CATM Sermon - March 13, 2005
I feel extremely privileged. On top of being a part of this amazing community of faith and meeting with many of you and working on important projects and sharing life together, I get to stand before you now to talk about my Jesus. Who is your Jesus. Who is the Jesus of all time.
And this is both an intensely personal thing for me, and an intensely public thing I do. Private because I get to speak of the One who saved my life from the pit, who rescued me from myself, who lifted me up out of the miry clay.
The one who knows me like no other, faults and weaknesses and sins a plenty. The One who has given me a hope and a future.
But He is also your hope...whether or not you know Him personally as Saviour and Lord, in Him is all the fullness ever intended for your life. And this too is an amazing personal and public truth.
It’s personal because when we embrace Him we embrace the absolute best future that exists for us, and public because as we embrace Him and grow in our communion with him, He pours out his goodness and his life and his blessings through us. You see, in him is all the freedom you were made for. In Him is all the potential and all the possible and the above-and-beyond-what-we-can-ask-or-imagine.
And in Him there is what we can refer to as a cosmic reality. That’s a fancy word for the parts of
reality that are so much bigger and beyond our daily lives. Jesus is the One who rules and reigns the cosmos with all authority and mercy and love.
And in Him you and I find our connection to the cosmos which are much greater than us but, we
discover as we read the Word of God, they were created for us.
So today, as we approach Holy Week which begins next Sunday, I want to do two things. I want us to take a fresh look at the Saviour. And I want us to take a fresh look at ourselves in the light of the Saviour.
A Fresh Look at the Saviour
I’m surprised sometimes what feels like the stale ways that people look at Jesus. Some refer to the gospel story as “The Old, Old Story”. I think there’s even a chorus by that name. But I am glad for the hymns that we have and for the new worship songs that we sing.
And I am glad for those who throughout the ages have found creative ways to express their understanding of Jesus, which is always based on what the Holy Bible reveals about Him.
Many if not most of the songs we sing at Church at the Mission were written by people who were moved to express worship to God because of something new that they had discovered about Him. Or something fresh in the way they interacted with Jesus.
I understand that as well because a lot of the songs I’ve written, including the ones on our worship album, began in tears from something beautiful I had just realized about God. About His love for us. About His unceasing pursuit of us.
I guess the thing that bugs me the most about stale perspectives on Jesus is that they seem either stuck in the church’s past history, or they seem to focus on Jesus a very long time ago in a very far away place from us. What’s wrong with that? Well, you see, Jesus is best understood as being mostly now.
Why? Because He is not locked in the past. He is imminent to us. That means that He is present to us. He is here. When we gather to worship together here on Sundays we are not worshipping a relic. We are not just remembering His mighty acts of long ago. He is here. Right now, in this room, we are in an encounter with the living God this very moment. He is moving in this place. Do you realize this? He is touching lives.
A funny thing a lot of preachers experience is a person from the congregation coming up after the
service and saying, “Thank you so much for talking about...so and so. When you said...so and so, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I’m now refreshed in my walk with God”.
But the funny thing is...sometimes we’ve never said what they thought we said. We could be on a whole different topic talking about something completely different, and yet people are hearing a different thing that is blessing them.
Why is that? It’s because God is here. He is powerfully present by His Spirit. He is still teaching
us, still reaching us, still stretching his arm out to us, still reaching His arms around us is a huge
embrace of love and acceptance.
God is eternally now. Eternally present. Actually, in the language of the Bible, He just is.
That’s what God told Moses at their meeting at the burning bush. At the end of their conversation, when God told Moses He was going to deliver His people from the hand of the Egyptians, Moses asks God, who shall I say has sent me?
Ex 3: 14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ’I AM has sent me to you.’" That can also be translated from the Hebrew, “I will BE who I will BE”
Whispering, looking up and around: So if God is right here by His Holy Spirit, right now, with all of his love and all of his compassion and all of his power, and we are right now in the middle of a great big embrace from the living God, what might the Holy Spirit be revealing to us about Jesus.
