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Passion Around Purpose
June 8, 2008 Rev. William “Buck” Day
Philippians 2: 4-8
Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, But made himself nothing, taking the very nature of servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!
Thank you, task force. We appreciate that very much. Thanks for everyone’s hard work; and thank you for all of you for contributing and being a part of it. It is very much something that I think God will continue to use in our midst in the upcoming months. So we are going to talk a little bit about that right now, but I think it is appropriate that we go to God right now.
So, would you join me in prayer?
Jesus, we come to you today because we know that we are pretty hopeless and helpless on our own. So Lord, we come to you and we ask that you would help direct our time, direct our future, Lord God. And Lord, we ask that by your Holy Spirit you would do a great work amongst us; that every one of us would walk away different people when we get to the end of, not today, but the end of this process as we move forward Lord. So Lord I ask that you would have your way with us as your people. That is my prayer. So help us to think clearly, to dream big, and to see what you are leading us into. We ask that in your name, Jesus. Amen.
Well, Adoniram Judson graduated first in his class in the early 1800’s at Brown University. As a result of some tragedy in his life, he made a commitment to Christ and that commitment lead him to the mission field. He decided he wanted to be a missionary to India. So he set off with his new wife. Only, when he got to India, he couldn’t get into India. So what he did was he turned his sights to the next closest country, which happened to be Miramar, which Pat just prayed for today, also may be known as Burma. That is the country that has had the terrible cyclone that has so much trouble going on with it. It is the same country where Adoniram went to be a missionary so many years ago.
When he went to the country, it was almost 100% Buddhist. They had never heard of a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, that was just not something they had ever heard of before. So as he worked his way into the country, he believed and trusted that the best way to bring these people Jesus was to put the bible in their hands in their own language. So that is the work that he set out to do in his life. It took him three years just to learn the grammar of the Burmese people and it was another seven years before he finally baptized his first convert. Then in that process, at its heyday, his church consisted of fifteen adults and a few children. In that process as he gave himself to this translation and the work in Miramar, he watched two of his children die; he watched his wife die; he remarried twice and watched those two wives die. By the time he got to his mid-fifties, he had contracted tuberculosis, to the point that he went out to sea to try to get some relief and he died. He died at sea and was buried in the Indian Ocean.
You look at that and you go, “Was this worth it?” This man had a passionate drive, a passionate love for Jesus Christ, but what were the results? You might say the results were very few and the rewards were little. Yet, if you were to go today to Miramar and you were to ask a Christian there, they would show you their bible because he finished that translation. And they would probably show you that bible, maybe with tears in their eyes, and as you opened it there would probably be only one English sentence in it and it would say, “Translated by the Rev. A. Judson.”
You see, his translation was so good; it is still used some 175 years later. And by some accounts, there are over six million Christians in Miramar today, all who trace their spiritual heritage back to Rev. Judson.
All of us need to live with some kind of driving passion to guide our lives. Otherwise, our lives will quickly lose their value. That something, that purpose that is the focus of our passion, needs to be noble. It needs to be righteous if it is going to rally the support and the passion of others. That just has to happen. I thank God for men and women around the world, many of whom we will never know who are in countries all over the world; but we have to also say that are probably right next to us right now, who live in our community as well, who have chosen to live with a passion to bring the reality of Jesus Christ to this world; for there is no higher call. There is no higher call than to bring Jesus to reality in this world. Everyone who claims to be a Christian, everyone who claims Christ as Lord, is given that mandate by Jesus. For Jesus says in John 21, he says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” We are sent by God and this not a new idea. This is not an idea that Jesus just brought down to earth because it was something he thought would be good for his followers that would come after him and all of us today. No, this is not something that just appeared with Jesus. This is something that is at the very heart of who God is. It is a part of His very character. Our God is a sending God.
Stew last week referred to Abram and how Abram was sent by God. “Go to the country that I will show you and I will bless you so that you might be a blessing to others.” Scripture is full of stories of people who have been sent by God, people like Moses. Moses was sent, wasn’t he? How about David? How about the prophets? The seventy disciples were sent by Jesus. Barnabas was sent to this little bunch of Gentiles who were claiming Jesus as Lord in Antioch; Phillip was sent to the Eunuch; and Paul; and most importantly, Jesus himself. Jesus himself was also sent. Jesus was sent by the Father to earth.
