[0:00] So, I won't belabor the point. Let me get to my assignment. Today, we'll start in Luke 10. It's a good bit of reading, so I, this word that the Lord gave me, I may be able to finish it today.
[0:14] If not, we'll close it out on next week. So, we may do part one today. We'll see how the Lord moves, but I believe God has word for us this morning.
[0:25] Amen. Luke 10. It's a good bit of reading, but I need to set the stage for what God wants to speak. It says, after these things, the Lord appointed 70 others also, and he sent them two by two before his face into every city and place where he himself was about to go.
[0:48] Can I say you're not meant to be alone? Then he said to them, the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few.
[0:59] Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. He didn't pray for the harvest. He prayed for the laborers.
[1:09] Go your way. Behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves. Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals, and greet no one along the road.
[1:22] But whatever house you enter, first say, peace to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it. If not, it will return to you.
[1:34] And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give. For the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.
[1:45] Whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat such things as I said before you. And heal the sick there. And say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you.
[1:56] But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, The very dust of your city which clings to us, we wipe off against you.
[2:07] Nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God has come near to you. But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in the day for Sodom than for that city. Let's go down to verse 17.
[2:19] It says, Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you.
[2:55] But rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven. That'll preach itself.
[3:07] The title of today's sermon is, You Are Sent. You Are Sent. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, God.
[3:18] We give you glory. You have put your word in me, God. You knew who would be here. And so, God, I pray that you just bless it. I decrease so that you may increase.
[3:31] And that in the end, you will get all the glory. Because it belongs to you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.
[3:43] You are sent. This word was really given to me maybe about a month ago when Pastor Landon, and I honor him, Pastor Landon and your wife, but they invited me to come back to speak to the kids before they went back to school.
[4:02] It was the kickoff to go back to school, and the Lord dropped this word into my spirit that you are sent. And I don't believe it was just for the children.
[4:15] I believe this word is for the body. Because I believe that not just for you here, but that those that are coming, that this word is going to speak something into our spirit.
[4:28] See, the kids, and I knew I could see it in their face when we were in there, that some, man, they were dealing with anxiety. They were nervous.
[4:41] They wasn't quite sure what their school year was going to bring, and so you can visibly see it. And so God had to release a word to them to say that you are sent, because sometimes we think that we go places because we have to go.
[4:58] That we just end up there because I got to go to work or I got to go to school. And what God is saying that you don't just go to work, I send you to work.
[5:11] You don't just go to school, I send you to school. Hmm. There's some portion of scripture I love, I love a lot of scripture. This is one of my favorite ones.
[5:22] Kayla, she always messes with me. She says, everything's your favorite. Yeah, okay. This is one of my favorites right here. That the word says, a man's gift will make room for him and will bring him before great men.
[5:37] But then the God, he shifted my thinking and my perspective. He said, I want you to look at it like this. How about I'm the man and you are the gift?
[5:49] So when you think about it in that sense, that if God is the man and you are the gift, that his gift shall make room for him.
[6:03] And will put him before great men. When you shift your thinking, you don't just have a gift, you are the gift.
[6:19] That when God sends you to whatever place he goes to, he's sending a gift. There are some places that have prayed for an answer to a problem.
[6:36] They're wondering who can solve this. We have a problem. And what God said is, I have prepared a gift to answer your problem. And so he sent them you.
[6:50] Which should be a messenger from heaven to solve the problem. And the problem is, is that we should be messengers from heaven, but we go to places raised in hell. That what you're doing, God didn't call you to do.
[7:09] That discord and all of the bickering and all of the fighting. That God didn't send you to do that. He sent you to be a gift.
[7:25] The one thing about a gift and I think about Amazon and all that and when the packages show up is, a gift has to be present. See, on Christmas morning, we used to get up to look for presents under the tree.
[7:44] We called them presents. We didn't call them gifts. But God changed the words of it. He said, you can't be a gift if you're not present. That you have to be present to be a gift.
[8:02] There's some places you refuse to go. And because you refuse to go, you can't see the gift that God made you into. That whole part.
[8:15] That when you get there and you present yourself, God's saying, now there goes my gift. And my gift is making room for me.
[8:28] Let me go to the text. Well, before I get to it, let me tell you. So when I graduated college, when I graduated college, I majored in computer science.
