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- [00:01]
Pastor Joby Martin
Welcome to Deepen with Pastor Joby Martin. The Church of 1122 is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. And we're praying this message helps you deepen your relationship with him. Now let's dive in.
- [00:17]
Pastor Britt
Welcome back to the Deepen podcast. Big weekend over. Big in the church of 1122. Huge. We launched our first. I'm saying we.
- [00:28]
Pastor Joby Martin
We launched, but good job.
- [00:29]
Pastor Britt
I feel like it's we.
- [00:30]
Pastor Joby Martin
You got babies in the kids ministry.
- [00:32]
Pastor Britt
We are launching our first ever kids book, the big brave choice for giving like Jesus. Pastor Joby, did you ever think you'd write a kids book?
- [00:40]
Pastor Joby Martin
Oh, dreamed of it my whole life.
- [00:43]
Pastor Britt
Did you ever read a book when you were a kid?
- [00:46]
Pastor Joby Martin
Star Wars. Star wars picture books.
- [00:50]
Kevin Myers
Of course.
- [00:50]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah.
- [00:52]
Kevin Myers
So I built the Millennium Falcon in Legos.
- [00:56]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah.
- [00:57]
Compassion Staff Member
Oh.
- [00:57]
Kevin Myers
But then it got broke.
- [00:59]
Pastor Joby Martin
It always does.
- [00:59]
Kevin Myers
Sad day.
- [01:00]
Pastor Joby Martin
It's kind of a weird thing, Legos. Oh, they'll let you down.
- [01:04]
Pastor Britt
Are you guys adult LEGO people?
- [01:06]
Kevin Myers
No, no. But my kids had a Lego run, you know, back during 2020 when we were home.
- [01:14]
Pastor Joby Martin
It's expensive.
- [01:15]
Kevin Myers
I spent an inordinate amount of money on Legos. You know, I kind of. You kind of break it down into apple cost per hour. It started making more sense at that point.
- [01:24]
Pastor Britt
You would do that.
- [01:25]
Kevin Myers
Yeah.
- [01:26]
Pastor Joby Martin
So one of the things legitimately, as Gretchen and I were raising ours when they were little, is outside of the Jesus story book Bible, it's really hard to find children's books that aren't just morality based. You know, they're all just like, you should do good because it's good. And then it'll have like a picture of Jesus in the back or something. And so I just kind of had the idea and went to Lori and said, lori, what if we took chapters out of the previous books I've written and we just turn it into like build characters and all that. She did all the heavy lifting.
- [02:03]
Pastor Britt
Our mutual friend. And 1122 er, Lisa Turker says that writing kids books is actually harder than adult books because you only have 250 words to communicate. I know, like a gospel message. Yeah.
- [02:18]
Pastor Joby Martin
So that's why we started on forgiveness, because especially for a kid, man, it is the foundation of the gospel, you know, and they can understand because they all got friends or brothers and sisters or whatever, and they understand what it is to offend someone and hold a grudge. And then it's an easy link then to say, yeah, that's what we do to God when we sin and he forgives us. Therefore, we should forgive. So that's the kids version of Matthew 18.
- [02:46]
Pastor Britt
The word forgive is said in my household at least 10 times a day. So yeah, it's very real. And I would also say. Cause right now you have to look at every page of every book for kids because they're sneaking stuff in left and right for sure. But then the Christian ones, which I'm glad that there even are some. But a lot of times they're too much for kids. Like we have this one book, and I won't say the title, but it's a gospel centered book. But I get to page 3 talking about sin and total depravity and I'm looking at my 4 year old. Like God kicked him out of the garden. Like, it's just a very intense book. So one thing I like about this book is it's very chewable for a kid to under. It's still gospel centered, but it kind of meets them right where they are.
- [03:34]
Pastor Joby Martin
That's the plan. That's why there's dogs in it. My dad. My dad's the grand. The PAA in there.
- [03:39]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [03:40]
Pastor Joby Martin
Not great. Oh, Perry with his mustache and reading the Bible. Yeah. Just like we grew up.
- [03:47]
Pastor Britt
Well, why, like, what's the point in making resources for kids?
- [03:51]
Pastor Joby Martin
That's it. To make disciples. We're trying to. Honestly, you know, we're going to talk about it being Compassion Weekend also.
- [03:57]
Pastor Britt
Yep.
- [03:58]
Pastor Joby Martin
And it's great that it all landed on the same weekend because, you know, one of the questions I ask in regards to these Compassion kids is what would you do if it was your kid? You would do whatever it takes. Well, the reason we create resources like this is because this is for our kids. And we want our kids to be able to know and understand the gospel. And the church ought to be like the biggest help, the biggest cheerleader to be able to resource our people. So we just saw a big void there. And so. And there's lots of great kids books. Like, they just kind of tell stories, of course, you know, are fun. But.
- [04:31]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [04:31]
Pastor Joby Martin
And if it goes good, we're going to keep doing it. Be the same people, the same puppies. Perry Martin will still make all his cameos, as he should.
- [04:41]
Pastor Britt
Yeah. So anybody listening? Get a copy anywhere books are sold and in all of our lobbies and resource centers. Okay. Compassion Weekend Pastor Joby set up. Who is our special guest here on the Deepman podcast?
- [04:53]
Pastor Joby Martin
Passion. Kevin Myers. My phone. You're still Compassion.
- [04:58]
Kevin Myers
It's just Kevin. Compassion.
- [05:00]
Pastor Joby Martin
Mine's Compassion Gavin. That's Kevin is. He was A big wig, used to run hospitals and stuff. And the Lord wrecked him on a mission trip. And he went to work for Compassion. How many years ago?
- [05:16]
Compassion Staff Member
18 years ago.
- [05:17]
Pastor Joby Martin
Good gracious. So we met when we were a service at beach, and we were doing our first Compassion weekend, and we only had about 300 people at the service. This thing just started. And I just decided if you come to 1122, you have to sponsor kids, because that's what we do here. And one weekend we didn't. We used to do bulletins back then, back in the dark ages of like 2008 or nine. This is 2008. And so we call compassion and say, we need 300 packets. And they're like, can't. The best you can do is 10% of your weekend attendance? And I'm like, 30 packets? No. And so that's when Carly. I think Carly worked for me then. And she was like, they won't. I was like, you're just talking to the wrong person. Like, you just have to. Like, I'm a big. Wherever you are, there is somebody that can give you whatever you're asking for. You realize that, like, if you're at the bank and they're saying no, there's somebody that could just give you money, you know? And so I was like, that's what I need to talk to. So Anyway, we got 300 packets, and we ran out of packets because instead of bulletins, we just handed out Compassion packets. And I lined the back of the sanctuary with trash cans and preached a very emotionally manipulative sermon. And at the end said, you can either sponsor the kid in your hand or you can throw them in the trash. Because if you do, if you don't sponsor them, that's where they're eating tonight. And, dude, you would hear, like, people got ticked. I mean, I didn't care because if I got fired, I was just going to be the youth. I still had my youth pastor gig. I was fine. And so I. I'll. I mean, people were mad and they'd walked out. And you'd hear one hit the trash can and. And there were none in there. Cause everybody was spying. It would go and like, four people would run and grab it. So then we called. We're like, we're out of packets. What do we do? And that was on a Sunday. And I think, like, Monday afternoon or Tuesday, Kevin flies to Jacksonville and be like, what are you doing? I was like, we're sponsoring kids. What do you mean? And so that's how we met. Took me to Africa Then we got really involved.
