1. Review and Overview
a. We have been talking about letting God turn us inside out and change the focus of our lives from being self-centered, self-interested, and self-absorbed to that of a God centered, Kingdom minded, outward focused people of God.
b. This transformation will not come about as a result of a sermon.
c. It will not come about merely by wishing it to be.
d. It will only come about when the Spirit of God so grabs your soul and your heart and stirs you to have the same passions as God Himself has.
e. So long as you and I choose to keep the status quo, live prayer-less lives, live in our comfort zones and refuse to take new risks, we will keep God at a distance and our world will remain the same.
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ii. 100,000 teenagers fasted and prayed and then gathered in Nashville Tennessee to pray for revival last Saturday. They were serious about God. Serious enough to sacrifice not only an entire weekend but also many fasted for a week or longer. They are passionate about Jesus! Why aren’t we?>
2. Today I want to share two things that break the heart of God (beyond merely rejecting Him)
a. The two things that break God’s heart are people in need and people in greed.
i. People dying in need – trapped by poverty which tells a person that they have little value to society. Those caught in poverty are told:
1. You are a burden to society.
2. You aren’t adding to the tax base but to the tax burden.
3. You aren’t making a contribution to society.
4. Why can’t you pull yourself up by the bootstraps?
ii. People dying in greed – their prosperity has convinced them that their value comes from what they’ve got.
1. Shut up in their gated communities, their pass code protected driveways, their McMansions and their tinted windowed Mercedes – they have the life that most covet, and yet they are dying on the inside.
2. Quote: “I know money won’t make me happy but I’d like to try to find out for myself.”
3. We don’t need to look very far – the headlines and Paris Hilton – to see someone who has it all and yet is dying on the inside.
3. Do you remember Jesus’ first sermon that He preached? He delivered it in Nazareth, His home town. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” (Luke 4:18)
a. Why was Jesus sent to the poor? Why not the rich…after all, aren’t they people too?
i. Now in those days, a rich person was someone who could afford two sets of clothing. A commoner, a poor man, only had the clothes he wore and a cloak to wrap himself in at night. (that is why it was against the law to hold a cloak held in surety overnight).
ii. The poor of that day were poor not only materially but also in terms of rights and every part of life, both physical and spiritual.
iii. They were the downtrodden, the oppressed, the uneducated, the unemployed, the unskilled, the sick, the imprisoned, the luck-less ones.
iv. They were those who life had not smiled on, in fact that life had frowned upon. Not much different than today is it?
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b. Put yourself in the position of these poor:
i. You go to hear Jesus speaking.
ii. He heals your cousin from something he’d been suffering from for years but could never afford to go to the doctor for.
iii. You see in the crowd that crazy guy that everyone had written off as hopeless, looking calm and happy and in his right mind.
iv. You hear Jesus speaking about how God is looking for the lost and rejoicing over those who come to Him in childlike faith. It sounds like good news doesn’t it?
4. Why not the rich?
a. Did you know that the poorest of Americans would be classified as rich in 4/5th of the world
b. God can do little for the self-satisfied, the self-seeking and the self-centered.
c. The problem with affluence is that it blinds us to our NEED OF GOD and creates such a comfort zone around us that we forget the hurting people out in the world that God calls us to serve.
d. Those who have their attention focused upon meeting their wants instead of others’ needs,
e. I believe this is the affliction of the American church – it is an affluence that has blinded us to the pain of the world around us.
5. When a pastor talks about poverty and the needs of the poor, we commonly shoe-horn his sermon into the bleeding heart category of Christianity. But evangelical Christians are again waking up to the fact that God is offended by the plight of people suffering.
a. Let me see if I can put this into perspective:
b. Tony Compolo visits churches all across America. He began one of his messages to a group of pastors, “Today, more than 8000 children will die of Malaria and most of you don’t give a BLANKETY BLANK”
i. Now Tony didn’t say “blanketyblank.” He used an expletive. Then he paused watched the faces of those gathered. Then he continued, “there are more folks in this room offended by my use of “blanketyblank” than by the fact that 8,000 children died needlessly today.”
ii. His point is one that we need to take to heart.
iii. Most of us are more offended by an expletive than we are by children dying.
iv. We are playing church while the world goes to hell.
c. We should be scandalized by the fact that children are dying from starvation and preventable diseases. In just 3 days, more children die in Africa than the entire population of the town and township of Madison. (ask a child to come to the front).
i. If your child had Malaria, wouldn’t you do all you could to save him?
