Welcome Power

0:00 the 10th chapter when jesus sends his disciples out as missionaries he warns them of persecution hardship they will face he also promises glory promises reward to any and is who ate his followers in support of their ministry the scripture says jesus said to the 12 whoever welcomes you welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple truly i tell you none of these will lose their reward the gospel of the lord praise to you lord christ allow me to pray dear lord we thank you for this day i ask for these words from my mouth and meditations upon all of our hearts to be acceptable to you who is our lord and our savior amen please be seated well good morning to everyone again so good to see you all yes it's been a little bit it's been a little bit um most of y'all familiar but when i get a chance to preach and speak i invite you to the participate with an are you with me and amen and hallelujah or give me a second whatever's going to help you all okay so are you with me yes all right all right well the i entitled this sermon uh welcome power welcome power and we'll kind of learn about what that means in just a little bit by way of introduction um are you all familiar with the movie the three amigos i think so fairly older comedy very good if you like that sort of slapstick comedy um but if you're not familiar uh it's three buffoon ish actors uh they're three out of work silent movie actors in this movie um and they're accidentally drawn to a mexican village that's being harassed by a gang of outlaws uh the three of them are ned niederlander lucky day and dusty bottom and essentially they kind of play lone ranger types in their movies but what they don't realize is they're invited to this mexican village it's not a movie they're shooting it's real life it's kind of a you know funny sort of humor and these three amigos um they're able to actually bring justice and transform the town even though at a certain point they don't realize this is not a movie this is real life they do it by mistake and so what's interesting is there is a power in ignorance if you will that they didn't realize there was so much potential they had when they are kind of acting as they're doing justice and they weren't realizing it and it's kind of cool if you think about it and what i'm offering you today is is that this passage offers us that you can meet god and help others meet god by a very simple action being intentional to welcome people and it's not just a polite cultural thing there's a lot of power to this so today we're going to look at this passage and see how there's a very there's a big power in the intentional act of welcoming someone so are you with me all right we'll begin with verse 40 anyone who welcomes you welcomes me and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me jesus says it's very simple to receive the reward of encountering god it comes by just welcoming people who would have thought it'd be that crazy of an idea you're telling me i can meet god by being welcoming yes jesus is saying that and it starts because jesus says he's sort of the chain of relationship that makes that happen jesus is reminding us those who follow him as his disciples as they are received they create the path for others to experience christ as christ is reflected in god and it creates an encounter with the father because that's what he says anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me think about that this week perhaps for some of you this might be kind of a foreign concept because there's a big cultural difference here i think that jesus was speaking to most of us we're not usually sent on behalf of someone else like a proxy if you will or a representative there's a rule that you stand in for someone else and you can actually speak authoritatively on their behalf jesus is sort of talking about in that culture we don't do that too much in our culture we have some connections with things like public officials who represent our interests and our political interests we vote for them they vote on our behalf ideally and they make decisions but here again jesus is reminding us that his followers we're not lobbyists we're more than that we're his representatives and a part of that is to do a very simple thing being welcoming to others and what i'm saying jesus is reminding his followers this is so simple to do that you can almost forget to be welcoming because when you welcome others jesus is saying you're welcoming them into a connection with god and that person will welcome you as well and they will be received by god and blessed in a certain way and encounter god and engage god more are you with me on that yeah okay now you might be thinking that's very nice but so what well that's a that's a great little kind of you know question and challenge well if you take the word welcome um if you look it up in the dictionary go on webster.com it'll show you kind of the origins of that word and it comes from a latin word as well um the word will and then kuman a latin meaning desire so it's desiring the will seeking to desire the will in a way what jesus is asking us to do is you're helping yourself and others to get a better understanding of what you desire and how you will that into being and that comes into connection with the will and desire from god and it's easily done by welcoming others again that it's not just a polite action it's something that's saying you're going to experience as you will the desire of god in welcoming you're encountering god's will and desire and this is because jesus is god's will and desire for the world and we become like him jesus is again saying be like me