Paul Daugherty - Jesus Is Calling You Out
I wanna preach a message to you called, «Jesus Is Calling You Out». Jesus, turn to someone next to you and say, «Jesus is calling you out». Are you at Mark chapter 10? Mark chapter 10, verse 46. Turn to verse 46, it’s kind of far back in chapter 10. And it is a moment where Jesus was calling somebody out. As they were coming to Jericho, Jesus and his disciples together with a large crowd, I would imagine like an 11:00 AM church crowd, they were leaving the city, they were excited. We just had church, it was good and we’re all headed to go get some chicken together. We’re gonna go eat together and they’re leaving the city and all of a sudden, this blind man, Bartimaeus, which means son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside, he was begging.
And when he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was coming by, he began to shout Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me! And people started rebuking him. They were like, shh, be quiet. This is church, man, don’t talk. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t listen to you. But he shouted all the more, Jesus! Notice that it was the religious people trying to shush this man and trying to stop him from getting to Jesus. Becare…listen, we should never stop someone from experiencing their breakthrough with Jesus. We have protocol, but I’m telling you, let’s not let those that are in need of a miracle miss out on their breakthrough because of our preferences or how we think it’s supposed to be. Jesus stops and he says, call him. So, they called to the blind man, cheer up my friend. Get up on your feet, he’s calling your name. He’s calling you out.
Turn to someone next to you and say, «he’s calling you out». And so, when he called it, now here’s the beautiful thing, Jesus was not calling him out to condemn him, he was calling him out to heal him. He was not calling, I’m already preaching if you’re taking notes. Note takers are history makers. Jesus wasn’t calling him out to shame him. He wasn’t calling him out, Al Richardson, to shame him. He wasn’t calling him out to condemn him. He was calling him out to save him, to heal him, to do a new work inside of him. Jesus doesn’t call us out to make us feel miserable or to make us feel embarrassed or to be like, oh, don’t say my name. He calls us out to tell us, I know you. I know what you’ve walked through. I see what you’ve been through. I see how they treated you. I see what you’ve gotten yourself into and I’m calling you out of that past shame, that condemnation, that guilt and I’m calling you into a future.
So when they called him, when Jesus called him, he throwed his cloak over and he walked towards Jesus. He got up on his feet and Jesus asks him, what do you want me to do for you? He says, rabbi, I just wanna see. I just wanna see. And Jesus said, go, your faith has healed you and immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus. Lord, I pray that you’d speak to us today. Remind us that you have a purpose for us, that you are for us and not against us, that you love us and you came to save us, heal us, redeem us and use us for your glory in Jesus name, everybody said, amen. Thank you so much, my friend. Can we give the worship team a big hand? They do a great job every single service. I wanna give you a few things that Jesus is calling you out of, but you could make your own list.
Number one, Jesus is calling you out of fear and into faith. Think about when Jesus called Peter to walk on water. Again, during this moment, the disciples, they were all afraid, they were in a storm and Jesus comes walking on the water and they think he’s a ghost. They go, ah, it’s a ghost! Jesus says, no, it’s me. Peter says, if it’s you, call me to walk towards you. Jesus says, come. The invitation to walk on water, the invitation to step out of our comfort zone of fear and to start walking towards Jesus, the invitation to be a part of what Jesus is doing from fear to faith.
Now, some of us, we don’t even realize that we’ve been operating in fear. The reason we haven’t stepped out to start a connect group or serve in the youth group or go on a missions trip or serve at the dream center, is we’re afraid. What if God doesn’t use me? What if God doesn’t flow through me? What if I pray for the sick and they don’t get healed? What if I open my house up and I’m not good enough to be a connect group leader? What if I do this and I fail? What if I launch this company? What if I step out? What if I go on this mission strip, but then I’m embarrassed because I don’t have as much spiritual, like a strong, spiritual pedigree as some of these other people. But Jesus says, no, I’m calling you out from fear into faith.
Trust that Jesus is bigger than your fears. Trust that he’s greater than your intimidation, your insecurities, that he works through people, not that are perfect, but people that have faith in his perfection, in his character, in his goodness, in his power. Jesus is calling you out from living for yourself into living with a greater purpose. In Mark chapter four, verse 18, Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee when all of a sudden, there was these two guys that were fishing and he says, hey you, come and follow after me and I’ll teach you how to really fish. What was Jesus doing? He was inviting them to move from living for themselves. You fish for yourself, you make some money, but you fish for Jesus, you make an eternal impact that echoes for generations to come.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a job or you shouldn’t get married, have kids. Those are great things. But there is a deeper purpose to life than just graduating from college, getting your MRS degree and getting 40K a year or whatever salary you want to make and buying that house and getting that car. Jesus says, I have a bigger purpose. So get your job, get married, whatever those dreams are, but live for the glory of God. You’re the light of the world. You’re the city on a hill. Jesus is inviting us to live beyond ourselves. Jesus is calling us out of shame and into grace. There was a woman who was caught in the act of adultery in Jesus’s time and she was thrown at his feet and all these religious leaders, they had their stones. They were like, we are ready to stone this woman to death.