That was part of our reading today that Pat read, from Philippians. Philippians is a story of the incarnation, how God came to earth in the form of Jesus. God is sending His Son to earth, did you hear that?...Sending His Son. That’s what it’s about. God sent His Son and Jesus understood that. Jesus understood that that was his role. That’s what he was to be about. He came to earth with a purpose. So by the time that he gets to the end of his life, as he is gathered with his disciples in the upper room, in John 17, he begins to pray for his disciples and all that would follow after him. In John 17, that is sometimes called the high priestly prayer, in that he says that he has glorified the Father by doing the work that the Father has given him to do. Then he says these powerful words. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world,” this is Jesus praying to the Father, “but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
The world is not our home folks. The world is not our home; and just as Jesus was sent into it, however, he now sends us into it as well. The scriptural messages are clear, that we as followers of Christ are to continue the work that Jesus started. We are to tell the world of God’s great love, for the world and the people and His love is unending. We are to show that love. We are to show that love as a reflection of who we are in Jesus. That’s what scripture tells us to do. Stew began to talk about how we do that, and some of the ways we can do that: by being transparent, by seeking reconciliation, by living a missional life, which we talked about as we talked about as living for others, living for others.
So if we begin to look at this statement, we begin to think of it in the scriptural mandate that God has given us, this idea of being sent. As we begin to do that, I want to start with a question. The question is: What is the very first line of the book, A Purpose Driven Life? The opening line of that book is “It is not about you.” It is not about you. You see, when Jesus was sent to the earth, it was not about him. It wasn’t about him. He was about bringing glory to the Father and doing what the Father had asked him to do, to be faithful to the Father’s will. That was the passion that drove Jesus. And that is the same for you and me. We are sent by Jesus to testify about Jesus. Another way to think about that is that our lives are to be the evidence of Christ’s reality to the world. The world will know we are his followers by… what?...by the love that we have for one another. We are to be the mark of Jesus to the world. That is what the world needs. That is God’s call on you and me, to be Jesus to this world.
And when we look at that, that is just a little sliver of that very first phrase – to follow Jesus Christ. That is just a small part of it. We are to be the mark of Jesus. When people look at us, they are supposed to see Jesus. They are supposed to understand who Jesus is by you and me.
So as we do those things, if we begin to live that out – showing Jesus to the world – that is not about us, is it? That is not about us. It embraces that idea of “blessed to be a blessing.” Anyone who calls Christ Lord has been blessed. Out of that blessing, we are to bless the world around us by living a life of serving others.
Now that is kind of our really tight-focused individual look. Let’s begin to pull the focus back a little now. Let’s focus back a little bit from the individual to the local church. As we do that I think the same thing can be said. The church is not there for itself. That may be a hard concept. That may be a new concept for you. That may be a very unsettling concept for you to begin to think about. The world is not here for ourselves. We are here to show Jesus to the world. Just as we have been sent into the world, the church, too, is sent into the world. No ifs, and, or buts. That is the scriptural message. The church does not exist for itself and its members. The church does not exist for us and for its members. It is to be an extension of God’s love to the world. That is who we are, that is who we are to be. Now if that is the goal, if that is the purpose of the church of Jesus Christ, to be a witness to the world, to show God’s love to the world, if that is the main thing, then we need some help getting there, don’t we? We need some help getting there. We need some training and some encouragement. Because we know that expressing God’s love is not easy. It is not easy. Do you remember in Jesus’ prayer, what does he say? He says, “Lord protect them from the evil one.” Why would he pray that?...because this world is not our home. This world is still ruled by the evil one. So as we go out into the world to try to give God’s love back to the world, guess what? We are going to take some shots across the bough. Jesus said, “As they hated me, they are going to hate you.” We need to know that going right out of the gate. So the church needs to be a place of encouragement, a place where we can be healed from the wounds of the shots that we take across the bough as we step out into the world; we come back; we get encouraged; we get healed; and then we go back out again. That is the encouragement piece.
