Thy Will Be Done
Matthew 6: 9 – 13 AND James 4: 1 – 3
I. Introduction.
Last Sunday, I announced my intention to lead our church in 40 days of prayer. I will have my first meeting with our Long Range Planning Committee this afternoon to begin preparing for these 40 days of prayer. We are going to provide our church with a list of things to pray for and some suggestions for how we can pray together for 40 days.
In short, we are not ready to begin the 40 days of prayer. BUT…Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to begin praying right now. I think we will be ready to present something to the church in about two or three weeks. That means, if you begin praying right now…you can actually pray for 54 to 61 days! That can’t hurt anything!
Perhaps it will be a good idea to pray for the Long Range Planning Committee as we work to organize and prepare for 40 days of prayer.
For the past two weeks, the Long Range Planning Committee has been looking back over all the comments made by our church members during our two Town Hall Meetings. We are organizing those comments into groups, or categories. For example, we received many comments about Sunday morning worship, our need to do outreach, and the physical condition of our aging buildings. I anticipate that these will be three of the categories we will pray about in our 40 days of prayer.
Some of the categories we will ask the church to pray about will be very “touchy” subjects. When I say “touchy,” I’m trying to avoid using words like “emotional” and “controversial.”
Music is a very emotional issue. There are many different opinions about music in our congregation.
The condition of our buildings can be a controversial issue. Our oldest building has been here since 1927. It has been the location for thousands of baptisms and hundreds of weddings. Doing something with the building where someone’s parents were baptized and married can stir up controversy.
This is the reason why we need to pray. Ultimately, I am asking you as a church to change. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we will keep getting what we’ve been getting. Are you comfortable with the results we’ve been getting as a church?
The church we are today is a smaller church than the church we were just ten years ago. We actually grew as a church in my first two years as pastor. We stopped the decline. We experienced a brief period in which new members were joining every Sunday and people were being baptized. We even had to create a new Sunday School department for all the young adults joining our church. Then, our community started losing jobs to layoffs, plant closure and jobs transferred out of town. That happened in 2008, and we have never regained our momentum.
I am of the opinion that we need to change something. But, I don’t know what. I mean that in all sincerity. I do not have the answer. But, I know who does have the answer. I do not know what the future holds. But, I know who holds the future.
This is why we need to pray. God has a plan for our church. We may not know what that plan is, but God is willing to show it to us. Therefore, we need to pray. It may seem impossible to us to navigate the emotion and controversy of change. But, it is not impossible for God. Nothing is impossible for God.
As I think about praying for the future, I am reminded of a phrase that Jesus used in his prayers… “Thy will be done.”
Matthew 6: 9 – 13.
9 "This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'(NIV)
II. The Model Prayer.
Some people like to split theological hairs and say this ought to be called the Model Prayer and John 17 ought to be called the Lord’s Prayer. They prefer to call this the Model Prayer, because this is one of two places where Jesus taught his disciples how to pray.
In Matthew’s Gospel, the Model Prayer is a part of the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke’s Gospel, it appears in a completely different context.
In Luke, the disciples watch as Jesus gets up early in the morning to go off by himself to pray. The disciples know how to pray. After all, they probably grew up in good Jewish families and learned how to pray from their parents and from their synagogues. But, there is something special about the way Jesus prays… And the disciples notice that.
So, the disciples come to Jesus and ask him how to pray, “Lord, teach us how to pray like you do…” And Jesus gives them a model for their prayers.
I find it significant that Jesus gives his disciples the Model Prayer in both contexts—the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel and the answer to the disciples’ request in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus did not give his disciples a series of lectures on prayer. Jesus did not do a thirteen week Bible study on prayer from the Old Testament. Instead, Jesus gave them an example.
This tells me that the very best way to learn how to pray is to begin praying. We don’t learn how to pray by studying prayer. We should not try to discover exactly how prayer works. (Does prayer change God’s mind? Does prayer cause God’s plans for us and the world around us to change? Does God already have the events of the future set?)
It also tells me that Jesus wants us to pray. Jesus demonstrated a life of prayer. His disciples saw him go off to pray alone with God. His disciples heard him pray in public settings. AND, Jesus gave them a simple model for how they (and we) ought to approach God. Prayer is an important part of what it means to be a Christian. Jesus expects his disciples to be men and women of prayer.
I don’t want to pretend that I have all the answers about prayer and the way prayer works. In fact, it is just the opposite. I do not know how prayer works. But, I don’t know how my truck works either. I know that it needs gas to run. I know that I am supposed to get the oil changed. I don’t know how it works…And that does not stop me from driving. I don’t know how medicine works. I have to take allergy medicine every day in order to live comfortably in East Texas. I take the medicine and am thankful that it works, even if I don’t know exactly how or why.
In the Model Prayer, Jesus gives us a demonstration of how to pray and not an explanation of how prayer works.
Jesus teaches us to approach God as our Father. And just as an earthly father wants to give good gifts to his earthly children, so our Heavenly Father wants to bless us with good gifts. If God is our Father, then we don’t have to beg him to do the right thing. We don’t have to plead with him to do what is in our best interest. God, our Father, plans to do the right things and the best things in our lives.
Jesus teaches us to ask for things. Specifically, we are to ask for both the big things and the little things.
For example, our prayers are to be concerned with the big things in life like the coming Kingdom of God. There is nothing bigger and better than the Kingdom of God. This is the rule and reign of God as the King. The world we live in is in constant rebellion against God’s rule. We can’t establish God’s Kingdom for him. All we can do is submit ourselves to God’s rule and pray that the rest of the world will do the same.
In the same way we pray for the big things, we are also supposed to pray for the little things. Even things as small as the daily bread we need to give us life and sustenance. Just as there is nothing too big for God…There is nothing too small for God. God is concerned about every aspect of our lives. We can pray about our jobs, our relationships, the money we make and the food we eat. Again, God is our Heavenly Father who earnestly desires to meet every need for his children.
The Model Prayer demonstrates how we are to approach God in prayer, and it demonstrates what we are to ask of God. We can pray for the really nig things, like the Kingdom of God, and we can pray for the little things, like the food we eat. However, all our requests are to be governed by the will of God. Jesus teaches us to pray, “Thy will be done (on earth as it is in Heaven).”
III. Jesus as Model.
The Model Prayer is not the only time Jesus demonstrated that our lives and our prayers are to be governed by the will of God.
Jesus modeled this for us when he faced Satanic temptations in the desert. Each of the three temptations Jesus faced presented him with an occasion to substitute his human will for the will of God.
When Satan told Jesus to turn the stones into bread, Jesus was struggling with the human need for food. He had been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, and he was hungry. (This is one of the biggest understatements of the entire Bible.) Jesus could use his God-given ability to perform miracles to serve himself… Yet, he resisted. He used his miraculous powers to heal the sick, to cast out demons, and to serve other people…rather than himself.
When Satan told Jesus to throw himself off the top of the Temple, he presented Jesus with an opportunity to do something spectacular to catch the attention of all the people at one time. Jesus could have gained a lot of glory for himself by performing such an impressive feat. Yet, this was not God’s plan for Jesus’ life and ministry. The miracles Jesus performed were not attention seeking miracles. They were caring for the least among the people. They were meaningful and spectacular for one person at a time. This is the way God’s Kingdom grows…One person at a time, and not everyone at once.
When Satan told Jesus to bow down and worship Satan in order to receive power and authority over all the nations of the world, he presented Jesus an opportunity to become Lord of the earth without going to the cross. Again, this was not God’s plan. God’s plan involved suffering, crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus could only become Lord over all the earth if he obeyed his Father’s will. He had to go to the cross in order to defeat Satan and to rightfully claim this world as his own.
IV. Why Some Prayers Go Unanswered.
Perhaps this was not the only time Jesus faced such a temptation… Remember the way Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus knew he was going to be betrayed. He knew he would be convicted of blasphemy. He knew he would be beaten and crucified by the Romans. Yet, on the night before he went to the cross, Jesus prayed in the Garden. He prayed three times. Each prayer began with Jesus’ asking God if there could be any other way. Is there was a way to redeem the world without suffering? Each prayer ended in the same way… Yet, not my will but Thy Will Be Done.
There is an interesting thing about God’s will. We love God’s will. We want to do God’s will. We find joy and fulfillment in God’s will. Yes, we will even fight for God’s will. That is…As long as there is no conflict between God’s will and our will.
James 4: 1 – 3.
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?
2 You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.
3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.(NIV)
These are the words of James, the brother of Jesus. They help us to understand why some of our prayers seem to go unanswered. We are praying for “My Will Be Done” instead of “Thy Will Be Done.”
If we believe that Jesus was both fully human AND fully divine, then we must admit that Jesus found himself in conflict with God’s will when he was praying in the Garden. Jesus prayed an honest pray but ultimately submitted himself to God’s will instead of his human desires. Jesus demonstrates how we are to pray and submit to God’s will.
To pray like Jesus prayed… We will tell God exactly what we are feeling and thinking. We will search for every available option. Then, we will give our feeling and thoughts over to God. After all, God knows better than we do and his will is better than ours.
God never promised to bless your plans. Yet, this is what our prayers often sound like. Lord, I need a better job, and I know exactly which job you need to get for me. Lord, I am faced with a decision. I don’t really want to know which choice you think will be better for me, because I already know what I plan to do. All I need you to do is make this work for me. Lord, my pastor needs to make some changes. Help him to see things my way.
This is especially true when we are praying for the future of our church… God knows better than we do about the future of our church and which direction we should go. After all, it is God’s church and not our church.
V. Conclusion.
I made a mistake in my first church and learned a very important lesson. I preached a sermon with one person in mind.
After business meeting one Wednesday night, a woman came to me “hopping mad.” Things had not turned out the way she wanted them to turn out, and she wanted me to know she was mad. She said, “This is my church! I have been in this church my whole life. My parents were in this church their whole lives. This is my church! I am not going to let these newcomers come into MY church and tell me what to do.” (The newcomers she referred to had been members of the church for 21 years.)
I thought about this woman all week long as I selected the Scripture—Matthew 16, where Jesus said, “On this rock I will build MY church.” I thought about this woman while I was writing the sermon—the church belongs to Jesus and not to us. When I preached the sermon on Sunday morning, I looked around the congregation to make sure she was there. Then, I preached to her. I made sure that I wasn’t looking at her too often. I didn’t want to be too obvious.
When the service was over, I went to the back door and waited for her to come by. Sure enough, she waited around at the back of the sanctuary until everyone had left. She was the last one to speak to me. She took me by the hand and said, “That was a really good sermon. You really told THEM.”
With that in mind… I am not preaching to THEM this morning. I am preaching to YOU. Every person in this sanctuary needs to hear this message. Every person in this church needs to pray for our church by praying, “Not my will…Thy Will Be Done.”
Some of us will need to spend time praying about the things we don’t want to change about our church. Perhaps it is the music of the church or the buildings of the church. We need to talk to God about what we feel and what we think. Then, we need to turn it over to God, Thy Will Be Done.
