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Moving Out of our Comfort Zone ~ Luke 9:1-9! February 23, 2014 ~ New City Church of Calgary ~ Pastor John Ferguson!

Intro: CS Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe, the land of Narnia is under control of the White Witch. Her reign brings a cold chill not only over the land of Narnia, but also over the lives of everyone living in her kingdom. In fact, it was said that under her reign, It was always winter, but never Christmas. One day, Spring begins to invade Narnia as the snow thaws, owers spring to life, and birds begin to chirp again. Father Christmas shows up in Narnia one day dispensing gifts.! Father Christmas explains, Aslan is on the move! Aslan is of course the Great Lion King, the long awaited Hero of the story who has come to break the spell of the White Witch. !

If you had been a rst century Jew living in Israel and heard Jesus speak, you would have been lled with the same excitement that is captured by the phrase, Aslan is on the move. As Jesus went about proclaiming The Gospel of the Kingdom of God, he was in effect saying Aslan is on the move. That day in which you are longing for God to come bringing Truth, Justice, Shalom is in fact breaking in to this world through me and my ministry. !

! And he called people to respond to His message by becoming a follower and joining in His revolution.! !
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Exploring: What it means to be a follower of Jesus is (1) to believe in Him and His message; and (2) to !! participate in the mission of helping people understand the Gospel. The Gospel is not good advice or ! ! secrets to successful living. Rather the Gospel means Good News. Its Good News about Jesus.! Christian: Jesus is always calling you out of your comfort zone to join him in spreading the Good News !! about the revolutionary kingdom of God. !

Jesus has been in Galilee for the rst couple years of his ministry. He is very popular; His teachings have amazed people, His miracles causing people to marvel and ask, Who is this man?! And now (end of ch. 9), he is on the verge of setting his face towards Jerusalem where he knows He will be crucied, and before those momentous events, and before He gives His Twelve Disciples the Great ! Com-! mission to go and preach His message to every nation, He wants to give them some hands-on, practical ! ministry experience. So Jesus pushes them out of their comfort zones in order to participate their rst real ! opportunity to do ministry without Jesus at their side.! And as well see, their ministry would witness different responses to their message, and their ministry even ! attracted the ominous attention of those in the highest positions of power. !

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So, were going to look at Luke 9:1-9 and well see Jesus push his disciples out of their comfort zones, and well learn a thing or two about what it means to follow Jesus he pushes us out of our comfort zones as well. ! 1 ! And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure ! ! diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. ! 1. Jesus deputizes them to act on his behalf: the power & authority to confront supernatural, evil inuences in peoples lives, and to heal debilitating diseases.! 2. Jesus commissions them to speak on his behalf proclaiming the central theme of Jesus ministry, i.e., the kingdom of God.! ! (1) What is the kingdom of God? The KoG is the kind reign of God breaking in upon this world. !
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Isaiah 11:6, 8-9, The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adders den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.! Luke 4:18-19, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lords favor.!

Luke 4:43, I must preach the good news of the kingdom; for I was sent for this purpose.! The best way to summarize Jesus ministry: The long awaited future in which God would take his power and reign bringing truth, justice, and mercy to Israel and the world was now on display in the person and work of Jesus Christ. ! Thats why every miracle he did was a message about the coming Kingdom; there was a ! ! ! sermon in every sign and it all had to do with the reign of God breaking into the world. Miracles ! ! showed that what he said about the Kingdom of God was true, but miracles are not sufcient to !! make people believe if they dont want to.! John 11:45-48, 53, Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the Council and said, What are we to do ? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.! (3) !So before he goes to Jerusalem to die and rise again, and before he entrusts his mission to the ! Disciples, he gives them pushes them out of their comfort zones. ! Jesus also wants to teach them a lesson in dependence!

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3! And he said to them, Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag nor bread, nor money; ! ! and do not have two tunics. ! Go as you are; take nothing with you. Stay in one place for a few short days, and then move on. Rather than relying on your own resources, rely on Gods resources entrusting themselves to his care as they proclaimed the Gospel. ! How does one do this? By growing in desperate prayer. ! Jesus himself modeled a life of desperate dependency on God by his own prayer life. !

