“The Man Who Invented Christmas”

A sermon based upon Isaiah 9:2-7; Matthew 1:23, 

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

3^rd  Sunday of Advent, December 17th,   

In October 1843, the writer Charles Dickens was broke and distressed. Despite early successes, his last three books had failed.  Rejected by his publishers, he set out to write and self-publish a book he hoped would keep his family afloat. The story Dickens created is the well-beloved Christmas Story known as “A Christmas Carol.” 

This Christmas, a film called ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ celebrates Dickens masterpiece of prose and his struggle to write and publish it.   While we can still enjoy and appreciate this wonderful classic, we all know that Christmas wasn’t invented by him.  How we celebrate Christmas today has been greatly influenced by him, perhaps even mostly shaped by him, just as our Christmas celebrations have also been shaped by Clement Clarke Moore and his poem, ‘A Visit From St. Nick’, but Christmas, as we know it, wasn’t invented by either Dickens or Moore. 

So how was Christmas invented?  Historically, Christmas Day was first established during the time of the Roman emperor Constantine, around 300 AD.  At that time birthdays were not celebrated as much as “death days” of loved ones, but as the Church became free from persecution and part of mainstream society, it began to celebrate Christmas nine months after it celebrated the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of Jesus on March 25th.  This worked out quite well, because Christians was a fitting alternative to the pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice which were filled with reveling and too much drinking for Christians.  Christmas Day, provided the occasion for more humane and reverent celebrations of hope, faith and if course, love.

Today, there is a tendency to return to a more primitive approach and to celebrate Christmas on more secular terms.  In the Broadcasting media we have even seen the attempt to skip term ‘Christmas’ altogether, by using the term “Happy Holidays”.  Even Christians can forget the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas, who once focused on the birth of Jesus Christ.  Christians can sing, celebrate, exchange gifts, but still omit celebrating the core focus of their faith amidst their Christmas party schedules.  “What does it really matter, whether I think about Jesus, religion, church or faith?” we might reason.  What difference does Christmas really make?  Is there really a ‘true meaning’ to Christmas?  I’ll make my on meaning, thank you very much!

THE PEOPLE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS

So, the question for us today is this: Who needs Christmas?  Our text answers: “The people in darkness do.”  While on vacation I saw a news report about a teenager who started a non-profit business to remake clothes for the homeless.  He said: ‘These aren’t second rate people and they deserve much more than second rate clothes’.  He was bringing light into the darkness of this world.  He was bringing ‘light’, he was bringing ‘hope’, and he was bringing ‘Christmas’.   When you are in the darkness, you’ll always need a little light.

During the time when churches were being persecuted in the European Eastern Block, once dominated by atheistic communism,  one Pastor stood up to preach at Christmas and he used today’s text: ‘The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.  On those in deep darkness the light has shined.’  When he preached those words communism had taken over his community.  The church building had been blown up by war and the Christians were not allowed to rebuild.  They were worshipping in small ‘mobile units’ or ‘trailors’.  Their land had become a dark place where there was no public place to turn on the true ‘lights of Christmas’.  But the pastor knew that the faithful had been in a place like this before.   He also knew that somehow they would come into the light again.  “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light….On those…has the light shined’.

When you living in darkness, which Isaiah called ‘deep darkness’ you will need hope for the true light.  Go up to Linville Caverns and walk deep inside those cavern walls, were the light never shines, and experience what I experienced as a child for the first time.   I thought I had been in the dark before.   I had walked in the woods.  I had moved from the city lights to the country nights.  I had spent the night in the woods in a tent and had put out the campfire and turned off the flash light.   But when the tour guide at Linville Caverns turned off the light, the darkness was so strong, it made be light headed, dizzy, disoriented, and even afraid.   Then, he turned the light back on.   He pointed to the fish down in the cavern stream and said, these fish have never seen the light and their eyes do not respond to light.  They are completely blind.   This is what it means live in the darkness.   If you stay in the darkness too long, you will eventually go blind and you will never be able to see again.   That was the first time I encountered what pure darkness means.   It not only means you don’t see, it also means you can’t.   When you live in pure darkness you are unable to see, even when the light shines. This is why the church must continue to bear witness to the light.

Most of us, thank God, have yet to live in a world that is void of physical or moral light.  We are still capable, for the most part, in understanding some difference between what it means to be in a time of moral darkness, and what it means to live in the light.  Our faith has been through dark times, our country has been in dark times too, but it seems that we have always been able to come back into the light.   Not long ago, I watched a movie about the Civil War; one of the darkest times in our American history.  It told the incredible story of how the Southern Army in Virginia needed fresh recruits, so they enlisted young military students from VMI.   These young recruits were to provide backup, but instead, when they saw the battle was being lost, they bravely walked through the mud, out of their shoes, and marched straight into battle.   Many of them courageously lost their lives, and still today, they are remembered at ceremonial roll calls at VMI.  The movie was named, “The Field of Lost Shoes” after the shoes that were found of those brave, young boys, who never came back to wear them again.

Those were ‘dark times’ in our history, which we never want to repeat, so when I heard young people in a new cast, sitting around in a room, expressing their fears that the extremes in social discourse, or in American politics makes them fear another ‘Civil War’ in America, I see that increasing fear that great darkness might return.   There is so much darkness still growing around us, that it can cause any of us to turn to thoughts of ‘doom and gloom’.   Whether it be the fears of an atomic war with North Korea, fears of increasing Islamic radicalism, fears of the European Union falling apart, or even fears of new cold war with Russia, or of new Chinese economic conquest, these fears bring renewed anxiety that the American, or even Christian future, may not be a bright as we once believed it to be.

Perhaps your own experience of ‘great darkness’ has nothing to do with the movements taking place on the world stage, but maybe the ‘darkness’ is closer to your own heart.  Maybe your own struggle with darkness is more personal, like the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job,  the loss of physical ability, or moral failure, which has meant the loss of your own dream.  Grief, however it comes, can seem very dark, especially at Christmas time, when we are talking about the shining of a great light.  Sometimes, because a ‘great light’ or ‘great hope’ has comes, we are caught in the shadow of our own difficult situation, and we are wandering through the dark.  Is that where you are this Christmas?   Are you one of those ‘people’ who finds themselves living, as the people in Isaiah’s time, who ‘curse their kings and their gods’ (Is. 8:21) or who ‘see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and are thrown ‘into thick darkness…. (Isa. 8:22)?   It can be easy to feel this way.   At some time, this could be any of us.   We can all live through a time when the darkness is so ‘thick’ it weighs heavy on our souls or in our hearts.

FOR A CHILD HAS BEEN BORN

But it is exactly upon this kind of people, --- ‘people who walked in darkness’ who see ‘a great light’ (Isa. 9: 2).   It was upon these very people who ‘lived a land of great darkness—“ that the ‘light shined’ (9:2).  It was upon these people who were bearing the ‘yoke’ of darkness as a ‘burden’ upon their own shoulders---those who had experienced the terrors of war, with ‘the boots of trampling warriors’ or the ‘garments rolled in blood’, who suddenly found their own ‘joy’ increased. But how?  How did this hope and renewed sense of ‘joy’ come?   How did this terrible darkness come to end?

