Early in the morning of Sunday, August 13, 1961, the East German government began to block off East Berlin and the GDR from West Berlin with barbed wire and antitank obstacles. Most Berliners were asleep while it was done. Streets were torn up, and barricades of paving stones were erected. Tanks gathered at crucial places. The subway and local railway services between East and West Berlin were interrupted. Residents of East Berlin and the GDR were no longer allowed to enter West Berlin, among them were 60,000 commuters who had worked in West Berlin to that date. After 10 days of wall construction, citizens of West Berlin were no longer allowed to enter East Berlin. 171 people were killed or died attempting to escape at the Berlin Wall the 28 years that followed August 13, 1961.
On the 9th of November, 1989, the Border separating Western from Eastern Germany was effectively opened. It was no small matter. The barrier that had kept people from freedom, that had kept a Communist controlled country from outside connections, was taken down.
I once mentioned in a sermon how I’d like to have a piece of the wall. A few days later, in walked a lady with a framed piece of the wall, documented and everything.
It’s so significant that a barrier so decisively placed, for so long, would come down. And when it did, there were celebrations galore.
We’ve been looking into some of the different things that get in-between people and God. They’re for real – things that have been set up, across which a person can’t seem to travel, even if they wanted to – barriers like not trusting the Bible, not understanding the Bible, feeling like I don’t need the Church – probably you’ve known someone who was hindered by at least one of those things. Maybe you were at one time. But, this morning, I want to make this a little more personal. What if the thing that’s keeping your friend away from God is…you? What if the church itself is what’s keeping people from God?
We know we don’t want to do that! Why, that would be exactly the opposite of what we’re all about, wouldn’t it?!
But it wouldn’t be the first time it has happened. Sometime around 64 AD something was happening in the church on the island of Crete. Paul had left Titus there to get things in order. But there was a problem – false teachers.
Titus 1:10-14 The Message
For there are a lot of rebels out there, full of loose, confusing, and deceiving talk. Those who were brought up religious and ought to know better are the worst. They've got to be shut up. They're disrupting entire families with their teaching, and all for the sake of a fast buck. One of their own prophets said it best:
The Cretans are liars from the womb,
barking dogs, lazy bellies.
He certainly spoke the truth. Get on them right away. Stop that diseased talk of Jewish make-believe and made-up rules so they can recover a robust faith.
Several hundred years earlier, Epimenides of Crete had written these words – a poem by a Cretan about Cretans.
They fashioned a tomb for thee, O Holy and high one –
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
The funny part is that Paul quotes this and then says, “This is true!” Sure enough, history says the people of Crete did have a bad reputation. They even created a verb from the word Cretan that meant “to lie.” The problem was that this was seeping over into the Church, and it was creating problems. One of the most obvious is that it would keep people from God.
Now, I want to speak first and mostly here to the people who are part of the Church right now. It’s not right that people will use someone else’s faults as an excuse, but it’s a fact that they will.
• “I can’t help the way I am. It’s my parents’ fault.”
• “I can’t help that I stole it. They shouldn’t have left it out in the open like that!”
• “I can’t help it that I lost my temper. They should have stopped me, and he shouldn’t have provoked me.”
We live in a pass-the-buck society. I know people shouldn’t do that, but they do. They were doing it in Crete, and Paul said for the people who were giving others an excuse, “Rebuke them! Get on them right away! Stop it!”
Yeah, but that was Crete and this is Rockford. But they also do it in Rockford.
This morning, while I speak to you who are believers and you who are already a part of CCC, I want to go straight to the conclusion this morning:
People are using someone else’s actions to excuse their own:
Listen to some of the reasons people are giving today for steering clear of the Church:
• It’s full of hypocrites; It’s corrupt
• It’s boring or irrelevant
• It let me down; someone burned me
• My parents weren’t involved in it.
You may have heard those reasons before. Today, I want all of us to take them a little more seriously. If someone is leveling that accusation against the Church because of you, change it!
There’s too much of this. There are too many excuses that we help reinforce that keep people from God.
Are you a hypocrite? Stop it! Stop being one thing here on Sunday morning and something different at your job. Stop speaking one way in the youth group and another way in the locker room. Stop acting one way around your peers but another way when you get home to your family! Start being a real person! Stop giving people the number one excuse that gets used for not being involved in a church.
Peter says,
1 Peter 2:1
Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
Are you treating your relationship with Jesus like it’s boring? Are you living like life in Jesus is irrelevant? Stop it! Stop giving people outside of Jesus another excuse to stay away! Stop preferring your comfort and ease over doing whatever it takes to help someone know Jesus! It’s our job as the Church to show the world that God is real and relevant to where they are in life.
1 Corinthians 9:22b
…I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
When someone comes to visit, are you creating negative impressions by griping, or slandering, or gossiping? Are you somehow convincing visitors that we’re no different than the rest of the world? If that’s you, Stop it! Stop convincing people who are investigating Jesus that this place has nothing better to offer to them than a bar down the street! Why do you suppose that Paul commanded:
Philippians 2:14
Do everything without complaining or arguing,
James 4:11a
Brothers, do not slander one another.
Ephesians 4:31-32
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Why? One very good reason is because the world is looking in to see if we’re walking our talk; if it’s for real, or if it’s just a bunch of judgmental rhetoric by people who are no different than everyone else.
There are plenty of reasons to give attention to these things, but the one I want to focus you on today is this: I don’t want to be the excuse or the reason that someone finds to ignore Jesus Christ! I don’t want my words or my actions to be the reason that someone will come up with when they’re explaining later why they have no use for the Church or no need for Jesus!
This starts with me and you as an individual. You’re responsible for yourself to begin with. But whatever you choose, it extends to your church family as well.