- [07:18]
Pastor Britt
I sponsored my first Compassion child at that service.
- [07:21]
Pastor Joby Martin
Did you really?
- [07:22]
Pastor Britt
Yeah. Good for you. Well, I mean, I definitely wasn't going to throw the kid in the trash. And I think I was in high school, so I definitely had no money, just brought it home, like, sorry, I wasn't gonna throw this kid away.
- [07:31]
Pastor Joby Martin
Your parents had plenty.
- [07:32]
Compassion Staff Member
From my end on that I had just started at Compassion, and I didn't know. I didn't know the play, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the playbook. Normal trash can wasn't really part of the Compassion playbook.
- [07:43]
Kevin Myers
So it didn't really catch on nationally.
- [07:45]
Compassion Staff Member
No. And you were like, well, I don't care. I'll get fired. I was thinking, oh, no, I might get fired over this. But it was awesome and amazing. And as I recall, we had Michelle from the Philippines spoke, and she had everybody wrecked. And you preached out of Isaiah 58. I don't know if you remember that, but it was a. It really, in so many ways, because we had just started the church team at that time. In so many ways. The things that you guys did at Compassion Sunday that time were things I tried to incorporate into other churches. Compassion Sunday. So in so many ways, you helped really build the church team at Compassion and still are.
- [08:22]
Kevin Myers
So how many churches do Compassion Sundays right now in. In North America?
- [08:29]
Compassion Staff Member
That's hard to say. You know, I'm not sure about smaller churches. We probably do 400. My team, which is the. The larger church team, probably do about 400 a year.
- [08:40]
Kevin Myers
Yeah. Praise God.
- [08:41]
Compassion Staff Member
Something like that. Yeah. It's amazing.
- [08:42]
Pastor Joby Martin
So you know how all of our kids spaces are built out the way they're built, like, to go on a mission trip. I. I got that idea from Compassion. Kevin invited me to go preach chapel at, like, the headquarters of Compassion in Colorado Springs. And they have this classroom that looks like an African classroom. And I. And when we launched 1122, I took a bunch of pictures of it. I was like, let's do this. Because we want it to be engaging and, you know, engage with kids, but not Nickelodeon, Disney, you know, not worldly stuff. And so that's why we build it out that way. And if. If you've ever. For all those of you that have kids and pick them up, when you walk through the kids space, you know, it's like going on a mission trip. Most of those pictures are Compassion partners from around the world, and all the pictures of kids are our Compassion kids and stuff like that.
- [09:30]
Pastor Britt
Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the Power of the church, planting through Compassion, because that's a really big deal.
- [09:38]
Pastor Joby Martin
Well, we kind of leaned on that one, too.
- [09:40]
Compassion Staff Member
Yep. Yeah. So two things about that. We. Yeah, we started planting churches with Compassion. Actually back up. Compassion does everything through a local church like yours. So we partner with about 11,000 churches. And what we found out about a decade ago is that some parts of the world, when we work, we only work in really economically poor communities. That's not where people usually want to plant a church. And so we actually did a lot of church planting over the last decade and you guys, again, kind of helped lead the way on that. And I've got a great story about one of your church plants we talked about this week. But what we do with the other 11,000 churches is really church revitalization when you think about it. So is that church planning or not? It's trying to make a healthy church. Because Compassion's ministry can't be successful unless we have healthy churches there in Kenya or Uganda or wherever. And if we have healthy churches here. And so we really think it's kind of a bi directional movement that we have because we partner with the church. Yep.
- [10:46]
Kevin Myers
Go ahead.
- [10:47]
Pastor Britt
No, you.
- [10:48]
Kevin Myers
Yeah. One of the. My favorite things about Compassion is of however many hundreds or thousands of churches that we get to work with through Compassion, whether it's the ones we plant or the other ones that we're helping revitalize through sponsoring kids and other other ways as they pop up, is that you're not going to go into any community around the world and say we sponsor 50, 60, 200 kids at a specific Compassion church. Or you're not going to see the sign 1122 anywhere it's going to be. And you're not even going to see Compassion, like with glowing lights. You're going to see the name of that local church and the leaders of that local church, the volunteers, the Compassion staff, the church staff, they're the heroes in that local community because they're the salt and light in that community. And so it's. Man, that's one of my favorite parts is that it's like it's all team Jesus. You know, it's really great.
- [11:42]
Pastor Britt
One of the things I was going to ask that maybe people listening, if they haven't been around church for a while and we read this text about bringing whatever you have in your hands, how do you, as the leadership of our church, how do you go by the philosophy of it's all team Jesus if whatever you have in your hands is like, well, some pastors might think, well, but that needs to be given to the local church. Like what is the balance of giving to the local church and choosing to partner with compassion?
- [12:14]
Pastor Joby Martin
So it's really parallel tracks, right? So like God loves a cheerful giver. So if you read the Old and the New Testament, the tithe belongs to the Lord and that is to be brought to the local church first and best. We talk about this all the time. The next part of generosity towards the Lord, if you can be generous to God, is offerings and then gifts. And so technically the way it ought to work if you're just letter of the law, is you bring your first and best to the local church. Then over and above that, then you support other ministries and then you keep a little dry powder in your pocket so that whenever the spirit of God moves, you have the ability to bless somebody that he says blessed. That's how it works. However, I don't care how it starts, you know, and what we have seen here is that generosity begets generosity. And so maybe, maybe you're kind of kicking the tires on this whole church thing, but you believe in God and you know that kid needs help. Yeah, just get in the game, man. You know, I still think Jesus is going to high five you when you get there. And then we will help disciple you and what it looks like to be faithful to the text in how to steward the resources that God has trusted you with. Now one of the questions I'll get from other pastors is aren't you a little nervous? Because dude, you do the math on 30,000 kids at $17.2 million a year. That is, that is not in our budget. That does not pass through 1122. Right, no problem. Like I said tonight, my job is not to make budget. My job is to make disciples. And you can trust God. Here's the thing. I found preachers love to preach this all the time. You can't out give God, but then when it comes to their own budget at their own church, they get nervous. I have not found that to be the case. You know, generosity begets generosity. You start, you take $43 a month, you sponsor a kid, and then you see the eternal roi. Now the primary reason that we bring to God is because he is first. It's about his preeminence. A step down from that, but this is still good is the kind of kingdom investment that you're making. All right? And you start getting letters from your kids and they got saved or they graduated high school or you know, all these kind of positive things and and especially, I mean, some of those kids I talked about that we sponsor, man. I mean, I've been sponsoring Brandy for 14 years. You should see the difference in her letters today. And when she used to just, like, do a handprint when she was three, and. And you get to see the way she's grown up and grown in the Lord, and it will unleash and unlock. You're understanding that I'm the one being blessed now. She's being blessed, too. But I'm also being blessed because I get to be a part of this girl's discipleship. And she lives in Uganda now. I've had the privilege of seeing her, I don't know, half a dozen times or something. You know, one time I went to visit her. Her mom's name's Grace. And we went to. It was. So I went to their home, and she was living, like Brandy was living with her grandma. And I walk into there. It's like a mud hut kind of shack thing. I mean, think like Disney. That's kind of. But. But not nice. And it's this kind of thatch roof thing, mud walls. There's just kind of one room with. You've been there a thousand times with like a. Like a clothes hanger in the middle with maybe a sheet to kind of separate things. It's where the kitchen, the bedroom, everything is in that place. And I go and I sit down. They probably had 25 of our letters just taped to the mud walls. And I'm seeing JP's handwriting and Reagan's handwriting, and. Because this might be bad, but I don't care what we used to do do. The moment our kids would get entitled, we'd be like, go write your kid a letter. That's what we do. Like, you start complaining about Xbox. Okay, how about this? You know, write Blue Boots a letter. And so then I show it to Brandy's, though she was little, too, and. And then the grandma, bro, they don't have anything. And she catches a chicken in the yard. They may have had four chickens. So imagine she gives us 25% of her groceries, and she speaks Lugandan or whatever. And so the mom, Grace, is telling me what she's doing. She's trying to give me a chicken, and I'm trying to explain to her the checked bag policy with Delta and how African chickens aren't on the list.
