A FEW THOUGHTS ON MISSION MODEL

A FEW THOUGHTS ON MISSION MODEL 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 July 15, 2007 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction The story is told of a professor at a university who was renowned for his atheism. He announced one day to his class, “I don’t believe in God, and to prove that there is no God, I’m going to give God a challenge. In a loud voice, he said defiantly “God, if you are real, knock me off my platform. I’ll give you 10 minutes.” It got very tense as the professor and the class sat speechless waiting for what would happen. The professor continued to taunt God. He said, “God, I’m still here! Are you going to prove yourself or not?” After nine minutes one of the students, a 240-pound linebacker, got up from his seat, walked to the front and knocked the professor off the platform. From his new position on the classroom floor, “Young man, what do you think you’re doing?” The student said, “God was busy, so He sent me.” The truth is, God is never too busy, but He might well have sent that linebacker! Though He periodically intervenes in dramatic fashion, it is the habit of God to use people to get His will done. In fact, one of His most remarkable characteristics is just that—He uses people. As sinful, disobedient and relatively inept as we are, God has determined in His sovereign will to work through human beings to get His work done on earth. The Bible puts it this way: We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. [webmasters note: 2 Corinthians 4:7] I’d like to consider with you this morning the kind of people He uses most regularly and most effectively to accomplish His purposes. To do so, let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 9 and there listen to the heart of a man who is the consummate example of the kind of person God readily uses. Let’s posture ourselves to emulate the qualities in his life that made him so usable to God. Servants Willing to Sacrifice In the first 18 verses of this chapter Paul has been explaining to the Corinthians his rationale of sacrifice. Some critics of Paul had been suggesting that Paul was not really an apostle of Christ, but an impostor and a hypocrite. Their evidence was that Paul had not received any support from them while he ministered among them, but made his living as a tent-maker in Corinth. Their reasoning was that any genuine apostle would have received offerings for himself and spent all of his time teaching and preaching, not working with his hands. Paul explains that, yes, he had the perfect right to receive such support, but, for reasons not clear to us today, he chose not to take that support from the young church in Corinth. He did take salary in his ministry elsewhere, but not in Corinth—again, it is not clear why exactly, except that he says in that particular case it would have been a hindrance to the gospel of Christ (9:12) Paul argued that it was important for his service to Christ in that particular city to not take advantage of his otherwise legitimate rights to monetary support. Rather, he chose to earn a living as a tentmaker, a skill he had developed earlier in his life. Look at verse 19. Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. God used Paul in a powerful way as he planted the new church in the city of Corinth. Sacrifice is always a characteristic of those who would serve Christ. You know that. Every time God has called you into something significant for Him, it has cost you. Has it ever NOT been worth the sacrifice? What might today’s believer have to sacrifice to serve God’s purposes? There are thousands of ways depending on our own personal spiritual maturity, our circumstances and how the Lord wants to use us. But there is one I think that may be universally applied to believers. I put it this way: we are all called to sacrifice our personal pride in order to accomplish God’s purposes. Here is what I mean by personal pride. I mean that carnal desire in us that wants to look acceptable to others. It shows itself in a hundred different ways—when we spend inordinate amounts of time making ourselves look good, when we spend inordinate amounts of money buying clothes or gadgets we think will make us more acceptable to others, when we wear those clothes in a way that is worldly acceptable (bearing bust, belly and butt), when we try to act sophisticated, or better than others or act and talk like the others we want to impress. It’s a very real issue—and it is, bottom line, personal pride. Think about it in spiritual terms. Why spend all that time and energy to win the favor of other sinners? Is it not God we really ought to impress? Isn’t it God before whom we most desire to be acceptable? Say yes or no. If we say yes then we must be cautious about how much attention we give to the way we look, act and speak in order to fit in. Before I move on, I assure you that I’m not saying Christians should look freakishly odd and out of style and never wear make up (if the barn needs painting…). But as we brush on the make up, curl the hair, decide how many buttons we should leave open and how low on our hips to wear our jeans, maybe we ought to pray. Right in front of the mirror, ask the Lord if He thinks we’re out to please Him or to please others first—which is, really, pleasing ourselves. Consider this other area of personal pride. When we speak, will we be deliberate about our witness for Christ. If we are, as Philippians puts it, on this earth for the godly purpose of shining like stars in the universe