Back to normal:
Did you know that’s the main thing the Holy Spirit does? He reveals Jesus. And Jesus reveals to us the Father.
Perhaps in our worship today the Holy Spirit is revealing to you what He is revealing to me. That
Jesus is astonishing. That He is so much more beautiful than I’ve let myself believe in the past.
That there is nothing sterile or detached about Jesus. You see, we read in scripture as we have
today about Jesus being the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. Colossians 1:16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
We read this, and we believe this, but we should also struggle with this, because, for one thing we are being told that the God who is present to us right here and right now by His Holy Spirit, who knows us by name and is closer to us than our own breath.
This same Jesus who has created everything in heaven and on earth, who is the very image of the
invisible God, He brings all of this power and authority and grace into this space by His Spirit.
We are told that He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. So while Jesus is here with us, as he promised to do when two or more gather, right now while he’s with us he’s also keeping the whole creation moving, holding it together.
That’s a powerful presence. That’s a presence that just can’t get stale and over-familiar. And I have to ask, how can we not be changed as we encounter this indescribably wonderful God?
And we’re told that he is the head of the body, the church.
Whispering:
Here’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone. Kerry and I aren’t the bosses around here. Jan’s not in charge.
This church has one head. And it’s a beautiful One. It’s Jesus. But...don’t tell anyone.
Back to normal:
And what else are we told? “He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. Colossians 1:19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him”
Every part of God is in Jesus. There is no part of God, no aspect of his character, no hidden corner tucked away somewhere of his nature and identity that is not in Jesus. All the fulness of God is in Jesus. What does that tell us?
There’s no where else to go to find more of God. If we understand who Jesus is, and we decide that we don’t want Jesus, we are saying, whether we realize it or not, that we don’t want God. Now that’s maybe a tough thing to hear, because we may want to believe that Jesus is just one option among a lot of other options, one way among a variety of paths, one expression of God that works for us but all those other expressions are just as real.
If you accept part of the revelation of Jesus and not all of the revelation of Jesus that will reflect
itself in your life, show up in your daily existence because you choose to line up with part of the truth and not all of the truth - a part being that he was a great teacher or miracle worker or he was a holy man as opposed to that he was that, quite correct, but he was also the son of God, God in the flesh.
ff we are to hear the Scriptures, if we are to embrace the Word of God, we need to humbly admit that God was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Jesus. That’s not an arrogant statement. That’s not with some kind of know-it-all attitude saying that as Christians have it right and everybody else has it wrong.
Nothing cold be further from the way we should understand all of this. You know how we should
understand this? In the same way that Abraham understood God when God said to him, Genesis 12:2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing...and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
The most important part of that message to Abraham was that God was going to pour out his blessings on “all peoples on earth”. Every blessing Abraham was to receive from God was to be passed on to others.
He was telling Abraham that through him, God was going to be incredibly generous to all people. Through Abraham, this promise would be fulfilled. And it happened through Abraham. Jesus Christ came through the line of Abraham.
So we are bearers of good news. But good news is not good news unless it is good for everybody. And we’re told in John 3:16 that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
The last thing were told in our scripture passage today is that through Jesus God the Father fixes
everything that is broken. That’s what “reconcile to himself all things” means. All that is shattered in our lives, all that is busted, collapsed, crippled, crumbled, crushed, damaged, defective, demolished, disintegrated.
Everything on earth or in the heavens that is fractured, fragmented, mangled, mutilated, ruptured, shredded and smashed. All of it through Jesus would be fixed. Brought back to where it should be in relationship to God.
That is an awfully tall order to fulfill. How could God possibly do all this through Jesus? Well the one thing in common with all of those words I just said is an absence of peace.
Well...God made peace. God made peace. And peace at a price. Peace at the price of His own dear Son. The price of peace was the blood of Jesus, shed of the cross, we are told in our Scripture today.
Ephesians 2:12-14 Remember (when) you were separate from Christ... without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace...”
You have been brought near. You have been brought close to God. Once you were separate from Christ, and that meant you had no hope and you were without God.
