The Church In Action
6-20-04
The Church In Action
During the terrible fires in Yellowstone National Park a few years ago, a well known national magazine hired a talented young photographer to picture this disaster for their cover story. When the young man arrived, he ran into a problem he had not anticipated for he realized that the smoke was so dark and thick, that it made it impossible to picture the scenes from the ground. The young man called into the magazine office and sought permission to charter a small plane so he could take pictures from overhead. The magazine made arrangements at the local airport and the call returned to him that a small plane would be waiting on the runway. He jumped into his rented car and away he rushed to the airport. There a very young man was sitting in a small single engine aircraft. As instructed, the plane's engine was fueled, and warmed for take off. The young photographer had his cameras and film ready and threw all the gear into the back-seat of the plane. He closed the door and said, " READY FOR TAKE OFF!" The young man proceeded down the runway. The plane was shaking and very rough. When in the air the Pilot asked, HOW WAS THAT?" The Pilot SEEMED VERY NERVOUS as the little plane lifted higher and higher into the wind. The young talented photographer had not experienced such a jerky flight, but he requested the Pilot to fly over the park. The photographer asked the Pilot to fly real low, near the fires. "Why?" asked the Pilot. "Because I am on assignment, I am a photographer, and photographers need to be close to the action to take photographs." The Pilot was very quiet for a few minutes, and he broke the silence saying, " I thought you were the flight instructor."
Getting close to the action is sometimes a little nervy-er than expected, but it's where we have to be to get the job done. What's true for photography is also true for God's church. God wants us to reach our world, and that requires us getting into action. Last
week I presented the first way we do that--purposefully. We the church are essentially and primarily a lifesaving mission station. That's why God established the church and that's what we're here for. We reach our world when we live out this purpose. The second way God wants us to reach our world is intentionally. Intentionality is "actively pursuing the right thing." Intentionality is the principle of ACTION. Look again at last week's verse about Gods' purpose for us.
“(God) had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone." [Ephesians 1:11, the Message]
I want you to underline the word "designs" the phrase "glorious living" and the phrase "working out." When you put those words in a phrase you have...
"Working out God's glorious living by design"
This is God's definition for intentionality. We are to reach our world by "working out God's glorious living by design."
As God's people, we must actively, intentionally pursue God's purpose. We can't just assume God's purposes will automatically get done somehow. We can't just hope they will be accomplished. If God's purposes are going to be fulfilled, we will have to be intentional about it. The first part of intentionality--the active, working out part--is that we must...
MAKE A DETERMINED EFFORT (it doesn’t happen automatically)
There is an attitude some people have about church that says, “We’re just going to be a church. We’ll get together and do church type things and that will take care of it.” Let me tell you, that doesn’t cut it as God’s church. God’s not into that kind of thing. That attitude comes from some sort of false fatalistic concept, from wishful thinking, or from a naive spirituality.
False Fatalism
Some people fail to make a determined effort for God because they have a false fatalistic, deterministic philosophy. You know--que sera sera. They think that everything that happens is mostly out of their control. They think the way things work out is caused by greater forces far beyond them. Some of these people have the idea that everything is God’s will since He could have stopped it or made something else happen if He wanted to. This person thinks that whatever happens God has let happen so it must be His will. Let me just say that if this were true, Jesus was wrong to teach us to pray, “Thy will be done.” If God’s will is always automatically done, there would be no reason to pray for it to be done. That would be a meaningless prayer. But, Jesus didn’t teach us to pray meaningless prayers. He taught us to pray for God’s will to be done, because it doesn’t always get done. People make choices contrary to God’s will, since He has given us free will. The Bible says that God does not will that any person should be lost forever, but there are people who will be lost, because they choose in their own free will to reject God’s offer of life with Him forever. What we say and do does make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others. We can’t just say, “Whatever.”
Wishful Thinking
There are some other people who fail to make much of an effort for God because they are wishful thinkers. Wishful thinkers are those waiting for their ship to come in. They are waiting for the right break to bring them success. The truth of the matter, as successful people will tell you, is that the harder they work, the more breaks they seem to get. Most breaks--particularly the most important ones--don’t just come to you, you go out and get them.
