The son of man has come eating and drinking and you call him a gluttonous man, a wine drinker and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Now we're launching out into new territory and I'm not sure where we're going to go and how we're going to get there but the Lord's in control and so tonight is a kind of an introduction to the subject which I hope is going to lay a groundwork for us to move into in the future. By the time we finish we're going to understand exactly what the social road is all about.

Now we have a little bit of an idea when we hear the word social you kind of have an idea in your mind about what social means and just to help you keep your focus without before we even get into scripture let's go just look see what the dictionary definition is for the word social and of course you go to dictionary.com there's always lots of definitions. I like this one it says living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community rather than in isolation. I think that explains it pretty good doesn't it.

The social road involves in living our lives in companionship of interaction in community with other people not as it alone is doing our own thing. Now to walk the social road requires some very important qualities and we're going to look at them briefly tonight and in the weeks and months that lie ahead we'll probably go into some of these things in a lot more detail and study them better understand them better from the scriptures but tonight is an introduction. There are three things three qualities that are very important for the social road.

The first one is visibility the second one is capability the third one is availability. Now if we're going to look for a model on what it looks like for a person to walk the social road and to be a social person there is no better model than our lord and savior himself and so that's why I've entitled this message Jesus our social model and so as we look at some of these principles I'd like to every time get back to look at how Jesus handled these things and what we can see from his life on how these aspects of the social road were manifested. So let's start by looking at visibility.

Visibility, being seen, being known, standing out all the things that are involved in being visible. Now many of us fail in this area and so I'm going to look at our failures first then we're going to look at how Jesus handled it. One of our biggest failures is fear of visibility.

We're afraid to come out into the open and show ourselves. We're afraid of showing people who we are and what we are. We put masks over so that people don't see the real us or we withdraw and we hide away and we avoid being too open in our communication with others.

It's impossible to walk the social road while you have that problem. If you are afraid of being visible, afraid of showing yourself to the world then it's impossible for you to walk this social road. Now why do we have this? Mostly because we are very self-oriented.

We have a need for recognition and if people are not recognizing us we're afraid to show ourselves. If we're good and capable and we can stand up and people say wow you're awesome then we kind of come out of the shell a little bit and we begin to show ourselves and be a little bit more bold in interacting with people. But if people are not recognizing us we kind of avoid, don't we? We kind of withdraw for fear.

For fear of what people are going to say, what they're going to think. Oh one of the most dangerous, dangerous expressions in this world is what will people think. Now mothers who drum this into their kids.

Now Johnny you better behave properly because what will people think of us as a family if you don't uphold our standards? What will people think? Be careful what you say, be careful what you do because of what people may think. It's very early in our lives often we are programmed negatively not to open our hearts and to be visible and to be comfortable showing ourselves to other people. We're afraid of being rejected.

We're afraid we don't have what it takes to be accepted by the world out there. We don't have the right background. We don't have the right associations.

We don't come from the right culture or the right race or the right nation. We don't come from the right family. We don't live in the right part of town.

There's so many things that affect the way we fear rejection. Because we're afraid of rejection we'd rather keep to ourselves. We'll hold back and we won't open our hearts and we won't get involved with other people for fear that they will see us and reject us.

So we'd rather remain invisible. And then probably the greatest crippling thing of all is insecurity and a wrong self-concept. The way you view yourself and inevitably the way you view yourself is too small.

I'm much smaller than everybody else. I'm far less intelligent than everybody else. I'm not as good-looking as anybody else.

There are so many different factors involved in insecurity and inferiority. And what causes all of that? We've got our eyes on only one thing, ourselves. See, this is total self-orientation.

And I'm afraid we've all been there. And we still face this on a daily basis. Our own insecurity and inferiority and the wrong way we view ourselves and our crying need for recognition and acceptance from other people stops us from rising up and being visible.

Without us rising up and being visible we will never interact socially in this world. Now we're going to look at that in some detail in the future. I'm going to be looking at some of this, especially the subject of insecurity and inferiority and self-concept.

I did a teaching on it a long time ago and I think it's time I do some revamping. And it's especially pertinent to the social roads because it's one of the biggest obstacles. It stops us from being where the Lord wants us to be, out there interacting with people and being an influence in this world.

