Go Tell It On The Mountain

Welcome Summit church on this blustery winter weekend in the triangle in just what side 10 days now. Wednesday week after next.

Are we are going to be together at the Durham performing arts Center.

How do we simply do not for several years. Call Christmas at Deepak.

It is one of the best things. Maybe the best thing we do all your long, and I know that you want to plan to be there and brings money with you.

Let me tell you will quickly remind you what we do these kinds of things. A special event we we realize that we don't always get to be together as a church were not different campuses, and so this brings us together even though we have different services as people from every campus are able to receive and reconnect each other so we try to do it a couple times.

The other reason we do it is because we know events like these can provide a catalyst for you inviting somebody that may not receive your invitation us to come to church with you in the weekend. We still believe that the weekend service is probably the best thing for you to invite somebody to but studies show that there are two times a year that people who don't go to church. The majority of them say they would ache and we would receive an invitation from a friend to go to a Christian event in one of those is is Christmas.

The other one course is Easter and so we provide these as a way of giving you something that you can use to invite neighbors and friends or may not come with you. Aren't normal weekend and so I hope you'll take advantage of that. You need tickets to get their tickets are free, but you get them online.

You need one to get in, you'll notice that some services are already sold out. And so if the tickets if for the service that you want to go to parcel out you can do one or two things you keep checking back@summitrtu.com because we always are having people that take too many are there that they have to cancel for some reason. And so they turn their tickets back in, especially as we get closer to the date you'll see a lot of tickets become available. On the second that you can do is to show up how you can show up. You have to you have a ticket to get in but every year we have people that that come to the service and say member the people to straighten comments on the attorneys back in we done this for four years now and we have yet to ever turn away a single person at a service so you can probably just show up and chances are will be something there. Now, having said that limit is use this as a time to firmly remind you I love and admire your faith you like only by the whole ZIP Code 27613 world coming on animal take a whole service. Don't do that to be realistic as realize that when you take a ticket you're actually keeping it from somebody else you might use it. So yes, we want you to invite people. We also want should be realistic and will mess it up everybody else right on so that's the way that works. Last weekend last weekend we did what we we kicked off her multiply with our first big give weekend and I told you a goal, was a we wanted to have the largest single largest offering we've ever had at the Summit church and I'm very pleased to tell you that you did that by a long shot last weekend. $2.23 million was given to the Summit church which is more than double any other week and we never had so I was like a man. Put your hands together, awesome in reporting that I do one remind about our financial goals are only secondary. Here are primary goals we have said is that every member.

The Summit church would say yes to the Lord Jesus Christ and what he is leading them to do and that we would all every one of us is a part of this church would learn what it means to honor Jesus in all areas of her life including our finances and so this multiply season is help really move us along in pursuit of that goal.

On the goal remains the same as that every single person who identifies himself of this church would I would honor Jesus and follow him. In this way.

Well, last weekend Pastor Waddell kicked off a series that we are doing called Carol's sermons, you can sing and I got up with his big old majestic Spanish voice and he show the world and I have had so many of you that came up to me after the semi dozens of you and said well you get off your sermon next week with singing. If not, a nickel for every person that sent it to me. We would need to do another multiply to make it so I message I heard about it from you play with it 100 times. So you asked for it. Brandon hit it its earlier start that he had no more.I get it is not ready to go go Sandy on all then he we go again on see me but I bypass right now. I will see you one Christmas Carol and raise you one.

We do not know exactly who wrote go tell the mountain or just sing it there but we do know that it was a slave song most likely composed in the South sometime between 1840 and 1860. Right before the United States Civil War. The text of the song goes like this.

While shepherds kept there watching over silent flocks by night behold throughout the heavens there shone a holy light.

The shepherds feared and trembled, when low above the earth rang out the Angel chorus, that hailed our Savior's birth down in a lowly manger the humble Christ was born. And God said, salvation that blessed Christmas morn. He made me a watchman upon the city wall. If I am a Christian I am the least of all, go tell it on the Mountain, over the Hills and everywhere go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born so much wonderful imagery in this song.

The song appears to be based on two primary passages of Scripture. First, obviously, the story the shepherds in Luke chapter 2. Second, maybe less.

