"Tables in the Wilderness" by Bryant Martin

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Strength to Strength once again. And it's a blessing to see you, those of you who have decided to get up and join us with a live call here at 6:00 or 4:00 or 5:00, depending on where you're located. Our vision here at Strength to Strength is to inspire flourishing communities of faithful Jesus followers around the world. It's wonderful to have you here with us this morning, but our live audience isn't that large, and we're okay with that. We can't replace the necessary personal relationships that are needed in the kingdom. And as wonderful as it is to have you join us on this platform on Saturday mornings for the live call, this isn't the purpose of Strength to Strength.

Our hope is to encourage and hopefully instruct and to connect people so that they can experience Christ's body in a local community.

Brother Brian Martin will be sharing with us this morning. He is the—I was trying to think of how to frame this. I would say the brain behind Strength to Strength. There's a few of us that come along and listen and discuss some of these ideas and our dreams here with Strength to Strength with him. But I have to say he comes up with a lot of this, and he's very creative, and God has blessed him with an active mind, and he's not afraid to dream. So thank you, Brother Brian, for all the work you do here at Strength to Strength. And thank you for this message that you're about to bring to us this morning.

I can say personally, being on the receiving end, that hospitality is something very close to your heart, and you're going to talk about extending your table. And I would say that my wife and I have experienced that firsthand, that extension of table. Shortly after we had made a choice to follow Jesus Christ, we connected with Bryant and Lynelle, his wife. And I think it was almost a year that we met every week on Zoom. And I think that's a very practical way that he has extended his table for the growth of other believers. And we are very grateful for that. So I'm excited to hear this talk.

I can't say I've heard it all before, but I've heard a lot of it before, and I'm excited to hear it again. So God bless you, brother, as you share this message that's close to your heart and something that you live out very practically in your everyday life. Before we get started, let's have a word of prayer.

Eternal Father, we look to you with joy and gratitude for you are loving and kind and gracious and merciful. Not one of us would be here without your call and without your provision. We thank you that we can trust our lives into your hands. I pray that you would bless this time together here this morning.

Be with Brother Brian as he shares a message that he is passionate about and that he cares deeply about. I thank you that he not only feels passionate about it, but he lives it out in his everyday life. I just pray that you would bless him as he shares, give him freedom, and be with each one of us, Lord, as we listen to this word. Father, help us to have hearts of compassion and empathy for the people around us, that we would open our homes and our hearts in ways that the world is astounded to see. Just pray that you would be with our time. May your spirit be in the driver's seat in all of this.

And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Good morning. Good day to all you that are here. I'm humbled to share this morning, and I covet your prayers as I share this message that God has placed on my heart.

On a Saturday morning, about this time of the day, approximately five and a half years ago, I found myself climbing a mountain in northern Iraq. I was trying to keep up with a 70-year-old brother, a widower, who was there serving a displaced people group in that part of the world.

And on Saturday mornings, he did this hike way back in the mountains, and I got to go with him that morning. And it took all of my—everything I could do to keep up with him. We get to the top of the first range, and we get to turn, and we look out across the plains of northern Iraq. And off in the distance, you can see the light of a city that was ancient Nineveh in its day. Today, it's not called that.

Just spectacular scenery. Early in the morning, we're looking west. The sun's just starting to come up. We turn and continue on our hike back into the mountains. And again, I'm doing all I can do to keep up with this brother.

We get back in, and we stop on this top of this range. And this brother says, "Look, out way out across there to that range on that corner of that mountain, that's where we're heading." And there he said there's this ancient village where that's no longer existing. It was bombed by a former dictator of this country. It was a village of dissenters.

But at this ancient village is an artesian well that just comes out of the mountain. And that's where we're going to refill our water bottles, and we'll come back. And I look out across there, and I'm looking where he's pointing.

