But today we are starting this new series on growing a church like Jesus. And I'm really excited about that. That goes all the way back to when we first started planting this church back in 2006. And people would ask me, what kind of church are you planting? And I would use that answer, a church like Jesus. What does that mean? And I would say, well, a lot of the people I know are tired. They're burned out by church itself. Church, it seems, uses guilt and shame to exhaust people. And that seems to be a problem. And I want you to know that I'm not casting stones. I have done that myself many times. Many times I have been known to use, to go into detail about the sacrifice that Jesus has made on the cross for us and then turn that around. This is fascinating Judo work, to turn all this beautiful bearing of sin that Christ has done for us to take away all of our guilt and shame, and I flipped it to make people feel ashamed. If He would do so much for you, why aren't you doing more for Him? Using the very thing that takes away all of our guilt to inflict guilt upon the listeners. That's a very evil piece of Judo that some of us do. And I said, Jesus made very clear that he came to give us rest, and to take away shame, and to take away guilt, and so the church should be doing that too. We're the body of Christ. That's what we are trying to do too. And that's what we're going to focus on this entire fall. We're going to look at what a church like Jesus ought to look like. And the first thing we're going to focus on today is that a church that is like Jesus is gracious. A church like Jesus is attractive to broken people. A church like Jesus is a place where the unclean can come in without hiding and ask for help, ask for grace, and know that they will receive it. And that is where we are going to start. That is the church that we want to be. We believe that as we grow together, no one person can be the church, no one person can fulfill the ministry of Christ, and we have to work together to do that. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4 that God gave apostles and prophets and shepherds and teachers. and pastors for the building up of believers so that you, the church, would do the work of ministry until we achieve the full stature of Jesus. We're growing into Jesus. We're grown, we want to be more, we want more of Jesus in Tulsa, and we want to be more like Jesus in Tulsa. And we find, first of all, this week, that the gospel of God's grace, the goodness of God, the compassion of God, the beauty of God, does both, makes us more like Jesus, and is attractive to broken people to make Jesus more. Please stand as we read from Mark chapter one. rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place. And there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him. And they said to him, everyone is looking for you. And he said to them, let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out. And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling, said to him, If you will, you can make me clean. moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once and said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them. But he went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places. And people were coming to him from every quarter. Thus far the reading of God's word. All men are like grass and all of our glories like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but not God's word. God's word stands forever. You may be seated. To be a church like Jesus, we have to be gracious like Jesus. We have to let God's ministry and grace flow through us. The first thing I want you to see about that is that Jesus' ministry flows from His identity. And that's where I want you to turn back to the front page of the bulletin where it says, Call to Worship. Okay? The call to worship is part of the sermon text for today, so I bet you can find it. It's on page one. Now, what do you notice about that? First of all, it's interesting. Jesus gets baptized, and the baptism of John the Baptist was a baptism of repentance. And there's typically a question around that, right? Why does Jesus need to have the baptism of repentance? And on one level, he didn't. He was sinless. He was the only perfect man. But his mission, the reason he came to earth was to identify with sinners, to be numbered among the transgressors, to take our place. And this is the beginning of his taking our place, being in our place. And so he is baptized for us. He is repenting for us. He is identifying with us at this baptism. John the Baptist himself says, why do you need to be baptized? And he says, to fulfill the word, to fulfill the prophecies. He's fulfilling Isaiah 53 that would be numbered among the transgressors. And so Jesus goes down and is baptized, and it's this beautiful, glorious moment. I've always wanted to do this for my kids, but I just can't embarrass them that much. I have a friend who did. I have a friend who's in Chattanooga. His name is Joe Novenson, and his daughter was part of a play in ninth grade, and she did so beautifully on the stage. When she finishes her soliloquy, he stood up and yelled, that's my daughter! That is my daughter, and she delights me. And that's what God the Father does right here. He rips heaven open. He rips the veil open and he