- [16:35]
Kevin Myers
We'll let that go.
- [16:36]
Pastor Joby Martin
Oh, my goodness gracious. It's incredible. It's incredible. Something else people don't think about unless you go see a Compassion project. Is the staff that gets hired. So let's say you got a church staff. It's almost always a bi vocational pastor, right. And then compassion comes alongside and they hire a bunch of people. It's all local church people. And they're running. They're running the fee program, they're running the educational program. This means there's like five or six families that are now covered. And then oftentimes what happens is when a mom. Let's say, let's say this family's got. Because unemployment rate like in Uganda is going to be 60% or something crazy. So you got some godly dads and they just can't. They're trying to do everything they can do to make a living, man. They're farming when it's in season, but then when it's out, season, out of season, they don't have anything. And if one of their kids gets sponsored, honestly, that's one less mouth they have to feed and everybody in their family gets more. So sometimes it's hard to see the impact to the whole family.
- [17:41]
Pastor Britt
Sure.
- [17:42]
Compassion Staff Member
Can I add one thing on that? You're talking about the family, which is spot on. It's kind of a micro version of what I was talking about. The church. Church revitalization. I came to Jacksonville from our home office and we had a meeting with our president yesterday and he shared that in the context of revitalization of a church that the average church that we partner with before we partner with them, their annual budget, annual is five grand American. After we partner with them, it's 125 grand. And so if you can imagine that from a church leadership standpoint, you got 250 kids coming in, you got a budget to cover those kids. And then if you're doing the right thing, and hopefully we are, because we're picking the right churches, then you have access to swim upstream to those kids families. It's a church growth thing. And in addition to that, we're obviously providing expertise and networking and things like that, very much like a church planning group here would do. And so that's how we grow the church who then grows those kids and disciples those kids.
- [18:45]
Pastor Joby Martin
And I am by nature a skeptic. So the first trip I ever went on, they were like, hey, here's a bunch of compassion kids. I was like, I want to talk to that one in the back. It's not talking to anybody. And they would show us the files. I was like, show me the file cabinet. And I would just go show me this kid right now. You know, and they bring that kid there. I was like, I don't meet their family. And we'd go meet their family. And I would even try to like, break the rules and give the pastor a little bit of cash. He's like, I can't take that idea, man.
- [19:09]
Compassion Staff Member
It was really tough leading secret shop.
- [19:11]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah, I'm out of control because I'm gonna go all in. And I'm here. I was like, let's see. Let's really see.
- [19:18]
Pastor Britt
Wow.
- [19:18]
Pastor Joby Martin
It's incredible, dude. It's incredible. I mean, here's the thing. This is why you got to go on a mission trip. Like, you think you're doing something. You think you're gonna like, you know, be the great American hero to, like. Well, they really need me. Yeah, right, bro, you about to be humbled in your little, tiny, itsy bitsy faith. You're going to be walking among giants that have nothing. And you're strangely jealous of the joy that exudes from some of these folks. One of my favorite stories is we went to Kuro, Brazil. And the reason we did is because Rodney McLaughlin wanted to go. That's where he's from. He's from like Rio or it's all fancy, you know. And yeah, the first time I ever went to the Copacabana, I didn't know that was an actual hotel.
- [20:01]
Kevin Myers
Me either.
- [20:02]
Pastor Joby Martin
I said it was a song. He was like, you go to the Copacabana? You know? I'm like, oh. And he's like, no, it's right here. I was like, what? So anyway, it's nice. And so, so we go up, way up north on the Amazon to this place called Godot. It was the voodoo capital of South America. And we partnered with a Presbyterian church. And there was this guy on one side of town and he had raised up a young pastor that he wanted to plant, but he just. They didn't have the means to do it. And so we come along in partnership with Compassion and we plant a church in Caddo, right beside the city dump. That's where they call it the mall. And they people would just go and shoe off the vultures to get some food and scavenge for, like, recyclables that they could sell this kind of thing. Okay, so we go start a Compassion project. There we go. Rodney preaches in the dump. A couple people get saved. It's incredible. We go back a year later to start help building the facility. And so you basically build three buildings. You build a church building, basically a cafeteria and a school. And then they start. Compassion begins like as the church is being planted. So you're feeding, educating, sharing the gospel with 150 children. Something like that, dude. Day one, it's like a third world mega church because. Because guess who the. The voodoo doctors ain't helping feed. The moms ain't feeding nobody, but Jesus is. And so mama's like, okay, yeah, you can have your stuff. I'm going to this Jesus thing because they've taken care of my babies. Their first baptism, they baptized in the river. Hundreds of it. Looks like it's the. It's the Amazon version of our beach baptism.
- [21:41]
Pastor Britt
Wow.
- [21:41]
Pastor Joby Martin
People show up everywhere to get baptized.
- [21:43]
Pastor Britt
Wow.
- [21:44]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah, man.
- [21:44]
Compassion Staff Member
And I got to share this story because it's too coincidental to be coincidental. So my daughter and son used to work for 1122. My daughter now works for Compassion, and she's leading a trip of sponsors as we speak to Brazil. And unbeknownst to her or me, she's at that church.
- [22:01]
Pastor Joby Martin
Let's go.
- [22:03]
Compassion Staff Member
And so we FaceTime two nights ago, and she said, I can't believe it. You know, I looked in our database, and it was the church that you guys planted. Then the next night, she called back and said, there's a family of four on that trip from North Carolina, where I'm from. And the dad and I asked if it was okay to share this. The dad has given half of his salary to compassion because of 1122, and they're getting ready to start an outpost in North Carolina. And my daughter was kind of blown away. Like, I can't believe the impact at 11:22. It's her church. She went out and planted a church in Montreal, Montana, with you guys and. But this is still kind of like her church, and she was blown away by the impact of that. So it's really cool to see that.
- [22:47]
Kevin Myers
Let's go.
- [22:49]
Pastor Britt
I feel convicted to write more letters. That's what I'm feeling convicted about, because.
- [22:53]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah, me too. They made it way easier now than it's.
- [22:55]
Pastor Britt
They did.