And I see on one of those ledges, these terraces where he's pointing, I see people moving, men moving. And I turn to him and say, "Brother, there's a bunch of men over there." And this older brother, he looks, and he can't see them. And he says, "Occasionally, there's shepherds that come back through here with their goats." And it's probably just a sheep herder, a goat herder. And I said, "I don't think so. It's a number of men."

And at that moment, my mind goes back to something that one of the other men at this project told me the day before. He said, "This older brother hikes back in the mountain every Saturday morning way back in. And we always hope he comes back.

There's back in the mountains, there's Iranian militias and other militias that operate and live and work from." And he said, "It's not occasionally. There's bombings back in there. Occasionally, Turkey drops bombs. It's not the safest place in the world."

And I'm remembering all of a sudden that conversation. And he wanted to say, he said, "But we always remember," he said, "this older brother who hikes back in, he's got a big gray beard. And we always remember that. Console ourselves with the fact that Middle Eastern culture respects elders. And so, you know what? If you would happen across some bad guys, most likely there would be no harm done." But that was five and a half years ago. And five and a half years ago, I didn't have a lot of gray hair. And I'm thinking, "I'm like a sitting duck here."

But by then, this older brother was headed down into this deep valley. And I just either I was going to remain here in the mountain alone and give up or go with him. And I chose the latter to go with him and down into that valley. And up across the other side, we went up to this ancient little footpath that traveled around the mountain to where this village was. And we get on this path, and we start coming on the mountain. And I know that we're getting close. And I'm following close behind him. And every fiber in my body is alive.

I'm really focused now. What will I see as I come around the corner of the mountain? Who will these people be? And we come around the corner of the mountain. And there on this terrace right in front of us is a number of men seated on the ground. And they don't see us right away. There's a small fire there against this old ancient stone wall. There's a couple of guns propped over here.

There's another little fire going where I can see they had their chai kettle there where they're making hot water for their chai. And I look back to this group of men. And at that point, there's one man getting up, and he's coming towards us. And there's one thing about him that just brought so much relief in my spirit, in my heart, in my mind. And that is he has a big smile on his face. And he has his hands out. He's saying, "Welcome. Welcome." And he can speak our language.

And so we walk up to these men, and all the other men are jumping up. They're not able to speak to us, but they have smiles on their face, and they're gesturing with their hands to sit down where they were seated there on this cloth. And on this cloth is goat cheese and roasted walnuts and dates and naan, which is the most amazing bread from the Middle East.

And we get seated there, and these men become our servers, and we become their guests. And we sit there. One man's adding more water to the chai. We soon have chai. And we sat there on that side of that mountain, and we had the most epic picnic I've ever had.

Incredible hospitality was shown to us.

And just hold that story for a moment. We're going to get into my topic here. We'll come back to that story.

Have you ever experienced a table in the wilderness? Have you ever created a table in the wilderness experience for someone else?

For someone who you wouldn't have had to, but you did.

This morning, my topic is titled Tables in the Wilderness. And we'll get to the table word later, but just for a couple of minutes here, I want us to think about the word wilderness. What does that mean to you?

A wilderness, by definition, is a wild, uninhabited, and uncultivated region. It's a desolate track. It's a confused mass or collection. It's a place where only people with fortitude go.

Those who are timid stay away. It's wild. It's lonely. It's inhospitable. It can be a track of land, or it can be an idea or a concept. It can be a world that is set against Eden. It's set against the ways of God. It's set against the ways of heaven on earth.

And we live in that kind of a world, friends. We live in that kind of a world. It's a world where there's wars. In the last two years, there's been numerous, very high-profile wars, very public wars that have went on. And there's many, many more wars that we aren't hearing about.

It's in parts of the world where it's just not popular to talk about. Those are happening. The press isn't making those public. So wars and rumors of wars. There's broken families. There's rampant sexual brokenness. There's addictions. There's mental health crisis in our world. There's loneliness, an epidemic of loneliness. And I just want to read, just want to stop there for a second and read out of this book here called The Six Conversations, Heather Holman.

