Everyone Gets to Play

Connection/Tension

Open with prayer guide...

Finishing series Vineyard 101: Finding Identity in our Distinctives.

You’ve heard by video from our bishop, archbishop, and cardinal - we don’t use those names. I was too chicken to ask the pope for a video, so I want to show you an interview he did.

Show Jay’s interview with Rick Warren...

A Sunday School teacher once asked her class if people were born Christian. A little boy quickly piped up and said, “No ma’am, they are born normal.”

For sure, being a Christian is to no longer be normal, at least in terms of how we live. To much of the world we look weird because we don’t go along with their practices and beliefs. Unfortunately, sometimes we act weird too, at least when it comes to doing ministry. So, last week we addressed this in our distinctive of being naturally supernatural.

I want to hit the final distinctive I want to cover in this series, and it’s one that Rick mentioned in his interview with Jay. In my cessationist church, not only was the supernatural gifts of the Spirit dead, but it was really only the apostles that did them. They were like super-heroes. Someone to admire, but not someone to emulate. If the topic of healing came up - demon oppression never came up - the unstated explanation was “yeah but that was the apostles.”  No ever showed me the passage we will look at today.

Even today, I have a dear friend who is a pastor in another denomination. We discussing the ministry of all believers. He has been taught to put a comma in Eph 4:12. God has given certain gifts to the church, Ephesians 4:12 “to equip the saints[,] for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,” The pastor’s job is to do these three things, not equip saints to do them. I can’t help but think that this severely limits the effectiveness of a church when all this ministry is restricted to an ordained person. And how boring!

Shortly after John Wimber became a Christian, he started reading the NT. He saw all these accounts of people doing the same things Jesus did. So he went to his pastor at the time and asked him, “When are we going to do the stuff?” The pastor asked him what he meant, and John said, “You know, the stuff. The stuff Jesus did.” And the pastor looked at him and said, “Oh, well we don’t do that stuff.” Wimber remembers thinking as he walked away, “I gave up drugs for this?!”

Well, the truth expressed throughout the NT is that the ministry and mission of the kingdom is not restricted to superstars. It wasn’t just the apostles. God’s Spirit indwells normal people to do the work of bringing God’s kingdom to people, places, and circumstances. In fact, if normal everyday Christians don’t do the stuff, then the stuff won’t get done. It seems that the Lord is unwilling to bring his kingdom apart from the cooperation of his saints. In the Vineyard this distinctive is called Everyone Gets to Play. What it means practically is that The Holy Spirit empowers everyone to do what Jesus did.

Text

The text I want to look at this morning comes from Luke 10, subtitled in my Bible The Mission of the Seventy.

Luke 10:1-9

Let’s zip through here asking “What does it mean that everyone gets to play?”

The Lord sends us where he intends to go (v 1)

Jesus gathers this group of 70 other disciples - likely men and women - and sends them out to the places he plans to visit.

What seems undeniable to me in the Bible is that the Lord intends for us to be active partners in bringing his kingdom to earth. We shouldn’t limit this to “mission trips”. Everywhere is a mission field. 

Everyone CAN play

The Lord is looking for gatherers (v 2)

We think people aren’t interested or are unreceptive. It wasn’t true then and it wasn’t isn’t true now. I heard interesting interview with David Kinnamon, the president of the Barna research group. He said their poll of 25,000 people under the age of 25 shows that there is a resurgence of interest in Jesus and the Bible. They are open. The problem is that they are open to anything. They are looking for something to give them meaningful direction and hope. 

The church is perfectly poised to do this. So we must pray for laborers, but then we must also be the answer to our own prayer. It’s not the job of just pastors and missionaries. It’s the job of the whole church.

Everyone NEEDS to play

The Lord provides for his mission (v 3-7)

The command to not take all these things wasn’t to unnecessarily burden those being sent out. It was to liberate them from carrying too much. It was to remove a temptation of self-sufficiency so that they would be dependent upon God. And the promise is that what they needed would be supplied. 

The old axiom is true: the Lord equips who he calls. If you are a follower of Jesus then you are called. Therefore you are equipped. 2 Peter 1:3 “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness...”

Everyone is EQUIPPED to play

God’s power is for everyday people (v 8-9)

I love how matter-of-fact Jesus is as he commissions these disciples. “Cure the sick who are there”. It is assumed that they will just do it. That they have all the power and authority to make it happen. Because God’s kingdom has come near in Jesus the King.

The assurance we have is that as we set out to bring the kingdom to others, God’s Spirit will meet us there.

Everyone is EMPOWERED to play

It’s not just the apostles (v 1)

I want to circle back to the beginning to drive this point home. These seventy others are NOT apostles, they are just ordinary people who are also following Jesus. The book of Acts is filled with other ordinary people - people who never saw Jesus personally but who believe in him - who walk in his authority and power to heal the sick and drive out demons.

Jesus great commission was that the apostles were to go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything I’ve commanded you. I think Wimber’s pastor thought they were just suppose to teach them what Jesus did, not teach them to observe - to do the stuff. But this is exactly what Jesus meant. His kingdom ministry is for everyone who follows him.

Everyone GETS to play

Gospel/Response

The amazing news is that everyone gets to play. In fact, the only thing that disqualifies you from NOT playing is not playing.

The conclusion to our story says that, Luke 10:17–18 “The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” And then, Luke 10:21 “At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit...”

Jesus rejoices when we play.

Let me close this message reading you something that Jay Pathak wrote about Everyone Gets to Play...