Are you ready to break the silence, go beyond your relational circle and demonstrate unconditional love?

Our church is on a focus for 2014: E1R1, “Each One, Reach One”. We have as a theme verse 2 Timothy 2:2. We’ve been examining that verse, and we’ve been spending time breaking it down. We talked about, he says, “The things you’ve heard.” The things. What are those things? The things are, we explained, the Gospel and the paradoxes of the Kingdom. Paul says, “The things you’ve heard me say.” That’s shorthand for the Gospel. We explain the Gospel as a series of paradoxes where we must die to live, where we must serve to be great, where we must give to gain. All of those paradoxes that we looked at. The next part of that verse is that we’re to entrust these things. Entrust these things. The word entrust means to deposit, to give something important for someone to hold on to. So, this “Ready, Set, Go” is about the entrust. What are the action steps that we have to take to entrust the Gospel, to entrust these things to others? We’ve got a key verse for this series “Ready, Set, Go”, right? “Ready, Set, Go” should be something we can remember because it is a very familiar expression to us. If you’re lining up for a race it brings back memories of a kid and racing your friends. You stand on the mark and somebody says, “Ready, set, go!” Or arm wrestling my dad, trying to beat him when I’m a teenager: ready, set, go! You know? It’s that time when “ready”: you get on line, you get in place, mentally and physically you’re ready. “Set” is that momentary pause before action takes place. Then you go. You spring forward. You act upon whatever the goal is. In our case, it’s to touch people. So, ready, set, go. To effectively mobilize our church to reach those who don’t know the Lord. That’s what we want to do. 1 Peter 3:15, let’s put that up. We’re going to memorize this together as a church, alright? We’re going to say it out loud a couple times through. Next week some of the words are going to go away. The goal is by the end of “Ready, Set, Go” all I have to do is put 1 Peter 3:15 up and you’re going to be able to say it, okay? So practice it at home, read it at home, learn it, memorize it. Now it’s easy because we get to read it. But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect 1 Peter 3:15 One more time. But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect 1 Peter 3:15 So, three action steps. What I’m going to do is overview the series today. Each of the points I’m making in the overview, I’m going to elaborate on in subsequent weeks. But I want to present an overview of “Ready, Set, Go”. And we’ll help you to do each of these action steps as the weeks progress. Let’s open our Bibles up to Luke 3. Let’s begin reading with the second part of verse 2 in Luke 3. Luke 3:2b-7 The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. 5 Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. 6 And all mankind will see God’s salvation.’” 7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers!” John subsequently wrote a book about how to win friends and influence people. [laughter] “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” I read that extra verse because John’s gospel is being preached in a very primitive form. What I mean by that is, at this point, all John really understands is repentance and that wrath is coming. The Messiah is coming after me, his winnowing fork is in his hand. He’s going to separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat he’s going to gather; the chaff he’s going to burn. And boy, you’d better get your life together. You’d better get your act straight because when he comes, wrath is coming with him. That was the message of John. That was being understood by his audience because that’s all they knew. See, they grew up with the law, in the law it’s an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, you reap what you sow. The idea of reaping what you sow was already prevalent in society. Also in the eastern culture, the rise of Buddhism, which would have already been on the scene for four to six hundred years, the idea of karma, right? You reap what you sow. The Buddhists would teach that you’re going to either reap it in this life or the next life, but you’re going to reap what you sow. It’s the idea of karma, the idea of reaping what you’ve sown. It’s what John knew and it’s what his audience would know. John didn’t fully understand what you and I know about the Gospel. The paradoxes of the Kingdom, he didn’t understand. What do I mean by that? Jesus comes on the scene and he does not act like John thinks the Messiah is supposed to act. Jesus comes on the scene and doesn’t do anything with the military; he doesn’t do anything political. He doesn’t lead any kind of opposition against Rome. He doesn’t seek to establish any kind of material throne in Jerusalem. He’s not preaching conquest and deliverance. Instead, he goes about healing and doing good and helping the oppressed and hanging around, quite frankly, with a pretty rough crowd, talking about God’s love, and talking about a new concept: grace - man does not reap what he sows. God is going to do for man something different, something wonderful. God is going to enable man, through Christ, to reap what he has not sown. Jesus is going to die so we can live. Jesus is going to serve. Jesus did not come to be served; he’s come to serve. God’s wrath is coming, but it’s not coming on people, it’s coming on Jesus. The wrath of God is going to be placed on Jesus at the cross. God is going to extend to us pardon, mercy, and grace. John doesn’t understand this message. That’s why when John is in prison, Matthew lovingly writes a letter to Jesus. What does he say? He asks a question, “Are you the One, or should we look for somebody else? Did I get it wrong? When I baptized you I thought you were the One. Did I mess up?” John really wants to know. He’s not being sarcastic. He’s not trying to be rude in any way. He simply wants to know. Because he’s not acting and doing what Messiah is supposed to do. Jesus comes and he brings, not wrath, but God’s grace. So, you and I now, become agents of that grace. There are a lot of people you and I know who are running from God and hiding from God and avoiding God at all costs because they think, “If God ever gets a hold of me, he’s going to smite me!” to quote an Old Testament word. He’ll strike them down. He’s going to punish them. So they avoid God; they avoid church; they avoid Christians. They don’t understand grace. So it’s our job to help them to understand what Christ has done. But we have to take these action steps. All three of these action steps have to be taken by you otherwise this isn’t going to happen for you. Let’s look together at what Isaiah is writing. Isaiah looks into the future hundreds of years, out of the desert of all places. Out of the desert is going to come a thriving ministry that will change the world. You wouldn’t think you’d go to a desert. Now we’ve got Arizona, and we’ve got Nevada, and Vegas is there, and Phoenix, and we see big cities in the desert. But in Bible times? That’s where scorpions and snakes live. That’s where cactus grows. That’s nowhere you want to be. If you want to start a thriving ministry you don’t go, “Hey, let’s go to the desert.” That’s not where you want to go. You want to go where the people are. And the wilderness? The desert? That’s not where people are. So it’s very peculiar that Isaiah would write and say that this voice that’s going to break the silence is going to come in the desert. That’s exactly what happens. From the desert comes a voice. Breaking the 400 years of silence, John begins to proclaim the Gospel, in a primitive form nonetheless, but he begins to proclaim the Gospel. First, to entrust the Gospel we must break our silence. At some point you have to speak. I’m pretty confident that most everybody here has a voice. I’m pretty confident that a lot of you who have voices have a faith. And I’m also confident that many of you who have voices and a faith have never articulated that faith very much outside of church, outside of small group, outside of circles where it’s easy to talk about our faith. But when we go into the work place? When we go into our schools? When we go into the other places where we gather and spend time? We become silent. We have to break the silence. We have to be a voice. That’s how Isaiah describes John, a voice. You know, to be a voice for the Lord you don’t have to have a degree. You don’t have to be a theologian, or a scholar, or a pastor, or a missionary. You simply have to have a voice, and be willing, and have an opportunity. God can use anybody.

