Danger of a Reduction

When Covid Lockdowns started my tv viewing went next level

Instead of sports highlights I spent 3 days watching antiques roadshow highlights

I am not proud of it but it happened

People bring in items from their house they think have some value and antique appraisers give them an estimate of what the item would get at an auction.

One episode a guy had a painting his grandparents gave him behind his front door where people hung hats and coats. It was nice as an entry way picture

He saw it, passed by it every day with no pause because

it was so familiar

It was from his great grandparents trip to Mexico in the early 1900’s so he brought it to the show.

Turns out his house warmer was a one of a kind of one of the first paintings of the most famous artist to ever come from Latin America.

Familiarity blinded him to the 1904 Diego Rivera oil painting worth more than he could imagine....just over 1 Million dollars

It had served the purpose he knew for it. But there was immeasurable more if he just looked

We do the same with the Bible

If you have been around church a while or are new to christian things theres a good chance you are inoculated by the familiarity of christianity and what you think it says

It goes something like this:

You have done bad things and should feel guilty. To deal with that guilt believe Jesus died for you and you can go to heaven

In between keep these rules

As my grandma told me “don’t smoke don’t drink don’t cuss don’t chew…and never go with girls who do”

That reduced message is void of the vibrance, dynamic, and depth

It seems far from the day to day human experience

So we think the familiar things have no meaning for my life in a world that isnt how its supposed to be

The Christian Message is the Message of restoration through the life death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus

His miracles are the vibrant, dynamic, treasure that gives the familiar new life

This is what defines our mission to restore the people and places of Greenville

We start in John 2 where restoration exploded on this earth

(1) Restored Joy

Jesus is at a Wedding

They have ran out of wine for the celebration

Wine was the sign of joy at a wedding and still is ….and joy has run out

Jesus turns ceremonial jars of water into wine

Think about this:

The creator of the double helix DNA strand……he could have done anything

And what does he do?

He restores joy

The Christian message is the message that joy can me tasted again

The opposite of joy is not unhappiness

The opposite of joy is sorrow, fear, guilt, anxiety, insecurity, darkness, and tears

This is the message: Christ came and became the man of sorrows so that we may know Joy

That means in our sorrow, anxiety, fear, we can know Joy again

We can taste it in this life and know a better message than I get a get out of hell free card if I don’t sin too bad

We have a sure hope that he has come to restore this very place

My favorite promise in all the bible about the restoration He has given us is in Hosea 2

God’s people are living a nightmare because of their choices

The thing they said they’d never do again they have done

The unfaithfulness the sad nights the hard conversations and God says this promise in Hosea 2

16 In that day—

this is the Lord’s declaration—

you will call me, “My husband,”

and no longer call me, “My Baal.”

17 For I will remove the names of the Baals

from her mouth;

That means that in Christ the day is coming where you won’t remember the name of the thing you can’t seem to stop, you won’t remember the regret the guilt the mistakes the funerals…that is the Christian message

It is sure because he has done it

He got up

He tasted sorrow and funerals and sickness for the joy set before Him

John 4:46 shows us another facet to the christian message

(2) Human Fragility

A young boy is on the verge of death

The desperate cries of a father come to the author fo life

This man is affluent, powerful, the world is his and yet human fragility comes to us all

The promises of progress, affluence, control, abandon us all because we are each and everyone fragile

No power or affluence could keep this powerful man from a world that isn't how it should be

Gates can’t keep sadness out even here…although I am pretty sure Trip and Judy keep giving me a defective clicker so I stay out

For us today you can crossfit and eat kale and play pretend it wont happen to me….but fragility comes for us all

The son did live but he would eventually still die.

Restoring our fragility came at a cosmic price

Fragility doesn’t get the last word

All Jesus says is, “Your Son will live.”

God is saying, “Your son will live, but My Son will have to die.”

TELL THE STORY ABOUT BAKER ….