says, that's my son. That is my son and he makes me happy. I take deep joy in him. That's such a rich, rich, rich, rich, rich passage. And there's many things I want you to get from it. And the first thing I want you to get from it is that he said this at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, not the end. He said it at the very first act, not at the cross, not at the resurrection. He says it at the beginning. Why is that important? Well, Satan was going to immediately start tempting Jesus. And if you go to Matthew or Luke and you read about the temptations, every one of Satan's temptations would start out with the words, if you're really God's son, if you're really God's son, And Jesus needed this affirmation from God himself, that's my son, in whom I'm well pleased. And if Jesus needs that affirmation, how much more do you need it? How much more do you need to be reminded of it? If Satan tempts Jesus with it, you know he's tempting you with that every day. If God really loved you, would you have this headache this morning? If God really loved you, would you still be single? If God really loved you, would you still have this crummy job? If you're really God's son, would you be living in a house like this? If you were really God's son, then why are you never the one who wins the lottery?" Whatever stupid things he's saying in the back of your mind, that first sentence is always the same. If God really loved you, why? And Jesus did not base his knowledge of being God's Son on how he felt that morning, on how nice people were to him that day, on how good supper was, he based his knowledge that he was God's son on the word of God. And you have that just as richly as he did. Everyone who comes to him receives the right to be sons of God, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. When I accepted Christ and was ready to join the church, my brother called me from San Antonio to tell me that verse from John chapter one. You are a son of God. Welcome to the family. We base that squarely on God's word, right? Jesus loves me, this I know, because I got an A on all my tests, you so and so. No. Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible says it. It's in His Word. We can trust Him. The second thing I want you to see about this, again, is that it's at the front end of His ministry. Jesus did not do His ministry to earn God's approval. He ministered out of His assurance of God's approval. If there's one thing I want you to believe and get, it's that. There is an enormous difference. If you want to know the difference between true Christian righteousness and self-righteousness, it might get down to this one thing. The self-righteous, insecure Christian is living their life to earn God's approval. And the true believer, the one who is in Christ, the sons and daughters of Christ, of God, they know they have it. They know they have it. And all of their ministry, all of their love, all of their service, all of their mercy flows out of the knowledge that God approves of you, that He is delighted with you. You already have it. So live with confidence out of that. You are in Christ. He tells you that from the very beginning of your Christian walk, right? Everyone who comes to him, those who receive him, he gives the right to become sons of God. That's true of you. He is delighted with you. You do not have to live your life to earn it. It's already yours. That's the first thing I want you to see, is that Jesus' ministry flows from His identity, and if we're gonna be a church like Jesus, our ministry flows from our identity, that we are the body of Christ, that we are His beloved Son, and He is well-pleased with us. He is well-pleased with us. The second thing I want you to see is that our sin, our uncleanness, begets Christ's pity. Now, where do we see that? We see this in the story of the leper. He comes to Jesus, and in leprosy in that day, we don't really know exactly what it was, and anybody who says they do is lying. But what we know for sure is that it was unclean, that it was contagious or considered contagious, it was contagious, and so you had to separate yourself. If you had this disease, you had to separate yourself. And it became a mark, it became a mark of righteousness by how far you would stay away from these people. And that's awful because they're already suffering the punishment. Whatever it is they did, they probably got too close to dead animals, spent too much time with dead animals, trying to eat roadkill like some of my relatives in Tennessee, and got sick. That's probably something along those lines. And so by handling unclean things, they themselves have become unclean things. it became this mark of righteousness. And whenever that people got close to them, just like today, if you had COVID last week and someone came up to give you a hug, you'd say, hey, I'm just getting over COVID. Might not want to do that, right? Somebody sticks their hand out to shake it. I always love when people are shaking my hand. In the process of shaking my hand, going, oh, by the way, everybody in my house is at home throwing up. I'm like, oh, thank you for telling me that. So in the same way that you would warn people that you were sick, they would warn people by saying, I'm clean. I'm unclean. Don't get too close. But that became this