Membership Matters	November 15, 15

Grace in, grace out

We all share a common longing – to spend our lives on something heroic; something that truly matters; something that would make a lasting difference. What do you dream of doing?

If there were nothing holding you back, what would you do?

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Can you believe it - two more weeks and it will be the first Sunday of Advent! Forty more days and it will be Christmas! It challenges us to grasp why and how Jesus came to the earth. But it is equally challenging to try to understand why he left earth after his resurrection.

Have you ever thought how different the last two thousands year would have been if Jesus had stayed on the earth to direct his followers as they took the good news of salvation through faith in him into the world?

I can’t help but think it would have been a different story if Jesus had been physically present on the earth to have intervened in order to stop some of the church’s more glaring debacles… like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the numerous anti-Jewish pogroms.

If Jesus had remained on earth, his followers could have directly appealed to him to rule on such moral issues as slavery, apartheid, women’s right, abortion, end-of-life issues, gay rights, to name but a few.

And yet Jesus categorically told his followers, in John 16:7, “It is for your good that I am going away.”

From eternity past, God’s wisdom was shown in the coming of Jesus to earth.

The same thing was true of his leaving.

Despite appearances to the contrary, Jesus’ ascension was not an act of abandonment. He clearly told his followers in John 14:18, “I will not leave you as orphans…”

He promised he and the Father would come to his own in the person of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “The Father will give you another Counselor. He will be with you… and will live in you forever.” Because of the Spirit’s presence and power, Jesus assured his followers, “…anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. They will do even greater things than these…”

This statement borders on the unbelievable!

You and I will do greater things than Jesus????

Am I alone in thinking, “That was nice of Jesus to say that. But what he really was trying to do was boost the confidence of his followers who were pretty discouraged to hear that their Leader was about to be killed?”

Seriously….who here can do greater things than Jesus?

We know how fallible we are; how prone we are to misunderstand; how easily we get off track. Far too often we overstress the unimportant and under stress what really matters.

And yet, Jesus cannot lie.

He always speaks the truth.

It is true that every now and then spiritual giants comes along – George Mueller, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, CS Lewis. But primarily when it comes to the building of his church, Jesus has entrusted that task to ordinary followers like you and me.

And so yes, when the Spirit lives in us and when we in faith trust our lives and our reputations to Jesus, together the church of Jesus does greater things…greater things than what Jesus did.

The heroic that we long to live is realized as we embody God’s presence in this world and both welcome and make room for the Spirit to express through our lives God’s grace. This is the way we point ahead to the time of restoration. This is what sets us apart as a counter-cultural community.

Our culture stresses that our sense of purpose and fulfillment will be experienced by figuring out what post-secondary education we’ll pursue; then what vocation we’ll spend our life on; who we’ll marry and whether we will raise a family; what hobbies or interests we’ll cultivate; etc.

All of these are important decisions. But they are not ultimate choices. There is one decision; one choice that is above all! Will you turn your life to Jesus and spend your life on him and his cause? That choice infuses our lives with purpose and a sense of destiny. And that choice influences all our other choices and all aspects of our life.

I like how the Spirit said it through Peter in 1 Peter 4:10: Each one should use whatever gift they have received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms…

Grace in.

What we have… we have been given.

In his second letter, Peter confirmed in 1:3: God has given us everything we need for life and godliness.

Why does God do that?

Because he is good.

And because God is good, he is generous.

God’s goodness and generosity is seen in all that he created.

It is the same with the salvation provided through Jesus.

And it is clearly evidenced in the grace we experience – we are forgiven and we are given a new identity.

We talked about this several weeks past – we are a community of servant leaders who act as God’s representatives here on the earth.

When he first created mankind, it was the world and its creatures who were to experience through humans the same kind of care they would receive from God if he were physically present.

But since Jesus’ first coming, in addition to caring for the earth and its creatures, Jesus’ followers have been given an even greater responsibility: we are stewards; we are distributors… of God’s grace.

Through us God expresses his goodness, his care and concern for others; and through us he extends his grace to those who come in contact with us.

Grace in, grace out.

God wants our interactions with others to be so grace-infused that interacting with us is like interacting with God himself. What a responsibility!

Here is a concept we need to think deeply upon – being a steward; a representative; a distributor of God’s grace, is not a title; it’s a lifestyle. It’s how you and I live in response to God’s goodness and the grace that we’ve experienced.

Each one should use whatever gift they have received…

The gift Peter wrote of is not just our spiritual giftings of grace.

‘Whatever’ means everything.

