A Life Like Jesus

Come on.

Well, as you know, we are one church in multiple locations, and I just want to invite you to welcome with me our whole church family.

We have our Pendleton campus meeting in a high school auditorium, our Department of Corrections brothers meeting together, and our whole online family.

One more time.

Walla Walla, can we welcome everybody to church this morning?

I'm excited to be able to bring the word.

But before we jump in to the word this morning, I just want to charge us to pray for something.

As you know, my wife and I are the youth pastors here at Life.Church, and we are going in about eight days.

We're taking a little over 100 kids to youth camp just outside of Spokane.

Pray for us, okay?

No, but really, we do wanna just charge you to pray.

We leave the 10th and we come back the 14th.

And if you've ever been to a youth camp before, I know for me, growing up in church, being able to go spend a week in the presence of God, encountering him, getting rid of social media and phones and all the distractions that can come with that, and just meeting the presence of God on the lake and with people your age can be such a life-changing moment.

for students.

I know even for so many in our youth group right now, they were changed because of a moment at a youth conference or a youth camp.

And so can you be praying?

Can you be praying for God to encounter our kids for safety on the travel up, for every leader that is going, for all the Red Bull we will be drinking, and that we'd come back changed.

Amen?

Awesome.

Well, I also just want to pray together for a moment.

We have Pursuit Night this Tuesday, and I just want to invite you to come.

We pray for any and all things, and I just want to spend a moment to pray together as a church before we have Pursuit Night this Tuesday.

I want to pray for the fires that are going through Spokane.

I want to pray for...

God's presence here in the room for youth camp.

And so if you'd join me just in praying this morning.

God, we thank you for your presence that's already in this room.

And God, we do just pray for all of the places that are being affected by fires right now.

God, we pray that you would cause every fire to cease.

God, I pray over the fires going through Spokane right now.

God, I pray for a rain to come.

And we pray for protection over every person in that area that is being affected by those fires, I pray.

and that you would cause every fire to cease, God, except for the fire for your presence in this city.

God, we do pray over youth camp in the coming days.

God, we pray that you would encounter the next generation, that our church would feel the difference when young people come home on fire for you and ready to change the world.

And so we pray for all that you're doing here in Walla Walla and in Pendleton and the Department of Corrections, and we just pray that you would continue it in us.

In your mighty name, everybody said?

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, we're jumping back into our series, There Is More, where we are going through the book of Acts chapter by chapter, and we're officially ending Acts chapter 9 today, which is good news because that means we're on pace to finish just before Jesus returns.

We will get through it, I do promise.

But we have some long-winded preachers, okay, and I am no exception.

So I'm excited.

The book of Acts is actually my favorite book in the Bible.

And I just absolutely loved being able to go through it as a church together.

But as I was preparing for this sermon this week, I began to think about getting older.

And one of the weirdest things for me about getting older, and I can almost feel the eye roll from everybody in the room, it's like getting older.

I know.

But I do feel like I'm getting older.

Okay, I know I'm not old to some of you in the room.

But I was just thinking about getting older.

You know, I'm a dad now.

You knew I was going to get that in there somewhere to my beautiful daughter.

But I was thinking about one of the weirdest things for me getting older is that I've become more like my parents.

And yes, in the good ways, but also in the ways that I used to make fun of.

Like, I find myself saying things like, we have food at home.

And I'm like, oh, gosh.

Who am I becoming right now?

What am I doing?

Right?

Like, I used to talk to my parents about, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up?

You know, and now I'm like, hey, what did you get the internal temperature of this chicken to?

Because if it's under 165 degrees, it's... No, thank you.

But it got really bad when I got a Blackstone.

Can all my dads say amen?

Okay, I got a Blackstone, and it was, like, involuntary.

I started grunting when I stand up out of chairs now.

It's like, ugh.

You know?

cooking on the Blackstone.

I got to stand there with my hands on my hips.

Start squinting when I'm, no, I'm joking.

I got a Blackstone for Father's Day.

I love cooking on it, but it just brings the dad out in me.

Like my wife can tell you this.

It's terrible.

She cannot describe anything about herself anymore.

Like if she says, I'm hungry, every dad in the room knows what I'm about to say.

Hi, hungry.

I'm Landon.

And it's involuntary.