encounter god as i share that with you and other people will experience that because jesus in a way is the will and the desire of god in all people are you with me very good so we go from that to verse 41 in verse 41 jesus says whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet's reward whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward to talk about this one i'm going to share a little bit of a story here this was 2008 i was doing a lot of traveling as a videographer with a motivational speaker he's an international motivational speaker who's actually a christian and in one of these trips we went to indonesia and at the time i didn't really think much of indonesia being a very rich country i was only 24 at the time i was fairly young still learning a lot about the world um anyways this christian speaker usually he was sponsored by someone kind of wealthy to go to some of these countries and essentially it was a rich patron who would kind of put him up and sponsor him to go and do different things help people and all these sorts of things and so our whole team was told that yes we were sponsored by some rich patron who get gathered this whole trip together and he was going to host us and so one day after we did our events they said well they want to make sure to make you feel hospitable and so they're going to take you out and you just go enjoy and i said okay that sounds fun so they took us to a mall our whole team of people included the get the motivational speaker we go to this mall and i was sort of like i didn't want to come to indonesia to go to the mall the beach was just down the way and i love surfing but i was like well this is my job it's fine and so i didn't really want to go shopping either a little bit of it was i was kind of being culturally polite i didn't want to take advantage of something i kind of felt like who am i to come to a different country and go shopping on someone else's dime apparently or if that's what was going to happen and so i just hung back and i hung out with a bus driver and some random person who was a part of the group and so this gentleman a kind of asian-ish looking man i didn't know his name he asked me he says why aren't you going i said oh i just don't really want to go shopping i'd rather not buy anything and he said oh okay that's fine so my whole other team people went did the shopping came back some people bought extravagant things some people bought just nothing like stupid things um the day ended we got back to the hotel and i'm talking with a motivational speaker his name is nick and he says oh did you go and i said yeah he's like what'd you get i was like oh i didn't get anything i didn't really feel it was polite to do that he's like oh okay that's your choice it's fine and then he said um well who were you talking to i saw you talking briefly to someone sitting down i said oh there was the bus driver and there's this other gentleman and he's like oh he's like oh that was our sponsor that was the patron yeah and so and he said you know he's really really wealthy and he wanted to gift us and i said really i said oh i didn't do that and uh and he said yeah he owns like all the malls in indonesia so it was totally fine you could have just totally had a great time and i was kind of like well okay i missed out on that um i i in reflection i said maybe i could have bought something for my wife or done something else but i really felt like i was in a parable uh when i reflected on this story but i tell you this story because of what jesus is saying in this passage here i think there's some connections i was trying to be courteous but i ended up on missing out on something bigger and it wasn't about i was focused on the possessions i was focused on the physical things but there was something more powerful afoot and by that i mean i missed out not again on possessions i missed out on being blessed by a person and their generosity i missed out another piece of relational power that was there that this person was offering in a way and i think that's connecting to what jesus is saying here with these because you hear rewards and you hear a sort of a ulterior motive and so i missed out on the power of this person's presence to bless me and jesus is saying in verse 41 the point when he speaks to the prophet it's it's more about who the prophet represents and brings as the prophet comes to put it another way it's the power of the presence and relationship connection that overflows as the prophet enters your midst and you welcome them and they welcome you into the presence of god and so when you're being receptive to them you may get a physical blessing and that's wonderful but it's more important to realize that there's the blessing that comes from god by being with someone who represents god and so you care less if you get something physical because you get the presence of god are you with me on that and so that's what i missed not only did i miss a physical blessing i missed the opportunity to talk with this gentleman get to know him or indirectly a way he could give his presence if you will to someone else and this reminded me too do you remember those commercials i think they're mastercard commercials um it started off plane tickets twelve hundred dollars drinks at the pub twenty dollars and then learning about where you came from priceless yeah jesus is saying when the prophet is in your midst they're a physical reminder that god's presence is powerful and it's priceless and it's available you don't want to skip out on that being a person who welcomes a prophet and you're receptive to that you begin to experience the priceless mercy grace