Obviously, Isaiah 52 seven. If you have a Bible invite you to open it to Isaiah 52 seven. That's where we will be for the rest of the morning, say, 52, seven, where the prophet Isaiah foretells a day when the good news of the Messiah will be announced throughout the whole earth. Isaiah wrote these words literally 750 years before Jesus Christ was born in after he talked about the death of Jesus Christ and how the Messiah would die for our sins, Isaiah says this in chapter 52 verse seven how beautiful upon the mountains, go tell it on the mountain of the feet of him who brings good news publishers, PC brings good news of happiness who publishes salvation, he says to Zion, your God reigns.

So the writer of this Carol. This slave says go to the mountains and tell this good news about Jesus being born how explain the importance of the mountain imagery in a moment but first, know that the apostle Paul is going to use this exact same text in Isaiah as his primary tax for establishing the Christian mission, which is what Christians are called the great commission in Romans 1014, Paul explains the urgency of the gospel, how Jesus Christ died to make a way for every people of every time to be able to come to God and that people need to accept the gospel and they need to receive it for themselves if they're going to be say and then Paul concludes that explanation of the urgency of the gospel with these words.

Romans 1014 and 15. How then will they call on him and who may have not believe now they do believe in him, in whom they have not heard how are they to hear without somebody preaching and how can they preach unless they are sent as it is written. Isaiah 52. Seven.

How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. So what this song dies in picking up on Isaiah 52 seven. It does what the apostle Paul did it take this verse and it connects the Christmas story to the great commission and it highlights in so doing, it highlights three very important and I would say rather surprising things about the good news about the good news of Christmas and they are these three number one, to whom the good news comes number two what the good news brings in the number three where the good news sins. I will be with those one at a time.

Number one, to whom the good news comes this song notes in the first three verses of the song that the message came first to the shepherds. Now that the slave who wrote the song felt drawn to the story of the shepherds is not surprising since shepherds were considered to be the lowest class of people in Jewish society at the time, much like the slaves would then consider the lowest class in their time. We had this romanticized version of the Nativity often tell you this where you are shepherds of these good-looking strapping young man in cool outfits with sashes and bandannas which we assume work cooler first century kind of way. Their faces are reverent clean-shaven there sitting there humbly pondering the mysteries of the Christ child that is not at all.

The picture that you get if you understand the culture of the Bible shepherds were basically homeless people. There were always dirty. I mean they stayed outside with animals for weeks at a time. They were the kind of people that you could smell before you solve them. Shepherding was the least desirable job in Israel.

It was for them the ultimate unskilled labor there so I can prove that to you, they get that job. The children leverage shepherd boy right shepherd boy. The reason you know that is because it's a job you got your middle school seventh graders date as they they watch the sheep so other words, when you are a grown man and you were still shepherd that meant a total life when you are asked at a party. What does your son do you never wanted answer. He's a shepherd. The next question will be, will what went wrong and why what happened is that so much promise Heights I sale my son plays video games in the basement all the time any blogs you know it just is another kind of thing you want to say they were considered respectable citizens either since they had to work seven days a week or so they can take us out of all the never went to temple and shepherds were so low in Jewish society that rabbinic tradition tells us. Their testimony was not even accepted in court. You have 10 shepherds. Also, you do something and they were all tense at the same thing.

It would not be accepted in court because they were shepherds.

That's how how little he is staying. They were in Jewish society. So needless to say, they're not the typical candidates to receive the first announcement about the birth of the King of Kings hi I have a friend who is a CEO of a really successful startup company here in the Triangle in 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama asked if he could launch his campaign in North Carolina from the steps of this guy's office building in the research Triangle Park. It's not hard to see why his company was very successful.

It was wrong.

It was innovative, it represented the future and so that campaign wanted to identify itself with that kind of young aspiring successful leader. That's not a whole hard at all to understand what is hard to understand is why the Angels would choose to inaugurate Jesus's beginning of his kingdom with a group of people most despised in Jewish society. Why did they do it that way.

The answer is very simple it was to demonstrate from its inception on earth. The very nature of the gospel itself. You see them coming to the shepherds, God reached down to those that everybody considered to be on the bottom showing that there was no one to broken no one to pour no one to it insignificant for Jesus's kingdom.

