A lot of people think the Bible is a book of rules. A lot of people think of the Bible as a source of
doctrines - of right teachings about God. A lot of people consider the Bible, because it is inspired
by God, to basically be God. And that’s the people who respect the Bible.
There are others think that the Bible is almost too outdated and irrelevant to even bother with. They’ve seen the Bible used to support racism, war and the oppression of women. They’ve seen people fight over it and argue about it in a way that just doesn’t seem Christian. So they don’t bother with it.
Both of these views are at least two things. They are commonly held by a lot of people. And they are quite far off the mark. As we give more and more thought to what it means to be a church, a faith community and a covenant people, it’s important that we figure how to relate to the Bible.
The first lot of people I described have it sort of right. In the Bible we do find a recommended way of living- the Bible does tell us how to live well together, with strangers and with God. In the Bible we do find truth - we find God’s revealed will and God’s revealed truth.
But we also find that God created everything, and that God is a Spirit. He made the world, but he is other than the world. He is above it. Nothing created can be said to be God. That’s why it’s important to state that the Bible is not God. It contains His thoughts, but it cannot contain his mind. It contains his will for us, but it cannot contain Him. Period.
The second lot of people have perhaps some good reasons to have gotten it wrong. They have seen the church misuse the Bible in some cases and along with that misuse they have seen anger and unloving attitudes that make it very hard to take the Bible seriously. Because if people who take the Bible so seriously can be so seriously unpleasant and unloving...well that’s doesn’t make any sense.
What is our relationship to the Bible? How does this book, God’s Word, relate to us. How should we see it? How should we respond to it? How do we avoid some of the mistakes others have made?
The most obvious fact about the Bible that is often overlooked is that it is a collection of stories. Real stories. Actual things that happened to actual people. For that reason the Bible is pretty untidy. There are parts of the Bible hat still make me shudder or groan at times.
Nearly all of the “heroes” of the Bible are messed up people who are given gifts. Abraham was a fairly confused and not overly honourable fellow who let fear get the better of him once too often. Yet he was given the gift of nations {Gen 12:1-3).
David was a shepherd and apparently an ok king, but he was also an adulterer and a murderer. Yet he was given the gift of being called, in the end, “a man after God’s own heart”. And Jesus Christ came from the line of David.
And the list goes on. Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, had been a murderer who sincerely thought that every Christian he killed brought a smile to God’s heart.
Eventually in one of the most bizarre turn-arounds in history, he became the guy that God used the most in the early church to spread the gospel, and he himself was killed by others who were pretty sure they were doing God a favour. Paul understood that life and faith and Jesus Christ were gifts to be cherished.
So the Bible can sometimes contain messy stuff. Human stuff. Stories about people and their friendship with God, people and their mistakes. People at their lowest points. People when they were hopeless. Scared. People when they had done some really, truly stupid and self-destructive things. But also, people who’s lives changed when they encountered...God. The Bible is the story of people encountering God.
It contains their dramatic highs and lows, their fallenness and their redemption by God. And it also contains the story of one unique life that never stumbled, one perfect human life that actually showed us what it really means to live as a human.
One life that showed us that even though life is messy and our lives can be a terrible mix-up, that’s not the way it has to be. One life that points to a new drama, a new humanity, a redeemed humanity: Jesus
The name I’ve given this sermon is “Your Role in God’s Drama”. I could have called it your role in God’s story. Same thing. We are God’s people. We are people of God’s covenant. A covenant is an agreement.
The agreement is that God sent his son into the world so that whoever believes in him will be saved, and we agree to believe this, and to live our lives in a way that shows that me mean it when we say we believe it. So we are among those saved by God in Christ.
We are a community of God’s beloved children who he has called out of darkness and into his wonderful light. And we, too, have a story. You have a story. If you are a Christian, your story will have connecting points to stories in the Bible. Your story has a past. Your story has a future, just like our story as a church has a past and also a future. It’s said that in order to understand where you are going, you need to understand where you’ve come from. Please understand that your story matters. It matters because you belong to the people of God, the church of Jesus Christ.
This is a big topic, and one that can’t really be covered in one message. What I hope to do, though, is cause us to start thinking seriously about our lives and our life together as a continuation of the story of God’s people. We are a part of God’s drama in this community, the story that is being written by God through our very lives.
There are two things that we need to keep in mind as we start to think in this way. Two things to discover. The first is that your story is the story of God’s beloved child. Your story is not a randomly connected series of moments painful and stressful, happy and fulfilling.
