Good morning. Great to be back. This is my first time going back to back preaching, I feel a little nervous. It is encouraging that those of you who were here last week actually came back, knowing that I would be up here again.
I am also excited to have a bunch of family here, my wife’s siblings and parents as well. So, all the stories I told about them last week, none of them happened. And what happened last week stays there?
Nah.
For those of you who weren’t here last week, or if you were and it didn’t make any sense, let me summarize.
If you recall, We started by briefly reviewing all of history and talking about what God has been doing since the beginning, how we has been loving and saving us.
And then we said, since God has loved us this much, sending himself into history to live and die and pay for our sins, that love compels us. It makes us see people differently, it makes us live differently. We live like missionaries, because God has chosen us to be the spreader of the message. Carrying the story of his Son to our neighbourhoods, schools and Starbucks.
And we said that basically, what is comes down to is God changing your heart so that you might care about someone or something more than you care about yourself. That’s where we went.
And that was sort of it, I didn’t talk a whole lot about how it goes down, or what it might look like in 2009, or how it looks for families or singles or students or retired people.
And I took some shots, if you remember at people who have a Jesus fish on their car and also drive like a maniac. I need to repent of that because on Friday I was mowing my lawn and a dog walker neighbour stopped by who I had previously met, and we ended up talking about God because of the Jesus fish on our car.
Do I like the decal? No. Does God have a sense of humour. Absolutely.
And I want to pick up the threads of last week by reading a verse and a passage from Romans 12.
First Romans 12:1 - I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Vs. 4 - For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually, members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts (encourages), in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
Now who Paul is going to go after here is two different kinds of people and he is going to get after their heart motivations.
Vs. 1 says this, and we majored on it last week: Remember the mercies of God?
Remember how you were lost, remember how as Titus 3 says that we passed our days in malice, hated by others and hating one another. Remember how we were foolish, how we just did dumb things all the time. Remember how we worshiped created things instead of rightly worshipping the Creator?
Remember?
And remember how God, our God Jesus Christ, came into history, lived the life we could not live, died the death we should have died so that we could be forgiven. Remember?
Remember the God who allowed the gospel to spread from Jerusalem to Asia to Europe to North America to Ontario, so you could know it and be saved?
That is the mercy of God, not counting our sin against us because of Christ, despite all of the junk we do.
When we consider that mercy, the rational response is to offer our bodies as living sacrifices in worship to God.
But you are wondering, what does that mean?
The word body in the greek has a connotation that you take your whole life, not just your church life, not just Sunday, not just after work, but you take your whole life and place it before God and say, “whatever you want. Whatever you want.” We pry our fingers off our own life, we let go of our time and our wallets and our energy and say, God, I am on your mission, not mine.
This is the point: If we are missionaries, as we declared last week from 2 Cor 5, therefore it logically and theologically follows that all of life is mission. Or it ought to be.
This is radical thinking. It changes from waffle thinking, to spaghetti thinking. See, in a waffle world, everything has its own box. I can put a strawberry in this one and butter in another one and syrup in a third and gosh I am hungry, but everything has its place. Nothing is connected.
You know what I mean right? That work is here, and at work I work and I shut up about everything else. And when I get home, I am just a father. And at my kids soccer game, all I do is yell at the ref. Nothing is connected. No thread of mission combines all of them.
We ought to be more like spaghetti, yes we have a thread of work, but it touches and winds around mission. That at work, we work to bring God glory, but we are also on the lookout for ways to love people, to share Christ with them in a real, relevant way.
And when you are taking care of your kids at home, and teaching them and taking them to the park, you are open and willing to seize any opportunity to love on other stay-at-home parents. To make connections with them.
For me, in university, I played on an ultimate frisbee team. Yes it actually exists. And we were good.
And one of the popular past times in frisbee is drinking alcohol. Not just one or two, but in a big way. And my team would throw keggers. And as a captain, I was supposed to be there, support the team. But it creates a dilemma, because I don’t want to get drunk, I don’t want to hit on drunk girls and it is a weird environment with lots of opportunities to make dumb choices.
But I realized as I thought and prayed about it that God was giving me an opportunity. So what I used to do is go right at the beginning of the party, 9:30/10pm and bring a six-pack of rootbeer. No joke. And I would drink them and talk to people.
And the best part was, every party, someone would ask me why I wasn’t getting hammered. Every time. And most times, after a few drinks, someone would ask me why I didn’t have sex before marriage. And every party, I got a chance to talk about why I made different choices and how Jesus had affected my life. And they listened. And it made an impact.
Now before you send me a nasty email - Is my life a prescription for yours? No. But did I take a chance that it seemed God was opening for me? Yes. Cause I am trying to live like spaghetti, trying to find out how different parts of my life wrap around mission and evangelism.
This leads me to where I am going:
TWO Wrong approaches to mission
1. Do nothing Danny
a. Some people out of a zeal for their whole life to be mission, end up doing nothing. They hear me or George or a book talk about the freedom offered by the Bible in terms of how we go about evangelism and use it to say, since all of life is mission, since I am constantly engaged in evangelism, I never want to do anything specific.
That is wrong. I mean for a few of us, we can do that and still have lots of opportunities. My wife Jen is a perfect example. She is constantly meeting people, on our street, at convenience stores, at church, on campus and is having coffee with them.
We come home from social activities and she has two coffee dates booked and I am like, how did she do that? All I talked about is the Leafs and the weather and how cool big sledgehammers are. I don’t even know his name.