mark of enormous shame that whenever someone came close, they had to say, unclean, unclean. And the rabbis would brag about how far they stayed away from people with leprosy. If there was a leper, someone with leprosy was under a tree and you stood under the shade of that tree, you were unclean. One rabbi bragged that he would never buy an egg on a street that a leper had walked down. Another rabbi encouraged his followers to throw rocks at lepers to keep them at a safe distance. So these guys had great self-esteem and, just kidding, This one man, he seeks out Jesus. He hears about Jesus and he is audacious. He comes to Christ. He won't let anything stop him from coming in to Jesus. He throws himself in and he begs him. He implores him. If you will, you can make me clean. And again, that's so rich. What a rich passage. And Jesus looks at him with compassion. Jesus looks at him with compassion. Let's just go through these two things here because there's so much. First of all, you just see this audaciousness, right? He's imploring him. That means he doesn't say it once. He implores him. You can do this, Jesus. Jesus, you can make me clean if you will. You can make me clean. Now, right there is combined two beautiful things. There's an urgency. Right? He's coming into the crowd. He's doing things he is not supposed to do. He is borderline sinning, if not just outright sinning. He has walked into a crowd. And yet, humility. If you will. If you will. Lord, not my will, but yours. Isn't that amazing? He's urgent, but he's not demanding. Or if you don't do this, I've got no other chance. If you don't give me Christ, then I will die. I have nothing else that I could possibly go to. There's no one else who can help me, but not my will, but yours. There's no demanding this. No, God, if you don't do this for me, then what good are you? God, if you don't do this for me, then you must not exist. I'm going to leave you. I'm going to abandon you just like you've abandoned me. There's not a hint of that. There's utter humility, if you will, if you will. And the second thing I want you to see is how his sin, not his sin, but his disease draws out Christ's compassion. draws out Christ's compassion. It says, Jesus looked upon him and had compassion for him. It's a fascinating word. In the Greek, it sounds a little bit like, well, it sounds like what it is. It's onomatopoeic. It's splechna. And your splechna is your guts. And it means he felt in his guts love for this man. It's a word that originated with how pregnant women would feel towards their unborn babies. They would feel them moving and this love, this compassion would immediately begin to flow toward the child. And that's how Jesus feels for this man. He just feels it in his guts, this compassion, this love for him. It's deep. Do you believe Jesus is like that? That he would look upon the unclean and instead of turning his face, instead of turning away, he would turn toward? Do you believe he turns toward the unclean? I hope you do. That's what love does. When you see your children suffering, you don't send them away, you draw them to yourself. 38th birthday, no, it's 32, my 32nd birthday. We drove into Houston all day the day before, and we got in pretty late, and so we were throwing kids around, as you do when you have four, and the youngest, Isaac, was still sleeping in his pack and play, and he was really little, so we still had the little microphone radio thing with him. because we were a whole ten feet away and we might not hear him if he started crying. And he did. He started crying about three in the morning. We were both so tired and we were just like, alright, he's going to make it. He'll be fine. We both went back to sleep. We got up in the morning, went into his room and found out that he was crying because he had had stomach distress and he'd thrown up all over the pack and play and slept in it. And that was great. He didn't drown, so we're good. And so we pick him up and Bianca was on vomit duty and I was on bath duty. And so I took him, set him in the bathtub, washed him off. You know, he's just pathetic. And then I turn around to wash my hands because I'm beginning to get pathetic. And Harold walks in, who was like six at the time, and all I hear him just yell, Isaac pooped in the tub. I got so mad I just backhanded Isaac. Just kidding, I didn't do that. I scooped the poop out and Harold, this is a famous line in our family, I got the poop in my hands and Harold goes, happy birthday dad. I flush it and I take my sick son out of the tub and I wrap a towel around him and I just hold the most pathetic a human being can possibly be and you just hold him. That's what he needs. That's compassion. And that's what we see in Jesus. We see true compassion. He feels compassion for him. And he demonstrates that compassion by reaching out and touching him. It's probably been years since this leper has felt human touch. And he touches him first. He reaches him at the point of his deepest need, at the point of his deepest shame. He touches him. And then he says, I am willing, be clean. We see here just the absolute beauty of Christ. In Christ, you see one who's unlike any other. You see this comparison, these opposite seeming features come together in a way that you don't find in anyone else. You see tenderness without