1. I guarantee the parents of the children who die each day are crying the same tears of grief that you and I would cry.
2. Is an African child worth less than an American child? Are African souls worth less than your own?
ii. In Sept. 1865, Hudson Taylor, missionary to China, visited a pastor’s meeting in England. He stood up to speak of the fact that 100,000 Chinese a month were dying of famine in China, and had never heard the gospel. The Convener of the convention tried to interrupt Hudson Taylor and said, “surely you mistake the character of the Conference These meetings are for spiritual edification.”
iii. Hudson Taylor continued undetered, “A million a month in China are dying without God, and we who have received in trust the Word of Life — we are responsible.”
iv. Hudson Taylor stood up to a cold hearted, religious nation and told them about the lost and dying of another continent, long before television and video clips numbed their viewers to the sight of a child dying on a street corner, its belly swollen and eyes shut by blowflies.
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1. The church is responsible. You & I are responsible. You and I cannot run from it any longer!
6. Now as I say these things, I am equally at fault. I too have ignored the needs of a pain filled world. I have done so for many reasons, including being preoccupied with my own troubles.
a. But it is when we face these uncomfortable truths that we can have our thinking changed and begin thinking and living inside out. We begin to make a difference in our world!
7. Romans 12:2 says, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
a. To become outward focused, we need to have our minds changed about how we view the world and the pain within it.
b. Jesus entered a world just like ours, just an earlier time and place, a world filled with pain and suffering, illness and outcasts.
i. He began His ministry proclaiming “Good News” of a kingdom that would overshadow and overtake the kingdoms of this world.
ii. He proclaimed a new world order in which people would care for one another, where they would live sacrificially for one another and where the heart of God would be incarnated into each of their lives.
iii. As the Spirit of God changed believers lives, the 1st century church, the followers of Christ, turned the world on its heels.
1. Despite opposition, persecution and even death, the believers transformed the communities in which they lived, loving the loveless, and spreading the good news of a transforming relationship with God made possible through the death and resurrection of their Messiah.
2. For the early church (until the last century), the kingdom of God was a Here and Now expectation, not one of only when Jesus returns. For some reason, we have allowed a few false teachers to convince us that the Kingdom of God is a future event instead of a present reality.
3. As long as we see it as a future event, we will not risk, engage or participate in its occurrence.
c. What has happened since then?
i. We have become religious instead of relational.
1. We check off our religious duty on Sunday mornings but leave our transformation at the door step when we leave.
2. It is a whole lot easier to wear a religious smile or perform a few religious duties a couple of hours a week than it is to love your disagreeable neighbor or spend some time with some rowdy kids at a trailer park.
3. The transformational power of the gospel requires that you and I throw off the religious garb and instead clothe ourselves with Christ 24/7, and see and love the world through His eyes.
4. We must begin to live and love SELF-LESS lives instead of self-centered lives of comfort and security.
ii. Our world will only change when we first change.
1. It will require that you and I become outward focused, outward directed and die to the self-led, self interested lives we have been living.
8. Some folks say that peace will arise from the erasing of poverty.
a. I don’t believe that. I believe that war arises from greed and not poverty.
b. Poverty occurs because people make poor choices and their children become imprisoned by those choices.
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i. In Dt. 15:4-5 “there will be no poor among you, since the LORD will surely bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, 5 if only you listen obediently to the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all this commandment which I am commanding you today.”
ii. Folks are told that if they obey God and follow His way of living, they will prosper. But there is a problem isn’t there. We don’t always do that. We make selfish choices. We make bad decisions. And we suffer for it.
iii. Just six verses later in Dt. 15:11 God addresses the problem of the poor in the land, "For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, `You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.’
1. Why? Because we are creatures who make bad choices. We don’t follow God’s methods or plans.
2. Yet, even so, we aren’t to harden our heart toward the poor, even when it is their own fault! We have all made poor choices at one time or another.
c. Poverty continues because of injustice. Injustice grows because of greed and insensitivity. Injustice imprisons people, children, communities and even entire countries in poverty. They cannot escape without outside help!
d. What that means is my choices (as one who may not be poor) will have an effect upon those who are poor.
i. What business is it of mine that my neighbor is hungry and only has one meal a day?
ii. Everything. I must make choices that reflect my faith. Otherwise I am living a lie.
VIDEO CLIP
iii. What kind of choices can I make to change the world?
