Week One - One More - Pastor Trey Hildebrant - First Orlando

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] It is so good to be with you first Orlando, across all of our campuses, here at John Young, Horizon West, DeBarry, Okoey, and our brothers out at the Marian Correctional Institute. If you're here at John Young, can you welcome everybody into church today? It is so good to be together. [APPLAUSE] We are stepping into what I believe could be four of the most consequential weeks in the year for our church, not only for our church, but for our community and for our influence around the world. As we start a brand new teaching series today called One More, as you have seen around the room and even behind me and with the book, let me say a couple of things to help us move forward, and then I'll jump into the teaching. I know sometimes we don't love homework, but this is Jesus' homework, and it is good for you. I think as we take what God starts on a Sunday into our Monday and our Tuesday and our Wednesday, this will guide you through Scripture. It will challenge how you think and how you pray. If you've been hungry to grow in your relationship with God, or if you're thinking there's got to be more, you've got to take up opportunities like this. So grab one of these books and start with us tomorrow in The One More Study. Also, on your app, the First Orlando app,

we have sermon notes. I think those are really helpful as we move through a teaching so you can follow along, even take some of your own notes. So if you go to the First Orlando app, find the sermon notes there, and you can follow along, and even there's some application at the end of the sermon notes to help all of this come together. And then before we get started, I want you guys to know that we are a family here at First Orlando, and the production team left me a note that says, "Stealers versus Falcons at 1 p.m. Keep it snappy, pastor." So considering that my team doesn't have a quarterback, I'm going to take as long as I want, whoever put that up there, all right. Hey, so as we move through The One More Series, we are studying the key sending passages in all four New Testament gospels. So we're going to go Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Today is Matthew, we're going to be in Matthew chapter 28. And here's a thought. Matthew 28 shows us why we exist, like why we're here. If you're a follower of Jesus, maybe you've had a thought like this that once I said yes to Jesus, why doesn't he just take me home to be with him in heaven? We are left here as followers of Christ for a very specific reason,

and that's what Matthew 28 is going to teach us. But here's a question to get us started. How do you interact with people who don't share your worldview? How do you interact with people who don't see the world the way you see the world? They don't share your faith. Well, maybe more specifically, how do you interact with someone who doesn't believe in Jesus? Is it anger? Disinterest? Avoidance? Maybe it's just awkward confusion? Maybe you think I'm going to get on social media and I'm going to win an argument? By the way, that doesn't work that way? Or do you love them? Do you see them? Do you hurt for people who don't believe in Jesus? Do you long for them to know what you know about Jesus? See, every day we are surrounded by people who don't know Jesus, people who are hurting, who are searching, who are wondering people who we believe are lost and dead spiritually. People who are near to us, but far from God. And even beyond our everyday lives, there are entire people groups around the world

who have not heard the name of Jesus. Nations and tribes and pockets of people from the jungles of the Amazon, to the Middle East and into Asia, who have never even heard the name of Jesus. Church, this should not be. This is an intentionally challenging series for those who are followers of Jesus and call First Orlando home. If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, first of all, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. So consider the next four weeks an invitation into the huddle. Pretend you are at a football game watching and then the coach kind of turns to you and invites you into the huddle. If you are not a follower of Jesus or you're not even sure about church yet, you are invited into the huddle. We're going to do some game planning and some play calling over the next four weeks so that we can be clear of how we are moving forward together as a church. Ultimately, this is a series about what it means to live as a Christian. Not just to be a Christian, but to live as a Christian. By the way, I want to say welcome to a special group of people. This is a lot of the TFA football team over here. You can welcome them coming in as I talk about a huddle. Coach Conway, they're going to sign autographs after the game or -- no, we won't get them into a head like that. All right. Hey guys, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the great commission because here's what happens in the great commission. This is right after Jesus' resurrection, he gathers his followers up and he gives them marching orders. This is from Matthew 28 starting in verse 16.

Matthew 28 verse 16, this is the great commission. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they had saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." Jesus says, "I have all authority, now go." What would it look like to radically align our lives with the great commission? The phrase radically aligned is important because many of us agree with the great commission. We agree with it. We think it's important and necessary for Christians to share our faith, but we have not positioned our lives or aligned our actions to the mission of sharing Jesus with as many people as possible. Even if we want to share Jesus with people, we often don't. We miss the moment. We shrink from the opportunity. We hesitate and think another time. So let's dig in. I think God has more for us than that. First, why is it called the great commission? Have you ever asked that question? Why is this called the great commission? The phrase great commission was coined in the mid-1600s but was made popular by a missionary to China named Hudson Taylor towards the end of the 1800s. Hudson Taylor is known as one of the most consequential Christians since the apostle Paul. He started a ministry called the China Inland Mission and by 1865. And by 1910, there were over 800 missionaries to China, 125 schools, and over 20,000 Chinese people had been brought to faith in Jesus.