as we hold out the word of life, then somewhere along the line, sharing truth and a personal word of what Christ means to us ought to begin replacing our talk about less honorable things and our socially correct language. Let me just be straightforward about this. This is precisely the sacrifice we should be making—giving up the personal pride of acceptance by the world by being just odd enough to speak for God at every appropriate opportunity. That’s His purpose for us. Paul gave up personal security and spoke spiritual truth to secular people, knowing he would be persecuted for it. Maybe it’s time we took him on as our model and started courageously speaking in ways that glorify Christ in our world, and might just draw some to faith in Him. The question we should ask about our appearance, our speech and our behavior is, is it pleasing to people whose opinions don’t matter, or is it pleasing to Him whose opinion alone matters? Is it serving to plump up my personal pride or to glorify the Lord of my life? As C. S. Lewis put it, The glory of God, and, as our only means to glorifying him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life. There really is something more important than how we look to others—it’s how we look to God (and how God looks to others through us). Our purpose is clear: we Christians who populate the St. Louis metro-east area are called to saturate our environment with the good news that because of what Christ has done, anyone may have a personal, reconciled relationship with God, discover wholeness of life in Him and discover life-giving purpose in His kingdom. Witnesses Willing to Adapt In order to be faithful to God’s purposes one of the things we have to understand is that Jesus did not command the whole world to go to church. He commanded the church to go to the whole world. His words were clear in the first century and they are clear in the twenty first century: Go and make disciples of all nations… And in order to be effective in reaching others we will have to be willing to change some things. Look at what the apostle Paul said he was willing to do to reach others for Christ: To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. [webmasters note: 1 Corinthians 9:20] I think there are two areas in which we must be willing to change and adapt—in GOING and in DRAWING. You see the church has a centrifugal style of ministry and a centripetal style of ministry. In basic physics, centrifugal force is that which impels an object away from the center of rotation. It’s the reason mud flies off a spinning tire. Centripetal force is really just the opposite in physics and is the force on an object that tends to move it toward the center of rotation because of gravity or electricity or some other force. Think of the swirling water in a flushing toilet and how it is drawn to the center. In the church we are called to be centrifugal—that is to go out to the world. So Christians from the center of their identity as the church take their word and behavior witness out to the world around them, influencing unbelievers toward faith in Christ. We must be willing as a church to make some changes in our centrifugal ministry. One change is a change in our attitude about going. Believers tend to think centripetally. We always think in terms of going to church. But we need to change our perspective. We ARE the church—we don’t GO to church. And as she obeys the mandate of Jesus to go into the world to influence people for Christ, we, the church, are going. Let’s please not speak of going to church as if the building were the church. It is more correct to say we the church are going as in centrifugal ministry. That’s a change of mindset that is in order so that we can begin to adapt to the needs of others around us, as did the apostle Paul. The other change we need to make in terms of centrifugal ministry is in our willingness to courageously enter into the very different worlds of nonbelievers. We are not very comfortable about going to bars and beer fests and parties where the language might be offensive to us. We like to defend our avoidance by saying we are to be separate from the world, or to safeguard ourselves from falling into sin, we need to avoid such situations, because we might not be mature enough to deal with the temptations. Let me ask an open-ended question: when will we be mature enough to go? Certainly we should avoid situations that will predictably lead to sin, especially in our peculiar areas of weakness, but let’s be honest – there are a lot of parties and pubs and bowling alleys and Octoberfests and dances that could use a good stiff dose of Christian presence. When we are willing to go, maybe they’ll be willing to listen. I’ve personally made far more progress in advancing the gospel in the life of unbelievers when I’m sitting across from three or four of them in lawn chairs with beers in their hands than I ever did with them in a church classroom. Do you know why? They won’t come to the church building! But they’ll listen if we’re willing to find them on their turf and relate meaningfully with them. But that’s really hard for me to do! Yes it is—and refer to point one, Servants willing to sacrifice. Then there is centripetal ministry—when we do occasionally draw unbelievers to Christian gatherings. It is at that time when we need to be willing to adapt as well. In their presence, when dealing with unbelieving guests whether at Sunday morning Celebration or in cell meetings and life groups, we need to drop our Christianese and relate to them