These are the talk notes from Sunday’s service. It was a cool chance for me to "close out" 2006 and help our church look forward to 2007.
**Note: The images we used for this message were from a Simply Youth Ministry freebie a few months back. Gasp! We used imagery that was used at Saddleback? Doesn’t that mean that we are Purpose Driven? (Man, I’m a bit snarky on January 2nd)
Whom Shall I Fear?
2 Kings 25:26
Hook:
Today’s message is for us, the community of believers here
at
First
Baptist
Church
. On the last day of 2006 I
have the pleasure helping us look back on the previous year and looking forward
to what is to come in 2007.
Let’s start with some
highlights:
– 1 year ago, the
church building was in the middle its largest construction project since the late
1960’s. (Show exterior picture from
1/4/06
)
o As
of today, that project is 99% complete.
o It
looks fantastic. I hope you agree!
o We’ve
added up-to-date offices for staff, renovated the sanctuary, we have a new
entryway, an elevator and covered entrance to give easier access to those who
need it, a resource center, as well as many mechanical upgrades that will make
the building safer and more efficient for us own in the future.
o This
was a community project. We, the people of
First
Baptist
Church
,
worked on Phase 1 together. While the heavy work was done by professionals… things
we weren’t capable of doing. A small army of church members poured a multitude
of sweat, muscle, skills, planning, and about 300 gallons of paint which has
helped transform the building into something that is more accessible to all.
Thank you.
– 1 year ago, the
church was going in about 10 different directions. There were something like 40
programs and systems running within our walls. Yes, 40 programs for 200 people
came at a high price!
§ Many people were stretched to their limits.
§ People in all levels of leadership struggled to
manage all of the programs.
§ Staff and deacons had no way of knowing what was
going on in every area of their responsibility.
§ The result was that a lot of ministries were
doubling efforts, ministries competed for people and resources, and while
everyone wanted the same thing… we weren’t working together.
o To
remedy this, over the summer and this fall, the church has undergone a massive
restructuring.
§ The deacons and Pastor Bob led us through a plan
that would narrow the focus down to one main goal common across the board.
§ All the church ministries now have the same goal
of investing in children, students, and adults in small groups.
§ Every program of the church now points our faith
community toward what we feel are more optimal learning environments… from the
foyer of Sunday morning, to stage-of-life Living Rooms, and to the kitchen, our
small groups, where something like 70 adults, 25 middle and high school
students, and dozens of children are being discipled.
§ All the church staff now share a common vision
and goals.
§ Ministries, boards, and more noticeably staff,
contribute instead of compete with all areas of the church. You are seeing this
in action here this morning as well as at other very public things like
MainStreet. But it’s happening all over.
§ To foster healthy discussion and communication,
all of the church boards now have a system of liaisons where staff and deacons
are non-voting members of all boards and committees.
§ As a result, we have the most effective,
healthy, and efficient model of ministry I’ve ever experienced in a church.
– Let me just sum
it up like this, this has been an exciting year in the life of
First
Baptist
Church
. We all have a lot to be proud of. We, as
a community of believers, are to be congratulated.
Let’s look forward to where we are going:
See, through all the hard work of 2006, we’re hoping that it
reaps benefits to the congregation in 2007… and into the future.
Hammer by hammer, paint stroke by paint stroke, meeting
after meeting, we want the work of 2006 to help us accomplish our mission in
2007 and beyond.
The mission of
First
Baptist
Church
of Romeo
is to lead people into a growing
relationship with Jesus Christ.
I’m here to encourage you today that we’re better positioned
to reach that mission today than we were one year ago. You are to be thanked for
your hard work, congratulations.
And yet, I think
there is something very powerful that is holding our community back.
While we’ve come a
long way… we still have a long way to go to accomplish that mission, don’t we?
I think there is some deep seeded fear that we, as a
community, need to overcome today if we are going to move forward to fulfill
our mission.
See, just like in 2006 we needed to work together to
accomplish so much… if we’re going to move forward with our mission in 2007,
we’ll need to conquer fear together too. And that means all of us working
towards overcoming some fear this morning.