[8:43] I minored in math. But when I graduated college, I couldn't find me a job right away. And at that time, I had a little one on the way, so I had to go work.
[8:53] And I was stressing. And so at a last ditch effort, I was able to go be a teacher at high school. I used to teach high school mathematics. And so I didn't want to do it.
[9:08] I struggled doing it because it wasn't what I went to school for. And so I was fighting with it. But then I realized years down the road that the Lord didn't send me into the school to wake up the students.
[9:23] He sent me to the school to wake up the teacher that was in me. It wasn't about the students. He was showing me that there's a teacher in you that has to be.
[9:40] And sometimes you get too close that you can't see it because your feelings are too attached to it. You're too emotional to see what's happening in the moment.
[9:53] But until you can back up from the situation and get your feelings out of the way, you're saying, God, if you didn't send me there, I never would have got the tools I needed to be here.
[10:04] the text. Jesus was sending out his disciples two by two.
[10:20] It says to the places that he himself was about to go. That where God wants to send you, he's not sending you by yourself. He's sending you to the places he's going to come to.
[10:32] He's sending you just to prepare the way for him. Now, it was 70 and you would think if I sent out 70 individually, I could cover more ground.
[10:46] 70 people could go to 70 places. But God said, no, I'm going to pair them up and send them to 35 places because they need somebody with them.
[10:56] the problem with us sometimes, especially in the body of Christ, is that you have turned companions into competitors. You have turned people that has God sent to you to walk with you and you spend your time competing with them.
[11:21] Moses needed Aaron. David needed Jonathan. The problem is that we discard the people God has sent to walk with us because guess what?
[11:36] You don't have everything within yourself to do what he called you to do. You only got a piece of it. That's why you are a part of a body. Every joint supplies.
[11:51] So where I'm lacking, I pray my brother-in-law can cover where I lack. Where he's lacking, I have to stand in the gap to cover him where he lacks.
[12:04] See, the Lord took me to this thing and he made me think that, see, you need a battle buddy. This world is too cruel to go through it by yourself.
[12:16] you need a battle buddy. You need someone that will help you fight. You can't have someone that's going to talk about you to people.
[12:30] You need someone that's going to talk about you to God. Don't talk about me to people. Be in my corner to talk to God about me.
[12:41] when you see me uncovered. Don't tell people about what I'm going through. Talk to God about what I'm going through. There's a thing in the military.
[12:59] It's called cover. It's called suppressive fire. Landon, this is my battle buddy. Landon, come here. what suppressive fire is, if he's my battle buddy, if something happens, let me go down there, and I'm in a safe place, but Landon is exposed.
[13:21] If he's my battle buddy, for me to lay down suppressive fire, I need to start firing on the enemy until he can get safe. I'm laying cover down for him.
[13:34] I have to cover him until he can get to a place of safety. And so, if the enemy is attacking Landon, I might not hit the enemy with my bullets, but I need to lay enough fire down to make him back down so he can get to safety.
[13:54] He's my battle buddy. I got to cover him. We got weapons. That's not carnal. They're mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds.
[14:06] It might not be my stronghold I need to pull down. I need to help Landon pull his down. So, I'm laying suppressive fire down from him.
[14:18] So, when I pray, I'm praying down fire from heaven to consume everything that wants to consume him. and I'm going to keep firing until he gets to safety.
[14:33] There may be some times where I'm going to have to get down there with him and we're going to have to go back to back. And I get the enemies coming that way, you get the enemies coming and we're going to go back.
[14:43] say, I got your six. I got your back. Recovering.
[14:56] Because see, when he's out there by himself, it could be deflating. It could be a lot on him by himself. But when I show up, that puts something on the inside of him to let him know I'm not alone.
[15:10] And if I'm not alone, then I can go a little further. I was sent here for a reason to help cover my battle buddy.
[15:26] Now, what if I decided not to come where I was sent? That means he's exposed. Appreciate it. God is sending you.
[15:40] They sent them two by two. You got to take care of your battle buddy. How can two walk together unless they agree?
[15:56] You can't walk together because you spend your time fighting instead of agreeing. We need battle buddies. So he sent them out two by two.
[16:07] to the places he himself was going to go. And he said, I'm sending you out as lambs amongst wolves.
