Seeking First The Kingdom

Once again, I want to introduce my message this morning with just a short video clip.
It's entitled "More Than a Building."
Please look at this.
For thousands of years, the church has been a symbol of refuge and hope.
Old or new, archaic or modern, this structure has long been
home to the ideals of faith, hope, and love.
But are these principles confined to live within these walls?
Do they exist only among the pews and stained glass windows?
Do they reside only in the Bibles and Himmels, to be opened at service and then laid to rest
until we return again?
Could it be that church is more than a building?
Could it be a hand reaching out to someone in need?
Could it be the embrace of a friend?
Or could it be a random act of kindness?
Could it be that church is more than simply a place?
It is home to a calling that goes far deeper, a sanctuary not built to confine us away
from life's trials but to empower us to share the love of Christ with those around us.
It is an opportunity to work together and effectively touch a world in need.
It is an opportunity to be more than a building.
In the scripture that we read together a few moments ago, we have Jesus saying to Peter,
"You are, Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades are the
gates of hell."
We'll not overcome it.
Notice the word play there.
The Greek for Peter is Petros.
The Greek for rock is Petra.
On this rock I will build my church.
Traditionally, the Roman Catholic tradition is interpreted that rock to be Peter.
Peter, hence the tradition that he was the first pope and the Protestant tradition we
have favored the interpretation that this rock refers to the confession you are the Christ,
the Son of the living God.
Through out scripture, the special favor of God and the focus of his attention rests
on the church.
This morning we want to try to spend some time reflecting together then what does it look
like when the church seeks the kingdom of God?
We've talked about seeking the kingdom of God individually.
We've looked at seeking the kingdom of God in our families or in our single life.
But what does it look like when a community of faith, like what we are here, are committed
to pursuing the purposes of God's kingdom?
Well, it starts, I believe, with a realization that we're called to be faithful to the Lord
and faithful to his purposes for the church.
Now the word church in Greek is the word ecclesia.
We get the English word ecclesiastical from that.
And it literally means the called out ones.
And what that refers to is God's redemptive action in history whereby he reaches into
peoples from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
And then he calls out a people with whom he develops a special relationship.
Diagrammatically we can picture it this way.
Picture this as the world and all the people in the world.
All those people are divided, as you know, into different tribes, tongues, and nations.
That goes back all the way to Genesis chapter 11, where God confuses the tongues at the
building of the Tower of Babel because people were ganging together in rebellion against
God and to keep them from being united.
He mixed up their language, he mixed up their culture.
And ever since that time we have had different tribes, tongues, and nations.
And what God has been doing then throughout history is he's been reaching into that
world population.
And he reaches into what the Bible calls the elect people whose hearts he has prepared
from the foundation of the world for salvation in his kingdom.
He enables them to hear the gospel, some version of it, to respond in faith.
And then he brings them together into Christian community and that is the church.
It is the called out people of God.
The church is both invisible and visible, invisible in the sense that it's comprised of people
all over the world throughout all ages.
Many of whom you and I will never know or never see, but visible in the sense that God brings
people together out of every tribe, tongue, and nation.
And he bonds them together into one visible community that we know of as the church.
Here's how the Heidelberg Catech is, and one of our confessions puts it in response
to the question, what do you believe concerning the communion of saints?
That's one of the articles of faith in the apostles' creed.
The answer is this, I believe that the Son of God threw his spirit in word out of the
entire human race from the beginning of the world to its end.
Gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and
united in true faith.
And now this community I am and always will be a living member.
I believe that out of the whole human race from the beginning of the world to its end the
Lord gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and
united in true faith. And the word true faith is critical there because how do you become
part of this community?
Well you become part of this community by becoming aware of your sin, by repenting of
sin, turning to faith in Jesus, receiving the Holy Spirit, and then by being baptized
so to speak into the body of Christ.
There is no other name given under heaven by which we can be saved but the name of Jesus.
And I underscore that as I often do because we live in a world where Satan is constantly
trying to blur the boundaries.
He always leads towards universalism. God loves everybody.
