Living Sent Lives in Our Every Day Life

1. By Loving Our Neighbors

1 John 3:16–18 (ESV)

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

This passage jumps from a negative example (versus 11-15) Cain who let envy and anger ultimately lead to murder to Jesus who loved even as far as death. The basic thought, as commentator Gary Burge notes, is anyone who hates is willing to deny life to his or her opponent and in one sense has already committed murder, but the reverse is also true…those who exhibit love, who forgive freely and value their neighbor, bring life, healing, and goodness to others.

Two examples of living in community- we must follow Jesus

Example of Jesus is a model for us to emulate but it’s not just an ethical model; it is a genuine offering, a genuine giving of his life. Burge states it this way; “Love that fails to take the form of action on behalf of others is nothing more than religious rhetoric. In this setting John is addressing division in the church and speaks against those within the church who wielded religious weapons with devastating consequences. John is eager for his community to exhibit visible signs of love—love that acts on the order of Christ’s saving activity.”

It’s important for us to have a proper theology of love…how appropriate coming the week we celebrated valentines day. A basic question out of this passage is “if someone claims to be changed inwardly, to what extend is this change a reality outwardly? Does it affect our relationship with our peers, with the needy, with those we call ‘our opponents.”

Key thought- the love we have experienced through Christ’s love for us, to the point of death on the cross, should be visible in our lives as we love those around us….even when they are not lovable. We think about Jesus being mocked leading up to the cross and as he hung on the cross…we think about how Jesus brought Judas on as one of his disciples, loved him, cared for him, & did ministry with him all while knowing he would betray him. Our world wants us to hate others and if we are not careful we will fall into that mindset, but as Christians we are called to love and we love those even if they are far from God because that’s the example we were given by Jesus.

One note on how we are to love our neighbor is that it is really hard to love someone from a distance. This past week Amy Womble and I had the chance to work with an organization called Refugee Hope Partners and were invited to join them to visit a families home who had to come to America from Afghanistan and found a place right here in Apex. It was such a neat time getting to meet this family and hear their story, but I would never have had that experience if I didn’t put myself in a position of proximity to them. Let’s not let others decide who we should love or see as valuable in our society. We must remember that God created every person in his image (the Imago Dei) and in order to live out this love we are commanded to do, we must be willing to get to know our neighbors.

Spurgeon Quote: “Now Christian, your religion claims from you that you should love as your Master loved. How can you imitate him, unless you love too?

So our first point is that we must love as Christ loved and next we will look at how this love should fuel us to want to serve others.

2. By Serving Our Neighbors

Acts 20:34–35 (ESV)

You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

Paul is challenging the Ephesian Elders by giving the example of how he lived among them. In chapter 18 we learn that Aquila and Priscilla were also tent makers as Paul was…he used his the money he made from his job to bless others. We can take a lot out of this passage on how God desires us to work (a theme we see throughout scripture) but more importantly that it is not for our own prosperity but as a means to help others. This is a great reminder that Paul set an example of how to serve others well.

Last week Shawn preached a little mini-sermon on this after we sung “Name Above All Names”…you know there’s a reason he has the title pastor in front of his name, and last Sunday he set this point up so well. You can go back and watch hit but to paraphrase it Shawn reminded us that if we believe the words we sing about God than it should transform us and we should want show that love for God in the what we do when we leave this place.

We showed the clip of Baptist on Mission before I came up here to preach and this of course links so beautifully with this call we have to serve those in need. Just this week brother Craig and a team from Apex Baptist Handyman ministry built a wheelchair ramp for someone in our community that had a need which was presented to the Raleigh Baptist Association who reached out to us. I love that we were able to do this project and am thankful for those guys who gave up their time to serve someone else. I also love that RBA heard about the need and thought of our church. Church family this is what we want to be known for in our community…how we love others!

This week we also had many church members drop off items for a family that came here as refugees and who’s kids are enrolling at Salem Middle & elementary School. Our connection with Megan the social worker assigned to Salem Middle helped us learn about this need and our church family, especially our kids ministry, shoutout to pastor Jarred mobilizing those who would have clothes, shoes, etc that the family needed. Again I love seeing our church in action and love that the first call Megan made was to our church to see if we were interested in helping.

Originally this sermon was going to be in April leading up to Love Wake, but it’s never to early to point you guys to April 27th when our church will collectively serve our community together. We have some really exciting projects this year including partnering with Habitat for Humanity and serving with the Miracle League of the Triangle which is a baseball league for special needs athletes. I know of at least one church member who plays and I can’t wait to have a team out there helping out this wonderful organization…but don’t wait until April to help….there are so man wonderful organizations in our area you can serve with and so many opportunities to serve those in your community if you just look for them.