I was on an airplane ride recently, and I was a little bit bummed because I had missed my flight and the airport was so crowded I didn’t get through security in time. So I said, “Rather than get upset because I’m on standby, maybe the Lord has somebody he wants me to talk to. So, I’ll just roll with it.” So I’m on standby, and I didn’t get the next flight. The next flight I get the last seat on the plane. As I’m flying, I started a nice conversation with a couple by the name of Rachel and Mark who may be listening to this. So I have to be nice. They were very nice. From the East Coast. They had a wonderful British accent. You know British accents. They’re fun to talk to and everything they say sounds very interesting, sounds very intelligent, just because of the accent in which they say it. And so we’re engaged in this conversation and we start out with small talk and eventually we started talking about church. A couple times they referenced “our church”. I said, “Tell me about your church. It sounds like you go to church. What church do you go to?”

He said, “Well, let me tell this story. Every time I tell the story I get choked up, so I hope I don’t get choked up.”

I said, “That’s ok. Just tell me the story.”

He said, “Our daughter is nine years old. When she was about five, she was going to a Christian school at a church in our area, and I went to pick her up one day. My wife and I, we didn’t go to church, but we wanted her to be raised in faith. So I picked her up, and she’s showing us around the church. She takes us to these stained glass windows and she begins to tell us she spends a lot of time there. The windows tell stories. She could tell us, from looking at each stained glass window, what that story was out of the Bible and who those people were and the significance of that window. She went down and down and she got to the last window and she stopped at this window and she said, ‘God speaks to me a lot here, Dad.’”

As a dad I get choked up here too. She said, “God speaks to me a lot here, Dad.”

He’s like, “Umm. You know, she’s five years old and God is speaking to her. Alright, Sweetheart. Well, tell Daddy what God says.”

