Madison Church
Madison Church
Embracing Jesus' Mission: Finding Your Place and Purpose
What if you knew the exact moment when Jesus declared his mission to the world? Journey with us as we explore Luke 4:14, where Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, returns to Galilee and reads from Isaiah. This pivotal moment sheds light on Jesus' divine mission to bring good news, heal the blind, and release the oppressed, setting the stage for his transformative ministry. Our new series, "Finding Your Place and Purpose," begins by recapping the miraculous events of Jesus' birth and early life, highlighting God's intricate plans and the significance of Jesus' baptism and temptation in the wilderness.
Following this, we delve into Jesus' healing ministry from Nazareth to Capernaum. Witness how Jesus' miracles went beyond physical healing, addressing spiritual needs and challenging cultural perceptions of illness as a punishment for sin. We draw parallels to modern times, encouraging listeners to serve their communities and embody Jesus' mission today. Practical suggestions, like partnering with local organizations and participating in events like the Thanksgiving dinner with the Lussier Community Education Center, offer concrete ways to extend love and compassion in our daily lives.
Lastly, we reflect on the danger of spiritual complacency and the importance of balancing intellect and emotions in faith. Drawing from personal experiences in Springfield, Missouri, we emphasize the necessity of small groups and spiritual friendships to keep our vision of Jesus' mission sharp and expansive. We discuss supporting global missions and local service trips, such as the middle school ministry's trip to Rapid City, South Dakota. As we prepare for communion, we challenge ourselves to live missionally, inspired by Jesus' example, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to make a meaningful difference in our communities and beyond. Tune in and be encouraged to continue Jesus' ministry in your own life.
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Welcome to Madison Church Online. I'm Stephen Feith, lead pastor. We'd like to invite you out to join us in person soon. We're starting a new series today and it is actually the third installment, if you will, of a series going verse by verse and word by word through the Gospel of Luke. Although over this next segment we're not going to go word by word, we're going to kind of come up for air just a little bit because otherwise, the way that we had scattered it out, if we did do word by word, we would be in this next six chapters for the next three years, 150 Sundays. And now you're like, okay, that's fine, we can, yeah, we can skip some parts. Right, it's not that they're not important, but we're going to focus on the most important parts here in the passage as it pertains to our church community. We're calling it Finding your Place and Purpose. And as a quick 30 to 60 second recap, where have we been? All these messages and talks are available anywhere you listen to podcasts or on YouTube, should you decide that you want to get caught up. But you don't have to.
Speaker 1:If I do my job right today, today's message will still make sense to you without all the context of the past, but we started in Christmastime the Advent season going over the first two chapters of Luke Seven weeks, the first two chapters and describing how God had a plan and that Jesus was the fullness of this plan and how he came to us in very unexpected ways, came to us in very unexpected ways and then Luke transitions to Jesus being baptized in water filled with the Holy Spirit and then led to the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days, and in this moment this was kind of like a priming of Jesus. He's about to do his ministry, he's grown up, he's a grown man at this point. He's baptized, he's being tempted and tested and now he is ready. And that is where we pick up the story today in this next part of our series. And so, if you want to follow along in your Bibles, we're going to Luke, chapter 4, beginning with verse 14. Now the central question to this portion of Luke's gospel, these next five chapters, is who is Jesus? That is what Luke is setting off to answer, not just for Theophilus, the original person who was intended to get this document, but for all of us today who are reading it and perhaps you're not reading it for the first time, but maybe you are. And if it is, what Luke is trying to show you is who Jesus is. He's getting beyond the whole. It was prophesied that there would be a Messiah. That happened in chapters one and two and this would happen, and that would happen. And now Luke is setting off to prove just who Jesus is. Luke is going to make the argument that Jesus is the anointed Son of God, sent to bring liberation, healing and restoration to all people.
Speaker 1:And in Luke 4.14, the very first thing we read is that Jesus returns to Galilee filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, if you are following along with your Bibles, you guys know that I'm a big fan of writing in your Bibles highlighting, underlining. I do believe it is a book meant to be written in, and one of the things I've been encouraging you to do, as we've been going through Luke, is to underline, circle or highlight every time you see the word Holy Spirit. And here it is again Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, returns to Galilee. Luke is not letting us forget that the Holy Spirit is leading Jesus.