People who have lost hope have a hard time overcoming darkness.   Once the darkness comes upon you, or gets within you, it’s very hard to get it out.  During the Vietnam Series of films on PBS, I watched and listened as one Marine told how after the Vietnam War, after all that terrible combat experience, when he came home, and ever since, even as a man, he had to sleep with a night light.   When he told his kids they didn’t need to sleep with their night lite on anymore, they complained: “Dad, why are you still sleep with a nightlight on.”  He had to try to explain to his kids why he, as their father, still had to have his nightlight on.   It was that hard to get the darkness out.  

One thing for sure, great hope for a new world does not come by our own human doing.  It may indeed seem to be too late for some of us to have any new hope for a new world, a new life, or a new joy, especially when we too have been hardened, broken down, or defeated by the darkness around us.   It may feel as if it’s too late for us, but Isaiah says that even upon this kind of people---people who are still living in darkness, when their seems to be little hope for their own lives—it is upon them that hope came.  

Hope came upon them, just like hope comes upon people when a baby comes.  Have you ever been in a nursing home, and been with some of those folks for whom there is seems to be little hope left, and then someone brings in a baby into their room?   When the baby or the young child enters the room, even the hardest, most pain ridden soul lights up.   When the baby comes things change.  It’s like this for new parents, when the baby comes everything changes.   The reason you live changes.  The reason you work changes.  How you see the world changes.  The baby changes everything.

It was this kind of change toward hope---hope in a young child, that Isaiah spoke of when he said, “For unto us a child has been born, …a son has been given to us.”   When the baby comes, light and hope comes.  But what we also need to know is that this child Isaiah saw, was no ordinary child.    Isaiah says that this child is different because  ‘authority rests upon his shoulders….”   He is not just a child who will remain a child, but this is a child who will rule the nations in a way that he can be astoundingly named  “Wonderful Counselor,  Mighty God,  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace….”   These are not ordinary words about just any kind of ordinary child, nor just about any kind of worldly Prince, Counselor or King.   These are words about a child who grows in ‘grows in authority’ so that there will be no doubt about who he is.  When this child comes to rule, Isaiah says,  ‘there shall be endless peace for David’s throne’.   This child will grow to establish and uphold God’s rule with ‘justice and righteousness’ ‘forevermore’.   His rule establishes hope, peace, ‘justice and righteousness’ in a way that you don’t just have a new day, but in a way that there is a ‘whole new world’.   And this new world comes just as humbly and hopeful as it does for a family who experiences the birth of new life in their own little child.  Isn’t it amazing how such a simple, humble, even humiliating birth, could change the course of everything else that happens?  We all know what the birth of a Stalin or Hitler negatively meant for the world.  Imagine what it could mean when a good ruler was born.   This is the kind of positive, but humble and relentless hope that keeps coming to the world every time a child is born.  

This is a beautiful image of hope---hope not just for a family, not just for Israel, but this is a hope for the coming transformation of the whole world.   But you may ask how has, how does, or how can the birth of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah still be the hope of the whole world---a world that grows more complicated than ever before, where promises of hope, future, or transformation are quickly extinguished by the negativities of our own ‘gloom and doom’?   Has the birth of Jesus really changed anything?   Has it really even changed us—our world, or at least how we see the world?  What is it about the life, teachings, or deeds of Jesus that has caused the world to see or do anything differently?   Are we a people who have been left in the dark too long, or are we truly a people ‘who have seen a great light’?   Has the baby really changed anything in us, or in our world, which brings us the light of hope and the promise of peace for our own tomorrow?    Did Jesus ‘invent’ or ‘bring’ anything of substance into our world that brings a difference to the darkness that still comes in life and in death?

WITH JUSTICE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS

This child Isaiah saw is not only called a Wonderful Counselor, or Prince of Peace, he is also unexpectedly called “Everlasting Father” or “Almighty God”.  The point here is not to point to who this child was, but to point to who this child is, and what he did, and still does, to bring to us a hope that is no ordinary hope, that shines no ordinary light. This means that you can’t expect to measure hope or see light in the birth of this child in the same way you measure hope in the birth of our own children.

Isaiah expressed exactly this when he said that this ‘child’ would ‘establish’ David’s kingdom with ‘justice and righteousness’ from ‘this time onward and forevermore’ (v.7).  Here, we come to some of the strongest promises in all of Scripture; “The Zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”   What this means is that the light of ‘justice and righteousness’ which comes through this child, will not be established in any way that had ever been known before, or will ever be known again.   This light will also never fail, like other lights shining through other human kingdoms.   The light of hope in of this child’s rule and in this child’s kingdom is different, because he is a very different kind of child, and a very different kind of king.  

This child is different, not because he actually ‘rules’ in this world, but he is different because he actually has never has yet ruled in this world.   Whatever we can say or don’t say about Christ and his kingdom, or whatever we might say about who really invented Christmas, or who or what Christmas really means,  the ‘light’ in Christ’s ‘kingdom’ is a light that was rejected by the world.  But as John’s gospel says John to our amazement, is that the world that rejects Jesus is unable to extinguish or overcome Christ’s light.  The world can’t overcome the light because, as Jesus himself said, “My kingdom is not of this world”, Jesus said this to Pilate, as Pilate prepared to crucify him. Jesus also said: “You will see me and the kingdom coming in glory…..”  Thus, Jesus light shines into the world, but is not from this world.  Like the sun, it shine and can’t be denied, though we are still free to try to hide from its light.  This light shines on earth but it is a light that remains in the heavens… is still in the future… and is is coming only in God’s way and on God’s time.  The light of God’s kingdom comes near, but still hasn’t fully come as we still are free to refuse its light.   God’s light shines brightly in the world, to reveal how things should be, could be, may be, but it remains beyond this world, so it can’t ever be fully extinguished.

God’s light in Jesus Christ can’t be extinguished because this is a light shining straight  from God’s heart into the human heart to reveal the truth of what it means to live as humans on the earth.  God’s light in Christ is an eternal, spiritual, light shining as a kingdom where God’s comes demanding to rightfully rule on the throne within our hearts.  It is only in here, in human hearts, that the kingdom can be believed and be established, and it is only here, within our hearts, that light will fully shine, as we will allow it to shine.  “This little Light of Mine” is where the Kingdom must begin.   It is God’s light that shines directly into our hearts to become our own light.  This is how this child comes and commands his rule.  The great, mysterious light of Christmas, is that the very ‘Everlasting Father’ and ‘Almighty’ God comes to us, again and again, revealed as the the same, helpless, needy, dependent baby who comes into our family and captures our hearts as the truth who commands his humble, righteous and just rule.  Until this eternal child captures all our hearts, the Christ can’t fully come.   But he can rule in and through and in us. But one day,  our hope is, that when the government of this child has grown and gained full authority in us,  this kingdom will come without end.  He will rule forever, because we allow the light to shine in us, one heart at a time.  The great mystery is that this child continues to be born, his kingdom will continue to come, shining on human hearts, as long as there one willing heart until God comes to finally make take his throne and make his home, eternally, with us.  