And she looks up at him and she says, “God says it’s time for you to come back to him.”

He felt something stirring in his spirit. He said, “That was four years ago. My wife and I, we don’t miss. We started going to that church.”

A voice. God can use a child. God can use you if you’re willing to be a voice. Notice where John was a voice. Where was John a voice? John was a voice in the wilderness.

Do you have any wilderness experiences? Some of you are students. You go to a Christian school. That’s great and wonderful, but maybe some of you don’t. Maybe you feel like you are a voice in the wilderness. Some of you, in your workplace. There’s a few of us in this room, Jesse, myself. We work in a church, so everybody on our staff is a Believer. We were giving Pastor Tim a hard time because he was trying to encourage somebody recently. He said, “I told the person at every job there’s always going to be those difficult people that are hard to get along with.”

And I said, “So who is that here for you, Tim?” [laughter]

We’re blessed here. Our coworkers are all wonderful. At our staff meeting we get along great and we just laugh and love each other. But we realize that some of you go into work environments that are pretty hostile. For some of you, to share your faith at your job is like a voice in the wilderness. People there don’t believe as you believe and your message is not as welcome or understood as it is here. And so you are a voice in the wilderness. Sadly, some of you are a voice in the wilderness in your own families, aren’t you? I’ve got some families or even some extended families where many in the family are not Christians. So for you to share your faith even in your family it’s like John speaking in the wilderness. But God says, be a voice. Just like that statue, I love that statue without hands. [Referring to a photograph shown during worship] We’re his voice as well. Are you willing to be the voice? Are you willing to let God speak through you? If you’re willing to let him speak through you, you don’t have to be a scholar. You could have known the Lord for one day. If you’re willing to share what he means to you, to share your story, God can use you.

Secondly, to entrust the gospel to others you must burst the relational bubble.