In fact, you find out in the ministry of Jesus that he prefers the poor and the broken. Why would he prefer it's because they're in a better position to receive the good news. They realize they need it.

The essence of sin, you see the core element of sin is pride and pride is just the idea that we don't really need God that were sufficient without him whenever you're rich in something whenever you're successful whenever you're respectable in some area of your life, it often usually delude you into thinking you don't really need God in that area of your life. So those who are rich in money for like they got enough money to guarantee tomorrow so they don't think much about needing to stay right with God in order to guarantee their security for the future of money to guarantee their future. That's why Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go to the eye of a needle than it is for Richmond to go to heaven.

Why because they only rekindled one when they realize just how much they need God.

Those who are rich in talent or good looks, feel like they have everybody else's approval so they don't really think that much about God to buy got everybody else told me I'm awesome.

I'm not that obsessed with whether or not God things I'm awesome. Those who are rich in moral goodness. Those who are respectable those who are looked up to assume that if God can accept anybody.

Boys can accept them well kind of thing the God rage on the curb were like if God accepts anybody. I'm definitely respectable and people think that I'm awesome like this. And so we got, except me.

But this sense of self sufficiency distance of respectability is all an illusion. One conversation with the doctor that you were expecting. After a routine checkup can shatter everything in your life and some of you know that from experience in all this might that you had all these prospects you had about the future suddenly changes with one conversation with an oncologist one conversation one phone call telling you there's been a wreck.

There's been a wreck involving your wife and your children can destroy everything that you cherish most in life.

One unexpected summons in your bosses office on Friday afternoon could ruin all your financial prospects and if you think that your good people, respectable, decent people… Because we compare ourselves to the wrong standard. I told you before that whenever I start feeling good about myself. Which happens from time to time. It's always because I'm just comparing myself to somebody else and they cannot do a lot better than their doing see that I look in the God's word in a circle.

See what Jesus said about those who enter the kingdom of heaven that he make statements like this, he said, he said. Matthew 18 that I had to be so surrendered to him. If I want to go into his kingdom had to be so surrendered to him that if he told me to sell everything and give it to the poor. I would do it without a second thought. He told me that if I wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven. My heart had to be so full of love that when somebody stole my jacket from me. My first impulse.

My instinct was to offer them. I sure also. That's the kind of heart that God lets into his kingdom because of the heart that God has he told me that if I wanted to enter his kingdom. Matthew five my heart had to be so pure that I never even thought lustfully about somebody who was not my spouse. I start looking into the right standard and I realize that underneath all this religious makeup. I know that I'm a dark hearted center and maybe I am better than you. Some of you in certain areas. Maybe you're better than me but the point is what you mean that we not put her makeup on better want to stir the makeup away away you see that you are a dark hearted senator like me throughout my life throughout my life I realize I've been one of the most self-willed, rebellious, deceitful people I've ever known. And maybe this is because I know what's inside my heart more than I know what's in yours.

See, I always thought that I knew best and I've always wanted to do things my own way.

The person who is lied to and disappointed and broken more promises to me than anybody else is me. I am a dark hearted center and I have no hope of earning God's favor.

So the question is no longer how good you have to be to earn God's favor. That's a nonstarter. The only question when you understand things are. Do you realize you're so bad that you can never earn God's favor, God's favor, has to be received as a gift. It's the only way it can be received. It cannot be merited or earned and shepherds and slaves are usually the better position to be able to realize that that's what Jesus in Luke 18 tells a story that was scandalous to think about it today still scandalous, but it was especially scandalous back then on the system and going to the temple to pray, one man, everybody recognizes its religious leader in the local synagogue got up I looked up to.

Don't think religious hypocrite. By the way, this is not what Jesus was presenting were talking about the kind of guy in the summit church that everybody knows there's your prayer leader ma'am it is time to pray that God is always there defraying loud mainframe heart there's you he's got greener buddy at the door. He's a guy that that does childcare volunteers and nobody also volunteer. He's a guy who serves on the deacon team. He's got a gable largest gift in the multiply initiative and were talking some of you like that. God is awesome and Jesus says he comes down front to pray because that's where people like the CMI goes out front and right brain thinking about all the righteous things he's done and how God must surely happy because all those righteous things that he's done that kinda guarantees his place of God Jesus. It is another man who stands in the back stage the back for two reasons. One, or buddy hates Emmys a tax collector, tax collectors and their Dave were the lowest of the low, morally speaking, because they were traitors. They extorted money from Jewish people to give it to the Roman oppressors and so were talking bottom of the barrel for them.