presence blessing all the things that come and yes there might be some physical aspects but don't get stuck on the physical are you with me yes very good very good well we'll move into my final point verse 42 and if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple truly i tell you that person will certainly not lose their reward this makes me think of how powerful it is to welcome all sorts of people a people of any place any age any any uh sort of richness or low riches um there's a power in being welcoming and the good part is you get something out of it and but as i said it's not always about what you physically get so let me tell you another story um this is about a friend of mine this was many years ago he's a mentor to me he's still a good friend his name is dan i worked for dan at a sporting goods store and dan um he was a legend at this sporting goods store because at this time it was uh it was called chick sporting goods in southern california and the sales people you would get um oh goodness i just forgot skip my mind what does he get uh when you people buy something and you get an incentive back commission thank you he he he was very good salesman he pulled a lot of commissions essentially and uh but dan was a faithful christian man he invested a lot of time in me he taught me a lot about life um and uh i am who i am because of dan in many ways today but he was an infamous salesman because of i think of his christianity and how he followed jesus and he the story was told and he would know he would tell this story too to incoming sales associates that one day when he was just a lowly entry-level salesperson uh he would be known to take on any sort of customer um he didn't care if they were rich or poor and it was very much illustrated on this one moment become made him infamous one day a woman comes in she looks very if you will homeless and she comes in and she starts just putting a lot of stuff in a cart but she looks homeless and all the other salesmen completely ignore her dan does not ignore her he goes and he takes time and listens to her and long story short she ends up buying a lot of merchandise she was just a woman who was very wealthy and for some reason she would dress in a not presentable way but that didn't stop dan from visiting with her helping her and then she ended up being a repeat customer only to dan and so he ended up again getting a lot of commission and i tell that story because dan was doing what jesus said welcoming all people jesus spoke of giving a cup of water to somebody it's actually speaking of the person who gives it to the disciple but i think it also translates going the other way around being a follower of jesus says you should give a cup of water you should express something to someone else doesn't irregardless of where they're coming from what their background is what they look like or what you think they are because they could actually be something more and dan did this i believe because he was a faithful christian man who said i'm going to treat all people with dignity and whether or not you get something out of it and that's where that reward part comes in he got a reward but that's not what he was seeking i think there's a similar piece of what jesus is saying there are you with me on that good good well let me bring this to a conclusion i want to encourage you all that you have the ability to have welcome power jesus is reminding you what it takes to the simple action of being welcoming and there's a power that comes with that being open to bless others and they can help you encounter god and they can also encounter god's presence along the way the simple act of giving a cup to a person you may not know who they are they don't know who you are but it opens an opportunity for them to encounter god and you to encounter god as well i'm going to close with the reading of some lyrics of a song you may know this song um but i'll tell you who it is at the end it goes like this so one of those nights and about 12 o'clock this old world is going to reel and rock saints will tremble and cry for pain for the lord's going to come home in his heavenly airplane if god had a name what would it be and would you call it to his face if you were faced with him in all his glory what would you ask if you had just one question and yeah yeah yeah god is great yeah yeah god is good yeah yeah what if god was one of us just a slob like one of us just a stranger on the bus try and make his way home if god had a face what would it look like and you would you want to see if seeing meant that you'd have to believe in things like heaven and jesus and the saints and all the prophets what if god was one of us just a slob like one of us just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home friends that's a song by joan osborne what if god was one of us song is begging the question or perhaps be a little more bold i'm begging the question to you will you welcome god on the bus what if you saw a slob and that was somebody jesus was calling you to see will you be able to show people like the song says if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like heaven and jesus and the saints and all the prophets would you want to see it jesus is reminding you and me from matthew in this passage that to see others is to welcome them and see god is on the bus to help them see that there is a slob that jesus wants you to see something about and they want you to see something about god and them too and if you miss it i wonder if you believe in things like heaven friends don't miss god he is one of us welcome him amen amen we now come to the singing of the hymn of the day