To show you what I mean by a “deep seeded community fear”,
we’re going to look at an interesting series of events found in the Old
Testament. If you aren’t already there, please turn with me to 2 Kings 25.
Big idea:
If God’s people are going to accomplish God’s mission, we
need to live fearlessly.
Book:
Fear in context… run
like mad
2 Kings 25:26 (back story Jeremiah 41:14-18; 42:13-18)
“At this, all the people from the least to the greatest,
together with the army officers, fled to
Egypt
for fear of the Babylonians.” (2 Kings 25:26)
Why were these people
afraid? (3 minute recap on the history of
Israel
’s
exile)
– We’re going back to 597 BC.
– See, hard times had fallen on the people of God.
– Centuries before, God had given the Jews their Promised
Land, just as he had always promised He would to Abraham.
– But it was a conditional promise.
– A conditional
promise is a promise between two parties where each side must fulfill the
obligations of the agreement or the deal is off.
– Ten times in the book of Deuteronomy we see these
conditional arrangements… God gave the people rules to follow about the
Promised Land and he said, do these things “so that it may go well with you.” That was the
people’s responsibility.
– But if they chose not to live up to the conditions,
they knew God could remove them from the Promised Land. That was God’s
responsibility.
– This is a moral attribute (description) of God… God is
just.
– In Hebrew,
Justice has the same root word as holiness. Because God is separate from sin,
He must act.
– Charles Ryrie writes “Justice fulfills what holiness
demands”
– If God did not hold the people of God accountable for
their actions, He would stop being Just. And an unjust God is not really Holy…
which violates who God truly is.
– So, since God is just… He must act if the conditional
agreement is not met.
– So time goes by, things started off OK for the most
part, but as time went on they didn’t keep their end of the bargain… and as
Pastor Bob mentioned a few weeks ago… it’s not wise to put God to the test.
– There was a long string of bad kings in
Judah
…
many of whom worshipped other gods. Some went as far as setting up statues to
other gods within the walls of
Jerusalem
.
This was a direct violation of God’s conditions.
– A repeated, unrepentant community of believers forces
God to act.
– As a result of many unmet conditions, God punished His people;
In 597 BC God gave the Promised Land to a foreign king…. Nebuchadnezzar, king
of
Babylon
. (Present day
Iraq
)
– 2 King 24:3
says, “Surely these things happened to
Judah
according to the LORD’s command”
– The rightful king, Jehoiachin, and about 10,000 of the
best and brightest people in
Jerusalem
,
and all the money, were exiled to
Babylon
.
(2 Kings 24:14)
– Then Nebuchadnezzar left Jehoiachin’s uncle, Zedekiah,
in charge of
Jerusalem
as the new
king with “the poorest people.”
– Get the idea… the people who were left were so poor and
so unskilled that they weren’t worth taking to exile. (2 Kings 24:17)
– This king Zedekiah wasn’t that bright… the king of
Babylon happily left Zedekiah in charge of Jerusalem… all he had to do was take
care of the city and the remnant of the people left, but Zedekiah rebelled
against Babylon. (2 Kings 24:20)
– And
Babylon
responded swiftly against this rebellion.
– For 2 years, the Babylonian army starved the people out
of the city of
Jerusalem
. (2 Kings
25:2)
– The people who are left… they are in desperate times. (2
Kings 25:3)
– After 2 years of being starved out, the Babylonian army
sieges the city of
Jerusalem
,
chases Zedekiah out into the open country and he’s put to death. (2 Kings 25:7)
– Then the Babylonians took all of Zedekiah’s leaders and
had them executed. (2 Kings 25:21)
– Then, the Babylonians completely burned and destroyed
the city of
Jerusalem
, including
the temple… taking anything of value to
Babylon
.
(2 Kings 25:13-17)
– Then… the few people who were left tried to organize
themselves one more time… and the Babylonians came one more time to kill those
leaders. (2 Kings 25:25)
– Then, the few who were left… then… THEN… they were afraid. So they left.
This is what I’m talking about with “community fear.” Let’s
do a reality check from the remnant people of
Jerusalem
right here.
– They had been faithful to the
Promise
Land
. No matter how bad it had
gotten they had stayed… God had given them the land, it was theirs and they had
stayed.