That is the Christian Message

He chose ultimate fragility to conquer it

By His wounds we are healed

True Hope in our fragility is the Christian Message

(3) Chapter 5 opens with the next

A man cannot walk. But his pain is deeper than life he’s missed out on

Hes exposed to everyone who has passed kept on the outside

THe worst of him is on display to the world

Think of the great regret or baggage you have thinking if anyone knew this about me I would never be loved

Industries exist to display the perfect you

It’s what social media is all about

It's why I get a quinoa salad at the beach club instead of the burger and tots I really want

What if people know, what if they see? If they do I will be alone

Christ knows the worst of you and has set His affections on you before He created a thing to seek and save you

Restored Community is the Christian Message

The Christian Message is about restoration to true community

To be known and loved and be part of a radical countercultural community

It is not full of the best rule followers and the Jesus extroverts

it is first and foremost full of people like me who were saved by unmerited grace to see what I long for can only be satisfied in Him

The true church is full of people who are learning to long for the things that give life and will last forever

we are people who long for Him because we have tasted that His way is unlike any other

Brokenness has left him as an exile…an outsider

The one who holds every bone cell together made him new

We all long for community

We are made in the image of God who has existed forever in community

Damage has left us all on the outside

But the Son came as the ultimate exile.

Far from his heavenly home…cast outside the city to lose his ability to walk as his legs were nailed to a tree….

So we can be restored

That's the Christian Message

(4) Abundance where there is need bursts through in the next miracle

Desperate physical need ravages this world

Sickness, hunger, addiction, longings of heart and mind go unmet

In John Chapter 6 need is over powered by abundance

5000 men, not counting women and children, are fed in an overflow

What Christ proclaims is that emptiness is restored

A day is coming where there will be no need or longing

No ache from stomach or body or heart

On the Cross cried out in thirst..in the wilderness alone he cried out in hunger…in Gethsemane he knew abandonment

Jesus knew hunger and ache of heart so he can fill what is empty in us all

The 5th is awesome

(5) After the miracle of provision the disciples leave by boat

In John 6:16-21 - Chaos comes on them in the sea…

John says “Darkness had already set in, but Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 A high wind arose, and the sea began to churn”

Water represented the home of all that terrifies in ancient times

From the sea came all evil and all that has power to overtake you

It is the under the bed boogie man for grown ups

Your greatest fears

And Christ uses them as his footstool

This is the Peace of the christian message

It is the absence of all darkness, of all fear, of all chaos and what if’s

Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid” - there is no fear or anxiety in but only peace in Jesus’ presence.

We are familiar with Psalm 23…though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil

It is a shadow for us because evil and chaos were real for Him in His Valley

Swallowed up by the Prince of Peace

(6) Vision is restored to a blind man in John 9

We all have a way of seeing the world and answering the deepest questions

Who are we in this world, how can we be whole, how can all that is broken be mended, what is the good life ?

We all bet our life on some savior to get us there

The christian message announces that we can see for the first time the only true savior and the way to what we long for …

Paul wrote about us in Eph. 1:18, “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened”);

the inability to see Christ’s glory, see Jesus for who He is, see God, see others is our greatest need

Jesus continually tells people to repent during His earthly ministry

The word He uses is unique

In the Greek it is Metanoia

It is not the word for stop doing the No No’s

Metanoia means to change the way you see

Change the way you interpret your world and the human experience

He has come to give sight to the blind and restore us

We can see God through the Cross because on it the Father turned away from the son…As Christ cried out why have you forsaken me it was blinding darkness …

His dark blinding night of the soul so we can truly see

(7) The Chtistian message is the message of Life

John 11 records the most scandalous message we carry

death does not have the final word for those who call Him Lord

His friend Lazarous has died…his friends are weeping

Christ took account of the scene and it says in John 11:33 “33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you put him?” he asked.

“Lord,” they told him, “come and see.”

35 Jesus wept.

The language for deeply moved and troubled is the language of outrage he was outraged in spirit

It is the language used of a snorting and pulling horse

HE is outraged at what sin has done

Death is not his design and he hates it…it has enraged the Creator of Life

He hates what vandalism to His perfect canvas has done

He knows he cares and has done something about it

He paid for our restoration with His life..

On the Cross he paid the price of our sin…and in His resurrection he demonstrated to the Universe all that is promised has begun

It has already begun…Because He got up We will one day get up from the grave…

Death answers to Him

To show the watching world He has come to give life he tells Lazerus to come out

Do you know why He had to say Lazerus come out and not just come out?

Because at His voice if he had simply said come out every dead body on earth would have got up and walked to Him…

That is the Christian Message

In Christ when He calls your name you will know life as it was meant to be with Him

I close with this quote from Tim Keller

“Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?”13 The answer of Christianity to that question is—yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.”

So we work

That is the mission we carry out in a local place among a local people to reach teach and restore the people and places of Greenville

If you want to truly live cast your life on this Jesus. Let us show you from the Bible how to make Him Lord

Cast your life in the great redemptive drama unfolding around you every day…to Build His Kingdom