The Life You've Been Waiting For

Exodus 6:6–7 NIV

“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. 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.

Introduction

Recently Apple released the iPhone 15. How many of you are iPhone people?

I’m not going to ask a follow up to that…. Either you are and you aren’t and you aren’t, please don’t send me a blurry picture. I really am not interested.

But the release of the iPhone 15 had some Apple aficionado’s pretty disappointed.

You see, when the iPhone first released, they told us a story about why we needed this phone.

You can now story thousands of songs on your phone.

You can now take pictures that’s quality is so well you will throw away your disposable cameras.

You can edit a movie on your phone.

You can play a race car game and just by moving your phone like a steering wheel you can steer your car.

Apple gave you a compelling why. They were able to sell you on a phone and tell you why you needed this device that you didn’t know you needed.

And for those who follow the yearly keynotes, the disappointment with Apple was palpable.

Instead of telling you why you needed this new phone, they gave you the specs.

The processing chip is faster.

It’s durable.

It’s water resistant.

And as a friend told me after watching the keynote… they’ve lost their why. People don’t by phones for processing chips. They buy new phones because of a compelling why.

Transition

And somehow, similarly to how fans of Apple are feeling, I get the feeling that many churches have lost your why. I have the feeling that people who attend church have lost their why about coming to church. Why do I come here? Why do I join the mission of the church? Why does any of this matter?

Let’s get back to our text to find our answers.

The Text

We have been wrestling with this text, Exodus 6:6-7, and the Four “I Will’s” that God spoke over Israel.

The handles that we have been preaching from are here:

The Heartbeat of God

For the lost to be saved

For the saved to be pastored

For the pastored to be equipped

For the equipped to be mobilized

Today, we are going to unpack what it means for the equipped to be mobilized; or what we call in our house, to Make a Difference.

The Reframe

I want to start this off by helping you reframe your expectations of this church, and really, the Church. The Church at large.

For many of you here today, you have subscribed to this idea that church is the place that we go to so that we can partake in the things we need to do in order to get to heaven. The church is the conduit. It is here that we learn how to be good and if we are good and we do the right things, then we will get to go to heaven.

Now we probably arrived here for two reasons:

We grew up in a church that emphasized heaven and what we needed to do to get to heaven. We do things that get us access, and then we hit cruise control and we’ll get there when we get there.

A second reason for this you have for whatever reason come into an awareness of hell, and you don’t want to go there. So you do the things that you need to do in order to ensure that hell is not your final destination.

The problem with that, is that we are looking at an incomplete picture of God’s plans for humanity, one, and two, an incomplete picture of the Church.

So let me present to you this limited view, and what some have erroneously called the Gospel comes from:

Half Story

Fall -> Redemption

Christianity becomes just another faith system and not a world view

We are unable to influence the cultures of the world.

This half-story only emphasizes that we were born sinners and our focus is on getting ourselves and loved ones to heaven.

The Full Story of the Gospel is this:

Full Story

Creation -> Fall -> Redemption -> Restoration (Renewal)

Encompassing Worldview

Empowers us to Influence the Cultures of the World

The full story tells us that all of humanity was made in the image of God and made for a perfect environment (Eden), and through a perfect relationship with God to do God’s will here on the earth. Satan tempted humanity and through the fall of Adam and Eve, it separated us from our loving God. In the fulness of time, God sent his son Jesus to die as us. When he rose from the grave he redeemed us and we now have the privilege of joining God in the renewal of all things here on earth.

Do you see the contrast between the two?

If you subscribe simply to half of the story, you are spending your time simply waiting to get off of this planet and to get into heaven. But when you live the full story, you understand that we are made in God’s image and our purpose is to join God in the renewal of all things.

I Will Take You As My Own People...

Israel was not looking forward to heaven. I want you to look once more at the text with the lens of the full story...

“I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God...”

Notice that eternity is not on the mind of God. He is focused on the present.

God was wanting to take this people group who had spent the last 400 years in slavery and he wanted to give them a new identity.

Egypt called them slaves, but God called them sons.

And his plan wasn’t to get them out of Egypt and into heaven, he wanted to get them out of Egypt and into their own land.

Why? So that they could begin to influence the world around them and reveal to the cultures around them who God was.

Jesus Talked About the Kingdom

If we fast forward to the life of Jesus… He didn’t talk about Heaven as much as he talked about the Kingdom. Did he talk about heaven? Yes he did. He talked about going to prepare a place for us. But what was most of his focus on? The Kingdom of God.

He wanted His Kingdom to be evidenced in the life of his followers.

Luke 17:20–21 (NIV)

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

The original reading of that verse says, “the Kingdom of God is within you.”

What was Jesus saying?

When you become my people, and I become your God, people are going to look at you and see my Kingdom. They will see a people that is in this world, but not of this world.

We are not being influenced by culture, we are influencing culture.

We are people who have a covenant with our King

We have a narrative of being made in the image of a loving God

We don’t change our ethics based on the climate of the day, but we live our lives according to the way of Jesus

Though our Kingdom is invisible, make no mistake it is here! Because we trust in what is unseen more than we trust in what is seen.

And then there is the Church

We’ve looked at Israel and we’ve looked at Jesus, now let’s turn our attention to the Church, of which you are a part of.

The Church was always designed to be different. The Church is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.

The Lord said to Abraham that he would be the father of a people that could not be counted… and he wasn’t talking about Israel. He was talking about the Church.

Why?

Because Paul would write that Abraham’s covenant with God was established by faith and not by the law. We are saved not by the law, but by grace through faith.

We are the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham as the multi-ethnic, multi-generational people who have laid down the banners of their ethnicity and picked up the banner of the name of Jesus.

Though we are brown, black, or white, we are united by faith because of our allegiance to King Jesus.

And His desire for us was simple - tell the world about me!

Acts 1:8 (NIV)

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.”

This Is Your Story

Lighthouse, this is your story!

This is why we call you up and say, “Use your life to make a difference!”

This is not about strategy, systems or church growth, this is about doing the thing that God has called us to do. This is about becoming the people that he has always called us to become.

We Make a Difference everywhere that we go!

This is the compelling mission of the church.

And this is a worthy endeavor to sacrifice your life for.

Our narrative is not that we are sitting around and waiting to go go heaven and in the meantime having good church. No, that is not the bride that Jesus died for.

We have been redeemed by Jesus and we are on mission to renew the earth until he comes back again and makes a new heaven and a new earth.

Don’t miss out on the this wonderful adventure that gives you the only lasting fulfillment in this world. Jesus said, if you drink this water you will never thirst again.

Religion doesn’t satisfy, but a relationship with Jesus always does.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

Respond to the Call

(God) saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. 2 Timothy 1:9 MSG

Stand for a Cause

But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God. Acts 20:24 NLT

Do It With God’s People

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. Ecclesiastes 4:9

Conclusion