There is also that training piece that is very important as part of the church, because we are to show God’s love to the world. That is really hard, isn’t it? …Because, to show God’s love to the world, “it is not about me.” We have a hard time loving because we are really self-centered people, the core of who we are. So we need to be trained. We need to be trained to learn how to love, how to love the world, because it doesn’t come naturally to us. So if we got the goal of moving out into the world, we need the under-girding of encouragement and training to help us get to that goal. That’s where things like worship, things like community, things like small groups, things like discipleship, things like prayer all come into play. They all need to be a part of that because those are all part of the functions of this training and encouragement that is so vital to be able to get us beyond ourselves. But the danger that most churches fall into is that they like the training. They like the encouraging. We enjoy being with each other, don’t we? We like being together. But because we spend so much time together, we get so inward that we forget what God has really called us to do; and that is to go out into the world. That’s what we are called to do. But we need this help to get there. But we get stuck in this inward-focused, “it’s all about me” mindset.
So, now wait a sec. We have been talking about some fairly heavy stuff not necessarily related to that. Now why would I do that? Why would I do that? Why would I do that on Vision Sunday when we are supposed to be talking about where we are going and, all right… Well simply said, I think if we just laid this statement out and said, “You know, this is a really good statement, let’s take it and run with it,” and we just let it hang out there, kind of be on its own, I think it would be like a lot of other good statements that are put together by churches that sound really nice but don’t really do much to move us forward. They don’t really help a whole lot. That is why I wanted to help set some context. Because when we begin to look at this statement in the context of Christ’s call on the church, then we begin to see how this statement might get lived out. We begin to see it in a different context. And my prayer is that we will begin to see the depth and the breadth of this statement, how wide and how deep this statement can go, when we understand it in the call of who we are and what we are supposed to be as God’s people. And the truth is that if we look at this statement, twenty minutes is not enough to unpack this statement. Twenty minutes is not enough to understand all the implications of what this means. We could do one of those Paul sermons, you know, where he preached all day into the night. I still don’t think that we would get it all; because I think that’s what this statement has when we look at it in this context of what Christ calls the church to be, particularly when we begin to consider it in the context of who we are in terms of our history here at Faith and even the size of who we are. We are not going to understand this in one day.
So that is why I wanted to lay this out for you and let you begin to live with it a little bit. To begin to think through it, to pray over it, to begin to process it, to get our heads around this statement, because as we do that, my prayer is that we will begin to see this in that big context.
As we begin to see it in that kind of a context in the fullness of who we are and where we are going, my prayer also then is for us to begin to see the realization of how far we have to go, how far we have to go. When we see it, then all of a sudden this statement becomes for us something that we want to realize at some point in the future. It becomes a goal for us. I think one of the beauties of this statement is that because it is a goal, it is a lofty goal when we consider it in the context of who we are and we consider the depth and the breadth of that statement. It is to use Pat’s words from a month a so ago, “It’s a BHAG.” It is a big hairy audacious goal. This is a big hairy audacious goal. This is a big thing and as a result it is not going to be easy to accomplish. I’ll tell you that right now. There is no way we can do it in and of ourselves. It is too big for humans to accomplish this in our own strength. It is going to require God’s supernatural activity in us and in this church in order to move this forward, to see this goal become a reality.
God needs to be in this. Otherwise, we are just wasting our time. We are just wasting our time. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste my time. There are too many other things we could be doing in this world. I don’t want to waste my time. I want to be about something big for God.
I think one of the other beauties of this goal is that it is just that. It is a goal. It is not a means. It doesn’t tell us how to get from where we are to this vision. That is yet to be determined by God working through us. That is where we are today, I think, is we are thinking, now what? Where do we go with this? So that is what I want to do in the next few minutes is just look at some of that.
One of the next steps here in this is for us to put together a group, a group that would be representative of who we are as a church. So it would probably be a couple elders, myself, and then people from the congregation that would represent all the different groups within our congregation. So it would be seniors. It would be students – students, hear that? I want to hear from you. We want you to be a part of this. Talking about young adults, we want them to be a part of this as well. And all those middle-aged folk like me, as well. So we are going to put together this group and part of the goal of this group is to chart a way for us from where we are to where we want to go. If we look at this as a goal, it is going to require that we get input from us here at Faith. So we are going to have opportunities for us to give more input into it. We started that with the survey and some other things, but we want to do some more things to make sure that we are all getting involved in this and living with it a little bit. So we are going to have more input from us as a church. But we are also going to go out into the community. We are going to go out and talk to the civic leaders, talk to school folks. We are going to say, “You know what, we want to be here to help you. What are you involved in? What do you need help with? And how can we help you?” Do you here in that language that “it is not about me?” It is not about me. So we are going to take that input from those places and we are going look and begin to build a strategy for us to move forward.