But now, in Jesus...you have been brought near. By his shed blood...you who were once far away are now brought into His holy presence. You are now among those to whom Jesus promised His presence.
What does this all mean? You may say, “Matthew, that’s all very nice”. You may say, “I believe this. I believe this gospel of life, or at least I’m opening up a bit to this big, true story...but how
does this become real in my life.
My life is a ragged journey on a rough road and I need something here and now that clearly relates to me where I’m at, right now. I need the rubber to hit the road. Bring it home to me”.
Take a Fresh look at Yourself
Colossians 1:6b says this “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it
has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth”.
This Gospel of Life is Bearing Fruit in Your Life
Even before you receive Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, the Word of Truth that is planted in you
is changing you. Literally the week that I first heard the gospel when I was 17, even though I was
an atheist who had completely rejected any and all ideas of God, I began to pray.
Without knowing it, without understanding why. I was being pulled in, I was being wooed. Six months before I even understood enough to say yes to the gospel, God by His Holy Spirit was gently wedging open the door to my heart.
It’s funny how God speaks to us in the every day. [PLAY “MEANT TO LIVE” CLIP] This song is by a Christian band called Switchfoot. The song is called, “Meant to Live”, and some of the other lyrics say this: “We want more than this world’s got to offer We want more than the wars of our fathers And everything inside screams for second life, yeah”.
If you are here today and you haven’t received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you need to know that God is wanting to wedge the door to your heart open, just a little bit at a time. And He will wait and be incredibly gentle with you.
He will honour your choices and engage you at the level of you mind and your heart and your body.
If everything inside you screams for second life, know that He is here to receive you and give you
precisely that!
If you are a Christian, if you’ve made that choice already to receive Christ, you just need to keep
saying “yes!” to God. That one great big, huge “yes” that you said to God opened far more doors to purpose and joy than you probably realize.
Keep making the choice to live for God and not for yourself. The more you do that, the more you seek to love God with everything you are and the more you reach out to your neighbour in kindness and love, the more you will feel the impact of the fruit of the gospel in your life.
Here’s a little warning though. If you try to keep that love to yourself, if you don’t keep reaching
out and loving other in Jesus name, you’ll find yourself sooner or later spinning your wheels spiritually. Feeling like you’re going nowhere. Whether or not the rubber hits the road is actually
your choice. Your choice. Remember that.
This Fruit in Newness of Life
Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
The fruit of the gospel is newness of life. We are being set free of bondages and baggage and everything that hinders us in life.
We are being set free from the pleasures of sin that lie to us so convincingly about how they add something to our life while in truth they wear us down and drag us back to the miry clay or the place of God’s absence.
The newness of life that God gives us has as its focal point His love, his power, his glory and that
focal point rests upon the cross of Christ. We must always return to the cross [PPT-Cross pic] to be renewed.
What Happens When You Bring it Home to Yourself?
A final word: Christ died for you. You’ve heard that. You may know that at a place that is very deep inside you. You may live that. You see, that means that you matter. That means you matter immensely. You are worth the very life of the son of God. Think about it.
So...will you start treating yourself like you matter? Will you make a choice to agree with God’s
opinion of you, which is that you are priceless? And respect yourself because of how beloved you are by God?
And will you also make the choice to reject any and all other thoughts that you may have of yourself...that you may be worthless, messages that you may have received from when you were a child on up.
Will you make the concrete choice to reject those messages and instead embrace the message of God which is that you matter so much that your value is too great to be calculated.
We serve a risen Saviour who risked everything by committing the ultimate act of lasting value...He made a place for you in heaven. And he said that we would do greater things than he.
Will you, for His glory, risk more, reflect more and then do more things of lasting value since he has called everyone of us in Jesus Christ to make the most of every breath we take?
Let pray. Lord Jesus, you are astounding. You are astonishing. Our best thoughts of you barely scratch the surface of how deep and how wide and how high your love is for us. Will you move in us today. Will you help us say “yes” to this encounter we are having with you today? Will you grant us your joy as we continue in our worship of you, both now and forever? In Your name we pray. Amen.