It's not like I want to do it.

It got so bad a couple days ago, she said that, she said, I'm hungry, and she literally mouthed under her breath what I was gonna say back to her.

She's like, I ain't hungry, I'm Landon.

I'm not that predictable.

Every dad is that predictable.

But anyways, why was I saying all that?

Something important.

Oh, yeah, but I began to realize I've become like my parents.

And part of that is just growing up and spending time with them.

It's kind of like, you know, when you were a kid, you probably had somebody you wanted to be like, right?

Like a lot of the kids these days, they grow up and go out to their driveway and they want to shoot it like Steph Curry.

Or maybe you growing up, you old folks, you wanted to shoot like Michael Jordan.

You had somebody you wanted to emulate.

Or for the girls, I don't know who you wanted to be like, but somebody, a pop star, I don't know.

But we begin to emulate people we want to become like.

For me, I grew up loving basketball, and I wanted to be just like Chris Paul.

Anybody know Chris Paul?

Okay, nobody.

This is a bad example.

Okay.

Well, Chris Paul was an NBA player and somebody that really got me into basketball.

And so what I would do is I would watch his highlights.

I would watch how he would shoot.

I would watch his form.

And then I'd go out to my driveway and I'd begin to do it.

And then when I'm playing games, everybody would say, that looks a lot like Chris Paul.

Just kidding.

Nobody ever thought that.

But I would begin to emulate and try to look like them because we wanted to be like somebody.

And the story we're going to read today in Acts chapter 9 I think is a great example of this where Peter actually begins to emulate Jesus because he spent so much time around Jesus, wanted to be like Jesus, and he actually begins to do ministry like Jesus.

And so let's look here in Acts chapter 9.

I have a story where Peter, and I want you to try to think, maybe you'll recognize what story I'm talking about, where Peter is emulating Jesus in his own ministry.

Acts chapter 9, we're going to start in verse 36 and read through verse 43.

It says this,

She was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor.

About this time, she became ill and died.

Probably was not the story to make a joke like that.

Her body was washed for burial and laid in an upstairs room.

But the believers had heard that Peter...

So Peter returned with them, and as soon as he arrived, they took him to the upstairs room.

The room was filled with widows who were weeping and showing him the coats and other clothes that Dorcas had made for them.

But Peter asked them all to leave the room.

And then he knelt and prayed.

Turning to the body, he said...

Get up, Tabitha.

She opened her eyes.

When she saw Peter, she sat up.

Just a casual resurrection here, okay?

He gave her his hand and helped her up.

Then he called in the widows and all the believers, and he presented her to them alive.

The news spread through the whole town, and many believed in the Lord.

And Peter stayed a long time in Joppa, living with Simon, a tanner of hides.

Okay, this is like already a crazy story, okay?

We see Tabitha dies.

There's people weeping.

They call Peter in, and Peter prays, and then she's raised back to life.

And I want us to know this.

I want to look at a story in the Gospels.

And then I want us to make a connection here.

And so I want you to think through the story we just read in Acts chapter 9 and notice the similarities we see here in the book of Mark chapter 5.

Okay, so we have somebody calling them to come.

Jesus went with him and all the people followed, crowding around him.

We're going to skip forward a few verses here because they get stopped in the middle of it, but we're going to pick back up our story.

It says this, That's a bold statement.

Then Jesus stopped the crowd and wouldn't let anyone go with him except Peter, James, and John, which we'll come back to that here in a moment.

When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing.

We're starting to see a similar picture here as we saw in our chapter.

He went inside and asked, why all this commotion and weeping?

The child isn't dead.

She's only asleep.

Again, a bold statement to say.

The crowd laughed at him, but he made them all leave.

And he took the girl's father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was lying.

Holding her hand, he said to her, Talitha kum.

We'll come back to that, which means little girl, get up.

And the girl who was 12 years old immediately stood up and walked around.

They were overwhelmed and totally amazed.

Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened.

And then he told them to give her something to eat.

Okay, picture this.

We have Peter, who is here in this moment, and I'm gonna put up a slide that has all these different connections, and then we're gonna talk about what I think it means.

Look at this.

This is the story we just read out of Mark chapter five, and it's in the other gospels.

And then Peter raising Tabitha,

Back to life, okay?

