Joining the Father's Business

SERMON: 2008-08-25--jn0508--joining-the-father-s-business SOURCE DURATION: 00:37:52.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 0.10 APPROVED: false REASON: All provided candidates are labeled [Music] and contain no discernible sermon content (prayer, benediction, etc.). Therefore, there is no last segment belonging to the sermon within this list of candidates. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:33:32.680-00:37:50.720 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:00:04.610] [CUT] Well, if you were here last Sunday morning, you will recall [CUT] I mentioned then that this [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:00:04.610; resume after this marked segment] journey that we're on as a congregation that has culminated in the building of these facilities really started already more than 17 years ago. Seventeen years ago in the spring of 1991, our church council began a series of discussions about who we are as a congregation and where do we believe the Lord is leading us. What I didn't tell you then and what I want to tell you this morning is how it is that council came to those discussions. We came to those discussions because we read together an article by a Roman Catholic priest by the name of Bob Bedard who wrote an article entitled "Giving God Permission – Key to Church Renewal." The article tells the story of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Parish in Ottawa, the nation's capital. And Father Bob Bedard had already been ordained to the priesthood for 30 years but he had never pastored a parish ministry. He had no idea where to start. So as he was praying about where it is that he needed to go with that ministry, it was as if the Lord said to him, "Give me permission. Let me do what I want to do." And since he really had no better alternative, he thought he better do that. And the result is that God began to work powerfully in that congregation. This is the article that we read together back in the spring of 1991. That began our discussions. What is God doing in our midst? And that's what led then to that council motion of June of 1991 that we recognize that God is working in this church, that we seek to identify the direction that he is leading us and that we commit ourselves to follow him in obedience with the measure of grace that he grants to us. A motion that I said last week in some way sounds like motherhood and apple pie but it's proven in the history of our congregation to be extremely far-reaching because the building that you're sitting in today is the fruit of that commitment to follow where the Lord is leading us. Well, Bedard's article and the concept of where is God at work and how do we get on board with him was further reinforced for us as a congregation in the mid-1990s by the publication of Henry Blackaby's book, Experiencing God. A lot of you here have had opportunity to read it. Some of you have even studied it in some detail. And like Bedard, Blackaby in his book posits the belief that God is constantly at work in the world today. It's our job to try to find out what it is that he is doing and then it's our job to get on board with him. Hence the title Experiencing God because that's when you experience the presence and the power of God. And as an aside, I find it rather fascinating that if one of the religious best sellers of the 1990s was a book called Experiencing God, one of the religious best sellers of the 1970s was a book by J. I. Packard called Knowing God. And I don't know if you catch the difference, but it reflects a very subtle shift in the subsequent decades from an intellectual understanding of God towards an increased desire to experience God. And you can't understand today's society unless you understand the degree to which we're hungry for real spiritual experience. You need both, but you see that shift in today's culture towards Experiencing God. Well, it's a bit of a lengthy introduction, but I want to come back to this subject of identifying where God is at work and getting on board with him. Because you see, as we have moved into these new facilities and we look forward now to the next leg of the journey together, it is at one and the same time tremendously exciting, but also frankly a little terrifying. Terrifying because both the opportunities and the challenges are huge. This place is about three times, almost three times bigger than the old building. That's a lot of space to feel. A lot of new people that we anticipate can be drawn to the ministry of this church. With expanded ministry opportunities come the additional challenges of building ministries and building leadership teams, not to mention the additional financial load of carrying the cost of the building, not only, but also moving forward into expanded ministry opportunities. And the big question then that you and I face periodically when we contemplate these kinds of things is how in the world do we handle all of this? That is to say, how do we carry an additional load without getting burned out in the process and how do we maintain a spiritual joy and a spiritual vitality? Now the temptation, of course, the tendency when we're confronted by bigger and higher challenges is to try to work harder. You put your nose to the gravestone. You put your shoulder to the wheel. You make more demands on yourself and you make more demands on other people. And there is a time and a place for all of that. But again, the danger with that is that after a while you become resentful about the demands that are being made on you. You lose the joy of the Christian life. You lose the joy of Christian service. You go on autopilot. You go through the motions. Your heart has long closed off and spiritually you've died and that, of course, sets you up for temptation, that sets you up for failure, that sets you up for throwing in the towel. And the antidote to that biblically, I think, is rather to learn from Jesus and how he did his ministry. Again, I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but Jesus had the most important ministry in all the world which was to reconcile the world to God the Father by his life and by his ministry. He had three and a half years to do it, he started when he was 30. He died on the cross by the time he was 33 and a half. And yet when he came to the end of his three and a half year ministry, he could say to God the Father, "The work that you've given me to do, I have completed it." How many times in your life have you ever felt that