Speaker 1:The Holy Spirit isn't just leading Jesus. The Holy Spirit is a central theme in Luke's gospel. You can't read Luke's gospel and ignore the importance and the role of the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus is not just a man with some good ideas, he's not just an influential teacher, but he is acting under divine authority himself. Yes, jesus is God and yet he submits to God. It's a real mind bender. It's hard to understand, but that is his nature as the Trinity Father. That is his nature as the Trinity Father, son and Holy Spirit. Jesus himself isn't a lone wolf. Jesus himself isn't going crazy and doing whatever he wants to do. The sinless Son of God is led by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit leads him to Galilee.
Speaker 1:Reports about Jesus are spreading quickly, and soon he returns to his hometown of Nazareth. Nazareth is a town in this little providence of Galilee, so think of Galilee as kind of maybe the state, and Nazareth is just a town and that's where he goes. And Jesus is there for some period of time. It's not clear, but however long he's there, he's there long enough for what happens next to not be weird. It's the Sabbath.
Speaker 1:He shows up, he grabs a scroll. Every time they get together on the Sabbath, what they're supposed to read is already predetermined. And so he grabs a scroll and he reads the passage of the day, and it comes from Isaiah, and I'll put the words on the screen for you. Jesus reads the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that the captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and the time of the Lord's favor has come. Jesus continues he rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and so what's going on here is kind of a little bit like what's going on here today. There's a reading, there's a passage that Jesus was given. He reads it, he hands it back, then Jesus goes and he sits down, and it's at this point Jesus will start to talk about it. Kind of like I'm talking about this passage today, and so Jesus is talking about it, and Luke isn't giving us a word-by-word manuscript of what happened.
Speaker 1:Jesus probably said lots of things about this passage, but what Luke considers the most important part it's the only part he decides he's going to include about Jesus's exposition and explanation of the passage is that Jesus says the scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day Now. This is a bold declaration. Jesus is announcing that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. Jesus says you know that passage. We just read Ta-da here I am. I am the Messiah. I've come to bring freedom, not just in a political sense, but I've come to bring freedom in a spiritual sense.
Speaker 1:Now the crowd's expectations are as challenged as yours would be if I ended this message today by reading a passage out of Revelation and saying I'm back, which I'm not doing. But you can imagine how their expectations were challenged, how everyone there would say really this guy? Because what the Jews were expecting was a military leader like King David, somebody who would be involved with politics and overthrow the Roman Empire, placing Israel back in what their opinion was the rightful place on top, as God's chosen people, not just in a spiritual sense, but in a very earthly sense, that they would be number one. But what they didn't get was that Jesus's mission and that God's heart was so much greater and more profound than his modern politics at the time. What he was talking about, what Jesus was talking about with setting people free, it was about spiritual bondage, it was about healing physical ailments and, most importantly, it was about restoring the soul.
Speaker 1:Well, like I said, the people of Nazareth. They were not impressed. If you remember from the earlier part of the series. Jesus grows up in Nazareth. And so they actually declare Luke writes this part down too.
Speaker 1:It's interesting he says isn't this Joseph's son? That's what the crowd is like, kind of murmuring to themselves. In other words, they're like we remember that boy who scraped his knees and had ice cream all over his face. Maybe not those specific details, but you get the point. They remember Jesus, the baby Jesus, the infant Jesus, the, the toddler, jesus, the adolescent, and you can imagine Jesus walking that line of like, not sinning but still causing trouble, because that's what teenagers do. They said we remember this guy and all of a sudden he's showing up.
Speaker 1:He's reading Isaiah, the great, great prophet Isaiah, and he says I'm telling you, here I am today, and what we can kind of gain from this passage, you and me today, is that the familiarity of Jesus blinds them to the truth of Jesus. You see, they'd grown up with Jesus, not just years, but decades. We just celebrated 10 years at Madison Church last Sunday. They would have known Jesus at least twice that much, if not three times, as long as we have been around. So you can say confidently that most of those people really did know Jesus. These aren't towns like Madison, they're not even towns like Verona. These are much smaller areas. They definitely knew Jesus and they were blinded by the truth of him because of their familiarity with them and their opinion and their belief.
Speaker 1:Jesus wasn't just challenging them or saying something heretical, but it was impossible. It was impossible. They saw that boy go through puberty and the awkward phases of life. There is no way that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah who has come to deliver us from the Roman Empire. Well, eventually, the murmuring actually just turns into rage, because Jesus then challenges their nationalistic views, reminds them that God's grace extends, and has always extended, beyond Israel. He brings up the stories of Elijah and Elisha. He shows them that God's mission has always been global, not just specifically for the Jewish people, but that God has always been open and wanted other people to be involved, not just one group. So Jesus has gone in.