As we begin to think about that, that is no minor makeover is it? That is no minor makeover. It has the potential, and I use that word intentionally, it has the potential to completely reinvent who we are as a church. I say potential because it may or may not, depending on how we work and how well we listen to God. But because it has that potential, I will tell you right now it is not going to be easy. All the church experts that I read about say, you know what, trying to do what we are attempting to do is a long hard painful road for lots of reasons. One of the things that come up is that as we move through this process, there may be things we talk about as maybe, should we think about doing this? Or maybe even we say, we are going to do this at some point, and some of us may not like that. Some of us may be real unhappy with that, as well. So that is why we are going to talk about this. I want you to know that this group is not going to go off into a little smoky room, light some smoky candles, kind of do some stuff and then go, “Ta-daa.” It is not going to be done in a vacuum. It is going to be all of us kind of working together continuing to process this and live with it and think about it and pray over what the potential implications are. For this is what our session, and I believe God, is calling us to be as a church as we go forward. It is going to require great courage on our part. We are going to have to be courageous as we move forward under the mighty hand of God.
Alexander the Great despised cowardice at battle. One day a man was brought to him guilty of that crime, of cowardice. The great king from high above his throne looked down at the man and he said, “What is your name?” This man knew that Alexander the Great held his life in his hands, so he was petrified. He was shaking and he could barely even get out the word, “Alexander.” At which point Alexander the Great stood up from his throne, looked down at him and said, “What is your name?” At this point he is really frightened now. He could barely even get out the word, “Alexander.” So now the king steps down from his throne, looks at him one more time and he said, “What is your name?” He could barely get out above a whisper, “Alexander.” Then Alexander the Great looks at him and he shouts, “Change your conduct or change your name.”
May God bless us as we seek to live up to Christ’s name.
Let me give you a couple things that we can do as we walk out of here today; some things that we can be thinking about and doing as a people of Faith.
One is I think we need to pray. We need to pray for Faith Church, because, this is a big deal. We need to pray that God would have His way with us. That we would not usurp God; we would not come with our own agenda, our own kind of way of trying to make it happen. Pray for the humility of you and me as we move forward. Pray that we would live out “it is not about me.” It is not about me.
Secondly, search the scriptures. I trust God’s word, and so maybe for you this idea of the church not existing for itself is a brand new concept and it is not sitting real well with you right now. I want to invite you to look at scripture and say, “Are there examples of people or community that live for themselves in scripture and what happened to them? And also, vice versa, groups that lived for others and what happened to them?” What does it mean to be sent? Looking at that whole idea that God is a sending God, what do we learn from scripture from those who were sent?
Then thirdly, dream big. Dream big. Reflect on the depth of this statement. Think about the implications of this statement on Faith Church. What might we look like in terms of reaching out and really being that place that begins to bring Christ’s love to our world as we serve it? What would that really look like? What would that mean, what would that require of us? And if we are going to be really serious about that, then what does it mean for our training and for our encouragement? How do we get trained so we can go out and love the world? What does that mean for us? What does that look like? How do we encourage ourselves when we do come together?
Finally, a story. Vacation Bible School starts tomorrow. I want you to know that there are more children coming to Vacation Bible School tomorrow than there were one year ago. There are more children coming and there is room for more. That is one of the ways that we can bring Christ’s love to this world. I want you to know that there are some moms here among us who are taking that to heart, because they have been inviting their friends. They have been inviting their friends to bring their children to Vacation Bible School that they might be able to experience Jesus. That’s a wonderful thing. That’s really what it means to really begin to show Christ’s love to the world. I want to thank you moms, and hopefully there are some dads that have been doing it as well, for inviting your friends because that is as basic and simple as it is. It is saying, “You know what, we have this good thing going on. You might like it. Your kids might like it. Bring them along.” That’s as simple as it can be in terms of reaching out. We are not talking about standing on the corner, passing out four spiritual laws. O.K. We are talking about being transparent, being real and loving people so that they meet Jesus. That is what we are talking about. Amen. Amen.
Let’s read this statement together as God’s people.
To Follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, Be Filled with His Love, and Share His Abundant Grace with our Communities.
Continue to let that settle in folks and may God richly bless you as you do that. |
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