She has a natural curiosity about people, wants to know them to love them, to connect with them. She actually teaches me a lot about how it is supposed to look.
But that is not me, and it is probably not most of you, until you practice for a while. I am a little introverted, like my privacy, don’t like to bother people. Therefore, I need to do organized things to meet people, to love them, because I don’t function like that intrinsically.
And so, having the view that you can live without intentionally scheduling mission into your life is probably foolish. Not to mention that you miss out on great opportunities, like for instance, one small group here at Connections decided that at Christmas they wanted to help out a family.
So they made a plan, a plan to contact the London NW resource center and get a reference for a family that needed some help. And they did. They gave them some winter clothes, a bunch of food, had dinner with them. It was awesome. Not only did they show them practical love, but they had a chance to share Christ with them, engaging them on a real level with where they were at.
And there are tons of opportunities all around with lots of different organizations, as well as the fact that making a plan helps keep you accountable. If you say, I will hopefully have my neighbour over for dinner someday, that is unlikely to fly. But if you decide that you will invite someone this week, that is a lot more powerful.
So, avoid doing nothing.
2. Do one thing Doris
The other trap we often fall into is that we place all our eggs in one basket by doing just one and then claiming we are done.
What this often looks like is that people will say, I serve at a soup kitchen once a month, that is my mission. Or I give out bulletins at church, that is what I do. Or I build one house a summer with Habitat for Humanity. Or even, I have a Jesus fish on my car and I played Michael W. Smith really loudly with the windows open, in the winter. And once I do that, I am done.
That is a waffle life! You don’t understand that your whole life is mission. That your whole body is a sacrifice. That you ought to be on the lookout for chances everywhere. Yes, schedule things in, but be open to opportunities.
And this wrong approach is especially intoxicating for people with a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder, like me. I am not bad, but I like having a plan, I like knowing what is coming next. Spontaneity irks me quite frankly. I am often like, “you are messing up the plan!” Why do you want to injure my soul?
So I love to schedule one thing in and then plan the rest of my life so that mission is not present. But that is wrong, and at the bottom of it, I am just trying to remove my guilt, not worship and love God to my utmost. You feel me on that?
We need a balance, not just doing one thing, not doing nothing, but planning and reacting so that we can live a life fully devoted to God.
Two Right approaches
1. Use your gifts (personality, sp. Gifts)
This is where the passage we read at the beginning really comes into play.
We talked a lot about the different gifts people get, and much can be said and has been said about that, and my point is not to break down all of them and help you analyze who you are.
But the point I want to make, which sounds almost silly, is that we are all different. We are different. God gives us different gifts that when we employ them collectively, it looks beautiful.
Think of the Detroit Red Wings who mercifully lost. I hate them. But they understand something. They are not all Pavel Datsyuk. They can’t all dangle. But what you know is that Lidstrom is going to play 38 minutes, be a rock and never give away chances. You know Holmstrom is going to live in front of the net and annoy Fleury to no end. You know Darren Helm is going to skate around like an energizer bunny and never give up on the puck. And Osgoode is going to be good enough.
They each know their role and they perform it well and that is why they are so annoying. They are good year after year because they don’t rebuild, they just reload with the right parts.
And that should be the way the church functions. That in life, we all contribute a part to the whole. And there is this stupid attitude in church that puts the gift of teaching or preaching as more important than everything else. That if you can preach, you are a rockstar, and everyone else better just give out coffee and bring their friends to hear the rockstar. That is wrong and foolish.
We undervalue so many of the gifts. Like hospitality. It is a gift to be able to host people in your home, to make them feel comfortable and welcome, to love on them. That is a gift and it leads so many people to Christ and we treat it like second-class. If you have that, God bless you, please use it.
And other gifts, like giving. Some people just know how to make money. They seem to fall backwards into it. We had a family friend like this a long time ago. Every time he tried something, it just went crazy. He had the Midas touch. He bought a store, wrote a book, did some renovations - didn’t matter what, he just made piles of money. And that is a gift from God so that you can use the money to help others out, to do wild things like give someone a car or drop off a bucket of groceries, or whatever.
And what every gift has the potential for, and each one of you has the potential for is to use your gift for mission, for loving and leading people to Jesus.
For me, I love playing sports. And for a while, I resisted playing them because I should be doing something more holy with my time. But I realize that playing on a team with a bunch of non-Christians or dropping by pick-up sports at the university is a great way to meet people and a natural door to relationship. I become friends with someone by spiking a volleyball in their face. And I don’t have it figured yet, how it all works together, but I am trying to figure out how God has gifted me and leverage that for mission.
You just need to be yourself instead of trying to be like that guy, or that girl or that family. Be you. Try to do what you feel gifted at and stop worrying that you are doing it wrong. If you love Jesus and are trying to serve him and your eyes are open to opportunities, you are so right. That is right.
2. Try lots of stuff (at church, at work, at home)
This is the part where I dump a lot of suggestions on you, because frankly we are a diverse crowd. I love that, and some of these suggestions are going to seem stupid to you and others will seem crazy and some will be so good, that you want to eat them.
I will hijack George’s blog and post all of this stuff online, probably on the new facebook fan page for Connections and potentially on George’s blog. I will also post some links to good articles.
A. Eat with non-Christians.
A. Everybody needs to eat, why not make a habit of sharing those times with non-Christians? Go to lunch with a coworker, eat in the breakroom instead of alone, invite over the neighbours, do a neighbourhood BBQ. Basically flee from always eating alone or only with other Christians.