Speaker 1:This is not their typical Sabbath. He's read this passage very familiar with all of them, something they're waiting for, something they're yearning for. They want the Messiah to be there. Jesus claims he is the Messiah. This is impossible. And then, on top of it, he goes.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what? It doesn't matter if you reject me anyway, because God didn't just send me for you anyway. He sent me for everyone else. So that's fine. And you know what? People rejected Elijah and Elisha too, and now they are utterly appalled and offended. So much so you might. They tried to kill him, okay. So I don't know what I would have to say here this morning for all of you to decide. It's time for me to end. But you got to imagine you feel pretty strongly right. You came in this morning. You weren't thinking that, hey, at the end of the day, let's kill someone, were you? No, some of you aren't answering Very troubling online audience, so hope this footage makes it to you.
Speaker 1:That's what they do. They take them all the way to the cliff. They're going to throw them off a cliff. That is how angry they are with him. They're going to throw him off a cliff, but Jesus, displaying his divine authority, he walks through the crowd miraculously. We're going to chalk that up as a God saved his butt in this particular occasion and he continues his mission. He's not welcome in Nazareth, where he grew up, where everyone knew him, and so he heads north to Capernaum where he's going to spend a ton of time, it's where he's going to pick his 12 disciples, he's going to do some crazy miracles on the Sea of Galilee, and it all starts with rejection. It's a good message for you and I today, because some of you probably came from a small town or the family that wasn't normal, or maybe you came from a big city like Madison or Chicago, and now you're here, but it's a reminder that, no matter where we came from, that rejection just might happen, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're doing something wrong. In Jesus's case, he was actually doing something right and that's why he got rejected, and it was that rejection that leads Jesus to the place where we're going to be spending the next several weeks studying as he does his work.
Speaker 1:Familiarity can blind us to God's work and, just as the people of Nazareth miss Jesus because they knew him too well, we can miss out on God's work when we become too comfortable or too familiar with the church, with scripture or with our own spiritual practices. We must remain open to the unexpected ways God is moving. Whether you've known Jesus for three minutes or 30 years, we have to be open to the idea that he can still surprise us. He can do things that we don't think. Look like him. And that's not necessarily his problem, it might be ours and getting ourselves stuck in our ways. We must remain open to the unexpected ways God is moving.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, jesus goes from Nazareth to Capernaum. He continues his ministry Bonus points here for some of you Bible nerds who have been in the church a long time. He goes and he heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law, which means yes, that I know. Okay, yes, okay, that's fine, let's continue. Peter was married. Boom.
Speaker 1:Luke records and just kind of summarizing here Luke 4, 40 through 41. No matter their diseases, the touch of his hand, referring to Jesus, healed everyone. Many were possessed by demons and the demons came out at his command, shouting you are the Son of God. And what scholars surmise here is that Luke puts these two stories together. Right, because there was some travel time between Nazareth and Capernaum. He was in Nazareth for a while we don't know how long and he tells this story. What Luke is trying to communicate is that Jesus didn't just talk the talk, he didn't just go to the Sabbath and he wasn't just a brilliant speaker, a brilliant communicator who knew a bunch of stuff, but he walked the walk. And what we're gonna see throughout Luke's gospel is where Jesus talks, healings happen. Where Jesus taught, miracles happen, because the two went together. Jesus just wasn't about yapping and learning, but he was about doing and backing up. Even the demons recognized him as the son of God.
Speaker 1:Now, some of you know this and some of you may not, but for the people of that time, illness was often seen as a punishment of sin or spiritual oppression. So when Jesus is coming into these towns and these people are blind or they can't hear, they can't walk, the rest of this town around them would have assumed that you did something wrong or your parents did something wrong and God is punishing you for it. So it wasn't just that you had a disability. There's humiliation attached to it, a spiritual humiliation, that you're wrong, that you must have done something bad. And what Jesus does is he comes and he says no, no, no, here I am, I am the king, I am the spirit, and he heals people and he shows them. It was more than a physical restoration, but spiritual liberation and a glimpse of the kingdom of God breaking into the world all around them. And now today we properly understand, with the help of Jesus and medical advancements, that medical things happen because we're physical beings and we live in a fallen world. Sickness and illness happens. It doesn't mean that you did anything wrong. It doesn't mean that your parents did anything wrong. It doesn't mean that God is punishing you.