By the relational bubble, what I mean is this. When a person comes to the Lord, if they come to the Lord as a child that’s different, but if they come to the Lord as an adult or a teenager they have friends all around them who know the Lord. But what I’ve found is that the longer a person is a Christian and the more they become involved with their church, the circle of friends who don’t know the Lord gets smaller and smaller. And pretty soon, if we’re not careful, and I’m not talking about you’ve got to go to work and you rub shoulders here at work, and you’ve got to go to school and you rub shoulders there. I’m talking about on your free time when you do whatever you do to enjoy yourself. You go hunting, you go fishing, you go shopping, you go to a movie, you go to a ballgame, you go out to eat, you go out for coffee, whatever it is. What we find happening, pretty soon, is that Christians only associate with other Christians. And churches, especially mega-churches, are guilty of this. They organize Christian Zumba, Christian bingo, Christian bowling, Christian movie night, Christian this, Christian that. Everything we do is always and only with other Believers. How in the world are you going to accomplish that? You can’t. It’s impossible. You’ve got to burst the relational bubble. What was the number one criticism that was rendered to Jesus by his enemies? Those who disliked him and his ministry? Luke 15, first couple of verses. Let’s read those together. Luke 15:1-2 Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” This is the criticism of Jesus more than any others. The religious elite, the “godly” people of the day, were looking down on Jesus because he hangs around with tax collectors and sinners. Now tax collectors back then were not the beloved figures they are today. [laughter] Now everybody loves tax collectors. The loudest boos I ever heard in a baseball stadium were when they introduced the IRS gang that had visited the game that day. “Here’s our Girl Scouts, yay! Here’s our Boy Scouts, yay! And here’s the IRS, boo!” And it just wouldn’t stop. But back then it was even worse because they were Jews who were working for the Roman government. They could collect the tax and Rome says, “We want this amount,” and anything over and above that was theirs. People were greedy then like they are now and so they would just take money out of their own people’s pockets. Despised group. Think about it, I don’t know how tax collectors feel today when they read their Bibles. I’m sure there are some tax collectors who are Christians. There’s got to be, somewhere. How would you feel if your profession was singled out here? The nurses and sinners. Salesmen and sinners. Landscapers and sinners. Hey, come on! There it is. I can’t disguise it. Tax collectors get singled out. We don’t have any here so it’s okay. We’ve kicked them all out. [laughter] Sinners were this big group of anybody who wasn’t like them, anybody who didn’t go to synagogue. It could be beggars, it could be people with diseases, it could be the poor, it could be the people who just didn’t have faith. Anybody who wasn’t them was lumped into this category called sinners. The religious leadership looked down and said, “If Jesus wants to be somebody, if he wants to be famous, if he wants to be influential, he should be hanging with us, we’re the people who matter.” It made them question how legit he was. You look at the company and you get judged by the company you keep, right? Look at who he hangs out with. He welcomes them! He seems to enjoy it! He eats with them! The implication is that this is habitual with Jesus. This isn’t just some event. This is the way he lived his life. This was his lifestyle. Jesus spent time with others who followed God but he went out of his way to build relationships and friendships with those who didn’t know God. If we’re going to accomplish this objective in 2014 we have to be willing to burst relational bubbles. Like I said, all these action steps we’re going to talk about in detail. That’s one we’re going to hit pretty hard next week, so I’ll move on. Thirdly, if we’re going to entrust the gospel to others we must demonstrate unconditional love. It has to happen. You know why so many, there’s a lot of people who despise Christianity, Christians? You know why? Because what they experience form the church is judgment. They experience judgment. Not love, judgment. It says the people were coming to Jesus. Why did they come to Jesus? Was it because Jesus agreed with everything they were doing or saying? Not at all. If you watch Jesus’ interaction with Non-believers, he never condoned their lifestyle. He never said, “Hey, it’s okay! Do whatever you want. Wink, wink.” But he also, in speaking to them truth, he demonstrated unconditional love. And people are drawn to unconditional love. They know he’s a man of God. They know he doesn’t condone their actions or their lifestyle but they also knew it was demonstrated through his words and his actions that he loved them; he truly loved them. And people like to be with people who truly love them, who’ll listen to them even when they don’t agree with them. I’ve got a friend who’s a rock star. I’ve known him for years. I got to know him through a mutual hobby. I’m a geek. I’m a nerd. I like old comic books. I have since I was a little kid. My son calls me a nerd. You’re a nerd. You’re a geek, whatever. Because I like those. I think Spiderman’s cool. I think Batman’s cool. I like them all. So I meet my friend, and I find out he collects comic books, too. My son was in high school, he’s 24 now, but I found out this was his favorite band. I thought this was going to make an impression on him. He got to speak with him [the rock star] and he thought that was really cool. I sent him a picture of myself, two other guys, and this guy who’s in the rock band. He’s got Grammies, still sells concerts around the world, sells out. He’s rich, famous. I sent the picture to my son. I thought, now he’s going to be impressed. I said, “What do you think of Dad’s hobby now? What do you see in this picture, huh buddy?” He said, “I see three nerds and a rock star.” You can’t win! So, I spent some time with him [the rock star] recently. His lifestyle, to say the least, is extremely different from mine, okay? Very different from mine. He doesn’t do the drugs, he doesn’t do the alcohol, but the groupie stuff, yeah. Big time. So we’re talking and he says he’s got a woman that he’s interested in marrying. I said, “You know you’re going to have to change your lifestyle. You can’t keep living the way you’re living once you get married.” He said, “Oh no, I’m not going to change anything. You just don’t talk about it.” I said, “I don’t think that’s how it works.” So we got into a debate about monogamy and his culture and what was acceptable and what wasn’t acceptable. I didn’t just go, “Everything’s okay! Do what you want to do. God will accept you whatever you do.” I didn’t say that. I would share my objections with him. And I’d say, “Well, you can’t do that.” “Well, you’re a priest,” he says. “I keep telling you I’m not a priest!” [laughter] He’s calling me a priest. I’m not a priest. “Are you working out?” “Nah, I’m not working out anymore. I noticed a little bit of a paunch that I’ve seen. I found out the ladies still love me, so I don’t have to work out.” “It’s not about the ladies; it’s about your health.” “It’s not about the health. Everything’s about the ladies! I don’t have to work out anymore.” So, his idea of life is different from mine, but when we’re done conversing, “I’m going to see you in April. Hey, you and I are going to go out to eat.” “Okay, sounds good. Don’t go to the place we went last time; that was horrible.” “Yeah, we’re going to go someplace else.” I’ll see him in April. I’ll see him in August and we’ll hang out together. Why does he want to hang out with me? Our lifestyles couldn’t be more different. He doesn’t have a faith in God at all. He knows I love him. He knows I love him. He’s experienced from me unconditional love and because of that he wants to spend time with me. So we’re going to talk about that in this series. How’s that lived out. Unconditional love.