B. Walk
A. Not only is it good for your health, make a practice of getting out and walking around. But be deliberate! Say hello to everyone. Strike up conversations. If you have a dog or kids, bring them along, it is a natural opener. Garden outside. You would be surprised how many people walk by. Take interest in people. Ask questions. Pray as you go. This has been awesome for Jen and I in our new neighbourhood.
B.
C. Be a Regular
A. This is another one I have been trying to do, but instead of hopping all over the city for gas, groceries, haircuts, restaurants, coffee, try going to the same places at the same time. Be a regular.
B. We just moved into a place where there is a convenience store and hair salon really close. So now we try to rent our movies from there and get our hair cut there, and we have already met one of the cashiers and a hairstylist.
C. Build relationships with the workers. Ask questions, be interested. Thank them. Tip well.
D. Hobby with Non-Christians
A. You may disagree, but I think it is a good idea to play sports in non-Christian leagues. Pick a hobby or sport that you enjoy and find a place to do it in the city. There is this magazine called Spectrum which lists a zillion leagues and clubs and activities, pick one and try it out. And as you go, pray, be intentional, be winsome.
E. Be with people
A. No matter what you do, you can live with intentionality. If you have an office job, go out with people after work once in a while, show interest in their lives. If you are at home most days, get involved in a mom’s group, or schedule play dates with neighbours.
F. Participate in the City
A. Instead of living like a hermit in your basement, focused on a glowing screen, make a practice of going to fundraisers, concerts, clean-ups, shows. Strike up conversations there. Study the culture so that you know how to engage with it. Love our city, pray for our city. Reflect on what you see and hear.
* by the way, we are doing this a church this Sunday. I think we have 3 or 4 run-ins, that is, as a church we are hoping to attend a couple of festivals this summer. Make a plan to come.
G. Serve your neighbours.
A. I know lots of you here have skills, really practical ones. Like I was talking to my friend Dan who goes here and I mentioned how my brakes rotors were warped and my car jiggles as it stops. And he is like, well I could throw some new ones on for you. Wow. Best friend status.
B. But maybe you can drywall or garden or woodwork or clean up, offer to help your neighbour if it comes up. Or if they are outside working, wander over and see if you can lend a hand.
H. At church
A. We cannot overlook the importance of being on mission while we gather for worship. There is something really moving in seeing a group of people worshipping God and hearing His Word taught. In fact some on you here today came to church not believing and were later convinced in your heart that it is all true. Some of you even do not believe but you come to see what it is all about.
The gathering of God’s people, Christians, is so important for mission. Invite your friends, ask them if they want to come. And when they come explain the stuff that goes on. Lots of things we do are weird, they are going to need a guide.
And to bring things to a close this morning, I want to return to 2 Cor 5, and I want to read you vs. 20. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Now let me say this, and I want to say it clearly. Mission must include message. Mission must include message. There should be a time in your relationships and in your living that you move beyond actions and beyond food and beyond smiles and waves and you instigate a conversation about what is going on in their lives spiritually, where they are at with God.
There must come a time for that. When you implore them, if they are not already to be reconciled to God. When you explain who Christ is and what he did. And when you wrestle with their questions with them.
Many of the activities and lifestyle choices I described today are just ways to get into others lives. But please, I beg you, and the text commands you, do not forget to implore them to be reconciled to God. That is not just the job of the preacher, but of the missionary also.
And maybe you just need to develop a question that feels comfortable for you - like, hey do you ever think about spiritual things? Or hey, do you ever go to church? Or, what are you doing Sunday morning - would you like to come with me? Or - simply, what do you believe in?
And I am not laying a guilt trip down - this is going to look different for each person. It will take different lengths of time, and you are going to say different things, but remember the mercies of God, his great love for us, his abiding patience for us. And this morning if you don’t know Christ, but want to, please ask. Ask the person who brought you, or come talk to me or someone from the band.
And if you already follow Christ and want some help, let me recommend a connection group. We are doing some over the summer and amping up big for the fall.
Let me say, from personal experience, one of the best ways I have learned how to be on mission, is to see other people. To watch as people in my small group reach out to their friends. To be at their house and see neighbours come by to chat or borrow something. And to ask for help, knowing I am not there yet, but I am working at it.
This is the road forward. And if you are jammed in your Christian life. If it all seems lifeless and dead, the best way to grow is to engage in evangelism and mission. I am convinced that so much of us are stunted, dwarfish Christians is because we refuse to get off the bench and into the game.
Guys, my heart beats so hard for this. I am convinced that if we step out in faith, God can use us in such ways that we will be floored. I love you guys, I want to see you live fully and freely, so let’s do it together.
Let me pray.
Showing posts with label On Purpose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label On Purpose. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
On Purpose, Pt. 1
June 7, 2009
Ben Jolliffe
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake was died and raised.
From now on, we regard no one from according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him as thus no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What a great piece of Scripture.
Good morning Connections. What a thrill to be back up here. George couldn’t preach this week, so I will take a swing here.
We are on one of my favourite topics this morning and actually we are just doing part 1 of 2. Next week I will be coming back to finish this topic off.
PAUSE
From 2 Cor 5, we see a description of the mission God has for us as Christians. Paul is breaking down what a Christian life, fully realized looks like. But even before we talk about the implications for our lives, we have to take a step back.
Because any right understanding of the mission God has called us to, as individuals and as a church rightly begins with God and not with us. To start with us is a huge mistake. Because none of us has a clue what is going on. But God, our God, the author, creator, sustainer of our universe has all knowledge grounded in him and in his character.