– In their minds, God wasn’t going to take away His
Promised Land. They probably felt like they hadn’t done anything right.
– For 11 years now… this small group of people had
survived siege after siege. All the leaders of the country had been taken from
them, they hadn’t been afraid.
– Their new king, he had been taken from them, they
hadn’t been afraid.
– They had the temple, the place where God dwelled… so
they weren’t afraid.
– But if you can put yourself in their shoes for a
minute… at this very moment… when they were all alone… they realized something:
They knew…
If God’s people are going to accomplish God’s mission, we
need to live fearlessly
But they were now
afraid…
They had to realize something terrifying. Looking in the
mirror, they may have been God’s people… but they weren’t helping to accomplish
God’s mission anymore, and they were starting to live fearfully.
You see…
The people God was using to accomplish His mission, the ones
who were living fearlessly… they weren’t in Jerusalem right now, were they?
They were in
Babylon
.
We’re going to see those people in the book of Daniel in
just a minute.
But we, as a community, need to come to grips with our fear
right here.
– I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have that
kind of a moment when I suddenly realize that I’m somehow not on God’s mission
anymore.
– I never want to be working and striving for my own
mission so hard that I lose sight of the community’s mission.
– That’s a scary place to be.
– But there are moments in our community where I hear
from people who are fearful of God’s mission in Romeo.
Personal Example:
About a month ago I was teaching in Light Force, our
ministry for 7-12th graders. This year we’re working our way through
the Book of Acts and we’re using the metaphor of a virus to show how God spread
Christianity in the first century AD. It’s a fascinating way to look at Acts.
I was trying to get our students to see the big picture of
what could happen when a lot of people come to know Jesus rapidly, like was
happening in Acts.
I asked the question, “What would happen if a lot of people
at
Romeo
High School
accepted Christ and started to walk with him?” “What would that look like?”
“What about
Romeo
High
School
would be different?”
I got some good answers. But one of the answers really broke
my heart because it revealed something that I think is a deep seeded fear of
our church. This student was honest. Well meaning and blunt. This student said,
“It’s hard to think about something like that because it couldn’t ever really
happen. God couldn’t do that.”
Let me unpack two fears that are represented in that one
statement… because I’ve been here long enough to know that this student was the
only one who thinks like this. I know many of the people here well enough to
know… this is a community-wide thing.
Two community fears
Fear we won’t make a
difference
You see, I think that a lot of us share this same feeling
that my student broke my heart with. We don’t really think that Christ can make
a difference in our town. We don’t really think that introducing people to a
life-saving relationship with Jesus is important, so we don’t do it.
On the one hand we openly acknowledge that Jesus is the sole
way to the Father. In theological terms, we say we believe in the exclusivity
of Christ.
– In a pluralistic society, our belief in the exclusivity
of Christ, that no one can have a relationship with God, that there is no peace
in the world for humanity, apart from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
is offensive. Our saying that we hold that doctrine to be true is telling every
single person who doesn’t believe in Jesus that we think they are wrong.
– And in a pluralistic society, like the one we live in,
we’ll do just about anything to not be labeled.
On the other hand, we are so afraid of the realities of this
doctrine that we allow our friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors
to go on living an incomplete and hell-bound life.
But, what is the churches mission?
+ to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus
Christ.
Re-state the big
idea:
If God’s people are going to accomplish God’s mission, we
need to live fearlessly
So, if we are going to accomplish God’s mission together, we
cannot be afraid to believe that Christ is the only answer to all of our
friends and families problems.
As James says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so
deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
If we want to overcome this fear, we simply need to do what
God is telling us to do and reach our lost friends with the message of Christ.
Personal example:
I know we’re talking about community fears, but I think I
can show you how to overcome this first fear by sharing how I overcame a
personal fear.
– I used to be afraid to visit people in the hospital.
The whole experience just creeped me out. That’s funny, right? A pastor who’s
afraid to visit people in the hospital.
o Want
to know how I dealt with it?
§ First, I had to be reminded that visiting people
in the hospital wasn’t for me. It was for the good of the people I was
visiting.