When we believed in Jesus and received him into our lives, we agreed that he would be the Supreme Authority of our life.

Jesus is explicitly clear – he will be Lord – 24/7/365 - over every aspect of our lives:	our singleness; our marriage; our family

our sexuality

our education; our vocation

our recreation; our hobbies and interests

our skills and giftings

our time

our finances

I believe this is what was at the heart of what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray – your will be done, here on earth as it is heaven.

“your will, your way, always”

Pursuing his will is how we live life to the full.

We’re not left to guess what that will is.

The Triune God has communicated clearly to us… what his will is…

regarding all the facets of life I’ve just mentioned.

It is pursuing and living God’s will that distinguishes us as a counter-cultural community.

In recent months we’ve looked at a number of these facets of life and what God’s says to us of how we are to live. Today and next week I want to put before you a new truth concept regarding what Jesus says is to be our relationship with the wealth he entrusts to us.

Money and wealth are one of our culture’s dominant idols.

But it’s not just Western culture that worships money.

It is a common human condition that has existed since ancient times.

This theme is of such importance that in the Bible there are 2,250 verses that speak of the believers relationship to money. More is said in the NT about our relationship to our possessions than is said about… prayer, hell and faith… combined!

It’s probably not surprising for me to tell you that the number one theme of the NT is salvation. But do you know what the number two theme is? How a follower of Jesus is to handle their financial resources!

The Bible never says that money or being rich is an evil thing.

The issue according to Jesus is what we treasure.

Matthew 6:21: Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.

Do you remember the parable of the rich landowner?

Luke 12:16-18.

Jesus didn’t say it was wrong for the landowner to have had a bumper crop, or that he had built bigger barns to store it in. The critical issue was why the man had built bigger barns. Luke 12:19.

The focus of that man’s life, what he treasured above all, and what his heart loved, was his material goods and what he could do because of them – eat, drink and be merry.

The man had planned for his future…here on earth, but not for his life after death. He had put his confidence in his bumper crop and not God. And too late, he discovered that he had treasured the wrong things. Luke 12:20-21.

Whatever a person loves; they treasure.

Whatever a person treasures; they serve.

Whatever a person serves reveals what they are devoted to.

Jesus says there is room in the human heart for only one Master; one God.

How we handle our wealth reveals whether it is Jesus.

The mindset of our culture is that one’s wealth is theirs to use as they please.

The instruction of Jesus is that our wealth, along with everything we have, has been given to us as a trust to use as Jesus directs.

How do we guard against our wealth becoming an idol we worship?

God has provided us with a brilliant means – our corporate worship together of him on Sundays. Let me explain.

This is, in addition to our own daily worship, when we re-orient our lives to God. It’s where we re-focus our priorities; where we are reminded by God what is important, and where we restate our commitment to him.

Romans 12:1 teaches that true worship involves sacrifice.

We give to Jesus the sacrifice of praise as we sing to him; through our prayers we place in his hands our life and needs and the needs of others; as his Word is taught we respond to him in surrender and fresh commitment; and when we give to him our tithes and offering – we affirm Jesus is the Lord of our wealth and that we trust him to provide and care for us.

In a world that is thirsty for grace; you and I have the remarkable privilege of being God’s conduits – grace in; grace out.

Today is our association’s day of prayer.

We’re going to respond to God by singing and praying together to him.

I’ll give you direction as we move from song to prayer to song to prayer.

Some of our prayers will be individual.

Others will be spoken in a huddle with a few other people.

At the end we’ll worship God with the giving of our offerings.

And at the same time the kids will bring in the Operation Christmas Shoe Boxes, so we can pray blessing on them and the children who’ll receive them.

Jesus didn’t always tell a person to go and sell their possessions in order to follow him as he did with a rich man whose story is told in Mark 10.

But before Jesus told him to do so, I want you to see a comment that the Spirit moved Mark to include. Look at Mark 10:21.

What Jesus said to that man was spoken in love.

Whenever Jesus speaks into our lives to point out things that hold us back, he does so… motivated by his love for us.

The man had asked Jesus, “What do I have to do to inherit eternal life?” Mark 10:17. When Jesus told him to sell everything and give it away and then come follow him, Mark writes that the man’s face fell and he went away sad. Mark 10:22.

Maybe he knew, maybe he didn’t, but after talking with Jesus it was clear that as much as this man loved God, he loved his wealth more. And this placed him in a difficult situation which Jesus had spoken of in Matthew 6:24: “You cannot serve both God and Money.”