Now why do you have to be visible? See, this is very important for you to understand. You need to be visible firstly so that other people can benefit from it. You also need to be visible so that you can benefit from it.

Well, let's get it the right way around first. Let's not make it total self-orientation. Well, what am I going to get out of this? Why should I do it? Got to have an other orientation first because if you can't have an other orientation, how can you be involved socially with other people? You're not involved socially with other people to see what you can get from them.

And in the process you will get. It's a process of getting and giving. And it starts with giving first.

And say if you're too selfish to open your heart and to take all that you have, if you're too selfish to give it out to others, you'll never walk the social road. And you'll go through life embittered and complaining and hating the world and envying all the people who are rising up there and are being known and are popular and are famous. And you may be tempted to use those fatal words.

It's not fair. It's not fair, Lord. Just look at them.

Lord, they're not even serving you. Lord, that person is so carnal, so self-oriented, so full of themselves, always bragging about how good they are. And yet everybody runs after them.

And here I am, Lord, I'm so humble and so committed to you, nobody even notices me. You know why? Because they're visible and you're not. A simple reason.

They're visible. Yeah, they may be using the wrong attitude. They may even have the wrong motives.

But they are fulfilling one major important requirement, the social road, and that's visibility. Until you become visible, you have no social life. You have no social interaction.

You cannot walk this social road. Sometimes we use ministry as an excuse for this. Well, you know, I'm just dedicated completely to the Lord.

Me and the Lord, we can spend hours together. I can pray for hours and it's so wonderful in his presence. But out there, those people, those carnal, miserable Christians, I don't want to mix with them.

You know, we've looked at the ministry road and the business road, and we saw that they run side by side. But I want to tell you something, there's one road that joins the two together, it's the social road. Because ministry involves working with people.

And business involves working with people. And if you are not interacting with people, if you are not communicating with people, if you are not visible to people, you will neither minister nor do business. We have the social road for last, but perhaps it's the most important one of all, because it brings everything together.

And I hope that I'm challenging you tonight to have a fresh look at yourself, not hide behind your super spirituality, not hide behind all of your own failures and weaknesses. You must be visible so that you can fulfill your destiny in this world. Your destiny is not to go up all alone and die all alone.

Your destiny is to make an impact on this world. Your destiny is to leave your mark and your imprint on this world. So by the time your time is up here, your mark and imprint has been left behind.

You're not going to do that without walking the social road. And you could start by having an other orientation instead of a self-orientation. And the best way to start is instead of looking for recognition for yourself, start to recognize other people.

It really hurts and costs you sometimes to do this. It's the more you give to other people, the less they give back. Just try holding a conversation with anybody out there.

And while you're talking about them, they'll talk for hours. And not once will they say, and so tell me about you. I don't care about you.

You've got to earn the right to speak about you. You've got to earn the right by first talking about them, by first recognizing them, by first complimenting them, by first pointing out the good things that you see in them. And that is how you build bridges to people.

If you're not ready to do that, you will never have social interaction because nobody out there is lying awake at night wondering how they can meet your need. You're going to have to learn to accept other people just the way they are. It's difficult when you've been a trainer in ministry, when your job title, your job description involves changing people and making them into something new.

Seeing all the weaknesses and trying to transform them. Why it's so hard for me to walk the social road after having been in the ministry road. Extremely difficult.

It takes a total change of orientation. But instead of looking on people and saying, now, this is what needs to change in you, you can just look at them and say, I accept you just the way you are. You don't need to change.

Now, if you want to change, I can be there to help you. But if you don't want to change, that's fine. I will not reject you.

Now, there's a principle called sowing and reaping. Whatever you shall sow, you shall reap. If you're crying out for recognition, may I ask how many seeds of recognition you have sowed by recognizing other people? If you're crying out for acceptance, how many seeds of acceptance have you sown by accepting other people the way they are? Then how about this one? Praising people.

Praising them. Oh, man, she took that job and messed it up so bad. You know what? I could have done it 10 times better.

So you bite your teeth. You grit your teeth and you bite your tongue and you say, well done. That was great.