- [22:55]
Pastor Joby Martin
So it's so easy to drag and drop pictures.
- [22:58]
Pastor Britt
And when I open my app and it says, how many days since I've written the last letter?
- [23:03]
Kevin Myers
Guilt and shame.
- [23:04]
Pastor Britt
Guilt and shame. Okay, so we were in Matthew 14,
- [23:10]
Pastor Joby Martin
and conviction is a warm invitation.
- [23:14]
Compassion Staff Member
Do better.
- [23:17]
Pastor Britt
So we start off, and we. We studied last week that John the Baptist dies. And so we see in verse 13 that Jesus pulls away from the crowd to grieve his friend's death. And I want to talk about if y' all think that the soil of Jesus's Heart is different because he's in this tender, grieving, suffering, hurting season, primed for like, is that a. A way to be primed for compassion? Maybe not. Maybe Jesus, he's always primed for compassion.
- [23:53]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah, you get into like the hypostatic union and it's hard to.
- [23:56]
Pastor Britt
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [23:57]
Pastor Joby Martin
That whole thing put motive on, you know what I mean?
- [23:59]
Pastor Britt
Sure.
- [23:59]
Pastor Joby Martin
He is love. So sure. But that it really did hit me. I mean, he is going to grieve. And just because he knows what's happening does not mean that he does. It doesn't make him sad.
- [24:12]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [24:14]
Pastor Joby Martin
And so, I mean, John 11 is my favorite place to go there because he even knows that he's going to raise Lazarus. And the Bible doesn't say how long, 45 minutes, 2 hours, whatever it is, he could have been like, why are you sad? It's gonna get awesome here in a minute. But he doesn't, man, he is. His name is I am. That I am. So he is eternally present in the moment right now. So what I have found is if you don't give yourself an opportunity to cry when it's time to cry, you won't be able to laugh when it's time to laugh. And so he does this. And so his normal rhythm is he pours himself out. He goes. Spends time alone with the Father to pour himself out to go spend alone with the Father. So if Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, co eternal with God, who for from eternity past the moment he is born, has done nothing but lavish and receive the lavish love of the Father, if he's like, I gotta do my quiet time, then maybe we should pay attention to that.
- [25:13]
Kevin Myers
Yeah, I get what you're pointing at. I don't think it necessarily applies or applies to Jesus, but I do get what you're pointing that at is when you're suffering and you suffer loss or you're in a season of suffering, you kind of have two choices. One is to go to the Father or one is to get. Start falling down the habitual downward spiral of self. That's what hurt does, is hurt puts you. You get wrapped around the axle of your own hurt and pain and. Or you go to the heart of God. You know, I think Jesus doesn't necessarily feel the temptation toward the. Toward the actual of self. Like he's just immediate. His instinct is only to always go to the heart of the Father. So that's what he's withdrawing is to be restored but with the Father. You know what I mean? But I think it's an interesting thing because you, when you get wrapped around the axle of your own hurt or your own life experiences, whether it's just you've done stupid or just stuff, people dying, it just grief is real. And you know, when you begin to fall down that tunnel of habitual self, if you will, what can happen? The only things that are going to grow out of there are bitterness and skepticism and things that are very, very unhealthy. And they're going to shade your worldview and you're going to see everybody and everything through it. You go to the heart of the Father and all of a sudden what begins to grow out of that is love and patience and compassion. You know, and there's something interesting about compassion, the word because it says Jesus has compassion. And so compassion is not something, I'm trying to figure out the right way to say this, but it's not something that you just feel. It is something that you have,
- [26:59]
Compassion Staff Member
it
- [27:00]
Kevin Myers
is something you take possession of. And that is when it becomes compassion. Before that is just sympathy or empathy, that's even a thing. And when you take hold of that is when it actually becomes compassion. You know, just feeling, you know, watching the Sarah McLaughlin singing videos and being like, oh man, the puppies are sad. That's not compassion. You know what I mean? It's really not anything.
- [27:28]
Pastor Joby Martin
It is a twist in the enemy when we started calling things empathy to just feel what people feel. But that is not what Jesus does. He, he, he does have feelings, but then he takes action to get to meet people's needs. And so the idea of toxic empathy leads you to terrible places. Like I feel bad for you, so I'm not going to tell you true things because I don't want you to feel worse. And that is a dark road. Listen man, when, when self actualization just manifests itself in self gratification, it just leads to self destruction. That's where that road goes and that is the road our culture is on. Yeah, and so you got to lift your eyes up above the horizon, get them fixed on Jesus and then he gives you eyes to see the way he sees and you have compatible. My heartbroken is a pretty good definition for it. It means from the guts, this thing that drove him to do something about it.
- [28:30]
Pastor Britt
If you're moved by compassion, can you simultaneously be self centered?
- [28:37]
Pastor Joby Martin
I. It's really, it's really hard to be. I mean, you know, I guess you could play the mental gymnastics of like, I know I'm going to be blessed in this, I'm going to do It. But I don't think there's necessarily a problem with that. Like, when I write a letter, it makes me feel good. There's nothing wrong with that. God. God's a good dad. He wants to give good gifts to his kids. Like he wants to bless me in the blessing, you know?
- [28:58]
Kevin Myers
Yeah, we talk about it all the time on here, that it's all about the posture of the heart and nobody really knows, save you and God, you know, so it's like if you go sponsor a compassion kid so that you
- [29:12]
Compassion Staff Member
can,
- [29:15]
Kevin Myers
I don't know, show somebody that you want them to think that you're a good person, that you sponsored a compassion kid and that that compassion kid is now a means to your end.
- [29:24]
Pastor Joby Martin
Probably not great before the Lord.
- [29:27]
Kevin Myers
It's probably not great before the Lord. And I would say I'm still glad that kid got sponsored.
- [29:31]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah, no doubt.
- [29:32]
Kevin Myers
You know what I mean? So I think God can even use, you know, we'll use that. But I mean, what Pastor Joby said at the end and talked about many times on hearing different sermons, you know, and it's Ruslan KD's whole thing is like, more than anything, I want to bless God. And one of the primary ways to bless God is to bless the people that, you know, he cares deeply about. And that starts with orphans and widows and the marginalized. And, you know, and, and so at, at the end of the day, we want to, whatever it is, whether, whether it's reading my Bible or sponsoring a compassion kid, bringing my first and my best serving in ministry, what I want to get to the end of my life. And that got. And that had made blessed God's heart, that even though I stumbled my way forward and I didn't do it all right, and I said the wrong things and I wrestled through my own jacked up motivations at times that even in the wrestling, it can bless God's heart because in the wrestling is the surrender, you know what I mean? And so that's it, man, is that God would look at the legacy of the leadership season as long as Pastor Joby and whomever else he chooses to be the leaders around him. At 11:22, you get to your run. Everybody's going to get the end of their run one day. And it's like, did that bless God? Like, you know what I mean? Did it move God's heart? And another way to say it is, you know, did God get glory from that in the right way? I mean, he's going to get his glory from it, but you get What
- [31:06]
Pastor Joby Martin
I'm saying, the only reason I shared the kids that we sponsor, it's 1 Corinthians 11, 1, follow me as I follow Christ, you know, and so in this area, you can follow me, and you'll be following Jesus. I just wanted more kids to get sponsored.