Some of us will need to spend time praying about the things we want to see changed. Perhaps it is the music of the church or the buildings of the church. (It might even be the pastor of the church.) We need to talk to God about what we feel and what we think. We need to tell God how much better the church would be if the leadership would just do things the way we think things ought to be done. Then, we need to turn it over to God, Thy Will Be Done.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
What Drives Your Church?
What Drives First Baptist Church?
Exodus 6: 1 – 9; Matthew 28: 18 – 20.
I. Introduction
Thank you to everyone who participated in our Town Hall Meetings over the past two Sunday nights. If you were not able to attend, let me share with you what happened.
We had about 150 people present each night—in spite of the cold and rainy weather both nights. We began each meeting with a presentation from our Long Range Planning Committee.
Their first presentation reviewed statistics from the most recent ten year history of First Baptist Church. Over the past ten years, our church has received an average of 28 new members per year by transfer from other churches and 13 new members per year by baptism. That is an average of 41 new members every year. However, during the same ten-year period of time we have lost an average of 20 members to death every year and an average of 29 members to transfer to another church. That is an average of 49 members lost each year. (Do the math in your head…41 new members gained minus 49 members lost…We are experiencing a slow decline.)
The second presentation from the Long Range Planning Committee offered some information the committee discovered by reading a book, Reaching People Under 40 While Keeping People Over 60: Being Church for All Generations (Edward H. Hammett and James R. Pearce: Chalice Press, 2007).
This truly describes what we want for our church. We want to be a multi-generational church, consisting of senior adults, median adults, young adults, youth and children. However, we have a problem… These different generations have different characteristics. The differences are obvious when you look at the way the generations dress or listen to their styles of music. Yet, there are other differences which are less noticeable—like the ways the generations learn and communicate.
I think I can illustrate the differences in communication. There was a day when most people communicated by sitting down to write a letter. People would sit down with pen and paper to compose a letter; seal it in an envelope; go to the Post Office to buy a stamp; and mail the letter. Then, they would wait four or five days to receive a reply. Then, people began to use telephones. I can remember having a rotary phone in our kitchen when I was a child. If someone was talking on the phone, other people calling us would hear a “busy signal.” Then, my family got a “push button” phone with call waiting—if I planned it right, I could talk to two people at the same time. As an adult, I got my first cell phone. It was shaped like a brick, with a rubber antenna sticking out the top. Now, I have a cell phone that I carry with me most of the time…But, I rarely use it to talk…I send and receive text messages and email…I even use it to check facebook!
Over the years, communication have changed from letter writing to phone calls to emails to text messaging. None of these forms of communication is the right way or even the wrong way to communicate. They are simply different. AND, they are merely the FORM of communication…The form of communication does not change the message. The same message can be delivered in many different forms.
So, how can we become a church for all generations? The letter writers, the phone talkers, the emailers, the text messagers, the facebookers, and whatever comes next?
After meeting with the Long Range Planning Committee for over a year… After holding two Town Hall Meetings to receive input from the church body… After compiling every written and spoken comment… I have the answer! The answer is… I don’t know.
But, I think I have a good idea of how to find out.
Over the next couple of weeks, the Long Range Planning Committee will compile all the responses and suggestions from the church. We will begin to organize the suggestions into categories. For example, some of the suggestions dealt with Sunday morning worship, the condition of our buildings, the youth ministry and children’s ministry of our church.
Once we have a list of categories, we are going to ask you to join us in 40 days of prayer. Moses spent 40 days with God on the top of Mount Sinai. Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert. And, Rick Warren wrote a book about 40 days… If 40 days is good enough for Moses, Jesus and Rick Warren, then it’s good enough for us.
In the meantime, we need to ask ourselves, “What drives First Baptist Church?”
I ask this question this morning, because I have an answer in mind that I hope will become the driving force behind all we do in the future…
Read Exodus 6: 1 – 9.
1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country."
2 God also said to Moses, "I am the LORD.
3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.
4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens.
5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
6 "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.
7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.'"
9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.(NIV)
Exodus 6 is one of two stories in the book of Exodus about the “Call of Moses”…
God’s first call to Moses happened at the burning bush in Exodus 3. Moses was working as a shepherd in the desert. Since sheep eat grass, being a shepherd in the desert is very difficult work. He had to lead his flock of sheep all over the desert looking for water. Where there is water, there is grass. Then, when the grass is gone, he had to lead his sheep to find more water and grass. One day, Moses saw a burning bush. While the bush was burning, it was not consumed by the fire.
God spoke to Moses from the bush and told him that God had a plan for Moses’ life. God wanted Moses to go to Egypt and lead God’s people out of slavery. You would think that Moses would be excited to know God had a plan for his life. But he wasn’t. He argued with God and gave him three excuses for why Moses was not the right man for the job. God won the argument. God has a way of doing that… So, Moses went to Egypt.
In Egypt, things didn’t go as smoothly as Moses had hoped. First, Moses talked to Pharaoh, the King of Egypt. He told him that God had sent Moses to let God’s people go. But, Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let God’s people go.
Then, Moses spoke to the Hebrew people. They didn’t listen to Moses either. They turned a deaf ear to Moses, because Moses was actually making their lives more difficult. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, he increased the workload for the Hebrew slaves. Their lives were more difficult after Moses came around… They didn’t want to listen to anything Moses had to say.
So, God came to Moses a second time in Exodus 6 to reinforce God’s calling and purpose for Moses’ life. Exodus 6 is like God is saying, “I know things haven’t worked out exactly the way you had planned. I know that the work is harder than you expected. BUT… I have called you to these people, to this place and for this purpose.”
Perhaps that is God’s word to each of us this morning as well. Things have not turned out exactly the way we wanted them to. The work of the church is more difficult than we ever imagined. But, God has called us to this people, to this place and for this purpose.”
If you look up the word “Drive” in the dictionary, you will find a definition that says something like, “to guide, control or direct.” For example, when you drive your car, you guide, control and direct your car home from church. When you drive a nail, you guide, control and direct that nail into a board. And when you drive a golf ball, you HOPE to guide, control and direct the ball straight down the middle of the fairway.
A couple of years ago, I read a book that has been highly influential on my understanding of the church…The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (Zondervan, 1995)…Warren is the pastor of Saddleback Church in Mission Viejo, CA…The largest and the fastest growing Baptist church in history…Now don’t let that bother you…I do not intend for FBC to become anything like Saddleback…That is the mistake many pastors have made in the past 5 – 10 years…Many ego-centered pastors—thinking God has called them to pastor the largest and fastest growing church—have tried to take what works in Orange County, CA and transplant it to East Texas only to be solely disappointed…Don’t worry…I don’t plan to build an outdoor baptistery on the front steps of the church…I don’t plan to wear a Hawaiian shirt to preach in on Sunday mornings…But I do want to become familiar with and to introduce you to some of the universal & biblical concepts I have learned from Warren’s book…
On page 37 of The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren acknowledges that our church (First Baptist Church, Lufkin, Texas) was one of the first churches to believe in his vision to plant a new church in California. We sponsored him financially for the first five years, and we sent mission teams for several summers to help them get started.
The book also shares Warren’s extensive research and personal experience at Saddleback…Warren’s research involved the careful study of several churches in America that demonstrated phenomenal growth…This study led him to make a very interesting discovery…Every single church he studied had one thing in common…Each church operated out of a clear sense that God had called them to fulfill a specific purpose…In other words, they were Purpose Driven churches…
Then, Warren followed up this research by studying other churches…Some that were barely growing…Some that were plateaued…Others that were dying…And Warren made another discovery…Every church is driven by something…Not necessarily driven by purpose…But driven by something…
Don’t you think the same thing happens in churches today? Not in our church, of course, but perhaps another church…
What keeps us from being Purpose Driven? … Let me offer a few suggestions…
II. The Past?
Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by their Past…By Tradition… “We’ve never done it that way before.”
Their only goal is to perpetuate the past…The way things used to be...And the way things have always been…
Methodist minister, Richard J. Fairchild tells a story of one of his early pastorates…Every year the church had a Turkey Supper around Thanksgiving…One year a major church dispute broke out over the Turkey Supper…The dispute was so bad that one long time membership family actually left the church…Why? Because the wife of a new family in town convinced the rest of the women that it would be more efficient to place the pies on the counter top beside the sink instead of the counter top beside the refrigerator…The woman who left the church commented, “It’s just not the right way to do it. We’ve never done it that way before, and I am not about to do it that way now. Those new people are going to ruin this church. They aren’t even from around here.”
The same thing happened to Moses…It wasn’t about pies, it was about Manna…A group within the church began to complain about the Manna…We used to eat so much better than this…We had all the meat we could stand…We were better off in Egypt!
The church driven by the past sees any kind of change as negative…It’s just not right!…
Maintaining the Status Quo is the most important thing…Everything else, including God’s will, is secondary to “remaining stable.”
III. Personality?
Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by Personality…Either an authoritarian Pastor, a powerful layperson, or an influential family controls everything the church does…
This church doesn’t say, “We’ve never done it that way before.”…This church says, “What does the leader want to do?” …Or, “What does the Tom Sawyer Family want to do?”
My observation about Personality Driven churches…They are only one funeral away from failure…If the pastor leaves or the key layperson dies there is no one to carry on the work of the church…The church would simply wander around aimlessly until a new leader can be found…
Moses faced the same kind of distraction…In Exodus 32, Moses had been on Mt. Sinai for 40 days…The people were unhappy with the way things were going, so they asked Aaron to be the new leader…I am sure they thought that a new personality would provide a new vision, a new driving force in the church…
IV. Programs?
Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by Programs…Focus is placed on maintaining and continuing the same programs that have been in place for generations…
There are 2 mistakes in this situation…(1) Program driven churches have made a compromise…People are no longer the most important priority of the church…Positions are the most important…No one wants to take the job, but we have to find someone to fill the position, or we won’t have anything for the children to do on Wednesday nights…(2) Program driven churches cannot let go of dead or dying ideas…Folks, if a program needs to be propped up, we need to let it go…If a program of the church is already on life-support, we ought to go on and pull the plug and let it die!
Or as a friend of mine says…When the horse dies, GET OFF!…Can you think of any dead horses that we need to quit riding?!
Moses faced the same problem in his church…In Exodus 32, when the people made Aaron their leader, they created an idol (a golden calf) that the people worshipped…They also credited that idol with rescuing them from Egyptian slavery…
Program driven churches have done the same thing…They worship an idol, or a pantheon of false gods.
V. Purpose?
Some churches are Purpose Driven because they recognize their God given purpose and mission…
In the business world, there is a lot of talk about mission statements and the importance of organizing business practices to reflect the vision and values of the mission statement. Eventually, churches adopted this same practice. We have a mission statement as a church. One of our former pastors organized a committee of members to write our mission statement. But, we also have a mission statement that was not written by a former pastor or a committee of church members. It was spoken by Jesus himself.
Matthew 28: 18 – 20…
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19 Therefore go 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 I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.""(NIV)
This is our purpose as a church…to Make Disciples.