I'll be referring to this book later in this talk. And Heather says this. She says, "Nearly half of Americans report something or sometimes are always feeling alone." 47% of Americans say this. 1 in 4 Americans, 27%, rarely or never feel as though there are people who really understand them. 2 in 5 Americans sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful, 43%, and that they are isolated from others. 1 in 5 report that they rarely or never feel close to people, 20%, or feel like there are people that they can talk to, 18%, feel there's almost never anyone to talk to.

Only around half of Americans, 53%, have daily meaningful in-person social interaction actions, such as having an extended conversation with a friend or spending quality time with others. Generation Z, adults 18 to 22, is the loneliest generation and claims to be in worse health than older generations. And I'm going to have a story to tell you a little bit of a young man who I met yesterday, an interaction that I felt was divinely appointed that I almost chose to walk away from. And he was 21 years old.

There's people who say that, sociologists say that this loneliness that we're talking about, it can be hard for those of us who have never experienced it. But it's almost worse than not having water for three days or not eating or starvation. It's palpable. It's tangible. It's a serious problem, this loneliness. And so we live in that world.

But unfortunately, this is also in the church as well.

Sometimes our churches feel like a wilderness. There's division. There's hypocrisy. There's isolation. It's just a Sunday morning shiny shoe show. There's a fixation on formulaic and individualistic saved-me gospel rather than being consumed or infatuated with a gospel that is good news, where there is a new king with a new nation, a new kingdom, where we are called as a corporate body to be part of a symphony that brings a piece of the home turf to foreign soil, heaven to earth.

The latter is rarely experienced, and the former is just the condition of the church. And so you have an anemic body, anemic church, where many people are leaving and losing the faith, set against a world with so much brokenness, and where the world together, the powers of darkness, principalities and powers, spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places seem to be aligning globally away from God.

Just this week, the president of the United States gave the State of the Union Address to this nation annually. That's what happens here in the US. And I listened to parts of that speech and listened to one other commentator talk about it for a couple of minutes.

And my conclusion is that speech that the president of the United States can be captured in one short phrase, and that is death and darkness. And globally, we see that happening. And so we live in a world where it is a wilderness, and people are losing faith in humanity, and sadly, in the church.

Gavin Ortland of Truthy Knights says this. He says about 40 million people just in the US now have stopped going to church. The percentage of people who don't have any religious affiliation has spiked up 30%. 30 years ago, it was only 5% of the people in the US, 30%. This massive change, especially in the younger generation, especially in those that generation Z who are the 18 to 20, 22 years old. So there's much need. There's much brokenness. There's lots of hopelessness. However, I believe that God is doing a new thing.

God, as He has worked through the millenniums with His people, God is working with His people today. And He wants us to embrace this new thing. Instead of stepping back and defending, He wants us to step forward and to serve.

Think of this verse here in Isaiah 43, verse 19, "For I'm about to do something new. See, I have already begun. Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland."

God sees it.

God is seeing. He's seeing rivers. He's seeing rivers in the desert. But there's many times we respond like Thomas and say, "Only if we can see it will we believe. If we can tangibly see it, we'll believe it." But God wants us to believe it by faith and then to work that out. When God sees an army, we see broken mangled, broken lives. When God sees a haven for birds, cattle, and humans and oases in the desert, too many times we just see cracked, baked clay.

But brothers and sisters, to those who are listening, God is doing a new thing, and He wants us to be part of that. God is calling us to influence our world from the margins, to move into the center, to bring the good news of a new king, of a new nation, a new kingdom. And the church has always faced this.

This isn't new. Things have always looked impossible. But those followers of Jesus have believed it's possible, not because of us, but because of God, because we serve a God of the impossible. C.S. Lewis says this. He said, "Human life has always lived on the edge of a precipice.

Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men have postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun." And so my burden is that we begin this morning, that we don't get analysis paralysis, that we don't get fear and drawback, but that we move forward, that we just take that baby step forward. The late Tim Keller says this in a recent article that he wrote probably in the last two years. Like I said, he's no longer living.

