Welcome once again to WestShore Community Church. It’s been twenty-seven months since we began weekly services, and during that time we’ve been through a lot together. We’ve shared times of rejoicing and celebration – Linda and Scott’s wedding, for instance, and the birth of their daughter Hope. The birth of Patrick B_. Little David coming into the S_ family. We seen several people profess faith in Christ – Gary S_, who braved the hot waters of the galvanized steel watering trough to be baptized. Vicki M_, who was baptized twice – once accidentally, at Seneca Lake camp, and then later on purpose. And Amy L_ and Sarah B_, who chose the more traditional venue of the baptistry at Park Heights Baptist Church. We’re also thankful for the recent faith of Bev and Sean C_. Perhaps they’ll be the first people ever to be baptized here in the Rec Center pool.
We’ve also shared sorrows. Work-related stress. Illnesses. Miscarriages. Struggles with alcohol. Struggles with marriage relationships, struggles with parents and children. We’ve walked with one another through some intensely personal and excruciatingly painful experiences; supporting one another, encouraging one another, listening to one another, praying for one another.
In the past 2½ years, we’ve shared a lot of good times working and playing together. Cooking Bratwurst on the fourth of July, riding in the parade in the back of the Big Red Truck. Raking people’s leaves for free, just to show that God loves them. Playing kickball at Seneca Lake. Eating hand-cranked ice cream and playing volleyball. Enjoying potlucks on the S_’s deck. And week after week, we’ve assembled together on Sunday mornings to unpack the trailer, set up folding chairs, connect sound equipment, arrange the doughnuts, welcome visitors; and then sing, and talk, and listen, and pray, and give, and teach, and serve one another in the name of Christ.
Along with all that, we’ve experienced the emotional ups and downs of people coming and going; people joining our fellowship, staying for a while, and then moving on. Some visit only once. But others journey with us for a weeks, or months, or even years, and then depart. That’s hard, especially when it involves people we’ve grown close to, because our hearts are knit together. Yes, we understand that loss and separation are an inescapable fact of life until Christ returns; but still, if you allow yourself to care about people, it always hurts when they go.
There’s more, but you get the idea. And all of that – the joys and sorrows, the highs and lows, the celebrations and struggles – all of that is part of being a church, a living fellowship of believers. Sharing those things is what it means to be part of a body, a family, a community. And the purpose of it all is draw us into a deeper fellowship with the Lord; to transform us and make us like Christ, so that we might receive his grace and mercy, and might give him glory, until the day of his return.
My point in reviewing all this is that our life together is what makes this a church; a completely real, fully authentic, church of Jesus Christ. Are we small? Yes, at least for now. Are we financially self-supporting? No. From the perspective of our denomination, we’re classified as a "mission," because we haven’t formally declared our independence. But what makes us a church isn’t our size, or the source of our funding, or our denominational status. God isn’t greatly concerned with those things. What makes a church is the Spirit of God moving among a people, changing them, uniting them to Christ and to one another. And for the last three years, this is exactly what He has been doing here among us. No, we don’t own a building. We don’t have a 50-member orchestra or a 200-member choir. But we do have the Spirit of God. We have Christ as our head and as the source of our life. We are just as much a church of Jesus Christ as any congregation, anywhere on the face of the planet, because God is here. And, far from being done with us, I believe he’s just getting started. Why? Because there are still hundreds, and thousands, and tens of thousands of unchurched people right outside our doors, people who need Christ, people whom we are uniquely well-suited to reach.
But more than that, we have a promise. In Matthew, Jesus declares that he will build his church; that the work of establishing and caring for churches is his work. Not only that, but victory is assured; the power of the Spirit, working through the church, will overcome the power of sin and death.
"… I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." -- Matthew 16:18
"I will build my church." It’s not our church, it’s his. This isn’t something we dreamed up; it’s a work of God that we’ve been invited to be a part of. And nothing, not even the demons of hell, will be able to stop the church from surviving, and thriving, and growing, and reproducing, and prevailing in the lives of men and women. Does that mean that no individual church will ever close its doors? No. Does it mean that no attempt at planting a church will ever fail? No. History and experience prove otherwise. But what it does mean is that church planting is not a human work. It’s not a matter of our strength or our ability. It’s a work of God, backed by God’s power, undergirded with God’s might.