If we want to be a Purpose Driven Church, then we have to be willing to do two things…(1) To look at everything we do through the lens of what the NT describes as our purpose—Great Commission: to go throughout the world God has given us and MAKE DISCIPLES, that includes evangelizing the lost and nurturing young believers…(2) We need a Plan! How are we supposed to accomplish our God-Given purpose? I believe that our Purpose is the same in 2011 as it was in 1883! But our Plan HAS to change. We do not live in the same world as the first members of this church lived in 1883…And we shouldn’t live in the same church either!
The starting point for every ministry and activity of this church ought to be the simple question… Why do we exist?
VI. Conclusion
William Barclay once said…There are two important days in every person’s life, the day you were born, and the day you discover why… For Christians, this is the day we were born and the day we discovered that God wants us to be his disciples.
I think the same can be said for churches…There are two important days in the life of a church, the day we were founded, and the day we discover why…
Why were we founded? What is our purpose? What is the driving force behind all we do and say?
It reminds me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland…Alice met the cat on the road and asked, “Which road should I take?” The cat replied, “That all depends on where you are going.” Alice said, “I don’t know.” The cat, “Then it doesn’t matter which road.”
Exodus 6: 1 – 9; Matthew 28: 18 – 20.
I. Introduction
Thank you to everyone who participated in our Town Hall Meetings over the past two Sunday nights. If you were not able to attend, let me share with you what happened.
We had about 150 people present each night—in spite of the cold and rainy weather both nights. We began each meeting with a presentation from our Long Range Planning Committee.
Their first presentation reviewed statistics from the most recent ten year history of First Baptist Church. Over the past ten years, our church has received an average of 28 new members per year by transfer from other churches and 13 new members per year by baptism. That is an average of 41 new members every year. However, during the same ten-year period of time we have lost an average of 20 members to death every year and an average of 29 members to transfer to another church. That is an average of 49 members lost each year. (Do the math in your head…41 new members gained minus 49 members lost…We are experiencing a slow decline.)
The second presentation from the Long Range Planning Committee offered some information the committee discovered by reading a book, Reaching People Under 40 While Keeping People Over 60: Being Church for All Generations (Edward H. Hammett and James R. Pearce: Chalice Press, 2007).
This truly describes what we want for our church. We want to be a multi-generational church, consisting of senior adults, median adults, young adults, youth and children. However, we have a problem… These different generations have different characteristics. The differences are obvious when you look at the way the generations dress or listen to their styles of music. Yet, there are other differences which are less noticeable—like the ways the generations learn and communicate.
I think I can illustrate the differences in communication. There was a day when most people communicated by sitting down to write a letter. People would sit down with pen and paper to compose a letter; seal it in an envelope; go to the Post Office to buy a stamp; and mail the letter. Then, they would wait four or five days to receive a reply. Then, people began to use telephones. I can remember having a rotary phone in our kitchen when I was a child. If someone was talking on the phone, other people calling us would hear a “busy signal.” Then, my family got a “push button” phone with call waiting—if I planned it right, I could talk to two people at the same time. As an adult, I got my first cell phone. It was shaped like a brick, with a rubber antenna sticking out the top. Now, I have a cell phone that I carry with me most of the time…But, I rarely use it to talk…I send and receive text messages and email…I even use it to check facebook!
Over the years, communication have changed from letter writing to phone calls to emails to text messaging. None of these forms of communication is the right way or even the wrong way to communicate. They are simply different. AND, they are merely the FORM of communication…The form of communication does not change the message. The same message can be delivered in many different forms.
So, how can we become a church for all generations? The letter writers, the phone talkers, the emailers, the text messagers, the facebookers, and whatever comes next?
After meeting with the Long Range Planning Committee for over a year… After holding two Town Hall Meetings to receive input from the church body… After compiling every written and spoken comment… I have the answer! The answer is… I don’t know.
But, I think I have a good idea of how to find out.
Over the next couple of weeks, the Long Range Planning Committee will compile all the responses and suggestions from the church. We will begin to organize the suggestions into categories. For example, some of the suggestions dealt with Sunday morning worship, the condition of our buildings, the youth ministry and children’s ministry of our church.
Once we have a list of categories, we are going to ask you to join us in 40 days of prayer. Moses spent 40 days with God on the top of Mount Sinai. Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert. And, Rick Warren wrote a book about 40 days… If 40 days is good enough for Moses, Jesus and Rick Warren, then it’s good enough for us.
In the meantime, we need to ask ourselves, “What drives First Baptist Church?”
I ask this question this morning, because I have an answer in mind that I hope will become the driving force behind all we do in the future…
Read Exodus 6: 1 – 9.
1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country."
2 God also said to Moses, "I am the LORD.
3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.
4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens.
5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
6 "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.
7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.'"
9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.(NIV)
Exodus 6 is one of two stories in the book of Exodus about the “Call of Moses”…
God’s first call to Moses happened at the burning bush in Exodus 3. Moses was working as a shepherd in the desert. Since sheep eat grass, being a shepherd in the desert is very difficult work. He had to lead his flock of sheep all over the desert looking for water. Where there is water, there is grass. Then, when the grass is gone, he had to lead his sheep to find more water and grass. One day, Moses saw a burning bush. While the bush was burning, it was not consumed by the fire.
God spoke to Moses from the bush and told him that God had a plan for Moses’ life. God wanted Moses to go to Egypt and lead God’s people out of slavery. You would think that Moses would be excited to know God had a plan for his life. But he wasn’t. He argued with God and gave him three excuses for why Moses was not the right man for the job. God won the argument. God has a way of doing that… So, Moses went to Egypt.
In Egypt, things didn’t go as smoothly as Moses had hoped. First, Moses talked to Pharaoh, the King of Egypt. He told him that God had sent Moses to let God’s people go. But, Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let God’s people go.
Then, Moses spoke to the Hebrew people. They didn’t listen to Moses either. They turned a deaf ear to Moses, because Moses was actually making their lives more difficult. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, he increased the workload for the Hebrew slaves. Their lives were more difficult after Moses came around… They didn’t want to listen to anything Moses had to say.
So, God came to Moses a second time in Exodus 6 to reinforce God’s calling and purpose for Moses’ life. Exodus 6 is like God is saying, “I know things haven’t worked out exactly the way you had planned. I know that the work is harder than you expected. BUT… I have called you to these people, to this place and for this purpose.”
Perhaps that is God’s word to each of us this morning as well. Things have not turned out exactly the way we wanted them to. The work of the church is more difficult than we ever imagined. But, God has called us to this people, to this place and for this purpose.”
If you look up the word “Drive” in the dictionary, you will find a definition that says something like, “to guide, control or direct.” For example, when you drive your car, you guide, control and direct your car home from church. When you drive a nail, you guide, control and direct that nail into a board. And when you drive a golf ball, you HOPE to guide, control and direct the ball straight down the middle of the fairway.
A couple of years ago, I read a book that has been highly influential on my understanding of the church…The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (Zondervan, 1995)…Warren is the pastor of Saddleback Church in Mission Viejo, CA…The largest and the fastest growing Baptist church in history…Now don’t let that bother you…I do not intend for FBC to become anything like Saddleback…That is the mistake many pastors have made in the past 5 – 10 years…Many ego-centered pastors—thinking God has called them to pastor the largest and fastest growing church—have tried to take what works in Orange County, CA and transplant it to East Texas only to be solely disappointed…Don’t worry…I don’t plan to build an outdoor baptistery on the front steps of the church…I don’t plan to wear a Hawaiian shirt to preach in on Sunday mornings…But I do want to become familiar with and to introduce you to some of the universal & biblical concepts I have learned from Warren’s book…
On page 37 of The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren acknowledges that our church (First Baptist Church, Lufkin, Texas) was one of the first churches to believe in his vision to plant a new church in California. We sponsored him financially for the first five years, and we sent mission teams for several summers to help them get started.
The book also shares Warren’s extensive research and personal experience at Saddleback…Warren’s research involved the careful study of several churches in America that demonstrated phenomenal growth…This study led him to make a very interesting discovery…Every single church he studied had one thing in common…Each church operated out of a clear sense that God had called them to fulfill a specific purpose…In other words, they were Purpose Driven churches…
Then, Warren followed up this research by studying other churches…Some that were barely growing…Some that were plateaued…Others that were dying…And Warren made another discovery…Every church is driven by something…Not necessarily driven by purpose…But driven by something…
Don’t you think the same thing happens in churches today? Not in our church, of course, but perhaps another church…
What keeps us from being Purpose Driven? … Let me offer a few suggestions…
II. The Past?
Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by their Past…By Tradition… “We’ve never done it that way before.”
Their only goal is to perpetuate the past…The way things used to be...And the way things have always been…
Methodist minister, Richard J. Fairchild tells a story of one of his early pastorates…Every year the church had a Turkey Supper around Thanksgiving…One year a major church dispute broke out over the Turkey Supper…The dispute was so bad that one long time membership family actually left the church…Why? Because the wife of a new family in town convinced the rest of the women that it would be more efficient to place the pies on the counter top beside the sink instead of the counter top beside the refrigerator…The woman who left the church commented, “It’s just not the right way to do it. We’ve never done it that way before, and I am not about to do it that way now. Those new people are going to ruin this church. They aren’t even from around here.”
The same thing happened to Moses…It wasn’t about pies, it was about Manna…A group within the church began to complain about the Manna…We used to eat so much better than this…We had all the meat we could stand…We were better off in Egypt!
The church driven by the past sees any kind of change as negative…It’s just not right!…
Maintaining the Status Quo is the most important thing…Everything else, including God’s will, is secondary to “remaining stable.”
III. Personality?
Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by Personality…Either an authoritarian Pastor, a powerful layperson, or an influential family controls everything the church does…
This church doesn’t say, “We’ve never done it that way before.”…This church says, “What does the leader want to do?” …Or, “What does the Tom Sawyer Family want to do?”
My observation about Personality Driven churches…They are only one funeral away from failure…If the pastor leaves or the key layperson dies there is no one to carry on the work of the church…The church would simply wander around aimlessly until a new leader can be found…
Moses faced the same kind of distraction…In Exodus 32, Moses had been on Mt. Sinai for 40 days…The people were unhappy with the way things were going, so they asked Aaron to be the new leader…I am sure they thought that a new personality would provide a new vision, a new driving force in the church…
IV. Programs?
Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by Programs…Focus is placed on maintaining and continuing the same programs that have been in place for generations…
There are 2 mistakes in this situation…(1) Program driven churches have made a compromise…People are no longer the most important priority of the church…Positions are the most important…No one wants to take the job, but we have to find someone to fill the position, or we won’t have anything for the children to do on Wednesday nights…(2) Program driven churches cannot let go of dead or dying ideas…Folks, if a program needs to be propped up, we need to let it go…If a program of the church is already on life-support, we ought to go on and pull the plug and let it die!
Or as a friend of mine says…When the horse dies, GET OFF!…Can you think of any dead horses that we need to quit riding?!
Moses faced the same problem in his church…In Exodus 32, when the people made Aaron their leader, they created an idol (a golden calf) that the people worshipped…They also credited that idol with rescuing them from Egyptian slavery…
Program driven churches have done the same thing…They worship an idol, or a pantheon of false gods.
