Vision Sunday - God's Story, My Story

What is vision Sunday?

What is vision Sunday?

NOT Pastor Ben was singing in the shower one day and had a vision that 2000 people are going to come to know Jesus in the next two years… that’s not it...

NOT sitting around emptying our minds until WE have a vision…

NOT hype… so if you expected me to come dressed up like a cheerleader with a megaphone, you are going to remain disappointed… or relieved depending on how you look at it...

Not tricking you into participating…

Simply THIS: WHAT are we doing in this next season of ministry and WHY are we doing it…

Simply THIS: WHAT are we doing and WHY are we doing it…

Theme this fall: “God’s Story, My Story.”

Study the entire storyline of the bible from Genesis to Revelation…

Main question: How has God written YOU into HIS story???

How has God written each individual person… Oak Hill Fellowship Church… the Solanco Community… 21st Century America…

How has God written YOU into HIS story?

Important order: God wrote YOU into his story before the foundations of the earth… NOT the other way around…

Too often in modern Christianity, we think that WE write GOD into OUR story…

We think God is here to fulfill OUR vision…

That when we believe in Jesus he puts his stamp of approval on whatever we want to do with our lives…

We think that we need to “make time” for God instead of all of time belonging to him…

We think that we need to “sacrifice a portion” of our personal resources for God instead of realizing that we are just stewards, not owners…

We think that we are supposed to build our own kingdoms and as long as we occasionally “use them as a platform for God,” he’s cool with us receiving some of the glory.

But the way of a disciple is not “How does God fit into my story,” but rather we discover “How has God written ME into HIS story?”

To state it less as a question and more as a vision statement, our goal is that each of us would find our place in God’s unfolding story of salvation through Jesus Christ.

And to really grasp that effectively, you have to start all the way back at the beginning… and have to get the full scope of God’s unfolding story of salvation…

Some people think the Bible’s story goes like this: God created, and then two days later man fell into sin, and a day after that God sent Jesus who was born, but a day later died on a cross, and three days later rose from the dead and now we are here.

The truth is that God chose to reveal himself slowly… over thousands of years… through many books of divinely inspired scripture… through many authors… ultimately to his people Israel, and then in these last days, to the Gentiles as well through the church…

There is a whole story that God used to save a people for himself...

And so to put state the main question for the series in a positive statement, here’s what we are going for… that you would be able, from anywhere in the Bible… and anywhere your life takes you...

Find your place in God’s unfolding story of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Now to cast a vision for you about what we are doing in this theme and why we are doing it, I want us to look at ...

2 Timothy is the last book the Apostle Paul ever wrote...

He wrote it to his young disciple Timothy who was pastoring a church in Ephesus and really was carrying a lot of the burden of Paul’s evangelistic efforts throughout his life...

Timothy had traveled extensively with Paul ever since Paul’s second missionary journey...

He had traveled to various churches to carry letters and establish them in sound doctrine...

And all this was kind of against his personality… he was a timid… fearful…

But God had a calling on Timothy’s life. He had a place for Timothy in his unfolding story.

And so Paul writes this last letter to his spiritual son…

And in chapter 3, we hear a plea for Timothy to trust the scriptures that pointed him to Jesus… so that he could trust Jesus for the calling on his life in the face of any circumstance:

Read

Paul is reminding Timothy to find his place in God’s unfolding story of salvation through Jesus Christ.

And today I want us to see 5 reasons we should do the same thing today… 5 reasons for this theme “God’s Story, My Story”

And the first is this:

In a confusing world, we need a biblical worldview. (v. 10-13)

Explain: In verse 10, Paul talks about the things that characterized his ministry… solid teaching… righteous conduct… a godly aim… faith… patience… love… steadfastness (or endurance)...

But in v. 11, Paul shows what that got him… suffering and persecution.

In

Now I’ll dig back into v. 10-11 in a little bit… but for now let’s just admit that it’s sort of confusing that people who love try to do things God’s way are often the people that suffer the most.