But he said this. He said, "The Christian church in the West faces the first post-Christian deeply secular culture in history. It has not yet developed a way. Christianity, the Christian church, hasn't developed a way to do evangelism with the secular and with the nons, those who a huge percentage who say, 'We're not really of any religious affiliation.

We're agnostics. We don't believe in anything. We haven't figured out how to get a way that gains traction and sees these people regularly coming to the faith.'" And he goes on to say, "What we need to do is we need to figure out the means, a way to do this that will entail a mobilization of lay people in evangelism as in the early church where normal people are reaching out. And then the content or maybe the catalyst or the platform needs to show and demonstrate to deeply skeptical people that Christianity is respectable, desirable, and believable."

And so he's helping us see that the issue of our day and then challenging us with or helping us think about what are ways that we're going to reach the world around us. And so I want to move into three points here that I want to lay out, three main points, practical phrases that begin with the letter E. And it's not easy phrases. It's very things that will stretch us beyond our capacity. But I believe it's by God's grace we can do these things as we help each other and provoke each other to love and good works. And these phrases go like these topics or these points, these three main points will be these. Number one is extend your table.

Number two, exercise unreasonable hospitality. And number three, engage in dignifying conversations. So we'll hop right in here, but I want to say upfront is that I in no way want you to think that I have achieved these things. These are things that I am attempting to do in small ways, and I want to grow in these. I go through seasons and I go through ebbs and flows in my life as anyone else. And I just see the incredible need for me to, in just a small way, attempt to do some of the things that I want to lay out here this morning. So I wanted to put that upfront. In no way am I achieving these fully, these points.

So number one, extend your table. Let's hop right in here. So do you have a table? And I think most of us say, "Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All of us have a table." You would be quite unusual where you live, what you call home, if it doesn't have a table. But my question for you is, do you have a table? It might mean a regular table, but I want us to think about the spiritual aspect, this spiritual literal aspect of a table. Okay?

A table, if we think about it, it has a lot of symbolism. It's very symbolic. It's symbolic of relationships, of food, of family, of hospitality, of love, of acceptance, of relationships. To be seated at a table is to be human.

Dining, food are the great equalizers, and everyone does that. Everyone. Every culture has a culture around that table, that place where you eat. And so to be part of being a person on this planet is understanding this table, not only the literal tangible aspects of it, but the spiritual aspects of it. Maybe they haven't thought about it, but it's there. We all experience the tangible food, but yet also the human spiritual part of these things.

God himself waits on tables. Have you ever thought about that?

Think about the Old Testament. There's many places there where God has given commandments to the children of Israel. Think about the temple or the tabernacle. There was a table there with bread on it that the priests actually ate from. Think about even before the tabernacle. Think about in Exodus 24:9-11, these incredible verses here where God is there at Mount Sinai, and God is giving the law, and Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Baihu and these 70 elders, they go up to the mountain. And it says that they saw God's in part, they saw God's place, and there they ate and drank.

There was this divine meal that was prepared for them. What about our favorite, one of our favorite psalms and maybe one of the favorite verses that many, many people have over the millenniums have quoted millions of times? "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You have anointed my head with oil. My cup runs over."

So thinking about this idea of a literal table, a spiritual table, God prepares a table for us in the wilderness. The story of Jesus also, think of God's Son, God's most intimate revelation and how He related to people around Him.

Many times He had table fellowship. And I love that little lesson He teaches in Luke 22. He says, "Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?" It's a rhetorical question, but He goes on to answer it. It's not the one who is at the—Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

Jesus saw Himself as serving tables. Think about it. The Creator of the world, God in the flesh serving His creation and actually thinking about His creation as the one who is greater. An amazing idea. Of course, the Emmaus Road, we'll be touching on that later here.

But there He is. He reclines the table. He took the bread. He blessed it and broke it. This revelation came. A table is a place where Christ can be embodied in the world through blessing, breaking, giving, and nourishment. And as one writer has said, "The most powerful and often most neglected sacrament we have is the table.