And Jesus gets down in the sand. And I love Jesus I love his heart for people. Jesus loves sinners. Jesus loves the people that, oftentimes, the church gives a side eye to. The church is like, I don’t know, I don’t know about this. And Jesus gets right there, writes in this sand, then he looks at the religious people. He says, you with no sin, you who’ve never sin in your life, you get to throw the first stone. You get to write the first comment on Facebook. You get to throw the first slander against this woman if you’ve never sin. One by one, the religious leaders dropped their stones. Jesus was calling the woman out of shame, out of sin. He said, woman, where are your accusers? She says, there’s none. He says, neither do I condemn you. Now go and send no more, out of shame into grace.
The same grace he showed her, he wants to show you and me today. How many are thankful for his grace? Come on, half of us in the room. The other half, let’s get it. Jesus is calling us out from bondage to freedom. Some of us in this room, we don’t even realize. We’ve been addicted to things for so long and Jesus is saying, it’s time to get free. It’s time you got free from that lifestyle of sin. It’s time you got free from that addiction to stuff. It’s time that you got out of that bondage to witchcraft and darkness. It’s time you got out of that bondage of that Jezebel spirit you’ve been under. It’s time you got out and you started walking in freedom.
Jesus is calling us out, not to condemn us, but to set us free. Jesus is calling you out of depression and oppression into a sound mind. I wanna go to Mark chapter… Let’s go to Mark chapter five. Mark chapter five, verse one. So, they arrived at the other side of the lake. And when they got to this place, Jesus climbed out of the boat and a man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the tombs to meet him. The man lived in burial caves and could no longer be restrained, even with a chain. Whenever he was put in chains and shackles, as he often was, he would snap the chains from his wrist and he would smash the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue this man. Day and night, he wandered among the caves and the tombs and the hills and he would howl in the darkness and he would cut himself with stones.
This man was suicidal. He was tormented. He was depressed. He was overwhelmed. He was having panic attacks, anxiety, depression, every mental illness you could imagine was part of this legion in his mind. In fact, the legion of demons in his mind was over a thousand demons is what they called themselves. Just like this massive amount of demonic soldiers that had taken him captive on the inside. And when Jesus was still a distance away and saw this man, this man ran to meet him and bowed low before Jesus with a shriek in his mouth, he said, why are you interfering with me, Jesus?! The devil does not wanna be interfered with. The devil wants to have… See, the devil hides himself in America differently than he does in Haiti, I think.
I think, there, it was very much more manifested. Externally, we could see it. Here, it’s way more camouflage. It’s hidden in self-righteousness. It’s hidden in greed. It’s hidden in lust. It’s hidden in pride. It’s hidden in hatred towards a brother or sister. You go, well, Paul, hatred’s not demonic. Oh, yes it is. You think hatred came from Jesus? Well, jealousy’s not demonic. You think Jesus gave you that spirit of jealousy? It camouflages in like, it’s just a little bit of sin. Jesus says, it’s witchcraft and it’s messing with you and I came to set you free. I didn’t come to call you out to condemn you. I’m not gonna call you out today, but Jesus is speaking to you saying, let’s break that. Let’s break that spirit off today.
So, Jesus looked at this man who was possessed by demons and the man with demons, he says, I beg you, don’t torture me. See, the enemy is subject to the authority of the believer. When we know who we are, that we are children of God, the power of Jesus is stronger than the power of Satan. And so, Jesus points at this and he says, come out of this man, you evil spirit! And Jesus demanded, what is your name? And he replied, my name is Legion because there are many of us inside this man. The evil spirits begged him again and again not to cast him out to some distant place. I want the band to come up.
So this is interesting. Jesus cast them out, they said, send us to the pigs. Let us enter the pigs. Any y’all eat bacon this morning? I’m just kidding. It’s outta you. But Jesus gave them permission. The evil spirits left and they plunged into the water. Now, watch what happens. I want you to come back to this moment. Those who had seen a crowd begin to gather, in verse 15, they saw the man who had been possessed. They saw the man who had been tormented and he was sitting there, clothed, perfectly sane in his mind. And those who had seen what had happened, told everyone about this demon-possessed man. And the crowd began pleading with Jesus to leave them alone. The power of God had moved and they didn’t know how to receive it.
As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed, who was now set free, he begged to go with Jesus. But Jesus said, no, go home. Go home? Home? Can’t I go to Belize? Can’t I go to Guatemala? Can’t I go and preach in a foreign country? Because it’s easier to preach in a foreign country than it is in your own house. It’s easier to bind the devil in a foreign country than it is in your own family. Jesus says, I want you to go home because your family needs to see the new you. Your family needs to see the power of God in you. Your spouse needs to know that the same God who heals in Haiti, heals in Galilee and heals in Tulsa. And the same God who heals families and demon possess people and Belize can do it right here in our city.