Jesus is called because a beloved person has died similarly to how Peter was called because Tabitha has died, who is also a beloved person.

Jesus arrives and people are mourning and weeping.

And when Peter arrives, the room is filled with people mourning and weeping.

Jesus sends everybody out of the room.

And what does Peter do?

Peter sends everybody out of the room.

Jesus takes the girl by the hand.

Peter later gives Tabitha his hand to help her stand up.

Jesus says, Talitha kum, which is little girl, get up.

Peter says, Tabitha, get up, which in the original language is like one or two letters off of Talitha, okay?

Do you think that Luke wants us to see a connection here and the way that he's telling the story in Acts chapter nine?

The girl immediately gets up.

Tabitha opens her eyes and immediately stands up.

Everybody is amazed and everybody is amazed and many people believe in the Lord.

Why is this important?

Why do you think that Luke wants us to see the connection between how Peter has this moment and the moment that Jesus has?

Here's why I think it's important.

Because I think Luke wants us to understand that Peter was not building his own ministry.

Peter was looking to the one who came before and saying, you know what?

If I do nothing else but emulate the life of Jesus in my ministry, then I've done something right.

And I think that a problem that our culture can get into today is that we think we need to find a new way to do everything.

Oh, I'm going to build my ministry with something the church has never seen before.

If your ministry starts with that, then you're probably in the wrong place.

Right?

Oh, I'm going to build Peter Ministries International.

I'm going to start my Peter podcast.

No, Peter had nothing of that in his heart.

Why?

Because he had seen Jesus.

And I think it's so cool that we can see all the connections here.

And look at this.

In our story with Jesus, then Jesus stopped the crowd and wouldn't let anyone go with him except who?

Peter.

So Peter was there.

Peter was watching as Jesus goes in and he sends out people that have a lack of faith and he's watching as Jesus has this moment.

And Peter said, you know what?

I don't need to come up with a new way to do things.

And I think that us as the church can learn from this.

Rather than trying to create a new way to reach the world, how about we just look more like Jesus?

Because I promise you this, if the church looked more like Jesus, the world wouldn't be able to help but change.

Peter cared more about looking like Jesus than he cared about building his own ministry.

And I think we can learn the same.

And this is the whole story of Acts.

Think about it.

It's the life of Jesus, emulated in the believers, empowered by the Holy Spirit, beginning the church.

That's the book of Acts.

The life of Jesus, emulated in the believers, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and now beginning the New Testament church.

And so...

How do we do this?

How do we live, and this is the topic I wanna talk about, the title of my message, and I'm already running out of time, so that is awesome.

A life like Jesus.

Just as Peter began to emulate Jesus in his ministry, we are called to do the same.

See, the goal of Christianity, and I don't even like using that phrasing, but the goal is not just simply to reach everybody else.

The goal in and of ourselves is to look more like Jesus.

And if we're not looking more like Jesus, we might not know him in the way we think we know him.

And in the same way that I become like my father in the natural because I spent years with him and I spent time with him and I watched his mannerisms and I watched the way that he talked and I began to become like him.

It's so funny.

I'll go and preach somewhere and I'll have people tell me this all the time.

Let's say it's like watching your father when he was younger.

I take that as a high compliment.

But why does people say that?

Because I speak similarly to him.

I have his mannerisms.

And I have a long way to go to get to his level.

But the mannerisms, the wording, the way that I speak, why?

Because I spend time with him.

Because I've sat on the front row for 24 years and watched him.

I've watched his life.

And so I've slowly became like him.

And so how do we become like Jesus?

Well, we have to spend time with him.

We have to know him.

We have to look at him.

It's like I'm a golfer.

You also knew I was going to bring that up at some point.

And I'm not a good golfer, but I'm a golfer.

And this is how I practice.

I will watch a professional, and I literally will do this.

If you go through my camera roll, I would say maybe like half of my camera roll is Paisley pictures, and then the other half is like videos of my golf swing.

And why?

This is what I'll do.

I'll take a professional player that I want my swing to look like and I'll record like a screenshot of it or a video of it and then I'll go out and I'll set my camera up, I'll record my video of my swing and I'll put them side by side.

And I'll begin to look at the professional and I'll look at mine and I'll say, wow, they look pretty similar.

