Barriers
For the One • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 12 viewsNotes
Transcript
Handout
Big Idea: If faith is a journey, how do we help people along the journey? We have to realize that the journey has a predictable pattern of barriers that we need to help people across. We will be working through the five thresholds of coming to faith. Speak to The One and recognize where they might be on this spectrum of thresholds and how to take the next step. Speak to the follower of Jesus and help them to know how to help their one take their next step.
Briefly recap faith as a spectrum.
Draw Engle’s scale of evangelism on the board.
Do the barriers to climbing Rainier bit...
Don’t have the gear
Don’t have the rock climbing know how
There are the barriers of things that I don’t even care about that I would have to start caring about if I attempted to climb Rainier…like heights…do rickity ladder bit.
So here is the premise of where we are heading today: If the call on the life of a follower of Jesus is to go make disciples then there is the imperative that the word “make” implies some active role on the part of the one “making” disciples. Let me tell you why that is revolutionary and you didn’t even know that it was.
That is revolutionary because if you grew up the way I did then it was all about information transfer. Your job is to just tell people that Jesus is real, and so is heaven, hell, and their sin and that all they need to do is take that information and make the most life-transforming decision of their entire life with little or no regard to where that person is at on their journey or the real questions, skepticism's or issues that they might have.
Let me show you why this isn’t enough with one simple question:
Could you go summit Rainier if you just read a book about how to do it and yet had no prior knowledge?
Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, there were a couple of pastors....explain their journey of figuring out the five thresholds that every postmodern adult has to step across on their journey to faith in Jesus.
And so this morning we are going to unpack what each of those five thresholds are.
If you are not a follower of Jesus, please listen incredibly carefully because perhaps you see yourself somewhere at one of these barriers today.
If you are a follower of Jesus, however, I want to read you a quick verse and ask you a question before we get started.
And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil;
and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know.
“The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.
“But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Who causes the seed to grow and produce its grain?
Is it the farmer who works the soil, gives it water, and keeps the weeds from choking it out?
Or is it God who causes the sun to shine the plant to perform photosynthesis, and the rain to fall?
The answer is yes. God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to know Him and find life. But for some strange reason, He has chosen to partner with us to help people come to know him.
Who is your one? Just know that they are somewhere on this spectrum of faith. And it is our job as followers of Jesus to enter into their story, do life with them, love them, and help them walk through all of these thresholds that we are going to talk about today. And maybe you get to be there on the day they walk through that final threshold or perhaps you may journey with them for years and only see them walk through one of these thresholds. No matter which of those it is, if you are faithful to be there with them and help them along their journey, you are being faithful to the mission of Jesus that you have been called to.
So let’s get started because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
Before we do though, here is how this will work: I will give you a barrier (hopefully everyone got a fill in the blank because I promise you will want to take this information home with you) I will show you where we see this in the Bible and what this barrier looks like in culture and how Jesus shapes our response to the barrier or threshold.
Barrier 1 = Distrust into Trust
As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him.
And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him.
When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?”
And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Explain why Matthew had no reason to trust the religious establishment…of which he would have seen Jesus being a part of.
Follow Me were the words of a Rabbi. Follow Me is something that you said to a worthy student and in Matthews mind he was not that. In fact, Matthew would’ve had a great distrust for the religious establishment because they would have made it clear that they did not approve of his lifestyle. They would have cast him out and ostracized him at every turn and yet Jesus leans in and goes to his house for dinner. Jesus begins building a relationship with Matthew. And to solidify Matthews ability to trust Jesus, Jesus actually sticks up for Matthew and his friends in front of the religious establishment.
Question: Is there a general trust towards Christians from people outside of the faith? Why do you think that is?
Could it be the blatant hypocrisy they have seen in some of their Christian friends who claim to believe one thing and do the complete opposite?
Could it be the church scandals from major leaders in the Christian faith?
Could it be the seemingly unending string of financial missteps made by christian and parachurch organizations?
I could go on and on but do you get the picture.
Distrust = if being a Christian means _______________ I don’t want any part of that.
How we help people across that threshold:
Go have dinner and build a relationship ensuring you live what you claim to believe in the process.
