Untitled Sermon (24)

Northside Church

Relationship with our community: Serving and sharing

Jamey Mills

Good morning!!! My name is Jamey Mills and I’m the lead pastor here at Northside Church.

We are in our 3rd week of our series, sort of unpacking what Northside is all about.

We’ve talked about how Jesus came to give us life to the full and how there is wisdom… in knowing and leaning into the reality that the one who created life… has wisdom on where real and abundant life is found…

We’ve talked about how there are often a lot of similarities in how we come to know Jesus… and even how we grow within that relationship…

God often uses people… just like you… in the lives of others. In my experience I’d tell you I think it's probably at least 90% of the time.

And… while there are many ways and things that can help us grow in our relationship with God… it does seem like 4-5 continually rise to the top in playing a large role in our spiritual growth…

Time in the word

Prayer

Attending Church

Small group community

Serving others

And that… really is how Northside has developed its strategy… how and why we do what we do.

And we really do think that investing in three key relationships is incredibly important…

The 3C’s

Relationship with Christ

Relationship with His Church

Relationship with our Community

We’ve talked about how balance and consistency in these things matter. Each of these play a role in our growth and development.

If you spend time in theWord once a month, it’s probably safe to not expect the same impact and growth as someone who is doing it everyday.

There are some who the last thing they need is another Bible study… What they need is to engage in serving people.

Or there are some who don’t need another thing to do at the Church, but what they need is to take a step when it comes to spending time in the Word.

Is God asking me to spend time in the Word, to a deeper prayer life, join a small group or a service team or any of the other things we talked about… and if something begins to stick out… to follow through with it.

Which brings me to what we’re talking about today…

Years ago I heard a story about this newly appointed general who was assigned to a base that he had never been before… and as he arrived he was given a tour and met the other high ranking officers before finally settling into his office where he’d spend the majority of his time. A week or so into the job, he looked up and saw a young private making his way across the lawn headed toward his office, and he was carrying a tool box… and without much thought… and wanting to make a lasting impression he quickly picked up the phone and put it up against his head and as the young walked in he said...

“And you too Mr. President, give your wife our best and we are looking forward to dinner this weekend as well… but I have to run, someone just stepped in”.

With that he put the phone down, stuck out his chest as if to say, what do you think about that… He turned to the young man and said… and what can I do for you…

The young man shyly smirked and said… sir, I am just here to hook up your phone.

Need to get away? Right… I mean how do you recover from something like that… “I know”... but there are some lessons for us in that…

Knowing when it's time to change your career.

Trying to be something you're not never goes well.

LASTLY…

Communication without connection doesn’t work.

That dude could have talked on his phone all day… but until its connected, he’s just blowing hot air.

And today as we talk about what it means to invest in our relationship with our community… I think that's something to think about.

When it comes to our 3rd C… Relationship with our community…

What Kind of relationship is God’s Church supposed to have in the community we live in?

It reminds me of something we see in Jeremiah…

Just to set the stage a bit… Judah had watched Israel get uprooted by the Assyrian army… God has used the Assyrian army to bring humility and discipline to Israel who had turned their back on God… it was a fate that Judah narrowly escaped because they decided to listen to God’s prophet Isaiah.

If you’ve read the Bible… you’ve come to this conclusion…

Actually if you’ve paid attention in life you’ve learned it too….

LIFE GOES BETTER when we learn from the mistakes of others.

But even though they had watched Israel fall, they now were walking the same path of rebellion and idolatry.

And God is about to humble Judah in a very similar way. The Babylonian empire was on the rise… they overthrew the Assyrians and the Egyptians and with them… Judah.

It says that the Babylonians packed up the strongest, smartest and most skilled people from Judah and shipped them to Babylon where they were forced to live in exile…

And for those who remained in Judah, it was bad. They watched the complete destruction of everything they knew and loved… the families, homes, their palaces and even the place they met with God… was reduced to rubble… and the holy things within it… hauled away to Babylon.