Speaker 1:But the message of this passage still remains that Jesus extends over all forms of our brokenness emotional, financial, physical and spiritual and that his mission is to restore both the body and soul. At the heart of this passage is the principle that Jesus, who is empowered by the Holy Spirit, brings liberation, healing and restoration. His mission transcends cultural and political boundaries. It wasn't just about a physical healing. It wasn't just about overthrowing political systems, but rather Jesus came to bring spiritual freedom to everyone, then and now. This principle runs through the entire New Testament. In the book of Acts we see the early church continuing this mission, empowered also by the Holy Spirit, proclaiming the gospel and bringing healing to those around us.
Speaker 1:And at Madison Church today, 2,000 years later, we try to embody these same principles in our little faith community, whether they're through our give back events or small groups. We want to bring liberation, healing and restoration to the city of Madison, to the places we work, to the neighborhoods we live in or the apartment complexes that we call home. This is what Jesus has offered us. We believe that God's kingdom breaks into the world, as it was when he was alive, and doing miracles. When we today serve people in need and build relationships and walk alongside others, it's not just about gathering here on Sundays. I like this space and it's meaningful, but the mission of God that he has left us with is so much bigger than that. It's about living incarnationally, being the hands and feet of Christ from the time we leave here until the time we come back.
Speaker 1:And so what does that mean for you and I? Watching, listening online, what does that mean for all of us here today? Here are some specific challenges that I think we can walk away with. Jesus didn't just stay in Nazareth, he was kind of driven out of Nazareth but he also doesn't stay in Capernaum. He doesn't stay in this other town very long. Jesus moves from town to town, bringing the good news not just the message, but the miracles to everyone he encountered, and we today are called to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not saying you got to move suburb to suburb or city to city or state to state or leave the country to do this well, but building relationships with your neighbors as they come and go. Maybe your neighbors move here and they're here just for a year or two and then they leave. Or maybe you've had a neighbor for a really long time, or coworkers who are new and they're just hired, and coworkers who have been there a long time who are new and they're just hired, and coworkers who have been there a long time. We've got to look for opportunities to serve and share the love of Christ in not just our words but our actions. Whether volunteering with a local organization like our partner DACE, the Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, or tutoring middle schoolers that are our adoptive school partner on the west side Gillespie, or intentionally just showing kindness to the random person you walk by on the streets, all of us can live missionally by demonstrating and sharing Jesus's love in those spaces.
Speaker 1:And I alluded to earlier during the connection card bit that we're getting ready to do this Thanksgiving dinner. This will be either the 10th or 11th time we have done this dinner with the Westside Community Center. This is a really big deal to me. It's a big deal to our church community. It was one of the first projects that we got involved in. We knew when we were starting Madison Church it couldn't just be about connecting with God and it couldn't just be about having Christian community, but we needed to give back and contribute to the places that we called home. And so we reached out to the Loser Center one of the directors there and we said we'd love to help. How can we help? And they said we do this gratitude dinner every single year and we just need more volunteers. I said, well, we can do volunteers, what else so? Well, we could use some money. And I said we got some money, we can help with that too.
Speaker 1:And then, as we're getting close, we're talking about the menu and I noticed that something that's missing, that's a staple at Thanksgiving. There was no desserts on the thing, and for those of you who know me, I'm not a big dessert person anyway, but I know dessert's big. You got to have dessert on Thanksgiving and I asked why not? And they said, well, just didn't have the budget for it. So I remember we went out to Costco and we bought those giant pumpkin pies those of you with Costco memberships you know they're just the best Bought a whole bunch of those, and ever since then, pies have been part of the menu. And so we do this and we continue to do this event every year because it's a critical aspect of giving back. And so today, if you're sitting here and you're saying, how can I missionally live and give back in the way that we're talking about today, why don't you volunteer with us in November at this dinner? You'll have to give up a Friday night and anywhere from two to three to six hours, but this is what we're reading in this passage. This is what it looks like in 2024.
Speaker 1:Another thing is that we should embrace the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit. The sinless Son of God relied on the Holy Spirit's power to fulfill His mission. So you and I, who are not the sinless sons and daughters of God, should also rely on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will guide us, empower us and help us discern God's will in our everyday lives. And at this point I want to take a little bit of a detour, an intentional detour that I wrote.
