Wordeed - Week 7: Signs, "Kingdom Signs"

- Just like the rest of the Jewish people of the first century, John the Baptist expected that the coming Messiah would free Israel and judge the nations.

- John's preaching was about repentance, judgment, and unquenchable fire.

- After Herod had him thrown into prison, John was probably feeling pretty sorry for himself while hearing about all the wonderful things that Jesus was doing.

- Maybe he was wondering, 'Why isn't Messiah setting Israel free?

- If Jesus is the Messiah, then why am I sitting here in prison?

- If Jesus really is the Messiah, then why is he not judging the nations?  Why is Messiah not condemning shameless sinners?

- So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, 'Are you the Coming One, the One that the prophets foretold, the one we are expecting? Or should we expect someone else? Jesus, why are you not living up to my expectations?'

- Now, Jesus knew what the Jews were expecting. He knew what John was expecting.

- So basically what he says to John's messengers is this: "Consider the evidence: The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."

- The kingdom's presence is shown through kingdom deeds.

- The list Jesus gives to John is a summary of the miracles Matthew recorded in chapters 8 & 9 and refers back to a number of passages in the prophet Isaiah.

- Matthew 8 begins with Jesus healing a leper who came to him, saying, Lord, if you will, make me clean, and Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will; be clean.

- Immediately after that we read of the faith of the centurion of whom Jesus said that there was no one in all Israel with such faith and Jesus healed his paralyzed servant without ever visiting him.

-  Continuing on we read of Jesus healing many and casting out demons. Then we witness Jesus' authority over the weather as he calmed the storm.

- Next Matthew describes the healing of two demon possessed men in the region of the Gadarenes. Matthew understands Jesus' word carries great authority and Jesus speaks only one word to the demons in his account of his story, go.

- With the beginning of chapter 9, Matthew reports the story of Jesus healing the paralytic whom he told, your sins are forgiven, and knowing the thoughts of the scribes Jesus told the man, Rise, pick up your bed and go home.

- Another man comes to Jesus, putting his trust in him, saying, My daughter has died but if you put your hand on her, she will live. While on his way, a woman who'd been bleeding for 12 years touched Jesus robe and was healed by her faith in Jesus.

- After raising the little girl, Jesus healed two blind men and cast out from a man a mute spirit.

- What is Matthew telling his readers about the kingdom's presence in Jesus?

- The kingdom's presence is shown through kingdom deeds.

- Let's hear what Isaiah has to say of the age of salvation, writing 500 years before Jesus.

- Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. Isaiah 26:19 (ESV)

-  In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. Isaiah 29:18 (ESV)

- Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;  then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. Isaiah 35:5-6 (ESV)

- Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see! Isaiah 42:18 (ESV)

- The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound... Isaiah 61:1 (ESV)

- Jesus understood his miracles as signs that fulfilled Isaiah's vision of the age of salvation. 

- As he said to John's messenger, "The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."

- The kingdom's presence is shown through kingdom deeds.

- The judgment that John and the Jews expected to come along with the Messiah would be delayed until a later time.

- What Jesus was telling John's disciples to pass along to John was this: what you have seen in me and heard from me are the signs of the kingdom of God.

- If you want to know who Jesus is, then consider the signs.

- But it's not enough to consider the signs and know that Jesus is Messiah.

- As Jesus warned John's messengers, 'blessed is anyone who does not fall away because of me.'

- God's blessing rests on those who commit themselves to following Jesus Christ and stick with that commitment. (Osbourne, 415)

- Jesus warned John and his followers that their disappointment must not lead to abandoning Jesus because Jesus does not meet their expectations.

- The same is also true of us. We must not abandon Jesus when he does not do what we expect.

- Just like the people of the first century, we want to remake Jesus into our own image.

- We want a comfortable Jesus who makes life easier and simpler.

- But the Jesus portrayed by Matthew, and the rest of the New Testament, is not a comfortable Jesus.

- Jesus is not a grandfatherly, jolly, Santa Claus type figure who gives us whatever we ask.

- Our God is not a bubblegum machine into which we pay a quarter and crank out our blessing.

- Jesus Christ is Lord and King and he calls his followers to commitment, and faithfulness.

- And this Lord and King did not consider it beneath him to suffer. In fact, he embraced suffering for the whole world on a cross.

- And he also calls us to embrace suffering for the sake of the world.

- It's not enough to join the church; we have to join the mission.

- The signs of integral mission are easy to see if we're looking for them because they are the signs that God's kingdom is present.

- The presence of God's kingdom transforms lives.

