August 23 - The Ministry of Jesus
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 7 viewsNotes
Transcript
PRE-SERVICE
welcome!
The bathrooms are open - that’s the only part of the building that’s open. Please use the hand sanitizer going in and out of the building.
Please stay with your vehicles unless you have to use the bathroom.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
More outdoor and indoor services!
IF WE MOVE INDOORS - we will have some extra steps we have to run through.
There are two big changes. The FIRST Change is, the health unit is currently asking us to not sing as we get together. So we are going to focus on opening and closing service with prayer. The main reason is that doctors have a strong reason to believe that singing substantially amplifies the risk of transmitting COVID. BUT - This measure is only temporary.
I know this isn’t ideal, but i’ll tell you what - I’m really looking forward to this. I love singing, but the entire point is to praise God - and it’s a great thing to dedicate a larger portion of the service to singing.
The SECOND chnage is this - we are also being asked not to run a separate kids ministry. So parents - what we are going to do is, we are going to modify the order of service a little bit. We’ll be doing a short video, and a little kid-focused message before the main message. We want to make sure that your entire family is getting ministered to.
We also want to get some resources into your hands to help your kids learn the best. We will be putting together some kits with some fun sermon notes activities, coloring pages, and we’re encouraging you to fill the kits with other stuff that will help your kids.
If you want in on this, talk to pastor jon - drop a message to me on facebook, go to parklandchurch.ca/connect and fill out the form at the bottom, or send me an email at jon@parklandchurch.ca
MESSAGE
Jesus’ ministry was not meant to finish with his death - if anything, it really started with his death.
Jesus, before he went back to heaven, he got together with the disciples. And he said this.
Matthew 28:18-20
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Now, if Jesus started saying something, and he began with the phrase ‘I possess all authority in heaven and on earth’ - listen to what he’s about to say. Nobody starts a sentence with that, and leads into something unimportant.
Now, this is what we call the ‘great comission’. And maybe you know it - go and make disciples, baptizing and teaching. But we skip the ‘Therefor’ at the begining.
The full message is this - Jesus holds all authority in heaven and on earth. He is the ultimate top of the ladder, the boss’s boss. In every area of heaven and of earth, He reigns supreme. And so, BECAUSE OF this fact - we need to be making disciples.
Jesus told many parables about the kingdom. Two particular stories (both parables called ‘The Parable of the Talents’, though they were slightly different) were about a man giving money to several of his servants. They were to take the money, grow it, in order to profit the manager.
In each story, one person refuses to do it, saying that they don’t believe the person deserves the wealth. And that one person in each story - they’re the bad guy. They’re the negative example.
Jesus is saying something about HOW he works with us through those parables - but he’s also saying something about himself. He’s saying - i’m the manager here. You work because what you have here, it’s all mine. and the other servants understood that - they weren’t doing their master a favour, they were serving him because they owed it to him - they had his finances, this was their job.
There is the difference between people who are in it when the times are easy, and people who are in it no matter what. It’s EASY to serve God when you feel like you love him, it’s EASY to tell people about God when you have an abundance of time and ability to get it done.
But what about when serving God means sacrifice? What about when telling people about Jesus costs you something? What about when doing what God wants you to do is hard?
It’s easy to give when we feel like giving - what does the bible ask of us when we don’t?
I want to talk a bit about Ephesians 2.
Now, here’s the context of this verse.
STARTS OFF TALKING ABOUT OUR SINFUL PAST (how people followed the ways of the world, gratified the desires of the flesh, deserving of wrath)
However, God turned things around - and it was fueld by his great love for us and his great mercy. And Paul talks about the great things God did for us
He made us alive even when we were dead
he raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly realms
BUT - He gave a WHY. Ephesians 2:7
in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
So, God does all these great things. He gives us life, he gives us a place with him in heaven. BUT - he wants this whole process to demonstrate the incomparable riches of HIS grace.
So, there’s an expectation here. Not that God is saying, ‘I did this for you, so you need to do something for me in return’. Its more like this:
If we appreciated and loved God as much as we say we do - we would want to give our lives to him.
THAT’S A MARK OF REAL LOVE - if all you want is to receive from a person, is that real love? But if your love spurs you to want to give back - that’s a mark of real love.
SO paul wants to remind us here - that everythign we have from Him, everything we are IN him - it’s all a gift. Everything in us and through us is meant to show the rest of the world who God is. And Paul says this:
Ephesians 2:8-10
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
So he’s saying, even our very status as children of God, is not something we have earned - it’s a gift. And with that Gift, God is also setting us on a mission.
God created and changed us us not just to love us - but to do good works. That’s part and parcel with the salvation experience.
We should be saying as Christians, ‘Once I was a sinner but God saved me, gave me an eternal life and a home with him - and now I have a job to do’.
And none of us are off the hook here. We’re comfortable with the idea that God loves our obedience. We’re happy to give when it’s easy, we’re happy to serve when we feel like it, and we’re glad to sacrifice when we don’t have to go without.
But there’s a flipside to that I want you to understand - it’s easy to do our duty when it’s easy to do our duty. But when our job gets hard - we are not off the hook.
And I want you to understand a few of the reasons behind why i’m talking about this.
Firstly - I think it’s really easy to start off with the DESIRE to serve God, because we love him. But then we get COMFORTABLE in serving him. then we start losing sight of the big WHY we’re serving Him - because he’s the infinite God of the universe, who deserves every second of our praise and service. And sooner or later, we shift perspective from ‘I’m doing this because God deserves it’ to ‘I’m doing this to be generous’, then we start doing it less, and less, and less. Then we start seeing our faith as primarily about what it does for us, how it makes us feel. We see our church as an organization that exists to meet our needs. God wants to build us a house, but he wants to use us to build him a kingdom. And we forget the mission because we spend too much time in the mansion. We focus too much on what God does for us, that we forget to spend time on what God does for others THROUGH us.
But secondly - maybe you haven’t confronted this kind of reality about faith. The reality that God is infinite and majestic and all powerful. He holds all authority everywhere for all time. And He’s asked us to do something - so we need to start taking that really seriously. Because, in regards to our sinfulness, we desperately need to confront ourselves with how badly we have fallen and how deeply God has forgiven us, and how we’re welcome with open arms no matter what kind of people we may have been - BUT. We also need to confront ourselves with how powerful God is, how much authority He has, and how we really do need to serve Him, because it’s the right thing to do.
And here’s the wonderfulness of it - in serving Him, ESPECIALLY during times that it’s hard, we will feel the presence of the Spirit far more than we ever did trying to take care of ourselves. Because remember, Jesus himself taught us that one:
Matthew 16:25
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
And it makes sense why we default so much to a view of church and ministry that makes us the most comfortable - because it’s not wrong to want our needs met. What we miss is, by doing what Christ asked us to do, how he asked us to do it, when he asks us to do it (which is all the time), we will experience a level of closeness and comfort with the spirit that we would never have thought possible. And this is the key of the experience with being a christian - that even in laying down our lives, we can find them if we’re looking to Christ. And I want us to do this more than just accidentally - that people accidentally get ministered to as they come and we’re taking care of ourselves. This needs to be the primary driving force of our organization as a church - the idea that, we are here to show the world the incomparable riches of God’s grace. And the best way we can receive that grace while giving it out to other’s is through this process of learning to give up ourselves for Christ.