So, there they were… many of their loved ones shipped away, they were poor and tortured… some were executed and they were starving as food ran out… and it really was the worst living conditions imaginable…

Every time I study this stuff I am blown away at how easily we forget to be thankful for the big things that we so often treat as little things…

It was all gone… just like that.

And even to this day, archeologists are finding evidence that what we are talking about today isn’t some made up story… this really happened… and once again they are amazed at just how accurate the Bible is with what they are finding.

And sure enough Babylon followed the path of many world powers that preceded them.

The rise to power and influence meant the decline of morality… and the collapse was so great that their very name became synonymous with immorality. “They had a crazy infatuation with self-centered indulgence… that was polluted by the grossest and most shameless lust”… is the way one author put it.

Those who were taken to Babylon did fare a little better, they weren’t in prison or under house arrest… but can you imagine what it must have been like to walk the streets… knowing what they did to you, your family, your countrymen...

And in Babylon, it says several false prophets rose up… and began to tell the people of Judah what they wanted to hear… one of them was Hananiah… who told Judah that God had said… within two years they and all that was taken from the temple would be returned to Jerusalem…

Jeremiah had this reputation as a sort of miserable prophet…

He had the had job of speaking God’s truth to a group of people that never listened…

He didn't tell them what they wanted to hear…

And even in the midst of their rebellion to God and the brokenness and hardship it caused him… as a person… he still loved them and was motivated by God's love and truth… to tell them what it is God sent Him to say.

Jeremiah ended up confronting Hananiah, in Jer. 28:15 he reminds Hananiah that God did non send him… and that for some reason the people have believed him and we learn that he ended up paying dearly for his lies.

Here is what Jeremiah (who was in Judah) sent to his people that were in Babylon.

Jeremiah 29:4–7 (NLT)

Jeremiah 29:4–7 NLT

This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

4 This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: 5 “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. 6 Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! 7 And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

Can you imagine how Jeremiah’s words must have sounded? That is so hard for me to wrap my head around… after all that happened… your people… your homes… and even your Church… and…at the hands of those whose very name became a phrase used for massive immorality…

I mean surely they must have had these feelings of… but I don’t belong here…

There bad people… they aren’t kind… they don’t have the same values I do…

The truth is… we have more in common than I’d like to admit.

We live within a decaying world and culture… it is broken… and like every work power before us, it's becoming more complicated and complacent and immoral… losing sight of what we really need… because at times… it feels like we really don’t need anything beyond ourselves.

It reminds me of what we read in 1 Peter 2:11–12 (NLT)

1 Peter 2:11–12 NLT

Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.

11 Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. 12 Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.

And we are also… foreigners. Peter is reminding us that our home is heaven… that we are created for and belong with God and in His presence… and just like Jeremiah,

Peter is telling us to live with intentionality and purpose.

… purposefully…

What I hear is… be faithful and serve… work for the good… right where you're at. Wherever God has you.

And Peter tells us not to get sucked into the culture… the worldly desires of it that wage war on our very souls… the life taking things we have been talking about like…

The sexualization of children… massive identity issues that are robbing us of life… greed, pride, selfishness, addiction, lust…

But instead, living with such intentionality… that even if they accuse or treat us unfairly, they can so clearly see Jesus in us that they end up acknowledging and honoring Him themselves.

I can’t even imagine what it must have sounded like when Jeremiah told them to settle in… to not simply tolerate it… but to pray for… invest in… and work toward the health and welfare of the city… and did you catch what vs. 7 said…. “The City where I sent you”.

Jeremiah told them to pray for, invest in, and work toward the health and welfare of the city where I SENT you.

They were a SENT PEOPLE

… I’m willing to bet they didn't feel sent.

Sent… into the moral armpit of the world at that time… they were sent… to pray for and impact that culture… by living intentionally…

One author I read on this said… what if God’s way of changing a city was at least in part… His people live intentionally in their coming and going.

In Matthew 5… Jesus tells us… to be salt the salt of the earth and the light of the world… and that is, exactly what I think Jeremiah and Peter’s point is…

That as we set up shop in a culture that is far from God… we play the role that salt and light play… we give off the flavor of God’s love and grace… and preserve His truth… and we show people the way to Jesus… by the way that we live, treat them, and care for others.