The same author who weaves together the story of the Bible weaves together the threads of your ife. This applies particularly to Christians. How do I know this? [All things work together...]
Why does this matter? If this is true, your life has a very profound point to it. Your life means much. There is purpose and value and intent in your life. You are being shaped. Your experiences are forming in you a picture of what God wants you to be. Christ is being formed in you. Jesus, who is your hope of glory. It is said that who we are is the sum total of our choices.
Good character results from good choices.
Bad character is the fruit of a lot of bad choices. And yet we all make all kinds of choices, some good and some bad. How does it turn out for the good? There is one answer to that question. The answer is God.
You are God’s beloved daughter. You are God’s beloved son. I don’t think it’s possible to dwell on that reality for too long. You know what it means to be the beloved of God? It means he favours you. He chooses you. I often tell my kids that out of all the boys and girls in the world, I love them more than the rest combined. And I mean that. I like them. I enjoy them. I cherish them. I delight in them.
God likes you. He enjoys you. He cherishes you. He delights in you. You are the apple of his eye. You know why you can’t dwell on that for too long? You know why that line of thought can never become selfish or self-indulgent?
Because each of us think too little of ourselves. Think of someone you know who seems incredibly arrogant and always acts like they are better than the rest or that they just think better,run better, feel more deeply, or whatever. Get to really know that person and you’ll find a small, scared child who is just trying to convince themselves of something they really believe is a lie.
And what about the rest of us? What about the average person you see on the street, the average person sitting beside you this afternoon? Most of the rest of us don’t believe we amount to much at all. But the Bible tells us we are mistaken when we think this way. Very mistaken. And it’s a big mistake...because if we believe this big mistake, we live a shadow of the life that God intends for us to live.
What does the Bible say? “We are God’s workmanship”. You are the finished product of who God has made you to be...up to this point in your life. There’s more to be done. That’s what makes the future interesting. But right now, you are God’s workmanship. And God doesn’t make garbage. He only makes the best.
“We are God’s workmanship...created in Christ Jesus”. When you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour God began a process of recreating you. He gave you a new nature. He gave you a new name. Once we were “Not a People”. “Now we are the people of God”.
When you became His you no longer had to live as a slave to sin. Something new and beautiful has begun in you. This is because you are the beloved child of the most high God.
“We are God’s workmanship...created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do”. Eph 2:10 This leads to my second point this afternoon. You are the beloved of God...meditate on that for a very long time. The longer you spend, the greater the benefit to you.
And you were made for a reason. You were made for what the Bible calls “good works”. That’s to distinguish between that kind and another kind. We were intended for good, not evil, to love, not to hate, to create, not to destroy.
I said there were two things to keep in mind today as we talk about your role in God’s drama. The first is that your story is the story of God’s beloved child. The second is that your role in this big God-story that we are living, is to live for the good. To bless, to make, to heal, to love. To live for the good means to live for God. “There is only one who is good”, said Jesus. [Mt 19:17]
How can you best live for the good? How can you best play your part in this drama. Two ways: 1. Obey God. 2. Use the gifts that God gives you to bless others. Why obey God? Isn’t that kind of an outmoded idea? Isn’t it better to do stuff for God, to spend you time and energy sacrificing your time and energy?
Samuel asked a question like this. He asked, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offering and sacrifices a much as obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams”
One of the toughest things about being a Christian and being part of a church is that it’s quite possible to mistake being busy with serving God. It’s quite possible to be doing good on the outside while doing evil on the inside, to figure that the good stuff people and God can see makes up for the bad stuff they can’t. Of course, God sees and knows everything. And because of this he wants us to aim for the better thing - to obey him.
So whatever we do for God better come out of something authentic inside of us. We cannot earn God’s favour. Jesus did that for us when he suffered for us on the cross. You, Christian, have God’s favour. Now.
The challenge each of us face, is to live life in a way that reflects God gracious gift. Obey. Don’t
sacrifice. Be authentic and real on the inside and out. Don’t cover stuff up. If you do that, along
the way you’ll forget that you are the beloved of God, and then we’re back to square one.
The final point is that we’re called to bless others with the things that God has blessed us with. God has only ever given good gifts. Haddon Robinson, a respected American teacher of preachers, says it best, "With Him the calf is always the fatted calf; the robe is always the best robe; the joy is always unspeakable; and the peace passes understanding.
“There is no grudging in God’s goodness. He does not measure His goodness by drops like a druggist filling a prescription. It comes upon in floods. If only we recognize the lavish abundance of His gifts, what a difference it would make in our lives!"