When I was a young pastor, I thought all I had to do was teach and preach the Bible and everything else would just fall into place. I
thought that if I were just strong in faith somehow God would see that everything else was taken care of and the church would automatically fulfill God’s will. Well, that was very naive. Things don’t just happen. The Bible says, “Faith without works is dead.” My concept of the church was like that of a man who saw a beautiful garden. He said to the gardener, “My, hasn’t God created a beautiful garden.” To which, the gardener replied, “You should have seen it when He had it all by Himself.” From the beginning God told Adam to work the garden of Eden and take care of it. Genesis 2:5 even says that some things didn’t begin growing until there was a man to work the ground. God has always intended that His purposes be carried out in partnership with people. Some things will only get done when we do them. If we don’t do them, they won’t get done.
There are four people in the church like there are in every organization--Everybody, Anybody, Nobody, and Somebody. Everybody thinks Anybody can do something, but Nobody does it until Somebody does.
Naive Spirituality
There are still other people who don’t make much of a determined effort for God because they hope things happen by some sort of spiritual osmosis, but they don’t. These people sometimes even try to make their lack of effort sound spiritual by saying that they’re waiting on God. A lot of times God is wondering what we are waiting for. When Jesus returned to heaven, His disciples were watching Him, and after He was out of sight, they kept staring into the sky where they had last seen Him. God had to send two angels to challenge what they were doing by asking them, “Why are you standing here staring at the sky?” The disciples needed to be doing what Jesus told them to do rather than standing there looking for Him. It’s a challenge we all need.
“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” [James 1:22, New King James Version]
Some people may think they are waiting on God, but more often the truth is the other way around. God is waiting on us.
“For the eyes of the Lord search back and forth across the whole earth, looking for people whose hearts are perfect toward him, so that he can show his great power in helping them.” [2 Chronicles 16:9, Living Bible]
Determined Workers
God’s purposes are not regularly accomplished by supernatural activity that we just sit back and piously observe. God works through people who listen to Him and do what He says. When the young Jewish woman named Esther became Queen of Persia, the Jews in Persia were the targets of ethnic cleansing. When her uncle Mordecai challenged her to risk her position as queen to do something about it, he said, “If you keep quiet at this time, someone else will help and save the Jewish people but you and your father’s family will all die.” In other words, if you don’t do this, God will get someone else to do it, but some person is going to do it. What God wants done is not accomplished by a mystical magic process. He works through people and He’s always working at it. That’s what Jesus said.
“My Father never stops working, and so I keep working, too.” [John 5:17, New Century Version]
Jesus said His Father gives the example that He followed as the model for His own life. God works and He expects us to be like Him. On the seventh day of creation God rested from His activities of creating the world, but He has never stopped working altogether. He is not coasting in cruise control just letting things happen. God is working now and always, and He expects us as His church to be just as intentional. He expects us to make a determined effort. He told us to pray for people to do His work.
“There are many people to harvest but only a few workers to help harvest them. Pray to the Lord, who owns the harvest, that he will send more workers to gather his harvest.” [Matthew 9:37-28, New Century Version]
God’s purposes require workers. The fields don’t get harvested on their own and God doesn’t miraculously harvest them from heaven. We have to do His work. We have to be intentional about what we’re doing as God’s church. We have to make a determined effort. We have to actively pursue God’s purposes.
“Everything you do or say should be done to obey Jesus your Lord.” [Colossians 3:17, New Century Version]
Actively working out God’s glorious living means we make a determined effort instead of passively waiting for something to happen. The second part of intentionality--the pursuing glorious living part--means we...
FOLLOW THROUGH WITH GOD’S PLAN (it’s not just being in existence that works.)
The people I was talking about earlier who say, “we’ll just get together and be a church,” sometimes also say things like: “we’ll hang out a sign, put our name in the phone book and list our services on the church page in the newspaper and the people who want to will come.” You see, if we are going to “work out God’s glorious living” it’s not just a matter of establishing our presence or our identity. God’s purposes are not fulfilled simply by calling ourselves a church. All kinds of people call themselves a church. Being intentional about God’s purposes requires more than just making a start with God’s plan. It means following through with it. Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons...