They were thieves and they were crooked to restain about air. He's hated but is also standing back there because he knows that he is so wicked that he doesn't have any place in God's kingdom and he stands back Bayern.

All he does.

You didn't pray and think about his righteousness, he lays on his face and he beats his chest beats his chest and Jesus said, he says over and over. Can God be merciful to me a sinner and in Jesus is the most scandalous thing is is one of those men went home justified one of those men went home right with God. And it's not the one that the Jewish people. Another one that many of us would think it was in the man that everybody looked up to. It was the tax collector because this man came in this good man came in with his righteousness, which is no righteousness at all in God's sight and he left without righteousness, but that tax collector came in with only the knowledge of his guilt and he left with the gift righteousness of Jesus Christ and a gift righteousness of Jesus Christ is righteousness, indeed. And because he was in a place where he knew he needed it. Then he was more liable to receive it than those who were morally respectable easy shepherds and slaves and tax collectors are usually in a better place to receive the gospel than those of us who were not any of those three things, because when you're flat on your back, your usually look in the right direction. You don't have to be a shepherd. You don't have to be a slave you have to be a tax collector to be saved, but you have to have the heart of one to be saved. You have to become like a child slave, a tax collector in a shepherd because you have to know your need in Christianity all you need is need, but you need me. Even if you don't have me then you will have Jesus number two what the good news brings to him the good news comes number two other good news brings like many Negro spirituals. This song focuses on God's promise of relief from suffering.

You see a slaves the world they lived in was a terrible world full of injustice and pain but they knew that the birth of Jesus Christ was bringing about a new world in which sin and suffering and slave masters would no longer reign over them. So again Isaiah 52 seven the writer this careless thinking about how beautiful upon the mountains of the feet of Emma brings good news publishers piece suit brings good news of happiness and publicist salvation says to design your God reigns last week by Pastor Riddell showed us that the most famous Christmas Carol in the world Joy to the world was written by man Isaac Watts in the midst of intense suffering and joy to the world was a declaration that sin and suffering and injustice did not rain. They would not have the last word that God reigns. In fact, that's the way he phrased it in the song Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns in one of the most my favorite phrases from the Christmas Carol. He he says this he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found everywhere. The curse is found everywhere. The curse is touched everywhere. The curse is broken but for the Savior's gonna reverse the curse.

He's going to heal what is broken, this slave that wrote the song had felt the sting felt the sting of the curse in just about every area of his life.

The curse was felt in the shame of his subjugation. The curse was felt in the injustice and abuse that he had endured at the hands of others. It was felt in the thankless toil that he endured at the oppression of others. It was felt in the broken family that he was probably a part of. We've all heard the horror stories of families in in it and slave culture.

When I bit the kids get older that that the slave master takes the kids and sells them in separate these family separate husbands and wives them fathers and sons and mothers and daughters of a never see each other again. This man had felt the curse in every area of his life and the good news that he is declaring there's all this is temporary and Jesus one day will reverse all of that in establishing a new world. Joy, my opinion will talk about this aspect of the gospel enough we talk about salvation is God's forgiveness of our sins about him wiping the slate clean about him removing our guilt before God and that the gospel certainly is. But the gospel is also healing, Jesus didn't just died to take away the guilt of our sin he resurrected to reverse the pain of our sin's resurrection is a reversal of the curse, you see many people envision heaven as this bodiless, colorless existence where we float around on clouds and play harps all day and sing in the choir and go to church.

A recent study I looked at showed it to thirds of evangelical believers, which just be people in churches like this one don't think we'll have a body in heaven really love about and we discover up Bayern would assert in the presence of God were float around or play harps and Unisom and I'm not going to stop, but that's no heaven is about the Bible's name for heaven is listen to the new heavens and the new earth.