- As Terry Smith writes in his Wordeed blog, "How do we know when a group of Christians have captured the vision and become fully engaged wordeed practitioners? What are the signs that transformation is happening? They might not only be the obvious ones of people becoming followers of Christ, churches growing and poverty being reduced. Sometimes they are more like the [substitute signs]. When you can’t always measure the direct impact of some [occurrence], you need to look for indirect signs or evidence. Maybe some of the [substitute signs] of integral mission would be the [decline] of substance abuse, or less absenteeism in school and work, or greater inter-church cooperation. Perhaps the sign of integral mission in your community will be lavish generosity and goodwill towards people who don’t even want to be part of your church. Or the evidence of Christians being consulted in municipal affairs."

- Whatever the sign, the presence of God's kingdom transforms lives.

- The kingdom's presence is shown through kingdom deeds.

Wordeed 6, Being. Doing. Saying. "Higher Expectations" (I was away week 5))

Scripture: Luke 4: 16-30

- "And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan." Matt 4:23-25 (ESV)

- News traveled fast in Galilee, through the villages along the trade routes, but it traveled especially fast to where the trade routes met at the crossroads where the Roman garrison was stationed, the village of Nazareth.

- Anticipation was growing among the people of Nazareth. Jesus had been preaching up and down the countryside at every village and the people of Nazareth expected great things.

- So, on that Sabbath day when Jesus showed up it was only natural that he be invited to read from one of the prophets and explain God's word to the people.

- The scroll of Isaiah was a huge scroll. And like all scrolls in those days it was without chapter and verse, but Jesus unrolled the scroll to the place we call Isaiah 61.

- God’s Spirit is on me;
    he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
    recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
    to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”

He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.” (The Message)

- The message of Isaiah the prophet in these verses is a message of hope. It is a message that contains the signs of the coming of the kingdom of God. It is a message that announces the year of Jubilee, of freedom.

- Now, while the people of Nazareth were filled with anticipation and expectation, they were also surprised by Jesus' claim that the very Scriptures he read only moments before had just come true among them.

- Jesus knew that the people of Nazareth expected him to take care of his own. They expected him to do the same things in Nazareth that he had done for the people of Capernaum (Evans, Luke, 71).

- But their expectations of Jesus would be crushed. In the rest of Jesus' sermon to the people of Nazareth that Sabbath day, he gave the examples of Elijah and Elisha.

- Jesus reminded them that no widow in Israel received help from Elijah only the widow Zarephath of Sidon. No lepers received healing through Elisha only Naaman the Syrian.

- This reminder deeply offended the people of Nazareth.

- They found Jesus preaching to be unacceptable because they expected their Messiah to deliver Israel from her enemies and crush the Gentiles.

- That was what the common belief about Isaiah 61:1-2; that when Messiah came, he would destroy Israel's enemies while bringing freedom to Israel.

- But in effect what Jesus was saying, 'Yes I have come to bring freedom but not freedom for Israel, freedom for all.'

- Israel's people had misunderstood Isaiah's message of the kingdom of God; that it was a message, which God intended for the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the exploited.

- Messiah Jesus does not behave in ways people expect of their Messiah.

- I believe that means at least two things for us: 1) Jesus works in us in unexpected ways; and 2) Jesus expects us to work in the lives of unexpected people.

- Let's break this down somewhat.

- First, Jesus works in unexpected ways. Like Nazareth and Capernaum, Jesus does not work in every community, every church, or every era in the same way.

- We are mistaken if we think that Jesus will work in us the same way he has worked somewhere else.

- We are also mistaken if we think that Jesus will work in exactly the same ways today as he worked in the past.

- Jesus does not expect us to be like the UPC church down the road or the like Maple Ridge Wesleyan church up the road.

- Jesus doesn't expect us to be a clone of some other church, rather he expects us to be the people he has called us to be, doing the things he has called us to do, and saying the things he has called us to say.

- If we are always in the process of moving toward greater maturity in Christ, then Jesus also does not expect us to try to clone a past vision of ourselves, but to become more like the people he is calling us to become today, tomorrow, next week, next year.

- Sometimes we expect Jesus to do certain things for us, in us, and through us. And when those certain things don't happen, we get down and depressed.

- Jesus calls different communities to accomplish different things related to his mission.

- For example, the goal of Maple Ridge is to become the kind of church that unchurched people want to attend, whereas our goal is to be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus until the light of the gospel shines in every home.

- Can you see how those different goals show that Jesus will work among each church in different ways?

- The issue is not what do we expect of Jesus; rather the issue is what does Jesus expect of us.

- Second, Jesus expects us to work in the lives of unexpected people.

- How do we know? Well, we know Jesus expects us to work in the lives of unexpected people because that's what Jesus himself did by announcing the good news to the poor; by teaching his disciples; by casting out demons, by healing the sick, the lame, the blind; by eating and drinking with sinners; by confronting religious abusers and powerbrokers; by sending out his disciples; by being crucified; and by his resurrection from the grave.