It's not easy, is it? You know, the scripture says that one day when the Lord Jesus appears and we stand before his judgment seat, we are judged for our works. And some of our works are going to be gold and silver and precious stones, and they will withstand the fire. And there's going to be wood, hay, and stubble that's just going to get burnt up.

I think some of us are going to have not much left because most of what we built is wood, hay, and stubble. But I just love a scripture that says, and then shall every person receive praise from the Lord. Every one of us is going to find something to praise us for.

You know what? Nobody in this world is so bad that there's nothing praiseworthy in them. We could just stop long enough to find that. Instead of seeing what is so obvious, all of the ugly things, all the weaknesses and their faults, so quick to see that, we could just take the time to find something to praise people.

You know, we can start building bridges to people. We're going to start forming social interactions with people. We're going to start forming a community of people who love and care for one another.

Then you'll start walking the social road. But it's going to cost you. Jesus was not afraid to show himself visibly to this world.

Do you know when all of our problems with insecurity begin, when we start worrying about what people think about us, and when we start withdrawing it ourselves? It's not in childhood, because in childhood we don't care. We just play, and we have fun, and we do our thing. But then we get to that awful part of life called adolescence or puberty, where you start transitioning from childhood into adulthood, and suddenly you start becoming self-aware.

Suddenly you start becoming aware of yourself, of your body, of your capabilities, of what people think about you. And that is when our insecurities begin in life. I would say right now, at the age of 12, just before you become a teenager, it's probably a key age when you are transitioning into this stage of becoming self-aware.

Now the scripture doesn't tell us a lot about Jesus' life as he was growing up, but I'm going to show you that Jesus was visible all through those 30 years, even though the scriptures don't tell us much. But the scriptures pull back the curtain just on one little event at the age of 12. At the age of 12, Jesus goes with his parents to the Feast of the Passover.

With three feasts a year, the Jews had to go to where people could only afford to go to one of them, and his parents were poor. So they attended just the one, the Feast of the Passover, and they took Jesus with them, and they were already almost home, probably. And suddenly he realized Jesus wasn't with them.

Young 12-year-old guy, he's sitting there in the temple. Now, if he was insecure and feeling inferior, he would have been hiding away somewhere. In fact, he'd probably been hanging onto mommy's apron strings, and he certainly wouldn't have been left behind.

He would have been right there where it was safe. Here he is sitting in the temple, chatting with all the adults, not just ordinary adults, but all the leaders, all the leaders who knew the scriptures, who were intelligent and educated and high up. And here he is discussing things with them, asking them questions, and they can't believe the wisdom of this young 12-year-old guy.

It's not a sign of insecurity in Jesus. Not a sign. Right from the beginning, Jesus was ready to walk the social road.

Can you imagine? He was like more than a day there before they discovered. He actually spent the night there. Where did he sleep? No wonder the scriptures don't tell us.

The young 12-year-old guy stuck alone in the temple. He wasn't afraid, because he knew who he was. He knew who he was.

Look at some of the things that Jesus did to get there. When his parents come, he's not arrogant. He submits to them.

He tries to explain, hey, you know, I should be in my father's house. Please excuse me. Sorry, guys.

I didn't mean to upset you, but it says he submitted to his parents and went with them. There was no arrogance. Insecurity produces arrogance.

You wonder why teenagers are so arrogant? Why they think they know more than their parents? You know that old thing, the teenager thinks his dad is so stupid until he gets a bit older, and he can't believe how much his dad learned in the last few years. He suddenly realized his dad wasn't so stupid. That arrogance is caused by insecurity, because an insecure person never wants to admit weakness.

An insecure person never wants to submit to somebody else. They want to dominate and be in control. That's the first problem that insecurity causes in our lives, and we'll look at it later in much detail.

Jesus had no insecurity. He was not arrogant. He knew who he was.

He was confident. He was bold, but he was humble enough to submit to those who were over him. It's a lesson we need to learn, and for some of us, it's been a few years since we were 12, and we still got some other habit patterns there we haven't got rid of yet.

It's time we deal with it. For years, you failed to walk the social road because of those things that started back there, and you may have overcome some of them, and time may have healed some of them, but sometimes there are still elements there that stop us from interacting fully with others so we can do what God's called us to do and fulfill our destiny in this world. Jesus appears publicly at John's baptism, right there in the public.