New heavens and new earth means it is like the old heavens and old earth just newer and better and awesomer to heal version of it is, like if I told you that I drove a 1983 Nissan Sentra that had no radio in the air conditioner was broken. The heater ran nonstop and had 398,000 miles on it but I got a new car, come look at in the parking lot. We walk out there you're not expecting to see a horse not expecting to see a helicopter you're expecting to see a car like the Nissan Sentra. Just a lot more awesome right is a new car right so new heavens and new earth means old heavens older, not some fundamentally different, something that's like the old one. Just not broken down and just a lot better.

I know I gotta be honest I love sitting on imagining what that is what's I like what is a glorified ribeye taste like about intuitive I like about the cursed one. What is the healing one taste like I don't think we'll meet in heaven. Jesus ate fish after he resurrected from the dead, so boom and got put on the Bible for people like me come was a heavenly Grand Canyon look like was the heavenly Hawaii look like that's the cursed Hawaii was a real Hawaii look like BAA. There's a heavenly Dean Dome in heaven, where the Tar Heels win every single game at the buzzer.

It always goes archer art direction you got see one she used to.

I'm not trying to be biased by definition there can be no devils in heaven right there will be.

There will be a heavenly Duke, would you not to change a mascot does not have the devil in heaven when anything where is the curse. Where's the curse touched the earth because that's the place of God can reverse it easier to heal it. Where's it touched you in your marriage. There were the curse touched you is in your physical body is it in your with your children is in your job been reading Isaiah this week in my own time with God. I came across a verse that he will I absolutely love and I just forget about that.

I've been a real beginning like all of his first there 4922 this is what the sovereign Lord says this in that day, give the signal was with the signal. I can be like and they will carry your little sons back to you in their arms will bring your daughters back to you on their shoulders was at me to the slave.

It meant that that family, that of been torn apart by injustice would one day be restored right means that parent. He's lost a child lost a son to an untimely death is going to see that son brought back.

I would assume by the Angels and their arms without lost daughter who died when she was four years old carried back to you on the Angels on the shoulders of the Angels. What a glorious day that will be. That's good news for shepherds.

That's good news for slaves.

That's good news for people who have walked to the valley of the shadow of death, and it's good news for people who suffered and it's good news for people that are in pain and is good news for you and for me, number three, where the gospel where the good new sentence to whom it comes what it brings. Number three where the good new sentence this Christian brother of ours.

This slave is you gotta tell this everywhere is the good news really means that there's nobody to lowly forgot to pursue the good news means that there's no one so insignificant that God would overlook them if there's no one so guilty that God would forsake them know once or broken, the God wouldn't heal them. No one so lost that God couldn't find them. If Jesus really is able to save to the uttermost all come to God, the faith in his finished work, then you gotta tell this everywhere because there is no element of society know people on earth. No brokenness that this message of salvation will not penetrate and heal me. Now explain the mountain imagery because I think we are in place were we can understand it easy in those days most cities in the Middle East were settled between mountains and soda data for cell phones before radio communication when the city was awaiting some kind of news.

Maybe it was a battle that was taking place that threatened their kingdom. The city waiting on this news would look up to the top of the mountains because of the first place. You see the messenger come carrying the good news to get the watchmen on the city walls who are waiting and watching, looking on the crest of the mountain for the messenger to come over the mountain with the flag of a certain flag that represented this is good news and then the watchmen would begin to publish the news that the messenger is coming. The battle has been one and we have been saved.

That's what a writer of go tell the mountain uses that the fifth verse, the watchmen on the wall the watchmen upon the city wall.

He made me that watchmen find the one who is seen salvation on the one who is experienced it and I get to tell the rest of the city.

I get to tell these people that salvation is come to see Isaiah 52. Isaiah imagines groups of people scattered all over the world in different cities different nations different languages different situations different classes of people all waving, all waiting overwhelmed and oppressed by the cursed scared of death without hope. And here comes the messenger to announce the battle was over in the kingdom is been restored to read this reminded me of that scene from the second book of the Lord of the rings nerd alert the two Towers Aragorn theater in Fayette in a legless who are the good guys. They got this little small remnant Army there trapped by these huge armies of orcs of Sauron and are about to be destroyed all hope is gone when Aragorn remembers the promise that Gandalf gave him the last time he saw it. The promise was at first light. On the fifth day look to the East look to the mountain of the East and you will see my coming to an office.