This man coins the phrase the great commission because the phrase great commission clarifies Jesus' words in Matthew 28 as the most significant directive, as the most important charge that Christians have received from Jesus. If you want to know, what does Jesus expect from our lives and how we live is the great commission? That we would live this way. The way Hudson Taylor said it was, the great commission is not an option to be considered. It is a command to be obeyed. It's our aim to make the great commission our personal mission endeavor, not just a statement but how we live. That we would actively share Jesus with one more, with one more person, where we live, where we work, where we play. And this is not proper. This is a rescue mission for every soul. Rescue. Now, to some degree, everyone wants to be a hero, right? Now, Jesus is the hero of the gospel, but we want to be a part of something heroic. We admire heroes. We think about those stories that you might see on the news of a person lifting a car off of someone that's been pinned to the ground, or a firefighter running into a burning building to save a baby, or something like this, a lifeguard swimming out into the ocean to save someone who's drowning. Well, this past July, there was a story that made its rounds on the news, and the video of this lifeguard saving this kid is harrowing.

Take a look. (people chattering) (people chattering) (people chattering) (people chattering) That's a 16-year-old lifeguard saving a 10-year-old kid. They got out safely. We watched that, and it feels like you begin to feel the energy pent up a little bit, because it's a rescue. By the way, I checked. That's West Coast oceans. Florida doesn't do that. So I don't think being new to Florida, if you have any pointers, I don't want to be a part of that. But what you see is a rescue, and it does something in your heart. So here's what puzzles me. Is that rescue more daring than the rescue of a soul? Isn't every time someone says yes to Jesus a rescue of exponentially greater proportions? If souls only spend eternity in one of two places, heaven in the presence of the Lord, or hell away from him, shouldn't that awaken a passion for rescue in us? Here's a question that, or a thought that I'm wrestling with, is we don't see the great commission with the gravity of rescue. I don't often see the great commission with the gravity of rescue.

Now, some of you are already living this way. You are sold out to sharing Jesus and your community and around the world. So A plus to you, some of you out there, but many of us, we need an awakening to the great commission. Imagine partnering with God to rescue one more soul, and then another, and then another. This series and really the future of our church is rooted in the truth, that if the people of God live for one more, then our world would be changed. Here's what's true, with Jesus, we have the clarity, conviction, and courage needed to reach one more. The clarity, the courage, or the conviction and the courage. We see it in the great commission, Matthew 28 starting back in verse 18. Jesus said, "All authority in heaven and on earth "has been given to me." Which means everything that all of his power is summed up in this moment when he says, "I need you to understand what I'm about to tell you "is not a suggestion. "Therefore, our confidence in accomplishing "the great commission rests in his authority "and not our ability." The authority claim that Jesus is making here is significant. He's claiming deity, he's claiming that he's God, he's claiming kingship. The early disciples would have heard this

and they would have recognized that this was a game-changing announcement. By the way, did you notice when we read it earlier, it said that they go to this mountain and some worshiped him while some doubted? Think about what's happening. This is the resurrected Jesus. He's already died and risen again, but there were people in the immediate proximity of the resurrected Jesus who still doubted. Which means, by the way, if you're wrestling with doubt, if you're working through that, that's okay. Jesus still welcomes you in. But he wants to clarify, oh, some of you are doubting? First of all, I've risen from the dead, but let me be clear, all authority has been given to me. So this isn't the type of authority that we shrug off. This is the king of the universe through whom everything was created. time, yet knows the hairs on our head. That's easier for some than others, I know. This is the one who has eternally loved us and died to save us, and then whose authority was vindicated through the resurrection, proving that he has the keys of life and death. King Jesus didn't give the great commission just to an institute, but he gave it to individuals, to you, and to me, and in many ways, Jesus has taken his authority, and he has delegated his authority to us. We move in life under the banner of King Jesus for his glory, for from his authority, and to reach one more in the name of Jesus. We are partnered with the king himself as we bring the nations into faith, and which means this, the church doesn't have a mission, the mission has a church.