This is the simplest yet the most difficult of all of the thresholds to help people walk across because it means that we have to actually live out what we claim to believe. In order for people to believe Christians can be trusted, we actually have to be trustworthy and we have to have close enough relationships with people who aren’t followers of Jesus for them to be able to see that. That means that the work of making disciples actually begins far upstream in our own hearts and in our own spiritual formation.
You see the entire foundation of our mission is relationships. I want to talk you through this idea of Gospel opportunities. Go on to explain that.
The mission of Jesus isn’t some extra thing that you have to add to your schedule. It is your schedule…but your schedule lived with intentionality paying attention to the relationship opportunities that God has placed right in front of you.
Barrier 2 = Indifferent to curious
Briefly tell the story of the feeding of the five thousand. But don’t tell the story of them following him to the other side of the lake.
This crowd had learned that they could trust Jesus to meet their physical needs. Jesus was trying to use this miracle to convey a deeper spiritual meaning that he would also satisfy their deepest spiritual needs as well.
Tell the story of them following Jesus to the other side of the lake.
When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You get here?”
Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.
“Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”
And they seem interested for a little while until Jesus starts diving into the deeper spiritual meanings behind the miracle he had performed and then this is their response:
Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”
As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.
While the multitudes and even some of the people who had followed Jesus up to this point were impressed with Jesus’ miracles and had come to trust him somewhat, what is made evident here is that they were indifferent to the deeper spiritual realities that Jesus was trying to bring them into.
I think we see a couple of things from this story:
Even though people may walk through the barrier of distrust into trust, that does not automatically mean they are interested in deeper spiritual realities. That is another threshold we have to help people across on their journey of faith.
Not everyone will cross every barrier.
In fact, I have chosen several of our examples based on the fact that the people in them failed to walk across the threshold and come to faith. And that was with Jesus actually leading them! So you need to know that there are plenty of people that you will love and serve and share your life with that will come to a particular threshold and never go any further. It is heartbreaking at times to want something that you know is good and life giving for others and yet it is their own personal choice to cross the threshold or not. But we cannot force nor should we ever try to manipulate people through guilt, shame, or a polished sales pitch.
What will really bake your noodle and will lead us to the third observation about this story is this question:
Did Jesus know that his feeding of the 5,000 was actually going to be a huge flop? You realize that is what it was right? Jesus came to the end of that teaching and all of the people he had fed and been teaching walked away because of their blindness…they were just using Jesus for the miracles. That’s what you call a ministry flop by the way…feed 5,000 people (actually closer to 20K) not see a single person come because of that. And yet, Jesus knew that was going to be the case and still chose to perform the miracle and spend two full days teaching them. Why?!?
The simple answer: It is because that is just who Jesus is. The Bible says that Jesus saw the hungry multitude and had compassion on them. Jesus is the embodiment of love and love doesn’t ask questions like: what do I stand to gain from serving these people? How does this thing I am doing serve my agenda? Are they a lost cause? They will never believe, so what is the use? We don’t do any of this because of any of those reasons. We don’t serve people and build trust in people to further an agenda or fix a person that we see as a project.
WE JUST LOVE PEOPLE. We love people because that’s who we are and that’s what Jesus did. We bring up spiritual realities because we love people and because we have honestly seen the impact that diving into them headlong has had on our lives.
Many people in the culture we live in are stuck here at this threshold. There is a level of trust, respect, and deference for followers of Jesus and yet there is often indifference towards believing in Jesus. Here is how it often comes out:
You just do your thing and I will do mine and we will both be good.
It is fine that you believe what you do and I would never want to change that…its good for you and seems to be working for you but it just isn’t for me.
And so the question is: How do we help people across this threshold?
Ask questions that help people define the set of spiritual realities that they are currently living their life by.
People have deep and spiritually informed philosophies about almost every area of life and yet most people choose not to think about them. They choose not to think about the things that drive almost every aspect of their life to include every decision they make. It is what drives how they parent their kids, to where they derive their sense of morality from, to why they do or do not return their shopping cart to the shopping cart coral at Walmart.
I was talking with someone the other day and the shopping cart thing came up. I asked them, why do people return the shopping cart? Their response was: because it is courteous. I know that their worldview is based in naturalism. Meaning evolution and natural selection and therefore no room for a God in their equation for the world and as the final logical conclusion of that worldview…no cause or standard of morality to include courtesy. The idea of courtesy is an unknown integer in their equation.