All roads lead to God.
Doesn't matter what your religion is as long as you subscribe to it wholeheartedly.
God, if he exists, will take you to himself and if there is a heaven, that's where you're
going.
That's not what Scripture teaches.
Scripture teaches that by the time the curtain falls in history.
The wheat is going to be separated from the chaff, the sheep, from the goats.
The people of God will inherit the new creation.
And those who have turned against him and walked away from him and continued to defy his authority
will experience everlasting judgment and condemnation.
That's why engaging in the work of mission, engaging in the work of evangelism is ever so
important because if you love your family and if you love your neighbors and if you love
your community, then you want each person to have the opportunity to respond in faith
to the good news of Jesus Christ.
We need to be faithful to the Lord, but we also need to be faithful to His purposes.
Just think through that a little bit more closely.
Why does God build the church?
I mean, why has God reached into your life, brought you to faith, brought you to this or
other church community so that you can be part of the visible church of God?
Well I can think immediately of three reasons, number one, to have a relationship with Him.
There's one thing that's incredible about our God, is that He wants to hang around with
the likes of you and me.
I mean, don't underestimate that, but look at it from God's point of view.
Here He is, you know, He's perfectly holy, He's perfectly content, He's always had perfect
fellowship, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they're never lonely, they never get into a hassle
with each other, they have perfect unity and yet consistently God wants to reach out
and brace you in Me and make us part of His forever family.
Why?
Because He has a heart of love and what He has in the Trinity He wants to share with you
in Me created in His image and so in the creation story, God creates Adam and Eve and
then He has fellowship with Adam and Eve.
And then when sin causes separation later on, He calls out Abraham and Abraham becomes
the nucleus of a new people.
And then later at Mount Sinah, He enters into covenant with Israel and then in the New
Testament in the person of Jesus, Jesus comes into the world to tabernacle among us.
I think He had a lot more fun in heaven than He did coming down here to get nailed to
a cross but that is an expression of His heart.
And then in the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gets poured out and the Holy Spirit comes
to live among God's people.
And then when you get to the end of the Bible, there you have the Holy City, the New Jerusalem
which is the church coming down from heaven as a bride prepared for her husband and the dwelling
place of God is with man and He will be their God and we will be His people.
You know, sometimes when we struggle and sometimes when we think we can't find God anywhere,
we wonder about God and if He's really got an interest in us, well, fact of the matter
is biblically speaking, God's more interested in spending time with you.
I'm willing to bet that you are willing to spend with Him.
And the loss is ours because He's got a lot to give.
So He wants to hang around with us.
He wants to do relationship with us.
He wants us to know Him and He wants to know us and He wants us to walk and talk like
Adam and Eve did in the garden.
And then He wants us to model life with God because remember now, the further people drift
away from God, the less they know Him and the more they buy into wisdom from below, the
less their personal life, their family life and their community life reflects the character
and the nature of God because Satan is described in Scripture as the prince of the power of
the air and He's constantly trying to remake the human race in His own image and in His
likeness and what happens repeatedly then is that the witness to God and to God's character
gets lost.
And one of the reasons God raises you and me up to be His people and calls us into a collective
community is so that as a community, we can march to the beat of Heaven's drum and we
can in some small way reflect His character and His nature.
How do we do that?
We do that believing in repentance.
And the rest of the world prides itself on always being right.
We learn by God's grace to humble ourselves, embrace our humility and our brokenness that
are in need for Christ.
We do that by honoring God as the creator, the sustainer and the redeemer.
We do that by a simple thing as giving thanks for our food before we sit down to eat.
We do that by gathering in a place like this and in many other meetings like it to worship
God to know God, to honor Him to hear from His Word.
We do that by trying to embrace wisdom from above so that we can learn what it is to love
God with all our heart and to love our needware as we love ourselves.
Do we do that perfectly?
Of course not.
Do we make a lot of mistakes, indeed we do.
But don't underestimate that when Christ lives in us individually and collectively, there
is something about Jesus that shines through here.