And people who do evil often get away with it!

Look at verses 12-13 - “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (2 Ti 3:12–13). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

This is a question that people frequently wrestle with both inside the church and outside the church: why do bad things happen to good people?

Why does suffering exist?

How do I make sense of these horrible injustices???

And to add to the problem, popular pastors and televangelists often answer these questions with ideas and tips that are more at home in self-help books than the Bible.

Paul is warning Timothy that many are going to be imposter Christians… deceiving others and being deceived.

They may sound like they believe in God… they may quote the Bible… they may say they are Christians...

but they do not understand the how the Bible fits together and points to Jesus… and therefore they do not properly apply it for a life of godliness.

So what do we do? When we open our Bibles, how can we know that we can rely on what we are reading? How do we know what to apply?

How can we understand what the Old and New Testaments mean for us and for our salvation?

And we know

How can the book of Judges… for example… help us make sense of our world today?

Understanding the whole story is like putting on Bible glasses through which you see all of life...

It colors your world with the beauty of redemption.

It makes sense of the world around you… all of the suffering and beauty and good and evil and injustice… God’s word gives us the way to look at all of that.

THAT’S a biblical worldview.

THAT’S a biblical worldview.

And that only develops as we grow to understand the whole story.

The less we are familiar with the whole story, the less the gospel and the world around us is going to make sense to us...

The less we understand God’s story, the more it will seem like the Bible belongs in church, but nowhere else… the more it will seem disconnected from life.

That’s why starting next week we are getting into a 13 week sermon series from Genesis to Revelation.

We are obviously hitting the high points… but the goal is to piece together the whole storyline of the Bible… and show how it helps us make sense of our own story.

I’m praying it will be like putting Bible glasses on so that we can see the world around us more clearly.

Next Sunday, the sermon will be called “The Story of Everything...” and we are going to see how the weight of everything we know and hope for in life rests upon the first two chapters of Genesis.

Make it a priority to be here on Sundays… when you can’t be here… or when you are teaching a class… listen to the sermon online...

The sermons are going to be tied into the rest of what we are doing…

Timothy needed to stand out as a godly disciple and disciple-maker who was willing to endure the upside-down nature of the gospel in this world.

He needed to boldly withstand intense persecution… he even needed to come to EXPECT it as a godly follower of Jesus.

And so Paul urges him in v. 14 - But as for YOU, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed.

Here’s the second reason we’re pursuing this theme this year:

In a half-hearted world, we need whole hearted devotion to God’s eternal purpose. (v. 14-15a)

If the world in every age hates the true message of Jesus Christ… if false teachers are deceiving others and tickling people’s ears, we need to be “all in” on the gospel message.

We need to know how to sniff out the false-gospel and how to cling to the true gospel.

And so Paul says, “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed.”

That word continue means to “remain… stay… abide...”

Don’t get off it… remain close to the truth that was passed down to you.

It’s happened a couple times in the last few months where those who were once prominent Christians… even church leaders… turned and denied their Christian faith.

And it’s got a lot of people like, “How is that possible?”

And the answer is here… they didn’t continue.

They were deceived and are now deceiving others.

They didn’t remain in what they firmly believed.

They had half-hearted devotion.

But these godless leaders stand in sharp contrast to the people who taught Timothy the gospel…

He says, “ “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (, ESV)

So who did he learn the gospel from?

Well… it started when he was a kid… with his mother and grandmother…

Parents, never underestimate the value of teaching your kids the scriptures.

Get your teenagers on this reading plan that we are doing this fall.

Work on memorizing the Fighter Verses as a family that we are returning to in the NextGen Discipleship Hour and talk about what they mean… parents are the primary disciple-makers of their children...

But when Timothy was an older teenager, he also started following the Apostle Paul...

And Paul had already mentioned earlier that Timothy got to see every part of Paul’s life… his teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11 my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra [remember, that’s when Paul was stoned and left for dead outside the city]—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me.