in ways that are meaningful to them. Some churches have changed their entire approach to church meetings, choosing to become “Seeker Sensitive”—they design their services with entertainment and other glitz in order to draw unbelievers to their services. Then they attempt to slip some Gospel-lite into the program with the intent of gaining the seeker’s interest a little at a time until eventually they accept Christ. While I don’t deny that as probably a legitimate ministry approach—as long as the believers are being equipped somewhere in the program—we have chosen not to adopt that ministry style here. But that does not mean that when we have guests with us we ignore their need for some loving attention and personal ministry in a style to which they can relate. As a corporate body, we will go on with our worship and our communion and our Bible teaching as always, but sitting next to those curious not-yet-Christian people there will be caring Christians ready to meet them on their level and minister to them as far as they can. In both our centrifugal and our centripetal ministry to unbelievers we need to be ready to adapt and to reach people in sensitive and appropriate ways, led and empowered by the Holy Spirit. This may mean you will need to change. Change is not comfortable. It’s been said that the only one who really welcomes change is a wet baby. Are you willing to make a couple of uncomfortable changes for the glorious purpose of seeing some others come to faith in Christ? William Temple said that the church is the only society in the world that exists for the benefit of its nonmembers. Pray that you as a witnessing Christian in league with God’s purposes through you, will be willing to adapt to the needs of those who don’t yet believe the gospel. Pray that we as a church will always be sensitive to those who don’t understand why we do what we do. Ask for the kind of adaptability that governed Paul. Pray that unbelievers who may find us strange will also find us loving and credible in our witness. And always be willing to change in order to get God’s purposes served. Disciples Centered on the Lord’s Purpose That brings me to the final quality of the person who is most usable by God: CENTEREDNESS. In verse 23 Paul said I do all this for the sake of the gospel… Here was a man centered on the purposes of God. Sharing Christ was not peripheral to Paul. His entire life was dedicated to sharing the good news of Jesus as clearly and compellingly as he could with as many people as he could. Sadly, a Gallup poll indicated that out of all evangelical, American believers, only two percent had introduced another person to Christ. I want to challenge each person in this room to pray and work for this goal—that at least one person in your circle of influence will come to faith in Jesus Christ before the end of this calendar year. Is that a worthy personal goal? A worthy prayer goal? A worthy ministry goal? It is if you are centered on the purposes of God in your life. If serving the Lord with all your heart is of primary importance to you, you will see the value of pursuing this goal. As anyone who’s ever witnessed to others knows, it is not always an immediate success. He didn’t ask us to be successful—that’s all up to Him—He just asked us to be faithful. He’s not worried about your ability, but He is terribly interested in your availability! Let me read for you from John Wesley’s journal concerning one month of ministry: Sunday morning, May 5 – preached in St. Anne’s. Was asked not to come back anymore. Sunday evening, May 5 – preached in St. John’s. Deacons said, “Get out and stay out!” Sunday morning, May 12 - Preached in St. Jude’s. Can’t go back there, either. Sunday morning, May 19 – preached in St, Somebody Else’s. Deacons called a special meeting and said I couldn’t return. Sunday night, May 19 – Preached on te street. Kicked off the street. Sunday morning, June 2 – preached out at the edge of town. Kicked off the highway. Sunday afternoon, June 2 – preached in a pasture. Ten thousand people came to hear me. The gospel is worth sharing, even in the face of sacrifice, when it requires difficult change in us and when it demands total dedication. Let me ask you—is there anything more important in all eternity than bringing men, women and children to Jesus Christ for salvation? It is worth a hundred failures to see one trust Jesus. Those who want to cooperate with God’s purposes in this world, and to serve in the flow of His Spirit’s power, will find themselves better able when they center their lives on Him and His will. Conclusion Next week I would like to continue the theme of Mission Model, and speak from the scriptures about BRIDGE-BUILDING. Here is a prayer that I regularly encourage God’s people to pray. It is designed as a morning prayer—one to be prayed sincerely every day. Read it with me… RWA PRAYER (Ready, Willing and Available) Lord, I want to be ready today for whatever ministry opportunity You want to send my way. Help me by Your Spirit to be alert, to hear and respond. I am willing to be used by You to influence other persons to come to faith in Christ. So I am asking You to sovereignly lead me to at least one person today who needs to hear the good news. Make it clear to me when they arrive in my life, so I won’t have to question whether or not it is Your leading. And finally, I need to admit to You that I do not feel confident to be Your witness to this person, so I ask for the power and wisdom of Your Holy Spirit to give me what to say. Amen.   [Back to Top]