The table in our home, the table in our neighborhood, the table in our workplace." End of quote. So as Christ followers, I believe deeply that at this table, we get to mediate the grace of heaven on earth. And we can in tangible ways reach out to our neighbors, to those strangers, to our family, to our church. This message I'm giving here isn't all about evangelism.

Paul teaches us there in Galatians, "Do good to the—" Let me just catch that verse here real quick. "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those of the household of faith." So this table, this message is about really us serving those that are around us, those are our neighbors. Okay. Let's think about the word extend for a little bit. So we're in this first point here, extend your table. Now, many people have a table, as I talked about earlier, but how many of you have a table that extends? Raise your hand. I can see some of you. Raise your hand.

Okay. Maybe 70, 80 percent. I grew up in a home where our table could stretch a mile and not quite, but it felt that way. All right? We had leaves in the closet, and you would put them in, you would stretch that table out, and you could have a lot of people around that table.

And a table that extends isn't that coming of an idea. But again, we're talking about this spiritual extension. All right? It could be literal, but it's that spiritual idea that's way more real, that spiritual literal idea. The kingdom extension is captured in the two words of Jesus, "Go in love."

So think of Matthew 28, the Great Commission, "Go into the world, teaching all nations, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all things." All right? So table extension is all about the Great Commission, all about going and making disciples. And then also love. Think of the greatest commandments. Love God, heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And so really, this extension idea can be captured in one phrase, "Go in love."

It means to go where it hasn't been before. It means to extend the places that we have never been before. And again, there's just a lot of this teaching that Jesus gives. Think of the power of the talents, Matthew 25.

A table extension is the opposite of the hole digger servant. All right? The guy who's trying to preserve. That's not table extension. That's preservation. And that's defense. That's the opposite of what Jesus wants us to do. He wants us to extend, to invest our talents, to go into the world, to be in the world, not of it, but in the world, investing these gifts that God has given us, these talents that God has given us.

And also, of course, we have the sobering passage there in Luke 14. I'm just going to quote this or read this here, Luke 14, verses 12 through 14. Quoting here, "Then he also said to him who invited him, 'When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.'" So again, just as in Matthew 25, Jesus is trying to get us to understand this idea of investment in something that's an eternal investment.

That is not about reciprocity, where I scratch your back, you scratch mine, but it's all about generosity. It's all about this idea of abundance, not scarcity. And it's about reaching out to those who will never invite you back. And this is a sobering teaching here.

Jesus had fellowship with people from every walk of life. Think about it. The nationalistic zealots, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, people who were looked down on in society, he had table fellowship. And we can't really understand hardly the Middle East culture. If you eat with somebody, if you dine with somebody, you're saying, "I'm one with you." And that's what Jesus did.

We often speak of following Jesus and being obedient to him. We call ourselves followers of Jesus. And so the challenge for us is, does this diversity of fellowship that Jesus had, does this match our current lifestyle? Or is your lifestyle, is your experience more same with others?

I get together with my friends. I have people from people in my social demographic, ethnic demographic to my place, and they invite me back. There's this reciprocity idea. Or are you actually following Jesus and living in that diversity of fellowship as we see him, table fellowship as we see him doing?

Mark Clavell says it so well. "We learn from Jesus' fellowship meals that our tables should be places of radical welcome, especially for those who are lonely and on the outside. This is the shape of the kingdom of God."

Okay. So a couple of action points here about table extension, about extending our tables. How do we do that? I have a couple of action points, then we'll jump into our next point here. So first of all, begin to pray for ways to extend your table.

Begin to pray for ways.

I think that's so important. Lord, today, make it possible for me to meet one person who I can talk with, who I can share with, who I can extend my table to. And I think about how just a month or two ago, I guess it was longer than that, maybe three months ago, I was feeling sad about my lack of outreach in my life. And I prayed one morning as I headed to the cafe, "Lord, I want to have one conversation, meaningful spiritual conversation with somebody today." And before I could lay the hand on the door of our cafe, I was almost accosted by somebody who had a lot of questions about who we were.