This final rule, however, does not merely wait on us, it waits in us.  This is what we see in the conclusion of Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol.’  You remember the moment when Ebenezer Scrooge finally sees the light.  He had been visited by three ghosts of Christmas; Christmas past, present, and Christmas future.   But it’s the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that finally gets to him, or in him.  This Ghost points Scrooge’s to his own darkness, forcing him to face the reality he doesn’t want to face: his coming death and meaningless life.  It is then, as he sees his name on his own tombstone, right in front of him, that he can no longer deny the person he needs to be and the person others need him to be.  Listen again, to how Scrooge responds as he sees, in his dream his own body on his death bed: “Am I that man who lay upon the bed? No, Spirit! Oh no, no! Spirit! Hear me! I am not the man I was. … Why show me this, if I am past all hope? Good Spirit, your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life! I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year…. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.  The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.  Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!’

The rest of the story, you know.   Scrooge saw a light in the darkness, and he turned toward that light.   What about you?   Can you still see His light shining bright, even in the darkness that surrounds us?   Can you sing, with the spiritual, the best Christmas son of all: “I saw the light, I saw the light, no more darkness, no more night.  Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight.  Praise the Lord, I saw the light?”   Can you say with the prophet: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-- on them light has shined?”  Will you allow ‘his authority’ to ‘grow’ and glow through you?  You can; you must!  “For” this “child has been born for us!   He is the one who is forever ‘Christmas’!  Amen.

“R U a World Christian?”

A sermon based upon Acts 15: 6-12

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

1^st Sunday of Advent, Nov 26th, 2017,    (Series:  THE MISSIONARY CHURCH)

The Docu-Movie, “Facing Darkness,” tells how the story of how Samaritan’s Purse confronted the Ebola virus head-on, when two of its own staff, Dr. Kent Brantley and Nurse Nancy Writebol, contracted the disease.   Thanks to the concerted efforts of prayer, governments, and many health experts, they were saved and the Ebola virus was finally contained in Liberia.  What I remember most about the documentary, was one single statement, Dr. Kent Brantley made, after his recovery:  “Faith in God does not make you safe, but it may also put you in danger!”

Today, we want to speak again about God’s call to become a missionary church. When the rightly understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, the saving message of God is not only for ourselves, our family, or our own country, but the Good News of Jesus Christ is a message for the whole world.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…” the gospel says.  “Go and make disciples of all nations…” the Great Commission also says. This gospel is not a message for only a few, but it is a message for all.   So, until a church is also a church concerned for the whole world, it can’t be a true church anywhere in the world.  Isn't this why we teach our children to sing: “He’s got the whole world, in his hands!”   It’s not about us being safe, it’s about all being saved.

GOD MADE A CHOICE… (v.7)

To help us understand how God calls us to be ‘world Christians’, I want to point to one of the most important moments in the early church.  Acts 15 tells us of a meeting of the ‘apostles and elders’ in Jerusalem, concerning ‘the conversion of the Gentiles’ (15:3).  It was a meeting called because some were opposed to their conversion, ‘unless’ those Gentiles were ‘circumcised’ as Moses had commanded.  As the apostles were going forward into the world with the gospel, following what Jesus had commanded, some wanted to stay with only what Moses had commanded. 

It was in the midst of this ‘debate’ that Peter spoke up, saying, that “God made a choice …, that I should be the one whom the Gentiles would hear the message….” (v. 7).  Peter spoke about what God was doing now, not from only what God had done in the past.  Peter’s new experience of God’s love for the whole world was rooted and guided by Scripture, but God’s love was not bound or restrained by Scripture.   There is a difference; a very big difference.  

Everything that God does in the world can be and should be rooted and guided by Scripture, but God is also a living God who is free, active, and responsive to human need.  The true God always has more than a word from the past.  Since God is the truth himself, He can’t be restricted nor restrained, even by his own word in the past.  When Peter says “God made a choice,” he means that God can do anything God wants.  God can even do a ‘new’ thing that has never been revealed or done before, either in Scripture or anywhere.   God can do this, because God is God.   While God doesn’t go against His Word, which is the ‘eternal’ truth found in Scripture, since God himself is the eternal truth, God can bring us new ways with new understandings that bring us new truth beyond the ‘ancient’ truths, so we can still find God’s love revealed to us today.

Before we can become ‘world’ Christians, that is, before we develop a concern for the whole world, we must trust in a God who still makes choices and who is bigger, greater and more than we now think or know.  As one popular writer has put it, before we can serve God, we must be ‘gripped by the greatness of God’.   If God can be contained within your own thoughts, hopes, wishes, understandings, or opinions, then God ceases to be God and he also ceases to be true God who can save you. Only the God who is bigger and greater than the world, can save the world.   So, if you want to be a world Christian, you must first have vision of God who more than you now know.  

It’s is God’s choice to ‘do’ and ‘be’ more, Peter means.   In Acts 10, we read how God came to Peter in a dream, revealing something never revealed before.  God told Peter, who had been commanded by Moses to only eat ‘kosher’ foods, that God now calls ‘all foods clean’.  If Peter had only stuck with Moses, Peter could not have followed the true God, who is on the move.   In a powerful, revealing, and redeeming moment, ‘God made a choice’, a free choice, to go beyond what had been ‘before’.  Now, God was revealing himself, not just in new foods, but also in new people; people whom Peter had never known until he trusted the God was big still big enough to be the God who does something new.

HE TESTIFIED TO THEM… (v. 8)

But of course, the problem most people have with ‘new’ understandings of God is how to know whether or not this ‘new’ vision is true.  Peter said ‘God made a choice’ by choosing him to be a witness to what God is doing, but how does Peter know?   How did Peter know that the voice speaking to him in the middle of the night was really God’s voice, and not mere indigestion?  

For those who believe that God created this world, it may not be a great stretch to understand how God might also ‘love the whole world’, but it can be much harder to put this ‘truth’ of love into practice, especially when we have lived in only one country among only one kind of people.   When I was living in Europe, I used to listen to Armed Forces Radio so that I could get American news.  On one program, I can’t recall exactly what the caller to the news program was talking about, but I do recall what he said.  He stated proudly that there was no greater country in the world than America.  He also said that no country has ever done what America had done.   He also said, in his own words, that America is the only perfect example of what the rest of the world should be, because nobody can do what America does.  As I heard him speaking, while I could appreciate his love and patriotism for his country, I couldn’t agree wholeheartedly.  America is indeed, a good and great country, but America is not perfect and shouldn’t be idolized.   We should be humbled by America’s goodness or greatness, but not falsely prideful.   While Germany, nor Europe, were perfect either, after living in Europe for over 6 years, I could see many ‘good’ things America was indeed missing.   A more sober assessment would have been something like I once heard: “America is great, because America is good; but when America ceases to be good, it will cease to be great.”

I tell this story not to belittle the ‘greatness’ of America, but to remind us that a country, a people, and a religion too, can only be consider ‘great’ as long we measure ourselves by higher standards than ourselves.  Peter tells us that the criterion knowing God’s truth is God’s living presence made known through the Holy Spirit at work in people:   “God….testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us (8).    

I find it quite revealing that the most important message of the book of Acts was not about God, nor about Jesus, but the message of Acts is mostly about the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world.   More than a book about the ‘Acts of the Apostles’, this is a story about the ‘Acts’ of the Holy Spirit.   Jesus himself pointed to the coming of Spirit (John 16:13), telling his disciples to ‘wait’ on the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4) who would enable the church to go, not just to Jerusalem and Judea, but into the whole world with the good news (Acts 2: 4ff).

There, are of course, many angles on what Peter was saying about God ‘giving the Holy Spirit’, but perhaps the most important is that the Spirit is how God continues to work through all kinds of people.  When Jesus said that the Spirit ‘declares things to come’ (Jn. 16:13), this was more about ‘who’ God will continue through, as much as ‘how’. God works through all kinds of people to accomplish his saving purpose in the world.

The common denominator is not, ‘who’, but ‘how’.  The Spirit is God works through people who live, act, and love like Jesus.   This God who came to give his Spirit to us,  also came to give His Spirit to ‘them’.  Until we can also see God at work in them, we will never know the fullness of God’s in us.  There is no ‘singular’ truth of God, because God is at work in us all, when we live and love like Jesus. 

HE MADE NO DISTINCTION (v. 9)

Is your God big enough to love the whole world?   Is your God the God who can reveal himself to anyone through the Holy Spirit?  This is the kind of God that Peter is reporting to be at work in the world---a God who moves beyond Jews, beyond Jerusalem, beyond laws, and is a God already at work in the world beyond us all, keep revealing to all, how the Spirit of Jesus can still save the world.

Peter is especially reporting to those ‘stuck’ in their own religious politics, to inform them, and us, that God moves on to others, whether we want to recognize it or not.  God does not stay in one place, because love does not hold anything back.  Truth will not be squelched, but will be revealed.   And the greatest truth God has ever revealed is this: ‘by faith [God} has made no distinction between them and us’ (v9).  

We probably already know the song: ‘Red, yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves the people of the world?’  But do we really know why we sing, teach, and need to continue to understand this?   It is not just so that we can teach our children that God loves everybody.   No, if we forgot how much God loves them, we will also forget how much God loves us.  For the God who is truly God, and is only God, is the God who ‘so loved the world’ just as much as he loved Israel, just as much as he loved his Son Jesus, as much as he loved the disciples, loved the Church or loves Christians.  ‘Red, yellow, black or white’, means God loves us all, but if we cease to understand that God ‘makes no distinction’ and we dividing the world into ‘us’ against ‘them’ or ‘them’ against ‘us’, then we cease to know the true God.  When we cease to know this God, it’s not long until we cease to know God’s love of us too.  

Peter has learned more about God’s great love in Jesus by seeing God’s love at work in others beyond himself.   He has learned more than how God does not play favorites, or that God doesn’t prefer one person or people over another.  What Peter is seeing, is how God is already working in the hearts of other people who are not exactly like him.   Peter sees this, not by looking at human nature, not by looking at race, color, or by looking into a specific culture or creed, but only by looking at the ‘cleansing of their hearts by faith,’ which sees by their faith in Jesus, proven by the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, does people learn, not just how God loves the world, but he also learns ‘who’ God loves, which is far greater.

This love of God for the whole world has no condition;  none whatsoever.  It has no condition because God loves sinners, just as much as God loves us, or anyone else.    When Peter says that God ‘cleansed’ or ‘purified’ their ‘hearts by faith’ (15:9) he is not making a specific condition for God’s salvation, but he is referring to the ‘condition’ of salvation itself.   It is only through ‘faith’ that God’s salvation could ever come to a dying, struggling, sinful or selfish human beings.  Faith is necessary for salvation, because faith is only way our ‘cleansing  of...hearts‘can come.   Our hearts are cleansed by faith because of what God’s love has made possible, through Jesus Christ.

THROUGH…GRACE…WE ARE SAVED (v. 11)

This is where Peter comes to his final point: ‘We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (11).   Did you catch that Peter does not say we ‘are already saved’ but that ‘we will be saved’ through ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus’, just like they will?   Peter is not trying to limit God’s salvation, but he is trying to broaden our understanding.  We need to be humbled, not proud about what God is doing, not just what God has done.   We need to be forward thinking, not backward thinking.   We need to look to what God will do in the world, not just what God has done in the world.   By expressing salvation with a ‘future tense,’ Peter is reminding us,  that God’s ‘salvation’ is not something already fully consummated.   Our salvation is never something we possess only for ourselves or by ourselves, but God’s salvation is something God is still doing through all who believe in the ‘grace of the Lord Jesus.’    If we ever limit God’s salvation only ourselves--only to this church, our denomination, our country, our culture, or even this world, we will also find ourselves limiting what wants to do with us, in us, and in our world

We should never limit God’s salvation, because God’s salvation is freely given to everyone who believes in ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus.’   Did you catch this?  God’s doesn’t just save us by grace, but God saves everyone who ‘believes in the grace of our Lord Jesus.’   Now, of course, we might possibly think of some ways God would limit his salvation; like saying that salvation only comes to those who believe in Jesus.   This kind of statement is certainly in the Bible, because there is no greater love, just like there is no other name, that has been revealed to us than this: “…God so loved, that he gave his only Son.’    Yes, as a Christian, I may still need to clarify that Jesus is the one who is ‘faithful and true’ in revealing God’s love, but I still don’t have to put down other people or other faiths, especially if they are loving like Jesus loved.  Didn’t Jesus himself say to his disciples: ‘Leave them alone, because those who are not against me are with me.’  Even when I need to say why I trust in Jesus and why other do too,  I can still love those whom God loves, like Jesus would do.   

But there is finally, something else here too.  When I start to focus on God’s love, on Jesus who died, on what faith means, or when I focus on who God gives His grace too, my whole focus changes, just like it did for Peter.   With Peter, I stop trying to ‘play God’ by deciding who is ‘in’ or who is ‘out’ and I start trying to love like God loves and to care like God cares.  This is the direction the Holy Spirit is going, as He reveals the Father’s love through Jesus Christ.   

This is also the direction we must go, if we want to become world Christians.  When we realize that God makes ‘no distinction’ in loving people, we too will become more and more amazed at how much bigger God is, than we ever imagined.    We will also see that God’s love becomes ever clearer, because we have come to understand how God loves them, just as much as God loves us.   Only this God, who has enough love to go around to everyone, is big enough to be the true God of anyone.   That is why Peter, me, and you too, should be ‘world’ Christians.   Amen.

“A God-Driven Life”

A sermon based upon  Philippians 1: 21; 3: 4-15

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Christ the King Sunday, Nov 26th,    (Series:  THE MISSIONARY CHURCH)

Last week, I spoke about what it means to be a ‘missional church’.  I shared how the early church was not just a church supporting missions but it was the kind of culture that made the church a ‘mission outpost’ for the world.  

Today I want to get personal.   While many churches teach about missions, support missionaries, or have members who have gone on mission trips, we really don’t understand what the word ‘mission’ means until we hear God asking us personally, like he did Isaiah: “Whom shall I send, or Who will go for us?   We don’t really have a clue what being Missional means, until in some intimate way we can sense the spirit of Jesus saying to us, as he did to his disciples: “As the Father sent me, so send I you!”  When these kinds of words stir and penetrate our hearts, then we are moving toward a life of purpose and mission, which could be called ‘a God-driven life’.

Several years ago now, Pastor Rick Warren wrote a book that sold over 30 million copies.  That is almost unheard of for a Christian book.   The subject for Pastor Warren’s book was “The Purpose Driven Life.” He said that everyone is driven by something.   We may be driven by responsibility, guilt, anger, fear, materialism, need for approval, or even just plain ole ‘survival’.   Since we are all some kind of ‘driven’ people, every one of us swimming against the currents of life and death, we need to have some kind of defining purpose for our lives.   Only when we discover God’s purpose, Warren suggested, can we say we are living lives full of meaning and great purpose.

Many people could say they have found a ‘purpose’ in their lives, without ever reading Rick Warren’s book or even without ever going on a mission trip, or even being Christian.   Some even think it possible to find your own life’s purpose, without even ever actually thinking about it? 

Perhaps you can find a purpose for your life all alone, but I don’t think you can have any lasting, ultimate, or meaningful hope in the purposes you find for your life, until you also reflect upon some of the things the apostle Paul is thinking about in our text today.   While he was in prison, awaiting trial in Rome, Paul had a lot of time to think about his own life.  And no words better words express the ‘mission statement’ of Paul’s life these words from Philippians, which read: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (1:21).”  

Did you catch the last part of Paul’s strange idea: ‘to die is gain’?   How could someone find meaning or purpose in sacrificing or giving up their own life, rather than having life just for or about themselves?   Doesn’t this go against most everything we think about, when we think about having joy, meaning, or purpose for our lives?   What Paul says is contrary to what most of us assume.  He says that whether he lives or dies, God’s purpose remains active in him. ahead of him, and alive in him, because it goes beyond him and bigger than him.   By tapping into God’s purposes, Paul has found life’s greatest purpose.  It is the purpose which remains true for him,  whether his life is full or empty, rich or poor, great or small, long or short.  Since Paul has aligned his own life with the purposes of God, even his own ‘sufferings’, which are now ‘in Christ’,  have purpose and hope because they are full of the power of ‘Christ’s resurrection’.   It is “In Christ’ living or dying, bound or free, that Paul has discovered life’s greatest ‘joy’ (Phil 2:17). 

What might it mean for us to have a life driven by God; driven by God’s purposes, not only our own?  Paul continues to elaborates on what it means from him to both live and die in Christ.   Maybe his own understanding of God’s purpose for him can enlighten in finding a joy that can transcend life itself.

WHATEVER GAINS I HAD… (7)

In Philippians 3:7, Paul speaks about what he used to put in the ‘plus’ column of his life.  He has gone through the things he’s done, the things he thought were of great value. He adds it all up to figure and count what matters most. 

To consider such a ‘spiritual’ exercise, wouldn’t be a bad idea for us too.   Think about what you might put in the ‘plus’ column of your life.   What has made, or still makes your life worth living?  What is it that brings true value, meaning, the deepest joy?  A lot of people pursue happiness, but later they come to find how difficult happiness is to ‘catch’ even when you diligently pursue it.  Happiness proves to more to be a byproduct of living your life for good, right, and lofty reasons, and isn’t s a commodity one finds, achieves, or creates.    

Still, we all have our own lists of what we think gives us purpose and bring us happiness, don’t we?  Money?  Family?  Friends?  Education?  Status?  All these things, in their own way, or in the right way, can be good things and can attribute to much comfort and joy.  There is nothing wrong with having enough money, having a good family, having friends, having a good education, or being born in a good place or at good time.  Paul would not make light of any of these things.   They can all give you advantages, and bring possibilities that may result in joy and purpose. 

Paul’s own ‘fleshly’ advantages brought him meaning and joy too.  Paul said he had many reasons to have ‘confidence in the flesh’.   He was a Jew.  He was from good stock.  He was a well-trained.  He was a religious leader.  He was righteous.   People respected him.  There was nothing wrong with how he lived or what he did. 

Even when Paul was a ‘persecutor of the church’, he was doing something he then perceived it to be ‘right’.  Just like everything else Paul was doing with his life, Paul thought it was the best he could do, was all good, and all right, because he was doing what he believed he should have been doing with his life.   What more would you want out of your life than doing what you believe is good and right?  Wouldn’t this bring you joy and fulfillment too?  What could ever be wrong with doing what is right?

Isn’t this how all good, respectable and responsible people live their lives?  What else could you ever want from your life than measuring up to your own best opinion of yourself?

But as Paul counts his own gains and losses in life, Paul’s view of everything has been challenged.  His way of valuing what is good and right has been changed by his encounter with the resurrected Christ.  There are no other words to explain the radical change in Paul’s life than revolutionary and remarkable.  He even had to change his name from Saul to Paul.  Meeting Jesus, while on the Damascus Road going to kill more Christians, had literally opened his eyes to a whole new understanding of what was right, good, and important.

You, nor I should ever expect to have a conversion experience like the apostle Paul.   The radical type of transformation that happened to Paul is seldom and unique.  But when we follow Jesus, we should know what is like to have our values, beliefs, and perceptions challenged and changed on some level.  During the recent Ken Burns Documentary on The Vietnam War, a solider told how he had one view of war going into his deployment, but gaining a whole different way of seeing things once on the battlefield in actual combat.   That lieutenant, I think he was, told how he and his regiment were ambushed.  His men were dropping like flies.  Then there was in that moment a strange stillness.  He started praying: “God, please take me. Don’t let another of my men die.”  Then, suddenly the gun fire started up again.  He quickly changed his prayer: “God, I take my prayer back!  I don’t want to die!”   After that honest prayer, he said not one more of his men went down.  You could tell by the seriousness of his voice, his life was never the same after that.

This is not unlike the life changing event Paul experienced that changed his way of valuing everything.  In the Vietnam Documentary, solider after solider told of how their view of war, the world, and even the American government changed forever from the things they experienced in Vietnam.  “It was the first time I killed a man.”    I never killed anyone else. I will never get over what happened.   War makes you see everything differently.

There are events in our lives that can challenge and change even our best, most honest and cherished, even most sacred ideas of what is right and what is wrong.  Serving in Vietnam did that to people.  War still does that to people.  Paul said that even as a zealous, righteous ‘Pharisee of the Pharisees’ and ‘Hebrew of the Hebrews’, his own life, and his own views of what was right, were completely and totally changed when he encountered the ‘surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus’ his lord.    For Him, that is for Christ, he ‘suffered the loss of all things’, and now he counts all those things that used to be in the ‘plus’ column of his life, now he counts them as dung, rubbish, and trash, placing all those things he once valued in the minus column.  No longer does he go after his own view of what is ‘righteous’, but he has found the ‘righteousness which is of God by faith….” (9).

The other day I visited one of my former deacons in Shelby, North Carolina.  Last year, at 60 years of age, he answered the call to go into the Gospel Ministry.   He told me that when I was his pastor 20 some odd years ago, he knew he was supposed to do this, but now he finally has surrendered to answer God’s call and purpose for his life.   He has acreage, a farm, 6 chicken houses, his children are all grown.   He has a wonderful wife, and a comfortable life.   But, he said, this comfort is no longer what he wants.  I’m ready to get someone else to look after these chickens for me, for now, my joy is in the Lord.   I can only find my joy in serving the Lord all the time.

My friend is currently serving as pastor of a small congregation.  He is attending Bible School at Fruitland.   But the most important thing happening in his life right now is what he feels within his heart.   He has lost all his joy for everything he once did.  All those things he thought were gains to him, are now put in the loss column of his life.  He counts ‘all things but loss for the surpassing knowledge of serving Jesus Christ. ‘ For my friend, like Paul, all the values of his life have been turned upside down.

I WANT TO KNOW CHRIST (10)

What caused all of Paul’s values to change?  Paul tells us in verse 10, that his values have all changed because his desires have changed.  Paul wants to ‘win’ and ‘know’ Christ.  ‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings, by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection of the dead (10-11).  Knowing Christ and the ‘power of his resurrection’ goes in two different directions.     It not only means knowing that he has hope of life after death, but it means that Paul has the power and purpose to live in Christ now, even by ‘sharing’ his his sufferings or ‘being like him in his death’ (10).  

How can understand what Paul is talking about when most of our lives are spent going after what we want?  Who in the world has any kind of ‘desire’ or ‘determination’ to suffer for what is right, let alone focus on hope for a world beyond this one?  Isn’t this why most people don’t want to know much about “Christ” is our day, except to celebrate what they have, go after what they want, or keep what they have?  Isn’t this text just too ‘otherworldly’ to be heard, appreciated or appropriated?   Who wants to suffer for anything?  Who wants to ‘be like him in his death’?   Who wants to find this kind of Christ, or this kind of purpose of life, which can only be known in pain, suffering, or giving up what you want?  Is it any wonder that biblical Christianity is doomed in a world like ours, filled, even with Christians who want only what they want?  How could anyone, in their right mind, desire to be arrested, imprisoned, alone, even facing his own execution and death?  Is Paul out of his mind?  Has he lost it?  What kind of ‘righteousness from God’ is this, to want to become like (Jesus) in his death?

Again, I want to repeat, we don’t have to have a conversion experience as dramatic as Paul’s to follow Christ.   Surely, all the deaths of those he murdered must have been on his mind as he thought about his own approaching execution.  Perhaps Paul still had the dying of face of Stephen in his mind, whose stoning he had ordered.   Perhaps he was ready to reconcile his past with his ‘desire’ to die with Christ.  Who knows?   Perhaps Paul is like that lieutenant in Vietnam, ready to give up his own life. 

What I want you to know, is that we don‘t have to be like Paul in his intensity of his desire, but we do need to be like Paul in the sincerity of his heart’s desire.   Paul’s values, and now all his desires are to ‘know Christ,’ ‘to be found in him,’ and to know this ‘righteousness from God’ which will gives him no only the ‘power’ to live fully now, but that also gives him the hope of attaining Christ’s resurrection in the life to come.   What is important for us to grasp, is Paul’s desire to ‘know Christ’.   Whether he lives, or he dies, his desire to know Christ, to share in Christ, and even to suffer with Christ, gives Paul the ‘power’ and purpose, not just to live now, but gives him hope that what he does and what he desires, and even what he wants, will outlive his own life.  

Bruce Wilkinson once told of the late Howard Hughes.  If there was one word that would describe Hughes’ ambition, Wilkinson said, it was the word ‘more’. “He wanted more money, so he invested his enormous inheritance and increased it in just a few years to a billion dollars.  He wanted more fame, so he went to Hollywood and became a filmmaker and a star. He wanted more sensual pleasure, so he used his fabulous wealth to buy women and any form of sensual pleasure he desired. He wanted to experience more excitement, so he designed, built, and piloted the fastest aircraft of his time.

“Hughes could dream of anything money could buy and get it. He firmly believed that more would make him happy.” But, of course, it did not.  In Wilkinson’s words, Hughes confused the pleasure of having more for oneself for the greater joy of giving oneself to something bigger than oneself. “His Dream,” says Bruce Wilkinson, “was not significant enough to bring meaning to his life.”

And so, in his old age, Hughes became withdrawn. News reports portray him at the end of his life as drug addicted, emaciated and unkempt with decaying teeth and long, twisted fingernails. “But until his death he held onto his destructive dream that more possessions would bring more fulfillment.” His misguided quest for more made him one of the most pitiable men on earth. (From Bruce and Darlene Marie Wilkinson, The Dream Giver For Parents (Sisters, OR: Multonomah, 2004), pp. 45-46, as quoted by King Duncan).

THIS ONE THING I DO…. (13)

The apostle Paul wanted more too.   But it is one thing to want ‘more’ the things that pass away.  It is quite another to go after the ‘one thing’ everyone should value and desire.   Paul says, toward the end of this great text: “This one thing I do, is to forget what lies behind, and to strain forward to what lies ahead…(to) press toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus… (14).  

The image Paul uses is right out of the ancient Olympics.   Paul finally imagines his life, as a runner approaching the finishing line, pushing his body forward to leap beyond everyone else and win the prize.  Paul is not saying that he alone will win the prize, but he means that anyone, like him, who runs the race of life with Jesus, will win the prize of finding the kind of lasting, fulfilling, and meaningful purpose we all need in our lives.   But we can’t find this kind of ‘purpose’ or ‘meaning’ until we have a change of perspective, a change of desire and a new focus of determination. 

Like Paul, if we want to find our focus, as a church, or as a Christian, we too must determine to focus upon ‘this one thing’ which is our ‘heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus.’   But staying focused is not easy in a distracting world like ours.    Comedian Jay Leno went into a McDonald's one day and said, "I'd like some fries." He declares that the girl at the counter asked, "Would you like some fries with that?"  Audiologist David Levy recalls a frantic client who lost her hearing aid.  She had been eating a bowl of cashews while talking on the phone.  Her tiny hearing aid was sitting on the table next to her. Yes, in the midst of her conversation, she mistook the hearing aid for a cashew and ate it.

Actor James Cagney, who acted in movies of the early 20th century, remembered that in his day, acting was not as a glamorous a profession as it is now.  Actors then were paid only slightly more than the average American.  There were no labor laws to protect actors from long hours or hazardous working conditions. Cagney remembers that in one of his early movies, The Public Enemy, his character had to run away from an enemy who was shooting at him with a machine gun. There were few special effects back then, so the actor used a real machine gun with real bullets. Because Cagney often played characters that were on the wrong side of the law, he was often in movies where he was shot at with real guns and real bullets. One wrong move and he would have been dead. I doubt that Cagney had much difficulty staying focused when he did these scenes.  He knew that each moment was a matter of life and death?

Do you realize that this life is the only life you will ever get to live in this world?  Do you know how to make it count?  Do you know what counts, what to value, what are the best desires, and what kind of focus and determination you should have?  Do you know what is the ‘call of God in Christ Jesus’ for your life?  

While it can be about many things, it still must always come back to focus on ‘one thing’.   Our focus as a Christian, and as a Church, is to go after the ‘prize’ of what it means to ‘know Christ’ and ‘share’ in God’s purposes which have been fully revealed in the suffering, crucified, saving Christ.   Can you and I still see the ‘surpassing knowledge of Christ’ as the ‘one thing’ we need?   Can we see what Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian novelist, saw, as he lay on a bed of straw in a prison camp in Siberia?   While contemplating all that he had seen in the prison camp, he finally came to see that "the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart."  

Only when Solzhenitsyn saw that evil was not just a communist problem or capitalist problem but that evil was also his problem—the problem of in every human heart, it was only then that he realized his need of a Savior.   Only then, after he understood what the real problem was, could he now discover what right purpose should be.  Until you come to know you need Christ, more than anything else, will you find the only purpose of living and dying, that ever makes sense; to know Christ.   Only when you know him, will you discover the value, desire, and determination of living a ‘God-driven’ life.  Amen.   

“A MISSIONAL CHURCH?”

A sermon based upon Acts 2: 42-48.

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday After Pentecost, November 19th    (Series:  THE MISSIONARY CHURCH)

Last week, we learned that a church on mission has only one message: Jesus is “the way, truth and life, no one comes to the Father except through him.”    Until we get clear on this very narrow message, we don’t know what our mission is.   We would be like the business that went out of business and put a sign on the door: “We went out of business, because we didn’t know what our business was.” Without being clear about Jesus, and doing church like he is the only true way, we are ‘out of business because we didn’t know what our business is’. 

Today we want to think about, in more detail, what does a church on mission look like?   I also want to ‘teach’ you a new word: Missional.   Because the world around us has become ‘our mission field’, we must learn to be ‘mission-minded’ in a whole new way.   Instead of sending missionaries, we are the missionaries:  ‘Every Baptist is a missionary’ a European Baptist used to say.   To exist in a culture like ours, we must think less about maintaining our church, and we must become ‘missional’ in our own neighborhood.

So, what should a missional church look like?   In Acts 2: 42-48 we see the kind of church culture that was a thriving, spiritual community which quickly grew from 120 to 3,000 members.  It was precisely this kind of ‘missional’ community and culture that challenged the religious status quo of that day with the saving and healing power of Jesus Christ.

HAD ALL THINGS COMMON (a church that cares, v. 44)

Let’s start with the line in verse 44 which tells us how they ‘had all things in common’.   We read how they ‘sold their possessions and goods’ to give to those in need. 

Perhaps the first thing we need to get out of the way is that this is community, not ‘communism’.   Under communism people did not ‘sell their possessions and goods’, but their property it was forcibly seized.   Under communism there the attempt to equally distribute goods, always meant the ‘leaders’ got more.   And finally, under communism, people were more in need than ever before.   No, this text is not teaching communism, but it is teaching community.

When we arrived in eastern Germany, the former GDR, right after communism fell apart, we learned why.   Communism was not true Socialism.  People did not get enough food.  People did not have any money or property.  Buildings were crumbling.  The government was corrupted.  People lived in fear.  The infrastructure of was falling apart.  Communism could not be sustained.  It was a failure not only because it was ‘forced’, but because it failed to do justice and it failed to worship God.   Communism will not work, but community can.

What is happening here is true ‘community’.   Everything that is happening is spirit led and freely given.   A true human ‘community’---is a community of the Spirit that is centered on faith in God, and focused on giving themselves to others because of a shared purpose---to the be body of Jesus Christ in the world.   Don’t make this text any more complicated.  Here, the Spirit of Jesus has taken hold of human hearts. Here, people give themselves to God and neighbor, so that community happens. 

What does this mean for us today?   It reminds us that being a church on mission means that we are people, coming together to create community around a common, shared purpose to love as Jesus loves us.   We don’t just teach or talk about being a ‘community’, but we are doing it, and literally ‘banking’ on it.    We give ourselves to God’s saving purpose that is bigger than ourselves so we can also be saved from ourselves.    A community in Christ organizes itself, not around my family, your family, our around traditions of the past, but a church that is missional, longs to create God’s family now, by sharing our lives with each other.     

DEVOTED TO APOSTLE’S TEACHING (a church that learns, v. 42)

It is also important to understand that the ‘purpose’ of God’s community, is not to meet physical needs alone, but it is to participate in what God wants to do in our lives right now.  

This brings us to the second necessary trait of a ‘missional church’.   Here it is named as ‘being devoted to the apostle’s teaching’.   

There are many types of communities, clubs, political and group associations in our world.   Many of these are worthy, good causes and Christians can and should participate in many of them.   But the church of Jesus Christ, is a community with a purpose no other community has been given.   We have been ‘commissioned’ by Christ to ‘go into the world’ and to ‘make disciples’ an d ‘teach’ all nations, what Jesus taught us.    This is what the ‘apostle’s teachings’ were and still are.   Before the church was called church, is was called ‘people of the way’.   This way of Jesus Christ is the way of love which starts with the way of ‘fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers.’   This is where it starts, but not where it ends. 

There is no being a Christian, without learning what it means to love, trust, obey to keep learning what it means to follow Jesus.   That we should follow Jesus never changes, but how we are to follow Jesus is something constantly changes.   It changes not because the God’s love changes, but it changes because the needs of the world changes.   Being ‘devoted’ to the ‘apostle’s teaching’, means that we are constantly and consistently ‘going deeper’ into what it means to be faithful to Jesus in our own time and place.   Only a church that is never satisfied with what it knows and does, can be ‘satisfied with’ and satisfy Jesus, as the song says.  

In year’s past, Baptist churches ‘made disciples’ through programs like Baptist Training Union, and through Sunday School classes.  In our society these forms of discipleship are disappearing.   I have a friend of mine, whom you know, who is pastor of a much larger church than ours.  He said:  “When we lost Training Union in our Churches, we lost our Church Leaders.  Now, that we are losing our Sunday School, we are losing the knowledge of the Bible and the knowledge of what it means to be Christian.”   He might be right.  But I’m still hopeful, that we we can find ways not to lose our ‘discipleship’, that is, our ‘devotion to the Apostle’s teaching’.    What might that look like?

When Teresa and I began to work in Germany, we were guests of one of the largest Baptist churches in all of Germany; the Hope Church, located in one of the most populated areas of all of Europe.   This was a ‘working class’ church, and it was a church on mission.  It was the first time I had ever been a part of a church that did not the kind of Sunday School, I knew.  For you see, Sunday School was a British and American invention.  It wasn’t something that had ever existed on continental Europe.  They still did have discipleship, and they type of discipleship and devotion they used,  fit an ‘unchurched’ fit their ‘unchurched’ world even better.  

Each week, or at least twice a month, a ‘teacher’ who was often a ‘deacon’, would lead a House Group in his home.   They would use a type of ‘lesson’ just like our Sunday School, except there was a very personal, informal, relaxed, relational, atmosphere.   It was much more than teaching, it was teaching and then sharing the journey of life and faith together.   People who had never been to church before, were invited become part of these ‘small groups’ which were intentionally fitted to introduce people to the truths of Scripture, and most important the truth about Jesus.   Sunday morning primarily for Worship by Christians.  How can you know how to worship, unless you know ‘who’ or ‘why’ you are worshipping?  

This is how a culture that had lost its knowledge of God, introduced people to faith.    The small group, where people came to know and care for each other, as they learned together, was how people learned to relate to God and to each other.  There are many other things I could tell you that might work, but perhaps the most important point is that the church on mission must share and care together, even before it can rightly teach the way of Jesus.  Christians must show how they are devoted to Christ’s way, before others can know that ‘the way’ is right.  

DISTRIBUTED TO ALL, AS ANY HAD NEED (a church that shares, v.45).

The early church was a community that proved its devotion to Jesus, not only with words, but also with deeds.    I find it unremarkable that the early church was a community poised to meet the physical needs of the people in its own community.    Isn’t this what we remember most about Jesus, when we think of him as someone who ‘went about doing good’?   The ‘good’ that Jesus did, was not only to die for us, but it was also to live and show us how to live with each other, and especially how to reach out ‘to the least of these’---those who still find themselves on the margins of life; the sick, hungry, lonely, or those in special need of love.   

Remember how Jesus began his ministry, quoting Isaiah, saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me….”    Jesus went on to tell how he was called to ‘bring good news’, but this ‘good news’ was never only words, but God’s love was a verb.   A community in Christ must still be a community that is a verb of caring, learning, and sharing love with each other, and showing love to others in our community.  The word ‘distribute’ is simply ‘to share’ (NAS), which is ‘to share equally and fairly’ with those around us who are in need of hope and help.

In the world of the early church, there were no social programs, no insurance, nor service ministries, so the church felt inspired to ‘meet’ the needs around them.  While we have many more social and service structures in our world today, the church, if it is going to prove God’s love, must find new ways to show and share Christ’s love.   And the greatest needs are always more than physical; they are also relational, social, moral, and spiritual.   Only the church is given the ‘keys to God’s Kingdom’ which means Christ has empowered the Church to put its finger on the moral, relational and spiritual ‘pulse’ of the community to ask questions, no one else is asking, and to see needs, that no one else might see.   The less people are a part of God’s saving community today, the more these relational, emotional, relational and spiritual needs will show themselves.  But are we ready to see and respond?      

WITH GLAD AND GENEROUS HEARTS (a church that is joyful and generous. v. 46)

Next, we need to see that this community that was led by the Spirit, came to care, learn, and share with each other so that they became a community full of gladness and generosity. 

Reflecting on what this means for us, I sometimes wonder ‘who’ would miss this church community, if it were gone or died?   The ‘gladness’ and ‘generosity’ known in the ‘worship’ of the early Christian community found the ‘goodwill of all the people’.   It was known by all around it! 

 Are we ‘glad when they said to us, let us go into the house of the Lord’?   What brings us the kind of ‘gladness’ that makes us happy to be a community in Christ and others know us as a ‘glad’ people?  What we also see here, is that the early church was so contagious that people could not stand to be away.  They couldn’t wait for the next Sunday, the next fellowship, and the next Bible study.  The text says, that they ‘spent much time together…. They broke bread at home… they ate their food with glad and generous hearts.   Could it be that the church was glad because it was also ‘a generous’ church?   When life is about giving what you have to give, rather than holding only to get more, people will see in us something they don’t have.

AWE CAME UPON EVERYONE (a church of wonder & witness, v. 43)

Finally, the early church was full of ‘awe’ and amazement.   Now, we might at first understand that these ‘apostles’ were doing ‘wonders’ or ‘miracles’, which we can’t do.   But notice, it does not say they were doing ‘miracles’, but these are ‘signs and wonders’ which might include ‘miracles’, but points to much more.   Signs are ‘signposts’ which point to Jesus.  Wonders are simply the things that make us wonder because of Jesus showing up in someone’s life.  The wonders the church did then, are really no different than the wonders the church can still do now.   These are the things that we can do because of Jesus, which wouldn’t happen in our community with a people who are following Jesus.  Can we still imagine doing things we normally wouldn’t do, but will try because of Jesus?

When I was a pastor in Lenoir, we had a special ‘home’ located nearby which was established for recovering ‘Alcoholics’.   That ‘home’ had a much better success rate of helping, because it was a ‘home’ which included teaching men to put their faith in Jesus.   When some of them came to our church to share with us, they shared reasons for their recovery?  They needed and found Jesus.  Yes.  They learned to study the Bible. Yes.  They gave themselves to stricter discipline. Yes.   All these were true, but the most important ‘sign and wonder’ that always came through was the influence one special person, either the director, or a special partner, or sponsor, who was coming along side of them, to show them the way.   The key to the ‘miracle’ took on ‘flesh and blood’, became a friendship of someone who cared enough to  take time for them, and to be with them when they were in need.

Do you know how the greatest ‘sign and wonder’ of the early church was expressed:  “Silver and Gold have I none, but what I have I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ…..”   Even when the apostles had nothing else, they always gave themselves.   The ‘wonder’ of the early church was exactly these people who came together ‘with all things in common’,  to ‘devote themselves to learning, and to ‘prayer’ and to care and share, so that they ‘they had the goodwill of all the people’.   This is why the church grew so rapidly.   It had a culture the world didn’t have.  And even when the miracles became less, the ‘signs and wonders’ became more and more the people who cared and loved.  “People to People” as the song says, is always the greatest miracle in life.

   You too are a ‘sign’ and ‘a wonder’ when you live in a the kind of community that points people to Jesus, by being Jesus in the world and to each other.   This is always the kind of church culture that becomes missional.  When we have one purpose; to care, share, and show Christ’s love, we become the body of Christ, that is indispensable; like no ’body’ else in the world.   Amen.