V. Purpose?
Some churches are Purpose Driven because they recognize their God given purpose and mission…
In the business world, there is a lot of talk about mission statements and the importance of organizing business practices to reflect the vision and values of the mission statement. Eventually, churches adopted this same practice. We have a mission statement as a church. One of our former pastors organized a committee of members to write our mission statement. But, we also have a mission statement that was not written by a former pastor or a committee of church members. It was spoken by Jesus himself.
Matthew 28: 18 – 20…
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19 Therefore go 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 I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.""(NIV)
This is our purpose as a church…to Make Disciples.
If we want to be a Purpose Driven Church, then we have to be willing to do two things…(1) To look at everything we do through the lens of what the NT describes as our purpose—Great Commission: to go throughout the world God has given us and MAKE DISCIPLES, that includes evangelizing the lost and nurturing young believers…(2) We need a Plan! How are we supposed to accomplish our God-Given purpose? I believe that our Purpose is the same in 2011 as it was in 1883! But our Plan HAS to change. We do not live in the same world as the first members of this church lived in 1883…And we shouldn’t live in the same church either!
The starting point for every ministry and activity of this church ought to be the simple question… Why do we exist?
VI. Conclusion
William Barclay once said…There are two important days in every person’s life, the day you were born, and the day you discover why… For Christians, this is the day we were born and the day we discovered that God wants us to be his disciples.
I think the same can be said for churches…There are two important days in the life of a church, the day we were founded, and the day we discover why…
Why were we founded? What is our purpose? What is the driving force behind all we do and say?
It reminds me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland…Alice met the cat on the road and asked, “Which road should I take?” The cat replied, “That all depends on where you are going.” Alice said, “I don’t know.” The cat, “Then it doesn’t matter which road.”
Sunday, January 16, 2011
God Loves You Just the Way You Are...
God Loves You Just the Way You Are
Romans 5: 8 and Galatians 2: 20.
I. Introduction.
II. God Loves You Just Like You Are.
Romans 5: 8, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
I cannot think of anyone greater than the Apostle Paul to write these words. Paul had a story just like your story and my story…He thought he needed to “Clean Up His Act” for God…
And he worked hard at it…He had a pedigree that most Jewish young men would have loved to have had for themselves…He was born into a good Jewish family, Hebrew of Hebrews, Hebrew ancestry and Paul even spoke Hebrew…His family obeyed the law and taught Paul to love and obey the law as a child…When Paul grew up, he took on the highest religious rank available to a Jewish man, he became a Pharisee…As a Pharisee, Paul out performed all the other Pharisees his age…Every religious man in town wished he could be as religious as Paul was…
But one day Paul discovered that none of these things mattered…Because as much as he might try to be good or righteous or holy or like God, Paul could never be as good as God is…He could never become righteous, because even if his actions were good his motives were questionable…Paul discovered that it is possible for a person to sin even while they are keeping the law…It is possible to do the right thing so other people will notice you and brag about how spiritual and religious you are, and that is sin…It is the sin of pride…
Paul realized that he was caught in a trap that he could never get out of…As a human being, Paul was sinful and could not stand in the presence of a holy God…
Did you know that? If you have sin in your life, you cannot be in the same place with God. Another way to say that is to say, God cannot allow you into Heaven if you have sin in your life. It doesn’t matter how big or small you perceive your sins to be. Sin deserves death and Hell…Eternal separation from God.
And that is where we encounter the Good News about Jesus Christ…God loved you so much that he sent his only begotten Son to live here on the earth and to die for your sins…Jesus died for sinners…Jesus did not die for good people…Jesus did not die for saved people…Jesus died for sinners…
As a good Jewish man, Paul understood the death of Jesus in terms of Jewish religion…He thought of it as a sacrifice…Jewish religion taught Paul that if he had sin in his life he would have to go to the synagogue and offer sacrifice to God…Sacrifices were offered on behalf of sinners, not for the righteous…
There is Good News today…You do not have to “Clean Up Your Act” for God to love you…God loved sinners, and he demonstrated it in the death of Jesus…
Jesus taught this to his disciples…One day he ate lunch (in broad daylight) with a man who was known in the community as a bad sinner…And the Pharisees confronted Jesus about this…And do you know what Jesus said?...“Healthy people do not need doctors. Sick people need doctors. And sinners need a Savior.”
This is HALF of the Gospel...
God loves you just like you are…A sinner who needs a Savior…
III. But, God Loves You too Much to Leave You Like You Are.
If God loves me just like I am, does that give me a license to live any way I want to live? No! There is a second part of this Good News!
Remember the story of Easter. Jesus was the Only Begotten Son of God. He was born of a virgin. He lived a perfect and sinless life. He performed miracles, and he taught the people about the Kingdom of God. Eventually, the religious leaders had all they could take of Jesus’ ministry. One of his own disciples betrayed Jesus and handed him over to the religious and political leaders. They put Jesus on trial and found him guilty of blasphemy—claiming to be equal to God himself. They sentenced Jesus to the death penalty on a Roman cross.
However, the crucifixion of Jesus was not the end of Jesus’ story. Jesus literally and physically died on the cross. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. But Jesus did not stay in the grave. On the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a testimony that Jesus has conquered death and Hell…That Jesus really is the Son of God…That there is something for us to look forward to if we put our faith in Jesus…
But the Resurrection is also the beginning of a new kind of life for Jesus…No longer is Jesus confined to his human existence…While Jesus lived on the earth, he was limited in time and space…As a human with a literal and actual body, Jesus could not be in two places at the same time…Now, however, these limitations have been lifted…Jesus can be in all places at all times…
And do you know where Jesus lives? He lives in me!
Galatians 2: 20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
There are 2 things in this verse that I want you to notice…The first I have already pointed out…Because Jesus Christ has been Resurrected, he lives in me…
But there is a second point here…It can be found in the answer to the question, “In whom does Jesus live?” Does Jesus live in every person on the face of the earth? No!
Look at the second line of that verse…The life I live in the body, I live by FAITH in the Son of God…That is the key…Jesus lives in those who have placed their FAITH in him.
When Jesus lives in you it will be noticeable…Remember, Jesus Christ is fully divine, he is God…Remember, God is holy and perfect…Remember, a holy God cannot stand in the presence of sin…Therefore, if Jesus is in you and you are a sinner, there will be a conflict…Conflict between righteousness and sinfulness…
Who will win that conflict? Righteousness…Jesus Christ will prevail…That means, when Jesus Christ comes into your life, some noticeable changes will take place…
1. Sin is no longer comfortable…Conviction of Holy Spirit
2. Your desires begin to change…Rather than pleasing yourself, you want to do what is pleasing to God…
3. Your character begins to change…When Jesus is in you, he works to mold you and to shape you into his own image and likeness…The best way to think of this is to think of family resemblance…Just as a child looks like his or her father, your life will begin to resemble the holiness of God.
Yes, God loves you just the way you are—a sinner in need of a savior. BUT, God loves you too much to leave you the way you are. If you will place your faith in Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected Son of God, Jesus will live inside you. When Jesus is inside you, he will begin to change your life.
Too many people think they can change their own lives. The truth is we cannot change ourselves. We need help. Only Jesus can change your life.
IV. Conclusion.
Today I want to declare the Good News of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was Crucified so that you might be saved. Jesus Christ was Resurrected so that you might be changed into his image and his likeness.
This is the whole Gospel:
God loves you just like you are…But God loves you too much to leave you like you are.
Have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Romans 10: 9, “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This verse tells us that a person must do two things in order to be saved. You must BELIEVE that Jesus died and was resurrected for you. And you must confess (tell the truth) that Jesus is your Lord. This makes it personal.
Salvation is a Free Gift from God. But, there is an interesting thing about a Free Gift. You cannot do anything to earn a free gift. No one deserves to be saved. But, everyone needs to receive God’s Free Gift.
God has offered you a gift today. Will you receive it?
Romans 5: 8 and Galatians 2: 20.
I. Introduction.
II. God Loves You Just Like You Are.
Romans 5: 8, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
I cannot think of anyone greater than the Apostle Paul to write these words. Paul had a story just like your story and my story…He thought he needed to “Clean Up His Act” for God…
And he worked hard at it…He had a pedigree that most Jewish young men would have loved to have had for themselves…He was born into a good Jewish family, Hebrew of Hebrews, Hebrew ancestry and Paul even spoke Hebrew…His family obeyed the law and taught Paul to love and obey the law as a child…When Paul grew up, he took on the highest religious rank available to a Jewish man, he became a Pharisee…As a Pharisee, Paul out performed all the other Pharisees his age…Every religious man in town wished he could be as religious as Paul was…
But one day Paul discovered that none of these things mattered…Because as much as he might try to be good or righteous or holy or like God, Paul could never be as good as God is…He could never become righteous, because even if his actions were good his motives were questionable…Paul discovered that it is possible for a person to sin even while they are keeping the law…It is possible to do the right thing so other people will notice you and brag about how spiritual and religious you are, and that is sin…It is the sin of pride…
Paul realized that he was caught in a trap that he could never get out of…As a human being, Paul was sinful and could not stand in the presence of a holy God…
Did you know that? If you have sin in your life, you cannot be in the same place with God. Another way to say that is to say, God cannot allow you into Heaven if you have sin in your life. It doesn’t matter how big or small you perceive your sins to be. Sin deserves death and Hell…Eternal separation from God.
And that is where we encounter the Good News about Jesus Christ…God loved you so much that he sent his only begotten Son to live here on the earth and to die for your sins…Jesus died for sinners…Jesus did not die for good people…Jesus did not die for saved people…Jesus died for sinners…
As a good Jewish man, Paul understood the death of Jesus in terms of Jewish religion…He thought of it as a sacrifice…Jewish religion taught Paul that if he had sin in his life he would have to go to the synagogue and offer sacrifice to God…Sacrifices were offered on behalf of sinners, not for the righteous…
There is Good News today…You do not have to “Clean Up Your Act” for God to love you…God loved sinners, and he demonstrated it in the death of Jesus…
Jesus taught this to his disciples…One day he ate lunch (in broad daylight) with a man who was known in the community as a bad sinner…And the Pharisees confronted Jesus about this…And do you know what Jesus said?...“Healthy people do not need doctors. Sick people need doctors. And sinners need a Savior.”
This is HALF of the Gospel...
God loves you just like you are…A sinner who needs a Savior…
III. But, God Loves You too Much to Leave You Like You Are.
If God loves me just like I am, does that give me a license to live any way I want to live? No! There is a second part of this Good News!
Remember the story of Easter. Jesus was the Only Begotten Son of God. He was born of a virgin. He lived a perfect and sinless life. He performed miracles, and he taught the people about the Kingdom of God. Eventually, the religious leaders had all they could take of Jesus’ ministry. One of his own disciples betrayed Jesus and handed him over to the religious and political leaders. They put Jesus on trial and found him guilty of blasphemy—claiming to be equal to God himself. They sentenced Jesus to the death penalty on a Roman cross.