And it would end up being this 10, 15-minute conversation. And I had just prayed, and it really spoke to my heart, and I thank the Lord for that. It was a faith builder. It was invigorating. It was life-giving to be able to share to an agnostic Christianity and why we do the things that we do.

Use your home. Bring people into your home, send a powerful message. But we'll touch on this later, but it takes relationship to have people in your home. People just don't typically, unless there's a crisis coming to your home, you need to build relationship with others.

So those are two action points here. Let's jump into the next point, number two. Exercise on reasonable hospitality.

Remember the story back at the beginning of the unreasonable hospitality that I got to be I got to be served, be part of there in the mountains of Iraq. Unreasonable hospitality. I was the person on the outside. I had never experienced such fear in my heart. I was so fearful. I was the one. I was the minority.

I was the one who could be taken advantage of. But I was welcomed in with smiles and service in the most epic picnic ever. Let's think about the word hospitality just for a moment. I've shared this before, but I'll share it again. The Greek word for hospitality is this: philia xenoth or philio xenoth.

Philio, think of that. It's one of the Greek words of love, and it means brotherly love, to love like a brother or like a family member. Xenoth means stranger. And a word that's the opposite of philia xenoth is a word that we hear thrown around a lot in our contemporary culture, and that is xenophobia.

I'm sure you've heard that word before. And xenophobia is a growing movement in our world, not only in the United States, as there's lots of migrants coming in, but globally, there's this movement of displaced people and so many needs, and people are moving into wealthier nations. And at first, secular people want to welcome migrants until it begins to hurt them. And then it's over. We want them out. Don't bring them here. And so xenophobia is a growing issue in our day. And so you think about phobia, it's the fear of something. And I have a phobia of mice.

I'll get up on a couch when there's a mouse flying around, and my family kills it. My son has a phobia of spiders. I mean, just incredible phobia. And so it's that deep fear that just it'll motivate you to do irrational things. All right? So that is what many people are experiencing today, this xenophobia. But we can know as look at the Bible that God wants his people to be the opposite of that, to be those of philia xenoth, those who love strangers as a family member. And you just look at the storyline of the Bible. All right? So you just look at right in Genesis, we had these incredible stories of Abraham, how he served those angels that came to him, or men, but they were angels.

I mean, just if you look at that account, you can see he ran to meet them. He bowed to the ground. He said, "Sarah, quickly go make a meal, kill the fattened calf." Just incredible hospitality that he showed there. And that really was his life and his lot.

His nephew Lot exemplified a lot of those same things there in Sodom. And he said that he urged him strongly to prepare a feast. And Glenn Martin's book, Unrighteous Lot, helps you see in a fuller sense, pulling from writings of the other Jewish literature, how that this was a lifestyle that Abraham and Lot had cultivated. And they had a lifestyle of hospitality, and it shone through in so many ways.

But let's just back up a little bit further, if you will, right into the Garden of Eden. Think about how God created this amazing place, and he brought humans into it, and he himself came and walked with them. God himself is the ultimate host. So then moving on up through scripture, the Old Testament to love your stranger, we see that teaching to the children of Israel. Right into the New Testament, we see Jesus living that out and really taking that to the next level in how we should be relating to those people around us, to those who are on the outside.

Of course, then we have the teaching of the apostles to share with the saints in their need, pursue hospitality. So thinking of that teaching there in Galatians, do good to all people as much as possible, but especially to the household of faith.

This idea of hospitality, of love, of strangers is a lifestyle. I believe it's at the heart of the gospel. It is at the heart of the kingdom of advance. And we see that in the early church. There's just lots of resources, whether it's the patient firmament of the early church or the book by Brian Fickert called When Helping Hurts, where these people look at the early church and drawing from the writings make the case that the expansion of the early church was just through simple acts of service to those around them. It was the foundational block for the success of the early church. And the world saw it. The pagans saw it, and it caught their attention.