John says, no, no, no, no, I can't baptize you. He just says, do it, John. He shows submission again.

There he's manifested to the world, and John the Baptist proclaims, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He's bold. He's confident.

He's unafraid to be who he is, yet at the same time, he's not flaunting it. At the age of 30, Jesus stands up in the temple and reads a scripture that was written about him. He's 30 years old.

He stands up in the temple, reads the scripture. He says, this day the scripture's been fulfilled. The scripture's about me, guys.

I'm here. That sounds like arrogance, doesn't it? No, it's confidence, folks. It's confidence.

Don't ever confuse confidence and arrogance, and don't ever confuse inferiority with humility. They're not the same thing. No inferior person can ever be humble.

You've got to deal with the core. Jesus never tried to lift himself up. They were having this big feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, I think it was, and some of his family who had already rejected him said, hey, hotshot, you want to go make a name for yourself? Why don't you go and go to the feast there and declare yourself? You've got a good place to do it, boy.

Come on, now's the time to get on the shore and make a name for yourself. Jesus said, I'm not going. My time hasn't come yet.

But the Holy Spirit says to him, you must go. And so he goes, unseen, unknown, until they reach the crowning moment of the ceremony. Everybody's gathered around.

This is the crowning moment of the ceremony. This is the one time every eye is in the same place. And they take water out of the Pool of Siloam, and they pour it from a golden jug into a golden goblet, and they read out a psalm, therefore with joy shall you draw waters out of the well of salvation.

Right there at the crowning point of the ceremony, Jesus stands out and he shouts, hey, anybody thirsty, come to me and drink. That must have taken some guts, hey? Was he exalting himself? He just got so wrapped up in the fact that what was being portrayed here was actually a prophecy of him, of how he was going to go and receive the promise of the Father and pour it down upon his people, the promise of the Holy Spirit. He got so excited about it, I think he forgot where he was.

He wasn't afraid to show himself. He wasn't afraid to be visible. Of course, people didn't always like that, did they? When he stood up there and read the scriptures and said, this day is fulfilled, they got so angry, they took him out and tried to throw him off the cliff.

That's the part we don't like, isn't it? The rejection that comes. Who do you think you are? At the time when they said, you're still so young and Abraham gave us all these things, and you said before Abraham was, I am. What? How dare you claim to be the I am? They wanted to pick up stones and throw them at him.

Now, there's going to be a price to walk the social road, folks. You're going to get opposition. Do you know what? If Jesus had not made himself visible, we wouldn't be here today.

The gospel would never have been spread to the world. He would never have had those disciples that came after him, to whom he could give the commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Jesus was not afraid to stand up and speak to the crowd.

He stood up on the mountain and they all gathered, and he stood on the mountain so his voice could echo down. He preached to them and he talked to them. When they flocked him on the side of the lake, he got into Peter's boat and pushed out a little bit so that his voice could echo across the waters, and he preached to the crowds.

You were invited now, next week, to go and preach to a stadium of people. How would you feel? Well, let me at him. I'm the great preacher.

Let me go and wow them. I must be honest, I would not respond that way. I would want to hide.

I would really agonize and say, Lord, I don't know if I can do this. Oh, Lord, this is a bit much for me. Imagine if that opportunity were given to you, what an impact you could make, how your ministry could be extended, how what God has given you could spread to so many more people.

You see, but we are not reaching the world because we are afraid to be visible, and we hide behind our spirituality. I'm just being a little humble me. No, I'm being insecure little me, bottom line.

I'm actually afraid to face that. Jesus wasn't. You know what? He lives inside of us.

He can help us. Courage, stand up and be. He's called us to be.

Now, between that first incident, the age 12, and when Jesus finally appeared publicly after the baptism by John, Jesus was in obscurity, and we don't read anything about him because, of course, he wasn't known as the Savior yet. The writers of the Gospels had no knowledge, and if anything had happened during that time, perhaps it wasn't important for them to know. But we do know one thing.

