Out, into the World

 

Jesus tells his disciples, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. … Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:17).  Anyone who feels uncomfortable with the imperative on Christians to share their faith and lead others to follow Jesus needs to take that discomfort up with him.  The call to be witnesses and evangelists, comes from Jesus, so if we don’t like the idea of trying to influence others by introducing them to him, we need to take our dislike to him.  Don’t complain to the pastor that you think evangelism is spiritually arrogant or culturally imperialistic.  Take it up with the giver of the command, Jesus.

            I took our youth group for a walk on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, Sunday afternoon, when the weather was so intoxicatingly pleasant.  With social-distancing easing up a bit and the weather so nice, everyone was out.  College students; town residents; the street was abuzz with life.  We were able to catch a glimpse of a bit of the world Jesus wants us to evangelize.

            Refuge (the Hillside young adult small group) has been following the series “In Pursuit of Jesus,” https://inpursuitofjesus.net/.  Pastor Rasool Berry travels the world looking for signs of the presence of Jesus, and he finds them in New York City, Singapore, Sweden, and other places.  Viewing these videos, we get more impressions of the world Jesus sends us to, in order to be his witnesses.  I highly recommend you check this out.

            Evangelism is not easy and can feel kind of icky if we conceive of it as trying to sell strangers something they don’t want to buy.  But, if we can learn to see the people we meet as neighbors, and if we can love them deeply, and if we can think of evangelism as sharing the most wonderful truth that all people need, then we can embrace the call.  To be Christian is to be called by Jesus.  Will we answer?

            Let one of your Lenten practices be prayer for evangelism.  Pray that people who don’t know the Lord will come to know him through the testimony of humble, loving Christ-followers.  Ask God to help you see how he wants you to share your testimony.  Ask Him to infuse your own witness with gentleness, hospitality, and grace.  And, spend significant time asking God to show you the Judea and Samaria to which he is sending you.  What will be your evangelistic field?  Then, listen to His answer.  Then, go.  Go out into the world, to share the good news of life in Christ.

Outfitted and Ready

^19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Jesus, in Matthew 28:19-20).

^11 “When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit” (Jesus, in Mark 13:11).

^17 ‘The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us”’ (seventy missionaries returning to Jesus, in Luke 10:17). 

            The first of the passages listed above is the final word in Matthew’s Gospel, the “Great Commission.”  “Go!” Jesus tells his 11 followers that life as his disciples, by its nature, is a life lived on the move.  Hit the road, there’s a mission to accomplish.  There’s a message that needs to be spread.

            Notice that before Jesus ascends bodily, he sends his disciples beyond the edges of their imagination.  Yes, they will tell their fellow Jews in their home, Galilee, all that they have learned from him, but here, he’s sending them to the ends of the earth, to all nations.  That commission continues with each new generation of disciples.  To be sent by Jesus – this connects us, disciples in 2019, with Andrew and Peter, Matthew and Philip and the rest of the 12. 

            Also notice that while they are sent, it does not mean they are separated from Jesus.  Remember I am with you always, to the end of the age.  Jesus promised to always be at the side of his disciples as they ventured to places they never even considered.  In the second quote above, from Mark 14, he tells them that when they are challenged, they will be able to respond.  It is not you who speaks, but the Holy Spirit.  Jesus doesn’t just send us.  He sends us outfitted for the journey and ready for whatever we encounter.

            For the next month at HillSong Church, we will resume our focus on Growing Young.  As we emphasized when we introduced this ministry approach back in the spring, Growing Young is not emphasizing teens and 20-somethings to the neglect of the rest of the church family.  Growing Young is the belief that the entire church will flourish when everyone in the church family of every age contributes to the spiritual growth of our members 10-25 years old. 

            One of our Growing Young points of emphasis will be the way God equips every one of us for the spiritual challenges ahead.  We’ll look at spiritual gifts, our personality styles, our experiences and natural aptitudes, and our hearts’ passions.  We’ll discover how to bring it all together so that each member is serving in areas of ministry that highlight his or her strengths.