And people out there in whose hard God places the gift of faith will recognize that reality
and they will be drawn to it.
I did a survey years ago on how it was that people came to Jesus and I discovered that
almost without exception because they had seen in somebody something about Christ that
entreated them and that drew them.
I mean, I'll never forget that first retreat I went to when I got to college where the
guys who had taken me under their wing had dragged me.
It was a navigator retreat that weekend for the first time in my life.
I saw modeled relationship with God in conversation about the things of God that had been completely
foreign to my experience and I said whatever it is that they've got, I want it.
And a lot of you have been there.
We're called a model, life with God, we're also called upon to extend God's kingdom.
The first commandment God gave to Adam and Eve was what?
Be fruitful and multiply and then subdue the earth, why?
Because God wanted to build his kingdom.
He wanted a race of human beings that in submission to him and in relationship with him could
build a whole society that reflected the character of God, the justice of God, the love of God,
the mercy of God, sin messed it up.
Jesus came to restore it.
What is the New Testament equivalent to what is known in our circles as the cultural mandate
to subdue the whole earth that's the great commission?
Go therefore to all nations making disciples of them, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded
you.
Why does God raise up the church?
Why does He want to hang around with us?
Because He has chosen to let us share with Him in His redemptive purposes.
Until Abraham, he dealt with all the nations of the world in a general fashion.
After that, he zeroed in on Abraham and his offspring, the people of Israel and the Old
Testament and the church and the New Testament, and the function of the church and living
out a relationship with God and modeling the ways of God is so that He can use us now to
extend the work of His kingdom to every tribe, tongue and nation.
You say, "How do we do that?"
Well, we do that, as I said a moment ago, first of all, by modeling life in Christ, just
being ourselves, that alone makes us the light of the world and the soul to the earth.
Then we do it by wearing witness to Jesus.
We preach Him.
We proclaim Him.
We sit down with people in their struggles and we say, "I know this divorce is hard.
I know this loss is impossible for you to bear.
I know the struggles that you have with your kids are huge."
Well, let me tell you about Jesus, who He is, what He came to do and what He's willing
to do in your life.
The Holy Spirit bears witness to the proclamation of Jesus, works faith in people's lives.
We have an opportunity then to lead them into a living relationship with Jesus, one of
the women who's new to this community of faith and who's been going through an incredibly
difficult time, told me in between services that in prayer with one of the women in this
church, she saw Jesus wrap his arms around her, settled something in her soul, but I believe
is the beginning of new life.
And then we take people by the hand and we help them to grow up in Christ, learn to put
off old things and to put on new things and understand what it is that God is doing and
why He is doing what He is doing.
And then to find our gifts and to release ourselves in ministry.
All of these things are summarized for us in our vision and our mission statements.
Let me quickly review them with you.
Vision talks about who we are and where we're going, to be a biblically functioning community
through which God's redemptive purposes for the world can be realized.
Two things there, what we are and what we do.
What are we called to be a biblically functioning community?
That is to say, a community that is reflected is reflecting the character of God that learns
to love God above all and our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Again, do we do it perfectly, of course not.
But it's what God is calling us towards.
It's what we all are.
And why are we that?
So that God's redemptive purposes can be realized through us.
Doing always has to come out of being.
And if you reverse that, you'll always be in trouble.
Our mission statement, you know it well, reaching the lost, restoring the broken, equipping
the saints, releasing the workers, why?
Why do we reach out?
Because God loves lost people.
Why do we engage in the ministry of healing the broken, especially the broken hearted?
Because Jesus's heart was broken that we can be restored.
And none of these are things as an end in themselves.
There to help us come alive in Christ, find our gifting and our placing in the body of
Christ.
So that in turn, we can be released into places of service.
And tonight, we share that kind of celebration as we hear testimonies of faith of how God
is still at work in us and through us to bring restoration and healing and equipping in
the lives of His people.
And what an incredible thing it is.
When people come alive in Christ and their gifts begin to flourish and we can release
them into places of ministry, that's how the church multiplies for the glory of God.
