Jan 8 2017 Becoming Christ-followers who Make Things Right

by Mike Marette

Kay shared about how God is working and providing at Summit Christian – how He is building community. There are some volunteer opportunities – there is a free concert Tuesday night as well.
Lord, thank You for the work You are doing at Summit Christian and thank You for the hearts of the faculty and staff there to give of themselves for the sake of Your kingdom that people may come to know You. Thank You for giving Kay the opportunity to share and give to others there. I pray You would open up opportunities for each of us to share Your gospel – Open our eyes to be involved in Kingdom Work. In Your Name.
I’d like to start with a story – David Fitch is a professor at Northern Seminary in Chicago – the students are living and working in one of the poorest sections of Chicago. At one of their meetings – he asked – “How many of you are planning to be pastors when you finish seminary?” Each one said no – absolutely not! No way!. What about being “Political Organizers for the Kingdom of God?” “Oh yeah, we’d love to do that!” Every single one! Somehow it never crossed their minds that being a pastor is doing that – to organize people to live for the kingdom – we need to learn to live in Christ’s kingdom and invite the world along. To be clear, this has nothing to do with national politics – but the work of gathering of people to live in God’s presence – not in a church building but bursting out into the world through all the circles of our lives.
There are two ways of thinking in the Christian culture – and they are somewhat divided – different ideas what it means to live in the gospel – proclaiming the gospel, performing the gospel – and it is divided generationally. If you are my age – you have one view – and if you are under the age of 40, you have a different worldview as a Christian of approaching the gospel.
We look at the world – and say, the world is a bad place! Things are terrible! But people have always said that. This is nothing new today – it has always been said. If you are from my generation – what you say – the world is a bad place – and we need to prepare people for a better place – meaning heaven. That is crucial – and an important part of the mission – to get people into heaven! The problem is when it stops there. What happens – our thinking becomes – “What happens here does not matter” – and we ignore this world – and then we say – why is the world such a bad place. Think about it – it is not rocket science.
The second way goes like this – the world is a bad place and it is the responsibility of God’s people to make it a better place. This is crucial to our mission! But if you stop there, eternity doesn’t matter. It is only about here and now, and that is a problem. Now, what we naturally think – the solution is what? To do both, we think. And that is important – and a crucial part of our mission and ministry. But I want to share something nuanced that might be radically different and personally – I think it is more biblical than doing both – This way of thinking goes like this:
The world is a bad place. The Church – or the community of Christ-followers – the community of faith – needs to become a better place. The Church – as a better place – is a foreshadowing or expression of the ultimate Better Place (Heaven). That is what the church is created to be. “An outpost of heaven in a foreign land”
We are called ambassadors of Christ. Ambassadors live in embassies. And inside those walls are American soil. If a baby is born in an embassy – they can become President, because they were born on American soil! And the church is an embassy of heaven in a foreign land – and that is what the church needs to become.
As a better place, we prepare people to go to a better place as we welcome them into a better place. As people step into the soil of our embassy – they can become ready to go to that better place. They can be born citizens of the home country. And then – as a better place – as an outpost of heaven – we are ready to make the world a better place. It won’t happen by activism. We ONLY can make the world a better place by becoming a better place.
“This way of life does not stay within the walls of the church building – but bursts out into the world through all the circles of our lives!” If the church becomes that, you can’t contain it! But just becoming involved in activism won’t work – it has to become part of the community of Christ-followers and THEN it is able to erupt out into the world…
Everywhere we go. But it busts out because it is happening in the community.
There was a funny little discussion that takes place in theological circles. This has to do with proclaiming and performing the gospel. It is centered on this question – Did Jesus preach the gospel? Many say no… - How did they get there? Well, the question comes up – because He hadn’t yet died and risen. But 2 Corinthians tells us that not only did He preach the gospel, He IS the gospel. Everything He said and did was a proclamation of the gospel. When He gave the Sermon on the Mount or healed or said I am the bread of life – when He died, when He rose – all of it was the proclamation and performance of the gospel.
2 Cor. 5: 17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
This word comes up – reconciliation – simplest meaning: to make things right. The world is not right with God – and the reason – because of our trespasses/sins. There are multitudes of ways we sin – and we tend to focus on certain ones. But primarily – sin is the rejection of God as God. The source of all sin is idolatry – something else is God. This should be the focus when we think about sin in the reconciliation process. This tells us that God was in the Messiah reconciling the world to Himself. He entered this world that is bad – and things that were not right – He entered as a very specific person – IN Jesus – and everything He said and did focused on reconciling the world to God. Everything He said and did – what was God, in Christ, doing? One thing – reconciling the world to Himself. His death and resurrection is the ultimate expression of this – but that does not diminish His teaching, instead it elevates it – how He lived and what He taught.
Luke tells us -
Luke 4: 16 And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. 17 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
19 To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
When God does an amazing miracle, it is not just an amazing miracle, but proclaiming the gospel.
We can be so formulaic in proclaiming the gospel – that if you don’t do it THIS SPECIFIC WAY, it doesn’t count – but that is not how Jesus did it!
Jesus told a parable:
The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field – more money than you could imagine – so what he does – He digs a hole and buries the box – and covers it up so no one else can find it – and he sells EVERYTHING he has – house/car or donkey – all of it – sold! And he buys the field with the treasure.
What this says – think about the people hearing this for the first time – they would say – of course you would do that! Without question!
Remember Back to the Future – 2,3,4 one of those – a book from the future is brought back to the past – and the guy who gets it goes to Vegas and bets – and makes a fortune! That is how Jesus preached the gospel! Of course you want the treasure! Of course I’d sell everything and buy the field. Jesus’ preaching opened everyone’s eyes – like opening a window and letting the fresh air in.
And yet we can make it so boring.
This past year has been a unique year. Two people have made it this way – Donald Trump – and not Hillary – but Bernie Sanders – what America should be – Equality and fairness.
What if the gospel we proclaim and perform in our words and actions described a world – when people saw our lives and world, that described a world under Jesus that fully accomplished all of that!
For sure, it would have absolutely nothing to do with the political world – but an alternate world we could present. Something totally different than what is out there!
We could become a community of reconciliation.
2 Cor. 5: 17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
This world has such antagonism. What if the church became a better place where that is gone? What if – when people walked into a church – people saw harmony? What if the community of Christ-followers in our land were civil and dropped all antagonism and became what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. What an outpost of heaven this would be! What if you dropped it all on Facebook – and became an example of reconciling warring factions – first with God – but don’t think it stops there – but with one another as well. How different it would be if there church weren’t part of the problem –but the solution to the problem?