My prayer is that God would impress upon our hearts this conviction; that his power is more than sufficient to build his church; that nothing in heaven or earth can prevent him from accomplishing his purposes for this body. I pray that he will give us a clear, compelling vision of what he can do in and through this church, a vision that will fill us with joy and stimulate us to prayer, a vision that will motivate us to invite others to join us, to say, "come and see what God is doing!" Not a false vision, not a pipe dream, not a pleasant fiction, but a vision of unseen reality.
In the Old Testament book of Second Kings, we find the prophet Elisha in serious trouble. The Aramaens and the Israelites are at war. But whenever the Arameans prepare an ambush, God reveals their plans to Elisha and Elisha warns Israel. Finally, the king of Aram has had enough:
". . . Time and again Elisha warned the king [of Israel], so that he was on his guard in such places. This enraged the king of Aram. He summoned his officers and demanded of them, "Will you not tell me which of us is on the side of the king of Israel?" "None of us, my lord the king," said one of his officers, "but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom." "Go, find out where he is," the king ordered, "so I can send men and capture him." The report came back: "He is in Dothan." Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there. They went by night and surrounded the city. When the servant of [Elisha] the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" the servant asked. "Don’t be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And Elisha prayed, "O LORD, open his eyes so he may see." Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."
-- 2 Kings 6:10-17
Our problem is that our point of view is extremely limited. We can’t see the end from the beginning. We don’t comprehend all that God is doing and planning. And so we get discouraged, because we focus on a small piece of the picture. We see the dangers, the risks, the potential for failure, and we panic. We forget that there’s more to the story, much more. We forget about God’s unlimited power. We forget that God has unlimited resources at his disposal, that He can do whatever He pleases, whenever he pleases. Oh, we can see the problems with complete clarity; we can see the enemy surrounding us. We can point out every stamping horse, every armored chariot, every gleaming sword. We can imagine them thundering down the hill to attack. It’s almost overwhelming. Like us, when Elisha’s servant looked up and saw the enemy’s power and murderous intention, he became frightened. His heart turned to water. "What are we going to do?" he gasped. His problem, and ours, is that He could only see the enemy. What he needed was to see with equal clarity the hills full of God’s armies. And what we need is for God to give us eyes of faith that can see beyond our present circumstances. We need to be reminded that there’s more to reality than what we perceive with our senses, or understand with our minds. My prayer is that God will give us faith to see, not only what opposes us, but also the great power of God, surrounding the enemy on every side, ready to go to battle on our behalf. As Paul reminds us, "the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." (1 John 4:4)
Now, although my primary topic this morning is the building of the church, we can’t pass by this point without noting its application to every other area of life. Often our problem is not that we misperceive the difficulties and obstacles confronting us. Those we see with painful clarity. The problem is that we don’t also recognize the far greater power of God in the situation. All we can see is what’s opposed to us; we don’t take into account that God is there, too. We allow ourselves to be guided by sight, rather than faith, and so we become anxious, worried, fearful. What’s the cure? Well, unfortunately, we can’t always depend on receiving a literal vision of angelic warriors to boost our spirits. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But we can strengthen our faith by immersing ourselves in the Scriptures, so that the promises of God, and the ways of God, become second nature to us. Then, when we encounter some threatening situation, our minds will naturally go to what we know of God, rather than focusing only on what’s in front of us at that moment. Instead of being overwhelmed with fear of what we can see, we’ll be comforted with the truth of what is unseen. As Paul writes:
"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." – 2 Corinthians 4:18
Paul doesn’t mean that we spend our time imagining things, or playing "let’s pretend." He’s not talking about delusions or hallucinations. He means that we ought to dwell on the truth about God as it’s revealed in the Scriptures. Then we’ll be able to respond in faith, rather than fear.