And for two thousand years, Jesus has been at work.
And while sometimes we could weary and well do them.
And we wonder, Lord, why is this so hard?
We must never lose sight of the fact that it is an incredible privilege to be co-workers
with God in this whole business.
He didn't have to use you or me.
He could have used a bunch of angels.
Probably would have given him a lot less guff and a lot less trouble.
But with sharing in the work comes the joy and the reward of being co-workers with God.
We're called to be faithful to the Lord and faithful to His purposes.
You'll never understand this church what it is that we're about and why we do what we
do unless you understand that vision and that mission.
Every church has a similar calling in many ways, but our job is to try to work out that
calling in our local setting.
You with me so far?
If it is true then that we are to be faithful to the Lord and faithful to His calling, then
there's a thing that flows out of that, which is where the rubber hits the road.
We need to be open to the person and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Remember Matthew 16, what does Jesus say?
On this rock, the confession that I am the Christ, the Son of the Living God, I will
build my church.
It's Jesus' agenda to build the church.
And if we're going to be used in that process, it is our job to come alongside Him and let
Him lead us in that process of building Christian community.
Now here's an interesting thing historically that you may or may not be aware of.
If you look at the history of Christian churches and Christian movements, then you will discover
that almost inevitably they go through a certain life cycle.
God will work with His Holy Spirit into hearts and lives of a group of people.
They will come together.
They will become a church or they will become a movement.
And the early days of that movement, their full of vitality and their full of dynamism
and they can't wait to speak to other people about Jesus, the movement grows, people come
to faith and churches flourish at Boston.
And then as time goes on very often that fire begins to die down and the community turns
to routine and eventually they stop growing and they'll even start declining.
Even if externally things are still looking okay, inside the fire will have died down.
And what typically happens then is that God will raise up an individual or a group of individuals
who serve as a prophetic voice to that movement and they will say we need to recover our first
love.
We've missed a bolt, the fire has gone out, our hearts have become cold, we don't care
for the lost and in the same way that we used to and we're no longer as passionate about
worship as once we were.
And every so often but rarely in history a movement will listen to its prophets, repent,
turn to God and find renewal and life and vitality.
There was a Moravian prayer meeting that ultimately led to John Wesley's conversion that was
a continual prayer meeting that ran for a hundred years if you could imagine.
They had it right but they're the rare exception.
Typically what happens is that the establishment will look down its noses at the prophets
and they will say who do you think you are?
We've always done it this way before.
Why should we change now?
Eventually that friction will lead to a separation of ways in that prophet or that apostle if you
will with that spirit, with that passion then becomes the nucleus of a new movement that
will very likely go through the same cycle, the same life cycle as time goes on.
So diagrammatically you can picture it this way.
Think of the Roman Catholic Church, centuries and centuries of tradition along comes the
time of the Reformation in the 1500s.
Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli and other reformers they take issue with what is happening
particularly the selling of indulgences, if you know that history and a number of other
things, friction leads to a separation and you get the Protestant Reformation, a major
rupture in Christendom.
The Reformation takes root but it also has its own issues, takes its anger out if you
will on the Anabaptists who were even more radical than the reformers in terms of separating
from Rome, you get the Anglican Church coming out of that and after a while the Anglican
Church at that time became so dead and so dull that John Wesley gets raised up as a preacher
to the masses.
He was so much a high churchman that he says concerning himself I would have thought
it was a sin to preach to the masses outside of a church building where not for God's
calling in my life and he preached tens of thousands of people and brought many to a
saving faith in Jesus.
So out of that comes Methodism, out of that comes as you know the holiness movement,
out of that comes the Pentecostal movement which now is probably one of the fastest growing
spiritual movements in the Christian faith all over the world.
There's a life cycle, things start really well and then things have a way of dying
down.
Now why is that?
Well there's a number of reasons but one that I want to talk about is two that I want
to talk about in particular and I've bitten off more than this that I can choose, you're
going to have to bear with me but this is very close to the essence of what it is to
be a church so listen to me carefully.