Jesus was known by everybody in his time. How do I know that? Because when he came back in there again, now as the Son of God, they said, who do you think you are? You're the you're a nobody. Who do you think you are to come here and come and preach and teach to us? And Jesus made that statement as a prophet is without honor except in his own city and in his own hometown.

Jesus was known in his city. He wasn't an obscure little child hidden away that nobody had heard of. How do you get known in a city without the internet and the communications that we have today? Jesus was visible all along.

He was never afraid. Rise up. Show himself to the world.

I must go on. We need to be capable. We need to be visible, but we also need to be capable.

And you know what? We make excuses. We say, well, you know, I'm not naturally talented. Or we use this one.

Well, you have to take me as I am. This is me. You'll just have to accept me the way I am.

Just poor, useless me. You wonder why people are running after somebody else. Listen, there's very few people in this world who are naturally talented.

And those who appear to be naturally talented grew up under the influence of somebody who was already talented. They weren't born with it. Yeah, there's a spiritual thing involved.

And we'll look at that more later. We need to look beyond the natural. We need to develop the capabilities of our soul.

We need to know and learn how to show our feelings. Oh, you know, I'm not a kind of person who shows my feelings. If you want to be social, you better learn how to show your feelings.

Because social interaction is very feeling oriented. And if you don't show your feelings, and you never smile, and you just don't talk, who wants to get to know you? You better change. You're going to have to learn how to assert your will.

Oh, you know, I don't like to push people around. Comes a time when you need to assert your will. For selfish reasons, but in order to help others.

You need to change your temperament. Well, you know, the psychologist said that once our temperament is formed in childhood, we'll be that way the rest of our lives. No, not true.

You can change. And in fact, God expects you to change. Now, you can develop your abilities through study, and through practice.

And then you can develop your spirit, and the abilities of your spirit. You can tap into that inner revelation, you can tap into the internal anointing, you can reach out and receive the external anointing, and you can learn to release the anointing. Well, what kind of anointing do you use for the social route? And is there a social anointing? Yes, I will just touch on that shortly before we finish.

And we will look at it in more detail later. Jesus spent time in the presence of the Father. Jesus studied the scriptures.

He said, well, you know, he was the son of God. So he just woke up knowing the scriptures. When he stood there in the temple at the age of 12, he just knew the scriptures because God implanted into his mind.

Oh, no. Jesus only actually received supernatural empowerment after his baptism, when the dove came on him. Up until then, he was an ordinary man.

There was nothing ordinary about him, but he was man. Now Jesus studied the scriptures. I'm sure he had access to all the scrolls.

How could he stand up in the synagogue and read the scroll? Jesus knew how to read. Jesus was well educated. But do you think his parents did all those expensive gifts he was given by the wise men? There was money, lots of it.

Gold, frankincense, expensive stuff. And his parents used that money wisely. They educated him well.

Jesus studied the scriptures. It didn't just come full blown. And Jesus freely shared what he felt and what he thought.

He freely shared his knowledge and his wisdom. Well, you know, I took a long time to study these things. I'm not just going to give them out free to everybody.

You wonder why you're all alone? You wonder why nobody's drawn to you? Why there's no social element in your life? Why you're alone? You're going to have to develop those capabilities, and then you're going to have to make them available to others. And so the third quality is availability. Willingness to share.

Willingness to fellowship with other people. Being ready to have fun. Learning to smile when you don't feel like it.

Showing enthusiasm when you don't feel like it. See, if I came in here tonight feeling like I did earlier today, you wouldn't have wanted to listen to me. I can't afford that.

I've got to be enthusiastic. Even if I don't feel like it, I got to fake it if I have to until it comes. For the sake of the people, you're going to have learned to control your emotions and your feelings.

You're going to have learned to control your will and do what you don't feel like doing, or you're never going to walk the social road. Jesus shared everything with his disciples, and he accepted invitations to parties. Right.

Well, I'd like you to come to our birthday party. We're going to have a real awesome time. We're going to have eats and drinks and dancing and party, and we're going to have... That is so worldly.

I'm not going to a worldly party like that. My apostle, for goodness sakes, sent me to come to their stupid worldly party. Jesus went.

He ate the food they were eating. They offered him some wine, and he drank it. Oh, Jesus drank wine? Yeah? The scripture read at the beginning, he was accused of being a glutton, because he obviously ate a lot of the food and enjoyed it.