And so I just asked, what is it in our biology that necessitates courtesy? I did not ask that as a sort of gotcha question. I did not ask that in some attempt to shed light on a deficient worldview. I intended no shame in that and I wasn’t just trying to stump them. The point is that I wanted to invoke some curiosity around spiritual existential questions that we often live out without thinking about. That is it.
When faced with a conversation or question that begs to carry out the logical conclusion of their worldview, people will always come to an unexplainable gap that Jesus has an answer for. Please listen closely because this is where a lot of people go wrong once they come to see this barrier and how to help people through it:
It is incredibly important that you do not try and seal the deal with some high pressure sales pitch for Jesus. If you operate that way, you have used this threshold observation as a weapon and have undoubtedly begun to view them as a project you need to work on.
You see, we have these kinds of conversations all the time! It’s politics, raising children, marriage, ethics at work and business, and shopping carts at Walmart. And yet we often are not thinking in terms of continuing the conversation. We often fail to go deeper by asking the question of why. But once you crack the door on this and people begin considering even the most basic aspects of their lives in terms of spiritual realities, it is like taking the little blue pill in the matrix…you can never unsee it and will never stop asking questions. It opens the door to curiosity in people and by extension skepticism and doubt…here is the deal though; Jesus invites our curiosity and he is big enough to handle peoples skepticisms and doubts.
Barrier 3 = Closed to change to open to change
I have often heard our decision to follow Jesus likened to signing our name on the bottom of the blank check of our life and giving it to Jesus to fill out the amount of his choosing.
That means following Jesus is going to result in change in our life. Maybe that is just change of behaviors, actions, and attitudes. But maybe it is selling everything you have and moving to sub Saharan Africa as a missionary. Or moving to the Pacific Northwest to plant a church. Most often not…most often it looks like just following Jesus on mission across the street to love and serve your neighbor and your community.
Whatever the case, our journey of faith means change and many people are not open to change. That is what we see in the story of the Rich Young Ruler.
Briefly explain the Rich Young Ruler.
And here is how the story ends:
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.
Did you notice that the Rich Young Ruler only THOUGHT that his wealth had brought him freedom. What does Jesus promise him? Jesus promises true freedom and true wealth if the young man would just follow him.
Man we value our ‘freedoms’ and autonomy big time! And yet, Jesus would say that there is no freedom apart from him…we only think we are truly free. We think we have freedom and joy because of the disposable income, the big house on ten acres, through the kids sports and extracurriculars, the Instagram worthy vacations, and yet because we were created to worship something, those things often take a place of supremacy in our hearts and enslave us to worship in jobs we hate, in schedules we can’t sustain with little to no margins to actually enjoy them, and to upkeep that drains us of the very joy those things promised to give us.
You see, Jesus quite rarely asks us to abandon those things for his sake (although following after him means we are willing to make the change if he asks it). Instead, Jesus brings us freedom by putting all of those things in their proper place.
Your wife is a terrible god. Your job and your retirement account are terrible gods. You kids and their extracurriculars make terrible gods. Your stuff is a crappy god. And all of those lesser gods require a level of worship and sacrifice that is cruel and unrelenting. It is slavery.
Following Jesus often means a complete re-orientation of our lives around all of these areas. But these are deeply personal things that we actually really like and many people are afraid to hand those things over to let Jesus call the shots because, what if He asks me to change something that I really like.
And so how do we help people through this threshold from closed off to change to open to change as we follow Jesus?
We do this by sharing our story.
How have you found freedom in Jesus? Do you know the answer to that? Do you want to know the most frustrating question to ask a group of Christians? Here it is:
What has God been doing in your life lately?
You want to get a bunch of blank stares go ahead and ask that question in a small group setting. Do we know? Are we spending time reflecting and praying and in the Word communicating with God and allowing Him to speak to us through His Word to actually see what He is doing and showing us? When we do that and when we can see that, the next step is to be in close enough relationships with people where you can live a life of freedom on full display.
It is having a reason for the hope that is in you. It is displaying a life where there is room in the margins to love and serve other people. It is structuring your finances the way Jesus calls us to so that we have margin in our finances to love and serve others. It is seen in our approach to our jobs, our retirements, our health, our leisure activities. There is freedom, vitality, and a fullness of life that we believe is found in Jesus. Are you experiencing that?