The first is a thing called a tendency to institutionalize.
Now an institution is form and structure that a given organization acquires.
An institutionalization means that the form and structure become more important than
its life and mission.
Human nature has a tendency to want safety and security, comfort and convenience where
all creatures of habit shows up in the fact that given affigence we sit in the same place
in church and the after Sunday true.
We have a certain type of music that we like and certain routines that we go through from
day to day and certain ways in which we structure and organize our lives.
Now hear me well, there's nothing wrong with that.
There are people who are radical and who want to write off all institution and organization
and their lives and the lives of everybody around them are chaos.
God himself is a God of order and you not only need the new wine, you need a wine skin
in order to contain the wine.
Institutionalization is not wrong in terms of giving structure and organization to a people
in a movement, it is an inevitable part of that movement growing and maturing where
it becomes wrong is when the structure that you give to something and the form that you
give to something becomes more important than the will of God and now becomes an obstacle
to the movement of God.
The Pharisees and the New Testament are a classic example of that.
They had God all figured out, they had their whole religious life legislated but they missed
the bolt because when Jesus came to do the mission of the Father, they couldn't recognize
him.
They had been taught carefully separate yourself from unbelievers, Jesus comes along and
he hangs around with sinners, they don't know how to fit him in.
And so they end up nailing him to the cross because he didn't fit the preconceived notions
of how he ought to operate.
And that folks is a danger that every last one of us can fall into because this tendency
to use structure and organization to keep God out runs very deeply in each one of us.
And just to expand on that a little bit, let me try to show you the difference then between
movements in their early days when their life and their mission is more important than
their structure in their organization versus what happens when organizations get older and
tend to institutionalize, I'll give you two examples of how that works.
The first is in terms of mission.
The mission changes from looking to the future to preserving the past.
The Christian faith is always in forward motion, isn't it?
It's always looking forward to the day when Jesus comes again and every knee will bow and
every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
And so when Jesus is alive in your heart and when Jesus is alive in the community, then
you're always looking forward to how could we reach more people, how can the church grow,
how could we fulfill the purposes of God, how could we make God happy?
Those His purposes in the world for which Jesus died are being accomplished.
Now the movement ages, the fire goes out of our bones.
We've learned how to structure it.
What becomes our priority is preserving the past.
We've never done it that way before.
The world is filled with church communities, we're holding on to their old buildings and
preserving them is more important than engaging in the mission of God.
Did you know that there were churches with 25 or 30 people in a service and they spend
millions and millions of dollars making sure that their church building becomes a landmark?
And as you know, I'm not against buildings, but from God's perspective, where does the
value lie?
Not in the structure or in the organization, but in the life.
If you've ever been part of that kind of church movement and you try to change anything,
they'll nail you to the cross because we've never done it that way before.
That's the power of traditionalism in the wrong sense of the word.
Closely tied into that then is flexibility, dynamic versus static, a dynamic movement
goes with the flaw, knows how to adapt to its environment, knows how to create new ministry,
shut down old ministries, learns how to do things simply because this is what the moment
demands.
A fossilized movement becomes more interested in maintaining old structures and old ways
of doing things, that it is in going forward and fulfilling the purposes of God.
And it's not the church alone that suffers from this.
I got to thinking about this this past week and of all things what came to mind is Walmart.
Now you know me in shopping, I don't often go to Walmart, but Walmart is an interesting
illustration because Walmart has the distinction of being the world's largest retailer.
Our sales last year were $340 billion.
That's more than the girl's national product of a country like Sweden.
But if you know the news, Walmart's been struggling a little bit in recent years because their
sales have leveled off.
And the analysts are saying you need a retool and they've tried that without any success
why because the organization is huge.
And there are people in that organization who have a vested interest in doing it the
way they've always done it.
In fact, in February 2006, they hired a woman away from Chrysler who was brought on board
to help them get over the hump and to improve their sales.
She wasn't very sensitive or aware of the Walmart culture.
She lasted nine months before they fired her.
Why?