[16:20] That I'm sending you to dangerous situations. That you're going to be a lamb amongst wolves. Isn't that coincidental that the lamb said, I'm going to turn you into a lamb and send you out amongst wolves to people who are trying to devour you.
[16:47] But you're my sacrifice that I'm sending. You're the lamb. You're the thing that's going to make everything holy. So I'm sending you as a lamb amongst wolves into dangerous places.
[17:02] But he said, I didn't send you without any power. He said, wherever you go, you heal the sick when you get there. That's power. That I have the power to heal sick.
[17:18] I have the power to lay down peace wherever I go. He said, if you enter a home, you can lay your peace down there. He said, if it's a son of peace there, it will lay on that house.
[17:30] He said, if not, you can take your peace with you. You're a peace dealer. That wherever you go, you bring peace with you.
[17:44] But you also can be the one that God can use to let people know that if you don't accept this peace, then you accept war. God's peace. That's right. Because if you don't accept God's peace, that means you're on the other side of it.
[18:02] And I don't want to be, I don't want to fight against an angry God. So when God sends you out, he's sending you out as his messenger, as his representative, that if somebody wages war on you, they just wage war on God.
[18:18] That's why you have to be a lamb, spotless. Because you don't want to turn God against you. So when you're righteous and you do what you're supposed to do and you're following the instructions, then God is on your side.
[18:37] But you don't want to get on the wrong side of God. Some of us are fighting with people and you have put yourself on the wrong side of God. And we automatically assume God is on my side.
[18:51] Well, God only has one side. His side. Not your side, not they side, his side. See, Joshua had to find that out.
[19:05] When he approached the angel who had his sword extended, he said, whose side are you on? Us or theirs? He said, neither. I'm on the Lord's side.
[19:18] And Joshua had to make a decision. He said, well, I guess I'm on your side too. Make sure we're on the right side of this. So, so, the two, they were sent out two by two to places they didn't know what to expect.
[19:39] And God showed me something. Because we, we get disheartened when we go through struggle. Because they said, they're going to go to some places that were scary.
[19:52] They're going to go to some places where there were going to be lambs among wolves. But they still had an assignment. This is the thing that I learned about being a teacher. I hated it as a student, but then I realized it as a teacher.
[20:06] the hardest thing about school is that you don't pick your assignments. If you're a student, you don't pick your assignments.
[20:18] The teacher gives you assignments. Your job as a student is to carry the assignment out. You don't pick it. And some of us, God has gave us assignments and we say, nope, I don't want that one.
[20:36] That'll make me uncomfortable. I don't want that assignment. This assignment, oh, that assignment's too hard. I hadn't learned that yet. I can't do that assignment. And as a teacher, I'm supposed to make you uncomfortable so you can learn.
[20:51] Amen. See, I'm a math teacher. And what a math teacher does is sometimes the student just want to come with the answer.
[21:03] But I have to send the student back and say, show me your work. You can just pop up with the answer, but I need you to walk me through the process on how you got to that answer because I need to know what you've learned.
[21:22] So what God does, he just gives you the principles. the order of operation. So that whatever problem you get, you apply the formula and you get the answer.
[21:42] The problem with some of the things in math is sometimes the numbers are too high to deal with. So I teach students to reduce it to the simplest terms. And when you reduce it to the simplest terms, it's just like any other problem you face, you work the problem out.
[22:00] You apply the principles. What God wants us to do is I understand the problem you have, but if you ever understand the principles in the order of operation, no matter the problem, you can get to an answer.
[22:15] I learned that as a teacher, you don't pick your assignments. You carry your assignments out. Some of us, like Pastor Lance, we have failed some areas in our life and some seasons in our lives because we got missing assignments.
[22:34] assignments. And if you go through the grade book, you see some zeros where there should be 100s. Your God said, I put you in class.
[22:48] I've given you the assignment. You took it home as homework and you never brought it back. And then you come back with excuses. The dog ate my homework.
[23:02] When it's your responsibility. before this, before he got to this in Luke 10, if you go back to Luke 9, right before you get here, you see a bunch of people giving the Lord excuses.
[23:20] He said, the Lord said, here, come follow me. He said, listen, first let me go back and bury my father. Verse 60 of Luke 9, it says, Jesus said to him, let the dead bury the dead.