4 ! And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart !5 And wherever they do not ! ! ! receive you, when you leave that town, shake off the dust from your !feet as a testimony against ! ! them. ! ! ! Same gospel; different responses. Some believed, some refused to believe. !

- Leon Morris, There was a rabbinic idea that the dust of Gentile lands carried delement, and strict
Jews are said to have removed it from their shoes whenever they returned to Palestine from abroad. the disciples shaking of the dust from their feetdeclared in symbol that the Israelites who rejected the kingdom were no better than the Gentiles (cited in Ryken, 428). !
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- To do this to other Jews was therefore a dramatic enactment visually displaying the seriousness of
rejecting the Gospel of Jesus and the kingdom.!

6 And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. 7 Now Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening,and was perplexed, because it was said ! by !some that John had been raised from the dead, 8 by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen. 9 Herod said, John I beheaded, but who is this about ! whom I hear such things? And he sought to see him.! Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great who sought to have Jesus killed when he was a baby. ! Last thing Luke tells us about John the Baptist is that he was languishing in prison wondering if Jesus really was who he said he was. (7:18ff). Why was he in prison?!

- He spoke truth to power and told King Herod reminding him it was wrong for him to have have
married his brothers wife who had left her brother in order to be with him. So the power hid the truth away in a prison until he beheaded him (Mark 6:14ff). !

! Everyone had an opinion about Jesus. Herod: Who is this man about whom I hear such things?! ! ! So, why did Luke record this account in his historical biography of Jesus? ! ! ! !

About following Jesus: It will mean moving out of our comfort zones and proclaiming the kingdom of God in word and in deed so that people ask the questions, But who is this about whom I hear such things?! About responses to Jesus: Some are going to accept the message, others will reject it. And some, like Herod, will be interested in Jesuseven fascinated by himand still not get him. ! Main Idea: To be a follower of Jesus is to move out of our comfort zones ! and participate in the mission of Jesus.!

! Points of Application:! ! 1. Relinquish allegiance to any other king. ! !

At issue with every person who hears the gospel of Christ is a clash of kingdoms: His & ours. What people tend to want to do with Jesus is say, Jesus, bless me as I go after my dreams. We want him to be our own personal life coach, but we dont want him to be our king.! CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Give me all of you!!! I dont want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU! Hand it over to me, the whole outt, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.!

2. Seek rst the Kingdom of God. !

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If the Good News of the Gospel of the Kingdom is about Gods reign breaking into this world, then participation in spreading the Good News means involvement in mission in word and deed. !
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See chart: The Already / Not Yet aspects of the Kingdom.! E.g., John Williams & Sons of the King. All kids are at-risk, but these are far more at-risk than others, John says. Probably 50 percent of our boys come from single parent homes, and 50 percent of those dont even know their dad.! It may look like something like this. Or it may look entirely different. It may look like volunteering at a crisis pregnancy centre, visiting the lonely widow, spending time with a college student from another country, inviting an exhausted mom out for coffee to bless her, it may look like cooking a meal for someone in need, giving away more of your money to bless others, it may look like pushing back against our govt now considering the legalization of the sexual exploitation of women on our streets. ! It always involves seeking truth, justice & mercy in whatever ways Gods reign is being challenged in our city and in the lives of those around us. It is always seeks to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to bear in winsome ways upon our spheres of inuence in both word and deed. ! It always looks like moving out of our comfort zones. ! NCC Value #3: We exist for mission and not for comfort. ! Pastor Mike & I are excited to introduce to you a new opportunity for ministry to our city that will denitely move a number of us out of comfort zones. More on that next week, so stay tuned!!

3. Grow in desperately dependent prayer. ! An accurate measure of whether you are dialed in to Gods mission in and through your life: Do you pray? ! NCC Value #4: Expressing prayer as essential for our lives and ministry, not optional. ! Maybe pray: Lord, enable me to move out of my comfort zones for the sake of your kingdom.

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