Like teenagers… what if the thing you were most excited about for youth group this fall wasn’t the new GAGA pit in the parking lot (though that is pretty cool), but what if you leaned into the adults who love you and want to share their lives with you...

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

And adults… you know what that means for you… you need to open yourself up… and you need to be following hard after Christ.

Remember, it was the LORD who delivered Paul… it’s the LORD who makes us able and worth following…

But for Timothy to see all of that in Paul’s life… it had to be hard to know he would face the same persecutions...

It would have been easy for him to get side-tracked...

To water-down the gospel… or to let any teaching slide…

To focus on good deeds without gospel words…

To build up the amount of people who attend events rather than the amount of disciples who count the cost and follow Jesus.

That would be a lot less painful and a lot more gratifying for everyone involved.

We have an enemy who wants to get you side-tracked… who wants to hold you back so that you only have half-hearted devotion… and he will use any means possible to do so.

He will get you thinking that all that God wants is for you to go to heaven when you die… what you do with your story until you get there doesn’t matter.

There were some who demanded external conformity to the Old Testament law…

He will get you thinking that only pastors and missionaries are called to build Christ’s kingdom… and that you don’t have time for that while you’re building your own kingdom.

The enemy will get you thinking that because you don’t have certain gifts, you can’t be used in God’s plan.

He will get you thinking that your hardships are God’s hatred of you… and that he’s thrown you and your story aside...

He will get you thinking that grace is for your salvation, but your continued growth depends on you...

The enemy will get you thinking that grace means that no growth in godliness is required.

We have an enemy that will use any lie he can to get you sidetracked and to leave you in half-hearted devotion to God.

And he will often use the Bible to do it.

Didn’t we see that in Jesus’ life in the desert?

Satan uses the Bible to deceive Jesus… but Jesus knows the whole story… he knows the perfection of God’s design for humanity… he knows the craftiness of the serpent… he knows the context of God’s promises… and he knows his ultimate purpose to fulfill all of it through his death and resurrection.

The schemes of Satan are nothing new… but they will surprise us if we don’t know God’s word the way God intended it to be known.

But Paul says, “Continue.”

That word continue means to “remain… stay… abide...”

Don’t get off it… remain close to the truth that was passed down to you.

It’s happened a couple times in the last few months where those who were once prominent Christians… even church leaders… turned and denied their Christian faith.

And it’s got a lot of people like, “How is that possible?”

And the answer is here… they didn’t continue.

They were deceived and are now deceiving others.

They didn’t remain in what they firmly believed.

They had half-hearted devotion.

Listen, the goal of this fall is not to know the Bible for knowledge sake… the goal is to know the whole story so that we can continue in what we have FIRMLY believed.

They help us bring sermons out of the realm of “let’s think about this” to “let’s do this in the Power of the Spirit.”

Gospel Community discussions are going to be such an important part of this series…

Because if we only interact with something in theory for an hour on a Sunday morning, we are missing part of the power of what God has called the church to be.

Sermons are a powerful tool of God for sure, but biblical accountability comes alongside to make sure that’s being lived out.

And so don’t forsake meeting together… and grow in vulnerability...

This fall, some of you will experience changes in Gospel Community make-up or your leader...

In a me-centered world, we need Christ-centered living.

So they KNEW the Old Testament law… but they didn’t understand how it

We are doing our best to not disrupt the good things that are happening in our current GCs while providing leadership and new opportunities through more groups this fall...

And as we make those changes, allow this to be a time where you renew your commitment to Gospel Community...

Where you say, “I need someone like Paul reminding me to continue in what I have learned...”

Where you say, “I’m going to BE someone like Paul in another person’s life, reminding THEM to continue in the faith.”

I know that’s super-scary… but you can do it… and you can only do it through Christ.

Paul says to Timothy, “you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (, ESV)

In a human-centered world, we need Christ-centered wisdom. (v. 15b)

In an answer-starved world, we need Biblical literacy. (v 16)

In a hell-bound world, we need disciple-making confidence. (v. 17)