- [31:22]
Compassion Staff Member
Yeah, well, Brit alluded to it, like, the first two kids my family sponsored, my motive was impure, sort of impure. And this has been a bit of an epiphany over the last year for me. Honestly, I sponsored those kids because I thought sponsoring those kids would be a tool for me to disciple my own kids. But I thought it was a scam, and I really didn't care because the price point wasn't that bad, so whatever. And then, as Joby said, I went on a mission trip and really trying to catch compassion, called them up and said, hey, can I meet my kids? Thinking they would go, no, they're not real kids. You can't meet them. But sure enough, they brought them in. And so even though I started with somewhat of a skewed motive, it changed my life. It changed the course of my family's life, changed their DNA. And I'm sitting here 18 years later. And so I do think God can redeem even an impure motive sometimes just because of that little step of obedience.
- [32:23]
Kevin Myers
Totally agree.
- [32:26]
Pastor Britt
Yeah, so the text says he had compassion on them as he saw the great crowd and healed their sick. And obviously with this text is how we lined it up with it being compassion weekend. But why is that word. Why is Matthew careful to mention compassion? Like, he could have ch. Picked a lot of different words, and he specifically chose compassion here.
- [32:53]
Pastor Joby Martin
Well, the challenge to me, I asked this question, when you see people in me need, do you feel compassion or judgment? I was just preaching to me there because there's a lot of times I. My. My instinct is judgment, you know, versus about you don't work, you don't eat, or, you know, don't provide for your family. You're worse than the unbeliever. And those things are true. But I want my lead foot to be Jesus's lead foot, which is compassion. And I went on to say, like, if when your political ideology is your primary identity, the problem with that is that you begin to see the people as opponents to be defeated instead of people to have compassion for. And I used an example because I had a range of emotions this week when that YouTube couple decided to abort their child because they found out he had a 95% chance of being born with down syndrome. And at first it made me so angry because we work real hard around here to roll out the carpet for kids special needs. And tonight, man, Michael's on the front row just worshiping his face off. And you know, when you see him as a problem bro, you just don't understand God, right? And then over, over the week, I began to listen to a bunch of their, like, clips and how excited they were to have a baby and all. And then how that shifted into they decide to end the life of this baby. And I just thought, well, this is a downstream effect if you grow up in a culture of death and if you think that your comfort is the greatest value. And so I began to feel, now they will stand in judgment before the Lord, but I hope and pray that they come to Christ and they can repent of this and have their sins forgiven and be reunited with the baby that they aborted. And it, it, you know, Jesus says, pray for your enemies. It's amazing what happens in your own heart because you don't begin to see people that you pray for as enemies. I also, man, this is what happens with political ideologies, man. So you see, like, your team is pro whatever and a war breaks out and all of a sudden you're sending these poor Middle Eastern kids just being annihilated. And then it's unbelievable, the amount of conservatives of which I am one, begins to justify these things. Can we just lead with some compassion first? Now I get it. If you're the President of the United States, compassion can't be the only lens by which you lead. You know, they're very difficult decisions. And okay, we can have all that conversation or, you know, or. But if you're on the other side of it, like, you know, you're crying out for the needs of these kids over here, but you don't say anything about the Christians in Africa being beheaded right now. You don't care about those people. And so what begins to happen, this is, this is what landed on me, is as believers, as followers of Jesus, the church ought to be like the leader in compassion for any, any image bearer of God that is in suffering, regardless of the reason, even if it's their own decisions, man, they are objects of the wrath of the devil of hell himself. I mean, our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our enemy is not people. And if your lead foot is some kind of political ideology because you're right, because everybody thinks they're right, or they wouldn't be on that team, you know, I wish the whole world would vote like I voted. I think it would go better. But if my lead foot is not seeing people in need as human beings that Jesus died for, I'm out of step with the one that I call Lord, and I. I need that to be. I need that to change in me more.
- [36:57]
Kevin Myers
Amen.
- [36:58]
Compassion Staff Member
Amen.
- [36:59]
Kevin Myers
Next question.
- [37:01]
Pastor Britt
When we talk about compassion being an attribute of God, I learned this from the brilliant Raina Cherry recently. If you want to talk about compassion, she is a wealth of knowledge on compassion.
- [37:14]
Kevin Myers
But if you're listening, Raina, you better sponsor a kid.
- [37:17]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah, yeah. Send them some of your cookies.
- [37:19]
Kevin Myers
Oh, boy. Send me some cookies and I'll sponsor the kid.
- [37:23]
Pastor Britt
Her cookies are.
- [37:24]
Pastor Joby Martin
Everything she does is incredible.
- [37:26]
Pastor Britt
It's true. But we were talking about compassion, and she pointed out to me that in Exodus, in Exodus 34, the first adjective to describe God in some translation is compassionate. And so I just want to talk a little bit about. Because we're talking about how we as believers should lead with compassion. But how also is this an important attribute of God to know about him?
- [37:55]
Pastor Joby Martin
Well, at the end of that run there, I said the reason that we should look at people with compassion is because that's how he looked at us. We were not just lost, we were enemies of God, children of wrath, I mean, treasonous against the high King of the universe. We deserve his judgment, and he would be right to dole it out. And yet he looked at us and didn't just feel a thing, but did a thing and so loved us that he sent his only begotten Son. So that is our. That is our reality. That is reality. And so then when we don't reflect that, what are we doing? We were out of step with ultimate reality. We're out of step with the gospel.
- [38:42]
Kevin Myers
Yeah, I mean, to try to separate. I mean, you know, God is love. God is holy. God is just. We talk about all these, all, all these things on the regular. And love is not just something God feels. It is something that he is like. He just is it. And he has to be stirred up to anger, but he is love.
- [39:07]
Compassion Staff Member
Interesting.
- [39:07]
Kevin Myers
And compassion is another. Is a. Is love expressed? It is. Is the tangible experience of love. It's like how you, you know, the benevolent side or the merciful side of love, if it's a 10,000 carat diamond. And so no question about it. I mean, if you just look at God's history with the humanity and then specifically the nation of Israel and the amount of compassion that he had on them over and over and over and over and over and over again. And the amount of mercy that he showed and the amount of patience that he showed. And it's the entire book of Matthew. The point is that Israel missed the point that this good God, full of compassion and love and that he's picked you of all the peoples in the world, he picked you to show his glory to you, to show his glory through you, so that the world could demonstrate his benevolence and compassion and goodness. And you thought it was all about you and what happened. You know what I mean? And so very much as the gospel goes out into the Gentiles, which is where we're going next week, you know, in regards to the gospel breaking out beyond the borders of known Israel at the time, it's just the only experience that you can have with the God of the Bible is that of it's firsthand experience and encounter with his compassion, you know, and it's not going anywhere. It's just who he is. And the good news for people like us is that we will only people like us who have surrendered their lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The only experience we will have ever had with God forever is his absolute uncontested faithfulness. And so our only experience will be under the umbrella of, of God's benevolent compassion forever. Because he was being faithful to us before we even knew that there was a God or that there was, or that he was faithful. And so there will never be a moment in your eternity where you'll experience anything less than God's absolute faithful and devotion to you for his sake. And so that's a lot of words, but yeah, yeah, his lead foot is compassion.