weakness. You see humility without uncertainty. You see strength with no harshness. You see conviction with no unapproachability. You see power with no insensitivity. You see passion with no prejudice. You see integrity without a hint of rigidity. He touches him. He breaks the rules. And being the very, being cleanness itself, He makes him clean. He reverses the rules of cleanness and uncleanness. When a leper touches you, you are the one who is supposed to come unclean, but not Jesus. Jesus is cleansing. He is the water of life that washes away sin. And so when he touches him, the unclean becomes clean. He is the true source of righteousness. There is no Lady Macbeth around Jesus begging someone to wash the blood off her hands. There's no stain that he cannot and will not wash away. Man, can you imagine a church that believed that? A church that acted that out. One of my favorite stories about this church, several years ago now, a local school teacher, she taught at a Christian school, was going through a divorce. And she was sad about it, and she felt very alienated by it, and frankly, her smaller evangelical church kind of just didn't know what to do with her. divorces don't happen to good people. And she was sharing her heart with one of the women at her school and this woman who does not come to our church said, you know, I think River Oaks would have room for you. You should try River Oaks. And she came in and And it was wonderful. She met one of the women in our church. And I noticed the next week that the woman in the church that she met came twice. I thought I was feeling good. She came to both services. I'm like, man, I must have killed it. And so I texted her, you know, and I said, hey, I saw you came to both services. You must really like the sermon. She said, no, wasn't that great. She said, I saw this divorcing young woman come in by herself, and I thought, you know, when I went through my divorce, I needed somebody to sit with. I just wanted somebody who would sit next to me. So I thought she probably wanted somebody to sit next to her. And so I came in and sat next to her. More of that, please. We'll take more of that. That's what I mean when I say more of Jesus. More of that. More reaching out to people who feel unclean whether they are or not. More grace and less condemnation. More acceptance and less alienation. That's what we need. I'm getting to the end of time here, so let me jump to the end because it's fascinating. People always want to talk about it. It says, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them. Now there's a lot in that because Jesus is saying you're not really unclean until you have been accepted back into the community. And if you want to be accepted back into the community, you have to go do the things. But Jesus does not go do the things. He is basically claiming authority over the priests, because he's touched the man with leprosy. He's supposed to go offer the sacrifices too, but he is the sacrifice. He doesn't have to do that. And we don't have time to talk about that. But what does the man do? He goes out and he tells everyone. Jesus says, don't tell anyone. So he tells everyone. Now this is not some kind of ninja marketing. This is not him using reverse psychology. Jesus truly wanted him to not tell anyone. And he did what we call disobeying. He went against God's word. I don't know if it's sinning, but probably is. Typically, when Jesus tells you to do something and you do the opposite, we would call that sin. And what was the result of his sin? What's the last verse say? He went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer enter a town but was out in desolate places. This is fascinating. I learned this this week. Who's supposed to be in desolate places? Whose condemnation is that you can't go into crowded cities? Lepers. That's what is true of lepers, that is their sentence. Instead, the man healed from leprosy goes into the cities. He goes into the places where Jesus ought to be able to walk freely. And Jesus suffers the sentence of a leper, living outside in desolate places. He has taken the place of the sinner. He is doing what God has sent him to do. You see at the very beginning of his ministry when he's being baptized that he is being numbered among the transgressors and here he is coming to trade places with us. He's left heaven and descended to the grave so that we could ascend from the grave into heaven. He was condemned and went to the cross so that we could be justified and set free. He experiences the full wrath of God so that we could hear the words, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. He takes our place so we can take his place. That is the beauty of Christ. That's what we want to grow up into. We need more of that, please. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, thank you for sending your son to take our place. Thank you that he is drawn out, his pity is drawn out toward us, not his revulsion. Thank you that he is attracted to broken people like us. He's not repelled. Thank you for giving us your son. and we come to him now, and we bring our uncleanness to him now. And I pray, Jesus, that you would reach out and touch everyone here, and they would hear those words, I am willing, be clean. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.