1. Consume fewer calories.
2. Do I need that junk food, chips, cookies, brownies?
3. Do I need gulf shrimp for dinner?
e. Here is a practical example:
i. For want of medicine people die in AIDS “dying wards” stacked 4 high in bunk beds in Malawi. Medicine that costs $1.00 a day can reverse the effects of AIDS and allow a person to live and work again. But because there is no medicine, hundreds die each day.
ii. How much do you spend for Cable or Satellite TV? $45.00 a month or $70.00 a month?
iii. Daily newspaper - $5.00 a week?
iv. McDonalds - $4.85 per person?
v. Coke - $1.25 from a vending machine.
f. I could read facts that would numb your ears.
i. Then you would feel like shouting, “I can’t save them ALL!”
ii. We do nothing because we cannot do everything.
iii. We do nothing because we feel powerless.
iv. Starfish story.
9. Story about Carter, the taxi driver.
Back in 1994, Carter served as taxi driver for a man from Malawi, Africa. Because Carter wasn’t “just a taxi driver” but instead was “a taxi driver in the kingdom of God”, he treated his guest with special respect as only a taxi driver in the kingdom of God can. The guest introduced Carter to some other Malawian friends, and soon Carter the taxi driver was invited to visit Malawi, which he did, in 1998.
There, Carter saw poverty he had never before imagined. He prayed, “Lord, help me bring some joy to this village.” And God answered his prayer. First, Carter realized that there was no road in the village – just a narrow path, rutted and muddy. … With a proper road, people could get around better, and elderly and sick people could be transported to the hospital. He had brought
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some money, so he offered to pay for gas and oil and drivers if the people of the village would do the work. Soon Carter’s generous spirit – the spirit of the kingdom of God – became contagious, and someone provided a grader and then more and more people volunteered to help. Three days later, they had built a proper road a mile and a quarter long. A year or so later, he returned to the village. A young man had been falsely accused of stealing and was stuck in jail. Since Carter seeks the kingdom and justice of God wherever he goes, he got involved, and soon the young man was set free. On this same visit, Carter met a boy who needed medical care that was available only in a distant city. Carter made it possible for the boy to get treatment on a regular basis by finding and convincing – who else? – a driver to take him. The next year, he went back again and this time helped some young men improve their farming. (Carter is not an agriculturalist, but he used money he had saved from his job as a taxi driver for the kingdom of God to buy them some additional seeds.) He made connections and got twenty-six soccer balls donated to the children of the village, because in the kingdom of God, fun and play are important things. Carter knew this. He even helped them get uniforms, because in the kingdom of God dignity and pride are also important things. On another trip, Carter the taxi driver’s generosity inspired a shopkeeper in the village to donate money to help some sick children get treatment for ringworm. Soon a Bible school was launched, and it grew from seventeen to eighty-five students quickly. No wonder – when you see the signs of the kingdom of God coming to your village, you want to learn all about it! Roads, rides, seeds, ringworm medicine, soccer balls and uniforms, a Bible school – these are all signs of the kingdom of God in that little village. Carter told me, “I don’t do any of this myself. God is doing it through me.” [Brian McLaren, The Secret Message Of Jesus, pp 87-89.]
a. Carter made his first trip to Malawi when he was 67 years old.
10. We can examine the problem of poverty, we can analyze the causes of poverty, and we can study the results of injustice, but until we connect PERSONALLY to it, it remains only an idea or a cause.
a. Until you and I can place a name and a face on it (Art), we cannot feel the pain that poverty causes or really be motivated to do anything about it.
b. I am going to say something harsh: Christians are not supposed to be about taking up causes. We are to take up our cross and love people.
c. Causes don’t need love. Causes don’t love. They only seek energy and devotion and time.
d. People, on the other hand love and need love.
Poverty has a face on it, it contains someone’s tears, it bear’s someone’s name it affects someone’s child or parent.
11. The Mission Team is being instructed to plan a journey so we can touch the face of the poorest in our world within 2 years.
a. Will you begin to pray about becoming personally involved? Will you make changes in your lifestyle and the way you live so that others might live?
b. On your sermon guide there are some choices you are being asked to make. Between you and God, will you make them?
12. During our time of ministry, I have become aware that many of us are in such pain that we cannot see beyond our own suffering to minister to others. But until we acknowledge that to the Lord, until we admit we are so burdened, we will be trapped in it, almost in a form of spiritual poverty. The altar is open for you today, to come and give your burden to God, to humble yourself before Him and confess that you haven’t given because you have been crushed yourself.
13. KIVA.org – microloans – you loan thru an organization, directly to a person in need. “He who loans to the poor loans to God”(Prov. 19:17).
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