No, I'm kidding.

I'll say,

Okay, that's where it looks different.

Okay, I need to do this.

I need to change this.

And then I'll go try it again and I'll take the new video and I'll put it next to it and I'll say, okay, now I need to adjust this.

And what am I doing?

I'm trying to become like somebody I want to be.

And the same as if Jesus, if we want to become like Jesus, then we need to read the scripture and say, okay, where is my life out of alignment with the word of God?

Where is my life not look like Jesus?

And then we work on it and then we come back and we look at the life of Jesus and then we work on it.

And here's the problem.

We oftentimes do this, I have a lot of friends that golf, and I'm not gonna call anybody out by name.

Pendleton campus director.

But here's what'll happen.

Not in the golf world, but in the natural, is like I would take a video of a professional, here's what we wanna do.

We wanna take a video of a friend.

And I put my golf swing next to Jason Peterson's golf swing.

And Jason's a great golfer, but he's not a professional.

And I begin to compare and I begin to think, oh, well, you know what, my swing's not that bad.

You know, it's not as bad as I think, or I compare to somebody that started after me, and come on, you know where I'm going with this.

We look at another believer and say, well, they're cursing, so it's probably not that big of a deal.

But here's the reality.

When you stand before Jesus one day, you're not going to be able to pull up somebody else's life.

You're going to be put against the blameless, perfect Christ.

And if we haven't become more like him.

You're not going to be able to say on that day, well, they were like that too.

Well, what about them?

They did way worse things.

No, no, no, no, no.

We either have the blood of Jesus covering us and making us more like him or we don't.

None of that was planned and now I am out of time.

Okay.

So what does a life like Jesus look like?

I got three points for you of what a life like Jesus looks like.

and how we can begin to emulate that.

I think the first thing that we see in our story, and if you read through the life of Jesus, you will not be able to miss this, and it's this.

A life like Jesus serves others.

Jesus, the Son of God, comes and lives a holy, blameless life.

If anybody didn't need to serve others, it was him.

And yet, he lived his entire life to serve others.

Look at this.

In our story in Acts chapter 9, I think this is a beautiful statement to have said about you, and it's said of Tabitha.

There was a believer in Joppa named Tabitha.

She was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor.

What is she doing?

She's emulating Jesus.

She's emulating the life of Jesus in her own life, and she's beginning to serve.

She was making clothes.

Later in our story, it says that the widows were weeping and mourning in the room, showing Peter the clothes that she had made for them.

What do you have that you can use to serve?

And Pendleton and Walla Walla.

It might not feel significant to you.

I bet there was times where Tabitha felt like she was just sewing clothes together.

And in her mind, she's like, man, this isn't really making a difference.

How big of a difference is it making that I'm giving clothes to the widows and I'm taking care of the poor?

And we can begin to think that it's insignificant.

But we look at her life and at her deathbed, her room is full of people that were affected by her life.

Why?

Because she served.

You have something to offer.

Maybe it's your time.

Maybe it's finances.

Maybe it's, I don't know, feeling like maybe you can show when you're going to make clothes for people.

I don't know.

But you have something to offer.

And if we are going to look like Jesus, then we must live our life serving others.

And this is contrary to what the world says, right?

The world says, how can you build your own life?

Well, Jesus says, how can you build other people's lives?

How can you build the church?

I love this.

We're going to read a lot of scripture today.

I hope that's okay to read scripture in church.

When the 10 other disciples heard that James and John had asked, they were indignant.

So Jesus called them together and said, you know that the rulers in this world lorded over their people and officials flaunt their authority over those under them.

I would say that hasn't changed much.

But among you.

It will be different.

Who is the you?

The church.

It's believers.

It's disciples of Jesus.

And Jesus is calling them out saying, this is what the world looks like, but there should be a contrast between what the world looks like and what Christians look like.

Somebody should be able to look at your life and see that something is different.

And you're going to notice, we're going to read scripture after scripture about what a life like Jesus looks like.

And I just want you to notice as we read them, you're going to see contrasting language.

You're gonna see language like, well, the world is this and yet you are this.

Or because I have done this, then you so also do this.

It's language that is telling us that we should be different.

Then the world.

Among you it will be different.

Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant.

And whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else.