Lately, the elders along with the staff have been re-looking at this church family’s stated mission and vision and core values – those things that are foundational for all we do here – that describe who we are and what we’re about as a church family. Have you heard it or read it lately?
“Central Christian Church exists to glorify God by reaching people for Jesus and growing them in the Holy Spirit, both locally and globally, so that His kingdom may expand.”
I wasn’t here when those words were put together, but there are some things about them that I really appreciate. I appreciate how that statement reminds us that we’re not here for ourselves. We’re here for others – to reach others, to grow others, for the sake of God’s kingdom.
Why are you here this morning? For over 100 years, this Church has been serving the people who were yet to become a part of it, otherwise we wouldn’t be here! That means the moment we carelessly become a reason or an excuse that someone manages to use to ignore Jesus, we’ve become exactly the opposite of what we’re supposed to be.
I’m frequently asking God to trust us with the souls of people who need Him, to trust us to reach them with the truth of the Gospel, and to help those people grow in the Holy Spirit, so that God’s Kingdom may expand. Will He trust us? Only if we as a church family are careful to be sure we’re providing a rescue and not an excuse for people who are separated from God.
Now, I’ve been speaking especially to people who make up CCC.
I want next to speak to those of you who aren’t really a part of this whole scene. I want to speak for the last few minutes especially to any of you who might have been feeling like the Church is the main thing keeping you from God.
We’re just being honest here. You know how a family is supposed to have some more mature people in it, and then there are often some who aren’t mature at all. Well, the Church is a family. There are people in the church who aren’t very spiritual, who aren’t very mature, who still don’t “get it.” In fact, there are people in this place who have a long way to go when it comes to living like Jesus.
I hope it’s always that way. I hope there are always plenty of people around here who haven’t given their lives to Jesus, who don’t know the Bible, and who just really don’t know what to do about life. Because, when there are people like that with us here each week, it means we’re doing our job!
Matthew 9:12
Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
Friend, understand that the Church is like a hospital for sick people. The last time you went to the hospital with a medical need, did you leave in disgust? Did you look around and say, “I’m not going back there. It’s full of sick people!” Duh?!
Of course it is! It’s a hospital! And when you finally realize that the Church is supposed to be a house of prayer for all people – a kind of hospital for a sin-sick world and not a museum – you’ll be able to accept that it has its share of imperfect people. Yes, there are hypocrites. Yes, there are people who speak when they shouldn’t. There are people who will disappoint you. That’s because there are people in the Church, and some of those people either aren’t mature in their faith yet or aren’t Christ-followers at all yet. As some people have said, “The Church wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the people!” Ha!
Now if you’re on the outside looking in, and that bothers you, please understand that the Church is definitely made up of imperfect people. Is there some other kind of people? And we’re not gathering here under the pretense that we’re a group of perfect people, and then when you become a perfect person, you can come here too.
But you’ve had your reasons over time to keep a distance from the Church. In fact, of all things, you feel like the Church has been one of the main reasons you are at a distance from God.
Let me suggest a few questions that may help:
How much do you put up with in other places?
For instance, you don’t like that there are hypocrites in the Church. Don’t you put up with them everywhere else? It doesn’t keep you from the mall, Wal Mart, or from voting does it?
Maybe the Church seems irrelevant. There are certainly ways the Church needs to grow to remain interesting and to be relevant to your life. But, let me ask you to think about how irrelevant the world is when it comes to matters that are eternal in nature.
“Good Morning America.” In case you never do, just watch it some morning. After a few minutes discussing the lighter stuff, like terrorism, world economic collapse, and the latest widespread natural disaster, GMA gets on to the weightier, more important issues of life – the royal wedding, the most popular YouTube videos, what someone was wearing as they walked down the red carpet, and which celebrity couple is adopting an orphan and naming him “Purple Thursday 12.”
When it gets to issues beyond your paycheck or your retirement fund, when it gets to crises in life that can’t be answered by the world’s sappy answers, when it comes to the things that will last forever, just how relevant is the world, really? How much help is the world to you, really, when it comes to things that actually matter?
While the church may miss the mark in some ways, but it’s at least pointed in the right general direction; it’s at least pointed at addressing the stuff of life that has substance.
Maybe you’ve been burned – you’ve had a bad experience some time in the past – a bad minister, a bad church member, maybe just a bad church, and it has really kept you away.
Let me ask, have you ever had a bad experience at Wal Mart? Have you ever run into a bad mechanic, an arrogant doctor, a grumpy waitress? I have.
You know what I did? When I could, I went to a different one! But I still needed groceries. I still needed medical care. I still needed to get my car repaired. I still wanted to be able to go out to eat. I didn’t just quit all those things because I got burned. I still need those things.
Whether your experience in trying to get there has been good or bad, you still need a relationship with God. The Scriptures make it clear that God loves His Church and is using His Church today, even with all of its imperfect people.
In fact, the way that God works through us in spite of our imperfections is a way He is showing off His wisdom today.
Conclusion:
Ephesians 3:10-11
His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amazing, isn’t it? God is using His Church today as a display of His wisdom.
Can’t you just hear the questions of the angels? “Uh, Lord, are You sure that giving people grace and expecting them to live for You after that is taking some big risks? And can you imagine the accusations of the Devil, just like he did about Job; “Lord, Who are you kidding? You’re going to entrust the whole future of Your plan to the Church and no one else?
And God is proclaiming in the heavenly realms this morning how wise He is to carry out His plan through His church.
People thought the removal of the Berlin wall was never going to happen. Maybe you think that about whatever is a barrier between you and God this morning. November 9, 1989. You know, May 6, 2012 could become a day just as significant for you – the day that the wall between you and God came down – the day you crossed over from death into life….
