THE CHURCH ON PURPOSE – PART ONE: DRAW

THE CHURCH ON PURPOSE – PART ONE: DRAW 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 Aug 21, 2011 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction A few years ago the London Transit Authority was receiving a lot of complaints that their buses were driving past customers who were standing at the bus stops. The Transit Authority put an explanation in the newspaper that has become infamous with public relations departments. The explanation said, “It is impossible for us to maintain our schedule if we are always having to stop and pick up passengers.” That organization had somehow lost sight of its purpose. Because it is so easy for an organization to get caught up in schedules and other less-than-essential things, and in the process forget it’s purpose, it is important that the constituents of any organization be regularly reminded of its mission, its purpose. This is no less true for the church. Lest we as a church lose sight of who we are in Christ, lest we as Christian members of the church forget what we are called to be in Christ and to do for Christ, I am inviting you to join me in reviewing our purpose as a church for these next few weeks. In the process, as I promised, we will also look at how we are called to accomplish that purpose here at MECF. So we are going to study both the “mission” of the church of Christ at large, as it relates to our existence here in the St. Louis metro-east area, and in the broader reaches of God’s big world, and we are going to study the “vision” of this congregation—that is, how we are specifically called to engage that mission. That is, what do we do in our mission for Christ, and how do we do it? Text: 2 Corinthians 5:11-13 (The Message) - It's no light thing to know that we'll all one day stand in that place of Judgment. That's why we work urgently with everyone we meet to get them ready to face God. God alone knows how well we do this . . . His love has the first and last word in everything we do. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (The Message) - Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own. 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 (The Message) - Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons!   2 Corinthians 5:18-19 (The Message) - Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 (The Message) - We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you. How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God. First in a series We take our queue from the apostle Paul and the pages of the New Testament when we say that is our mission statement, too. Confident in the love God has demonstrated toward us in Christ, and confident that anyone who trusts in Him may likewise come to know His salvation, we commit ourselves to the task of helping others come to Christ, grow to maturity in Christ, and then help others to do the same. Over the next few week we will consider four terms that describe the process of carrying out this mission. In order, they are: Draw, Disciple, Develop and Deploy. This morning I would ask you to pray and consider the first in the series: “Draw.” What that means has nothing to do with art pencils or crayons, but everything to do with what you life looks like once you’ve made a commitment to Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches that those who give their lives to Christ in faith are changed. God forgives them of their condemning sin and then comes to live in them by means of His Spirit. When this faith transaction takes place, God begins a work of transformation in the life of the Christian—one that will make the Christian new, different, better and growing toward the image and likeness of Jesus. When this happens, it creates a “draw” toward Christ in the lives of those whom the believer influences. They are, to one degree or another, impressed with God’s work in the Christian. And like a faith magnet we draw them toward Christ through the example of God’s work in us, and through the spoken Word. And that is exactly how God designed it to work. An unbeliever observes God’s work in Christians around him and is influenced toward believing in Christ too. God’s desire is to use our lives as testimony to His love and power, and thus to draw others to faith. I considered a variety of approaches to this subject, but decided to use word pictures given to us in the New Testament to help us understand what this phenomenon of “drawing” really is, and how God uses us, and His sanctifying work in us, to draw others. Salt Matthew 5:13 – Jesus says to His followers: You are the salt of the earth. By that He simply meant that we are designed to “flavor” the world around us with God’s grace at work in our lives. Karl Marx sarcastically quipped that religion is the “opiate of the people.” Timothy Keller responds: Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people. It's more like the smelling salts. An early Christian document known as the Epistle to Diognetus (c. A.D. 120-200) is believed to have been written by a man named Athenagoras. In one important section the author describes how Christians are alike—and different from others: The difference between Christians and the rest of mankind is not a matter of nationality, or language, or customs. Christians do not live in separate cities of their own, speak any special dialect, not practice any eccentric way of life. … They pass their lives in whatever township…each man's lot has determined; and conform to ordinary local usage in their clothing, diet, and other habits. Nevertheless, the organization of their community does exhibit some features that are remarkable, and even surprising. For instance, though they are residents at home in their own countries, their behavior there is more like transients. … Though destiny has placed them here in the flesh, they do not live after the flesh; their days are passed on earth, but their citizenship is above in the heavens. They obey the prescribed laws, but in their own private lives they transcend the laws. They show love to all men—and all men persecute them. They are misunderstood, and condemned; yet by suffering death they are quickened into life. They are poor, yet making many rich; lacking all things, yet having all things in abundance. … They repay [curses] with blessings, and abuse with courtesy. For the good they do, they suffer stripes as evildoers. Donald Bloesch: We are called to be not the honey of the world but the salt of the earth. Salt stings on an open wound, but it also saves one from gangrene. Timothy Keller: What if you are salt in your small community? If you're salt—the kind of spiritual salt Jesus is talking about—people won't go away saying, "What a proud, stuck up and unfriendly person he was!" No. What happens is when they go away from your salty presence in a group, they will not say what a great person you were. They’ll say, "What a great group." "What fascinating meeting, there was just something about it!" This is pretty simple. Salt makes you feel better about life. Christians make you feel better. Light Besides salt, of course, Jesus also said His followers were the light of the world. So he encouraged us to let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16) In Philippians 2, the apostle Paul uses the metaphor of light again saying that in a crooked and depraved world, we shine like stars in the universe, as we hold out the word of life… It might help you to imagine God living inside your body, your life, and wanting to shine out of you into the darkness around you. We are His media for sharing the message of his love and salvation. From 1991 to 2007, Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies conducted a survey among 750 Muslims who had converted to Christianity. Those surveyed represented 50 ethnic groups from 30 different countries. Here were the nine most-cited reasons for conversion to the Christian faith: 1. Christians practiced what they preached. 