This is who we are, this is what we do. It's not just a program, or a logo, or just a ministry. With the great commission, we have been given the clarity we need to know why we exist, because Jesus removes the confusion from the mission. Here's an important thought. We won't live for one more until we are clear about what Jesus has asked us to do. Until we're clear. So verse 19 says, "Go, therefore, and make disciples go." Go assumes the church cannot remain closed in on itself, rather that those who are in Christ are actively going to the lives of their ones in the community, in the world, intentionally spreading the gospel of Jesus. Some of us need to be aware of this. The mission requires movement. We can't stay put. But our eyes are open, and our mouths are filled with Jesus, and our feet are moving towards other people, looking for people who have not yet said yes to Jesus, and bringing the gospel of Jesus into their lives. This is called evangelism. We define evangelism for us, because sometimes evangelism doesn't have a great reputation. Here's what evangelism is. Evangelism is the verbal presentation, so you're using your words, of the gospel, which is the good news of Jesus, with the loving intent, like you love somebody in your heart of leading the listener to faith in Jesus. Now, like I said, we hear evangelism. We might think of images of megaphones, the Billy Graham types. We're knocking on someone's door to ask them where they're going to go if they die. See, not all those examples are necessarily bad, but let's be honest. Evangelism doesn't always have a great reputation, so what do we do? We pull back. We pull back from sharing Jesus.

We think, "Well, I'm not good at it. I'm scared. This feels awkward." Now, here's the deal. Some people have the gift of evangelism, and some don't. Like evangelism as a spiritual gift. Some just have the guts and the skill built in to lead people to Jesus. I was over having breakfast with someone at the church a few weeks ago, and I noticed a small group from our men's ministry, the huddle. They were in the back of the restaurant talking about Jesus with the waiter. Some people just have that ability to go from zero to sixty and begin to talk about Jesus. Let me be clear. Some people have the gift of evangelism. Some people don't, but all are expected to evangelize. Some just do it loudly and often, and others take a different approach. For many, evangelism may not immediately be declarative, but it might start relationally. We may not share Jesus on the streets or in a stadium, but I hope we all share Jesus with people who are near to us, but far from God. Relationships and neighbors and friendships that lead to Jesus' conversations. We are called to evangelize, where God has put you on the map, He has put you on mission. Your home, your co-workers, at school, on your team, wherever you find yourself, where you're on map, you are on mission. Evangelism is where make disciples starts by winning souls to Jesus. Every person who has faith in Jesus, by the way, is now a disciple. We are not trying to just build numbers or create con "but it doesn't look like they follow Christ." When people truly surrender their lives to Jesus, they begin to live as followers of Jesus. We are called to start by winning someone to Christ

and then leading them on a path of what it means to actually live for Him. And then every disciple has the calling to go make new disciples. We have been sent out to bring more in with this conviction. We won't live for one more until our conviction matches the consequences. Until our conviction matches the consequences. In John chapter 11 verse 26, this won't be on the screen. Jesus gives us a really hopeful verse. He says, "Everyone who lives and believes in me "shall never die." Which means this, "You and me, we have an eternity." So pretend this rope goes off stage and goes on forever. The rope represents eternity. And this red area represents our lives. Imagine the rope is the timeline of our existence, your existence, my existence. We exist forever and this red strip is our time on earth. We spend a few short years on earth and then we have all of eternity. Yet so often all we really care about is what's happening inside of the red. We're obsessed from what's gonna happen from here to here. Like, okay, so I'm worried about, okay, what's my vacation gonna look like next summer? Am I gonna pass that test next week?

What's maybe a little bit further, what's retirement going to look like? These are great questions, by the way. If you're like me this time of year, I'm super obsessed with what's gonna happen with 18 to 22 year olds play football on Saturdays. Like I'm just, you know, it's like from here to here and it takes all of our attention. When the reality is we might be missing the big picture of eternity because this is what dominates our thinking, our lives. And we get obsessed with what's happening right here when the Lord is like, don't miss that people are eternal. You are eternal. Your neighbor, your friend, your enemy is eternal. But sin has broken us at a soul level. All have sinned and the consequences of sin is death, both now and into eternity. This is the problem. And we can't fix it ourselves. The cost is too high. You can't fix your eternity by yourself. This is why we use words like saved and rescued because that is the cost of our sin that no one has been saved or can be saved apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the solution to the greatest problem humanity has ever faced. And this is good news though, but good news is not good news

if it doesn't get there in time. The gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as the promised savior, a savior, a rescuer offering us eternal life through faith in his life, death and resurrection. Church, please feel this with me. We're talking about souls, eternity. This is what's on the line. And so we go and we go as verse 19 says to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. The commission clearly answers the question to who are we sent and Jesus says to all nations, which simply means everyone. Think about it. The bigger deal the news is the wider we go with the news, the more people we share it with. Big news, big circle, small news, small circle. Jesus says, tell the whole world about me. This is the biggest news, it gets the biggest circle. Everyone needs to hear about Jesus. They need to be baptized as disciples in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and then taught how to live for him. What if we really began to live for eternity? For eternity. We want to say that we live for eternity, but we look at our daily life. And let's just be honest, our daily life doesn't match up to this reality that we are eternal