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

as Jesus has done, so we are called to do.

Here's another scripture in John chapter 13.

You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, because that's what I am.

And since I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet.

I have given you what?

An example to follow.

Do as I have done to you.

And if Jesus washed his disciples' feet, if Jesus served those that nobody else wanted to serve, think about the life of Jesus.

Who was always caring for the widows?

for the poor, for the prostitutes, for the lepers, for those that was cast out by society.

It was Jesus.

What is he doing?

He's setting the example.

Jesus always saw the one that nobody else saw.

Do you?

Do you see the one that everybody else drives by?

Do you see the one at your workplace that nobody else will talk to you?

Do you see the one that nobody wants to talk to at church because they haven't showered in weeks?

Do you see the one

Jesus does.

Tabitha does.

And as disciples of Jesus, we should.

So if we're going to live a life like Jesus, we must serve like Jesus.

And when we do, look at this.

Peter returned with them, and as soon as he arrived, they took him to the upstairs room, and the room was filled with widows who were weeping and showing him the coats and other clothes that Dorcas had made for them.

I know it might not feel like you have a lot to offer, but I'm here to tell you when you serve others, it leaves a lasting impact.

I'll tell you who it mattered to, every widow that was in that room.

So much so, and you know, I'm not saying this is going to happen to you.

I'm just saying when you serve other people, they called Peter in and got her raised back to life.

Again, I'm not saying this is going to happen to you.

I'm just saying she had made such an impact in people's lives that they couldn't do it without her.

They said, get Peter over here.

I know Peter has seen Jesus raise people back to life.

I know Peter can do it.

Get Peter here because we need Tabitha with us.

I think a lot of us in our culture today might say, well, yeah, she was kind and she was awesome, but do we really need her around?

No, no, no.

Every single one of those widows said, man, we need her.

So a life like Jesus serves like Jesus.

Do you guys remember last week, Pastor Caleb preached an incredible word on maturing in Christ.

And I believe it was maybe a second point or third point.

And he said he didn't want to preach it.

This one's my point.

So don't get mad at me.

A life like Jesus is death like Jesus.

We're going to do something similar to how we started here.

But I want to look at a few chapters earlier.

A man by the name of Stephen in Acts chapter 7.

Let's read this together.

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God.

And he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God's right hand.

And he told them, look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God's right hand.

Which, that's a whole topic that we don't have time to go into.

But kind of cool.

Which we're getting to Saul and Paul here soon.

As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

I want to compare this

the death of Stephen to the death of Jesus.

And before, let me give this caveat.

You can't compare the death of Jesus to anybody, okay?

The theological significance, the enduring, the pain, the suffering, the taking death on his shoulders, of course, we cannot compare the death of Jesus to the death of anybody.

But I want us to see this, that Stephen was still emulating Jesus in the way that he died.

Now, two different stories, two different moments.

But he was becoming like Jesus.

As we are called to become like Jesus.

It says this.

We're going to finish this story and then look at Jesus.

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

He fell to his knees shouting, Lord, don't charge them with this sin.

And with that, he died.

Now let's look at.

the death of Jesus here.

Two others, both criminals, were led out to be executed with him.

When they came to a place called the scroll, they nailed him to the cross and the criminals were also crucified, one on his right and one on his left.

Jesus said, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing.

Look at this.

Jesus is falsely accused as well as Stephen.

Jesus has false witnesses as well as Stephen.

Jesus faces the Sanhedrin as well as Stephen faces the Sanhedrin.

Jesus commits his spirit to the Father just as Stephen says, Lord Jesus, would you receive my spirit?

Jesus says, Father, forgive them, where Stephen says, Lord, don't hold this sin against them.

Jesus dies outside Jerusalem.

Stephen is stoned outside the city.

His witnesses watch as Jesus dies, just as Saul watches as Stephen dies.

Again, we can't compare the significance of these two moments.

We can't compare the death of Jesus to anybody, but we can look at this and say, Stephen knew how Jesus died.

Stephen knew.

He heard stories.

You can imagine in that moment,

It was everything in him to want to be angry at his accusers, to want to throw blame at them.

And instead, his response is that, Lord, would you not hold this sin against them?

What is he doing?

He's dying like Jesus.

Say, man, would you forgive them, Father?