the work that you've been called to, you have completed? I mean, most of us are constantly living under the stress of more things to do, more responsibilities to carry out, more jobs to complete, yet Jesus, he said, "The work that you've given me to do, I've done it." So what was his key? Well, his key is described for us in his own words in the verse John 5 19 where Jesus says to the disciples, "I tell you the truth, the son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees his father doing because whatever the father does, the son also does." As we take a moment or two to look at that verse, it's very helpful to know two things. The first is this, Jesus says that he does nothing by himself. I tell you the truth, the son can do nothing by himself. Now technically speaking, that's not true at all, is it? Because Jesus is God, he is the son of God. Later on in the passage, he says, "The Father has given me life. I can give life to whoever I want to give life to." Later on still in the passage, he says, "The Father has given me judgment. I can exercise all the judgment I want." So technically speaking, what he is saying is not accurate, but what he means to say by that is that he refuses to take independent action from the Father. He is limiting himself to what the Father wants him to do. And that's the second thing to notice then, that he joins the Father in the Father's business. He can do only what he sees his father doing because whatever the father does, the son also does. Now you need to think this through with me a little bit. I mentioned last week that God the Father has a purpose. He is constantly at work in the world. Earlier on in this passage in verse 17, Jesus says, "My Father is always at his work to this very day." And he says, "I too am working." Now again, think it through with me. What's the Father's business? Well I suppose on the one hand, he has to keep this whole universe running. That's no minor task, I would think, keeping everything from running into each other and exploding and otherwise burning up. But more especially, the Father's work is the work of redemption. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And diagrammatically as you know, I like to picture it this way, those two circles representing on the one hand God's purposes in creation, God is central. We're in relationship with him and because we're in relationship with him, we're in relationship with each other. This is what the Bible calls the kingdom of God. This is how God created the world. Then along comes sin. Man was separated from God and this represents the world as we find it today. God on the outside, Satan in control over the human condition, S stands for self. We're all selfishly oriented because we can no longer trust God the Father. And so we take from each other and the whole world spirals down into despair and into destruction. As there is no one of us in this place at one point or another who haven't tasted the awful horror of the consequences of sin. And as I've often said, God could have left us there, he could have walked away from it, he didn't owe us anything, but God so loved the world that he gave his son and so the Bible tells us that in the person of Jesus Christ, God enters into the world to redeem the world. That is to say, he wants to take us from a fallen condition where we are alienated from God under Satan's power where we think self stands at the center of the whole universe. He wants to bring us back into our right relationship with God the Father and our right relationship with each other. How does he do that? He does that by sending his son on the cross. He pays the penalty for our sin from the dead. He arises so that we can not only be forgiven, but we can have new life and we can be restored to God and then by his Holy Spirit, he's constantly at work in the world, reaching into the hearts and the lives of men and women, bringing us to faith and helping us by God's grace to begin to live once again as worthy children of God. That's what the church is. It's a called out community. It doesn't mean that we're perfect. It doesn't mean that we do everything right. It doesn't mean that we're always loving God above all and always walking in proper harmony in a relationship with each other, but we're committed to living it out. We're committed to learning it and we're committed to growing up and we're committed to sharing in the ministry of the Father. And so when Jesus says here in this passage in verse 19, "I can do nothing by myself. I can only do what I see my Father doing because what the Father does, the Son also does." What he means to say is that as he comes into the world and carries on his ministry, he isn't just overwhelmed by all the need that's out there and he doesn't try to fix everything for everybody everywhere. No, wherever he sees God the Father at work, that's where he steps into the situation. In obedience to the Father, the Father meets him and things happen. And the man in this story at the Pool of Bethesda is a good case in point. The Bible says that this was kind of a miracle working pool and all the lame and the blind and the paralyzed and afflicted people would gather around this pool and there's an old tradition that says that an angel would come into the pool and stir the water and whoever got into the water after the angel stirred the water, this would be the man or the woman who came into healing. Now Jesus could have just walked around that pool, touched everybody and maybe he did but the Bible doesn't tell that he did, does it? Instead he zeroes in on this man who's been here for 38 years and he says, "Do you want to be made well?" Which when you really think about it, it's kind of a stupid question because who wouldn't want to be made well after they've been sick for that long? But don't fool yourself because when you've been sick for that long, you've been out of the job market for that long, you've gotten used to this way of life and for that man to be made well means he's going to have to find himself a job, means he can no longer live off the sympathy of other people, you know, there's a lot at stake here. But because God the Father is at work in this man's life, Jesus knows that God the Father is at work in this man's life, comes alongside the Father of all the people that surrounded that pool. This is the man to whom he says, "Get up, take up your mat and walk," and it's God's way of demonstrating his power in this particular situation for this particular person. So Jesus doesn't just