A good wizard so so Aragorn walks out and looks up there's all these armies of oppression that are about to destroy them. He looks up to the East right as the sun is coming up and it pops his head over the mountain and there is again golf with all the cavalry of the Roku ream coming over the crest of the hill bringing rescue and salvation. That is exactly the kind of seeing that J.R.R. Tolkien may been thinking about that when he wrote that, but that's the scene that Isaiah pictures is that there's a group of people that are surrounded by hopelessness and oppression, and over the mountain come salvation, but it's a messenger whose feet are beautiful leader, not a beautiful part of the body. They are not right you want to see my feet. I don't want to see your feeble your feet carry good news of salvation than they see themselves become beautiful and Isaiah sensors.

The group anywhere there's no matter how broken or lost, not shepherds or slaves are homeless who are surrounded by whatever mountains of oppression.

Jesus has not won the victory. So you gotta scale those mountains. You gotta go everywhere to all groups of all peoples and all places at all times in all situations and tell them the battle is been one of the pastor up in Newark, New Jersey will couple of Christmases ago was preaching. Yeah, she was using.

Go tell it on the mountain and EE said he wanted to get out of this cute little nativity scene mindset that everybody you know, has no one to find a way to make this real joy. Just ask the question, he said it would Jesus come to today. If he came to 2000 years ago we came to the shepherds, who were the equivalent of the shepherds be today and he figured the closest equivalent of the shepherds in our day would be the homeless. So we decided that week in preparation for a sermon rather than just pouring through commentaries is not even live on the street for a couple of days as a homeless man usually shares it with his congregation that Sunday he told them on Wednesday this week I decided to be homeless.

The live on the streets for a couple of days he went down the Penn station in downtown Newark New Jersey because that's where he said he most often encounter homeless people. He said the first thing I noticed was that the homeless were kind of a mixture of different kinds of people that a lot of them were old, some of them were mentally disabled.

Some of them were drug addicts, many of them had good jobs at one point but some kind of tragedy set them on a tailspin and they try to medicate it to alcohol and drugs and so eventually destroyed their lives and he said that the next thing I noticed about the homeless is that they always seem to be seeking rest is as an Penn station.

They were always trying to get close to the benches in the public restroom so they can lay down and sleep for a while but every 10 or 15 minutes the police would come along with the little baton and they would smack the badger smack their legs and make them get up and walk around at 3 PM.

He said the shelters, homeless shelters in Newark close their doors is if you're not in by 3 PM and you get to be on the streets for the night is at 11 PM.

They close Penn station and so we all got kicked out and I walked out with a homeless woman whose name was Milagro and I asked her what I was supposed to do next and she graciously told me about a bridge that she slept under that had a few extra spots and invited me to come in and out and be close to them for the evening is as we walk along the streets.

I then learned that the first spots to go in the city streets are the benches benches are like VIP seating for homeless people.

If you can find a spot next to a storm drain were hot air was blowing out and that was awesome to.

She taught me how to sleep on the street. She said you put on your cardboard box. The menu you on the stretcher blanket on and you lay on it is that I was pretty uncomfortable so she showed me how to sleep with my back against the wall against the stairs. That way, she said nobody can attack you from behind at 1 AM, I finally fell asleep.

He says and was woken up just a few minutes later by somebody kicking my boots.

It was the guy who goes around cleaning up cigarette butts on the street and all he said was out out out at 230.

I saw my first drug deals regarding the morning all these teenage kids showed up under this bridge with cash so they could buy hit since the moment him or not.

She offered it to me and I said now I mean I got a preach in three days so probably would be good so the police drove by multiple times that evening and they paid no attention to us. It was just a normal night in Newark went over to a woman I saw on the ground. Offer her pair socks.

She freaked out and recoiled.

She thought I was going to rape her attacker who said this wasn't the homeless. It turns out they never really rest the next morning I decided to ask passersby for about for coffee.