However, the crucifixion of Jesus was not the end of Jesus’ story. Jesus literally and physically died on the cross. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. But Jesus did not stay in the grave. On the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a testimony that Jesus has conquered death and Hell…That Jesus really is the Son of God…That there is something for us to look forward to if we put our faith in Jesus…
But the Resurrection is also the beginning of a new kind of life for Jesus…No longer is Jesus confined to his human existence…While Jesus lived on the earth, he was limited in time and space…As a human with a literal and actual body, Jesus could not be in two places at the same time…Now, however, these limitations have been lifted…Jesus can be in all places at all times…
And do you know where Jesus lives? He lives in me!
Galatians 2: 20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
There are 2 things in this verse that I want you to notice…The first I have already pointed out…Because Jesus Christ has been Resurrected, he lives in me…
But there is a second point here…It can be found in the answer to the question, “In whom does Jesus live?” Does Jesus live in every person on the face of the earth? No!
Look at the second line of that verse…The life I live in the body, I live by FAITH in the Son of God…That is the key…Jesus lives in those who have placed their FAITH in him.
When Jesus lives in you it will be noticeable…Remember, Jesus Christ is fully divine, he is God…Remember, God is holy and perfect…Remember, a holy God cannot stand in the presence of sin…Therefore, if Jesus is in you and you are a sinner, there will be a conflict…Conflict between righteousness and sinfulness…
Who will win that conflict? Righteousness…Jesus Christ will prevail…That means, when Jesus Christ comes into your life, some noticeable changes will take place…
1. Sin is no longer comfortable…Conviction of Holy Spirit
2. Your desires begin to change…Rather than pleasing yourself, you want to do what is pleasing to God…
3. Your character begins to change…When Jesus is in you, he works to mold you and to shape you into his own image and likeness…The best way to think of this is to think of family resemblance…Just as a child looks like his or her father, your life will begin to resemble the holiness of God.
Yes, God loves you just the way you are—a sinner in need of a savior. BUT, God loves you too much to leave you the way you are. If you will place your faith in Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected Son of God, Jesus will live inside you. When Jesus is inside you, he will begin to change your life.
Too many people think they can change their own lives. The truth is we cannot change ourselves. We need help. Only Jesus can change your life.
IV. Conclusion.
Today I want to declare the Good News of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was Crucified so that you might be saved. Jesus Christ was Resurrected so that you might be changed into his image and his likeness.
This is the whole Gospel:
God loves you just like you are…But God loves you too much to leave you like you are.
Have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Romans 10: 9, “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This verse tells us that a person must do two things in order to be saved. You must BELIEVE that Jesus died and was resurrected for you. And you must confess (tell the truth) that Jesus is your Lord. This makes it personal.
Salvation is a Free Gift from God. But, there is an interesting thing about a Free Gift. You cannot do anything to earn a free gift. No one deserves to be saved. But, everyone needs to receive God’s Free Gift.
God has offered you a gift today. Will you receive it?
Sunday, January 09, 2011
God's Mission for the Church
God’s Mission for the Church
Acts 1: 6 – 9
I. Introduction.
In October 2007, I was elected co-chairman of the BGCT Future Focus Committee. Our committee was assigned the responsibility of taking an honest look at the current state of our state convention and dreaming about what the future would look like for our convention. One of the first things we did as a committee was to look at the trends over the previous ten years. We looked at Cooperative Program giving and the number of churches participating in missions and ministry through the state convention. Perhaps the scariest statistic we looked at were the number of churches that disbanded between 1995 and 2008.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas is a changing association of churches. While the number of churches in the Convention has remained around 5,600 the churches making up that number has changed. In 1995 there were 5,587 churches in the BGCT. In 2008 there are 5,622 churches in the BGCT. In that time the BGCT has lost 1,069 churches to the Southern Baptist of Texas Convention. Interestingly the BGCT has lost more to church disbanding than to the competing convention (1,527). There have been 3,353 churches added to the Convention and 3,318 churches lost. The ethnic makeup of the convention is vastly different. In 1995 Anglo churches made up 75% of the Convention. Today, Anglo churches makeup 57% of the churches in the Convention. In 1995, 33% of the churches now a part of the BGCT were not a part of the Convention (From “Future Focus Committee Report,” November 16, 2009).
In the 13 year period from 1995 through 2008, 1,527 Baptist churches in Texas closed their doors. That is an average of 117 churches closing each year and 9.7 churches closing each month!
The phenomenon of churches closing their doors is not confined to Baptist churches in Texas. Just this week, I heard about a church in Massachusetts that sold its buildings to a real estate developer for $200,000 (http://www.enterprisenews.com/topstories/x1112767464/Whitman-s-former-First-Baptist-Church-building-sold-to-local-broker-Richard-Rosen ).
And, have you heard about what is going on with the Crystal Cathedral in Southern California?
In 1955, a pastor named Robert Schuller moved to Southern California with a dream to start a new kind of church. The Reformed Church of America gave him $500 to start a church. Since he didn’t have a building, he considered 10 different venues for his new church. His first nine choices were not available for a new church, so he went with his 10th choice—a drive-in movie theater.
For the first several years, Schuller preached from the roof of the snack bar to a congregation of people sitting in their cars. (I assume they listened through those little speakers outside the driver’s side window.)
Eventually, the church built their first chapel, three miles away from the drive-in theater. But, there were so many people who wanted to keep the drive-in venue, that Schuller preached an early service at the chapel and a later service at the drive-in.
This was the inspiration for the Crystal Cathedral. It was a church with glass walls and a two-story podium. That way, Schuller could preach to two congregations at the same time. One congregation was a “walk-in” church. The other was a “drive-in” church parked in their cars outside.
In the 1970’s, Robert Schuller was the first preacher to broadcast his weekly services to a nation-wide audience. His program was called “The Hour of Power.” It is still regarded as the most watched Christian broadcast in the world.
In 2006, Robert Schuller retired as pastor of the Crystal Cathedral and handed over the reigns to his son, Robert A. Schuller. Robert A. Schuller was an innovator like his father. He took the church and began to implement new ministries and new ways of doing church. But, it didn’t last long. In 2008, Robert A. Schuller was fired as pastor of his father’s church. The group of church leaders calling for his termination was led by his own sister, Sheila Schuller Coleman. Then, in October 2010, the Crystal Cathedral filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
What happened to the Crystal Cathedral? I suppose it can be attributed to two relatively simple problems. Perhaps, it is just that difficult to replace a pastor who has been leading the church for over 50 years. The official position of the Crystal Cathedral is that their bankruptcy is fall out from the economic recession. (However, I do not believe the recession can explain their $43.5 Million debt. I do not believe a church can rack up a debt that size in just a couple of years.)
Some people attribute the demise of the Crystal Cathedral to their success. Think about it… Robert Schuller was one of the most innovative church leaders of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and even the 80’s. In the 1990’s, however, he continued to do exactly the same things that led to his success in previous years. The church was comfortable with their success and no longer thought it necessary to innovate—to try something new and different. When a new pastor came along with new ideas, the church preferred to remain comfortable doing the same things they had done for the previous 50 years. In the end, it was more comfortable for the church to fire their innovative new pastor than to change.
http://churchexecutive.com/archives/crystal-hubris
http://www.crystalcathedral.org/about/history.php
http://www.ocregister.com/news/housing-282823-court-southard.html?plckOnPage=4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Cathedral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Schuller
Of course, this raises a question for me about the ultimate mission for the church. The mission of the church is not something to be entrusted to one man, regardless of how innovative or successful this man has been in the past. The mission of the church is not something to be decided democratically by a vote of the church membership. Ultimately, the mission of the church is something we ought to receive from God.
One of the best places to find this mission is in Jesus’ final words to his disciples before he ascended into heaven…
There are basically two stories of the Ascension of Jesus described in the New Testament. Matthew and Luke tell it just a little differently. They both tell us that Jesus ascended while the disciples stood watching. And they both tell us that Jesus gave his disciples instructions about what to do until he returned again.
In Matthew 28, we read that right before Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave us the Great Commission…Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age (Matthew 28: 19 – 20).”
Luke tells this just a little differently…
Read Acts 1: 6 – 9
6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.(NIV)
After speaking these words, the relationship between Jesus and the disciples changed forever. Once they had been able to see Jesus and touch Jesus and experience Jesus through their physical senses. But now, they could only experience Jesus in the same way we experience Jesus today—through our Spiritual Senses.
II. You Shall BE My Witnesses.
Notice that Jesus did NOT begin this Purpose Statement by describing what he wanted the church to DO…He began by describing what the church should BE…
I want to try to capture what Jesus said about BEING in just one phrase, “You shall BE my witnesses.”
As a product of modern American TV culture, the word “witness” always makes me think about a court of law…Perry Mason…Matlock…Law & Order…Boston Legal… If you ever watch these programs, you know that a trial can be won or lost (at least a TV trial) by the testimony of one witness…
What makes a witness a good witness? In my opinion, there are three things that separate good witnesses from bad witnesses.
First…A good witness must tell the truth…
Second…A good witness must be willing to speak out regardless the cost…
Third…And perhaps most importantly, a good witness must tell his or her own story…
A good witness can never tell someone else’s story…She must tell her own story…As it truly happened to her…As she experienced it…
When Jesus described the church as his witnesses, that is exactly what he had in mind…The church is to tell the world the story about a real-life experience with Jesus.
The idea of mission (witness) must begin with a real-life experience with the risen Lord, Jesus…The Holy Spirit will come upon you…Then you will receive POWER…Then you will BECOME witnesses…Witnesses with a story to tell about a real-life experience (a life changing experience) with the risen Lord, Jesus.
This is what Jesus was describing when he told us to BE his witnesses. We must witness—or experience—a real life encounter with Jesus that can be seen by other people when they are around us…
III. You Shall DO My Witnessing.
Once Jesus established what the church was to BE, he could describe what he wanted the church to DO…In particular, Jesus wanted the church to DO his witnessing in the world…Now that Jesus would no longer be present in a physical sense, he needed someone, anyone, the church to DO his work on earth.
How did Jesus want this work done? At this point we need to make a decision about the text. What do we believe about the book of Acts? Who originally came up with these words? There are basically 2 choices about this text…
1. Did Luke write these words? Some interpret these words to be a kind of outline that describes in spatial terms what Luke is about to spell out through the rest of the book of Acts. In other words, the first few chapters describe the spread of the Gospel in the city of Jerusalem. Then, we read about how the Gospel went through all Judea and Samaria. Then, the book of Acts closes as the Gospel begins to move into the remotest parts of the earth…
2. Did Jesus really say this? Others believe that Jesus spoke these words as a helpful way for the disciples to understand how to spread the Gospel from Jerusalem and then around the world…
I believe that Jesus really did give this command or mission to his disciples. But what did Jesus really intend? I mean, why did Jesus say: Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and the remotest parts of the earth? Again, we have 2 choices…
1. Did Jesus select 3 general areas at random that didn’t really mean anything to him or his disciples?
2. Or did Jesus select 3 specific areas that he truly wanted the church to focus on.
Jerusalem…Literally the city of Jerusalem. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we ought to travel to Jerusalem and begin witnessing in the streets. Some people may be called to do that. But Jerusalem is the very city that the disciples lived in and it was the physical location they were in right that moment.