20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Matthew 5: 23 Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.
What if we were known for making things right? Everyone you work with would say – that is the person who doesn’t say bad things or get involved in back-biting – but always trys to resolve stuff. My how things would be different if the church were to do this.
Matthew 18: 15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
It starts by doing it right – if someone hurts you – you do it privately and with nobody else. No one does this. If you become the one doing that – they’ll say – “WOW! This person is an alien, gotta’ be from a different planet!”
Notice the goal is not to tell them what they did wrong but to win them. This needs to happen in the church – this is primarily speaking about in the church. Think of the courage it takes to go to someone who has done something wrong. In context – this is about those who are hurting people in the church. The context – this is surrounded by four stories of doing that…
16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.
This is not about trying to build a case against the person – but not stopping until things are made right.
We use this verse to talk about church discipline – and it has a place in that – but in its context, it is about restoration.
17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
If a person is not willing to make things right – this person is not really a part of the community – because being a part of the community means being willing to make things right. And Jesus was a person who perfectly treated those who were not part of the community – tax collectors and sinners!
18 Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. 19 “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. 20 For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”
Forgiveness
21 Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus *said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
Here in Cuyahoga Falls, the Islamic population is growing – you notice it at the Natatorium. We have purposefully – intentionally decided to try to make connections – to be civil and to make eye contact and to say hello.
We like Middle Eastern food. There is a market we go to – we’ve been going to this market since before 9/11. Going there – I have gotten to know the folks who run it. I see them in Giant Eagle and I go out of my way to shake their hand and say hello and good to see you.
2 or 3 days after 9/11, I went – and wanted to make sure I was ultra-extra-friendly. This is a small example – but there are so many ways. WHAT IF – What if all the Christians on Facebook are CIVIL?!
This does not mean that we don’t share the gospel or share the truth. But if we are not living the truth, what will people think of our preaching? Not that much!