He said it was like I was invisible. It was like the Red Sea partying around me and then I realized at that moment that I'm normally on the other side of this equation, I'm the one coming out of the concerts, the games on the one coming out of the coffee shop telling the kids not the pain reminded these people. It was devastating to be on the side to be invisible. Imagine taking this day after day, month after month, maybe even year after year, what's it like to live this way for years and not be able to go home after two days, my family and my warmth in my comfort. What if your primary hope in life is just to get the good bench at night. Mother Teresa says it's the poverty that of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for, which is the greatest poverty of them all.

The writer of this Carol the writer, Isaiah knows that these are the ones that Jesus came to first bid that was the mountain. He scaled so that he could come to bear in public salvation and the writer of this Christmas Carol says don't they deserve to know. Should we be scaling the mountains of homelessness to get the gospel to them over Thanksgiving my my oldest two daughters and I took a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. When my daughter turned 10 years old, try to take them on a mission trip so my oldest daughter 12. My second daughter is 10 and so we went back to the Dominican Republic with a group called compassion, which is a mission organization.

Our church partners very closely with in the way compassion works is you sponsor a child that is in a poverty-stricken country and so we have one for each of our our children and they sponsor them and then they write them letters throughout the year and to stay up with their lives unto you go when you take a trip me and a few dads here the seven churches and our kids went and the way it works is this is you go visit some of the projects in the Dominican Republic where this is one of the countries therein but you visit these projects where they are there helping kids get their basic needs met. They are in education some really impressive education and technical skill training programs and then I'm spiritually there teaching them what it means to walk with Jesus. They always work through a local church there in one of these places and so you spent time a couple days of the project. They do what they call an in-home visit where you visit one of the kids that's just been inducted into compassion and so the little girl that we visited with meddling in the program. About two months and she had two months before had been rescued out of the sex trafficking industry in the Dominican Republic at five years old and now she's here and in the place you live was a way. One of my daughters described it was a tin can. It was a hovel but she was safe and she was involved in this program and see you to see me. It's just amazing. I'm seeing how these kids are being transformed been changed. We had three translators with our group, all of whom were in their early 20s, Dominican Republic, young adults, and just most of the most impressive people are been around.

They were smart they were.

Articulate how they love Jesus.

It was contagious. You just blown away by these you know this is a fact that was most impressive be a 20-year-old I've ever been around anywhere and on the last day of your trip offered at one thing on the day before you did bring in all the kids you sponsor and you hang out with them for an afternoon you get to meet him and just love them and and just get to know them and got a well given gifts in this it's all some of the last 83 translators reveal that they grew up in the compassion program that they were once that had been born a meter in poverty are been impoverished. One of the girls on the translators name was Diana. She starts telling us her story up on the last day and she says the little five euro girl you visit it was all like me, just as my dad abandoned us when I was a kid and it sent us in the poverty and she said probably the biggest thing was his rejection of me. I took as a rejection of my whole life up of the nobody love me. I thought that his he left me because of something wrong with me and she said it wasn't just here this like a cloud for the next several years since it was my sponsor in the United States. So many like you to begin to write me and began to just tell me over the years that I matter to God and that I matter to them and I God had not forgotten about me and that God love me and I gotta say this on the die.

Fermina gave me a plan to believe them enough like nobody else believed in me and she said, so I completed this program and now you know.

She said I've got a job. I've got a future ahead of me that was just somebody bridge this gap and somebody enter my life and told me about these things. The question that you are presented with on a trip like that when it's not out of sight out of mind. You say you scales that mount detailed those kids that they matter to God Amy Carmichael who was a missionary to India hundred years ago started an orphanage over there since it is not star of our hearts, to go forth and help them visit not make as long to leave our luxury are exceedingly abundant light to go to them that still sit in darkness of the good news really means there's nobody to lowly the guy whatever look them there's nobody so guilty. The godforsaken no one so broken that God would not heal them. How could we not scale that mountain to take the gospel, the good news of liberation through them said that Hudson Taylor who was one of the early pioneers secure the gospel to China back in the 1850s it Billy said he could barely stand to be in a church service like this 1000 English people use from from England. He needs that we would go back. I couldn't. I couldn't stand to be in the service not it's not that I didn't like worship. It's not that I didn't like crowds. He said I just couldn't stand the sound of thousand people were just bathing in the light of the gospel, knowing that there were millions of Chinese are never even heard Jesus's name.