And when we start with God, we realize this, that we are caught up in a cosmic story stretching back into eternity past, and we are just a little piece. We realize that God has been at work in creation and in history. It shatters a small view of God and His mission. Let me unpack that by briefly summarizing all of history in next few minutes. This is going to be quick.
In eternity past, God purposed in his heart to create the world, to create human beings in his own image, and he did. He created Adam and Eve, our first father and mother, and placed them in paradise. Tragically, they sinned against God, as we all do and because of their sin, death entered the world and men and women and the snake were cursed by God.
But in Gen. 3, we see that buried in the curse was a promise, that some day down the road, though the snake would seek to strike at us and destroy us, a Saviour would come to break the curse, and save humans from their sin.
In the meantime, humanity spiraled downward. People continually invented new ways to do evil, godly people were persecuted, stuff got messed up, it was a bad scene. And eventually God chose one man, Abram, and made a promise, a covenant with him, to make a great nation out of his descendants, and to bless all the peoples of the earth through his family.
God held true to his promise, even as Abram’s descendants grew into a nation in Egypt where they were enslaved and finally freed by God working through Moses.
They came to the promised land of Israel and established a country there, survived through a succession of judges/military leaders, then kings, most of whom were terrible, with a few bright spots. One of the bright spots, was King David, who you may know from such films as Veggie Tales, but was perhaps lesser known as a liar, adulterer, murderer and a man after God’s own heart.
And God loved David, loved him, and promised him that from his line would come the Saviour.
The nation continued to struggle and during this time came prophets, not financial ones, but ones with a ph. Inspired by God and speaking his words, they foretold of a Saviour, where and how he would be born, how he would live, how he would die, loads of distinct specific prophecies that made the doorway so small that it would be impossible for anyone to impersonate the Saviour.
And then all of a sudden, the prophecies stopped, for 400 years, nothing. No word from God, no new prophecies. World powers like Greece, Persia and Rome rise and fall. And then a young teenage girl named Mary is visited by an angel, she is impregnated by the Holy Spirit (which is a great mystery) and gives birth to Jesus, the promised Saviour.
Jesus lives a perfect life, fulfilling all the prophecies, and is eventually tortured, mocked and killed, making atonement, paying for all sin of all time for all people. He rises from the dead, appears to more than 500 people, then ascends to heaven.
And the story really takes off.
The 100 or so people who followed him, all of sudden, at the day of Pentecost are filled by God’s Spirit, they start preaching and proclaiming a risen Saviour. Bam, the first day 3000 new Christians. A little bit later, Rome and the Jewish authorities get nervous, start cracking down, force the Christians from Jerusalem.
The Gospel spreads all over Asia minor, a man named Saul, a famous Jew, is saved by Jesus in a roadside throwdown, he changes his name to Paul and starts preaching the gospel all around the Mediterranean.
By 300 A.D. Despite persecution Christianity is still growing, all of the cities in the Roman Empire are more than 50% Christian.
In the 5th century, St. Patrick goes to Ireland and sees many turn to Christ. As a society, we celebrate his devotion to God and zeal for missions by wearing kiss me I’m Irish t-shirts and drinking green beer until we can no longer stand.
I’m skipping a millenium here for the sake of time, but in the 1500’s, a man named Martin Luther and many of his compatriots like Calvin, Zwingli start the Reformation, returning Christianity to its biblical roots.
In the 1600’s and 1700’s Catholics, Puritans and others begin to establish missions in the New World.
In 1732, the first great Awakening spread across North America, bringing many to Christ.
In 1785, the first church was built in Ontario, in Brantford as an outreach to the Mohawk nation.
In 1844, St. Paul’s Cathedral was built in London Ontario, its first church.
In the 2000’s a group of people began dreaming what a church would like in North London.
And in 2007 George Saylor moved here from the USA and gave leadership to what eventually became Connections Community Church, meeting in the Masonville Movie Theatre.
This is where we find ourselves, 2009, in the scope of History. This is what God has been doing since the beginning. He has been on mission, bringing many to the knowledge of Christ. Out of his love he has been saving many.
And the last book of the Bible, Revelation promises that before the end, every nation and people group on earth will have heard the gospel and that in heaven, it is going to be a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic party with people from all over.
The point of that is that God is in the business of saving people. We have a God who sent himself into history to live and die so that we might be saved. God loved us. He just loved us.
And when we sit back for a second, and think on that it blows your mind. The love of God - 2 Cor 5 says that it controls or compels us. The love that spans millennia, that purposed in eternity past to save you, the love with which Jesus came from heaven, knowing he would suffer and die for the junk in your life. That is the love that controls us.
Not easy-in-easy-out love, not wimpy love, but unconditional, sacrificial, unbelievable, undeniable love. This is the love of God.
And it controls us such that when we look at people, we no longer see them as everyone else sees them.
I recently moved to a street that has quite a diverse population. There are houses of all sizes and the street is ethnically and financially diverse. And the thing that drives me crazy, is that I find myself labeling people without even trying or wanting to. I resist it, but it is there all the same. The guy who doesn’t mow his lawn is lazy, the kid who bikes by screaming at his friend is poorly parented.
The old guy who walks his dog while holding a little baggie of droppings is well...
And this happens everywhere with all of us. We all do it. We all label people.
But we ought to view people differently. The Bible says that when we look at the grand narrative of history, when we look at all God has done, how he arranged things and changed hearts so that the gospel would go from Jerusalem to Asia Minor to Europe to North America to London, and that he arranged it so that I would move onto that street, someone who knows and loves Christ. And when God has done all that so that one person might know him, it takes on a whole new meaning.
