“THE GENUIS OF WRONG”
“Building the right church depends on using all the wrong people”
Luke 17:20-21 (p742) March 4, 2012
INTRODUCTION:
I was sharing Wednesday night in our close encounters with God that he always seems to choose the wrong people…at least that’s what Gideon thought…
I won’t go over the whole story, but God comes to call Gideon to a place of leadership…His people have become complacent and sinful….
The Israelites are under attack and they cry out for help…God hears and he sends a messenger to a guy named Gideon…
God’s messenger finds him hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat…take my word for it…well hidden but the last place you’d thresh wheat…
The Angel of God Greets Gideon “The Lord is with you mighty warrior!”
And Gideon looks around and says…”you talkin’ to me?” “I can’t save Israel…I’m the weakest and least in my family.”
Gideon ends up being used by God to bring about victory…you can visit it in Judges chapter 6-8.
But my question is why does God seem to constantly pick the wrong people? Why does He continually come calling on the winepress hiders? Why does He pick the weak and the least?
And think about it? Rahab’s a prostitute, Moses a murderer, Abraham’s way way too old, and Timothy is way way too young…Noah gets drunk, David commits adultery, (and the Savior Jesus has Bathsheba, the women in the adultery as a direct descendant for the Son of God.)
Jesus picked fisherman and Zealots….you know what a Zealot is? It’s a Rebel…a James Dean rebel against the government. He picked skeptics…and women. Women?!!! Can you believe it? He chose violent, blasphemes, aggressive men…and women who had slept around.
God seems to have always chosen the wrong people in the Old Testament and Jesus, God in the flesh continued that trend in the New.
Why would God choose all the wrong people to build His Kingdom…To rescue His people….to lead His family?
I’d share with you first of all….
I SO WE CAN ALWAYS KNOW WHERE THE POWER COMES FROM
The Pharisees thought that power came from observation and control….they believed if they kept the rules better than anyone else (or at least were observed keeping the rules better than everyone else) they had the right to tell everyone else what God expected…they controlled through intimidation, fear and guilt.
Their belief concerning the Kingdom of God was “Cross all the T’s…Dot all the I’s and by carefully obeying all the rules…your in!
They believed they were in more than anyone else.
So when Jesus shows up…”O My goodness…are you kidding?” Eyes roll…heads shake…condescending glances are exchanged with a little wink.
Messiah’s certainly don’t look or act like that…we can tell by our observation.
The Pharisees are the theologians of the day, the Kingdom Monitors, who knew scripture like the back of their hands (instead of knowing it in the fronts of their hearts)….It seems they should have been ready to celebrate the Messiah entrance…Instead they were more prone to condemn. Observing rule and order became more important than people.
Mike Yaconelli writes in “Messy Spirituality”
Religious people love to hide behind religion. They love the rules of religion more than they love Jesus. With practice, condemners let rules become more important than the spiritual life.
John Mackie was the president of the Church of Scotland after World War II. With two other ministers from a rather severe and pietistic denomination, he traveled to remote parts of the Balkan Peninsula to check on missionaries they supported.
The three clergymen called on an Orthodox priest in a small Greek village. Excited to see the visitors, the priest offered the clergymen a glass of rare and expensive wine. Horrified, the two pietistic ministers refused. Dr. Mackie, on the other hand, took a glassful, sniffed it like wine connoisseur, sipped it, and praised its quality. He even asked for another glass. His companions were noticeably upset by Dr. Mackie’s behavior.
Later, when the three men were in the jeep again, making their way up the rough road out of the village, the two pious clergymen turned on Dr. Mackie.
“Dr. Mackie,” they said, “do you mean to tell us that you are the president of the Church of Scotland and an officer of the world Council of churches and you drink?”
Dr. Mackie had had all he could take, and his Scottish temper got the better of him. “No, I don’t,” he said, “but somebody had to be a Christian!”
My hunch is Dr. Mackie didn’t convince his condemners. The rules of their faith were much more important than showing grace. They were much more excited about condemning the faith of Dr. Mackie and the priest than they were about living their own faith.
This is exactly what happens when you teach people church is a “Spectator Sport”
That you come and observe instead of “walk in the spirit”…Look…lets go here….I don’t like what they do there…I’m going to find the Kingdom of God I like…..
And Paul says, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (1 Cor 3:16)
Jesus tells us….”the Kingdom of God isn’t a place you go…you won’t find it here or there…you won’t discover its power in the observing of all the rules…”the Kingdom of God is in you.
David Platt writes….Sadly the answer in many of our churches to the question…Don’t you know that the Spirit of God is in you?” is “No” Theoretically we get it…but practically in our churches and ministries we rely on anything but God’s Spirit in every one of our brothers and sisters to fulfill God’s plan in the world.
We don’t need Spirit filled people to perform, teach, organize or be outwardly nice…we just need the right place, the right program, the right professional minister.
