Vision Sunday: A Church Transformed & Transforming
Notes
Transcript
Call to Worship
Call to Worship
To all who are weary and in need of rest
To all who are mourning and longing for comfort
To all who fail and desire strength
To all who sin and need a Savior
We, Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, open wide our arms
With a welcome from Jesus Christ.
He is the ally to the guilty and failing
He is the comfort to those who are mourning
He is the joy of our hearts
And He is the friend of sinners
So Come, worship Him with us.
Sermon
Sermon
I want to thank you for joining us this morning, we never want to take your presence for granted! We love serving you, and celebrating what God is doing through Jesus together!
Today we are jumping in to Week 2 of our Vision series that we’ve titled, “Joyful Surrender,” which is an invitation into this next season in the life of our church.
We introduced our new vision statement as:
We see a vibrant and diverse community that joyfully surrenders all of life to making disciples for the glory of Jesus.
Last week we talked about this idea that God has set us apart for a particular work, and that work is telling others that God has set them apart too — this is the joyful surrender part of this next season!
Last week we used the word BELONG as we talked about the three words that will help guide us over the next several years to help us fulfill our vision as a church. These words are:
BELONG
TRANSFORM
ENGAGE
Today’s word is TRANSFORM.
Today we’re going to be talking about the subject of discipleship.
If you have a Bible, open with me to the Book of Colossians. We’re going to spend our time at the End of Colossians 1, focusing on verses 28-29.
As we’re jumping into Colossians this morning, Paul is writing this to a community that he hasn’t been to yet, and they’ve asked for his help to address an issue of false teaching. We don’t know what kind of false teaching it was, the extent that we do know that there’s some indication that with some have promised a fuller, more satisfying experience of the Christian life, and Paul calls this “hollow and deceptive” — it’s a lie that will always over promise and always under deliver.
Paul’s ministry to this church is making clear that Jesus will always be enough, and so he outlines his ministry to them, and explains why what he does is important for their discipleship.
Today we’re going to use Paul’s words about his ministry of discipleship to inform our own plan of making disciples here at Moraga Valley.
As we jump into Colossians 1 for help on how to become a disciple making church, we’re going to focus on two parts of Paul’s ministry:
Proclaiming Christ
Presenting People Mature in Christ
Look with me at the first half of verse 28, and we’ll talk about discipleship in the church begins with PROCLAIMING CHRIST
Colossians 1:28 (NIV)
He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom,
Paul’s very first word in verse 28 gives us the subject of who we are disciples to: He is the one we proclaim. We are disciples of Jesus — we are His students, His apprentices, taking on the work that He did.
A couple of verses earlier in verse 25, Paul tells us what he’s doing to make disciples: God has called him to preach, and in verse 28, he uses the word proclaim.
His primary concern is that this community would know Jesus, and there’s a pretty big idea at play here in the first two chapters that this community is being told that they need to know something more than Jesus.
I’d use the word “fullness” to describe what I think Paul wants to communicate, and I’ll give a few quotes to help us think through that:
Charles Spurgeon said, “I have a great need for Christ: I have a great Christ for my need.”
Or I’d use this quote from Pastor Jeff Medders to help us think through what’s going, “None of us are the Christian we want to be. But Christ is the Savior we need Him to be.”
The 23rd Psalm says it this way, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing.” With Jesus, you lack nothing.
Whatever’s going on in Colossae has an emptiness to it, a hollowness, but with Jesus there’s nothing hollow — there’s a fullness.
There’s an assumption, I think in our culture, and possibly at work for the Colossian church, that we need more than the gospel.
Today this is hustle culture, self help, pop psychology — doing more and trying harder. Or worse, removing something so important to a life with Jesus in hopes of making Jesus a little more tolerable, a little more palatable. A good example of this is not taking Jesus seriously about holiness.
When you add something to Jesus, you end up taking away from Jesus.
In verses 15-23, Paul spends 8 verses explaining the gospel — saying, “whatever you do, don’t move away from this!”
For Paul, Jesus is at stake. Accessibility to the truth about Jesus is at stake. Paul knows that the gospel is for everyone, not for groups of people who have added and taken away.
There’s actually a Greek word I’m going to show you that happens (four) times in the passage. It’s the Greek word PAS, and it means loosely, all or every — in the context of the end of Colossians 1,
Here’s how Colossians 1:28 reads when we use this word:
Colossians 1:28 (NIV)
He is the one we proclaim, admonishing PANTA (PAS) ANTHROPON and teaching PANTA (PAS) ANTHROPON with PAS wisdom, so that we may present PANTA (PAS) ANTHROPON fully mature in Christ.