We will all face a moment like Stephen where we either choose to die like Jesus or deny Jesus.

where we either choose to shed things from our life or become more like the things that Jesus has told us to shed from our life.

I think it's kind of cool that it says that Saul is watching as he dies.

You never know who's watching your life.

And as a Christian, I think that we sometimes view Christianity as adding things to our life, which is true, right?

We read the Bible and we go to church and we worship and we pray and we add these things to our life.

But you know what it also is?

It's removing some things from our life.

It's saying, man, I'm gonna die to my pride.

I'm gonna die to selfishness.

And luckily, because of the country we live in, you probably will not need to die for your belief in Jesus, but there are things in you that will need to die.

Dying to the sin.

that was once in our life, dying to the fill in the blank.

We will all face a moment where we either die to the things in our life or we deny God.

I think it's interesting that Saul is watching there as Stephen dies and he forgives his accusers.

And Saul, we know,

It's Paul who begins to write much of the New Testament and just a few chapters later has his road to Damascus moment where Jesus encounters him and his life is completely changed.

And I don't know, Acts doesn't tell us, but I think that it would be hard to not be marked by this moment where he watches a follower of Christ die.

And then you know what Paul talks about a lot?

Dying.

He talks about it all the time.

I would rather die.

Then deny Christ.

And he talks about his death all the time.

Why?

Because he understands that there's something greater.

And he understands that following Jesus is death to the world, to our sin, to our pride, to our selfishness.

And it's the only way to truly actually come alive.

Look at this.

We're going to like rapid fire some scriptures at you.

Philippians 2, 5-8, you must have the same attitude that Christ had.

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges.

He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being.

When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross.

Romans 8, 17.

And since we are his children, we are his heirs.

In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God's glory.

But if we are to share in his glory, we must also share his suffering.

1 Peter 2, 21.

For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, what?

Just as Christ has suffered for you.

He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.

Philippians 3.10, I want you to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead, which implies that we have suffered with him and shared in his death.

Galatians 2.20, my old self has been what?

Crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.

So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

So I ask you this question, what in your life needs to die?

for you to become more like Jesus, to live a life like Jesus, something has to die.

Something has to be broken off of our life.

Last scripture here, and then we'll go to our last point.

Luke 9, 23 through 24.

Then he said to the crowd, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way.

Take up your cross daily and follow me.

If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

I love this because it reminds us that dying to self is a daily decision.

We wake up and we put off our old.

We put off the past that once held us.

We put off our selfishness, our pride.

Becoming a parent, getting married, it just reveals in you how selfish we are as humans.

We put it off every day.

We die like Christ so that we can actually come alive.

There's no way to truly be alive if we first haven't died to our old self.

And here's where I want to end today.

So a life like Jesus serves like Jesus, dies like Jesus.

And lastly, we're going to end here.

A life like Jesus leaves a legacy like Jesus.

Now again, good luck leaving a legacy like Jesus.

We can never match the significance of what Jesus did on the cross, but you know what we can do?

We can emulate it.

We can leave a legacy.

I love this.

I know we already read it.

But I think this is such a powerful line to have said about Tabitha after she dies, before she's raised back to life.

She was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor.

What is that?

It's a legacy statement.

It's a statement of the impact that Tabitha had had on the people around her.

Legacy is not status.

Legacy is impact.

Our culture has misconstrued what's important at times, where we're building the most amount of wealth, the most amount of popularity, having the most social media, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, MySpace.

If we can build our status, you're like, I don't even think I was born when MySpace was a thing.

But culture says, hey, that's peak.

If you can have the most followers, if you can have the most money, then you've made it.

No, no, no.

That's status.

Legacy is impact.

Legacy is a room filled with widows weeping because of the impact that you had on them.

I love this quote by John Maxwell.

Success is when I add value to myself, but significance, legacy, is when I add value to others.

This is impact.

Peter returned with them and as soon as he arrived, they took him to the upstairs room.

The room was filled with widows.

This is a thought I'm having right now.

What would your room be filled with?

Would it be fellow business people that helped you get to the

highest place?

Would it be empty?

Would it be filled with people that you left a legacy on?

Now legacy is not status, it's impact, but legacy is also this.

Look at this.

Legacy is consistency.