There’s another point I’d like to make concerning the church, which is that God often prefers to do great things with unimpressive means. He often accomplishes great works through people or groups who seem inadequate. And the reason is very clear. The greater the disparity between our power and what God does through us, the more obvious it becomes to everyone that it was a"God thing" – that it was God who did it, and not us. Listen to this story concerning Gideon:
"Early in the morning, [Gideon] and all his men camped at the spring of Harod. . . The LORD said to Gideon, "You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her, announce now to the people, ’Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’ " So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained. But the LORD said to Gideon, "There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will sift them for you there. . . So Gideon took the men down to the water. There the LORD told him, "Separate those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink." Three hundred men lapped with their hands to their mouths. All the rest got down on their knees to drink. The LORD said to Gideon, "With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the other men go, each to his own place." So Gideon sent the rest of the Israelites to their tents but kept the three hundred, who took over the provisions and trumpets of the others." – Judges 7:1-8
I doubt that this particular bit of military strategy has ever been used as a case study at West Point. Gideon begins with a force of thirty-two thousand warriors, preparing to attack a rather formidable Midianite army. Verse twelve of chapter seven tells us that "The Midianites, the Amalekites and all the other eastern peoples had settled in the valley, thick as locusts. Their camels could no more be counted than the sand on the seashore." In other words, Gideon and his army are already badly outnumbered, their likelihood of success very small. And so what does God do? Incredibly, he makes the odds even worse. First, he reduces their number from 32,000 to 10,000 – more than a two-thirds reduction. You could argue that this was a good move, because it set aside those who were afraid, those who might desert or flee the battle. But that was just a warm-up. God then reduces them down to only three hundred men, less than one percent of the number he started with. Why? "In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her." In other words, God wanted all the credit. He wanted to make absolutely sure that when he routed the enemies of Israel, he would receive all the glory. And so he took an already outnumbered fighting force and reduced it down even further, to the point that, humanly speaking, there was little hope of success.
The application to our situation is probably obvious, but I’ll make it explicit. Over the past few months, God has not added to our numbers. I’m sure that many of you are asking "Why, God?" I’ve wondered that myself. "What are you up to, Lord? What are you trying to tell us?" And the truth is, I can’t say with certainty what God is doing. I didn’t hear a voice or see an angel. But I’ll tell you what I think. I think God may be putting us in the same place as Gideon’s army; taking an already small congregation and reducing it even further, so that when he does do something great and mighty among us, everyone will know that it was his doing, and not ours. And in truth, we wouldn’t want it any other way. We don’t want to see the works that we can do. We want to see the kind of powerful works that only the Spirit of God can do. Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if God did just that? Are you willing to pray with me that he would do that?
In your personal life, God may be doing the same thing. Taking away what you had stored up, removing the things you were depending on. Diminishing your finances. Diminishing your health. Diminishing the stability of your key relationships. Maybe what God is doing is removing anything you might be tempted to depend on other than Jesus Christ. Maybe He wants it clear to everyone that your joy, and peace, and contentment come from him, and him alone. If so, then it’s not punishment; it’s wise, loving discipline.
There’s another part of this story that I think may be encouraging to you. Continuing with verse nine:
"During that night the LORD said to Gideon, "Get up, go down against the camp, because I am going to give it into your hands. If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah and listen to what they are saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack the camp." So he and Purah his servant went down to the outposts of the camp." -- Judges 7:9-11
God had told Gideon was he was going to do. He was going to give the Midianite armies into their hands. Yet here Gideon was with his three hundred men, looking down into the valley at the thousands upon thousands of armed men, and he was a little afraid. You might expect God to rebuke him, but he doesn’t. Instead, God provides a means of encouragement. He gives Gideon an option. "If you’re still afraid, Gideon, go down there and listen." So Gideon goes into the valley and overhears one of the Midianites telling another about a dream he’d had, in which Gideon comes and wipes them out. After Gideon heard that, he returned to his own camp and ordered his men to attack.
God understands our weaknesses. He doesn’t demand perfect faith. He doesn’t require that we stride confidently forward, untroubled by doubts or second thoughts. He doesn’t expect us never to falter. He makes allowances for who we are – sinful people, trying to do the right thing, but hindered by weakness and constantly in need of his grace and mercy. The point is that in spite of Gideon’s initial fears, he did follow God to the best of his ability, and God honored that and greatly blessed him. In the same way, it’s OK if we have doubts and fears. God will accommodate our weaknesses and bless us, if we will exercise whatever faith we have and look to him for help and encouragement along the way.
(For an .rtf file of this and other sermons, see www.journeychurchonline.org/messages.htm)