- [41:32]
Pastor Joby Martin
All my life you have been faithful.
- [41:34]
Kevin Myers
That's right.
- [41:34]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah, dude, because just imagine this. I mean, this is what Jesus prayed for in John 17, right? That the world would know us by our love for one another. So just imagine if the whole world, when you asked, like man on the street, tell me about church people, they didn't lead with hypocrites and judgmentalism, but the word is they got some, they got some unique beliefs, but man, they love man. They are compassionate. And then you follow up with, do they think you're going to hell? They do, but golly, they love me. Like, I don't believe what they believe, but I believe they would. They believe what they believe.
- [42:09]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [42:10]
Pastor Joby Martin
And they believe it so much that they lovingly encourage me to turn to Jesus.
- [42:15]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [42:16]
Kevin Myers
If you are loving your neighbor as yourself, you will not ever, maybe not ever, but you will not regularly feel the temptation to have to validate yourself by your works. It's a bit of a mind trip if you really dig into it. But oftentimes when I'm being selfish, I want to point to all the loving things that I'm doing that I say in quotation when I'm being, you know, when I'm having. Whatever. Selfish is the only word. Like your narcissistic tendencies. Whatever the word is, you know that I can start pointing at the good that I'm doing. Especially if people start pointing at me saying, and I, and it doesn't feel good. And they're saying their experience with me is anything but love. My tendency is to be like, well, no, I mean, I did this and I did this, and I'm a good person. I'm a loving. I'm. You get what I'm saying? But if you're really walking in loving your neighbor as yourself, and you really are walking in the compassionate heart of the father, then you won't spend a whole lot of time thinking about yourself, and you rarely have to spend any time defending yourself.
- [43:25]
Pastor Joby Martin
That's right. And. And if you would. All right, you're talking about every marriage right now. That's what you're talking about, right? And so when your wife's like, oh, you don't ever do anything, and you're like, I do all kind of things, okay, if you. If you owned it, if in that moment you. You laid yourself down and you said, okay, this is actually a me problem, not a her problem, because I think I'm communicating love to her, but it is not. So. So as a professional talker, the responsibility is on me to communicate for understanding, you know, and so if people aren't getting it, what am I going to be like? Y' all need to listen better. I mean. No, no, no, no. It's. The responsibility is on me as the communicator to communicate what I'm trying to communicate.
- [44:07]
Compassion Staff Member
And.
- [44:08]
Pastor Joby Martin
And so in your marriage, if you were to hear that and instead of responding, again, man, with self justification, but you just owned it and be like, okay, so the ways that I have been trying to communicate my love towards you is not working. And so I need to listen so I can learn. This is some Bible verses Peter says, husbands live with. Your wife says, unto knowledge. So you're getting a lesson right there of how you need to adjust to. Because you got the feelings in your heart, but they're not. You're not communicating rightly. And so I'm going to need to adjust the way I'm communicating my love by Expressing my love. But instead, it's just what Pastor Brad said. We turn it on ourselves. And what we're doing is self justification as to why you should not feel that way. That never goes good.
- [44:55]
Pastor Britt
No, it doesn't. All right, let's talk about the disciples.
- [44:59]
Pastor Joby Martin
I love this part.
- [45:01]
Pastor Britt
So they see a problem. People are hungry. They've been there for a while. We got about 15,000 people, probably. Right. And their solution is to send the people away. Now, when I was preparing for this, I just started laughing out loud because I was thinking about meetings that I'm in with you guys. And I feel like this is a perfect example of what we talk about all the time, of when something is hard, we don't do it, and we don't see a way to actually do it. This is how y' all lead is like, we're not gonna not do something because we think that it's hard. But this is basically what the disciples did. They sent him away. So were they wrong in sending them away and not thinking, like, we're with Jesus. He can do what we can't see.
- [45:48]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah. This didn't make the sermon. But they come up unilaterally with their own plan without checking with Jesus first. Completely, for sure, that idea. And we do it all the time.
- [45:58]
Pastor Britt
Like, I feel like I live that in Yalls presence multiple times a month to keep going. No. Like, I will be in meetings, and we'll bring y' all a plan, and we think we got it figured out.
- [46:17]
Kevin Myers
I know. I see where it's going now. Yeah, yeah.
- [46:20]
Pastor Britt
And you will, y' all so quick. And it is the two of you, so quick. You will say, we chose that plan because the right plan is hard and we don't want to do it, and here's the right plan. And then we're all just writing it down. And then we go. We do that plan. So that's. That's what I see.
- [46:43]
Pastor Joby Martin
But here's the thing.
- [46:43]
Kevin Myers
Fair enough. Fair enough.
- [46:45]
Pastor Joby Martin
They get some, like, gospel amnesia in about two seconds, for sure. They saw him heal the woman that he called daughter. They saw him bring Jairus's daughter back. They've seen him calm storms. Like, what are we doing? Water to wine. They've already experienced all this.
- [47:02]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [47:02]
Pastor Joby Martin
And then the moment there's a crisis, they're like, oh, what are we gonna do? How about go talk to Jesus now? In. In John. John lets us know. There's a little sidebar conversation where Jesus says, philip. He goes, hey, what you gonna do about this? To test him for he already knew what he was going to do. So God does not mind putting you to the test.
- [47:24]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [47:24]
Pastor Joby Martin
You know, and Philip's answer should have been, I don't know, boss. What do you think we should do? Or here's an idea, because I want to come with solutions, not just problems for you to solve, but I'm wide open for whatever. Can you make this better?
- [47:39]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [47:40]
Pastor Joby Martin
You know?
- [47:40]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [47:41]
Kevin Myers
Yeah. People who live under the tyranny of the urgent generally have a very short memory. And so, you know, we just forget to remember. That's what they're doing. Like, all the things that he just said that they've seen, that they've already. I mean, the big one hadn't happened yet, the old resurrection from the dead, but there's been a lot of really awesome stuff that only the God man's gonna pull off.
- [48:07]
Pastor Joby Martin
He has said it three times so far, though, right? That's crazy. Three times. He's already been like, I'm gonna hand it over. Crucified dead, buried on the third day, like, so plainly. And they're like, yeah, enough about you. My son says, you're right and left. I mean, crazy, man.
- [48:24]
Kevin Myers
And then Jesus looks at him and like, all right, you go give them
- [48:27]
Pastor Joby Martin
something to eat, right?
- [48:28]
Kevin Myers
And they're like, hold on, man. We just said there ain't nothing to eat.
- [48:33]
Pastor Britt
You think? They just can't. They're thinking too small. Like, they just can't see.
- [48:38]
Pastor Joby Martin
So I. I preached this 10,000 times, okay? God gives you the gift of faith. Now, what you do with that faith, you have some autonomy over. Are you going to decide to put your trust in your circumstances or to snatch your trust back from the circumstances and put it in the sovereign hands of the Savior. And they are like, all they're looking is at heart. This is hard. Everything's hard. I don't know what to do. Well, it actually goes all the way back to the. The beginning of the teaching ministry of Jesus. If they. It'd be better if they just came up and be like, we are poor in spirit. We don't know what to do. We can't do this on our own. We ain't got this. We need help. What should we do? And because when he says, you feed them again. They could have looked to the sovereign Savior, but they look at the circumstances, they'll be like, all we got is this little kid's lunchbox. Which. That can't be true. I mean, come on. There's no way all them Jewish mamas ain't got some, like, pita bread up in their purse.