Accused of being a wine drinker, because he drank wine with them. Jesus enjoyed the food and the drink with them. He didn't just go on the pretense.

He actually went and became part of the party, in order that he could build a bridge to them. Not that he could become like them, not that he needed those things, but to show them that he was available to them. And then he could, while at the party, he could then begin to pour out some of his wisdom, and to share with them, and to begin to minister to them, and to draw them in.

Sometimes we wonder why we never reach the lost. So we have a mix of these Christians. You know, you don't have to go out on the street to witness, to reach the lost.

Most people on the street are losers anyway. If you build a church out of losers, you have a problem, church. Don't go build a church out of everybody that's lurking on the street corners.

There's nothing wrong with it, for goodness sakes. When you reach people in their homes, where they are, when you reach people that have a normal life, that need the Lord, it's not just the bums on the street that need the Lord. How are we going to do this? We're going to have to interact with them.

We're going to have to interact with them in the workplace. We're going to have to get involved in our community. I had a little get-together and meet one another day in our community.

I think it was mostly the one culture that we're getting together. I didn't think I was going to feel very comfortable, but we decided we were going to go. But the Lord didn't let us go because we ended up having to minister to somebody after our Saturday afternoon session.

By the time we were finished, it was much too late. But we were ready to do it. You're ready to get involved in your community, to meet people so that you can begin to interact with them socially and from there begin to minister to them and reach them.

There is a social anointing, and it's anointing which brings favor. Jesus said, he quoted from Isaiah chapter 61, which is a prophecy of him. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the poor and lowly.

He sent me to bandage up those who were crushed inside, to proclaim freedom to those in captivity and the opening of the eyes of those who are in bondage, to proclaim the year of favor and acceptance of the Lord. The anointing brings favor. Jesus did not have to look for it.

The anointing will cause you to rise up and become visible. The anointing will empower you to break free of your limitations, the anointing will enable you to do amazing things. How are we going to do this? Firstly, we're not going to do it by walking in the flesh.

We're not going to do it looking for self-gratification and self-exaltation. By the same token, it's impossible to walk this road without becoming visible and known to many people. You're going to have to change your tendency to hide away from the crowds and to keep your privacy and to not be available to certain people.

You're going to have to hold a very clear testimony in the world. You're going to have to be blameless because the moment you rise up into the public eye, Satan will want to take you out. I'm really shocked and amazed as I watch some of these people in politics, especially in America right now.

As each of them rise up, how they try to tear one another down, how they keep looking for dirty washing from the past to try and defame a person's character and prevent them from rising up into leadership. That's Satan's way. But if you're going to rise up and be known in the public eye, if you're going to truly walk this social road, Satan will look for some way to take you out.

And it's impossible for you to avoid your mistakes of the past. You're going to have to be transparent and admit your mistakes of the past and say, yes, I was, but I've been delivered. I've been set free.

I'm no longer that way. If they can point to something in you right now, you've lost your testimony. So there's a price for us to pay to walk the social road.

We're going to have to walk circumspectly in this world and be without faults and blameless, both within and without the body of Christ. So in conclusion, to walk this road, don't hold back, be bold, be ready to show yourself publicly in this world, yet continue to walk humbly. Do not seek a claim for yourself.

Jesus went so far as saying, please don't tell anybody about me. Don't tell anybody what happened. Jesus didn't look for that.

But you know what? He's anointing. And the spirit in which he walked couldn't stop it. The people flocked after him.

And the same thing will happen to you. If you let go of your selfishness, you let go of your insecurities and your fear and your needs, walk humbly and confidently, yet by the same time, boldly and confident in the Lord. People are going to get drawn to you like moths to the light.

You will not be able to avoid it. The social road will be manifest automatically. And as you walk that road, you're now going to find every opportunity to do the work that God's called you to do.

You're going to find every opportunity to do business and to bring finance into the kingdom of God. You're going to have to have every opportunity to fulfill what God put you on this earth for. You must walk the social road.

And I hope you understand a little bit clearer now what's involved and you're ready to make yourself ready to walk on this road. Amen.

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