Jesus is calling you out, out of your comfort zone, out of even the romanticizing of foreign missions and those are great. But right here, your backyard, your front yard, your living room to go home and go, Lord, I want to be a mission minded person right here. I want to live with your love. I wanna live with your compassion. Jesus said, at the end of the age, there’s gonna be people who come to him. This was Matthew 25, some red letters for you. He says, at the end of the age, there’s gonna be people who come to him and they’re gonna say, we know you. We walked with you.
But watch what Jesus says in verse 34 of Matthew 25. He says, the king will say, come you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom of heaven, prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you fed me. Hey, every time you give in the offering, every time you serve in this church, you are helping feed the hungry every week. Did you know today, we’ll give out bags of groceries to people that came to church that we have onsite? We give groceries out on this campus, at Victory North, at Victory Manford, at the Dream Center. Why, because we know this is the commandment, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked. This is why we do the Dream Center.
Jesus says, I was hungry and you fed me. You weren’t cynical sitting in church going, here they go again, asking me to give a dollar. You actually gave. When I called you out from living for yourself, you took the invitation to live with a greater purpose. When I called you out of being selfish to being compassionate, you moved from sympathy to action. And you started serving, you started loving. He says, I was thirsty. You gave me something to drink. Watch this, he says, I was a stranger and you started a connect group. You opened up your house. You invited me into your home. I was a little weird. It was a little awkward. You didn’t know it was me. You were entertaining angels when you thought it was just a homeless guy, just a strange person from the church.
How many y’all know there’s some strange people sometimes in the church? We’re all some of them, I am too, I’m a little strange. Jesus says, I was naked and you gave me clothes. This last week, I was sharing this with our kids that one time I was on a mission trip in the Philippines. We were in an area called Garbage City. And it was near the ocean and they dumped garbage into the ocean right off the coast there. But there was thousands of people that lived in cardboard boxes in the garbage, that was their homes. Didn’t have shoes or shirts. Many of them walking around just in underwear. And we set up to feed people that day. A lot of kids were sniffing bags of glue because that’s how they got rid of their hunger pains from starvation. Many died of starvation. We take for granted all that we have here in this nation. We are so blessed, my friends.
And I remember sitting there and our team started doing some dramas. We started sharing Jesus and this little boy came and crawled in my lap and he was in his underwear and I was thinking, oh, don’t sit on me. Like, don’t come near me. And he was dirty. He started peeing on me. And I was like, I just want to get up from here. I don’t know what to do. And I felt the Lord say, just stay, just stay, just stay and don’t move. And the boy sneezed and he wiped his snot all over me. And I was like, ugh. But I felt the Lord say, this is how I hold you when you’re a mess, Paul.
This is how I hold Americans that are messy too. We don’t always show it sometimes. Our kids do, we got diapers and snot and all kinds of stuff, but Jesus says, this is how I hold you. I was naked and you clothed me. I was a stranger and you showed me hospitality. I was a baby in the nursery and you rocked me. I was a teenager in the youth group and you mentored me. I was a new person coming into church. And you held the door open for me. I was that guy that was sitting in the cafe, I was kind of crazy, I was kind of weird, but you sat beside me and you had a cup of coffee and you told me to sit with you and your family the next week at church.
I was that college student that you just kept on going over to TU and saying, you gotta come to Victory, you gotta come to Victory. And I finally came and then you invited me to go to Buffalo Wild Wings afterwards and you paid for my meal. I was hungry, you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you showed me hospitality. I was naked, I was sick, you cared for me, I was in prison and you visited me. By the way, we have Victory Bible colleges in prisons in Oklahoma and all over the world and even in David Elmos in jails. We’re sharing the gospel. We’re getting people taught the word of God and they’re experiencing the love of God right there in their jail cell.
And the righteous one said, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and gives you something to drink? When were you a stranger and we showed you hospitality? I’m scrolling through Instagram and I don’t see it. I’m looking at all of my posts and I can’t find you in there. Where were you? Where were you in here? I’m going through this and I’m trying to find you here. Jesus says, that’s me, right there, right there, right there. That little boy. Wait, that was you? He said, yeah, you didn’t know, that was me. I was there. And when you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.
And when you love people and when you go home and when you serve and when you come out of darkness and into light, Jesus set us free. Not just for us to live in our freedom, but for us to share that freedom and bring others out of depression, out of darkness. Jesus set that man that was demon-possessed free and he says, I’m calling you out, not just so that your best days are in front of you, but that you would lead other people into their best days.
Would you stand in your feet all over this place? Somebody needs your testimony. Somebody needs your courage. Somebody needs you to get out of fear and into faith. Somebody needs you to get out of a hurt place. I was praying for someone at the altar in the last service. They said, we’ve been very hurt in our past. We’ve walked through a lot of hurt. I said, he’s calling you outta hurt and into healing. Not just that you would be healed, but that you would bring healing to others who’ve been hurt. See, it’s always bigger than us. Somebody say, «it’s bigger than me». He’s calling you out of discouragement into being an encourager. He’s calling you out of watching others experience him and encounter him into experiencing him for yourself.