For you and me, this means the city of Lufkin…It means the brothers and sisters, friends, classmates and coworkers that we see every day of our lives. If you want to follow Jesus’ command, then you must begin by witnessing to the people that see you every day of your life!
Judea and Samaria…Literally the two adjacent regions of Judea and Samaria. This is a larger area that includes people that looked just like the disciples and Samaritan people who are a different race from the disciples. For you and me, this means that we must begin our witnessing at home, witnessing to the people who know us the best. Then, we must move outward to the people who live around us but are not our personal friends and family…It includes people who look like us and enjoy the same kinds of things we enjoy…But it also includes people who do not look like us…People of every race and nationality…
The Ends of the Earth…Literally, these are the people whom the disciples have never met and the people whom the disciples must specifically make an effort to go and witness to. In each of the above groups, it would be possible for the disciples to witness and evangelize through the normal course of their daily lives. But these are the people who can only be reached through a specific mission trip or a missionary effort…
IV. Conclusion.
In which of these 3 places was it most difficult to BE a witness and to DO the work of witnessing? Jerusalem…Does that surprise you?…Jerusalem was the place where Jesus had been crucified…Imagine trying to convince those people Jesus was alive…They had watched him die on the cross!
It is the same for us today…Jerusalem is the place where we live…The people who see us every day…It’s hard to witness to people who know when you sin…
How well does Lufkin’s First Baptist, measure up to the mission that Jesus gave us? Remotest parts of the earth… Judea and Samaria… But what about Jerusalem? What kind of mission and ministry are we doing within a 20-mile radius of this sanctuary?
How will you help us to witness in Lufkin?
An influential book for me was W. Oscar Thompson’s book Concentric Circles of Concern. In the book, Thompson says every person has 7 circles of influence that share the same center point. You are the center point. Self…Immediate Family…Relatives…Close Friends…Neighbors / Business Associates…Acquaintances…Person X.
Two of Thompson’s major themes = we witness to each of these concentric circles through Love (“meeting needs”) = to skip from self to Person X without first witnessing to each of the other circles is hypocrisy.
Acts 1: 6 – 9
I. Introduction.
In October 2007, I was elected co-chairman of the BGCT Future Focus Committee. Our committee was assigned the responsibility of taking an honest look at the current state of our state convention and dreaming about what the future would look like for our convention. One of the first things we did as a committee was to look at the trends over the previous ten years. We looked at Cooperative Program giving and the number of churches participating in missions and ministry through the state convention. Perhaps the scariest statistic we looked at were the number of churches that disbanded between 1995 and 2008.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas is a changing association of churches. While the number of churches in the Convention has remained around 5,600 the churches making up that number has changed. In 1995 there were 5,587 churches in the BGCT. In 2008 there are 5,622 churches in the BGCT. In that time the BGCT has lost 1,069 churches to the Southern Baptist of Texas Convention. Interestingly the BGCT has lost more to church disbanding than to the competing convention (1,527). There have been 3,353 churches added to the Convention and 3,318 churches lost. The ethnic makeup of the convention is vastly different. In 1995 Anglo churches made up 75% of the Convention. Today, Anglo churches makeup 57% of the churches in the Convention. In 1995, 33% of the churches now a part of the BGCT were not a part of the Convention (From “Future Focus Committee Report,” November 16, 2009).
In the 13 year period from 1995 through 2008, 1,527 Baptist churches in Texas closed their doors. That is an average of 117 churches closing each year and 9.7 churches closing each month!
The phenomenon of churches closing their doors is not confined to Baptist churches in Texas. Just this week, I heard about a church in Massachusetts that sold its buildings to a real estate developer for $200,000 (http://www.enterprisenews.com/topstories/x1112767464/Whitman-s-former-First-Baptist-Church-building-sold-to-local-broker-Richard-Rosen ).
And, have you heard about what is going on with the Crystal Cathedral in Southern California?
In 1955, a pastor named Robert Schuller moved to Southern California with a dream to start a new kind of church. The Reformed Church of America gave him $500 to start a church. Since he didn’t have a building, he considered 10 different venues for his new church. His first nine choices were not available for a new church, so he went with his 10th choice—a drive-in movie theater.
For the first several years, Schuller preached from the roof of the snack bar to a congregation of people sitting in their cars. (I assume they listened through those little speakers outside the driver’s side window.)
Eventually, the church built their first chapel, three miles away from the drive-in theater. But, there were so many people who wanted to keep the drive-in venue, that Schuller preached an early service at the chapel and a later service at the drive-in.
This was the inspiration for the Crystal Cathedral. It was a church with glass walls and a two-story podium. That way, Schuller could preach to two congregations at the same time. One congregation was a “walk-in” church. The other was a “drive-in” church parked in their cars outside.
In the 1970’s, Robert Schuller was the first preacher to broadcast his weekly services to a nation-wide audience. His program was called “The Hour of Power.” It is still regarded as the most watched Christian broadcast in the world.
In 2006, Robert Schuller retired as pastor of the Crystal Cathedral and handed over the reigns to his son, Robert A. Schuller. Robert A. Schuller was an innovator like his father. He took the church and began to implement new ministries and new ways of doing church. But, it didn’t last long. In 2008, Robert A. Schuller was fired as pastor of his father’s church. The group of church leaders calling for his termination was led by his own sister, Sheila Schuller Coleman. Then, in October 2010, the Crystal Cathedral filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
What happened to the Crystal Cathedral? I suppose it can be attributed to two relatively simple problems. Perhaps, it is just that difficult to replace a pastor who has been leading the church for over 50 years. The official position of the Crystal Cathedral is that their bankruptcy is fall out from the economic recession. (However, I do not believe the recession can explain their $43.5 Million debt. I do not believe a church can rack up a debt that size in just a couple of years.)
Some people attribute the demise of the Crystal Cathedral to their success. Think about it… Robert Schuller was one of the most innovative church leaders of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and even the 80’s. In the 1990’s, however, he continued to do exactly the same things that led to his success in previous years. The church was comfortable with their success and no longer thought it necessary to innovate—to try something new and different. When a new pastor came along with new ideas, the church preferred to remain comfortable doing the same things they had done for the previous 50 years. In the end, it was more comfortable for the church to fire their innovative new pastor than to change.
http://churchexecutive.com/archives/crystal-hubris
http://www.crystalcathedral.org/about/history.php
http://www.ocregister.com/news/housing-282823-court-southard.html?plckOnPage=4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Cathedral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Schuller
Of course, this raises a question for me about the ultimate mission for the church. The mission of the church is not something to be entrusted to one man, regardless of how innovative or successful this man has been in the past. The mission of the church is not something to be decided democratically by a vote of the church membership. Ultimately, the mission of the church is something we ought to receive from God.
One of the best places to find this mission is in Jesus’ final words to his disciples before he ascended into heaven…
There are basically two stories of the Ascension of Jesus described in the New Testament. Matthew and Luke tell it just a little differently. They both tell us that Jesus ascended while the disciples stood watching. And they both tell us that Jesus gave his disciples instructions about what to do until he returned again.
In Matthew 28, we read that right before Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave us the Great Commission…Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age (Matthew 28: 19 – 20).”
Luke tells this just a little differently…
Read Acts 1: 6 – 9
6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.(NIV)
After speaking these words, the relationship between Jesus and the disciples changed forever. Once they had been able to see Jesus and touch Jesus and experience Jesus through their physical senses. But now, they could only experience Jesus in the same way we experience Jesus today—through our Spiritual Senses.
II. You Shall BE My Witnesses.
Notice that Jesus did NOT begin this Purpose Statement by describing what he wanted the church to DO…He began by describing what the church should BE…
I want to try to capture what Jesus said about BEING in just one phrase, “You shall BE my witnesses.”
As a product of modern American TV culture, the word “witness” always makes me think about a court of law…Perry Mason…Matlock…Law & Order…Boston Legal… If you ever watch these programs, you know that a trial can be won or lost (at least a TV trial) by the testimony of one witness…
What makes a witness a good witness? In my opinion, there are three things that separate good witnesses from bad witnesses.
First…A good witness must tell the truth…
Second…A good witness must be willing to speak out regardless the cost…
Third…And perhaps most importantly, a good witness must tell his or her own story…
A good witness can never tell someone else’s story…She must tell her own story…As it truly happened to her…As she experienced it…
When Jesus described the church as his witnesses, that is exactly what he had in mind…The church is to tell the world the story about a real-life experience with Jesus.
The idea of mission (witness) must begin with a real-life experience with the risen Lord, Jesus…The Holy Spirit will come upon you…Then you will receive POWER…Then you will BECOME witnesses…Witnesses with a story to tell about a real-life experience (a life changing experience) with the risen Lord, Jesus.
This is what Jesus was describing when he told us to BE his witnesses. We must witness—or experience—a real life encounter with Jesus that can be seen by other people when they are around us…
III. You Shall DO My Witnessing.
Once Jesus established what the church was to BE, he could describe what he wanted the church to DO…In particular, Jesus wanted the church to DO his witnessing in the world…Now that Jesus would no longer be present in a physical sense, he needed someone, anyone, the church to DO his work on earth.
How did Jesus want this work done? At this point we need to make a decision about the text. What do we believe about the book of Acts? Who originally came up with these words? There are basically 2 choices about this text…
1. Did Luke write these words? Some interpret these words to be a kind of outline that describes in spatial terms what Luke is about to spell out through the rest of the book of Acts. In other words, the first few chapters describe the spread of the Gospel in the city of Jerusalem. Then, we read about how the Gospel went through all Judea and Samaria. Then, the book of Acts closes as the Gospel begins to move into the remotest parts of the earth…
2. Did Jesus really say this? Others believe that Jesus spoke these words as a helpful way for the disciples to understand how to spread the Gospel from Jerusalem and then around the world…
I believe that Jesus really did give this command or mission to his disciples. But what did Jesus really intend? I mean, why did Jesus say: Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and the remotest parts of the earth? Again, we have 2 choices…
1. Did Jesus select 3 general areas at random that didn’t really mean anything to him or his disciples?
2. Or did Jesus select 3 specific areas that he truly wanted the church to focus on.
Jerusalem…Literally the city of Jerusalem. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we ought to travel to Jerusalem and begin witnessing in the streets. Some people may be called to do that. But Jerusalem is the very city that the disciples lived in and it was the physical location they were in right that moment.
For you and me, this means the city of Lufkin…It means the brothers and sisters, friends, classmates and coworkers that we see every day of our lives. If you want to follow Jesus’ command, then you must begin by witnessing to the people that see you every day of your life!