- [49:36]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [49:37]
Pastor Joby Martin
You know what I mean? I mean, I was being funny about my daddy having a pack of crackers, a can of vinegar sausages, and my grandma having purse bread, but that's real. Yeah, it's real, dude. So the resources were there. Like, you think these people just didn't think about lunch. There's some. There's some more than just this little bit of five loaves and two fishes.
- [49:56]
Pastor Britt
Yeah.
- [49:56]
Pastor Joby Martin
But this boy goes on with a way bigger blessing than anybody else.
- [50:01]
Pastor Britt
All right, you flew by this, so I want to just spend a couple minutes on it. Jesus first tells the disciples to bring the food to him. He gives thanks. He says he blesses it, breaks it, gives it to the disciples to distribute. Can you unpack that a little bit more? There's some big implications in that.
- [50:21]
Pastor Joby Martin
I wanted to preach a whole sermon on this. So this is a foreshadowing of communion, because this is what's gonna happen to Christ himself. He is God's gift. He is broken and then distributed. I mean, this is. This is the Lord's Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the crucifixion and the Resurrection, and then the Great Commission. This is a picture of all of that.
- [50:43]
Pastor Britt
So good.
- [50:44]
Pastor Joby Martin
Then it's also a picture of our own justification, our sanctification is that you are not going to be useful to the Lord until you are broken, and then he blesses you, and then you can be distributed for the sake of the kingdom. I mean, that's a whole sermon on that verse.
- [51:05]
Pastor Britt
What you got?
- [51:07]
Kevin Myers
Yeah. I mean, what are you gonna say? We should preach a whole sermon on communion at some point? You mentioned you talked a lot about it a few weeks ago, and, man, I say a few weeks live between two dog years. It was probably like. Like last month. But, you know, we. Lots of words.
- [51:26]
Pastor Joby Martin
Thursdays come with an amazing reason.
- [51:28]
Compassion Staff Member
It is amazing.
- [51:29]
Kevin Myers
Quickly Thursday. But I mean, here's the thing. Is. Is the John calling miracles signs. And this is one of the things that I hope the Deepen podcast and I hope being discipled here at 11:22, I know it's been true for me, is that when you read a text, you're looking for what else is going on? What's the text whispering? What else is Jesus pointing to? That's the bigger thing that he's doing, because it is awesome that 5,000 plus women and children, 20,000 people, whatever the number eight. And that miracle is one of the most f. Familiar miracles. And praise God for it, you know, like, really awesome. But It's a sign pointing to the greater thing that he's doing, which will be the broken body, the shed blood, the cross, and ultimately the resurrection. And so as a student of the Bible, when you study the Bible, take the time to really look at the details because the details are always pointing to something. Something greater.
- [52:33]
Pastor Britt
Yeah. And that's not unrelated to compassion. Right. Like Compassion, when you pay $43, you're covering some basic needs. But the ultimate goal is that we would share the gospel with kids and their eternities would be changed, not just their every day, for sure.
- [52:52]
Compassion Staff Member
I mean, that's probably lost on a lot of people. But Compassion's ministry, it's discipleship, that's really what we do. We resource and platform churches in the poorest communities in the world so they can disciple the kids in their community. The reason we do it in we're kind of tethered to poverty in people's minds. The reason our model works in that context is because we're meeting physical needs primarily access to health care, food education, mental needs as well. But the whole reason we do that is to drive people into those churches so they'll be discipled and evangelized. And so historically speaking, a Compassion kid comes to Christ every four minutes. And you alluded in your sermon to having good soil. It's been a couple years, but I was at a conference and they said somebody at that conference said that the average church kid In America gets 39 hours of church based discipleship a year. And that makes sense if you think about it, because people don't come every week and so forth. The average Compassion Kid gets 400 hours of discipleship a year at church, not even if they go to the church. I mean, that's where the Compassion project is. And so we know you can manipulate that evangelism statistic. You know, you can make a kid raise their hand or whatever. But it's really good soil because we work through the local church. And so I think that is the secret sauce of what we do.
- [54:27]
Pastor Britt
Yeah, that's good. Okay, last question. You talked about it in the sermon. But it's so good, the significance of the 12 baskets. And you pointed towards the feeding of the 4,000, which we'll cover next weekend with you, Pastor Britt. But can you. Let's talk about it a little bit again. Again, it's something that's pointing towards something greater that you could easily miss if you don't know.
- [54:49]
Pastor Joby Martin
So this miracle is mentioned in all four gospels. So this is a really good one where you can let the Bible be commentary unto itself. So it's what Pastor Britt was just saying. Remember, Matthew was an insider that chose to be an outsider. He sold his soul to support the Roman government, to exact taxes, to give to the people that were tyrannizing his family. This is a bad dude. Jesus saves him anyway. His name was Levi, but Jesus doesn't call him that. He sees Matthew where the world sees Levi. He becomes a follower of Jesus. Now when Matthew sits down to write his gospel, carried along by the Holy Spirit, he's writing to this Jewish audience. And so all throughout the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew makes all these connections that Jesus is the greater Israel, and specifically Jesus is the greater Moses. So Moses goes up onto Mount Sinai and receives the law of God, and Jesus goes up onto this mountain and preaches the Sermon on the Mount, which is the gospel. It begins with poor in spirit. It ends with the foundation of your life. Better be the rock of the gospel or the whole thing falls apart. Everything in between on the Sermon on the Mount is the implications of the gospel. Here Jesus says, oh, you guys need something to eat? Well, I've got bread. They lived on bread when. And they were in a desolate place. When Moses was with the nation of Israel post Egypt, they were in a desolate place in the desert and they were griping because they didn't have anything to eat. And so God gave them manna from heaven. And then when they eat this miracle bread that Jesus has just provided, and they look around and there are the number of tribes of baskets left over, they're like, wait a minute, 12? Are you kidding me? You know, then if you look in John, here's this. This will preach too. Their stomach's got full. But that temporary will never satisfy you. I mean, they're still full from the. The feeding of the 5,000. And they come to us. They come and they're like, show me a sign. And what you mean a sign still smells like leftover bread and you need a sign. And he says, the only reason you're following me is because you're chasing after your own needs instead of seeing, you're seeing me as useful and not beautiful. And then they say in John 6, well, Moses gave bread from heaven. And Jesus goes, oh, you want some bread? I got your bread. I am the bread of life that leads to. Unless you eat my flesh, drink my blood, you have no part with me. That's what he's saying. All of that stuff that was happening in Exodus, that wasn't the point. That was pointing to what's happening right now. And so just like the mana came from heaven, I came from heaven to sustain you. And I am all you need. And your hearts keep wanting slavery back in Egypt, but that's exactly what it is. And what I'm offering you is the promised land, an abundant life. And Jesus in John 6 says, that's me. And so without my broken body and shed blood. And so he's not talking about cannibalism, and he's not saying that communion saves. He's saying that the gospel saves. Apart from the gospel, you have no part with me. People begin to leave. And he does not explain himself because he's not a math problem to be solved, that he's a God to be loved. He wants a relationship with you. And that requires trust. Not just belief that, but trust in pastuo would be the word. And as they're leaving, he looks at Peter, says, you want to leave too? It's one of my favorite passages in John 6. One of the saddest verses is John 6, 6, 6. And many disciples from that day departed. Jesus does not go chasing after him to explain himself, because again, he's not looking for explanations. He's looking for faith. And so he says, peter, you want to leave too? Find me one place. Where Jesus asks arbitrary questions. He knows the heart of every man. When the Pharisees think a thought without saying it out loud, he answers their thought question. So he knows what Peter's thinking. Peter's thinking, I kind of do because I dropped my nets to follow after you. I thought everything was going awesome. We were the fastest growing church in Israel, man. We had 20,000 people on Easter Sunday. This is going great. I've made a wise vocational pivot here. And now everybody's leaving. He's like, what are you doing? He's thinking about leaving. And Jesus says, you want to leave? And then Peter does the smart thing. He evaluates reality. And his answer is this. Where else am I going to go? You're the only one that offers eternal life and notice. Jesus could have explained himself then. He could have said, hold on, hold on. At the next Passover, we're going to sit down and I am going to personify the Passover and let you know that the shed blood of the lamb on the doorpost of the house so that the angel of death passes over. Wasn't the point. I'm the point. I'm going to do that for you. He doesn't explain it. He just says, do you trust me? That's what he's saying. And so here's what Peter does with all his doubts and all his questions. So if the Compassion kids out there that are listening to this and they're like, why do I have to grow up here? That's a legit question, you know? And so what do you do? You just pick up your doubts, you follow after Jesus, and that is salvation.