“He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. ‘Which of the two did what his father wanted?’” [Matthew 21: 28-30]
With this story Jesus reminded us that God’s purposes are not fulfilled by simply agreeing with what He says. Being intentional is more than intending to do something. Intentionality is following through with God’s purposes.
And following through means more than setting up shop. A lot of people in churches have an edifice complex. They have the attitude that “when we get our church building, we will have arrived.” These people seem to believe in construction evangelism. You know: “If we build it, they will come.” They act as if they think there’s some spiritual power in a box like the Israelites did during the days of Eli the priest. In those days when Israel was attacked by the Philistines, they carried the ark of the covenant from the Tabernacle out to the battlefield. By doing this they thought they had God’s power with them to win the battle, but they were defeated anyway and the ark was captured as one of the spoils of battle. Later in their history during the ministry of Jeremiah the prophet, Israel thought they would be kept safe from defeat by the Babylonians just because God’s Temple was in Jerusalem, but that didn’t save them either. Jesus said in eternity there would be people who will plead to be saved not on the basis of just special buildings but on the basis of Jesus’ special appearance in their town at some point having taught in the streets of their city, but He said that even they will be turned away.
Being intentional about God’s purposes is not about arriving at a particular place or achieving a certain goal. Being intentional is following through with God’s plan-- pursuing not completing. Following through means we keep moving ahead--adjusting and keeping at it with determination to do whatever is required. As long as we are alive until the whole world is won to Jesus or He comes again, we have a job to do. We have to pursue it relentlessly. God does. He has been called the hound of heaven. He does not quit, give up, or go away and He calls us to do the same thing.
Jesus said that when servants come in from working all day in the fields, they do not sit down and have their master wait on them. Servants still serve their masters.
“Just so, if you merely obey me, you should not consider yourselves worthy of praise. For you have simply done your duty!” [Luke 17:7, Living Bible]
In other words, following through with God’s plan means we do whatever it takes. The Apostle Paul said...
“I am glad to give you myself and all I have for your spiritual good.” [2 Corinthians 12:15, Living Bible]
That’s not stopping short of anything necessary for God’s plan. That’s real following through. We need to have the same desire and commitment to intentionality as Paul did.
“I do everything I can to win everyone I possibly can. I do all this for the sake of the gospel...” [1 Corinthians 9:22, Contemporary English Version]
The first part of intentionality is the active, working out, being a doer part. The second part of intentionality is the pursuing--the glorious living, whatever-it-takes part. And the third part of intentionality is the right thing by design part. To be intentional means we...
DO GOD’S RIGHT THING (it’s not just anything we happen to think of)
When it comes to church, many people treat it the same way they treat professional athletics and presidential politics. Everybody thinks they know how it ought to be conducted. Everyone’s a Monday morning quarterback. Everyone has an opinion of what should be done and there are all kinds of opinions. In this country anyway, just about every legal activity has been done by a church--from barbecues to ballgames to beach parties to bingo to bus rides to bicycle races to board meetings to bandage wrapping to business expos to baby fairs--and that’s just a few of the B’s I could quickly think of and I happen to know churches that have done them. I could go through the whole alphabet several times and not cover everything that has been done by churches. All of these things could even have been good things for a church to do. Any church goer who thinks they have a good idea, thinks the church ought to do it some time, but everything is not God’s thing for His church.
Not Religious Things
Go has a dynamic plan for us. God doesn’t intend that we do just whatever we happen to think of--even if it’s a religious or Biblical thing. In the days of the prophet Isaiah God said...
“Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer, incense is an abomination to Me.” [Isaiah 1:12-13, New American Standard Bible]
Israel could have said, “Lord, that’s what You commanded in the Law.” Yes, but they were just going through the motions. They weren’t really doing what God wanted them to do because they weren’t living righteously. They participated in injustice at the same time they were bringing sacrifices to the Temple. That was not God’s plan. What they were doing was not the right thing even though God had commanded them to offer sacrifices and incense.