Judea and Samaria…Literally the two adjacent regions of Judea and Samaria. This is a larger area that includes people that looked just like the disciples and Samaritan people who are a different race from the disciples. For you and me, this means that we must begin our witnessing at home, witnessing to the people who know us the best. Then, we must move outward to the people who live around us but are not our personal friends and family…It includes people who look like us and enjoy the same kinds of things we enjoy…But it also includes people who do not look like us…People of every race and nationality…
The Ends of the Earth…Literally, these are the people whom the disciples have never met and the people whom the disciples must specifically make an effort to go and witness to. In each of the above groups, it would be possible for the disciples to witness and evangelize through the normal course of their daily lives. But these are the people who can only be reached through a specific mission trip or a missionary effort…
IV. Conclusion.
In which of these 3 places was it most difficult to BE a witness and to DO the work of witnessing? Jerusalem…Does that surprise you?…Jerusalem was the place where Jesus had been crucified…Imagine trying to convince those people Jesus was alive…They had watched him die on the cross!
It is the same for us today…Jerusalem is the place where we live…The people who see us every day…It’s hard to witness to people who know when you sin…
How well does Lufkin’s First Baptist, measure up to the mission that Jesus gave us? Remotest parts of the earth… Judea and Samaria… But what about Jerusalem? What kind of mission and ministry are we doing within a 20-mile radius of this sanctuary?
How will you help us to witness in Lufkin?
An influential book for me was W. Oscar Thompson’s book Concentric Circles of Concern. In the book, Thompson says every person has 7 circles of influence that share the same center point. You are the center point. Self…Immediate Family…Relatives…Close Friends…Neighbors / Business Associates…Acquaintances…Person X.
Two of Thompson’s major themes = we witness to each of these concentric circles through Love (“meeting needs”) = to skip from self to Person X without first witnessing to each of the other circles is hypocrisy.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Returning God's Call
Returning God’s Call
1 Samuel 3: 1 – 21.
I. Introduction.
One of my former seminary professors—Chip Conyers—loved to tell a story about Murphy, NC—located in Cherokee County. I don't know if this is a true story, but since it was told by one of my theology professors...I am inclined to believe it.
The Baptist church in Murphy was growing and needed to relocate into a larger building with more land that allowed the church to expand its facilities. The church located the land they wanted to purchase and finally found a buyer for their current church property. Everything was going smoothly until it was time for the sale to go through. That is when the church made an important discovery.
The church was an old, established church with roots going back as far as the American Revolution. The deed for the church’s land was an ancient document—and evidently churches did business differently a few centuries ago. According to the deed, the church property was owned by “The Lord God Almighty.” Therefore, the church could not legally sell the property until The Lord God Almighty signed the contract.
The church leaders did not know what to do. They sought the counsel of a local judge. The church leaders were surprised to find that there was a very simple solution to their otherwise complex problem.
The judge recommended for the church to place an advertisement in the Public Notice section of the county newspaper. The ad had to run for two weeks and read “If The Lord God Almighty has any interest in the Murphy Baptist Church, he should appear at the courthouse on or before April 15.”
As you can imagine, The Lord God Almighty never appeared in the courthouse. So, the church had to place a second ad in the Public Notices. “After a thorough and diligent search, The Lord God Almighty cannot be found in Cherokee County, NC and no longer shows any interest in the Murphy Baptist Church. Therefore the property reverts to the deacons.”
Certainly this is an extreme example of a church searching for The Lord God Almighty. Surely the church knows where to find The Lord God Almighty. Surely Christian men and women know where to find The Lord God Almighty. What about you? Do you know where to find The Lord God Almighty?
As I thought about what to preach on the first Sunday of 2011, several ideas came to my mind. I thought about preaching on New Year’s Resolutions. After all, this is the time of the year when we make promises to ourselves that life will be better in the new year. I also thought about preaching about new beginnings. After all, the beginning of a new year brings us the promise that all things can be made new.
However, I think we can combine these two ideas into one. I can think of no better way to begin a new year than to say this will be the year that I listen to God. I can think of no better New Year’s Resolution than to promise ourselves that we will listen to God.
II. Listen.
Two of the most foundational questions about God are: How can I search for God? How can I know what God wants for my life?
For non-Christian men and women, these questions are the starting point for a life-long faith journey.
For the Christian man or woman, these questions lead us to discipleship and growth. We will never reach a point in our lives when we will have all the answers about God. AND we should never reach a point that we feel satisfied with our relationship with God. We should always have a desire to grow closer to God and to search for God.
There is an interesting thing about searching for God. There is no clear-cut formula or program for finding God. I can’t stand up here on a Sunday morning and give you all the answers about God. But I can tell you a couple of things with absolute certainty.
First, God is searching for you. If you are not a Christian, God is searching for you. If you have been a Christian for several years, God is searching for you. It doesn’t matter how close to God you might feel. You may be living in rebellion right now, running away from God…But God is searching for you. You may be at the highest point of your spiritual life…But God is searching for you.
Second, I can tell you with certainty, that if you are searching for God, God wants you to find him. AND, God will help you find him. If you search for God, God will find you.
When we read the Bible, we read the history of men and women who searched for God and found God. We read the history of God who searched for men and women and found them. And by reading these stories, we make a remarkable discovery about finding God. The men and women of the Bible found God with their ears. They listened…And they heard God.
Listening is so important to our relationship with God that it even shows up in the Ten Commandments. The First Commandment says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” The Second Commandment says, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”
Here is an important lesson from the Old Testament…God has never revealed himself in images or idols. God has only revealed himself by his Word. God is not something to be seen and held and touched. God is a Person who longs for you to share in a relationship and speaks words that you can hear.
So, this is our starting point…If we want to search for God and to be found by God, then we must search with our ears. We must listen.
Read 1 Samuel 3: 1 – 21.
Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was desperate for a child. She promised God that if God would give her a child, she would give that child back to God to be used in his service. When Samuel was born, Hannah kept her promise by giving the young boy to Eli, the priest.
We don’t know much about Samuel’s childhood…We sort of lose track of him until he becomes a young man helping out in the sanctuary, being trained for a lifetime of service before the LORD.
In the story, we learn about one of Samuel’s jobs in the sanctuary. He had to stay close to the “Lamp of God” and make sure that the flame never went out, 24 hours a day. It was while Samuel was obediently tending to the “Lamp of God” that Samuel first heard God speak to him personally.
I can imagine what happened to Samuel was not that different than what happens to us when something wakes us up in the middle of a deep sleep. Samuel was jolted awake by the sound of a voice that shattered the silence. I imagine Samuel sat straight up in the bed…It took him a couple of seconds to process what he heard. When he realized it was someone calling his name, Samuel ran immediately into Eli’s room and said, “Here I am.”
Why do you think Samuel ran into Eli’s room? I think it’s because he heard a voice and Eli was the only other person in the house. Stop and think about how sad that statement is. Samuel and Eli were sleeping in the sanctuary—the House of the Lord…And Samuel thought Eli was the only other person there. It didn’t occur to him that God was there too!
At first, Samuel did not recognize this as God’s voice. Of course, we can’t really blame Samuel, because the Bible says that “in those days, the Word of the LORD was rare.” I’m not sure that anyone else would have recognized God’s voice either.
When Samuel finally discerned that this was indeed God’s voice, he listened and obeyed. He obeyed, even though he had the difficult responsibility of delivering a message of God’s judgment against the most powerful family in Israel…Eli, the Priest, and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas…
Eli and his sons were facing judgment because they were using the priesthood to commit sins against God and the people. They had sinned against God by abandoning the biblical guidelines for worship and sacrifice that God had given to Moses. They had sinned against the people by demanding that the people give them more than the priest’s rightful share of meat. In fact, they were keeping for themselves the choice cuts of meat that were intended for God. And God held Eli responsible for the sins of his sons, because he knew it was going on and refuse to stop it. The saddest part of the story is the way the Bible described Eli…He loved his sons more than he loved God.
But Samuel was a different kind of young man. On one hand, we witness the sinfulness of the priest and his sons. On the other hand, we witness the innocence of young Samuel. We see a contrast between the rebellion of Eli and the obedience of Samuel. While Eli and his sons ignored God’s voice, Samuel listened and obeyed.
If we want to be like Samuel and hear a message from God…Then we ought to search for God like Samuel searched for God…
III. Put Yourself in the Right Position to Hear God’s Voice.
Now I don’t mean that you need to sit in the Lotus Position, with your legs twisted together and your hands in the air in order to hear God…I mean that you need to be aware of where you are in life…Where you are affects how well you are able to hear (or not to hear) God’s voice…
Look at verses 2 and 3…Notice where Samuel was…He was in the Temple of the Lord, in the room where the Ark of God was…
There are two important lessons we can draw from this…
First…Samuel was in the presence of God…The Israelites believed that God rested on the kippur or the Mercy Seat on the top of the Ark of the Covenant…Therefore, we can see that Samuel was in the presence of God…In the NT, we don’t believe that God is contained in the Temple…We believe that through the Holy Spirit, God can be present anywhere…But remember Jesus’ words to his disciples in Matthew 18…Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am with you…I don’t care how much you like nature, fishing, hunting, your family, etc…You are more likely to hear a word from God when you are in church—gathered in the name of Jesus—than in a deer stand or fishing boat or golf course or in the bed or on the baseball / soccer field…
Second…We see Samuel performing his daily responsibility tending the Flame of God…God had commanded that the Flame never go out…Someone was responsible… Someone had to obey God and follow his plan… Samuel heard God when he was obedient…
It is important for us to remember that God has always spoken in a “still, small voice”…And God has never shouted, screamed, or otherwise raised his voice for us to hear…Notice that Eli did not hear God’s voice…That is because Eli was not in God’s will…When we are disobedient and outside of God’s will, it is virtually impossible to hear God’s “still, small voice”…
IV. Let God Do the Talking.
Look at verse 10…When Samuel finally recognized that God was talking to him, he answered, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
This is not what you and I normally say to God…We usually say something like, “Listen, Lord, for I have something important to say”…OR… “Listen, Lord, for I have something I need you to do for me.” When we do this, we actually make two mistakes…
First…We think we have something to say that is more important than anything God can say…This is the wrong attitude…Samuel approached God with humility…As a servant… Willing to do anything God wanted him to do…
Second…We talk so much that we miss what God is saying…Recently, I tried to give directions to a friend who would not stop talking and listen to what I was trying to say…I was the one who knew where she was going…I had driven the route before…If she had listened to the directions instead of talking, she wouldn’t have had to call us on her cell phone, five minutes down the road…
If prayer really is communication, then prayer involves two people engaging in two different activities…Speaking and Listening…In true prayer, God speaks and listens…In true prayer, we are supposed to speak and listen…
I think this is a common mistake for many of us when we read the Bible. We sometimes read the Bible to learn information. We can name the Ten Commandments, the 12 Disciples, the healing stories from the Gospels, the missionary destinations of Paul. But do we let God speak to our hearts and shape us spiritually.
There are basically two ways for us to think about the Bible: Sourcebook for Information…and…Source for Spiritual Nourishment.
Information is for your Brain…Nourishment is for your Life…
When was the last time you read a short verse or passage of Scripture, then prayed, “God, what are you saying to me through this Scripture?”
I want to challenge you today…Don’t try to read the entire book of Isaiah in your quiet time tomorrow…Take 10 minutes…Read a short Scripture, close your eyes, and pray, “God, what are you saying to me through this Scripture?” Then sit in silence for just 5 minutes and listen for God. I promise you that you will be surprised. It’s just that simple.