often awkward and potentially confrontational. Share Jesus with someone. But when we abdicate our responsibility to share Jesus with the ones in our lives, we are effectively saying that our discomfort matters more than their eternity. And I don't want to make that trade anymore. Do you? I don't want to trade my comfort for their eternity. I know that we fear rejection and awkwardness and not having all the answers and we don't like feeling silly or misunderstood. But here's the promise of the great commission. We don't have to live scared. We don't have to hold back in hesitation because the end of Jesus' words, he says this, "I am with you always to the end of the age." So courage. We want to live, we won't live for one more until our courage is stronger than our fears. The directive here is to making disciples is intimidating. You may be thinking, "Me? God?" Well, let me encourage you. It's going to sound a little bit backwards from encouragement but go with me. Have you ever considered that you don't have the power to make even one disciple, much less disciples of all nations? You can't. I can't. Because only God has the power to change lives. Therefore, it's not us taking Him into the world to make disciples. It's Him using us. So take the pressure off to perform or to control. The command to make disciples is effective because God is the one doing it, not us doing it for Him. He's with us. Christ's presence is personal. What He said in the Scripture, He says, "I am. I am with you always. He's with us and He's in us. He's helping us align our lives to the Great Commission." Christ's presence is continual. "I'm with you always. He never leaves." And Christ's presence lasts until the end of the age, which means this and we should celebrate. Jesus is already one. We have nothing to fear because we are guaranteed victory in this life and for eternity because of the victory that has already been won by Jesus. Our courage is rooted in knowing the end of the story. So be bold, Christian. We win in the end. We take that confidence and that encouragement and that courage out to live the Great Commission. But the idea of one more actually comes from a different teaching of Jesus in Luke chapter 15, verses 4 through 7. I'm just going to paraphrase. Jesus actually teaches three stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. And the theme is this that there was one lost. And a shepherd in Luke 15, 4 through 7, a shepherd would leave the 99 to go after the one. The point is this, the heart of God is for the one. One more helps us move away from thinking about the Great Commission as abstract but makes

the Great Commission personal. When we see God's heart for the one that he would leave the 99 to go after the one, you know what that does? It changes how you see the student that sits next to you at class. God's heart is for that one. It changes how you think about that neighbor. The one maybe that writes all of the messages on the Facebook group for your HOA, that neighbor. And you begin to think God's heart is for that one, or you're walking down the road. God's heart is for that one, or you're at the store, you see a barista at a coffee shop. God's heart is for that one. Charge, hear me. One more will never be impactful as a slogan. The Great Commission is not accomplished when we approach it generally. The Great Commission is for the one. And I was reminded of that a few weeks ago. One of my closest friends in ministry, the pastor named Brandon, Brandon texted me about four weeks ago out of nowhere on a Sunday. He said you'll never believe who showed up at church today. I'm asking and I'm not He said, "Eric, let me tell you Eric's story." About 18, 17, 18 years ago, I worked for a ministry called Straight Street. And we would go out into the city center with the vision of just sharing the gospel. We did a few other things, but part of what we did was share the gospel in Gainesville, Georgia, the good Gainesville, and Gainesville, Georgia. And, sorry. (congregation laughing) So we'd go share Jesus in downtown Gainesville, Georgia, and there was this tattoo parlor run by a man named Eric. And I wasn't great at like the walking down the street and just grabbing a random person and being like, "Hey, can I talk to you about Jesus?" I know that works sometimes, but that wasn't great for me. I needed a more relational approach.

So Brandon and I would go down to a coffee shop. We'd get Eric's favorite cup of coffee, and we'd go back to the tattoo parlor, and we would just sit down in the evenings and just talk about life and Jesus. Eric was into some new age things, broken decisions in his past, but we would just begin to talk about Jesus. And we saw his heart begin to melt over time as we talked about Jesus. But then life kind of got in the way and I ended up going a different path, but my friend Brandon stayed communicating with Eric. 18 years later, I get a text from a buddy of mine saying, "You won't believe who showed up at church today." Eric. 'Cause one more is a name. It's a face. It's a story. We can ignore the idea of someone, but we can't ignore a real person. We can't ignore a friend. We can't ignore a neighbor or a co-worker. By the way, and it's this passion for one more that is behind and fueling our vision for our church. So let me just talk about what this means for us together. 'Cause one more means a lot for us individually, but what does this mean for us together? We have a vision as a church to launch