More importantly, isn’t our culture crying out for that very thing? Isn’t culture crying out for freedom from the crazy cycle we find ourselves in, and for purpose, and meaning and significance. And doesn’t Jesus promise all of those things if we put down control of our lives and open ourselves up to allow Him to make changes?
And this leads us directly to threshold number four:
Barrier 4 = From wandering to seeking
Our culture is actually fully aware of all of those desires I just rattled off. And whats more, they are actually wandering through a veritable buffet of worldviews that offer solutions to all of them.
Its science or psychology. It is new age spiritualism and recognizing the god that lies within you as you connect to the life-force of the universe. It is westernized Buddhism that leads us to a sort of enlightenment. Its crystals and oils. Everyone is searching for some sort of a savior…even if that savior is just a better version of themselves. And it frustrates the living heck out of Christians. And I actually think that is hilarious…not the fact that they are searching for that but that it frustrates Christians so badly. Dude how much lower on the shelf do we need it put?!? Our culture is searching for something that, if you have followed Jesus, you now have an answer for. And I don’t mean the sort of pseudo science and anecdotal evidence answered found in all of those other worldviews…I mean you have the lived experience of why only Jesus satisfied all of those same cravings that you once had.
We see this in the story of the woman at the well.
Explain briefly that story… be sure to include the part where the Samaritans had differing views on spirituality (based on only having the first five books of the old testament) and the nature of what a savior looks like.
“Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
This is the cultural equivalent of what makes you right? What makes you so sure that what Jesus has to offer is any different or any better than what my crystals or my search of my true inner self has to offer?
The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.”
That is the cultural equivalent of…it’ll all sort itself out in the end. Your path is just as good as my path so you do you and let me do me. But then Jesus comes in and completely disrupts the equation:
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
And so how do we help people across this threshold:
We clarify their quest.
I feel I need to clarify that statement because what some of you probably just heard is that you need to have a masters degree in Christian theology to be able to provide answers to peoples deepest theological, philosophical, and existential questions about the nature of God with a solid apologitcal argument.
Put more simply:
How many people fear sharing their faith because they know they don’t have all the answers?
Listen to me really closely! Your own story is probably the best and most powerful thing you can share. “Here is why I chose to follow Jesus” is the most powerful thing you can tell someone.
Do you know that why? Do you need to clarify your own “why I chose Jesus story?”
Here is what I have found…If you grew up in a Christian home and came to faith at an early age, you probably need to spend some time thinking through that question.
Not only that, if you have children growing up in the church going to Sunday school every week, you probably need to really think through how you help them work through that question. Because what typically happens is in this desire to shelter our kids from the storms of opposing worldviews and influences, we generate these Christian bubbles that they never have to leave and they never have to figure out why Jesus ACTUALLY IS THE MOST SOLID FOUNDATION YOU CAN BUILD YOUR LIFE ON. And then we wonder why when they go off to college they are overwhelmed and so many of them abandon their faith. And the answer is because they never truly understood the why behind it in the first place. And we know that there are more than enough people in those spaces with all sorts of official sounding letters after their name standing there with open arms ready to hand them a solid sounding why that supports one of the opposing worldviews that we spent years trying to shelter them from. At that point it just looks like we were trying to hide something from them. That was for free.
So back to how we help people over this threshold: Live out your faith with integrity. Live out your faith knowing why you live it out. Here is what the Bible promises us in 1 Peter 3:15 is that if you do that, the questions will come. And when they come, people aren’t really looking for some deep theological argument. The most powerful thing you can give them is the “why” behind your own decision to follow Jesus.
And finally:
Barrier 5 = Ambivalent to Following
Ambivalence is sort of a funny word. How would you define it?
Here is how dictionary.com defines it:
Having mixed feelings about someone or something; being unable to choose between two (usually opposing) courses of action.
In our city, and even in this room, there are a lot of people who know the information about Jesus. They have come to see the good in following him even by seeing it lived in the lives of his followers. Many people are even convinced that the change that Jesus asks of his followers is a good thing that leads to freedom and life…usually that sounds like: “I really like what Jesus teaches.” “He was revolutionary and honestly our society would be better off if people would actually live out what he said.”