§ Second, I just had to suck it up and do it.
o And
just like anything else that we’re afraid of… if you do it a few times, you’ll
be OK
Fear we’ll lose our community
I see another great fear in our church family that reveals
something that we, as a community, need to fix in order to accomplish our
mission in 2007 and beyond.
And I actually think it was buried in the answer that the
student gave me a month ago… you’ll recognize it immediately.
Our faith community fears that if we really make a
difference where we live, that our church will “feel different” because there
will be more people here.
I’ve heard from many sources over the last 4 years, “I don’t
want our church to grow, I like it the way it is.”
I think there is a fear in some of us here today that if our
church grows by 50 or 100 people, that we won’t be as friendly or as close knit
as we are today.
Let me address this
fear from two perspectives…
- It’s
illogical to think that a church that is growing will become unfriendly. I
used to attend and work at a larger church and I never heard someone say,
“Well, we decided to join this church because it’s unfriendly. Or, I just
wanted to join a church where I have no friends.” Of course not! The reality is that a church that is
truly friendly and welcoming to all will always be a growing church. - We’ve
designed a structure that will be just as friendly to you if we have 200
people, 300 people, or 500 people by the end of 2007. If you are
connecting to a small group… those won’t grow beyond 10-12 people, ever.
As soon as they do, your small group will give birth to a new small group.
Here’s a little secret… as close as I feel to many of the
people in this church today… I’ve felt the exact same way at a church 10 times
the size.
Big idea re-stated
If God’s people are going to accomplish God’s mission, we
need to live fearlessly
In the times we live in, the New Testament era, the mission
of the church is always to grow. So if we want to accomplish God’s mission for
our church, we need to live fearlessly.
Fear reality
Let me show you in the book of Daniel where God was
accomplishing His mission through fearless people.
While we had a remnant of people who decided to try to stick
it out in
Jerusalem
, God’s mission
for God’s people went on a road trip to
Babylon
.
While that remnant was in the dark, God was using courageous
men to correct the path of a nation.
While God was executing judgment on the nation by exiling
them to
Babylon
, He was also
restoring His people back to His mission.
This was, in essence, a 70 year time out for the community.
there was a group of people who only feared God.
Daniel’s story in 90 seconds
– Among the 10,000 people brought into captivity, was
Daniel. (Daniel 1:4)
– Daniel was a young man of good stock. (Daniel 1:5)
– Daniel and his friends were given access to some choice
food, yet they decided not to break God’s law and eat meat sacrificed to other
gods. (Daniel 1:12)
– They feared God and not the king.
– During Daniel’s years in
Babylon
,
he was repeatedly put to the test. Would he fear the king or would he fear God?
o He
interpreted dreams for the kings
o He
is given important jobs
o He
takes great risks
o He
counsels kings with news they don’t want to hear
§ And in all things, Daniel exhibits fearlessness.
Re-state the big
idea:
We see again and again… God’s man, Daniel accomplishes God’s
mission, he lives fearlessly in the face of danger.
Look:
In the same way, when we look closely at our lives. When we
see the mission that God has laid out for us in 2007 and beyond, we have to
answer the same question Daniel did.
Who will I live my life in fear of?
More importantly, what would it look like if we as a
community conquered our fears together?
– What would happen to us if we commited ourselves today
to recognize what since God’s people are going to accomplish God’s mission, we
need to live fearlessly?
o What
would happen to us if we looked at our two fears and recognized that those
weren’t God’s fears for us?
§ We know that a relationship with Christ does
make a difference in peoples lives.
· We don’t have to look any further than ourselves
to see that.
· We can look around this morning and see how a
walk with Jesus has dramatically effected many families here.
§ We know that our church family would only be
amplified by welcoming in new faces.
· We don’t have to fear this because we know it
pleases God.
· We can rest knowing that seeing our friends
lives transformed is an amazing work of God!
Fear Eliminated… go
forth
What would our church look like if we committed to God,
right here, right now to accomplishing God’s mission, we need to live
fearlessly.
Hebrews 4:16
“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
Let this house of the Lord be a place of confidence… not in
what we are doing apart from God, let this be a place of confidence as we work
together to accomplish God’s mission fearlessly.
AMEN
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