Every church will foster either a participant’s approval to church or a spectator’s approval to church.
But Rick, If a church has an amazing preacher like you….a fantastic teacher like Jeff, wouldn’t we want as many people as possible to hear you guys…and I love to answer in Radical together…:”Not Necessarily…the goal of the church is never for one or two people to be equipped and empowered to lead as many people to Christ as possible. The goal should always be for all God’s people to be equipped and empowered to lead as many people as possible to Christ.”
It’s so easy to instantly equate talent, success, power and ability with “Leadership” …It’s natural for certain personality types to want to take the lead…but the aforementioned things don’t necessarily mean that man or woman is “Filed with the Holy Spirit and Wisdom.”
So….many times building the right church, and then is dependent on using all the wrong people.
Many of our churches don’t put nearly the importance on “being full of the spirit and wisdom” as they do “Husband and 1 Wife”
It should always be evident where the power comes from…not from performance or outward appearance….but from within….those who all lead by the Spirit are Sons of God”
There will come a day Paul says when all our “work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work” (1 Cor 3:13)
Gold, silver and precious stones will endure while the wood, hay and straw will go up in smoke…Paul says the quality of our work will be tested….(He’s speaking to Christian leaders….ministers, servants) Paul doesn’t say the quantity will be tested…Attendance to this won’t be in the mix…everything will focus on quality.
Warren Wiersbe pointed out something important about this passage…what’s the difference between the two types of materials mentioned…besides the obvious fact that one group is prepared and the other isn’t?
“I think it’s significant that wood, hay, and straw are abundant…right outside your door, or only a few miles away at most. Any forest, any farmer’s field has an abundance of these.
“But if you want gold, silver, and costly stones, you have to dig for them. You have to pursue with great effort. They’re not just lying around everywhere. You have to go deep into the earth.”
To me, these words are profound. Spiritual “construction” that uses wood, hay, and straw comes easy-little work, little seeking, no travail, no birthing. You just slap it up and it will look dequate-for awhile. But if you want to build something that will endure on Judgment Day, the work is much more costly.
On that day it won’t matter what your fellow Christians thought of you. It won’t matter what the marketing experts advised. You and I will stand before the One whose eyes are “like fire”. We won’t soften him up by telling him how brilliant our strategy was. We will face his searing gaze.
He will only ask whether we were boldly faithful to his Word.
Not how many people show up…not what appears to be successful, but have we constructed “people” through the spirit’s power…Have we dug deep and ask those were seeking to disciple to dig deep…..because when we do this according to the world…”We’ll use all the wrong people to build the church… let me end today with this pleas…
II NEVER FORGET THE ESPHESIANS 4 RESPONSIBILITY OF LEADERSHIP.
What is the responsibility of leaders in the church? God has given leaders to the church to equip God’s people for ministry and prepare God’s people for works of service.
True leaders are stewards of God’s Word and through the leadership of the Holy Spirit have an ability and a passionate desire to model and teach that word to others…this goes to the essence of being Radical Together and it changes everything about how we view leadership in the church.
We as leaders do not exist to plan events and programs, or provide services…Our primary responsibility is to equip people…to serve people.
Our calling isn’t to organize the church for people…our calling is to mobilize people for ministry. Why should this be our Model? ---Because it was the model of Jesus ministry while he was on earth.
He spent more time with 12 men than with everyone else put together…he poured himself into them more than having his ego stroked when 4 o 5 thousand showed up. In John 17 where he recounts his ministry before going to the cross…he doesn’t mention the multitude or the miracles…as spectacular as those things where they were not his focus…instead 40 times Jesus speaks to and about the men in whom he’d invested his life…”THEY WERE HIS FOCUS”
When it came time to leave…after the resurrection, at His ascension…there were no buildings or programs to point to and no crowds to boast of…most of the crowds had left…just 120 unschooled, ordinary people were gathered (you know…the wrong people to really do anything?) …just a small group with a small band of leaders.
And Jesus gave them 1 command as their commission.
Make Disciples…do with others what I have done with you. Don’t set in a classroom…share your lives…Don’t just show up at church…be my church…
Make disciples who will make disciples who will make disciples, and together multiply this gospel to all people…this is the simple commission I give to you…to drive my church and it should drive your life…
Daniel Webster once said, “The greatest thought that has ever entered my mind is that one day I will have to stand before a Holy God and give an account of my life.”
He’s right…someday I will stand before Jesus I know that I have been saved by His grace through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”. (Eph 2:87 “Not by works”.
But my work will be judged…the quality of my leadership will be tested….and that Day will bring to light whether I’ve settled for wood, hay or straw…
Or whether I’ve dug deep…been lead by the Sprit and by the Spirit made people more important than programs and things…
Not whether I’ve made people happy…but whether or not I’ve made people disciples.
Let’s pray.