And yet so many people are satisfied with a knowledge about Jesus or with just trying to live out His teachings to the best of their ability. But, we know that to in order to actually follow Jesus somebody has to die. We know that Jesus died for us to open a relationship with God that actually connects us with that hope and fullness of life that we’ve been talking about. But someone else actually has to die as well. You do.
You have to put to death that part of you that wants to be the ruler of your life and give ultimate control to Jesus. It isn’t just your morality and whether you return your shopping cart back to the coral. Every part of you has to be given to Jesus allowing him to call the shots in your life.
That is a decision. That isn’t just a moral code you can follow it is a decision. And the problem is that we really like calling the shots in our lives. Yeah maybe there are some areas I struggle with that I would like help with but I actually am doing a pretty good job of running my life in these areas and I like the job I am doing.
We see this in the story of Nicodemus.
Tell who Nicodemus was and the posh life he enjoyed through his position as a religious leader. Nicodemus had already come through all of the first four thresholds. But I want to highlight a part of Nicodemus’ story that always gets talked about and for good reason:
Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews;
this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”
Underline that phrase “came to Jesus by night.” Nicodemus realized that if Jesus was who he thought he was…the messiah…then that changed everything. There was no longer any need for Nicodemus’ job. There was no longer a need for an intermediary between God and man because God had come to earth to do that job himself. Its like the three cashiers at a little ma and pa grocery store watching the own install a self checkout machine and wondering who the first to go is going to be.
Nicodemus had to come under cover of darkness because if he was spotted by any of his fellow Pharisees it could’ve been seen as confirming Jesus’ identity and this would have been the beginning of the end for their order. You see, Nicodemus was faced with a choice. If what Jesus said was true then it meant his life was radically going to change. It meant that Nicodemus had to make a choice to follow after him allowing Jesus to call the shots in his life or he could reject Jesus and continue to enjoy the power and position of being His own boss.
What does that look like in our culture? - People who think that going to church or just doing good or knowing about Jesus is enough. And yet Jesus is sort of divisive like this…he forces us to make a choice.
Almost everyone knows John 3:16. That’s good stuff! That’ll preach man. But what is dividing is John 3:17-18
“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
To follow Jesus means you actually have to follow Jesus. And to not choose to follow Jesus is in itself a choice.
How does the Nicodemus story end? We actually do not know…the Bible does not say what happens to Nicodemus and there is a reason for that. Its because it means for you and I to see ourselves in the story and for us to answer that question. This is the moment people are faced with a choice to either follow after Jesus or not.
How do we help people over that barrier? Many times if people are at that point they are already attending a Sunday gathering or are willing to if they are asked. But if it is just someone you are in a relationship with then this is probably seen as the scariest part of the entire journey. What do I say? What if I blow it? Do I pray with that person? There is no way in a million years I could actually do that!
Here is the truth. Here is how to help people through this threshold:
You’ll know...
Ya’ll that isn’t a cop out I promise. Over and over again in the Bible when Jesus talks about his followers engaging in the mission, do you know that he promises: He is with you. You’ve probably noticed that this whole process is rooted in deep intimate relationships with people. People who know your story and you know theirs. People who you can speak openly and honestly about matters of faith and spirituality with. And when they come to the threshold of making that decision, they don’t need some theological discourse, they don’t need some prescriptive sinners prayer that you’ve memorized or a list of verses that you can pull off the top of your head…they need to you to just be with them and help them with the words to say.
Here they are.
Jesus I choose to follow you. Forgive me for all the ways I have put myself in the center of my life. I give that place to you.
That’s it...
Close out:
To the ONE:
Maybe you are here and are not a follower of Jesus and you realize that making that decision is the only thing left in your journey left of the zero mark. Man you can pray those words and mean them right there in your seat…you don’t even have to close your eyes.
Prompt to fill out card.
Where might you be along that journey. Maybe you are struggling to trust…go through all of the different thresholds. Have them fill out their card and put it in the offering box. You can put your name on it if you want to…and you can fill out the box that says follow up with me cuz I’ve got some questions. You want to leave it anonymous then that is fine too it still allows us to pray for you. If you want to put your name on it but don’t want us to contact you that is totally fine that just allows us to pray for yous specifically and know how we can best love and serve you on your journey.
To the 99 - Do you know people that have dealt with these issues before? Who are you in a relationship with that may be needing some of these questions answered? Who is your ONE and what threshold are they facing?
