Faith Requires A Risk
2/9/15 1 Kings 17:7-24 John 9:35-38
The amazing thing about God is that when God wants to do something, God can use anybody to impact others for the kingdom of God. I want you to meet one such person. Here is just one person, an eleven year old who is involved in seven distinct ministries of the church helping us to become stronger as a body while at the same time growing in Christ herself. Do you know how many other young people her age need to know the love of Christ? Do you know how many of them God wants us to reach?
Jesus does. Jesus said, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send out workers into his harvest field. Have you ever knew there was a job to be done, but you just felt like, I don’t care, let somebody else do it. You may have felt like, “ I have done my part” or “ that’s not by job” or “those people should have been more responsible.”
Jesus understands when we feel like that, because believe it or not, there a few times when Jesus felt that way himself. When Jesus came, his ministry was first directed toward the Jews because they were God’s chosen people. A lady came to him that was not Jewish, and asked him to cast a demon out of her daughter. Jesus told her, no, that's not my job right now. I was not sent here to do that. But the woman showed such faith in Jesus that he was moved to compassion and he healed her daughter.
When you look around at us what do you see? Do you see successful people who have their acts together? People who you wish you could be like? People who are closer to God than you are. What about the people you encounter each day? We see people as being successful, happy with their lives, with fine homes, great cars, and wonderful relationships. We are deceived into thinking that people with fame and popularity somehow wouldn’t be interested in knowing Christ or don’t really need God in their lives at all. But its all a lie.
Do you know what Jesus sees when he looks at others, and when he looks at us. He sees us as being harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Is there anybody here being harassed by trying to get bills paid or trying to make a relationship work that just isn’t? Is there anybody feeling isolated and alone, and as though God is far away right now? Anybody feeling like you have done all you can and things still are not working out. If just one more thing is added to your life, you are going to want to scream.
If any of this applies to you, you are in the right place because the church is where God wants people to find healing. When Jesus saw the people, it says he had compassion on them. The word compassion describes the deep inner mercy of God, that God wants to pour on his people.
People need to know about God’s love for them. I was reading about Ahab who was a king in Israel, who married queen Jezebel. These were two wicked people who completely did the worst kinds of sins imaginable including outright murder. It was said of Ahab, 1 Kings 21:25-26 (TNIV)
25 (There was never anyone like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, urged on by Jezebel his wife.
26 He behaved in the vilest manner by going after idols, like the Amorites the LORD drove out before Israel.)
After a lifetime of disobedience, Ahab heard one message fell to his knees and repented before God. God saw it, and reversed the calamity God was about to bring in Ahab’s life. Do you know how many Ahab’s there in the world today who think God would never accept them because of all they have done. Yet God reached out in Compassion.
The 500 Campaign is about compassion on those who are missing out on the mercy of God simply because they don’t know it God’s mercy exist. Some people haven’t rejected God, they don’t even know that God is an option to what they have. God has given us a building in which we can serve 500 people on a Sunday. Why should we not fill each of those seats for Christ. Our goal is to average 500 people each Sunday, who in the future will help us to reach 500 more.
So far we turned in pledges of 178 people we are praying for, that God will use us to bring into the life of this church. Most people who come into a church, come because a friend or a relative invited them. We often feel as though, before we can tell others about God, we have to get everything together in our own lives. After all we don’t want to be hypocrits.
That’s a lie from Satan. None of us will ever get our lives so together that we become worthy to share Jesus Christ. None of us ever get to that point of perfection. We also don’t want to spread the myth, that if you become a Christian, you’re going to become perfect and never sin again.
We are not right before God because of our righteousness. We are right before God, because Jesus was righteous and God gives the righteousness of Jesus to us. So we come before God, not with the good things we have done, but with the mercy we have received which was freely given to us. We are inviting people to come to a God of compassion and mercy who wants to change their lives and give them life.
The 500 Campaign is an admission that not only do we need God in our lives, but that others need God as well. To find the life that God wants us to have is to make ourselves available to God for God to use us to minister to others. One of the things that is true about all of us, is we all are pretty selfish. Selfishness defines the human heart. We attempt to bring that selfishness into our relationship with God and to our service in the church.
We are called to be servants in the body of Christ. Yet somehow we have come to believe that my joy in the church is to be dependent on how the church serves me and my desires. We also redefine church, from being the body of Christ, to an organization that does things my way. Instead of being servants serving, we become defenders of our way of seeing things.
Are we really ready to be offered to Christ to do as he pleases. Sometimes I’m afraid to do just that, because my will is not God’s will. Paul said that he knew what is to be in need and what it is to have plenty. What if this is God’s will for you to enter into a period of need. Will you still be content for the cause of Christ. Will you still make yourself available for Him to use. Or will you demand a change in your circumstances first. God if you do this for me, then I will do that.
The 500 Campaign is letting go of the idea that Jesus created the church to serve me, and surrendering to the idea that Jesus chose me to equip me to help build his kingdom as I grow in my relationship to him. You see, the closer we get to Jesus, the more like Jesus we become. We can’t get closer to Jesus without surrendering our will, to his will.
We can’t closer to Jesus without choosing to love each other. 1 John 3:20 tells us that anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. We think we will find God in some distant spiritual place, but God is actually in the common place situations around us. That person we want to change so desperately, might be there because God wants to change something inside of us.
The 500 Campaign is an admission that I need to love those inside of the church just as much as I love those outside of the church whom God wants us to reach. Pastor Toby preached last week that love involves a sacrifice. How much of a sacrifice are we willing to make to discover the life that God has for us. Jesus said, whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever is willing to give his life for Jesus’s sake will find it.
How much of the gospel do we really believe is true. Some of us believe all of it, and yet we act as though we don’t. If we saw a car go off the road and start smoking, instinctively, those of us who are able, would stop our car and run over to help the person. Compassion would cause us to momentarily forget about ourselves and reach out to help that other person. It would be the right thing to do.
Yet we say we believe that Jesus died so that we could be saved. What did he save us from. He saved us from a life without meaning without God. He also saved us from the judgment of God which clearly states that the penalty for sin is death.
Those who choose to live without God, will be given that same right all throughout eternity. To live without God, is to side with Satan. Satan will be cast into the lake of fire along with all those who have sided with him. Isn’t it strange that we will save a life from a burning car, and think very little of saving a soul that may spend eternity in hell.
The 500 Campaign is admission, that we want to give people hope for today, but that we also care about where others spend eternity. The only thing that will keep the 500 Campaign from becoming a reality is the fear of taking a risk. In our Old Testament lesson, the widow had to take a risk to bake a cake for Elijah. Should she give up what she had, on the word of a man who said, this is what God says.
She had to overcome her own selfishness and her love for her son to offer what she had to this perfect stranger. She could have said no. Had she not done it, both she and her son would have died. She did not know that it would be a couple of more years before it would rain again. She responded with using the talents she had to make a life for her and Elijah. God provided for her in ways that she never thought possible. Who knows how many of her other relatives and friends were able to eat from some of that oil and flour? They were glad she overcame her fear and her selfishness because it made life possible for them.
The 500 Campaign is a victory over our fear and selfishness in order to bring life both to ourselves and to others. Her obedience led to the later miracle of her son coming back to life from the dead. Who knows what miracle is there in the future for you, because of a willingness to say yes to the 500 Campaign today.
Here is a section of prayer that Erwin Lutzer led at Founder’s Week that I think is appropriate for us to pray.
(Read Prayer Insert together)
In my utmost for his highest the author wrote, “Tell God you are ready to be offered and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.” Be prepared though for a journey of lifetime. It’s going to require your faith to take a risk.