And then, of course, also in this new religion, these Jesus communities, there came this idea of, "We are brothers." So across ethnic boundaries, across country borders, these Jesus followers traveled to the other communities just to visit. And the other communities welcomed them in. They were strangers. They were of a different ethnicity, of a different nationality, but they said, "Welcome here. You are one with us. Jesus is our elder brother. God's our Father." And there was this incredible testimony as well as these Christians showed hospitality to each other. And I just think that in our day today, we're so quickly losing that among our churches.

The Anabaptists have always been known to be those who welcome people into their homes, but we're losing that. It's easier to grab a motel or some house for rent on Airbnb than to call up a local brother and say, "Hey, I'm in the area. Can we stay with you?" We need to revive those things. And it begins with us inviting people into our homes, into our lives.

And so we're thinking here of this idea of exercising unreasonable hospitality. It's not rational. It's irrational to the world. And it leaves a powerful testimony. And it's a way the kingdom can be advanced. So I have a couple of action points here. I want to lay out what I call the Emmaus Road hospitality map. And it's actually three four-letter words: walk, talk, dine.

Walk, talk, dine. And this is taken from Luke 24. There was that incredible story. After Jesus' resurrection, he comes and he walks with these two disciples on the road to Emmaus. And he gets in there on this walk, this mundane—that's how they got from one place to the other. It's just two disciples walking on this dirty road, gravel road, probably dusty road. Jesus comes and walks with them.

And it's in this mundane activity that heaven comes to earth. It's in this mundane activity that Jesus becomes just like one of them. So I want you to think about how in your life can you walk with people. What does that look like? Where are you walking with people? And how can you be like Jesus and just enter into that mundane part of life and be there for them?

The next point I have is talk, right? Walk, talk, dine. And so many times, we think that we need to have spiritual conversations, that we need to lead the conversation, that we need to be one on the stump teaching.

But what did Jesus do?

And we'll get into talk and conversation in our next point here.

But just on this part here, let's think about two things, several things that Jesus did, I think, that are so important. And as he begins this little trek with them, what does he do immediately? Does he begin to teach them, instruct them, show them his wisdom? What does Jesus do?

He asks questions. And not just one question. He asks two questions. Why are you sad? When was the last time you asked somebody why they look sad?

An interesting point here that Heather makes in her book is that so many times we ask boring questions like, "How are you?" And no one's just this rhetorical question. No one's honest. It's just like saying, "I don't want to talk with you," or, "I just want to do the basic." People actually like a personal question. And that's what Jesus does. He goes, "Why are you sad?" And they tell him. And then he goes, "What things? What's going on?"

And so he asked these two questions. And I think that is so crucial. We need people who ask questions. Remember, as teachers know, it's not the answer that enlightens. It's the question.

All right. So thinking here about walk, talk, and now we'll go to our last four-letter word, and that is dine.

Eat with people. Literally eat with people. Figure out ways that you can have a meal with people. And that can be very difficult. I can attest to that. It can be difficult to get neighbors into your home. And as I talked about earlier, we need to have a relationship to build fine ways to walk with people, to talk with people, to build these relationships so we can actually dine with them. And what's really fascinating about the Emmaus Road story is that the disciples, Jesus actually acts like it. I'm not sure if he really was real here, but he's like, "I'm going to keep on going."

And those disciples were like, "No way. Where are you going? You come with us. It's late in the day. You come eat with us." And so these people he's walking with persuade him to dine with them. It's most fascinating when you look into that story.

And so people won't respond to, "Come eat at your place with a cold call," right? We all know what cold callers are. Our phone rings, and it's some person bugging us to buy some kind of life insurance or whatever. And it's frustrating. We have no interest. Hang up happens is our normal response.

