to make up my mind. If you dont make up your mind, other people will try to make up your mind for you. They were trying to force Jesus to do something Jesus was not ready to do. I heard a story about Ronald Reagan when he was a little boy growing up in Dixon, Illinois. His aunt took him to get some custom-made shoes. They went to the cobbler and took measurements, picked up the kind of material the shoes would be made out of, and then the cobbler said, Ronny, do you want round toes or do you want square toes? Ronald Reagan said, I dont know. He said, Listen, you dont need to know that. Ill get the leather ready, get everything set, get the sole ready. Youll need to tell me in a week whether you want square or round. A week later, he ran into Ronald Reagan on the street, and he said, Well, Ronny, what do you want? Square or round? Ronald said, I still dont know. He said, Okay. You come back to the shop tomorrow, and Ill have your shoes ready. The next day Ronald Reagan went to the cobbler shop and got his two shoes, one with a round toe and one with a square toe. He said, Every time I look down at my shoes, I remembered the important lesson: if you dont make the decision, somebody else will make it for you. Are you allowing other people to set your agenda or are you allowing God to set it? Are you allowing other people to determine the course of your life? Are you living by default or by design? If its by design, youll know the direction youre going. Youll know when to say no and what to say yes to. Verse 44, And He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. Thats important. Jesus knows His purpose. He speaks His purpose in [Verse] 18-19. The subsequent verse says He lives out His purpose, but then what does He do? He keeps on living out His purpose. When I know my one thing, I prepare and I begin to implement and live out that one thing. Then what do you do? You keep living that one thing. Now it might change a little bit, how its lived out or where its lived out, but the one thing doesnt change. What youll find is over time, you begin to develop your gift and grow in your gifts and your passions. Then you become more effective. A fruit tree that is planted and grows deep roots will bear fruit, whether its apples or oranges, whatever it is. If its allowed to remain, its going to bear fruit; but if you dig it up and replant it, youre going to stunt its growth. Youre going to limit the amount of fruit it can produce. It will have to start over. Sometimes people are finding a new purpose every year instead of growing in their one thing. Heres my new thing or heres my new purpose. Churches will do that, Heres our new mission statement. Oh, we dont like that one, so three years later, Now we have a new mission. Now were this. Now were that. Or maybe they have all kinds of purposes, so theyre doing all kinds of things. At Faith Community Church, we have one thing. Jesus had one thing. Luke 19, He says, Ive come to seek and to save that which is lost. At Faith Community Church, our mission is to bring people to faith and maturity in Christ. Thats our purpose-thats what were about. I received a really nice email from somebody. I mean this seriously. It was a nice email. It said, Pastor, what are we doing for the environment? What is our church doing to pull our resources and our people and our talents for clean water and clean air? My response, and I didnt even feel bad doing it, was, Nothing. Am I in favor of a good environment? Absolutely. Thumbs up to clean air and clean water. I get upset when people try to politicize that issue. It is not a matter of republican or democrat. Everybody should want clean air and clean water and a healthy, strong earth for the generations. But the churchs mission is about the Gospel. Thats what we are about. What are we doing to cure cancer in the world? Nothing. Do I think cancer is bad? Yes. Do I want them to find a cure for cancer? Yes. Do I support ministries and organizations that seek to cure cancer? Yes. What are we doing about it? Nothing. Thats not our mission. There are other organizations that are doing a good job. Support them, and thats wonderful. Volunteer for them if thats the mission, but the mission of this church is to bring people to faith and maturity in Christ. Period. If we start taking on every cause, and no matter how good they are, were going to be spread so thin, were not going to be able to do anything effectively. Were going to lose sight of the reason we exist. It would be like the chili dinner. Did you come to the chili dinner and silent auction? Good chili! We said, Well that chili is really good. We need to have it again next week. So we make it again next week, and pretty soon, people from the community start coming around to buy our chili. We say, Well, its really helping out financially. Lets sell chili on Sunday mornings too. So we start selling chili on Sunday mornings, and pretty soon, we have to cut down to one service because there is so much demand for chili. Pretty soon we close our doors because everybody wants our chili. We exist to make chili instead of using the chili to fund our ministry. We laugh at that. There is a restaurant in Atlanta, or at least there was at one time, called The Church of God Grill. Somebody went into the Church of God Grill and said, This is a weird name for a restaurant. How did you get the name Church of God Grill? He said, Well, years ago, there was a church here called The Church of God. We sold chicken to supplement the church because it was difficult for the church in its early years. The chicken caught on so much, we actually had to cut back our services so we could sell more chicken. Eventually it grew to be so popular in the community and be such a moneymaker that we shut down the church, and now were just The Church of God Grill. We exist to sell chicken. That really happened. Talk about losing sight of your mission. Were not about chili. Were not about chicken. Were not about cancer; were not about the environment. Those things are all wonderful and good, and I support them whole-heartedly. Good chili, good chicken: this place is about the Gospel. This place is about sharing with the world the name of Jesus and growing people up into maturity in Christ. What about you? Whats your purpose? Are you living that out? Are you spread so thin that you feel like you have so many purposes youre not getting anything done? Or are you so compromised that you are more about the chicken than the substance? Youve lost track of what God has called you to be and do? One thing. One thing. Do you know your one thing this morning? Lets pray together, and then Ill share some announcements with you before we go. Father, we see a focused Savior in this chapter who clearly annunciated His mission and purpose and then without delay went about fulfilling that mission. No matter how old we are here, no matter how many years weve been in our career or vocation, if were not doing what youve called us to do, we can change. We must change. If theres restlessness inside, we must find out what that one thing is. Maybe we know what that thing is and were afraid to leave our routine to step out of our cage and take a step of faith. I pray, Lord, that You would help us to take that step. For those of us who know what that is that we are to do, engage in, were mindful of Your example that You kept on doing what You were called to do, that we might grow deep in our calling and our giftedness, that we might through the obstacles and hindrances and stumbling blocks that come our way, that we will not be detoured but remain focused on accomplishing Your purpose and mission. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.