February 14, 2010
Acts 1:6

14, 2010When Paul had something really important to say, he often repeated it.  An example is Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always.  I will say it again: Rejoice!”  Jesus took a different approach.  If there was something he really wanted people to hear and remember, he began by saying, “I tell you the truth....” That phrase occurs almost eighty times in the four gospels.  To further impress the importance of a particular truth on his congregation, Jesus would end on this note: he who has ears to hear, let him hear. In other words, “stop and think about what I just said; don’t let it go in one ear and out the other.”  What if somebody used all three of those techniques at once?  It would indicate that something was really important, right?  “I tell you the truth, the Church is not a business. I will say it again.  The Church is not a business.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

When two things are radically different, I thought you were supposed to contrast them, not compare them.  In business the bottom line is profit. In church, people are the bottom line.  What we’re trying to accomplish here, is very different from what Wal-mart is trying to do.  They measure success one way.  And we measure it by completely different standard; at least we’re supposed to.  But it doesn’t always work that way, and pastors are as guilty as anybody.  The next time I go to a convention, you ought to come with me, if you can stand it.  Frankly, a lot of preacher talk turns my stomach.  When two of them first meet, one usually begins by asking the other one, “So how big is your church?”  The second question is just as predictable: “how big is your budget?”  I can’t imagine what it will be like one day to stand before God and give an account of my life.  But I do know this much for certain.  He’ll never ask me those two questions.  That’s because he doesn’t care about the size of the church or how much money it has in the bank.  In fact, a huge membership and a big savings account might raise some other questions in God’s mind, like “Eric, are you sure you preached the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”?  You remember what the Bible says about people in the last days, don’t you?  He might even turn to the chapter and verse. “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.  Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” “You weren’t one of those teachers were you, Eric?”  Or God might very well ask me, “Did you and the congregations you served trust me to provide for everything you needed, or did you put your hope and faith in something else, like savings?  The reason I ask is, everybody was always so worried about money.  Eric, you do realize don’t you that if your faith falters when the economy suffers, then it wasn’t really faith to start with.”  I don’t know about you, but when that day comes I’d much rather hear God say, “Well done good and faithful servant”.  

I’m actually glad that the time I spent in the business world was limited.  Cause the longer you’re in it, the more likely you are to see everything through that lens.  At a conference some of us attended recently, one of the presenters made that point when he said that “the people you want on your budget and finance committee aren’t necessarily the ones with most experience in that area; no, you want the godliest people on that committee”, he said.  Sounds like something a preacher would say.  Only this guy wasn’t a preacher; he was a very successful business man, who knew the tendency of people who’ve spent their entire careers in business to see everything from that perspective first, and from a spiritual perspective second.  That’s not bad; that’s natural.  If your main concern at work for the last forty years has been the bottom line, then it’s automatically going to be your main concern at church.  That’s where Isaiah 55:8 comes in handy; God says, “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”.  I’m not picking on business people, but they tend to be something that God so obviously isn’t, and that’s practical.  I’m not even going to give any examples.  If you doubt God’s impracticality, just open your Bible and start reading.  You won’t get far before you see exactly what I’m talking about.  In my mind, one of the worst things that somebody could say about First Baptist Church is that we’re practical. That would mean that reason governs our decisions more than faith.  And without faith, the Bible says that it is impossible to please God.  Go back and read the rest of Hebrews 11 at your leisure.  By faith, Noah built a big ark.  I bet his neighbors thought he’d lost his mind...until it started raining.  By faith Abraham set out on a journey with absolutely no idea where he was going.  Why?  Cause God told him to.  That was all the explanation he needed.  A practical man wouldn’t have done that; he would have insisted on a detailed itinerary and a definite destination.  
What I’m getting at is this.  Reason is great, and in the business world I guess that’s enough.  But in the church, reason needs to follow faith.  It’s there, it’s just not out front.  Faith is first; reason is second.  I’ll give you an example, an unlikely one but an example nevertheless.  God speaks to you in his unmistakable voice.  He tells you to build a floating zoo, just like he did Noah.  As a Christian, the only correct response is “as you wish”, no matter how crazy the assignment sounds.  You commit to it on the spot, without hesitation.  Up to this point your brain is idling; you don’t need it; all that’s required is obedience.  When God tells you to do something you just do it, no ifs, ands, or buts.  Then, and only then, do you start using the brain God gave you.  Where am I going to get the money, materials, and manpower I need to build this boat?  God’s ultimately going to provide those things, but now it’s a partnership.  There’s the part he’s responsible for.  And there’s the part you’re responsible for.  You plan.  You prepare.  You build.  But the main thing you have to do is trust.  From beginning to end, you have to take God at his word and remember--if he told you to do it, he will make it happen, one or the other.