willy nilly go about the business of healing or preaching or teaching. Now later on he says, "The words that I speak are the very words the Father is giving me to speak." And because he is moving in tandem with the Father, the Father's power, the Father's approval, the Father's glory is there and things really happen. Now if you're with me in terms of what it is that I'm saying this morning then you will understand right away that the implications of that for your life and mine and for ministry as a church are huge because it means first of all that it's our job to identify where it is that God is working and then it's our job to come alongside where God is working and join Him there because again what is it that causes us to burn out? It's the overwhelming need in the world and that may not be much of an issue as long as your heart is cold and you don't care about a lot of other people and the world is full of people who just go along minding their own business and yes people are dying in Africa and there are marriages falling apart in our own communities and there are people who are overcome by God knows what addictions and what places of brokenness and yeah I'll throw my shekel into the offering plate but don't let it touch my life. But when Jesus has touched your life and you know not only how much He loves people but you know how powerful He is and how desirous He is to restore and to heal how anxious He is for the kingdoms of this world to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ then when you are confronted by needs all around you, you can't just turn a blind eye, you can just pretend it's somebody else's business. It comes home to you in a powerful way and then the question is Lord how can I take of my limited resources? How can I take my time and my talent and my treasure and how can I share it in a way that doesn't burden me out that keeps me alive spiritually and fresh and excited about serving God and doing, do you know what I'm talking about? I mean are you ever weary in well-doing? Don't you ever sort of get weighed down by everything that is out there and don't you sometimes suffer from what's known as compassion fatigue where you say Lord here I am but send somebody else I just don't want another phone call, I don't want to hear another problem, I don't want to see another need, I've got needs enough of my own life? Well the antidote says Jesus is to recognize that all the world's problems are not for you and for me to fix, we're not God, we're not Messiah and we're not responsible for every issue that arises everywhere. The Bible says in as much as it depends on you live in peace with all people, in as much as it depends on you and as you have time and opportunity to step into a need that's our responsibility and our responsibility then is to identify where God is at work, how God has entrusted us with gifts of time, talent and treasure and how God is then inviting us to step into that situation knowing he has gone before us, he will therefore also be with us in that situation and his power can do what we ourselves can never do. That's how Jesus did it and that's how he is inviting you and me and all of us collectively at this point in our history to look forward to the future, that is to say identify where God is at work, find out what it is that he is wanting us to do, step into it with the measure of faith and the gifts of grace that he gives us and then stand back and watch him bring about his salvation. Well somebody says what does that look like? Well for Father Babadard back some years ago it looked like this, it meant surrendering his parish to God and the term giving God permission sounds kind of funny because who needs to give God permission but you've got to understand it is a yielding of our hopes and our dreams to God trusting that he is at work and that he can do whatever it is that he wants and then standing back watching what God does supernaturally and here is how he describes his journey. After a couple of years of doing little but responding to people's needs and making sacraments available, waiting it out with the Lord and initiating practically nothing, I began to see him intervene in an unmistakable way. People started getting converted at Sunday Mass. Infrequent attenders were coming alive in the Lord, some who had been perfunctory or sort of half-hearted in the exercise of their faith began to experience the fire of the Holy Spirit. Fervent Catholics found themselves being challenged by the gospel to make more and more radical commitments to Jesus. Much of this was accompanied by tears and most of the crying was being done by men. He says I was slow to catch on. Tears? I said to myself what's the matter with these men? Well eventually the Lord cleared it up for me, these were people being touched by him, he had been given permission to do as he pleased and he was doing it. One thing led to another, after that the Lord's fire began to catch on, it became contagious, people began bringing relatives and friends to church with them, many of these would experience the same tangible grace of God. Whole families came alive in faith, enthusiasm became the rule, the liturgy soon grew to be very joyful and got longer and louder, rhythmic hand clapping, applauding the Lord, raising of hands in praise, great involvement in the singing. These and other modes of very active participation in the liturgy became the order of the day. And one of the reasons we so resonated with that article 17 years ago now was because up until that point in the life of our congregation our experience had been very similar. While we hadn't up until then formally said Lord the church is yours, the Lord clearly considered the church to be his and generations that had gone before us had made those kinds of commitments and the Lord's presence had always been very tangible in the old building and many of you will remember the first time that you came into that place you were stirred to your soul because you knew that God was there. And John was telling me after the inaugural service last Sunday here many of you were in tears and I trust those are tears of joy and tears of knowing that in this place too God has chosen to dwell. You see renewal, spiritual vitality is not something you can just stir up, it's not just the result of stirring music or stirring preaching or wonderful people hanging around patting each other on the back. No, no it happens when God breaks through. When God shows his glory, when God shows his face, when God shows