Our main passage that was read for today talk about spiritual gifts. There were lists of gifts like
prophesy, healing, wisdom knowledge. Elsewhere in Romans there are listed gifts of serving, teaching, encouraging, giving to others, hospitality leadership, mercy.
My point here is very simple and very brief. Each of you have at least one, probably more, of these gifts. They are from God. When you use your gifts with a desire to bless God and to love others, you are fulfilling your role in God’s drama. Your purpose for right here and now is getting worked out as you risk to step out of yourself and experiment with your gifts.
Let’s talk about our gathering here for a minute. If you have the gift of hospitality or the gift of
serving...you should be actively reaching out to others and welcoming them here. You should be
preparing the coffee and snacks for after we meet. You should be making sure people are cared for. You should be an usher. Talk to Eric. There’s a brother who finds his joy in serving others.
If you have the gift of encouragement, you should be talking to people after the service. Pray with them. Look for the one who seems kinda low. Spend a few minutes with them. Invite them to share with you.
If you have the gift of teaching, you should be coming to our Bible Study on Monday nights and exercising your gift. You should talk to me and see about getting involved in teaching ministry to children - Sunday School. Leslie Reynold has an incredible gift for teaching. Talk to her.
That’s another thing...if you see someone else doing stuff where they’re using their gifts and you’d like to be doing the same stuff they’re doing, hang around with people like that. Learn from them. Serve them. Spend time and grow with them.
If you have artistic gifts - if you draw or sculpt or write or thinks like that, you should be using them here. Bring a canvas into the service and start to paint. Bring art that glorifies God from home and put it up here on Sundays. Talk to Karen Thorpe or Julie Maclean, both of whom have an amazing vision for the arts in our church. Same goes for music. Talk to me.
If you have the gift of mercy, spend time in program with needy people. Or better yet, get out on the street and sit down beside someone who is begging and talk to them. Listen. Care. Get out there and know that you go as a beloved and beautiful child of God, redeemed by the blood of His precious Son, created in Christ for good works. And you go carrying the message of the grace of God in Christ, the message of God’s reconciling and healing love. How do yo do that?
Talk to Pastor Jan who excels in this gift. Or talk to Esther Lashambe who spends a lot of time just being with people who can be challenging to be with.Your role in God’s drama is to grab a hold of your belovedness and never let go...and get out there and bless others with the love of Jesus Christ.
In the movie "Dead Poet’s Society," Robin Williams plays the role of a teacher in an exclusive eastern prep school. On the first day of school, he takes the class of boys out into the hallway to look at the pictures of past, now dead, graduates of the school.
He motivates them to learn and excel in life with the following words: "We are food for worms, Lads! Believe it or not each and every one of us in this room one day will stop breathing, turn cold, and die. Step forward and see these faces from the past. They were just like you are now. They believed they were destined for great things.
“Their eyes are full of hope. But, you see, gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. If you listen real close, you will hear them whisper their legacy to you. Lean in. What do you hear?" Then Robin says in an eerie grave-like voice, ’Carpe Diem!’ (Latin for seize the day) "Seize the day boys! Make your lives extraordinary!"
Let’s seize this opportunity to live for Jesus Christ. Let us grab a hold of the calling we have to bless those around us in this community. We do that by loving people as unconditionally as we can. We do that by sharing the gospel of God’s grace with a needy and broken world that is a field ripe for the harvest.
A woman missionary in the South Pacific Islands was explaining to a group of children the custom and significance of giving gifts at Christmas. "Giving gifts," she said, "expresses love and reminds us of the perfect gift of love we received from God: Jesus."
Later that week, a young native boy came to the missionary’s side and said, "I love you and want you to have this." He pulled from a straw basket the most beautiful shell the missionary had ever seen. As she admired its beauty, she recognized it as a special shell only found on the far side of the island, a half day’s walk from the village. When confronted by this, the boy smiled and said, "Long walk part of gift!"
What beautiful thing can you do for Him today? What gift can you give? What part can you play? Seize the day, church. Seize the day.
Let’s pray. Help us to understand that we are beloved to you, Lord God. Will you cause us to not resist this truth or play with this truth, but rather to embrace your love for us as reality, as truth? And call us out God. Call us to come out of ourselves and to live lives of blessing, lives of love. Help us grasp the vision you would have for us as a people who would not hold back, who would speak your truth and offer your love without restraint. Your love is holy and pure. Your love is good. You, Lord Jesus, are good. We love you, God. Help us love you more. In Jesus name.
Amen.