Because she was trying to help the store move upscale to higher priced products where there
is a greater profit margin and the merchandisers in the organization kept on returning to
everyday low prices.
The two did not get along.
And she got worked out of the organization because of the sheer massive inertia.
And they're not the only ones that face that.
She looked at the world of retailing.
Where are all the giants of yesterday, they're all struggling?
Little worths, Eatons, Sears has headed struggles, K-Mart, where are they?
You see the bigger you become and the more structured you become, the harder it is to make
the changes that are needed to keep up with a rapidly changing culture.
And then the giants of yesterday can very quickly become the dodo's of today.
So closely tied into this then, is the challenge of changing culture.
Now culture is the way that a given group of people do life.
And it involves things like the language you speak, the customs and the values that
you hold, the entertainment that you engage in, the music that you listen to, the activities
that you subscribe to, the form of government that you adopt.
And it used to be that in North America, at least, we had a pretty homogeneous culture.
That is to say, pretty much everybody sort of broadly on the same page.
Two reasons for that.
Number one is North America was people by people of primarily Western European background.
And though they varied in culture and in cultural values, most of them were shaped by Christian
values, even though they themselves may not have been Christian.
They were Christian in value.
I was thinking of that as we were singing some of the songs earlier today.
We have a whole bunch of people who want to rip away the underpinnings of Christianity
and Western culture.
They don't realize that most of the values they subscribe to in many ways were Christian
in origin.
You take them away.
And the whole kit and kaboodle begins to fall apart.
You have the whole cultural thing with Western Europeans.
And you have the initial emphasis in North American culture on the melting pot.
We become one people, and even though that was bigger in the states than it is in Canada,
we still subscribe to this Canadian value of learning to be Canadians with our tolerance
and all the nice things that define us as a Canadian people.
Now that homogeneity, this one size and color fits all, is rapidly declining in our culture.
Not only do we receive immigrants now from any different parts of the world, but we have
a fragmentation of the family unit.
And with that one of the defining social characteristics of our day and age, and listen to this carefully,
is a thing called tribalization.
That is to say people are reverting back to being their own group of people, with their
own language, with their own culture, with their own values.
And you can see it, the shift that I'm talking about in the change that has taken place
for example in the world of television.
When I was a kid growing up in PEI, there was only one station and one network that we could
receive in our rabbit ears, and that was CBC.
If you had a better antenna, you might have picked up CTV, and we have now three major networks,
including Global, and in the states, typically, it was ABC, CBS, and NBC until recent years,
and that sort of served the broadcast needs of the broader community, did it on.
Now look at what we got today with the advent of the technology and cable television, some
of you are the proud owners of 500 channels.
Can't possibly watch them all.
But each of those appeals to a narrow segment of society, and they manage to stay in business,
because we have tribalization.
We have different people with different interests, being ministered to in different ways.
That's why some of these big outfits have such a hard time changing and keeping up with
the changes, because the culture is changing faster than what their mechanism internally
can keep up with, true for a lot of churches too.
And we were told now that popular culture turns over every three years.
That means in three years, the music is different, the values are different, the dress is different,
the lifestyle is different.
Understand the implications of this for reaching people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
Stick it out with me here, because this is important.
The further the culture moves away from the culture that is the norm of Christian community,
the more are the barriers that you need to overcome in order to reach them.
The different, the language, the different the values, the different the culture, the
harder it is to communicate the gospel.
And to just to give you an illustration of that, Matt Harris, and you know Matt, heads
up an organization downtown called Foundations to drop in center.
And Matt will bring in different acts to, you know, communicate.
And one of the acts that he brought in recently was a fellow by the name of Chris Greenwood,
who goes by the name of Manifest, he is a hip hop, rapper kind of person.
And our very own Valerie Peters, our very own Valerie Peters had the fortune of being
present when Manifest was doing his rap.
And there were a lot of kids there, place was packed, and they were obviously into it.
And Valerie didn't understand one single word.
Now less do you think she is culturally deprived, and for your edification, I've got a 30
second clip of our good friend Manifest rapping, and you see how much you can pick up when
you listen to this.