V. Pay Attention to What God Is Saying.
Look at verses 11 – 14…The Word of God that came to Samuel that night was not something that Samuel wanted to hear…God spoke a word of judgment against Eli and his sons…Samuel couldn’t make it up for himself and he couldn’t change the message…He had to take God’s Word as it is…As it came to him…The same thing goes for us today…
God has spoken to his people…God has given you a message that is meant just for you…You cannot make up God’s Word…You cannot change God’s Word…And the Bible is God’s Word…
VI. Conclusion.
God is speaking to you today…Are you listening? If you never open God’s Word and read the Bible…Then it will seem that God is silent…
Let's make 2011 the year we search for God. If we search for God, God will find us.
1 Samuel 3: 1 – 21.
I. Introduction.
One of my former seminary professors—Chip Conyers—loved to tell a story about Murphy, NC—located in Cherokee County. I don't know if this is a true story, but since it was told by one of my theology professors...I am inclined to believe it.
The Baptist church in Murphy was growing and needed to relocate into a larger building with more land that allowed the church to expand its facilities. The church located the land they wanted to purchase and finally found a buyer for their current church property. Everything was going smoothly until it was time for the sale to go through. That is when the church made an important discovery.
The church was an old, established church with roots going back as far as the American Revolution. The deed for the church’s land was an ancient document—and evidently churches did business differently a few centuries ago. According to the deed, the church property was owned by “The Lord God Almighty.” Therefore, the church could not legally sell the property until The Lord God Almighty signed the contract.
The church leaders did not know what to do. They sought the counsel of a local judge. The church leaders were surprised to find that there was a very simple solution to their otherwise complex problem.
The judge recommended for the church to place an advertisement in the Public Notice section of the county newspaper. The ad had to run for two weeks and read “If The Lord God Almighty has any interest in the Murphy Baptist Church, he should appear at the courthouse on or before April 15.”
As you can imagine, The Lord God Almighty never appeared in the courthouse. So, the church had to place a second ad in the Public Notices. “After a thorough and diligent search, The Lord God Almighty cannot be found in Cherokee County, NC and no longer shows any interest in the Murphy Baptist Church. Therefore the property reverts to the deacons.”
Certainly this is an extreme example of a church searching for The Lord God Almighty. Surely the church knows where to find The Lord God Almighty. Surely Christian men and women know where to find The Lord God Almighty. What about you? Do you know where to find The Lord God Almighty?
As I thought about what to preach on the first Sunday of 2011, several ideas came to my mind. I thought about preaching on New Year’s Resolutions. After all, this is the time of the year when we make promises to ourselves that life will be better in the new year. I also thought about preaching about new beginnings. After all, the beginning of a new year brings us the promise that all things can be made new.
However, I think we can combine these two ideas into one. I can think of no better way to begin a new year than to say this will be the year that I listen to God. I can think of no better New Year’s Resolution than to promise ourselves that we will listen to God.
II. Listen.
Two of the most foundational questions about God are: How can I search for God? How can I know what God wants for my life?
For non-Christian men and women, these questions are the starting point for a life-long faith journey.
For the Christian man or woman, these questions lead us to discipleship and growth. We will never reach a point in our lives when we will have all the answers about God. AND we should never reach a point that we feel satisfied with our relationship with God. We should always have a desire to grow closer to God and to search for God.
There is an interesting thing about searching for God. There is no clear-cut formula or program for finding God. I can’t stand up here on a Sunday morning and give you all the answers about God. But I can tell you a couple of things with absolute certainty.
First, God is searching for you. If you are not a Christian, God is searching for you. If you have been a Christian for several years, God is searching for you. It doesn’t matter how close to God you might feel. You may be living in rebellion right now, running away from God…But God is searching for you. You may be at the highest point of your spiritual life…But God is searching for you.
Second, I can tell you with certainty, that if you are searching for God, God wants you to find him. AND, God will help you find him. If you search for God, God will find you.
When we read the Bible, we read the history of men and women who searched for God and found God. We read the history of God who searched for men and women and found them. And by reading these stories, we make a remarkable discovery about finding God. The men and women of the Bible found God with their ears. They listened…And they heard God.
Listening is so important to our relationship with God that it even shows up in the Ten Commandments. The First Commandment says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” The Second Commandment says, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”
Here is an important lesson from the Old Testament…God has never revealed himself in images or idols. God has only revealed himself by his Word. God is not something to be seen and held and touched. God is a Person who longs for you to share in a relationship and speaks words that you can hear.
So, this is our starting point…If we want to search for God and to be found by God, then we must search with our ears. We must listen.
Read 1 Samuel 3: 1 – 21.
Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was desperate for a child. She promised God that if God would give her a child, she would give that child back to God to be used in his service. When Samuel was born, Hannah kept her promise by giving the young boy to Eli, the priest.
We don’t know much about Samuel’s childhood…We sort of lose track of him until he becomes a young man helping out in the sanctuary, being trained for a lifetime of service before the LORD.
In the story, we learn about one of Samuel’s jobs in the sanctuary. He had to stay close to the “Lamp of God” and make sure that the flame never went out, 24 hours a day. It was while Samuel was obediently tending to the “Lamp of God” that Samuel first heard God speak to him personally.
I can imagine what happened to Samuel was not that different than what happens to us when something wakes us up in the middle of a deep sleep. Samuel was jolted awake by the sound of a voice that shattered the silence. I imagine Samuel sat straight up in the bed…It took him a couple of seconds to process what he heard. When he realized it was someone calling his name, Samuel ran immediately into Eli’s room and said, “Here I am.”
Why do you think Samuel ran into Eli’s room? I think it’s because he heard a voice and Eli was the only other person in the house. Stop and think about how sad that statement is. Samuel and Eli were sleeping in the sanctuary—the House of the Lord…And Samuel thought Eli was the only other person there. It didn’t occur to him that God was there too!
At first, Samuel did not recognize this as God’s voice. Of course, we can’t really blame Samuel, because the Bible says that “in those days, the Word of the LORD was rare.” I’m not sure that anyone else would have recognized God’s voice either.
When Samuel finally discerned that this was indeed God’s voice, he listened and obeyed. He obeyed, even though he had the difficult responsibility of delivering a message of God’s judgment against the most powerful family in Israel…Eli, the Priest, and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas…
Eli and his sons were facing judgment because they were using the priesthood to commit sins against God and the people. They had sinned against God by abandoning the biblical guidelines for worship and sacrifice that God had given to Moses. They had sinned against the people by demanding that the people give them more than the priest’s rightful share of meat. In fact, they were keeping for themselves the choice cuts of meat that were intended for God. And God held Eli responsible for the sins of his sons, because he knew it was going on and refuse to stop it. The saddest part of the story is the way the Bible described Eli…He loved his sons more than he loved God.
But Samuel was a different kind of young man. On one hand, we witness the sinfulness of the priest and his sons. On the other hand, we witness the innocence of young Samuel. We see a contrast between the rebellion of Eli and the obedience of Samuel. While Eli and his sons ignored God’s voice, Samuel listened and obeyed.
If we want to be like Samuel and hear a message from God…Then we ought to search for God like Samuel searched for God…
III. Put Yourself in the Right Position to Hear God’s Voice.
Now I don’t mean that you need to sit in the Lotus Position, with your legs twisted together and your hands in the air in order to hear God…I mean that you need to be aware of where you are in life…Where you are affects how well you are able to hear (or not to hear) God’s voice…
Look at verses 2 and 3…Notice where Samuel was…He was in the Temple of the Lord, in the room where the Ark of God was…
There are two important lessons we can draw from this…
First…Samuel was in the presence of God…The Israelites believed that God rested on the kippur or the Mercy Seat on the top of the Ark of the Covenant…Therefore, we can see that Samuel was in the presence of God…In the NT, we don’t believe that God is contained in the Temple…We believe that through the Holy Spirit, God can be present anywhere…But remember Jesus’ words to his disciples in Matthew 18…Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am with you…I don’t care how much you like nature, fishing, hunting, your family, etc…You are more likely to hear a word from God when you are in church—gathered in the name of Jesus—than in a deer stand or fishing boat or golf course or in the bed or on the baseball / soccer field…
Second…We see Samuel performing his daily responsibility tending the Flame of God…God had commanded that the Flame never go out…Someone was responsible… Someone had to obey God and follow his plan… Samuel heard God when he was obedient…
It is important for us to remember that God has always spoken in a “still, small voice”…And God has never shouted, screamed, or otherwise raised his voice for us to hear…Notice that Eli did not hear God’s voice…That is because Eli was not in God’s will…When we are disobedient and outside of God’s will, it is virtually impossible to hear God’s “still, small voice”…
IV. Let God Do the Talking.
Look at verse 10…When Samuel finally recognized that God was talking to him, he answered, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
This is not what you and I normally say to God…We usually say something like, “Listen, Lord, for I have something important to say”…OR… “Listen, Lord, for I have something I need you to do for me.” When we do this, we actually make two mistakes…
First…We think we have something to say that is more important than anything God can say…This is the wrong attitude…Samuel approached God with humility…As a servant… Willing to do anything God wanted him to do…
Second…We talk so much that we miss what God is saying…Recently, I tried to give directions to a friend who would not stop talking and listen to what I was trying to say…I was the one who knew where she was going…I had driven the route before…If she had listened to the directions instead of talking, she wouldn’t have had to call us on her cell phone, five minutes down the road…
If prayer really is communication, then prayer involves two people engaging in two different activities…Speaking and Listening…In true prayer, God speaks and listens…In true prayer, we are supposed to speak and listen…
I think this is a common mistake for many of us when we read the Bible. We sometimes read the Bible to learn information. We can name the Ten Commandments, the 12 Disciples, the healing stories from the Gospels, the missionary destinations of Paul. But do we let God speak to our hearts and shape us spiritually.
There are basically two ways for us to think about the Bible: Sourcebook for Information…and…Source for Spiritual Nourishment.
Information is for your Brain…Nourishment is for your Life…
When was the last time you read a short verse or passage of Scripture, then prayed, “God, what are you saying to me through this Scripture?”
I want to challenge you today…Don’t try to read the entire book of Isaiah in your quiet time tomorrow…Take 10 minutes…Read a short Scripture, close your eyes, and pray, “God, what are you saying to me through this Scripture?” Then sit in silence for just 5 minutes and listen for God. I promise you that you will be surprised. It’s just that simple.
V. Pay Attention to What God Is Saying.
Look at verses 11 – 14…The Word of God that came to Samuel that night was not something that Samuel wanted to hear…God spoke a word of judgment against Eli and his sons…Samuel couldn’t make it up for himself and he couldn’t change the message…He had to take God’s Word as it is…As it came to him…The same thing goes for us today…
God has spoken to his people…God has given you a message that is meant just for you…You cannot make up God’s Word…You cannot change God’s Word…And the Bible is God’s Word…
VI. Conclusion.
God is speaking to you today…Are you listening? If you never open God’s Word and read the Bible…Then it will seem that God is silent…
Let's make 2011 the year we search for God. If we search for God, God will find us.
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