Speaker 1:But it's important to understand that spiritual feelings aren't always emotional feelings. Spiritual feelings are not always emotional feelings. We often confuse our emotions with God's presence, our emotions with God's presence. But sometimes God is close, even when we don't feel him. What I mean is, last week the band was clicking and in sync and it sounded good. Now, if you live in another part of the country you might walk away from this church service and say, man, god was moving this morning. Hey, god's moving every morning, whether the band's good or not good, or whether we have a band or we don't have a band.
Speaker 1:What you mean to say is that the band was rocking, and yeah, they were, but God is there. But you see the confusion right, because we feel it in our emotions. We say, oh God must be great. But then, when we don't feel it, we're like, oh God must be great. But then, when we don't feel it, we're like, oh God must be far. But that doesn't have to be true. You don't have to raise your hand.
Speaker 1:But I know some of you deal with mental illness, some of you are dealing with depression and I would imagine, because of the way that depression works seasonally, that every January or February you feel like God might be a little bit further from you than he was in July or August. You probably know this. You're all old enough now to kind of maybe recognize this Is God closer to you in July, or is your depression worse in January? That's where it gets confusing, because if we don't know what God's voice feels like, if we can't recognize it apart from our emotions, it's always going to be tied to that, which means that when you're happy and joyful, let's go the other way. You're happy and joyful, everything's going well, you're walking on water, you got the promotion, you got the raise, you found a hundred bucks on the ground. You're just having the best time ever.
Speaker 1:You might assume God is with me and I want to say no, that's not evidence of God being with you at all. It's possible that everything is going pretty freaking great for you and you're far from God. That's why this whole do what makes you happy advice by itself can be really actually terrible advice. Now, you guys know John 10.10 is one of my favorite passages. God has come, jesus has come to give us life to the full. So I'm not saying your life's got to suck. I really believe life is better with Jesus. But when the philosophy is do what makes you happy, you can be doing what makes you happy, but it's also leading you away from God. And in the process of doing that you might think I'm getting closer to God because I feel great. But just like how your depression doesn't mean you're closer or further from God, your happiness doesn't either. We have to develop. Here's my solution.
Speaker 1:You are emotional creatures. I'm an emotional creature. I love emotions. I don't think we need to repress those emotions, but I think we need to develop a deep intellectual knowing that God is near, even when we don't feel it. You see, when you're depressed or something isn't going right in your mind, you're like I need to solve this. What am I doing wrong? God must be punishing me. We're trying to justify the way we feel with why God is far, and instead I want you to interrupt that. I want you to interrupt that and say no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know I don't feel it, but that doesn't mean something's wrong. Something good doesn't mean something's right. Our emotions, how we feel today, how we feel over the course of a season, cannot be our sole indicator of God's presence.
Speaker 1:Scripture, the New Testament, backs this up. Jesus says be sure of this, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. You're feeling real bad, you're feeling real anxious, you're feeling real lost. You're feeling real dark. You don't know where God is. You reach your hands out everywhere and God is nowhere to be found. You have to tell yourself no, no, no. Remember what Jesus promised me he is with me always. And so, even though I'm in the darkness and I'm feeling around and I can't feel God anywhere, I need to tell myself he is still here. And for those of you who struggle with the voice inside your head God's not here because I did something wrong. I'm sorry that. That's the message, but I also want to say that's not God, that's not God's spirit, that's not the way it is.
Speaker 1:Paul assures us nothing can ever separate us from God's love, nothing. But if that wasn't enough for you, paul will elaborate. Neither life nor death can separate us from God's love. Neither angels nor demons can separate us from God's love. Neither our fears for the day or our worries about tomorrow can separate us from God's love. Not even the powers of hell can.
Speaker 1:The feelings and God's presence. By regularly reminding yourself that sometimes I have to objectively state and some of you need to write this down and put it on a mirror at home I don't feel like God is close, but I know he is. I don't feel like God is close, but I know he is. Just as your emotions are an important part of you, so is your intellect, so is your intellect, and sometimes your intellect needs to rein in the emotions that you're feeling. Again, I don't think emotions are bad, but I think sometimes we need that balance, and I don't know if this is a message we get to hear very often in Christian circles or the church. I think oftentimes we do just associate positive feelings with I'm doing something right and negative feelings with I'm doing something wrong, but that's not the case. Okay, back on track here Overcoming familiarity. The people of Nazareth rejected Jesus because they were too familiar with him, and similarly, we can become complacent in our faith and miss what God is doing because we think we already know everything.