Take like a bike, two types of life, two stories, two kids, and you without a bike, if
you be high, you ain't all heavy, you sadly living in hell, taking a nap.
Oh my gosh, we're the heck that I do, just know that they can only be one true, that's
it, that's all, that's all, that's all, that's all, follow me, here's the chorus, sing
along.
Listen to what I got to say, 'cause this type of stuff happens every minute, if I'm
just what you hear me, or what you hear the truth, then I believe in it.'
So a little test here of your cultural awareness, how many of you think you caught most of what
he said?
Ho ho, we have a few, few folks here, but listen, anybody over 22, we're a lost cause.
Listen to this, here's what he said.
Take my advice from two types of life, two stories, two kids living without Christ.
If you die, you ain't at all happy, use sadly, living in hell, teeth is gnashing.
Oh my gosh, what the heck do I do?
Just know that there can only be one truth, that's it, that's all, now I'm signing off, follow
me, here's the chorus, sing along, and then it goes back into, so listen to what I got
to say, 'cause this type of stuff, it happens every day, if I told you, would you hear me,
or would you hear the truth, and not believe me?
Now I tell you this, not to say that we need to be a hip hop/rap kind of church, because
other than Laura here and her friend and a few others, we might have pretty thin population
come next Sunday morning, but I'm trying to point out that God has His people in every
tribe, tongue, and nation, including every subculture, there are people there on whose
lives the hand of God rests, and how are they going to hear without a preacher?
How are they going to hear the message without somebody being sent to them to bear witness
to Jesus?
That's what manifest does, it's easy for us of an older age in a different culture to
look at that and say, 'Boy, you know, I don't identify with that at all, you don't need
to identify with that, but you got to understand something, that of the churches to stay current,
and if it is to reach any of the subcultures of our day, then we need to be open to the
work of the Holy Spirit in terms of raising up people with ministries and giftings to reach
the subcultures of our day. They won't likely come marching through the door into a church
service like this, no matter how attractive we make it, because their language and their
culture and their values are far removed, but they might indeed be hungry for Jesus, if
we can communicate Jesus in a way in which they can understand. And again, that's not
all our mission, but what's important for us as a church community to understand is that
when God raises up people with that mission or with that gifting, we must not only bless
them but not get in their way, because here's the tragedy of history. What do you think
happens? When a given movement calcifies and God raises up a prophetic voice, that becomes
a new movement seeking to carry out the will of God to the next generation. Where do you
think the persecution comes from? It comes from the previous move of God who misunderstands
the next thing that God is doing, because they think they've got them all figured out,
and God isn't fitting into their box, and now they're all bent out of shape. So you
can picture it this way, who persecuted the Reformers? Well, the Roman Catholic Church,
because you're breaking with us. When John Wesley began his preaching, where did his
opposition come from? It came from the Anglo-Consurg, it's amazing how nasty Godly people can get
when they think they're not getting their way. And when the charismatic movement broke out
in North America in the mid to late '60s and early '70s, believe it or not, where did
most of their opposition come from? Came from the Pentecostal folks, you know why? Because
the Pentecostal folks had spiritual gifts all figured out. And now here you've got all
these people, including Roman Catholics and people from mainline denominations, talking
about getting baptized in the Holy Spirit, and we all know that God cannot baptize you
in the Holy Spirit unless you speak in tongues, unless you're part of our movement.
And so the very thing that defines us becomes the dividing line that makes us blind to the
next move of God and makes us oppose what God is doing. And being open to the Holy Spirit
means that, yes, we want to make sure the message never gets compromised because that's
always the danger. But the methods are going to change from generation to generation and
from culture to culture because God's always interested in reaching into generation. And
I'm so glad the discharge back in the early '90s went on record as saying, "As best
as we know how we want to identify what God is doing, get on board with Him and change
whatever needs to be changed for us to remain effective in communicating the gospel in
ways that God invites us to do."
[Music]
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus, Jesus Christ,