[23:34] But you go and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow you, but first let me go and bid them farewell who are at my house. But Jesus said to him, no one having put his hand to the plow and look back is fit for the kingdom.
[23:53] those excuses don't work. When God sends you, even your self-esteem can't get in the way.
[24:12] Your view of yourself shouldn't stop you from going to fulfill the assignment. it. See, this is what, when they sit, when Jesus sent the 70 out, lambs amongst wolves.
[24:29] Here's the thing. They came back. All 70 of them. I mean, y'all missed that. He sent them out 70 as lambs amongst wolves and they all came back.
[24:50] He didn't lose not one of them. In this season, you're not going to get lost. When you fulfill your assignment, you're not going to be consumed.
[25:01] All 70 came back. Some of us are afraid. You think you're about to lose everything.
[25:15] And God said, when you fulfill my assignment, guess what? You're going to make it back. All 70. And they came back rejoicing. They said, Jesus, you weren't even, the demons were subject to us in your name.
[25:34] You should find every situation to apply what God has showed you. I believe we're going to see people get healed right here. I got an expectation.
[25:49] They're going to come in here one way and leave different. Brother, feel what you say? I want to see wheelchairs lined up over there. Empty wheelchairs.
[25:59] Because you might have rolled in here on them, but you walked out of here without it. I expect to see miracles, signs, and wonders.
[26:12] Am I the only one to expect that? He said, they came back. The demons are subject to us. We were casting out demons, Jesus.
[26:27] The 70. They used to have to have Jesus with them to cast them out. Now they can just use his name. It was a training mission.
[26:39] I'm showing you how to live life without me being right next to you. Come on. You see me do it. You know how this thing works.
[26:51] Now you go do it. I want that you get so filled with the Holy Spirit that no matter where you in the grocery store and you see somebody limping and it should activate something in you.
[27:06] If you come down the cereal aisle with a limp, I want to pull you to the side and say, let me pray for you. It should weigh something up on the inside of you to see somebody sick.
[27:21] It should burn a fire in you. They say, it's time to put into practice what I learned. I'm trying to see people heal.
[27:32] I'm trying to see the dead come back to life. That's my expectation. The season we're going into, that should be your expectation.
[27:46] You should get excited when they walk in. You said, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. It should, you should be like Popeye.
[28:00] I'm sorry, some of the babies don't know Popeye. He get that can of spinach and he, you should pull that spinach out when they come in here and say, oh, it's on.
[28:11] It's on. You can't come in here with the spirit of infirmity and expect to walk out the same way. The spirits are subject to us in his name. It's subject to us.
[28:27] Every spirit. It says try every spirit to see if it's of God. You have a discerning spirit on the inside of you. If something walks by you that doesn't agree with God, you say that needs to leave.
[28:39] I'm going to cast it out. He said, I've given you the authority to trample upon serpents and snakes.
[28:52] Nothing by no means will harm you. Do you believe that? It's your authority.
[29:07] Every man. It shouldn't be. If there's something sick in your house, guess what? You better take authority over it. Anything that walks in my house sick.
[29:19] Not into my sanctuary. Not when I'm the priest of that home. When it walks across that threshold, I've got authority there.
[29:32] I dare you to go home and exert your authority over your house. that any spirit in your home can't be there. I dare you to go home and drive it out.
[29:46] The spirit of this car, if you and your wife can't get along, I dare you to go drive that spirit out. If you and your kids can't quite see eye to eye, I dare you to go drive that spirit out.
[29:59] That spirit shouldn't take authority over you. You take authority over the spirit. To the demons. See, something happened to us.
[30:15] I work with predestined teens. They do a great work. And I was able to do this thing called Committed Academy. And I felt indictment against myself because a young man who had been incarcerated before came into the program.
[30:34] And we had spent some evenings together. And he told us his life is going to change. He said, the stuff I'm doing, I'm going to stop it. I see new life.
[30:45] He was 16 years old. It was on a Monday night. The next Monday when we were supposed to meet, he wasn't there. We automatically assumed that they just don't care.
[30:58] He's not showing up until we got a phone call that said he had got gunned down. 16 years old. That was in our care.