But that’s not how it usually works is it?  To make my point I’m going to use a real situation, not a hypothetical one.  Jim Robinson.  I didn’t hear God say, “I want First Baptist to add him to the staff”.  If he had, I would still be pushing hard for it, and I’d keep on pushing for it until it happened or I got fired.  I do, however, believe that God wanted us to seriously seek his will in the matter.  He likes it when his people spend time trying to discern what he wants.  But that’s not what happened.  I brought it up and before I even finished, some people were already shaking their heads side to side.  Maybe God spoke to those folks that fast.  It’s never worked that way for me.  Discerning God’s will has always been a time-consuming, soul-searching struggle.  You know what the biggest objection to Jim Robinson was don’t you?  Money.  God’s will wasn’t the bottom line, money was.  We can’t afford it.  Well guess what?  Neither could the people in 1920 afford to build this church.  I know I’ve worn that illustration out over the years.  I wish I could think of a time, more recently, when First Baptist took a huge leap of faith, but I can’t.  If you want examples of us doing the practical thing, the safe thing, the reasonable thing, the common-sense thing, the logical thing---I can supply you with plenty of those.  In Luke 18, Jesus finished a parable with the following question; it’s one we need to try and answer honestly.  “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”  Will he find his Church attempting the impossible or will he find us biting off only those things that we can chew on our own, without his help?   There’s another parable in Luke 19 about a master and three of his servants.  I won’t recount the whole thing, just the end.  When the master returned, each of the first two servants heard him say, “Well done good and faithful servant.”  But the last one didn’t fair so well.  The master called him wicked and lazy.  What did he do to receive such a harsh rebuke? He played it safe.  He buried his master’s money in a hole.  At least we keep it in a bank where it earns a little interest.  

According to my new word processing program I’m already 1,500 words into this sermon and I haven’t even mentioned the kingdom of God, not by name anyway.  Normally, my introduction is one or two paragraphs; today it’s five pages, so far.  That means you can go ahead and plan on at least one more week on Acts 1:6.  I used to be so impatient; I couldn’t wait to finish one sermon series before I started another.  Now I don’t care if it takes me five years to get through Acts, because I’ve finally learned that the point of this journey we’re on with God isn’t to reach the destination; it’s about all the things we learn along the way.  

Where did we ever get the idea that God’s purpose for His church was to strive, strain and achieve?  From the world, that’s where.  To be even more specific, we borrowed that mentality from the business world.  Think about it.  Ask any CEO what he expects of his people and he/she will say “results”.  Their motto is “make it happen”.  I don’t know how churches operated thirty years ago, but since I’ve been in the ministry, that’s been the mentality.  And I’ve only contributed to it, by assuming that “results” were the product of our human efforts.  This isn’t the easiest concept for some people to grasp.  You might even disagree with me.  And that’s fine, but that doesn’t make it any less true.  We don’t make anything happen.  God makes everything happen.  I’ll use myself as an example, but the principle applies to this entire congregation, and every other congregation for that matter.  No one will ever come to Christ as a direct result of my preaching.  My words may make someone think.  They may touch someone’s  heart.  They may even bring an occasional tear to someone’s eyes.  But my words never have and never will compel anyone to profess faith in Christ.  It may appear that way when someone walks the aisle at the end of a sermon.  Subconsciously you might conclude that their response was the result of something I said.  It’s not; or if it is, they should have stayed in their seat.  That’s why some churches don’t issue an invitation like we do at the end of the service.  Seriously, they don’t want to give anyone the impression that a person’s salvation has anything to do with the preacher.  The fact is, and this is really going to confuse some of you, a person’s salvation has very little to do with them either.  You see, there’s more going on in here every Sunday than it looks like.  Just because nobody comes forward, that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.  Very often there are people here who would like to profess faith in Christ, and there are certainly people who know they should profess faith in Christ, only they can’t.  I’ve been there; I know.  “Well”, you might ask, “if they want to and they know they need to, what’s keeping them?”  John 6:44, where Jesus states quite clearly, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”  I’ll put it this way.  Ultimately, the choice to become a Christian isn’t up to you. It’s up to God.  If He doesn’t draw you to Christ, you absolutely won’t come.  You can’t.  Now, once he draws you I believe you have a choice to either accept him or reject him.  But it always, without exception, begins with him.  If he didn’t initiate the relationship, none of us would be Christians.  Let me say it one more way, in case it’s still not clear to you.  If you are a Christian, it’s not because of anything a preacher said, it’s not because of something you did.  If you want to give credit where credit is due, give it to God; he deserves it.