Not Sincere Things
But it’s not just insincerity or lack of spirituality that makes
something to be not what God wants us to do. Something could be a good, sincerely motivated, spiritual type thing to do but it’s done out of human choice rather than God’s choice. The apostle Peter did that sort of thing on the mountain when Jesus’ appearance was supernaturally changed for a moment. When Peter saw this, he offered to erect a monument right then and there. It was something that had always been done in special moments in the history of Israel--particularly when the event had spiritual significance. And sometimes God is the One who told them to make the monument like the one at the Jordan River when they crossed over to the Promised Land. Before God returned the parted waters, He told them to take rocks from the river bed and stack them as a memorial of this miracle. So when Peter offered to make a monument on the mountain where the transfiguration took place, he was following scriptural precedent, but God told him to not do it. That was not what God wanted that time.
Not Human Ideas
What Peter was exemplifying and what churches often do is to ask God to bless what we’re doing, when we need to determine to do what God is blessing. Instead of coming up with our ideas and expecting God to go along with them, we need to find out what God wants us to do. It is possible for God to miraculously make a cement boat to float, but why make a boat out of cement hoping God will make it work, when you can make a boat out of wood that He’s already made flotational? Why come up with a different idea when God is already demonstrating what He wants? Jesus said His Father specifically directed His ministry.
“The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing...” [John 5:19]
The right thing for the church to do is what God determines for us to do and not just whatever ministry we might come up with. Our course of action must be to “see what the Father is doing.”
Not Traditional Things
We must not rely on our own ideas or even simply repeat the things God has used and blessed in the past, because what He blesses now is what is happening today. God’s mercies are new everyday and He provides the new wine of His Spirit for the new wineskins of today. People who just want to repeat the past don’t experience God’s blessing today. As Jesus said...
“No one who drinks the old wine seems to want the fresh and the new.” [Luke 5:39, New Living Translation]
God blesses different things at different times and just because He blessed the activity at one time does not mean that it is what He wants to use and bless the same thing at this time. For an example of this, God told the Israelite nation who left Egypt that He was giving them the land of Caanan. When their spies discouraged them and caused them to refuse to go, God judged the spies with death. The next day after seeing God’s judgment the rest of the people decided they would go into Canaan after all, but this time God told them not to go. He would not be with them. They ignored God and started out anyway but they were defeated and chased away by the natives of the land.
Being intentional about fulfilling God’s plan means we don’t just do whatever we might think is a good idea to do or what’s been done before. It means we open our eyes to see what God has designed and chosen for us to do and serve Him that way.
Concl: The thing God chooses for us to do may not always be
reasonable, sensible or logical to us, but it will always be the right thing. It's always a blessing to do the right thing.
Some years ago, there was a small tribe of Native Americans who
lived in the state of Mississippi. They lived along the banks of a
very swift and dangerous river. The current was so strong that if
somebody accidentally fell in, they would likely be swept away to
their death downstream. One day this tribe was attacked by
another hostile Indian tribe. They found themselves literally with
their backs up against the treacherous river. They were greatly
outnumbered. Their only chance for escape was to cross the
current, which would mean sure death for the children, the elderly,
the weak, and the ill and the injured... and likely death for many
of the strong.
The leaders of the tribe huddled up to devise a plan. The logical
thing, the reasonable thing, the expedient thing, the sensible thing
was to leave the weak ones behind. They were going to be killed
anyway... why risk losing the strong in a futile effort to save the
others? That was the rational answer but they couldn't do it!
Instead, they decided that those who were strong would pick up
the weaker ones and put them on their shoulders. So, the little
children, the elderly, those who were ill or wounded, were all
carried on the backs of the stronger. With great fear, they waded
out into the rapid waters of the river and they were met with a
great surprise. To their astonishment, they discovered that the
weight on their shoulders enabled them to keep their footing
through the treacherous current... and to make it safely to the
other side. Their own selfless service to others saved them all.
What they did was not the reasonable thing to do, but it was the
right thing to do. May we always intentionally do God's right
thing.