There's a believer in Joppa named Tabitha.

She was always.

You can't leave a legacy one time.

I did my good deed for the year.

If we're going to leave a legacy, it's a lifetime.

And here's the reality, and this is not a fun reality for some people.

We'll read here in a second.

But everybody will leave a legacy.

But not every legacy is worth leaving.

And I love that Tabitha's life is described in one line.

What is your one line?

It's a question I want us to ponder for just a moment.

If your life was summed up in one line,

what would it be?

Because it's actually something we see in scripture all the time.

So and so, who was blank?

And their life is summed in one line.

I'm gonna read mostly positive examples, but I want us to see that there is some negative.

Look at this.

The man we read about, Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power.

And that's a one line.

Look at this, back in Genesis, Enoch lived 365 years walking in close fellowship with God.

He will abandon Israel because Jeroboam sinned and made Israel sin along with him.

That's one line.

Okay, we're going to move on from that.

This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man.

He only blamed his person living on the earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.

So I ask again, what is your one line?

Is it good?

Is it bad?

Is it indifferent?

I don't know.

Three questions that I think we have to ask.

If someone were to describe your life in one line right now, what would it be?

Maybe it's Jeroboam.

Maybe it's lived a life of sin and caused everybody else's sin with him.

It's okay right now.

We're gonna have an opportunity for Jesus to wipe that clean.

So the first question is, what is my one line?

And we have to be honest about it.

Maybe it's not what I want it to be.

The second question I want you to ask yourself is, what do I want my one line to be?

at the end of my life, if the people in my life could say anything about me, what would I want it to be?

I don't know, it might be different for everybody.

But if you could have anything be your one line, what is it?

And then I think the third question that naturally follows is, how do I need to live today then?

To go from where I'm at to where I wanna be, what needs to change?

For my one line to become,

what it needs to become.

What do I need to consistently do to leave an impact on the people in my life?

And that's what it means to leave a legacy.

It's a room full of widows.

It's a room full of family.

But we're all called to live like Jesus.

And if we're gonna live like Jesus, then man, we gotta leave a legacy behind.

Something that lasts far beyond our lifetime.

I want us to bow our heads.

Close our eyes all across the room.

And Pendleton, I'm gonna invite the campus director to come on up to the stage right now.

Peter shows us what it looks like to live like Jesus.

Stephen shows us what it costs to live like Jesus.

And I think Tabitha shows us what remains after a life like Jesus.

Now we're pondering the question of leaving a legacy, but the reality is this.

It is impossible to leave a legacy without Jesus.

We cannot leave something that has eternal impact if we don't know the one who already did.

If we don't know Jesus who went to the cross for our sins, who died the death that we deserved, who left the greatest legacy of all time.

If we want to leave a legacy, then we have to know the one

who left the ultimate legacy, who died for our sins.

And here's the good news.

You might feel like your one line right now is like Jeroboam's, and it is, man, full of sin and full of shame.

One prayer can change everything.

And you can go from a life like Jeroboam to a life like Stephen, where it's a man full of God's grace and God's power, and leave the kind of legacy behind that God has called us to leave.

And all it takes is making one decision to make Jesus Lord and Savior of your life.

to believe that he went to the cross, died for your sins, and receive the forgiveness of your sins.

And so maybe you're in the room, you're in Pendleton, you're in the Department of Corrections, and you say, Landon, I don't know if I've ever made Jesus Lord of my life, but I want to leave the legacy that you speak of, and I want to receive Jesus as my Lord and as my Savior.

I just want to pray one prayer with you and know who's going to pray that prayer with me.

If you can, just raise your hand.

And in Pendleton, the campus director is looking out.

You say, I want to make Jesus Lord of my life.

I see that hand.

I see that hand over here in the back.

Come on, it's the greatest decision that you will ever make to make Jesus Lord of your life.

I see that hand.

Pendleton, your campus director is up there.

We're going to pray one prayer as a church.

Come on, church, you know what to do.

Repeat after me.

Say, Jesus, I give up control of my life unto you this morning.

I pray...

that you would be my Lord and my Savior.

I believe you went to the cross, holy and blameless, and died for my sins.

In the mighty name of Jesus.

Everybody said amen.

Come on, let's celebrate with those that just made that decision this morning.