That person, that kid, the dog-walker is immensely valuable. Not to mention that they are created in God’s image, they bear his mark. And as my wife reminds me, there is a story behind each person. We cannot know what is going on with them.
And if that is still not enough motivation, check out verse 18.
It says all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
That means that once God saved you, he saved you not just from sin, Satan and death but he saved you to something.
Are you tracking with me?
Most Christians believe we are saved only from bad stuff. We say a prayer, we believe in Jesus so that we get to go to heaven one day. And in the meantime we try to avoid killing anyone or saying swear words. Right? Wrong.
This passage confirms that we are saved from our sins, but we are saved to a life of mission. You are automatically a missionary. It is not an optional part of the Christian life, it is essential. Because this passage confirms that God has chosen this method, alone. This is how it is going to spread.
Vs. 19 - says that he has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation.
Vs. 20 - that God is making his appeal through us.
Vs. 20 - we are ambassadors
Spurgeon, a famous English preacher once said, “A Christian is either a missionary or an impostor.”
That means that when that Jesus fish car cuts me off, God is being represented there. Unfortunately I keep trying to convince my wife Jen to take ours off the back of our car…
That means if you neighbour knows you are a Christian, and you treat them like dirt, you are reflecting God.
I was reminded of this when we moved into our new house. There were two signs on the door. One said, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The other said, “no peddlers or solicitors allowed.” I laughed to myself, it just seemed contradictory. We serve and love God, but if you are trying to do your job, I don’t want to talk to you, and get off my lawn too.
All of us are missionaries. All of life is mission. And at the risk of being too blunt, if you call yourself a Christian, the only question is: Are you a good missionary or a bad one?
Does your life reflect the character and love of God? Does the way you spend your money (we just spend lots of time on that)? Does your house? Does the way you treat the cashier or the mailman? Does the way you parent your kids?
Because if you a Christian, if you follow Christ, you are automatically inducted into the ranks. Yes, you are saved from sin, but you are also saved to a life on mission with God.
And I know some of you get this, some of you are on track, you are living this out, but I know many of us struggle with this. To live it out for real.
-----------------------------------------
And as far as I can tell, there are two great enemies of evangelism and mission: Pride, Selfishness.
And both are misunderstandings of the gospel. See, the gospel says is that you are more sinful than you ever thought, but you are more loved and forgiven than you ever dared hope because of Christ.
But pride or self-righteousness has the attitude that there are two kinds of people in the world, good people and bad people. We need to be a good person and avoid and look down upon bad people. But the gospel says there is only one kind of person, sinful people. Romans 3 confirms that all are sinful, all of us have fallen short.
There are not two kinds of people, them and us. There is only us. We are shipwrecked, we are all busted up.
1 Cor 4:11 says this, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast about it as if you did not receive it”
The only reason any of us can grow and develop and become more loving is because of Jesus and what he did.
He is the only perfect one. If life were a Western movie, he would be wearing the white hat and the rest of us would all have black hats. We are outlaws by nature and choice.
And for those of you who are eagerly awaiting the new transformers film this June, think of it this way. You are all decepticons. You are all on the bad team, you are a rebel. Only Jesus is perfect
And if you look down at other people because of their lifestyle or sin, or if you refuse to associate with them then you are acting and living in self-righteousness. You have little or no understanding of God’s love and mercy towards you. You think you have pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps and now you have the ability to look down at others from your elevated position.
Remember the words of 2 Cor 5, that once we are Christians, we regard no one according to our old nature. The world may say that they are dirty, or annoying or hard to get along with, but you need to say, so once was I.
Ask yourself these questions:
1. Are there certain kinds of people I look down upon or judge?
2. Do I refuse to engage with non-Christian people in my life?
3. How do my neighbours think of me?
The other sin we often commit is selfishness. this is where I think many of us including me, are. I tend to be selfish with my time, my energy, my money. It is not that I do not have the desire to love and serve and share Christ with people, it is just that I never get around to it.
It is hard, awkward, time-consuming. It is hard to know where to start.
And if I were to bet, I think this is where most of you are mired. You can’t get past yourself. Your desires are good, your intentions too, but you never get into action.
You can call it apathy, or fear or discomfort, but at the heart is that you will not go outside your comfort zone to engage with people who don’t know God. You tell yourself that at work, you should be about work and never engage with people on a spiritual level. You tell yourself that at home, you want to give people privacy, not bother them.
You don’t want to be the weird Christian guy. Can I just say that out loud? That many of us are held back because we don’t want to be that guy… with the t-shirts and pithy quotes and a lawn mowed in the shape of a fish. You are scared of being that guy. No one wants to become Ned Flanders, I think… No one aspires to be annoying.
But no matter what it is that holds you back, apathy, fear, whatever, it is selfish.
This sort of lifestyle is in contradiction to the gospel. God came to earth, lived and died a painful, horrific death so that you might live, and you take that to yourself and ignore God’s words about living your life as a sacrifice. Your life is focused around your own comfort not about God and his glory.
And if no one has ever challenged you on this, let me. You need to grow up in your faith, quit living for yourself and start living for God. You need to start doing hard things, things that hurt, that cost you.
Listen to me - There is no glory, no courage, no legacy, in wimping out your whole life. Is that the sort of legacy you want to leave your kids and grandkids, that you got by and were pretty comfortable? That on your tombstone they write, “she never bothered anyone.” That is a tragedy.