When we leave the results to God, everybody wins.  He gets the glory, and we get to relax.  Occasionally, someone will express sympathy for me. “It must be hard to pour your heart out every Sunday and nobody responds”.  It used to be, when I thought God was a CEO who demanded results from me. Now I know better.  God doesn’t expect me to do what only he can do.  My part’s easy.  Preach and leave the results to him.  In Acts 2:42-47 we find a snapshot of the early church.  The first thing I notice about that congregation is how relaxed it seemed to be.  Everybody’s having a wonderful time--learning, worshipping, sharing, celebrating.  The one thing they’re not doing is struggling and straining to make things happen.  Why not?  Because verse forty-seven says, “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” It’s funny; every President has his critics, but nobody ever wants to trade places with him; running the country is too much responsibility.  It must be harder than running the universe, because we don’t mind doing God’s job for him. No wonder pastors and lay people are always burning out.  They’re trying to do what only God can do.  God isn’t looking to us for results; that’s his part.  He’s looking to us for something else, two things: faith and obedience.  In these closing moments I suppose I should say something about the kingdom of God.  It can be confusing; like I said last Sunday, it’s up there, it’s in here.  It’s arrived, and it’s not yet.  That makes getting a handle on the kingdom of God difficult for many people.  So let me give you a short definition and an illustration.  The kingdom of God is simply “the rule and reign of God.”  Jesus prayed, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” You see, there is no such thing as disobedience in heaven.  That word isn’t even in heaven’s vocabulary.  In effect, God says, “Jump” and the angels say, “How high”.  You may have noticed that it doesn’t always work that way down here.  God says, “Jump” and we say, “I really don’t feel like jumping.  I’m not in the mood to jump right now.  Maybe later.  I’ll skip if you want me too.  I’ll even hop.  Jumping’s just not my thing.  Sorry.”  

Raise your hand if God has ever told you to jump.  Has he really?  He’s never told me to do that.  But he’s told me to do plenty of other things.  Never out loud but always in his word.  How many examples do you want?  A hundred?  It’s getting late.  How about one?  Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to OBEY everything I have COMMANDED you.  Notice he said Obey, not consider.  He said Commanded, not suggested.  If the Church was a democracy, consider and suggested would work.  But it’s not a democracy; the church is a kingdom, Christ’s kingdom.  There’s one sovereign, and guess what....you’re not it.  Neither am I.  You know what we are? We are servants.  Or, in kingdom terms, we are subjects.  And subjects have just one job...do whatever the sovereign says, no excuses, no modifications, no rationalizations, no ifs, ands or buts.  When God tells us to do something, there’s only one correct and acceptable response, the same one Mary gave when she received her assignment.  Gabriel told her, “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”  Now hear this.  “The Lord will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”  To which Mary humbly and obediently replied, “I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.”  In other words, “I’ll do it.  God’s wish is my command.” If being a servant or a subject sounds like a miserable existence, then you don’t understand the kingdom of God any better than the disciples did.  If this was a traditional kingdom and Jesus was a traditional sovereign, I’d agree with you.  Living under his absolute authority would indeed be miserable.  Earthly kings can be cruel and unjust.  But Jesus is nothing of the sort.  He is always kind, and always just.  His reigns will mercy, grace, compassion and unconditional love for his subjects.  Even when the assignment is as difficult as Mary’s, serving Him isn’t a burden; it’s an honor and a privilege.  So much so that instead of saying, “His wish is our command”, it makes more sense to say, “his command is our wish.”