In Greek, Paul uses EVERY PERSON, PANTA ANTHROPON, three times — and he uses this to underline the fact that there’s nothing else that will change lives, other than Jesus — and to that end, he’s pointing to the fact that everyone lives under the possibility that their life can be radically changed by Jesus.
There are some weird things happening in Colossae, like worshipping angels, extreme measures on fasting, lots of gods — but those things won’t change your life. There’s a broader theme at work in Colossians: the gospel does not allow this kind of compromise.
Jesus didn’t leave something out in His death, burial, and resurrection — that something else can pick up in its absence.
When we proclaim Jesus, when Paul proclaims Jesus, we do it to show the world that Jesus is what is needed!
Paul says, “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom,”
Here are two great discipleship words: admonish and teach. Let’s define these.
Scholar NT Wright, defines the word admonish: “straightening out confusions...” —
And to teach is to clearly communicate the truth about Jesus and the Christian life.
Wisdom is needed to help straighten out any confusion that the Colossian church might have about Jesus, and then to provide instruction on what’s true about Jesus.
I think good discipleship helps us take all that we hear about Jesus, and all that goes on in the world, and it helps us sort out what’s true and what’s not true; what’s helpful and what’s not helpful; it helps us discern what’s not right and wrong but rather what’s good, better, and best for Christian living — good discipleship helps us know how to follow Jesus.
But… Paul says it’s done with wisdom, and James 1:5 says wisdom comes from God.
Discipleship is spiritual work — it requires God’s help.
We need God’s help in communicating the truth about Jesus so that the church becomes more like Jesus. This is Paul’s chain of thought:
We want to Proclaim Christ so that we can Present People Mature in Christ.
Let’s look at the second half of verse 28. Colossians 1:28
Colossians 1:28 (NIV)
so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.
Maturity is a weird word. Other translations use the word, “perfect,” but that doesn’t quite feel right either. Scholar Doug Moo, he says perfect feels too absolute, and mature, makes us think that we’re in the clear as long as we’re following Jesus a little better than our neighbors.
The goal in making sure we clearly communicate Jesus, in getting the gospel right, is not that you become a little better than your neighbor, but that you become a little more like Jesus.
I love how Paul talks about becoming more like Jesus: we do this with others. We don’t just teach and admonish privately — that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
We need the life-on-life example, the encouragement, the correction, of other believers — and the Holy Spirit makes us more like Jesus. And Paul knows that all of it would be in vain, all of the discipleship, all of the teaching, all of the admonishing, every person who comes into contact with the church, if it were done without God’s help. This is what he means in verse 29.
To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.
We talk about Jesus, because Jesus is at stake in our community — and there are others who are looking for their needs being met apart from Jesus, or they’re adding something to Jesus in hopes of it meeting their need. Paul thinks that discipleship is hard work, he says, “I strenuously contend,” he works his tail off to make disciples, knowing that he’s not working alone. There’s a balance at work here, the work that Paul does, and the work that God does — Paul knows though, try all that he might, God is the only one to change this community.
If you look at the beginning 5 verses in chapter 2, Paul continues the thought, I can’t go too in depth with it this morning as we don’t have the time, but I do want to read it and make a comment.
I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.
We need the disciple making ministry of the church, because like Paul, we know that for all the world promises, the real treasure, the real value, is found in Jesus. Paul knows that there are false teachers who have well reasoned, appetizing, “fine-sounding” arguments — but as I said earlier, they all over promise and underdeliver, and Jesus never over promises and He never under delivers.
When we talk about our vision as a church… We see a vibrant and diverse community that joyfully surrenders all of life to making disciples for the glory of Jesus. … we are talking a vibrant spiritual community that looks more and more like Jesus.
We want to build a life around following Jesus that keeps the main thing, the main thing. As we’ve just seen in Colossians 1, there’s a threat to the church when we don’t keep the main thing, the main thing.
I want to see us strenuously contend for the kind of discipleship that looks more like Jesus, and watch as God does wonders in front of us!
Over the course of this next year, we’re working together a plan to make disciples of Jesus. We want to see God TRANSFORM our community.
We’ve mapped out a pathway for that:
Encounter God
Explore Life with Jesus
Engage Others with the Gospel
We chatted a little bit last week about this as we help others Encounter God. We want relational evangelism to happen on our campus and in our community.