If you have a view that you can be a missionary and not suffer pain, you are sadly mistaken. Jesus promised us that following him would involve a cross, for you. It will always involve dying to yourself.
I used to think that I could find a way to engage with people on a real level and be cool at the same time. That theory is now shot. Because ‘cool’ people in our society are laid back, stand-offish, unengaged. To be cool is to not care. And if you want to ask people about where they are at in their view of God, or if you want to know what is really going on, then you have to put yourself out there and possibly get rejected. And that can look not cool.
The truth is that you will never act until you care about someone or something more than you care about yourself.
And my prayer for myself, and for you, if you are tracking with me on this issue, that one day by the grace and mercy of God, you will care about other people more than you care about yourself.
In summary, Christ has called us to a life of mission. He himself set the example as the first, and perfect missionary. Coming to us to save us. And we follow in his example in going out to our workplaces and our neighbourhoods, and our families, as missionaries. Spreading the gospel of Christ.
Maybe today, you are not even a Christian, you are simply checking things out. Thank you for coming. I am really glad you are here. Please know that Jesus loves you and that he gave himself for you.
For those of you who are wrestling with this issue, we are going to go deeper next week. We are going to discuss what it might look like for us to engage as a church and as individuals with this issue.
And we all need to engage, because George cannot carry the load. George cannot go to work with you, he cannot talk to your friends. You go to your work, you talk to your friends, that is the way it has to be.
But I want to be super practical and give you something to chew on before next week.
For those of you who desire to be missionaries, here are some starter questions to think through. And the easiest way to do this is to imagine yourself moving across the globe to a new country, a new city, a new neighbourhood and imagining how you would be a missionary there, then applying the same principles to your life here.
What criteria would you use to decide where to live?
How would you approach employment?
What standard of living would you expect as pioneer missionaries?
What would you spend your time doing?
What would your prayers be like?
What would you try to do with your new friends?
I cannot give you the answers and the truth is that I don’t have them. I can’t lay out for you what it is going to look like in your life, because it will look different from mine.
One thing you can do immediately, is start praying. Pray for anyone you know who does not know Christ. Start small.
And pray for us too, if you remember. We are trying to teach Christian university students how to be missionaries and it is a tough environment. They get beat up on a lot by the culture. Pray for them that they would love God and stick it out. The university is the best place and one of the hardest places to be a missionary.
Thank you for having me, I would like to pray for you.
Ben Jolliffe
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake was died and raised.
From now on, we regard no one from according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him as thus no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What a great piece of Scripture.
Good morning Connections. What a thrill to be back up here. George couldn’t preach this week, so I will take a swing here.
We are on one of my favourite topics this morning and actually we are just doing part 1 of 2. Next week I will be coming back to finish this topic off.
PAUSE
From 2 Cor 5, we see a description of the mission God has for us as Christians. Paul is breaking down what a Christian life, fully realized looks like. But even before we talk about the implications for our lives, we have to take a step back.
Because any right understanding of the mission God has called us to, as individuals and as a church rightly begins with God and not with us. To start with us is a huge mistake. Because none of us has a clue what is going on. But God, our God, the author, creator, sustainer of our universe has all knowledge grounded in him and in his character.
And when we start with God, we realize this, that we are caught up in a cosmic story stretching back into eternity past, and we are just a little piece. We realize that God has been at work in creation and in history. It shatters a small view of God and His mission. Let me unpack that by briefly summarizing all of history in next few minutes. This is going to be quick.
In eternity past, God purposed in his heart to create the world, to create human beings in his own image, and he did. He created Adam and Eve, our first father and mother, and placed them in paradise. Tragically, they sinned against God, as we all do and because of their sin, death entered the world and men and women and the snake were cursed by God.
But in Gen. 3, we see that buried in the curse was a promise, that some day down the road, though the snake would seek to strike at us and destroy us, a Saviour would come to break the curse, and save humans from their sin.
In the meantime, humanity spiraled downward. People continually invented new ways to do evil, godly people were persecuted, stuff got messed up, it was a bad scene. And eventually God chose one man, Abram, and made a promise, a covenant with him, to make a great nation out of his descendants, and to bless all the peoples of the earth through his family.
God held true to his promise, even as Abram’s descendants grew into a nation in Egypt where they were enslaved and finally freed by God working through Moses.
They came to the promised land of Israel and established a country there, survived through a succession of judges/military leaders, then kings, most of whom were terrible, with a few bright spots. One of the bright spots, was King David, who you may know from such films as Veggie Tales, but was perhaps lesser known as a liar, adulterer, murderer and a man after God’s own heart.
And God loved David, loved him, and promised him that from his line would come the Saviour.
The nation continued to struggle and during this time came prophets, not financial ones, but ones with a ph. Inspired by God and speaking his words, they foretold of a Saviour, where and how he would be born, how he would live, how he would die, loads of distinct specific prophecies that made the doorway so small that it would be impossible for anyone to impersonate the Saviour.
And then all of a sudden, the prophecies stopped, for 400 years, nothing. No word from God, no new prophecies. World powers like Greece, Persia and Rome rise and fall. And then a young teenage girl named Mary is visited by an angel, she is impregnated by the Holy Spirit (which is a great mystery) and gives birth to Jesus, the promised Saviour.
Jesus lives a perfect life, fulfilling all the prophecies, and is eventually tortured, mocked and killed, making atonement, paying for all sin of all time for all people. He rises from the dead, appears to more than 500 people, then ascends to heaven.
And the story really takes off.