[31:12] It broke me. It broke me. Because I thought I had time with him. I thought about the third or fourth session, I could preach Jesus to him.
[31:26] And because I didn't do it then, a life got snuffed out. And I pray he made it into the kingdom. God sent him there.
[31:37] And it hurts me to think that I might not have been ready for him. Because the Sunday night before the Monday he was supposed to come back, he got killed.
[31:54] The work we have is great. Lives are depending on it. And I just asked, Lord, it was it, could have been one word I said that was different.
[32:07] One thing I could have did that was different. Sometimes you don't know the lives you saved because they get saved. But what if not?
[32:24] The work we have, God is sending us. It's not time to play. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. It's going to have to be a part two.
[32:37] Because right now, we're just breaking up foul ground. But God is going to plant something.
[32:52] He is preparing you to be sent. When Isaiah, in Isaiah 6, I want you to see this. Isaiah got a chance to see the Lord.
[33:04] It was Isaiah 6. He said, in the year that King Isaiah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted, sitting on, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
[33:20] He said, in the year that he died, I saw the Lord high and He said, in the year that he died, I saw the Lord high and he said, in the year that he died, I saw something different.
[33:35] He said, in the year that he died, I saw the Lord high and then I recognized who I was.
[33:52] He said, I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell among people who have unclean lips. And it said that the angel went to the altar and brought back a coal and set it in his mouth and sanctified him.
[34:09] And then he asked him, who shall go for us? And Isaiah replied back, send me. Send me.
[34:21] At first, he wasn't worthy to go in his mind. But after the Lord consecrated him and purified him, his response was different.
[34:32] He said, send me. I'll go. The Lord is wondering that if he came and showed you the same thing, would you go? If he said, I need someone to go for me, would you go?
[34:53] Time to make a decision. Regardless of what you've gone through, regardless of what you think about yourself, the Lord said, it's time for you to go.
[35:04] Lord, I'm sending you to people who need to be healed, to people who need peace, to people who are being beat down by demons and spirits.
[35:20] The answer to it, you. The Lord is wondering, can I send you? Can I trust you?
[35:31] That the souls you're going to encounter, can I trust that you're going to take care of them? Can I trust that you're going to speak the words that's going to help get them into the kingdom? Can I trust you?
[35:46] God never blesses people just for themselves. And that's the problem that we have. We talk about my worship, my blessing, my...
[35:56] And go through the scripture and see who he blessed just for them. Nobody. He told Abraham, I'm going to bless you to be a blessing. And you will start to see the blessings God has for you that should be flowing through you when you make up in your mind, I want the blessing so that I can be a blessing.
[36:19] Not so that the blessings can get to me and stop. The blessings should flow through me. And the more they flow through me, the more the Lord will send.
[36:29] Amen. This altar is open. If you're saying, God, I didn't go before, but I'm ready now, send me.
[36:42] If you need to come to the altar and you need an angel to put the coals in your mouth, to sanctify you and put the words in there, come to this altar. The Lord wants to send you.
[36:53] You are sent. To the brokenhearted, you are sent. To the downtrodden, you are sent. Isaiah 61, that just wasn't what Jesus preached for himself.
[37:08] That's for you. The Spirit of the Lord is upon you. He has anointed you to preach to the brokenhearted, to men.
[37:22] He's sending you. Where are the gift? How dare you be a gift and don't want to be unwrapped? Don't never show up.
[37:34] You're like the Amazon package that says it should be there and it never shows up. Someone prophesied over me and said, be careful in this next season.
[37:45] Because what's coming, you're not going to recognize it. It's like when you get something from Amazon, you don't pick the pack, it comes in. It could be a box, it could be a bag, it could be... You don't send it back because it don't look like what you thought it should look like?
[38:01] I don't care what you think you look like. You are a present. You are a gift from God. And he needs you to go to the places to be a present. To help people see his goodness.
[38:15] But you got to get ready. Onto your feet. The altar is open. Father, you are woop. Amen.
[38:30] There you go. If you are siendohh. If you are estas, your friends, your will not be still merde. You are a worthyess Ed Meinberg.�s of this wineger's arena.
[38:41] He is a priest. Your dad will be beautiful. So, if you are my first, we will beゆ'd Ug住. So, when you get to us, so you see in a lived event now.