            On the front end of this emphasis we consider that Jesus sends us, the commission; goes with us, I am with you always; and, with Jesus our journey ends in victory.  When the seventy returned, they triumphantly proclaimed, even the demons submit to us.  Yes, we have spiritual gifts, natural talents, and heart desires that all help us accomplish much in Jesus’ name.  But before all the gifting and talent, we have Jesus.  We have the Lord of creation at our side, paving the path for us, and walking with us.  That is the equipping we need.

            As you participate in worship and small group ministries at HillSong Church throughout September and October, be aware of God’s calling.  Like Peter, Matthew, Andrew, and the rest, you too are sent in Jesus.  And you have talents.  Jesus will work through you.  But as you grow in awareness of your calling, even more, grow in relationship with Jesus.  Through prayer, through re-ordering your priorities, and through learning to listen to the Spirit, go deeper with Jesus.  He speaks and works through us.  And better than that, he walks with us and works in us.  With Him, we can answer the call.

Safe, New, Sent (Matthew 20:16-20)

Sunday, June 3, 2018

            Who we are supposed to be as individual believers and as a local congregation comes from who Jesus is.  We get to know him in the stories we find in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  The Bible is the authority to which we must conform.  The Bible is not to be adjusted in order tos fit in with our lives, with modern day sensibilities, or with current trends.  We adjust our thoughts and our lives to what we understand the Bible to be saying.  We submit ourselves to the God we meet in the Bible. 

            We meet God in story – primarily in the story of Jesus.  There are numerous examples. This morning we’ll look at a few.  First, Mark 3:1-6. 

[Jesus] entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. ² They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” ⁴ Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

            The man’s withered hand was for him a deformity and a disability.  He could not work.  His condition would be attributed to sin in his life – God inflicted him with a useless, withered hand as a punishment.  Thus, he could not do manual labor and he lived as a social outcast. 

            Jesus welcomed this rejected man.  Jesus interrupted normal Sabbath routine to help him.  What could be better than working a miracle that would ease the man’s pain, restore his social standing, enable him to participate fully in community worship, and empower him to go to work and make a living?  Jesus changed this man’s life, and verse 6 says the powers that be were enraged.  They had constructed a system of rules that marginalized the man instead of coming together as a community to help the man.  The synagogue and the synagogue leaders magnified the suffering the man went through due to his infirmity.  They were the opposite of “safe” for him.  Whatever difficulty he endured in life was increased by the religious leader were supposed to care for his spiritual life.  And churches through the ages have inflicted similar suffering on people.  People already going through various kinds of pain go to church for hope and instead are judged in a way that makes things worse.

            Jesus welcomed the man, loved him, and restored his life. 

            Jesus also condemned the Pharisees who showed no love to broken people and lost sinners.  Verse 5 says Jesus was angry at their attitude.  It also says, he grieved in his heart at the spiritual condition of that synagogue.  If we love the most broken people who come through our doors, we’re safe for them, the way Jesus was.  If we push to the margins people who already feel like outcasts, we cause Jesus grief and he’s angry at us.

            This is what he says in Matthew 23.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.^[a] 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell^[b]as yourselves.

           

            One more example shows how Jesus was safe for the wounded, the outcast, the lost, the confused, and those in great pain. 

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. ²⁵ Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. ²⁶ She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷ She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸ for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” ²⁹ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. ³⁰ Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” ³¹ And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” ³² He looked all around to see who had done it. ³³ But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. ³⁴ He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.

            Like the man with the withered hand, this woman suffered a physical ailment that also left her socially outcast and financially ruined.  In every way imaginable, she was down and out.  Jesus was on his way to heal the dying daughter of a very important man.  He stopped walking to the house where girl lay, just as we early saw him stop the synagogue worship.  To him, the person in front of him with great need was not a distraction.  Showing love to that person was the mission.  This woman was labeled unclean, but he called her daughter, healed her, and restored her.

            The first principle of our church’s philosophy of ministry is to embody the way Jesus is safe for people.  Are you full of questions?  This is a safe place for you to ask them.  Have you done some bad things in your life, and now come seeking forgiveness?  It is OK for you to tell your story here.  Is the world an unsafe place for you?  Come into the arms of Jesus.  That’s what we want to be for you.  One of our top priorities must be to be a safe place for people who need a safe place. 

And sometimes, the one who needs the safety of Jesus is someone who’s been coming a long time.  You don’t need to have it all together.  Even deacons and elders and pastors need the church to be that safe place.  Come and meet Jesus in this place.  Come as you are.  Come into the arms of Jesus.