I love how Paul echoes the word of Jesus in this passage as he says “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. Let’s look for chances to live this out in our daily lives as we love our neighbors. Paul is such a great example in that even though he was mighty in Word, he didn’t neglect practical deed ministry to the poor. Tim Keller captured it well when he said: The apostle Paul viewed ministry to the poor as so important that it was one of the last things he admonished the Ephesian church to do before he left the for the last time…you don’t use your last words without saying something that is all-important to you. For Paul it was: “Don’t only preach-help the poor.”

Which leads us to our final point for today. We can’t stop at just loving or serving our neighbor…if we truly love them the kindest thing we can do for them is share the Gospel with them. So our third point is…We live out sent lives in our every day life…

3. By Proclaiming the Gospel to Our Neighbors

We will look at two passages of scripture that show how adept Paul was at sharing the gospel in various settings.

Acts 17:16–21 (ESV)

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

Acts 13:26–33 (ESV)

“Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus…”

-We must contextualize the gospel to those we are trying to reach. Paul preached differently to his intellectual audience in Athens at the Areopagus than he did to his Jewish audience at Pisidian Antioch at the synagogue. We need to have such sensitivity in the task of contextualization- that is making the gospel known in a way appropriate for the context. Paul focuses on keeping the main thing the main thing by preaching the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ Central…example of Jimmy Scroggings preaching in the Philippines with his mentor Bob Tebow (yes Tim Tebow’s dad)….preached his heart out and when they came back Bob said you did good but forgot one important thing to not just preach of Christ’s death on the cross but also of his resurrection. Jimmy Scroggins shares about this in his book “Turning Everyday Conversations into Gospel Conversations” and is a great reminder to preach the totality of the gospel.

-Visual example of the Record, CD, and Digital Version of Jack Johnson

Quote from Commentator Ajith Fernando “All this calls for a passion for God and for people, which will give us the courage to try new things and to pay the price of doing so. That passion comes when we draw near to the heart of our missionary God, and it is maintained through a close personal tie with God and his Word. If we remain near to God’s Word, we know that our contextualization will not degenerate into syncretism.”

We want to equip our church to share the gospel with those around us. As I shared in the vinyl, CD, digital version of an album…they gospel never changes. Paul contextualized the gospel different for different audiences he engaged with as we saw in Acts 17 and Acts 13. I’m so excited about a 3 week training we will kick of March 6th at Midweek for adults to be a part of the 3 circles training. We realize not everyone can make it to those as you are serving in other areas, meeting as a life group, etc. so our goal is to put some of those resources up in March as we begin the training. It’s not the only effective way to share the gospel but what we love about the 3 circles gospel presentation is that Jimmy Scroggins a pastor in Florida, created it to be simple enough to share on a napkin. Each one of you will have the opportunity to pick one up on the way out of the service today. We also have Spanish versions available next to where the Baptist On Mission/Handyman guys will be hanging out. My prayer is that you would take one and commit to memorizing it as a method to share the gospel.

Additionally I’ve been working on a list of books that are a great resource for sharing the gospel with those from various religious backgrounds and cultures. I created an Amazon link to those books on APX Missions facebook page and if you email me I’m happy to send you that link. God has uniquely placed in an area where we can live out our love for our neighbors by serving them and sharing the gospel with them. Let’s be steadfast in preparing ourselves for these moments by learning how to engage those around us with the gospel.

Fear of evangelism. It’s hard. Lifeway recently did a survey on this topic:

According to a 2021 Evangelism Explosion study conducted by Lifeway Research, 51% of Americans, including 60% of the religiously unaffiliated, say they’re curious why people are so devoted to their faith. Two in 3 (66%) also say they are at least open to having a conversation about the Christian faith with a friend.

However, less than half of self-identified Christians have, at least once in the past six months, shared a Bible verse or Bible story with a non-Christian loved one (46%), invited a non-Christian friend or family member to attend a church service or other program at church (43%) or shared with a non-Christian loved one how to become a Christian (38%).

Example of two church kids living this out from our church. This month we had a kids who invited his friend who comes from a mormon family to church with him to experience kids midweek. I love the heart he had for his friend to come to church and hear the gospel taught in their class. Another kid recently used a school project as a means to witness. She did a presentation for her class for their show and tell type project about Noteworthy, a ministry her father is a part of that focuses on digital evangelism, and how she got to listen to calls about The Bible and to share Jesus with people all over the world. Afterwards she got several of her classmates telling her it was really cool and then several classmates telling her they don’t believe in Jesus. She also used it as a way to ask her teachers if they knew Jesus. One of them had shared with us that no student had asked her about her faith in all of her years of teaching. Isn’t that amazing church family! I’m sure there are many other examples of people within our church living sent lives like this, but let’s use the example of these kids to spur us on to share the gospel with those in our spheres of influences.

Closing thought:

We must learn to love as Christ loved, be compelled to serve others, and be bold in sharing our faith. We are blessed to have seemingly limitless resources at our disposal. There is no excuse. Let’s be faithful in living out sent lives in our every day lives. Don’t forget to pick up the Life Booklet- 3 Circles…you’ll also see the slide behind me that has the digital version through an app.

Let’s pray.