100 gospel expressions in 10 years. 100 gospel expressions. Gospel expressions are great commission communities all around Central Florida and beyond to reach people who have not yet been reached. This will mean new campuses, church plants, autonomous church plants that we help launch, micro sites on college campuses and apartment complexes, missional expressions in places like prisons and recovery communities. All of us aligning our lives to the great commission to reach one more is the only way this vision happens. We're still learning what this means, how to start and train a great commission community, but let me be honest with you, this isn't something that the pastors of First Orlando lead alone. This is way less institution and much more personal, the only way we accomplish an audacious vision like 100 gospel expressions in 10 years is if you lead the way, it's measuring the success of our church by how many leaders are sent out to reach people who are not yet reached. And by the way, you can reach people in your life based on your passions and your opportunities that I could never reach because where God has placed you on the map, He has placed you on mission.

Now we'll continue to grow our existing campuses. We want to fill this place with worshipers and people who call this home and people seeking God. We're gonna raise up leaders here at our church. All of that's gonna continue, but what if we begin to also measure how many leaders we sent out to launch gospel expressions? One burden of mine right now personally is prisons. God has just been messing with me about this idea of what it would look like to worship and reach people and disciple men and women who are in prison. By the way, if you ever find yourself doing something that's clearly listed in scripture, keep doing it. When Jesus said, "I was in prison and you visited me." So go with me for a second. What if every single prison and correctional institution in Florida became a gospel expression by 2036? There are 49 correctional institutions, state and federal, not including 21 juvenile detention centers across the state. What if church, what if we were worshiping in college campuses and micro sites and apartment complexes and we were in 60 plus prisons? Man, what would God do to change this state and beyond? By the way, we have leadership opportunities at three of our prisons and counting. If you have a desire to help us lead a gospel expression out of prison, you can actually scroll to the bottom

of the sermon notes there on your app, fill out an interest form. at one of our prisons. By the way, Marian Correctional Institute, I'm going to be with you next week, and I can't wait to be there with you. You might have a vision for a gospel expression that looks really different than that. Good. We'll train you, equip you, support you, and send you. Imagine a hundred gospel expressions networking together to reach Central Florida and beyond. Church, are you with me on this? Let's go. But let's get personal because a big vision like 110 doesn't work without one more. Listen to this. Without one more as the foundation for how you live and I live, we'll never get to 110. We choose to live radically aligned with a great commission. So here's the question I want you to pray through right now. Who is the one in my life far from God? Who is the one in my life far from God? You're going to take your marker and when you have that name, it may be today as you walk out, it may be in week four. You're going to go over to that board and you're going to write, Eric, Stephen, Mom, and other because God has put you on map, on the map and He's put you on mission for one more. So let's take 10 seconds. Breathe and pray, even now does God bring a one, a person, a name, a face to your mind. Those boards are going to be up for four weeks because some of you need to start the book tomorrow and as you pray and work through this book, God's going to bring names to your heart because right now you're thinking, I don't know who my one is, that's okay. It took me a few weeks to begin to think about names. And as you come on a Sunday, grab a marker and write your name on the board.

There's going to be something about that commitment moment when you say, "Eric, Lord, I commit right now to live in such a way that Eric might meet Jesus through our relationship. Who is the one in my life far from God?" Church, let's go on this journey together and reach one more in Jesus' name. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much and we're so grateful that you've given us the clarity of what this mission is. We have conviction that we are eternal. God, would you help us live with the conviction that people are eternal and then, Lord, would you give us courage? Courage to live for one more. For any of us who are thinking, Lord, I don't know who that one might be in my life. Would you supernaturally give a thought a name? Introduce us to somebody over the next couple of weeks who could become our one. I pray for the people in the room that feel like they have nothing but ones. Would you help them focus, Lord, who are you going to invite me to invest the gospel in? Lord, we love you. I'm so grateful that you want to use us on this mission to reach the world in your name. Would you help us in the name of Jesus we pray? Amen. I want to invite our deacons and some of our deacons' wives to come up to the front. They're going to be along the front of the stage, in front of these stairs over here. If you ever need to talk with anybody, you want to pray with somebody, don't miss a moment. We are ready to serve you, to love you every single Sunday. There's somebody up here to answer your questions and to pray with you. So come down, get in a line if you have to to spend time with a deacon and to pray. So as you're walking out, begin writing names on the board today and we'll focus on that over the next couple of weeks. If you're new with us, today is your first Sunday with us. You can download the First Orlando app and see all the next steps that are there because

we would love to help you move from outside to inside the life of our church. I love you all so much. See you next week. (gentle music)