Jesus calls us to fight differently… to battle differently.

And I believe that is true for us today… that

God calls us to impact our culture not by winning arguments, but by living intentionally

… by putting in a good word for Jesus with our attitude, actions, and watching for opportunities to speak His love and HIS grace into the world that needs it desperately.

And it reminds me of what we read in… 2 Corinthians 5:17–20 (NLT)

2 Corinthians 5:17–20 NLT

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”

17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”

We are a sent people

… sent by God to be His representation… to be His hands and feet… to the world around us. As God makes His appeal through us which is what? Come back to God.

God told them through Jeremiah to build homes, to plant gardens, to work toward and pray for the peace, health, welfare of the city in which God placed them.

And so my question is what does that look like for us…

To be honest I am not interested in attending a church let alone leading a church that is not committed to this. I really believe that we are a sent people… by God… to care about… invest in… pray for… work toward the health… the peace… and well being of this great city we live in.

And just like the story we talked about earlier… we need to realize that

Communication without connection… just doesn't work.

God was not calling Judah to just endure it… and he is not calling us to simply exist here… either.

QR picture

What are the needs or areas of brokenness you see in this community?

What are the hurts you see inside of this community?

Where do you see that we, as His hands and feet step in and make a meaningful difference in life giving ways?

How can you personally engage?

And I really do hope that resonates in us… that we feel the responsibility… passion and compassion… that Jesus felt when He walked the face of the earth… set the example of what it means to love well… to serve well… to care deeply… to speak truth in life giving ways for those that were different, hurting, lost and alone… and by God’s grace so will we. It’s a big part of what it means to follow Him.

Serving others… costs us. It’s supposed to.

It involves sacrifice on our part… for the good of others.

Investing in our relationship with Christ….

Sharing our story

Serving our community/world

Regardless of what Forest Gump did… the answer isn’t found on a bumper sticker… t shirt or with a blow horn…

Instead… following Jesus’ example.

Jesus got involved…

He sat with the women at the well, he touched the leper, He ate with the outcast... motivated by truth, love, and the desire for people to experience all that God had for them… Jesus got involved.

He never withheld truth… but his aim was always restoration… and reconciliation.

And it is so easy for us to feel underqualified, like we don’t know enough… or maybe in our heads it seems like this “event” that is just socially awkward…

But I think it's more about living intentionally.

Most of us… had someone else that played a role that led us to Jesus.

What if they had not.

This concept is out there…

But here is the gist of it…

Prayer

Care

Share

Who are you praying for by name that needs to know Jesus… Prayer is powerful. Pray for them, their family, their health, for an opportunity to share… Praying daily for someone is one of the best ways we begin to engage with living intentionality.

Note card as a reminder… where you see it…

Care

Be a good neighbor… a good co worker… a good friend… spend time.. Invite… be interested in who they are, what they’ve been through, their joys and aches… listen to them.

Ask questions… eventually… they will start asking questions too.

What do you do for a living…

Share

Look for opportunities to share your story… the difference that Jesus has made in your life… Be ready to share it… write it out now… keep it short.

Look for ways to share the reality of God’s truth, morality, values, love and grace… These things are so obviously needed in our world and I really believe that people are looking for them.

What a horrible thing it would be… if Northside fell off the face of the earth… and the community didn’t even notice.

I really believe we need to step up in this area…

And I don't want to preach a sermon like this without time to respond…

My friend Dan is going to help us shift to communion…

And as you take communion… I want us to pause and think about the difference Jesus has made… in us.

I want us to think about those we know that are outside of a relationship with Jesus and pray for them right now.

I want us to think about… ways we as people and we as a church can engage in our community in life giving… truth finding ways.

I want us to consider what it means to live intentionally.

You are sent… If you know Jesus… your are sent…

And he calls to pray for… fight for… work for… the good of the city.

Why… because it's full of people He created in His image…

I don’t believe a City like ALbany becomes an even better place by sitting on the sidelines.

Pray

Dan