2. Christians appeared to have loving marriages in which women were treated as equals. 3. Christian-to-Christian violence was less prominent than Muslim-to-Muslim violence. 4. The prayers of Christians had healed the disabled and delivered others from demonic powers. 5. The Koran had produced profound disillusionment because it accentuates "God's punishment more than his love, and the use of violence to impose Islamic laws." 6. God had used visions and dreams to influence the converts' decision. 7. Muslims can never be certain of their forgiveness and salvation as Christians can. 8. Reading the Bible, the converts had been convicted of its truth. 9. They were attracted to the idea of God's unconditional love. Aroma Another metaphor for the influence we are in the world on behalf of the Lord and His gospel is “aroma.” We touched on this a couple weeks ago. When Christ enters our lives He makes us smell good. Through us [Christ] spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. Someone told me recently that the best deodorant is a healthy diet. Eat a good die and you won’t need deodorant! Jesus “sweetens” our lives from within—not cosmetically. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the small of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. I want to recommend a movie to you. It’s a bit dated now, but it is a good one. Facing the Giants is an evangelistic movie made by Alex and Stephen Kendrick that tells the story of a football coach's spiritual life. The movie has no drugs, no sex, and no profanity. Consequently, the filmmakers believed it would receive a G rating if ever reviewed by the Motion Picture Association of America. However, after the movie was picked up by a distributor called Provident Films and scheduled for limited release in the fall of 2006, the MPAA rated Facing the Giants PG, meaning that children need "parental guidance" to see it. The reason for the MPAA's decision? Too much Christianity. The movie is filled with miracles, prayer, and even a presentation of the gospel. When asked about the decision, Kris Fuhr, vice president of marketing at Provident Films, said the panel "decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion, and that this might offend people from other religions. It's important that they used the word proselytizing when they talked about giving this movie a PG. In an age where cinemagraphic sex and violence is no longer looked down on as offensive, Christianity may become the next sex and violence, the content that is to be despised. The day may come when such movies will get an “R” rating for “religion.” Witness Acts 1 is the historical account of the final encounter between Jesus and the disciples prior to His ascension into heaven. His all-important last words to His followers there were: You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. A witness is one who says, I can vouch for this one! It is a person who has seen first hand what really happened. Though we cannot offer eye-witness evidence of the resurrection of Jesus as the first century believers could, we can nevertheless bear witness to what Jesus has done in our lives. Just weeks after Pentecost the apostles were arrested for preaching about Jesus and thrown in jail. But the angel of the Lord miraculously let them out. When he did, he told them Go, stand in the temple courts, and tell the people the full message of this new life. At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people. In Matthew 9:37, Jesus tells his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." There are so many levels at which we can be faithful to our calling to be witnesses for Christ: • Vote Christian values, be vocal about them opportunistically • Watch for opportunities to share with others that you are a believer, that you trust in Christ as your Savior, that you attend church, that your family stands for moral integrity • Behave like you believe in the workplace, neighborhood and town hall. Emmanuel Suhard: To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist. The results of a survey conducted 3 years ago illustrate the point: • 82 percent—the number of un-churched people who are receptive to attending church if invited and escorted by a friend • 21 percent—the number of church-going Christians who invited someone to church in 2006 I cannot persuade the whole world, but I can proclaim the whole Word. Word We are the ones Jesus has commissioned to share His Word with the people in the world around us. Listen Faith comes through hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. (Rom. 10:17) Dwight Moody, the second greatest evangelist next to Billy Graham: I prayed for Faith, and thought that some day Faith would come down and strike me like lightening. But Faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, "Now Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." I had closed my Bible, and prayed for Faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and Faith has been growing ever since. Hubert Mitchell memorized the entire New Testament. As a former missionary in his sixties, he spent his days in downtown Chicago, going from office building to office building. Inside he would ask secretaries if he could have five minutes with their bosses to talk about a personal matter. Frequently he would be ushered into the boss's office, and he would say, "I only have five minutes, but I want to ask you, did you read your Bible before you came to work this morning?" The boss would look at him as if he were crazy, and say, "No." Hubert would smile and answer, "Sir, you sure missed a blessing, didn't you? I'd just like to share with you what God spoke about to me in the Bible this morning." He would open a New Testament and hand it to the boss, and say, "Let's start right here." Hubert would sit back and start quoting it word for word. The boss would listen, amazed. After five minutes, Hubert would say, "My time's up and I've got to go. Wasn't that a blessing?" On most occasions the boss would ask him to stay longer, and they would talk. Hubert Mitchell led men to Christ all over downtown Chicago that way, because God's word was burning in his heart. We are the living, speaking Word of God, agents of reconciliation. Will we be faithful for Jesus who left heaven to die for our sins and justify us before God by His sacrifice? For the One who bought us eternal salvation with his very blood, would be willing to learn the Word of God and share it with those to whom He leads us? The Christians who were driven out of Jerusalem on the occasion of the stoning of Stephen, preached the word wherever they went. (Acts 8:4)You don’t need ability—His power is at work through the Word, and He will faithfully provoked faith in the hearts and minds of those with whom we share that Word A great congregation is fine, and fun, but what most communities really need is a few saints who are willing to step out in faith and believe that God will speak through them if they only try. Conclusion Premise 1 – the church is called to DRAW people to Christ, Premise 2 – I am a part of His church Conclusion – I am called to help draw people to Christ. Recommendation/challenge – RWA Prayer RWA Prayer 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 if 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]