The 100 or so people who followed him, all of sudden, at the day of Pentecost are filled by God’s Spirit, they start preaching and proclaiming a risen Saviour. Bam, the first day 3000 new Christians. A little bit later, Rome and the Jewish authorities get nervous, start cracking down, force the Christians from Jerusalem.
The Gospel spreads all over Asia minor, a man named Saul, a famous Jew, is saved by Jesus in a roadside throwdown, he changes his name to Paul and starts preaching the gospel all around the Mediterranean.
By 300 A.D. Despite persecution Christianity is still growing, all of the cities in the Roman Empire are more than 50% Christian.
In the 5th century, St. Patrick goes to Ireland and sees many turn to Christ. As a society, we celebrate his devotion to God and zeal for missions by wearing kiss me I’m Irish t-shirts and drinking green beer until we can no longer stand.
I’m skipping a millenium here for the sake of time, but in the 1500’s, a man named Martin Luther and many of his compatriots like Calvin, Zwingli start the Reformation, returning Christianity to its biblical roots.
In the 1600’s and 1700’s Catholics, Puritans and others begin to establish missions in the New World.
In 1732, the first great Awakening spread across North America, bringing many to Christ.
In 1785, the first church was built in Ontario, in Brantford as an outreach to the Mohawk nation.
In 1844, St. Paul’s Cathedral was built in London Ontario, its first church.
In the 2000’s a group of people began dreaming what a church would like in North London.
And in 2007 George Saylor moved here from the USA and gave leadership to what eventually became Connections Community Church, meeting in the Masonville Movie Theatre.
This is where we find ourselves, 2009, in the scope of History. This is what God has been doing since the beginning. He has been on mission, bringing many to the knowledge of Christ. Out of his love he has been saving many.
And the last book of the Bible, Revelation promises that before the end, every nation and people group on earth will have heard the gospel and that in heaven, it is going to be a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic party with people from all over.
The point of that is that God is in the business of saving people. We have a God who sent himself into history to live and die so that we might be saved. God loved us. He just loved us.
And when we sit back for a second, and think on that it blows your mind. The love of God - 2 Cor 5 says that it controls or compels us. The love that spans millennia, that purposed in eternity past to save you, the love with which Jesus came from heaven, knowing he would suffer and die for the junk in your life. That is the love that controls us.
Not easy-in-easy-out love, not wimpy love, but unconditional, sacrificial, unbelievable, undeniable love. This is the love of God.
And it controls us such that when we look at people, we no longer see them as everyone else sees them.
I recently moved to a street that has quite a diverse population. There are houses of all sizes and the street is ethnically and financially diverse. And the thing that drives me crazy, is that I find myself labeling people without even trying or wanting to. I resist it, but it is there all the same. The guy who doesn’t mow his lawn is lazy, the kid who bikes by screaming at his friend is poorly parented.
The old guy who walks his dog while holding a little baggie of droppings is well...
And this happens everywhere with all of us. We all do it. We all label people.
But we ought to view people differently. The Bible says that when we look at the grand narrative of history, when we look at all God has done, how he arranged things and changed hearts so that the gospel would go from Jerusalem to Asia Minor to Europe to North America to London, and that he arranged it so that I would move onto that street, someone who knows and loves Christ. And when God has done all that so that one person might know him, it takes on a whole new meaning.
That person, that kid, the dog-walker is immensely valuable. Not to mention that they are created in God’s image, they bear his mark. And as my wife reminds me, there is a story behind each person. We cannot know what is going on with them.
And if that is still not enough motivation, check out verse 18.
It says all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
That means that once God saved you, he saved you not just from sin, Satan and death but he saved you to something.
Are you tracking with me?
Most Christians believe we are saved only from bad stuff. We say a prayer, we believe in Jesus so that we get to go to heaven one day. And in the meantime we try to avoid killing anyone or saying swear words. Right? Wrong.
This passage confirms that we are saved from our sins, but we are saved to a life of mission. You are automatically a missionary. It is not an optional part of the Christian life, it is essential. Because this passage confirms that God has chosen this method, alone. This is how it is going to spread.
Vs. 19 - says that he has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation.
Vs. 20 - that God is making his appeal through us.
Vs. 20 - we are ambassadors
Spurgeon, a famous English preacher once said, “A Christian is either a missionary or an impostor.”
That means that when that Jesus fish car cuts me off, God is being represented there. Unfortunately I keep trying to convince my wife Jen to take ours off the back of our car…
That means if you neighbour knows you are a Christian, and you treat them like dirt, you are reflecting God.
I was reminded of this when we moved into our new house. There were two signs on the door. One said, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The other said, “no peddlers or solicitors allowed.” I laughed to myself, it just seemed contradictory. We serve and love God, but if you are trying to do your job, I don’t want to talk to you, and get off my lawn too.
All of us are missionaries. All of life is mission. And at the risk of being too blunt, if you call yourself a Christian, the only question is: Are you a good missionary or a bad one?
Does your life reflect the character and love of God? Does the way you spend your money (we just spend lots of time on that)? Does your house? Does the way you treat the cashier or the mailman? Does the way you parent your kids?
Because if you a Christian, if you follow Christ, you are automatically inducted into the ranks. Yes, you are saved from sin, but you are also saved to a life on mission with God.
And I know some of you get this, some of you are on track, you are living this out, but I know many of us struggle with this. To live it out for real.
-----------------------------------------
And as far as I can tell, there are two great enemies of evangelism and mission: Pride, Selfishness.