Speaker 1:I just spent the last week in Springfield, missouri. I was there resting. I was there seeing an old friend. I ended up golfing really well, even though my friends don't believe it, got a new tattoo Great week. But I was reminded down in Springfield, where there are mega churches everywhere. I mean I was telling the guy who was tattooing my arm. I said he asked what the biggest churches in Madison were and I said I think we've got two that are around the three to 4,000 people range. If I'm not mistaken he goes, those wouldn't even be top 15 here I said I know right, like that's a mid-sized church here in Springfield, missouri, and as such, there's this idea that they already know everything and they know this. I'm not talking badly about them, they talk about this themselves that, like we all grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt, we all grew up hearing not just Bible stories but deep theology.
Speaker 1:And when you're leaving church from, whatever your preferred brand of speaker is and your preferred type of music is, and the production value is literally second to none you're driving home and you're seeing meth addicts on the street because in Greene County they have one of the highest distributions of meth in the entire country. You're driving home and you're seeing women who are beaten and abused sitting on their front porch Because, also in Greene County, they have some of the highest rates of domestic abuse in the country. How can it be and they're asking this too how can it be that we do church better than anyone and you have these two critical issues right here, not just little issues like we're known for this. We're known for churches, domestic abuse and meth. Well, maybe it's because we're overly familiar.
Speaker 1:This is why we need each other. That's why we need small groups. We need our small groups at Madison Church and we need our spiritual friendships around us to help each other step out of complacency and into a deeper faith. We need people who love us and who know us and can show us the blind spots in our own lives. Seeing God at work in different environments not just here on Sunday mornings, but different environments can refresh your faith and help you overcome spiritual complacency.
Speaker 1:And finally, I think we need to expand our vision. Jesus' mission was not confined to Galilee or Nazareth or the Middle East. It was for all of them and ultimately, the world. It was for all of them and ultimately, the world. And so we today must extend our vision beyond this neighborhood, beyond the neighborhood we live in, beyond Madison, beyond Dane County in Wisconsin. We also need a global and inclusive vision of Jesus's mission.
Speaker 1:And when you think about, like, how can I do that? How can I support missions globally? Well, if you give to Madison Church, you already do. You may not know this about Madison Church, but we have written it into our bylaws that we give away at least 10% of everything that comes in. So if you've given 20 bucks to Madison Church, we sent two of it overseas it's gone. We do that every year. We reconcile the budget in June and say how much money came in, how much money do we need to give away, and we send it to missionaries like Wendy Osborne, who spoke two months ago, who was in Ukraine and is now going to the island of Malta to serve. So you say how do I help? Well, generosity is a really big part of it, but another way that you can do it is to support global missions and other missions is that we have a middle school ministry going to Rapid City, south Dakota, to serve, and this is helping them expand their vision of their faith. And we have a scholarship fund started because we want these trips to be equitable. Some families have two and even three people going, so it's not just $900, it's $2,700. And for those of you who are just living modestly, that's a lot of freaking money, and so we want to create we have created a scholarship fund and so a way, if you're talking about expanding your role and helping other people expand their vision, a great investment is in the Rapid City service trip, and this is so key.
Speaker 1:I mentioned at Madison Church not just partnerships with the Loser Center, not just mission trips, but we do partner because we want to be a church that gives back and never gets so focused on what we're doing that we forget that God has been working for the past 2,000 years and he'll continue to work after we are long gone. And so, as we wrap it up, let's remember Jesus's ministry did not end here on earth. It continues through you, it continues through me, it continues through us. His earthly ministry continues through us as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit, as we evaluate ourselves and the way that we walk out our faith. Is there liberation occurring around me? Is there healing and is there restoration? And if not, let's ask why not? Because this was the ministry of Jesus that he has passed on to us now.
Speaker 1:The early church took this mission seriously in the New Testament, full of examples of believers who were filled by the Spirit and brought the good news to others. And you guys know, because we just got done with our big series on values, that at Madison Church we take our own mission to heart. So the question I want you to reflect on as we enter into a time of communion this afternoon or this morning, is how will you live out the mission? How will you live out the mission where you live, where you work, where you go to school? Where can you make a difference? In your family and in your workplace or in your community? Ask the question how is the Holy Spirit leading me to step out into faith? This is our invitation today, as a result of the passage, to live missionally, as Jesus did, empowered by the Spirit, to participate in God's ongoing work in the world, and so let's be a people who bring liberation, healing and restoration wherever we go, because of our faith and what Jesus has accomplished.