It's it's when I would just speak of these churches.

I literally could not stay in there for the worse but have to go outside because it was too overwhelming to me.

I know that there's this mountain that mountain for him represented Chinese culture.

He had to steal it. They had to hear this and most of us are sitting around still talking about. Why don't know if I'm called waiting on some special Damascus Road experience to tell us to get engaged, William Booth, who found the Salvation Army minister to the homeless, and still ministers of the home was used to say this white not call not call did you say refused to hear the call. I think you should say just put down your ear to the Bible and hear him did you go and pull centers out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burden agonized heart of humanity and listen to its pitiful well for help go standby the gates of hell and hear the damage treat you to go back to their father's house and one their brothers and sisters not to come there and then look Jesus in the face of mercy you have professed to obey and tell him you will not join heart and soul and body and circumstance, in this March the published his mercy to the world is no longer a question of: he says the question of obedience like we often say the summit church. The question is no longer if you're called that call was given to you. When you begin to follow Jesus, follow me and I'll make your fishermen question is only where and how you are called the great commission is not a special suggestion for a sacred view of it that went to seminary the great commission is a mandate for everybody go tell it on the mountain is not a sentimental song we sing at Christmas time. Go tell it on the mountain is the marching orders in a mandate for every person who knows the name of Jesus to the question that I have for you is who are you telling what mounds God called you to go scale to go across. I know you're not all called to the homeless.

I understand that I know you not all called China novel called the Dominican Republic, or Indian, but everyone is called somewhere. Every single one of you all think that verse and he says how how they were consummated. Never heard about how they can hear what you everyone you said that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus Donelson of the same people which are sent somewhere is what we end every service here. The summit with that admonition summit church you are sent because that's what your role is to you as your pastor, what I think about a lot of times for you when they rinse them for Jesus.

You can answer the call you and answer is whether or not you when we told you go to the no-show to go somewhere. Everyone talking to someone you preached about Sodom and Gomorrah couple weeks ago. Few weeks ago and we talked about how God destroyed the city. Yes, the average Christian what was the sin that made God's destroyed Sodom right every Christian I know would just reflect which site homosexuality. That's what I got shorts on and it's true. Homosexuality was a bad sin in a certain part of the wickedness of Sodom. But Ezekiel 1649, when the prophet Ezekiel talks about why God destroyed Sodom. He did not mention any form of sexual impurity.

What he said is 6049 was the people Sodom lived in luxury and ease of the neighbors around them suffered and they didn't do anything to help you.

Not all called the same places, but I know you're called scale something.

I know that your call to scale some mountain to cure the gospel for some of you it's can begin by walking across the street and begin a relationship with a neighbor that's going out of your comfort zone with us the first 900 and scale walking across the office into the cubicle and beginning a relationship for you to share the gospel for some unit means a change of career for something that means a change of where you live for some huge coming going on unreached people group or somebody that means getting involved with the homeless door for the present element of a high school dropout.

Please get involved with ministries hear the church administer to teenagers or minister to kids in our website this weekend summit RTE.com.

There's a little place where you can see our church engages with the ministries of the city and how you can take mission trips and I know you're called somewhere to do something I don't mean physically necessarily moving your call and I want you to be able to stand before Jesus with a clean conscience and say I know I wouldn't call everywhere but I was called somewhere and I knew where that was. And I went I went who were you telling you telling you what you realize hopefully is what the slave who wrote the song relies listen as I was the homeless, spiritually speaking. I was restless I sought the solace of apartments in the city of sin. That was my whole life and I was when Jesus found me. He healed me, and he restored me I was the shepherd spiritual condition of me was the same as the physical condition of the home was in the Chevron.

I was the slave. When Jesus emancipated me now having been emancipated. The Cisco telling on the mountain cross that mountain and go to people and valleys with value-oriented tell them the Savior's been born that your commission that your college or mandate much about your headset all over campus is value. Hence, pray for his father renew this church's commission in its vision to see the gospel see the gospel transform our city. Our neighbors are children and nations around the world would praying Jesus