This isn’t just about us holding a great event on our campus, it’s about equipping you with the tools you need to share Jesus and make invitations in the places that you live, work, and play. We talked last week about holding the Alpha Course in the Fall, and we’ll provide other opportunities for you to grow in having spiritual conversations with people: like DBS Training or training in how to share the gospel.
We can invite others to Encounter God — without being weird about it. I want to invite Mark Bergman up and he’s going to talk a little about what a Discovery Bible Study is, how it works, and how Mark ever get to do this in the first place.
MARK BERGMAN SPEAKS
We want people to ENCOUNTER GOD — whether that be through evangelistic conversations, or from carefully planned events for our community where we want to clearly point others to Jesus.
And for everyone who has had an Encounter with God, we want them to EXPLORE LIFE WITH JESUS.
This is a value of our church. We are DISCIPLE MAKERS - we help people take their next steps in following Jesus.
We want to do this through Community-Based Discipleship and Spiritual Formation.
There are some aspects around Community-Based Discipleship that you don’t get in other settings. When you gather in community with other people you get the chance to practice hospitality, you practice spiritual friendship, you learn to pray by praying for people you love and you learn to pray by hearing people pray. You learn how people approach the Bible from their different experiences, you learn encouragement, you learn correction, you learn mercy and forgiveness.
There’s something about Community-Based Discipleship that allows people to step-in-step follow Jesus together. Erica and I have been in discipling groups with other families where we’ve talked about these people as our 2AM Friends — these are the people who know me so deeply in Christ, that if I called them at 2AM to bury a body, they’d be there. Obviously I don’t mean that literally — but it’s a Christian community where we get to witness others giving their lives away to one and another and for the greater community.
We are living at the center of an epidemic of loneliness, and yet we have the greatest example in Jesus and His disciples. He poured His life into 12 other people. We have the example of the early church — where the Book of Acts says, “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
I think another part of this is a process of Spiritual Formation. Here’s how Dallas Willard, the late philosopher at USC, defined spiritual formation:
Spiritual formation in the tradition of Jesus Christ is the process of transformation of the inmost dimension of the human being, the heart, which is the same as the spirit or will. It is being formed (really, transformed) in such a way that its natural expression comes to be the deeds of Christ done in the power of Christ.
Sounds pretty close to what we just talked about.
We want to begin to architect, or adopt, a plan for seeing God transform what Dallas Willard called the “inmost dimension.” I envision this is a 4-month, maybe a 9-month deep dive with Jesus where we grow our relationship with Him through scripture, prayer, silence, solitude, sabbath, fasting — a process where we learn where God has been at work in our life and story. This is what John Calvin called “the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves,” — Here’s what he wrote in his Institutes of Christian Religion:
“Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.”
As we think God is calling us to reach the next generation, I can’t help but think that both of these things we just talked about benefits the next generation. Discipleship is as much CAUGHT as it is TAUGHT — Paul says, “imitate me as I imitate Christ,” this is Christian imitation in the community of faith. One of my favorite photos is my son Graham raising his hand in worship — because he saw other Christians surrendered to Jesus — and did what they did.
And to that end, the Biblical mandate is that discipleship is the job of families — the best thing that we can do as a church is to partner in the work that you’re already doing as families. And if you’re not, we want to help you!
Now, these aren’t the only things that we’ll do to help give us a well-balanced life with Jesus, there will be plenty of opportunities in the future that we’ll host courses on parenting, provide you tools for making disciples in your home, invest in your marriages, give you tools to make the most out of your grandparenting — and build community for those that are single but often feel left out of the church.
We also want to see our community transformed as we ENGAGE OTHERS WITH THE GOSPEL. We want our church, every person, young and old, to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our Lamorinda, Northern California, and across the world! I get to talk about that more next week.
The goal is always more like Jesus: nothing more.
Benediction
Benediction
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit — as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be — world without end. Amen.
Other Items
Welcome & Prayer - Brandon Morrow (1-2 Mins)
Announcement of Alan Koenigsberg & Prayer - Brandon Morrow (<5 Mins)
Financial Update - Alan Koenigsberg (<5 Mins)
Worship Search Team Update - Dave Evans (<5 Mins)
Student Director Search Update & Direction - Brandon Morrow (<5 Mins)
Upcoming Dates - Brandon Morrow (<5 Mins)
Session Letter & Closing Prayer - Yvonne Koenigsberg (<5 Mins)