you what he has done in the gift of Jesus, when God stirs the deep recesses of our hearts and we know that we're loved to the core of our being and that he is there to meet our deepest needs. Out of that comes the overflow of worship. Out of that comes the overflow of a life of commitment. Out of that comes the overflow of a life of service. Is it always easy? No. Have we been tested and tried individually and corporately? You bet we have. But you know why? Every branch that bears fruit he prunes that it can bear more fruit and if the Lord wants to give us an expanded ministry, if the Lord wants us to touch more people's lives in deeper ways then it begins with you and me and he's got to cut to the core of our being so that in cutting to the core of our being the streams of water that come flowing forth from deep within our hearts is as pure as pure can be so that other people through us will in tangible ways experience the presence and the power of the Lord Jesus. What does it look like when you invite God into a place and when you invite God into your life and into your ministry then he begins to work, he begins to in many sovereign ways unfold the future and then our job is to try to get on board with him and figure out where he's going. You know we could sit down and try to figure out all kinds of things as to how to effectively reach our community and how to change people's lives but it really begins by surrendering our own hearts and lives to Jesus because the key is walking closely with God. The genius of Jesus was that he was in such close relationship with God the Father that he knew exactly where it was that God the Father was working and he came alongside him and together they watched the miracle of resurrection life take place and the times when you and I have seen God do great and mighty things it's been in those times when we have correctly identified the move of God and we have joined with him and we have watched him do things that we ourselves could have never done. I remember the late 80s some years after I first came here all of a sudden out of nowhere a whole generation of young people that had been raised in the church that had wandered away all of a sudden supernaturally started coming back and they were being touched by God in dramatic and powerful ways and I remember saying to a number of them Glenda Getcate in those days was one of them Sue Wearda a number of other young women why don't you start meeting together sharing your faith and sharing your journey and out of that came then what for many years was a ministry to young adults that powerfully touched lives and changed them. We could have never organized it we could have never orchestrated it we could have never made it happen God made it happen we came on board with him and tried to follow him and as we start on a new leg of the journey together one of the exciting things then is to study together where is God at work in which of my children in which of my neighbors in which of my friends has God already gone and how does he want to use me in that process because when God moves in that way then we know that things are going to happen because he's there with power and you know what that does that takes the pressure off you and me that takes the pressure off to try to make it happen that takes the pressure off to try to keep it all together it means as children with our father who is in heaven we can just put our hand in his hand and he will lead us into new and exciting places where we will see his hand in a whole new way and just to drive that home with one more story that Blackaby mentions in experiencing God as it related to his own ministry in Faith Baptist Church in Saskatoon his church a very small church felt led of the Lord to begin a ministry among college students and for two years they had tried to get into the dorms to start a Bible study and it simply had never worked because you can imagine how difficult a college campus can be to do this kind of work and so in desperation one Sunday he pulled the students together when he said this week I want you to go to the campus and watch to see where God is working and join him they asked me to explain and God had impressed on my heart these two scriptures there is none righteous no not one there is none who understands there is none who seeks after God and no one can come to Jesus unless the Father who sent me draws him and he says I went on to explain according to these passages nobody is going to seek God on his own initiative no one will ask after spiritual matters unless God is at work in his life and when you see someone seeking God or asking about spiritual matters you are seeing God at work this is something only God does in a life he goes on to say I told her students if someone asked you a spiritual question whatever else you have planned don't do it cancel what you were doing go to that individual and look to see what God is doing there that week our students went out to see where God is at work in the campus and to join him and on Wednesday one of the girls reported pastor a girl who has been in classes with me for two years came to me after class today and she said I think you might be a Christian I need to talk to you I remembered what you had said I had a class but I missed it don't know how her teacher would have approved of that but she goes on to say we went to the cafeteria to talk she said eleven of us girls in the dorm have been studying the Bible and none of us is a Christian do you know somebody who can lead us in a Bible study and as a result of that contact we started three Bible study groups in the women's dorms and two in the men's dorm for almost two years we had tried to do something for God and failed for three days we looked to see where God was working and joined him what a difference that made over the following years many students trusted Christ as Lord and Savior many of those surrendered to full-time ministry and they are now serving as pastors and missionaries all over the world I leave you this morning with this challenge ask God to show you over the next couple of weeks where is God at work in your life in your neighborhood in your connections ask him to help you identify what he is doing to give you grace to step out into it and [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:33:32.680; remove through 00:37:52.000] then to follow as [CUT] he leads and watch what he is doing [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:37:52.000; resume after this marked segment]