- Where we put up walls, Jesus is tearing them down. Where we seek to exclude others, Jesus opens his arms wide to include all who would come to him.

- Where are we like the people of Nazareth, offended by Jesus' preaching and actions that we find unacceptable?

- Sally Clarkson writes: "Too often, I think, we are tempted to view outreach mostly in terms of missionaries reaching unchurched people in faraway lands or perhaps an evangelistic crusade for thousands or an enthusiastic youth group rally. But Jesus gave us a very different model of ministry when he took the time to reach out to people he encountered in the course of his everyday life. He happened to go by Simon Peter's home after a trip to the synagogue, and while there, he healed Peter's sick mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31). He went to a friend's house and scandalized the Pharisees by eating and drinking with the people he met there – 'tax collectors and sinners' (Luke 5:39-32). He commended a Roman soldier in front of a crowd of people for his great faith (Matthew 8:5-13).  Wherever he walked, he encountered people in need, he had compassion on them, and he helped them.

        - "Note that the very people Jesus chose as a focal point of his ministry [were not] accepted in the temple courts of his day. The Pharisees rejected them as unworthy, either because they were outsiders in their society (such as Romans or Samaritans) or because they did not keep all of the myriad rules the Temple leaders imposed. Many of the people Jesus reached out to probably would've felt out of place in the Temple.

        - "It's easy to condemn the Pharisees' attitude, but don't we sometimes do the same thing? Are there certain people we find acceptable for ministry and others who seem too threatening to reach? Are we tempted to avoid those who look different from us, who dress differently or perhaps have "unacceptable" life habits like swearing, smoking, or drinking? Do we sometimes avoid reaching out to people simply because they make us uncomfortable?" (Clarkson, the Ministry of Motherhood, 88-89)

- Integral mission is not about our expectations, but about Christ’s expectations.  It's not about what we find acceptable or unacceptable, but about the Lord Jesus through whom all are accepted. It's not about what we want, but what God wants.

- That is why the early church had strong emphases in the areas of community, justice and compassion, hospitality, and in proclamation and confession of the faith. They were eager to please Jesus, meeting his expectations.

- Churches around the globe continue to reflect the values of integral mission. Churches like the African Brotherhood Church which affirms:

·       all peoples on earth deserve respect as exemplified by the holy Scriptures

·       the church's responsibility to is to serve all of mankind, meeting physical, social and spiritual needs equally and without favoritism

·       that a person is saved by confessing their sins and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and shall be rewarded in heaven according to their deeds

- The African Brotherhood Church backs up their values with action, and so must we.

- Now that we have decided to adopt the new mission statement, vision, and structure, we need to truly make them our own by beginning anew with prayerful planning and decisive action offering our words and our deeds for the sake of a broken, hurting, wandering world and for the glory of God.

- As a sign of your commitment to these statements will you stand with me and recite our mission and vision statements.

- Mission Statement:

Our mission is to be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus in and for our community until the light of Christ shines in every home.

- Vision Statement (w/ Core Values):

As a church, each member will be involved in ministries that reach out to each other, our families and community with fervent commitment, focussed compassion, and fruitful teamwork as we strive to meet needs and grow through evangelism, discipleship, and social action.

- It is time for our words and our deeds to match what we say we believe.

- Jesus expects our being, doing, and saying to go beyond what we expect.

Wordeed 4, Broken A Broken World Needs the Christian to Live Simply

Scripture: Matthew 23:23,24 (also see 10:9); Jeremiah 9:23-24

- Every 6 seconds a child dies from malnutrition. That's 600 children every hour, over 14,000 children every day, and over 5 1/4 million children every year.

- Over 1 billion (1,000,000,000) people are forced to live in utter poverty on less than a dollar a day.  Even in the poorest countries, a dollar a day cannot provide for one person, let alone a family.

- Of those billion, a whopping 73% are either living through civil war or have already lived through one and have had deeply scarring personal experiences of the brutality of civil war.

- 1% of the world's adult population possesses 40% of the global assets and the world's three richest people possess greater assets than the world's 48 poorest countries.

- Nearly 100,000,000 (100 million) people each year are forced into poverty because of health care costs.

- Unsustainable agricultural and industrial practices, without concern for the futures of those who must live off the land, continue to abuse God's creation and contribute to a variety of social injustices like the ones I just listed.

- Corruption is a large source of these problems and we, in the West, are quick to blame and point our fingers at the leaders of the poorest countries in the world, when what we ought to be doing is taking a look in the mirror.

- What does God have to say about all this?  Not surprisingly, the wholeness of integrity is what concerns Jesus in the face of brokenness and injustice.