- [59:51]
Pastor Britt
That's good. Final thoughts?
- [59:54]
Kevin Myers
That's pretty good. Amen. Kevin, we're glad you're here, man.
- [59:57]
Pastor Joby Martin
And thanks.
- [59:57]
Compassion Staff Member
Always good to see you.
- [59:58]
Kevin Myers
Appreciate your ministry so much, brother. You know, I mean, we really are family compassion in 1122. And us.
- [60:05]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah.
- [60:06]
Kevin Myers
You know, as humans, been all over the world. I've tried to get Joby to hire you, like, at least 10, you know,
- [60:11]
Pastor Joby Martin
this multiple times he has tried to get me to hire you as his boss. I have. That's what he thinks about you.
- [60:17]
Compassion Staff Member
Well, that's crazy.
- [60:18]
Kevin Myers
And, yeah, I really think there's going to be a really, really, really long line of children who grew to be disciple, making disciples that made disciples because of the effort and the energy and the. The compassion and the purity at which you've gone about your job for the last 18 years. And heaven is going to be. It's going to be fun to see.
- [60:45]
Pastor Joby Martin
Wow.
- [60:45]
Kevin Myers
You know, the. The. The amount of people that you get to hug and know that God used you in their life directly.
- [60:53]
Pastor Joby Martin
Correct.
- [60:53]
Compassion Staff Member
Yeah.
- [60:54]
Kevin Myers
And I've seen it firsthand, man. I've seen it firsthand, and I've seen a lot of the things that you've seen in a lot of these different impoverished communities. And, man, I would just encourage you as my brother, like. Yeah, absolutely. The faces of those children in those communities is motivation enough.
- [61:10]
Compassion Staff Member
Yeah.
- [61:10]
Kevin Myers
To wake up and do the job and to stay at it and stay at it. That said, you know, and maybe I heard a Compassion guy say this once, but one day Jesus is going to return. He's going to wipe all those tears. He's going to wipe, and he's going to reach over and wipe all the sweat off your brow, and it's going to have been well spent. So I'm proud to know you.
- [61:29]
Compassion Staff Member
Yeah, thanks for saying that. I mean, that's true for everybody that works at Compassion. And really, Pastor Joby said it at the end of the service. Our hope at the end of the day is that they will use the fact that they've been sponsored by somebody that they can't see to share the gospel message. And it's such a powerful thing. You've met Richmond Wandera in Uganda he's told me that story. That's what. That sort of story, that sort of revelation was what planted the gospel in him. Because he was like, I know my sponsor loves me, but I can't see her. And they keep telling me about God in this church I'm coming to. And so, yeah, I get that. And so I think what drives everybody at Compassion is when we find out we can add 50 kids to our program is that 50 first kid. I mean, it keeps me up at night, I'll be honest with you. And so that's why I love you guys and have for a long time, because I've seen it. I see it behind the scenes. I see it in your office. I see it when we go hunting. You guys would walk over, crawl over broken glass to get one more kid. Sponsored. I think you even have a tattoo to that end. And I see you do that the same way. So I'm honored to be your friend, Kevin.
- [62:50]
Pastor Joby Martin
We have a lot of compassion. I mean, we have a lot of church leaders that listen to this. So if there's a church leader out there and their church wants to get involved in Compassion, what do they do?
- [62:58]
Compassion Staff Member
Yeah, they can. They can call compassion.com and. And get connected to somebody on the church team. I hope this is okay. You can call 1122 and they can give you my cell phone. I'm happy to do that.
- [63:10]
Pastor Joby Martin
Yeah. And if somebody wants to sponsor a kid right now, they text sponsor to 83393.
- [63:15]
Compassion Staff Member
That's correct.
- [63:16]
Pastor Britt
Y and tell them the sovereignty of God is going to choose a kid for them.
- [63:19]
Pastor Joby Martin
So it's true.
- [63:20]
Pastor Britt
That's right.
- [63:21]
Pastor Joby Martin
A dude did that tonight, and the kid he got had his birth, his same birthday.
- [63:25]
Pastor Britt
Oh, wow. I love when that happens.
- [63:26]
Pastor Joby Martin
Girl pans up just crossing.
- [63:28]
Kevin Myers
I love it. Let's go.
- [63:30]
Pastor Britt
Pastor J, will you pray for us?
- [63:31]
Pastor Joby Martin
I want Kevin to pray for us.
- [63:32]
Compassion Staff Member
Okay. Lord, thank you for loving us and thank you for friendship. Thank you for the body of Christ. God, I know there's a kid somewhere that's desperate without hope. In Africa or Asia or Latin America and even in the United States and God. I just pray that through the ministry that we get to do, that kid would get some hope because somebody cared for them, somebody gave them enough nutrition, enough health care. But ultimately your gospel, so they would have hope and God, the same thing can happen for somebody here. I think we sleep on that way too much. I've heard Pastor Joby say before that he likes to take the wealthy people from Jacksonville and around our country and pair them up with a poor kid in Africa and watch them meet each other's needs. And God I know and I feel very convicted that that I need to understand that my selfishness and my lack of generosity and those things they're problems and sins in my life and God I can learn from some of the kids that we sponsor and so I pray that you would do that work it supernaturally God and we just pray that everything we do would always come back to glorifying you. It's in Christ's name I pray. Amen.
- [64:56]
Pastor Britt
Amen. Thank you for listening to the podcast the end.
- [65:00]
Kevin Myers
You nailed it.
- [65:06]
Pastor Joby Martin
The reality is everything already belongs to God and when we give financially we're acknowledging that we trust him. If you just watch this and feel led to make a donation, text the word donate to 441-122 or visit COE $22. Your generosity is not only an act of worship, but an investment so all people can discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ.