Wright is Wrong, But Not for the Reasons You Think

This is written for Temple City Life's June issue. We'll see if it get approved!

Uncommon Sense June 2008

Jeremiah Wright is Wrong (But Not for the Reasons You Think)

The ancient prophet Jeremiah warned Israel that God was not pleased and that destruction was coming on the nation. In recent days, another Jeremiah has gained national notoriety and has damaged the campaign of a major presidential candidate.

I have no interest in rehashing the political fallout of Rev. Wright’s comments; it’s been done, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to address anyway. What I want to examine is this latter-day Jeremiah’s theology. And my conclusion is this: he’s wrong, but not for the reasons you think.

You may think he’s wrong for the harsh things he’s said about America (no need to reprint his most famous comment here). Prophets do say some harsh things. You may think he’d wrong for the conspiracy theories he’s spun (think of his AIDS-as-government-experiment comments). Well, some conspiracies may be true (though I surely don’t think this one is). You may think he’s wrong to praise Hamas or Farrakhan to Khadafy (and I’d agree with you). But I don’t think that’s the heart of the wrong.

No, I can forgive Wright for these things. What makes Wright wrong is his theology—his liberation theology.

It’s not unfair to call liberation theology (LT) an attempt to combine Marxism and Christianity. I’m uniquely equipped to speak to this matter. Before getting two degrees in ministry, I received two degrees in political science. I really do know Marxism quite well, and I know how it’s worked its way in theology via liberation theology. Liberation theology began among certain Catholic theologians in Latin America. They sought a way of “doing theology” that would account for the plight of the dispossessed and also pointed a way forward out of the extreme poverty and inequality of the region.

LT soon spread to certain Protestant theologians and began to morph into regional versions and racial versions. So you’ll find the concepts taken up by some theologians in Europe and Africa and to a lesser extent in North America and Asia. And you’ll find distinctive group-identity versions of LT such as gay LT or feminist LT or (as in Rev. Wright’s case) Africentic LT.
LT claims that it’s just doing what Judaism and Christianity has always done: decry inequity, declare God’s favor to the poor and to champion the cry for freedom. The Exodus becomes the dominate model for understanding God’s dealings: He delivers the oppressed, He judges the Pharaohs of the world and He grants a new freedom to the redeemed.

LT has the same problem that Marxism in general has: in narrows life to economics. Marx believed that his system (which he called “scientific socialism”) explained everything about life, from religion to family to marriage to culture to you name it. For Marx, everything is economic. And in LT, theology collapses into and is absorbed by economics.

In my mind, the great unmasking of LT occurred when one nation fully embraced it: Nicaragua under the Sandinistas (1979-1990). Many of the leaders of the Sandinista government were deeply sympathetic to or actively involved in LT. They proved just as vicious and oppressive as the government they overthrew. In the laboratory of real life, LT failed.

Real life rarely deters academics or off-kilter theologians. Wright is a product of a variant of LT that also embraces anti-historical ideas that make ancient Jews Africans and Jesus a black man. Wright follows the LT line in theology, economics and politics. His conclusions flow from his flawed theological premises.

I find his theology deeply disturbing for two reasons: the attempt to weld the faith of Jesus with the crackpot theories of Marx is abhorrent and very damaging to essence of the Christian faith. Second, I find his racial perspective on the Biblical inconsistent with what we know about the world of the Bible. For the record: Jesus was a swarthy Middle Eastern Jew. I find any theology that has to turn Jesus into something He wasn’t historically to be something which undermines the historical nature of the Christian faith. Frankly, this is just as disturbing as some Aryan Nation attempt to turn Jesus into a blond, blue-eyed (non-Jewish!) white guy.

So I say again: Rev. Wright is in the wrong. But maybe not for the reasons you think.

MAKING DISCIPLES OF JESUS—FROM ALL NATIONS

This is the last installment on, "The Seven Basic Commands of Jesus."

Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 4:12; 1 Corinthians 9:19-23
Original date: March 9, 2008

I’ll never forget, as a brand new pastor the first time our little church in Western Pennsylvania had a “real live missionary” coming. I was a big missions booster in seminary and had been mentored by a great missionary and had seriously looked into going as a missionary, but God’s direction was pretty clear: stay and pastor and get people excited about missions.

So, when we had a chance for a “real live missionary” I called up every household in the church to tell them the week before he came. I was excited and I thought they’d be excited as well. And most of the families I talked to were pleasant enough and thanked me—and yes, some really were excited.

But there was this one lady. When I called her she said, “Oh pastor, I think we have enough problems in America that we shouldn’t be sending missionaries to other countries.” I couldn’t believe my ears. How could anyone hang around the message of the Bible and never get the local and global call to make disciples?

The reality is that many American Christians are right where she was. As we wrap up this series on The Seven Basic Commands of Jesus, I want to address again the worldwide dimension of the command of Jesus to make disciples.

As I said last week, for over 2,000 years, the church has existed for one prime purpose: to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Churches don’t have to strive to find God’s purpose for their church. There’s a reason we refer to Matthew 28:18-20 as the Great Commission: it defines what we’re supposed to be about as a church:

18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Remember again, Jesus didn’t tell us to make converts or church members. He wants to go and make disciples—from all nations. That means crossing any barrier or geography or cultural barrier to get the job done.

There are three things we have to understand about what He means by “make disciples.”

First, what is a disciple? That’s what we looked at two weeks ago, and we found that a disciple is someone who is learning to live, love and serve like Jesus Himself. A disciple is a person who is like Jesus.

Second, how do you make a disciple? We looked at that last week, and we saw the oikos principle—that God has placed people around us in our network of relationships as the primary people to reach for the gospel. These people are the “low hanging fruit” that we can real with the message in a natural and relational way.

Third, what’s the full implication when He says, “of all nations”? That’s what we’re looking at today.

If you hang around Christians long enough, and if the topic of missions comes up, you’re going to hear the term “mission field.” As in, “Did you hear the Sanchez family is now on the mission field?” When I was a brand new Christian and I heard people talking like that, I always imagined a plane landing in a big clearing on the edge of a jungle—that must be a “missions field”!

Well, I was confused on that. But one thing is clear: the mission “field” is “out there.” It’s across an ocean, up a river, in a rainforest, somewhere away. Right?

Some people don’t like the idea of missions. Who are we, they say, to interfere with these nice natives, who are happy with their own beliefs? And “don’t we have enough problems in America?”

Well, first of all most missionaries will tell you that unreached, unevangelized people are rarely happy with life. The Waodoni of Ecuador had a homicide rate so high before being reached that it’s estimated that two-thirds of all Waodonis died a violent death. The Mouks of Papua New Guinea had a belief system that was without hope and relied on deception and murder to sustain it. So we are not talking about happy people being bothered by missionaries! We’re talking about miserable people, real people with hopes and dreams, who need a new way of life.

Some would abolish missions on another ground. They say that God is a merciful God who doesn’t care what people believe—that there are “many ways to God.” They deny the truth of Acts 4:12, where Peter says:

“Salvation is found in no one else [except Jesus], for there is no other name [expect Jesus’] under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

The Bible says again and again that people are lost, now and forever, if they don’t know God through His Son, Jesus Christ. This belief that Jesus is the only way is the spring that winds the clock of missions passion. So long as there are people who haven’t heard the Good News about Jesus, we can’t rest. So long as they haven’t heard, God hasn’t received the glory He deserves; so long as they haven’t heard, some of our fellow human beings are being denied the best thing in life: knowing Jesus. And so we go and make Him known.

And we also go because of the direct command of Jesus. Once again, Matthew 28:19-20:

19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

That’s a direct command of Jesus! If Jesus is our Lord, let’s be clear: these are His marching orders.

Now—how do we go? Remember last week when I talked about “drive-by evangelism”? That’s where somebody lobs the gospel at people from a safe distance. They leave a tract, they use a bullhorn, and they try to shoehorn the gospel in an unnatural and even manipulative way.
I think a lot of people think missionaries are the ultimate drive-bys. I had a conversation with someone last fall that was under the impression that missionaries live compounds, get lavishly paid and barely know anything about the lands they work in. I had to tell him that his information was at least 100 years out of date—if it was every so!

Instead, modern missions takes the Bible in one hand and an in-depth knowledge of the people and culture with whom they work in the other. There are a high percentage of missionaries with degrees in anthropology who’ve learned the ways of the people in great detail, who learn in depth the language, customs, traditions and beliefs of the people. Then they learn how to take the message of Jesus and communicate it to the people in a way that really relates to the people there.

There’s a name for this—we call it contextualization. It’s a practice as old as the Bible. We see it in the missionary strategy of Paul in the Book of Acts and in his letters. When addressing a Jewish audience, he emphasized Jesus as the long-expected Messiah who fulfilled the Scriptures. When he was with Gentiles, he emphasized Jesus as the Wisdom of God, the one who makes life make sense. He writes in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:

19Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Paul’s not talking about being wishy-washy. He’s talking about telling about Jesus in a way that makes sense to people. He talks one way to Jews, another to Greeks, another to Romans, another to barbarians, and so on. If you haven’t communicated Jesus in a way that makes sense to the people you’re talking to, they you haven’t done anything at all. Call it drive-by evangelism or drive-by missions, it’s no good if people don’t understand it. You have to connect.
What an incredible privilege it is to connect, to be part of making Jesus known, whether it’s across the street or across the world.

One thing I’ve learned is that in the Bible, there isn’t a wall between local and global evangelism. It’s all just evangelism—making Jesus known among those who don’t know Him now. We use the modern term “missions” usually to mean evangelism that crosses cultural, language and geographic barriers. And that’s fine. It’s a handy term. But the Bible itself sees all evangelism as important and all part of the same thing—making Christ known to people who don’t know Him.

I mentioned that some people don’t think missions isn’t necessary because they don’t believe what God says in His word about Jesus being the only way God has designated to make people right with Himself. In other words, they want to push the mission field away as unneeded.
I really passionately believe that it’s the other way around. They mission field hasn’t gone away. It’s come closer. Most of the people around us, whether born in another country or born in America have no clue what it means to be a Christian. The so-called “mission field” is next door. The message of Jesus not comprehended in Thailand, or Temple City.

And the same thing we said about the oikos principle applies on a world scale. (If you weren’t here last week, the oikos principle is that we all have a network of influence around us, and that most people come to faith in Jesus though the influence of that oikos network of family, friend, neighbors, schoolmates and so forth.)

What a missionary does is to intentionally move from one place to another with the purpose of establishing a new oikos network for the sake of making Jesus known. So someone from Nagaland (a state in Northeast India, where the population is 90% Christian) goes to New Delhi to make Jesus known among Hindus, or someone from South Korea goes to Pakistan to make Jesus known among Muslims, or someone from Florida goes to Cameroon to make Jesus known there.

In world missions, we have learned to do what Tom Clegg learned in inner city Chicago—to never tell the gospel without actually demonstrating the gospel. That’s why we sent teams for years to do water projects in villages on the Thai/Burma border. This isn’t “drive-by” missions. Now in that same location, Mike and Becky Mann are working to establish a school that will become a center for the evangelization of the Hill Tribes in that area.

We used another phrase last week that also applies: you have to immanuelize before you can evangelize. Going in to do water projects and build schools is part of the “immanuelization.” Jesus came into this world as our Immanuel, “God with us.” He got in our neighborhood and lived among us. He didn’t do a drive-by. Only after he’d lived among us for 30 years did He even start to preach. He proved the love of God by His way of life, then and only then did He tell the story and then go to the cross. He “immanuelized” before He evangelized! That’s the pattern He’s left for us to follow.

As a command, Jesus expects all of His disciples to get involved in making the Good News known. That’s why I encouraged you to fill out the My Connection Covenant card last week, and I hope you did. That’s why I encouraged you to decide now that you’ll be involved in our Day of Service on April 27. In the same way, I want to encourage you today to commit to pray for the world mission of Jesus. As a reminder today, see a greeter on the way out for this magnet; it just says, “Remember to Pray for World Missions/First Baptist Church, Temple City, CA.” My hope is that it will be a constant reminder to you that as a disciple of Jesus, He’s called you to be involved in making Him known to people near and far.

These are the basic commands of Jesus. Let’s review all seven:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

Personally, I believe that believers who live this way will change the world. This is a way of life that is nothing less than revolutionary. I believe that a church that really lives by these basic commands is a transformed, New Testament people. These are people who don’t just go to church—they are the church.

MAKING DISCIPLES OF JESUS

Matthew 28:18-20
Original date: March 2, 2008

For over 2,000 years, the church has existed for one prime purpose: to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Churches don’t have to strive to find God’s purpose for their church: it’s clear as a bell, right there in the Bible. There’s a reason we refer to Matthew 28:18-20 as the Great Commission: it defines for all this age what we’re supposed to be about as a church:

18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Remember again, Jesus didn’t tell us to make converts, adherents or church members. There’s another outcome He had in mind. First, that we would GO; second that we would MAKE DISCIPLES and third, that we would cross any barrier or geography and culture to get the job done: OF ALL NATIONS. But at the heart, it’s this simple: make disciples!

As we come to the end of looking at the seven basic commands of Jesus, I want us to explore just what Jesus means when He says, “Make disciples.” As I said last week, it seems to me that there are three key aspects to understand what He means by “make disciples.”

First, what is a disciple? That’s what we looked at last week, and we found that a disciple is someone who is learning to live, love and serve like Jesus Himself.

Second, how do you make a disciple? That’s today, and I want to focus on how you initially make a disciple, or how we bring the Good News about Jesus into to lives of people who don’t know Him.

Third, what’s the full implication when He says, “of all nations”? That’s what we’ll look at next week.

When we live as faithful disciples of Jesus, we change the world. Faithful disciples act like Jesus, they live like Jesus and they love and serve like Jesus. That changes the world. Not the whole world all at once, but one little corner of the world where we have a network of relationships. Your “world” is that network of people who know you best, the ones where you spend most of your time.

Many of us here know Charles “Chip” Arn of Church Growth up in Monrovia; Michelle Cooper, Matt’s wife, used to work in his office. Chip continues the work started by his father Win Arn, one of the real pioneers in the area of church growth. Win observed a principle of evangelism in the New Testament that he passed on as the oikos principle. Oikos is a Greek word, the word for household. But the modern equivalent of the oikos isn’t just the people living under your roof. Let me explain.

In the USA, we’re used to each individual family living in their own home; that’s our standard arraignment. For most of the world throughout most of history, that’s not the way it’s done. Your oikos, your household, is everyone in your extended family, plus servants and employees and so forth. That could mean three or four generations of family plus workers or servants. It could easily be 20 people, and in some cases many more.

Remember as well that for most of history, people didn’t go somewhere else to work; they worked from home. (So telecommuting and home-based businesses aren’t something new; it’s going back to the way it’s mostly been throughout history.)

So the oikos today includes people related to you, co-workers, neighbors, schoolmates, friends and really everyone else that you came into contact with on a regular basis. It is your relational world, your circle of influence.

For the average person today, that’s a circle of 8 to 15 people. (For some real introverts that may be as few as 5 or for some real extroverts, that may be as much as 30, but for the rest of us, it’s somewhere between 8 and 15 people.)

These are the people who know if you’re genuine or not. These are people who listen to you when you have something to say.

And this is overwhelmingly how people come to faith in Jesus. Somebody in their oikos network influenced them to consider the claims of Jesus and they did and now they are part of God’s family.

Surveys consistently show that just under 90% of all people who come to faith in Jesus do so because somebody in their oikos network (especially family and friends) influenced them. This is far more effective than any kind of “drive by” evangelism.

We all know what a drive-by shooting is. Drive-by evangelism is kind of like that. Somebody lobs the gospel at people from a safe distance. They leave a tract, they use a bullhorn, they drop Biblical quotes into a conversation, and they try to shoehorn the gospel in an unnatural and even manipulative way.

Now no doubt you’ll tell me a story about someone who came to faith when they picked up a tract or heard a radio broadcast or even listened to a street preacher. I have no doubt that that happens. It just doesn’t happen very often, and I strongly suspect many more have been repelled by these approaches than have been positively influenced.

What really works, and what I really think is the God-ordained way for most of evangelism, is the influence of people in your network of relationships, in your oikos.

Let me give you’re a few very quick examples of this oikos principle confirmed in the Bible. In each case, I’m going to leave the word “oikos” untranslated so that you can get the idea quickly:
In Mark 5:19, Jesus tells the man delivered of demons, and says to him,

"Go home to your oikos and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

Another example, Luke 19:9: after Zaccheus was converted, Jesus said,

Today salvation has come to this oikos, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.

Here are a couple of passages where whole households came to faith in Jesus at once:
First, John 4:53. When Jesus healed the son of a royal official, we read,

…he and all his oikos believed.

And in Acts 11: 14, when Cornelius the centurion had a vision of an angel, the angel said about Peter,

He will bring you a message through which you and all your oikos will be saved.

Matthew Levi has an interesting oikos! When he came to faith in Jesus, he threw a party for them. Mark 2:15 says,

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's oikos, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.

His oikos was the lowlifes of Galilee: all the drug dealers, prostitutes and gang members. And when He met Jesus, he threw a kegger for all his buddies—all the people in his oikos network.
My proposition is that since this is so clearly modeled in Scripture, this oikos principle, that this is the primary God-ordained way to reach people. Yes, I know that some are reached by other means, that’s why I said “primary.”

And know this as well: we can seek to intentionally expand our oikos world for the purpose of evangelism; our network can and indeed must change over time. That’s exactly what a cross cultural evangelist (a missionary) does: he goes to a different culture (in Cameroon, or Mexico or Laos) not to “drive-by” the gospel, but to establish a new, intentional oikos network for the sake of the gospel message.

But you don’t have to go to some place distant to do that. You can do that right here, right now. Let me tell a story to help us all relate to this.

Tom Clegg was a youth pastor in suburban Chicago. Each summer some suburban churches put on an evangelistic outreach to the inner city. They’d blitz the streets with tracts. It was a hot day, over 100. Tom went out with a teen from his church named Ryan. A man on the street said something about the heat and Tom shot back, “It will be hotter in hell unless you repent!” Another guy was panhandling, so Tom gave him a tract and said, “You need this more than money!”

They turned a corner and about five tall, tough-looking black kids were sitting in the shade by a basketball court. Tom and the kid with them suddenly felt very small and very, very white. Tom began to hand out tracts when one guy said, “It’s too (blank) hot to listen to some honky preacher!” Then he pulled a knife, and Tom and the kid ran for their lives.

When they got back to their van, Tom confessed to the teen from his church that not only was he scared, but as he ran away, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the way they were trying to “spread the gospel” seemed shallow, fake and manipulative. Then he did something that will probably make you think he was crazy. He talked Ryan into going back to the playground where the guy with the knife was.

They drove the church van, stocked with cold sodas and ice. The tough-looking guys were still there and so was the guy with the knife.

Tom got out of the van and said to them, “Hey everything is cool, OK? Look, I just want to apologize for being a jerk. How about a soda instead of a sermon?” They dove for the cans and began to playfully throw the ice around. One of them challenged Ryan to some one-on-one b-ball. The guy with the knife talked with Tom. Tom ended up hiring the kid--his name was Franklin--to give him a tour of the neighborhood and to introduce him to people.

This was a huge turning point for Tom and for that outreach. It’s a long story, but here’s the bottom line—they resolved never to tell the gospel without actually demonstrating the gospel. Before, they’d been content to drive-by the Jesus message; now they began to live it. Tom calls it switching from sermon-based outreach to service-based outreach.

And guess what? It took a year, but Franklin, the kid with the knife, gave his life to Jesus. Today he’s a printer, married with kids and active in an urban church in Chicago.

I can sum it up this way: you have to immanuelize before you can evangelize. Jesus came into this world as our Immanuel, “God with us.” He got in our neighborhood and lived among us. He didn’t do a drive-by. Only after he’d lived among us for 30 years did He even start to preach. He proved the love of God by His way of life, then and only then did He tell the story and then go to the cross. He “immanuelized” before He evangelized!

That’s why we do service evangelism things like wrapping Christmas presents rather than handing out tracts on a street corner. That’s why we’re there at the Camellia Festival. That’s why we host things like the Chamber of Commerce and the Blue Banner dinners. That’s why we’re going to shut down morning worship on April 27 to do a Day of Service to the community—to immanuelize before we evangelize.

Didn’t Jesus say that the world will know that we’re His followers by the way we love? Sure He did.

Now, I want to suggest two action points to make what I’ve shared real in your life. First, in today’s worship folder there’s a card that says, “My Connection Commitment.” It says, “I covenant before God to pray for and to invite…” There are places for three names, a good start. If you need more, you can get more out in the lobby. With Easter coming soon, it’s a great time to invite people to worship. This is simply recognizing the oikos network God has put around you and to be part of praying for them and inviting them to hear the Good News.

Another action point is to get involved in the Day of Service on April 27. This will be a day of total immanuelization! Serving like Jesus will commend the Good News to people like nothing else.

The command to make disciples is clear as a bell. So let’s get to it, OK? Let’s let the world know just how good Jesus is!

BEING A DISCIPLE OF JESUS

Matthew 28:18-20
Original date: February 24, 2008

I was at the National Outreach Convention last November when I got into a conversation with a pastor from Maryland. He was an associate pastor at a Presbyterian church there and his title was Pastor for Discipleship.

He told a funny story about his title, Pastor for Discipleship. He said that he called someone who he was trying to get involved in a small group and left a message with his wife. He never got back to him, so he tried again a week later. Same deal. A third week, and finally the man called back. “OK,” he said, “what did I do wrong? My wife said the pastor for discipline was calling me.”

Discipleship/discipline—you can see the connection! As we come to the end of looking at the seven basic commands of Jesus, I want us to explore just what Jesus means when He says, “Make disciples.” As I thought about this, it seems to me that there are three key aspects to understand what He means by “make disciples” and that it’s going to take us three weeks to unpack this:

First, what is a disciple?

Second, how do you make a disciple?

Third, what’s the full implication when He says, “of all nations”?

That’s the map for the next three weeks. But today I just want to address the basic question, what is a disciple of Jesus?

Let’s look at that word disciple. In Greek, the New Testament used the word mathetes. It’s not a new word; the Greeks used the word for centuries to refer to pupils of a teacher. It came to have the meaning of an intern or an apprentice. Generically, the word means learner, but that’s a little deceiving. It has the idea of someone whose life is being changed by being in close contact with the master, and who is becoming like the master in the process.

Discipleship produces disciples who resemble the master, who take on the master’s beliefs and values as their own.

To be a disciple is to be much more that a convert or an adherent. It means that your life is conforming to the life of your Lord. A convert may check a box and show up at meetings and not be a disciple. An adherent may regard the teachings of a leader as the best and still not seek to make those teachings the guidepost to his or her life.

Now here’s something interesting: in the New Testament, there is no category for a non-disciple “convert” or “adherent” of Jesus. Anyone who follows Him is considered His disciple. The disciple who is lazy about applying Jesus’ teachings to His life isn’t “a believer (or a convert, etc.), but not a disciple” as I’ve heard some people say; the New Testament calls them “unfaithful disciples.”

Jesus really intends for us to be His interns, His learning apprentices, people whose lives are being formed to be more and more like His own.

Romans 8:29 says,

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

When I was a brand new Christian, I read this and thought maybe that in heaven we’ll all look like Jesus---you know, beard and sandals, the whole thing! It took me a while to realize that what God’s intention is that Jesus was raise up a people who would live like Jesus, love like Jesus, act like Jesus, serve like Jesus and by that show Jesus to the world.

This occurs through both a supernatural process and a natural process.

Supernaturally, there has to be the moment of decision that we talked about several weeks ago, when we repent and believe. We hear the message that Jesus is the way God has appointed to know Himself, we come to grips with our own spiritual brokenness, and we choose to follow Him now and forever. We can call that the New Birth, we can call that conversion, we can call that passing from death to life, from darkness to light, from being outside God’s family to being inside God’s family. This is a gift of God, a gift that comes from His grace, and it’s the work of God. It’s a gift that was won by the blood of Jesus on the cross. And when you receive that gift, the Holy Spirit comes to live within you.

That’s’ the supernatural process. Many of us act as if that’s all there is. God gives us salvation (spiritual rescue) and then we wait around until we die. We’ve slimmed down the good news of the kingdom of Jesus into a hell insurance policy!

Now let’s be really clear: I’m glad my eternal fire insurance policy is paid for, and it was paid for by the blood of Jesus on the cross. I’m glad for that. But Jesus didn’t just die to get us into heaven. He died to change the whole world, starting right now. It’s striking to me that when Jesus began His ministry, Mark tells us that the essence of His message was, "The time has come; the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15) It wasn’t, “Repent, one day you will die, you’d better get ready”—even though that’s the way we often try to present the good news. When Jesus came, He was talking about changing people’s lives right now.

Jesus’ disciples are the ones who understand the “right now” implications of His message. The Kingdom is here—therefore my life needs to be re-ordered along the lines of what’s important to my King.

And while the Spirit of God continues to work in us to empower us and to guide us, to continue on as a disciple is going to mean some real effort on our part. How do the supernatural work of God and our efforts work together?

Imagine a tropical island. It’s the end of July and it’s hot and humid and you’re sticky from head to toe. And you’re inland, too far from the beach and you just want to cool off. Lynann and I actually had an experience like this in Mexico in the summer of 2000, not far from Puerto Vallarta. We climbed a steep hill in a village not more than ten miles from the city because of a waterfall we’d been told was there, where there is a pool you can swim in.

But back to the story. So you see a waterfall on your humid island. Cool sheets of water come cascading down into a refreshing pool of water. Hot dog! Now you know how you’re going to cool off!

Think about it: that water comes down from above without any effort on your part at all. You might say this is a waterfall of grace. It’s a “supernatural waterfall”, coming down from above! I ask you a question: do you have to do anything to benefit from the waterfall? Be careful how you answer!

The answer is you still have to get under the waterfall to benefit from its blessings!

You can’t make it flow one drop, but knowing about it or admiring it or praising it doesn’t even get you wet! You’ve got to wade out into the pool and get under the flowing water!

In the same way, there’s a natural element in being a disciple of Jesus. You can say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but it won’t do you any good until you open it up, read it, study it and apply it to your life! That’s getting under the waterfall of God’s truth. Bible intake is one of several spiritual growth habits that are parts of being a disciple of Jesus. One of the things that a Jesus-following disciple does is do the things He did when it came to following the Father. That brings us back to the seven basic commands of Jesus:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

Several of these are these spiritual growth habits because they are repeatable, such as celebrating the Lord’s Supper, prayer, giving and making disciples.

There are all kinds of repeatable things we can engage in that will draw us closer to the Lord and that’s part of being a disciple, a learner, an apprentice of Jesus. Let’s think of how these spiritual growth habits imitate Jesus and makes us more like Him.

Another, more historic word for “spiritual growth habit” is a discipline, but don’t let that make you think that we’re talking about something terrible. (Remember the “Pastor for Discipline”?) Here’s a short list of disciplines that Jesus engaged in that He wants His disciples to engage in as well (see how these words are connected?) Also, to make it simple, I’m using Dallas Willard’s classification of “disciplines of abstinence” (things you don’t do) and “disciplines of engagement” (that that you actively do):

Disciplines of Abstinence

Solitude: The practice of spending time without any others or any distractions. Many times we’re told that Jesus went away to a place where it could be just He and the Father.

Fasting: Abstain from food, media, entertainment, or anything else that occupies your time. Jesus taught that His disciples would fast. It’s a great way to feast on God alone that engages the body. Jesus fasted right after His baptism, and certainly fasted during the times on the Jewish calendar when the Law required it.

Frugality: Use your money for purposes outside your own needs for a time.

Chastity: Jesus was someone whose sexuality was under control. And yes, Jesus was a real man, so this was a real part of his walk with God. Married or unmarried, chastity is supposed to be a part of the life of all of Jesus’ disciples.

Secrecy: That’s when you keep your identity quiet in terms of deeds or do, or money you give, because you know that all that matters is that the Lord sees.

Sacrifice: This stretches your sense of what you can do without for the sake of those who have less. Jesus gave up the security of the carpenter’s shop during His ministry, and often went without in order to do the will of the Father.

Those are disciplines of abstinence—the “do without” disciplines. Then there are the disciplines of engagement, the “do this” disciplines. Here’s a few.

Disciplines of Engagement

Study: Do you think that Jesus studied Scripture? You bet! He studied it, memorized it and pondered it. You can’t absorb the Bible by putting it under your pillow. This is how God speaks to us—by His word!

Worship: Jesus engaged in corporate worship (in the synagogue and at the temple) as well as in times alone worshipping the Father. If Jesus, the Son of God, made time for worship, even more so must His disciples!

Celebration: That’s the discipline of being grateful and thankful both in your own relationship with God and with other believers. Jesus said, “My joy I leave with you.”

Celebration, intentional joy in the Lord is an important and often neglected ingredient in spiritual growth.Service: That’s when you give time to the God’s work and to people in need. Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves.” (John 13)

Prayer: Jesus had a deliberate prayer life; it didn’t happen by accident. His prayer life so impressed His disciples that they asked, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” Take deliberate steps to pray regularly and with purpose.

Fellowship: Jesus craved time with the twelve, and forged an even closer bond with the inner three—Peter, James and John. If He needed fellowship, then so do I!

Does all this seem tedious? Maybe a story from the movies will help.

How many of you remember the movie The Karate Kid? In the movie, young Daniel (Ralph Macchio) asks Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) to teach him karate. Miyagi agrees under one condition: Daniel must submit totally to his instruction and never question his methods.

Daniel shows up the next day eager to learn. To his chagrin, Mister Miyagi has him paint a fence. Miyagi demonstrates the precise motion for the job: up and down, up and down. Daniel takes days to finish the job. Next, Miyagi has him scrub the deck using a prescribed stroke. Again the job takes days. Daniel wonders, what does this have to do with karate, but he says nothing. Next, Miyagi tells Daniel to wash and wax three weather-beaten cars and again prescribes the motion.

Finally, Daniel reaches his limit: "I thought you were going to teach me karate, but all you have done is have me do your unwanted chores!" Daniel has broken Miyagi's one condition, and the old man's face pulses with anger. "I have been teaching you karate! Defend yourself!" Miyagi thrusts his arm at Daniel, who instinctively defends himself with an arm motion exactly like that used in one of his chores. Miyagi unleashes a vicious kick, and again Daniel averts the blow with a motion used in his chores. After Daniel successfully defends himself from several more blows, Miyagi simply walks away, leaving Daniel to discover what the master had known all along: skill comes from repeating the correct but seemingly mundane actions.

The same is true of being a disciple of Jesus. What we deposit day by day in our lives by obedience to Master Jesus transforms us into different people, people who are armed to prevail in life and serve the Kingdom of God. Brothers and sisters let us be true disciples of Jesus!

GIVE GENEROUSLY

Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
Origiinal date: February 17, 2008

Ralph Winter, the grand old man of the US Center for World Missions, points out that the Queen Mary, the ship in dock down at Long Beach, is a stunning example of the difference lifestyle choices can make. As a luxury ship, the Queen Mary took 3,000 passengers back and forth across the Atlantic. But during the Second World War, the Queen was refitted to transport 15,000 troops on a trip, stacked in bunks up to eight high. All the fine silver and china were replaced by tin trays. The fine linen was replaced by wore cotton towels. In a word, during war the ship was deployed for a purpose; that purpose was to transport fighting men to change the world. We also are at war with spiritual darkness. How are your resources deployed? To sail through life in luxury or to win that war?

That is part of why Jesus commands us to give generously. He wants us to have a lifestyle that uses our resources to advance His Kingdom. But I also want you to see how this connects up with worship. Worship and giving are joined at the hip. Let me explain.

Worship is as natural as breathing for the follower of Jesus. It’s so natural that’s it’s striking that there are few words of Jesus that can be taken as “commands to worship.” The seven basic commands of Jesus that we’ve been looking at these past several weeks don’t include a command to worship. Now, He does command things that are often part of worship, like prayer and the Lord’s Supper. But there’s no command to worship. That’s a given.

But it’s not as if Jesus doesn’t care about worship. He is! And He’s much more concerned that we catch the heart of worship more than any outward form of worship. It’s really amazing how little there is in the New Testament about “the right way to worship God.” It’s all the more striking when you compare that to the Old Testament where the right way to do worship was regulated by dozens, even hundreds of commands.

Instead, the New Testament shifts the focus of worship from the outward to the inward, and Jesus sets the tone when He tells us about loving God—that loving God is the heart of worship.

The heart of worship is treasuring God as more valuable than everything else. The heart of worship is loving Him intently and intentionally. The outer forms of worship (like the Lord’s Supper and prayer and giving) are the actions that show how much we trust, treasure and love God.

All of life is meant to be worship. 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” That means that all of life is about showing how valuable the glory of God is to you. All of life is about worshipping God.

Jesus’ commands about money and giving have to be seen in this light. The way we handle possessions is a vital test of the reality or validity of our love of God. We will either worship God with our money and possessions, or we will not worship Him with our money and possessions. We will either love Him with our resources, or we won’t love Him with our resources.

A big part of life is money and possessions, so God intends them to be a big part of worship--since all of life is to be worship. It’s no surprise then that in Jesus’ teaching, He talks more about money and possessions that He does about heaven and hell combined! Imagine that—a large percentage of Jesus’ teach is directly or indirectly about money and possessions and giving—roughly one fifth of all of Jesus’ teachings. It’s accurate to say that Jesus intended us to worship (to love God) with our money.

Now there is a place for corporate worship – that’s what we do here on Sunday mornings. And the same definitions hold here as everywhere else: the heart of worship here is treasuring of God above all else. The things we do when we worship--hearing the word of God, praying, singing, giving, sharing the Lord's Supper, and so on—are all signs of the love in our hearts for God. And one of those things that happen when we worship is something we call "the offering." The offering isn’t some necessary evil we put up with; it’s part of worship.

I’ve told you before about seeing this in action in a way that just blew me away. I was in the Dominican Republic back in 1991 on a missions trip, and we attended many worship services. At one, when they took the offering, they didn’t pass the plate. They put the offering plate on the floor at the front of the room, and as we sang, we walked up (some actually kind of danced up) to the front, and one by one, people got on the knees and put in their offering. I remember thinking to myself—“Man, these people really understanding that giving is an act of worship!”

This business of worshipping God, of loving God through our giving is so prominent in Jesus’ teaching that there’s no way it wouldn’t make the “top seven” I’ve been talking about. Here’s that list of seven again:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38;

Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

Let’s look at those two passages that are listed with giving and see how this connects up with the God-oriented, God-loving lifestyle that He opened up for us.

The first is Matthew 6:19-21:

19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

You could call this passage, “What to do with your treasure.” There’s a DON’T: don’t store up your treasure on earth; there’s a DO: store up your treasure instead in heaven, in the presence of God. And there’s a reason: Where you put your treasure will determine where your heart is fixed.

There’s interesting research that shows that wealthy people are among the stingiest givers. While many give a lot in dollars, when you look at it as a percentage of income, it’s meager. Several years ago, Ted Turner made headlines when he pledged one billion dollars to the humanitarian work of the U.N. Digging deeper into the story, journalists uncovered that the gift was staggered over enough years that Turner would actually show a net gain through lower taxes, and that the gift was a mere 2% of his annual income. One billion dollars is less impressive now!

Middle class and even lower income people give the most. They are the most generous to causes that meet people’s needs than any other. I suspect that Christian influence, the teachings of Jesus, has a lot to do with that.

What’s clear about Jesus’ words is that the focus and the state of your heart is revealed by what you do with your money: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In other words, our hearts will naturally “aim” at wherever we put our treasure. If we sink it in an earthly pit, our hearts will aim down; if we put it in heaven, our hearts will aim upward.

Jesus warns us that there’s futility in putting it in an earthly pit: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” If we put this into today’s terms, He might say, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where stock markets rise and fall, where housing busts can wipe out your equity, where earthquakes and wildfires can ruin your real estate, and where business partners can embezzle and bad investments can wipe out your retirement.”

Instead, Jesus advocates a long term investment strategy in vs. 20: “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Jesus is saying that there’s a way of transferring what we have here to heaven itself.

You know that saying, “You can’t take it with you”? Well, Jesus is saying that there is a way to take it with you. He says there’s a way to “store our treasure” in heaven. How can that be?
What is the main thing he has in mind that we should do now, here on earth, to transfer earthly treasure into heavenly treasure? The context cries out that it means giving rather than accumulating. If laying up treasures in heaven is the opposite of laying up treasures on earth, then probably laying up treasures in heaven will be giving them away in ways that bring honor and glory to the name of Jesus.

There are several other teachings of Jesus that confirm this. For example, consider Luke 12:32-33, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys."

That’s the closest parallel to Matthew 6, and Jesus is clear: treasure in heaven is secured by giving away treasure on earth.

Here Jesus explains how you "provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old" and how you "provide yourselves with treasure in the heavens that does not fail," namely, "Sell your possessions and give to the needy." That’s how you do it.

In other words, possessions on earth are not for accumulating; they are for distributing in ways that Jesus is honored and our joy in heaven is increased. When we give – especially when we give so generously that we have to sell something to have anything to give – we show that Christ is our treasure and that we love others more than we love our own security and comfort.

You can see the same thing in Luke 14:13-14 where Jesus tells us to give to those who can’t pay us back. Why? Jesus answers, "You will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." In other words, when you give freely and generously because you trust Jesus to take care of you, you are laying up treasures in heaven. You will be rewarded at the resurrection of the just.

Randy Alcorn, in that little book, The Treasure Principle, says, "I’m convinced that the greatest deterrent to giving is this: the illusion that earth is our home." It’s not; Christ is our home. And therefore to live is Christ and to die is gain. And it will be all the more gain as we learn to lay up treasures in heaven by giving.

This principle of return comes out clearly in the other key passage, Luke 6:37-38:

37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

Jesus is here talking about a general attitude toward life, toward people and even toward God. He says don’t judge, don’t condemn, forgive instead. Have an open hand toward people, not a closed fist. That’s vs. 37. And this extends to giving in vs. 38. And Jesus is clear that there’s a dividend to giving, and he uses a pretty vivid illustration to make the point.

He uses something they’d all be familiar with: buying grain. Say you go to buy one bushel of grain. (They didn’t use bushels; they used things like ephahs and omers and cors, but you get the idea.) You’d bring your container, and of course, you want to get your money’s worth. You expect it to be “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together.” What you don’t expect and what God promises, is that when we give with that open hand/open heart attitude, God gives more: “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.” God promises a return on your giving—a return that always exceeds what you’ve given. He won’t just give you a “fair shake”—it will spill over on to your life.

Jesus commands us to give. In Matthew 23:23, endorses the tithe. Tithing isn’t an archaic Old Testament command—it’s the Biblical standard. God takes what we give Him and uses it to bless three great initiatives which are near and dear to His heart and which move forward the purposes of His Kingdom. Those three are (1) support of local ministry, (2) relief of the poor and (3) support of missionary ministry, planting churches where He isn’t known.

This is all in the context of His love. He commands us to give because He loves us and doesn’t want us to be excessively attached to earthly treasures, which will rust anyway; He wants us to love our neighbor as ourselves in the way we give to relieve the poor and to make Jesus known where He’s not known now; and He wants us to love God, to worship God with our money and our possessions, because He’s worth it! By giving a part, we acknowledge that He’s the source of all.

Before we close, I want to show you a video that really illustrates this well, that He’s the source of all:

Show “God Pie"

PRAY FERVENTLY

Matthew 6:5-15
Original date: February 10, 2008

VIDEO: Dropped Call (This can be view here. Scroll down to "Dropped Call.")

I want to talk today about prayer as the command of Jesus. That’s an odd way of putting it, isn’t it? The point I want to make is that one of the basic commands of Jesus is that we pray.

Remember that all God’s commands are only given for this one reason: because it will bring joy and fulfillment into our lives and because it will bring glory to His Son. God doesn’t tell us to pray, and to pray fervently, because He likes to see us sweat. God doesn’t tell us to pray because it will make us bored. God tells us to pray because it will bring us joy and because it brings glory to the name of Jesus.

So I have three basic ideas I want to open here. The first is that Jesus does repeatedly command us to pray; we’ll be brief with that. The second is that Jesus tells us what kind of spirit or attitude we’re to bring to our praying. Finally, Jesus gives us a model of prayer that we call the Lord’s Prayer, which I’m just going to quickly highlight.

I also want you to remember that this is connected to what we’ve identified as the seven basic commands of Jesus. Jesus told us to makes disciples who obey His commands. What are those commands? John Piper identified fifty commands. That’s kind of overwhelming. George Patterson back around 1970 identified seven basic commands—commands which he used effectively to train new believers in Central America. Here’s that list of seven again:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

Let’s look at the passage for prayer. It’s Matthew 6:5-15. Jesus is teaching, it’s from the Sermon on the Mount, and He says this:

5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men...."

Did you notice that Jesus says, “When you pray”? He didn’t say, “If you pray.” Jesus consistently assumes that His disciples will be men and women of prayer. But right now, He’s telling us what not to do—don’t pray for show, pray for real, and one way we can help assure that it’s real is to get away from others, to be by ourselves for at least most of the times when we pray.

5b "I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words."

Another lesson: lots of words or fancy words don’t make for better praying. I think sometimes we’re intimidated when we hear stories about some great saint of God that would pray for three hours every morning. Or we’re intimidated by that guy in our small group—when he prays, man, he sounds good. Don’t be intimidated! That exceptional gifting and call to prayer isn’t the standard, it isn’t what Jesus commands all His disciples to do.

8 "Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 "This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'
14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

OK, let’s think here. I said that Jesus assumes that His disciples will be people of prayer; He also commands it. In vs. 9, He says, “This is how you should pray.” That’s a command, a gentle but clear command. Take another place, Luke 18:1, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” That’s another gentle but clear command.
So, Jesus commands it. Now how do we approach prayer? The attitude or spirit that Jesus calls us to when we pray is that of a child to a Father. I say that despite the fact that that I know that some of you bad dads. Even if you had a bad dad, you still have a kind of an image in your mind of what a good dad would be like. That’s what we’re talking about.

That spirit is given in the opening of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father.” Jesus could have told us to pray, “Our master” or “God almighty” or “Holy Lord”. Instead He sets the tone for prayer under the New Covenant when He tells us to pray to God as “our father.” That’s the spirit of prayer that He calls us too even when we use other words.

So far, we’ve seen the fact that Jesus commands us to pray. And then we’ve seen the spirit of prayer we’re called to: come to God as your loving father, not to God as the Unknown, Unseen, Invisible One. He loves you and wants you to know Him! Now let’s look for a few minutes at this model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.

My love for the Lord’s Prayer has grown over the years. I used to kind of not like it. I was suspicious of churches that used it every Sunday for the reasons Jesus talks about here in the Sermon on the Mount: it can be used as a rote prayer, repeated without thought, one word kind of mumbled after another.

It took some years for me to really come back to the Lord’s Prayer, and now I love it, even though I rarely pray it word for word. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that I use it to guide my praying, and that’s what I suggest for you too.

Here’s what I mean. Here’s the Lord’s Prayer as it appears in Matthew 5:9-13 (it’s slightly different in Luke). As a matter of fact, let’s pray it together as it appears on the screen:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

And you may be wondering, what happened to the ending—“For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.” Well, that’s a great prayer, but our best and oldest copies of the New Testament don’t have those words, and even though they’re great words, they weren’t actually part of this model prayer the way Jesus taught it.

But to get back to the main thing, do you see how Jesus beautifully balanced this model prayer so that we would learn to put God, His glory, His holiness, His kingdom, His reign first, and then and only then do we start praying about the things that touch my life?

Here’s the first half again—notice it’s all about God:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

It radically God-centered. We come before God as our Father, and the first thing we pray is “hallowed be your name.” That means that the cry of our heart is that God’s name, His reputation, is held as holy, that’s it’s glorified, that God is honored in my life, in my home, in my church, in my country and in my world.

Then we pray for His kingdom to come. And Jesus isn’t teaching us to pray for the end of the world, because the following lines explain what “your kingdom come” means: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” “Lord, we pray that your ways would prevail as much in my life and in my world as your ways now prevail among the angels and the elect saints who are already with you in heaven.”

That’s the starting point in pray the way Jesus commands us. Then the second half of the pray is when we bring ourselves and our needs before this wonderful loving heavenly Father:

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

"Lord, my body needs food, shelter and clothing. I trust You for those things. And my soul needs a lot of things too. I need forgiveness, and I promise to be as free forgiving others as you are free when it comes to forgiving me. I am confident that you don’t lead me into temptation [by the way folks, that’s what the Greek grammar here indicates—it’s not like you have to ask God not to lead you into temptation]; now protect me from the Evil One, Satan.”

OK, so now we’ve seen that Jesus commands us to pray, that the spirit we bring to prayer is that of a loving child to a loving father, and we’ve seen that the Lord’s Prayer is the model, the laboratory where we can really learn to pray. I just want to leave you with a couple of parting thoughts that will enable you to either establish or strengthen your praying. Very quickly (it’s on the outline):

1. Establish a set time daily to pray. Nobody’s effective in prayer who hasn’t set aside time to be with God daily.
2. Approach it as a time to personally worship and adore God, not just ask Him for things.
3. Have a prayer list. People, situations, missions locations, and so forth.
4. Pray in conjunction with reading your Bible. What better time than you bring together your time with God’s word with your time talking with God.
5. Be “GLOCAL” in your praying: that is, pray about global things like missions and world events as well as local things like your kids or somebody’s health.

One last thought. Prayer can change your life. I know no one who is close to God without prayer, and I know of no prayerful person who is not close to God. William McGill, a devoutly Catholic psychologist and educator, said, “The value of consistent prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we will hear Him.” I think he was so right. Church, let’s pray!

PRAYER

Video: The Lord’s Prayer/ END

THE POWER & MEANING OF THE LORD'S SUPPER

Original date: February 3, 2008 Photo: Sea of Galilee near Tiberias

Luke 22:17-20

One of the seven basic commands of Jesus is the command He gave us to observe the Lord's Supper. Look in Luke 22:17-20:

17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

It’s a command to take the Lord’s Supper. Notice in vs. 17 that command, “Take this and divide it.” Then another command in vs. 29: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” It’s clear that Jesus intended His disciples to continue to observe this meal as a way of remembering Him and celebrating what He did for us on the cross.

Here Jesus makes it clear that the Lord's Supper is something that His followers have to do, need to do and get to do.

Let's explore what the Lord's Supper is and why Jesus made it one of His basic commands. Let’s approach this through a series of questions.

1. Where does the Lord’s Supper come from?

The Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke all report the Last Supper that Jesus had with his disciples the night before he died. Each describes Jesus giving thanks or blessing the bread and the cup, and giving them to his disciples saying that the bread is his body and the cup is the blood of the covenant, or the new covenant in his blood. In Luke 22:19, Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The Gospel of John doesn’t report the eating and drinking, but rather the teachings and actions that filled the evening.

As far as we can tell from the earliest records, the church did what Jesus said: They reenacted that supper in remembrance of Jesus and his death. Paul’s letters are the earliest testimony that we have (even earlier than the gospels), and in 1 Corinthians 11:20, he refers to an event in the life of the church called “the Lord’s Supper.” It’s called “the Lord’s Supper” probably because it was instituted or ordained by the Lord Jesus, and because its very meaning celebrates the memory of the Lord’s death. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:23-24, “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”

So the Lord’s Supper is that final supper that Jesus ate with his disciples the night before he was crucified. The actions and meaning of it are all rooted in what Jesus said and did on that last night. Jesus Himself is the origin of the Lord’s Supper. He commanded that it be continued. And he is the focus and content of it. Although that first Lord’s Supper was a Passover meal, Jesus takes it and focuses it in a new direction that carries over the Passover idea of being delivered from bondage.

2. Who Should Take the Lord’s Supper?

The Lord’s Supper is an act of the gathered family of those who believe in Jesus, the church. It is not an act for unbelievers. Unbelievers may be present—indeed, we welcome them to be present—there is nothing secretive about the Lord’s Supper. It is done in public. It has a public meaning. It is not a secretive, cultic ritual with magical powers. It is a public act of worship by the gathered church. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 11:26, Paul says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” So there is a proclamation aspect to the supper. Proclamation, not privacy, is the note to strike.

We do not forbid taking the Lord’s Supper to someone in a nursing home or a hospital, but that kind of individual celebration is exceptional, not the Biblical norm. If you count it up, five times in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul speaks of the church “coming together” when the Lord’s Supper is eaten. That’s the normal setting for the Lord’s Supper—when we come together.

In 1 Corinthians 11:18 Paul says the Lord’s Supper is for when we come together as a church: “when you come together as a church.” This is the body of Christ, the assembly of the followers of Jesus. They are the ones who have turned from idols and trusted Jesus alone for the forgiveness of their sins, and for the hope of eternal life, and for the deepest happiness we can ever have. These are Christians. So the participants in the Lord’s Supper are the gathered believers in Jesus.

3. What happens in the Lord’s Supper?

The physical action of the Lord’s Supper is not the consumption of a seven-course meal. It is very simple. It is eating bread and drinking the cup. 1 Corinthians 11:23b-25, “He took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’”

Nothing is specified about the kind of bread or the way it is broken. The only statement about what was in the cup is given in one verse each in Matthew, Mark, and Luke: “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom” (Matthew 26:29; cf. Mark 14:25; Luke 22:18). So it is called “the fruit of the vine.” I don’t think we should make a big deal over whether simple grape juice or wine is used. There is nothing in the text that commands or forbids the one or the other.

What we should be concerned about is playful substitutes—say, cheetos and coke! The Lord’s Supper is not a plaything. We should celebrate it with a sense of weightiness—which we will talk about in just a moment.

I might mention in passing also that there is nothing in the New Testament about the frequency of the Lord’s Supper. Some believe it would be good to do it weekly; others practice it quarterly. We are in the middle and generally celebrate it on the first Sunday of each month. I think we are free in this matter and the question becomes one of 1) What frequency and infrequency corresponds to its proper importance in relation to the ministry of the Word of God? and 2) What frequency or infrequency helps us feel its value rather than becoming callous to it? Those are not easy judgments to make, and different churches make them in different ways. This is a matter followers of Jesus can graciously disagree on.

4. What should the Lord’s Supper Make Us Think of?

The focus of the participants of the Lord’s Supper should be on Jesus and especially his historical work in dying for our sins. Luke 22:19: “Do this in remembrance of me.” As we do the physical act of eating and drinking, we are to remember. That is, we are to consciously call to mind the person of Jesus as he once lived and the work of Jesus as he once died and rose again, and what his work means for the forgiveness for our sins.

The Lord’s Supper is a stark reminder, time after time, that Christianity is not new-age spirituality. It is not getting in touch with your inner being. It is not mysticism. It is rooted in historical facts. Jesus lived. He had a body and a heart that pumped blood and skin that bled. He died publicly on a Roman cross in the place of sinners so that anyone who believes on him might be rescued from the wrath of God. These things really happened.

So, the Lord’s Supper is basically about remembering. Not imagining. Not dreaming. Not channeling. Not listening. Not going into neutral. It is a conscious directing of the mind back into history to Jesus and what we know about him from the Bible. There's and old Jewish saying, “To believe is to remember.” The Lord’s Supper roots us, time after time, in the nitty-gritty of history. Bread and Cup. Body and blood. Execution and death.

5. What happens spiritually in the Lord’s Supper?

This is all important. The reason is that unbelievers could do everything I have described so far. Indeed, if the devil could put on flesh, he could do it. Eat, drink, and remember. There is nothing inherently spiritual about that. So for the Lord’s Supper to be what Jesus means for it to be, something more must be happening than only eating, drinking, and remembering. Something that unbelievers and the devil cannot do.

In 1 Corinthians 10:16-18, Paul takes about the Lord's Supper as a “participation” in Christ.
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?

Here is something much deeper than remembering. Here are believers—those who trust and treasure Jesus Christ—and Paul says that they are participating in the body and blood of Christ. Literally, they are experiencing a sharing (a koinōnia) in his body and blood. They are experiencing a partnership in his death.

And what does this participation/sharing/partnership mean? I think verse 18 gives us the clue because it uses a similar word, but compares it to what happens in the Jewish sacrifices: “Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants [a form of the same word, koinonia] in the altar?” What does sharer/participant/partner in the altar mean? It means that they are sharing in or benefiting from what happened on the altar. They are enjoying, for example, forgiveness and restored fellowship with God.

So it means that when believers eat the bread and drink the cup physically we do another kind of eating and drinking spiritually. We eat and drink—that is, we take into our lives—what happened on the cross. By faith—by trusting in all that God is for us in Jesus—we nourish ourselves with the benefits that Jesus obtained for us when he bled and died on the cross.
This is why we lead you in various focuses at the Lord’s table from month to month (peace with God, joy in Christ, hope for the future, freedom from fear, security in adversity, guidance in perplexity, healing from sickness, victory in temptation, etc.). Because when Jesus died, his shed blood and broken body, offered up in his death on our behalf, purchased all the promises of God. Paul says, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Every gift of God, and all our joyful fellowship with God, was obtained by the blood of Jesus. When Paul says, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” he means: Do we not at the Lord’s Table feast spiritually by faith on every spiritual blessing bought by the body and blood of Christ? No unbeliever can do that. The devil can’t do it. It is a gift for the family of God. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we feast spiritually by faith on all the promises of God bought by the blood of Jesus.

How is the Lord’s Supper Sacred?

I close the way Paul does in 1 Corinthians 11. He warns that if you come to the Lord’s Supper in a cavalier, callous, careless way that does not discern the seriousness of what happened on the cross, you may even, if you are a believer, lose your life, not because of God’s wrath, but as an act of God’s fatherly discipline. Let me simply read slowly 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 as we move joyfully and seriously to the Lord’s Table.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner [that is, not trusting and treasuring the precious gift of Christ] will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, [not to see if you are good enough, but to see if you are willing to turn away from yourself trust Jesus for what you need] and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body [that is, without being aware that this bread is not to be treated like a common meal, the way some were doing in Corinth] eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 [And here is what he means:] That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died [not to be sent to hell; the next verse explains]. 31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined [that is, some are weak, and ill, and dying] so that we may not be condemned [that is, go to hell] along with the world.

Don’t take the Lord’s Supper lightly. It is one of the most precious gifts Christ has given to his church. Let’s eat it together.

[To the Lord's Supper...]

FAITH IN ACTION is Coming

PRESS RELEASE

Members of the First Baptist Church of Temple City will leave the building on Sunday, April 27 to engage in service projects in Temple City and surrounding areas.

Needy families will be assisted, a musical will be performed at a local nursing home, firefighters will be served lunch, AIDS caregiver kits for Africa will be assembled and hospice patients will receive care baskets.

Members will assemble at 9:30 AM for a send-off and come together again at 4:00 PM for a worship celebration.

Lead Pastor Glenn Layne added, "This event is called Faith in Action, which is a nationwide program developed by World Vision and Zondervan Publishers. Hundreds of church across the nation will be closed to serve on April 27. Our slogan is, 'Don't just go to church--be the church.' The church is never more the church than when it acts like Jesus, who went about bringing healing and hope to the wounded."

For more information, call (626) 286-3125 or email Glenn Layne at glenn@templecitybaptist.org.

Loving God, Serving People

As promised, I'm getting back to posting the messages from the series "The Seven Basic Commands of Jesus." This was the message from January 27 of this year. By the way, that's supposed to be Moses up there, not Charleton Heston, God rest his soul.

Loving God, Serving People—In Practical Ways

Matthew 22:37-40

The Bible is a BIG BOOK. Have you noticed what a BIG BOOK it is? Most copies are about a thousand pages long. That’s longer than a “Harry Potter” book…and frankly, it’s much harder reading.

In Jesus’ day, they didn’t have the New Testament yet, so the Bible was just the Old Testament—all 39 books, still a long book, written over more than 1000 years.

In the time of Jesus, Jewish scholars had carefully gone through the Old Testament looking for all the commands that God had given. They found a total of 613 laws. 365 were negative (“thou shalt not”) and 248 positive laws (“thou shalt”).

There were laws for everything, from how to make your clothes to how to prosecute people for murder to how to offer sacrifices to God. There’s even a law that says you’re not supposed to eat fruit from a tree during its first three seasons.

Imagine living in that society at that time, and imagine also that you really want to please God. Would having 613 laws to keep track of sound hard? A little confusing? You bet.

Along comes Jesus. The Bible says that when He taught, He taught like someone with real authority. The greatest compilation of His teaching is the Sermon on the Mount. He taught from hillsides to villages to the courtyards of the Temple in Jerusalem.

It’s not surprising that someone would ask Jesus about all those 613 laws. Both Matthew and Mark record the time; here is the way the story is told in Matthew 22:34-40:

34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Jesus had sifted through all 613 laws and boiled it down to two laws to live by: Love God completely and love people as much as you love yourself.

His command is the third of seven basic commands of Jesus:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

This is the list of seven developed by George Patterson, a missionary in Central America. And that’s the outline we’re following as we focus on obeying Jesus’ commands. The first one is
Repent and believe—Mark 1:15

The second is

Be baptized—and continue in the new life—Matthew 28:18-20

And now we’re at the third:

Love God and neighbor in a practical way--Matthew 22:37-40

We’re trying to memorize this list, one at a time each week. So let’s repeat that word for word:

Number One: Repent and believe—Mark 1:15
Number Two: Be Baptized, and Continue in the New Life—Matthew 28:18-20
Number Three: Love God and neighbor in practical ways—Matthew 22:37-40

Jesus says this is the real highpoint of the commands of God, whether we’re talking Old Testament or New Testament. It’s an interesting study (which I’m not going into) to see just how the Great Commandment is used and referred to by Paul and John, and especially James in their letters. I’ll just say that it’s clear that early Christians understood this as the heart of the kind of life Jesus calls us to.

Now there’s two parts of the command: love God, love people. This is the basis of the church motto we adopted in 2006: “Loving God, serving people.” You have to ask yourself, how do people know that they’re being loved, and the answer is, by serving them in practical ways.
Jesus says, there’s an answer to that question, what does the Lord want, and there’s a part A and a part B to the answer. Part A is this total love of God. Part B is this selfless love of people. It’s always in that order. Love of God has to come first.

Here’s how Jesus puts it:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

Jesus wants us to be clear that we aren’t to love God with just part of who we are. He gives four aspects: heart, soul, mind, and in Mark 12, He adds, love God with all your strength.

The heart is the center of our will and our emotions.

The soul is the totality of our lives, life as a whole.

The mind is our thinking capacity.

And our strength refers to our ability to apply ourselves, to make efforts of both the body and the mind.

Obviously, these four overlap, they don’t mean the same thing, and at the same time, they’re still distinct.

To love God this way is to treasure God above all else and to apply that love in our service of Him. God wants people who will love Him with a passion and will serve Him with devotion.
Now Jesus is quoting word for word from Deuteronomy 6:5. And there are echoes of this command all over the Bible. One of the most obvious in the Old Testament is from the beginning of the Ten Commandments, where God says (this is Exodus 20:2), “You shall have no gods before Me.” And then He goes on to say, “And remember, no idols either.” Jesus could have quoted that, but, just like Jesus, he quoted a similar command that says the same thing in a positive way, and in a way designed to remind us that God doesn’t just want a superficial allegiance, but He wants our full devotion (heart, soul, mind and strength).

You see, God wants a relational connection to us. He doesn’t just want us to say, “Oh, yes, you are my God” when we come into a temple or into a church building. That’s the so-called relationship that 2/3 of all so-called Christians worldwide have with God. He wants more; God wants a love connection with us where we respond to God with a purposeful passion.

And God really does want it. In John 4:23, Jesus says that the Father seeks true worshippers:
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

The Father dearly seeks out people to be part of His family. He actually commands us to love Him. You often hear it said that you can’t command love, but Jesus does, not once but many times.

Let me pause here and direct your attention to the message outline. Let’s do a little self-check. You have to be honest here. If I ask you to immediately respond to the question, “Do you love God the way Jesus describes here?” how would you answer? You choices are:

____ Yes, I love God with a passion
____ Yes, I guess so
____ It depends on when you ask me
____ Most of the time it seems that God doesn’t love me, so why should I love Him?

Can I remind you that Jesus’ commands are always for our good? God doesn’t command us to love Him because He’s got a low self-esteem problem and He needs us around to make Him feel better. God commands us to love Him with this kind of total passionate abandon because it’s right (He’s worthy) and because loving Him brings order, joy and balance into our lives. Loving anyone or anything more than Him is wrong (it’s idolatry) and it’s a barrier to the kind of joy that He promises.

That’s Part A of the Great Commandment, and it’s first for a reason. But there’s also Part B (Matthew 22:39):

And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Jesus says it’s like it in the sense that it’s just as foundational. He says that when you add parts A and B together, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:40).

Again, Jesus is quoting the Old Testament, this time from Leviticus 19:18. There’s one more place in the Gospels where Jesus gives the Great Commandment, in Luke 10:27. But this time the guy Jesus gives the answer to picks an argument with Jesus over the meaning of the word “neighbor.” “Just who is my neighbor?” he asks.

Remember that Jesus’ vision is always global—it’s always a vision that doesn’t settle for a small circle of people for God to love, or to be loved by people who love God. So He replied to this guy by telling the story that we call the Good Samaritan story. Let me retell that story in short form: a poor traveler gets mugged on the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho and is left for dead. A priest and a Levite, religious leaders in Israel, come across the poor guy and just pass by. They don’t want to get involved, and they may be afraid of becoming ritually impure by touching a dead body, whatever. It was a Samaritan that went to the victim and took care of his needs. Jews didn’t like Samaritans. They had the wrong religion, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong history. But Jesus makes him the hero of the story, and turns the “neighbor” issues around this way.

He finishes by asking the question, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The issue for Jesus isn’t carefully figuring out who is and who isn’t your neighbor, but being the best neighbor you can be.

By saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself”, He’s saying, “Just as you naturally seek what’s best for you, I’m calling you to seek what’s best for anyone and everyone that you come in contact with.” Just as you naturally want food, shelter and clothing, want that for other people. Just as you naturally want to be consoled when times are hard, seek to console others. Just as you naturally want to have joy in your relationships, want that for others. Just as you naturally want refreshing times of leisure, want that for others. Just as you, as children of God, have come to enjoy and love God, as you’ve come to know the forgiveness that comes from the cross of Jesus, want that for others—that they would know God’s love and forgiveness and the fresh start He gives.

But don’t just want it out there in the ozone layer—do something about it! If there are hungry people, feed them. If there are hurt people, console them. If there are lonely people, be their friend. If there are broken people, help fix them up. If there are people wandering outside of the family of God, by all means, help them find their way in.

We’re going to devote the whole month of April to giving you an opportunity to love people in very practical ways by serving them. You’ve heard me use the term, “Don’t go to church—be the church.” That’s the tagline of a special month called Faith in Action Month. This is a plan developed by World Vision, a great Christian relief organization. We want to encourage you to be the church in deeds of loving service. Don’t just come to church; be the church
Faith in Action is a 4-week, church-wide campaign that’s designed to enable us to look outward focus with a heart to serve. FIA culminates on a Sunday where regular services will be cancelled (that’s April 30) and the entire congregation will engage in service projects in, and with, the community.

That day will be a day of community service-–all wrapped up with an evening celebration. We’ll close the doors of the church on Sunday morning and open our hearts to your community through a day of service projects involving our entire congregation.

You see, these commands of Jesus just may take us from where we’ve been—focusing inward—to where God wants us to be: loving God with passion, and loving people, our neighbors, in tangible, practical ways. And that will bring joy to the heart of God and will bless and transform our world!