- "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!" (Matthew 23: 23-24, ESV)

- The Pharisees did not just tithe from their main crops and herds as commanded by the law, but even their herbs and spices because they believed that unless food was tithed that it was not ritually clean and therefore not lawful to eat.

- Jesus did not condemn this habit. What he condemned was their lack of concern for others.

- Jesus condemned their lack of concern for "the weightier matters of the law" namely justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

- This statement directly reflects Jesus' earlier comment about the Greatest Commandments which Matthew records in chapter 22.

-  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments."

- Justice and mercy are a reflection of love for others and faithfulness reflects love for God.

- Jesus accused the Pharisees of neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness because God is a God of justice, mercy, and faithfulness and in so doing the Pharisees sinned against the very heart of God.

- Because they neglected the "weightier matters of the law," Jesus said that the Pharisees were making great efforts to strain the unclean gnats out of whatever they were drinking while at the same time swallowing the largest unclean thing in Palestine a camel.

- The statistics we heard concerning poverty about hunger, violence, disparity (i.e., the unequal distribution of wealth), inadequate health care, corruption, bad governance and the environment at the beginning of today's message can all be impacted for good by God's people who are seeking to carry out justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

- The Pharisees were caught up in all the self important little details that made them look good to themselves and better than everyone else, but they left behind what was most important.

- James tells us exactly what he thinks of that kind of religion: Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world. (Jas. 1:26-27, MSG)

- Now I realize that James originally wrote here about orphans and widows, but his point was that they represent those society has rejected. Orphans and widows without a family were the homeless and the loveless.

- I think it's about time that we in the church a long hard look in the mirror at ourselves in order to evaluate just how much like the Pharisees we really are.

- How much time, energy and resources do we spend on ourselves versus the underprivileged and poverty stricken?

- Are we ready to stop our self important navel-gazing and start reaching out to those in need?

- If we are ready to turn the tables on the modern day Pharisaic attitudes that have crept up on us, then there as much we can do to promote justice, mercy and faithfulness today.

- One thing we can do is take part in The Sharing Way's annual appeal, Good Food, Healthy Change.

* - "In our modern world we need to recognize that programs that address hunger issues need to do two things:

1. Provide adequate food supplies when the needs are critical without distinction of race, gender, politics or religion.

2. Assist families and communities to become food secure through agriculture production and employment opportunities.

There are some wonderful examples of integral mission of local churches in Canada who are helping their brothers and sisters in the developing world.

•The financial contributions of many Canadian Baptist churches in

2011 allowed CBM to provide food aid to Somali families in refugee camps in Kenya.

• Highland Baptist Church in Kitchener sponsored a dryland agriculture training centre in India through CBM. Canadian volunteers were sent to work on the property.

• New Life Baptist Church in Duncan supported an urban microcredit program in Bolivia that helped families to increase income through small business operations.

• Canadian Baptist women's groups raised funds for women who had been victims of sexual violence in Congo. A significant portion of the budget provided loans for women to start small businesses in order to improve family nutrition.

• New Minas Baptist Church and Port Williams Baptist Church in Nova Scotia sent research agronomists from their congregations to Rwanda and Kenya to provide technical support for CBM programs.

• Lorne Park Baptist Church in Mississauga, Westview Baptist Church in Calgary and Brownfield Baptist Church annually partner in a grain project that raises approximately $50,000 for CBM's account at the Canadian Food Grains Bank."

- Now, I'm certain that some of you are thinking that neither you, personally, nor we, as a church, have the money for such things.

- But I'm going to let you in on a little secret, it might be shocking it might be hard to hear, but we all need to be aware of it, so here it goes:

- We spend our money on our priorities.

- If we don't think we have the money to make a difference in global poverty, it's because we haven't made the poor a priority.

- Honestly, it's really that simple.

- We need to allow the good news about Jesus Christ to change our priorities.

- After hearing a sermon on Matthew 10:9 which simply states, “Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts,” St. Francis of Assisi took a vow of poverty.

- Now, I'm not saying any of us have to take a vow of poverty, but we do need to carefully examine our lives and begin to live more simply by prioritizing our spending habits with the aim of helping the poor and not being mastered by money and impulse shopping.

- Simplicity is one of the disciplines of the spiritual life that we need to rediscover if we are going to help the poor and the needy, the sick and the lame.

- A commitment to living simply will enable us to gain control over our money rather than our money controlling us.

- I believe this is critically important for our whole lives before God because, as Jesus said, you cannot serve both God and money.

- Simplicity frees us from the grip our finances have over us bringing wholeness and also frees us to help others to become whole, which is what integral mission is really all about.

- I want to strongly encourage you to sit down this week and take a long hard look at your budget and your spending habits and start eliminating some things you can live without, simplify.

- Simplicity empowers us to show justice, mercy, and faithfulness to a broken world.