And both are misunderstandings of the gospel. See, the gospel says is that you are more sinful than you ever thought, but you are more loved and forgiven than you ever dared hope because of Christ.
But pride or self-righteousness has the attitude that there are two kinds of people in the world, good people and bad people. We need to be a good person and avoid and look down upon bad people. But the gospel says there is only one kind of person, sinful people. Romans 3 confirms that all are sinful, all of us have fallen short.
There are not two kinds of people, them and us. There is only us. We are shipwrecked, we are all busted up.
1 Cor 4:11 says this, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast about it as if you did not receive it”
The only reason any of us can grow and develop and become more loving is because of Jesus and what he did.
He is the only perfect one. If life were a Western movie, he would be wearing the white hat and the rest of us would all have black hats. We are outlaws by nature and choice.
And for those of you who are eagerly awaiting the new transformers film this June, think of it this way. You are all decepticons. You are all on the bad team, you are a rebel. Only Jesus is perfect
And if you look down at other people because of their lifestyle or sin, or if you refuse to associate with them then you are acting and living in self-righteousness. You have little or no understanding of God’s love and mercy towards you. You think you have pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps and now you have the ability to look down at others from your elevated position.
Remember the words of 2 Cor 5, that once we are Christians, we regard no one according to our old nature. The world may say that they are dirty, or annoying or hard to get along with, but you need to say, so once was I.
Ask yourself these questions:
1. Are there certain kinds of people I look down upon or judge?
2. Do I refuse to engage with non-Christian people in my life?
3. How do my neighbours think of me?
The other sin we often commit is selfishness. this is where I think many of us including me, are. I tend to be selfish with my time, my energy, my money. It is not that I do not have the desire to love and serve and share Christ with people, it is just that I never get around to it.
It is hard, awkward, time-consuming. It is hard to know where to start.
And if I were to bet, I think this is where most of you are mired. You can’t get past yourself. Your desires are good, your intentions too, but you never get into action.
You can call it apathy, or fear or discomfort, but at the heart is that you will not go outside your comfort zone to engage with people who don’t know God. You tell yourself that at work, you should be about work and never engage with people on a spiritual level. You tell yourself that at home, you want to give people privacy, not bother them.
You don’t want to be the weird Christian guy. Can I just say that out loud? That many of us are held back because we don’t want to be that guy… with the t-shirts and pithy quotes and a lawn mowed in the shape of a fish. You are scared of being that guy. No one wants to become Ned Flanders, I think… No one aspires to be annoying.
But no matter what it is that holds you back, apathy, fear, whatever, it is selfish.
This sort of lifestyle is in contradiction to the gospel. God came to earth, lived and died a painful, horrific death so that you might live, and you take that to yourself and ignore God’s words about living your life as a sacrifice. Your life is focused around your own comfort not about God and his glory.
And if no one has ever challenged you on this, let me. You need to grow up in your faith, quit living for yourself and start living for God. You need to start doing hard things, things that hurt, that cost you.
Listen to me - There is no glory, no courage, no legacy, in wimping out your whole life. Is that the sort of legacy you want to leave your kids and grandkids, that you got by and were pretty comfortable? That on your tombstone they write, “she never bothered anyone.” That is a tragedy.
If you have a view that you can be a missionary and not suffer pain, you are sadly mistaken. Jesus promised us that following him would involve a cross, for you. It will always involve dying to yourself.
I used to think that I could find a way to engage with people on a real level and be cool at the same time. That theory is now shot. Because ‘cool’ people in our society are laid back, stand-offish, unengaged. To be cool is to not care. And if you want to ask people about where they are at in their view of God, or if you want to know what is really going on, then you have to put yourself out there and possibly get rejected. And that can look not cool.
The truth is that you will never act until you care about someone or something more than you care about yourself.
And my prayer for myself, and for you, if you are tracking with me on this issue, that one day by the grace and mercy of God, you will care about other people more than you care about yourself.
In summary, Christ has called us to a life of mission. He himself set the example as the first, and perfect missionary. Coming to us to save us. And we follow in his example in going out to our workplaces and our neighbourhoods, and our families, as missionaries. Spreading the gospel of Christ.
Maybe today, you are not even a Christian, you are simply checking things out. Thank you for coming. I am really glad you are here. Please know that Jesus loves you and that he gave himself for you.
For those of you who are wrestling with this issue, we are going to go deeper next week. We are going to discuss what it might look like for us to engage as a church and as individuals with this issue.
And we all need to engage, because George cannot carry the load. George cannot go to work with you, he cannot talk to your friends. You go to your work, you talk to your friends, that is the way it has to be.
But I want to be super practical and give you something to chew on before next week.
For those of you who desire to be missionaries, here are some starter questions to think through. And the easiest way to do this is to imagine yourself moving across the globe to a new country, a new city, a new neighbourhood and imagining how you would be a missionary there, then applying the same principles to your life here.
What criteria would you use to decide where to live?
How would you approach employment?
What standard of living would you expect as pioneer missionaries?
What would you spend your time doing?
What would your prayers be like?
What would you try to do with your new friends?
I cannot give you the answers and the truth is that I don’t have them. I can’t lay out for you what it is going to look like in your life, because it will look different from mine.
One thing you can do immediately, is start praying. Pray for anyone you know who does not know Christ. Start small.
And pray for us too, if you remember. We are trying to teach Christian university students how to be missionaries and it is a tough environment. They get beat up on a lot by the culture. Pray for them that they would love God and stick it out. The university is the best place and one of the hardest places to be a missionary.
Thank you for having me, I would like to pray for you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