Sorry, we're not interested. And that's people, this idea of dining, you need to have a relationship. They won't respond to a cold call unless there's a crisis. And a little bit, I'm going to tell you a story of Tom that I met yesterday where something happened that I was able to, in 10 minutes' time, be having a coffee with this young man.

So people won't respond to cold calls. And as someone has said, Jesus ate his way through the gospels. So he was doing meals with people. He was eating with people, which is a very Middle Eastern thing, very relational. And that shows us how we are one.

Doing meals with people means that we are one with them, that we're human with them. Also, it doesn't have to be you making a meal. It could just be a potluck. "Hey, everyone, bring food." Jesus often ate at other people's tables as well.

And so we have these three points: walk, talk, and dine. And I could tell you the story here, and I often do, of Rosaria, butterfilled. The gospel comes with a house key or her other book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. Highly recommend these books. But Rosaria was a lesbian lady leading the movement, the LGBTQ movement back in the '90s. And she hated Christianity, but one day was invited by a pastor into their home. And through that, she became a Christian. I won't tell me the details of that because I want to tell you the story of Tom, something that happened to me yesterday. So yesterday morning, I was right here at my desk preparing for this talk.

And on a whim, I decided to take several children to our cafe. My wife was actually gone and get them a little treat. And so we ran into our cafe. I parked down the parking lot from our store. And I get out, and I meet one of our customers coming down the sidewalk.

And we're there just chit-chatting with him, my children right there. And all of a sudden, we heard the shouting. And I just turn and look into the store, the little restaurant that we're in front of, not ours, somebody else's. And I see this man, this young man, very upset and just shouting at the person, at the cashier. And the cashier, according to my children, was shouting back at him too.

So there was this highly, very agitated situation that was just instantly in her face. And as I'm processing this and realizing, "Whoa, this could go bad," and I'm thinking, "Let's get out of here. Let's leave. I'm out of here with my children." And I turn to my children to tell them to say, "Let's go." And at that moment, this man who was shouting, young man, is all of a sudden on the sidewalk right in front of us. He exited the restaurant in a hurry. And I'm right faced with this man. And there's part of me that says, "Just ignore and walk as fast as you can." But it hit me, this could be an opportunity for me to be Christ to this man.

And as much as I was thinking of moving, I just realized that I can't do that. God calls us to be peacemakers. And somehow, somehow, I need to bring peace to this situation. And so I look at this man in the face and say, "I'm sorry that you're upset." And I felt like God was giving me the words to say to him. And I said, "I'm sorry.

I'm here for you. Can we talk?" And within a minute or two, this young man was crying. And we talked some more. I said, "I can pray with you, whatever.

Let's sit down and talk." And pretty soon, this man was explaining a little bit why he was so upset. There was something that happened there. It was actually an old relationship where this man was not nice to him, and he snapped. And my children were there. I told them to leave in a minute because I just didn't know which way this whole thing was going to go. And so we ended up walking down the street, down the sidewalk to our restaurant. And I invited him into our cafe. We came in, and we got a coffee, and we sat down as a family. And we talked. And I could see this man just coming off of this anger to where he was just exhausted.

And we began the talk. We ended up talking for a little while there.

And I say that story because there was so much in me that this wasn't me. This was, I felt like, a divine

interaction, something that God just brought right into my life. And I almost walked away, almost did it because I was busy. And it hit me just how ironic this is, how I want to be a person who extends tables in the wilderness and how I want to walk away from this situation that felt so volatile, so scary.

But by God's grace, pressed through, we talked together. We walked together. And as it did that, down the sidewalk, I could tell this young man was calming down. Like I said, he was soon weeping. And it was just such a sad situation. And I talked with him. I realized that he lives by himself. He's lost his job. Just so many things are going wrong in his life.

And by God's grace, we were able to extend a table to him. And so the Emmaus Road hospitality map: walk, talk, dine. Pray for ways to do that. And God will give you ways to do that, even in the most unexpected ways. And it's almost never can you go in a five-minute period from talking and walking to dining with somebody.