Once we’ve established that we are a safe place, as Jesus is safe, and we have to constantly work on this, then we pray that people will meet the Holy Spirit in our midst.  In meeting God, we are made new.  In the bulletin, it says, “Transformed.”  That word and “made new” are interchangeable.

Listen to this exchange Jesus has with the fishing brothers, Andrew and Simon Peter. 

As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:18-19).

            Jesus takes them as they are, a couple of fishermen in the process of fishing.  However, Jesus tells them there will be changes.  Their lives are fixed in that region right along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  He says that’s going to change.  “Follow me,” he tells them, and it is clear he’s on the move. 

            They’ll fish again.  In the Gospel of John, we see them fishing after the resurrection.  Fishing will always be part of their lives, but it is no longer the top priority.  Job, family, marriage, relationships, physical fitness, career – whatever we put at the top of the priority list is moved down a notch when we do what Jesus invited Andrew and Peter to do, follow him.  Following him means he becomes Lord.  He is master of our lives. 

            He tells them, “I will make you fish for people.”  They have no sense of what this means, we might not either.  This call to evangelism has led many in Christian history into the damaging idea that we are supposed to change people.  Not so!  We don’t change people.  We help them meet Jesus and find forgiveness of sins in Him.  Once people meet Jesus, they are transformed.  When we “fish for people” as he said Andrew and Peter, we are transformed from the lost and the broken to disciples who know the Lord and who work at sharing his love with individual people who are lost and dying in a world that is lost and dying. 

            This is what our church is all about.  We are a safe place where people can come as they are and be loved.  Once here, in our community, they meet Jesus, and upon meeting Jesus, we do not remain as we are.  We have a relationship with the God who created the universe.  That’ll change a person.  We are made new, transformed into the perfect image of God.  We become new creations.

            Safe!  New!  There is a third and final anchor for our philosophy of what a church, what our church, is called to be: Sent! 

            In Luke 10:1-11 we see the first example of what Jesus will constantly do – send his followers into the world to announce the salvation he brings.

The Lord appointed seventy^[a] others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. ² He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. ³ Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. ⁴ Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. ⁵ Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ ⁶ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. ⁷ Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. ⁸ Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹ cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’^[b] 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹ ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’

A

            Like those earliest disciples, we are sent.  Each week, we are sent from worship into the world to be witnessed who share the Gospel in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and surroundings towns.  This is our Jerusalem.  Sometimes, we send members of our church out on mission trips.  And, when people have to leave church to move and live in other places, we pray over them  We pray a commissioning prayer, a sending prayer that says, ‘go with God’s blessing; go on mission for Christ.’  We live our lives as called people – called to give witness to the goodness of the Kingdom of God.

            Our church is to be a safe place where people are welcome and loved, and then, here they meet Jesus.  In meeting him, we are made new, transformed, and born again.  As new creations we are sent into the world to be the body of Christ sharing the love of Christ with all people.  This is what Carrboro Baptist Church is called to be.  This is who HillSong Church is.  Whatever future names we operate under, in essence, we are the body of Christ, at work, spreading his word in a world that desperately needs Him.

            This construct for church is easily seen in Matthew 28:16-20 – the passage known as the Great Commission.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

            “Go therefore,” Jesus says.  They are sent.  Faith does not sit in one place.  God’s mandate for the church is that we move into the world, the entire world, that all may know Jesus.

            “Make disciples … baptizing them;” we tell the story so that people will hear it, believe it, and give their lives to Jesus.  We are made new and then we try to help others discover new life in Christ.

            “And I am with you always.”  The safest place to be is with Jesus and He is always with us.  Because he is always with us, we are to be welcoming, inviting for other people.  Are people afraid of you because of your knowledge, because of your sense of self-righteousness, of because of a judgmental or intimidating spirit you give off?  That cannot be so, not if you or I want to be Jesus’ disciples.  People must feel safe and welcome approaching us just as Jesus puts people at ease. 

            Safe-New-Sent; our church aspires to this.  Spend time this week praying for our church, that our church may live into this calling God has given us.  We need your prayers.  We are entering a season where we re-discover this identify and in discovery, we live into it.  Pray for us and pray for God to show you your part in this church family.

AMEN