“Will You Be The Church?”

I want to begin a little differently.  I want to begin by taking you on a virtual tour of LaGrange Baptist Church.  Take a look.  [Video tour of Lagrange Baptist Church].

Alright.  That was a fairly quick virtual tour, but we have a beautiful church, don't we?  From the majestic white pillars outside to the beautiful spacious sanctuary inside, we have a beautiful church and we should be thankful for it.  But is this the church?  Is this the church? Maybe I should ask it this way?   What is the church?  I think the very thing that pops into our heads is the building, this place right here.  Kids, I don't know if you've learned this little rhyme, but when I was young I learned this little rhyme that went something like this… I'll see if I can get it right.  Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people. As a little kid I learned that the church was a place, and maybe even this morning some of you, your parents woke you up and said, "Hey, it's time to get up and go to church."  Even as one of the pastors here I find myself saying things like, "You should really come to our church." But is this the church?

Scripture never once mentions someone actually going to church because we don't need to go to church; we are the church as followers of Jesus Christ.  What's the big deal here?  Does it really matter how we think of that word, church?

A.W. Tozer once said, "Whatever comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.   Dan Kimball writes something similar, he says, "Whatever comes into our minds when we think of the word church, is the most important thing shaping the way we function as a church. 

And so your view of the church radically affects the way you view the mission of the church.  And let me just suggest to you then two ways that you can view the church.  You can view it as a place and if you view it this way you will think of the church much like a business, a dispenser of religious goods and services where you come to consume, and so when you're checking out a church you, you want to make sure it has all the things that you need.  I just went through the drive-through last night to get some Wendy's; my wife who is 20 weeks' pregnant and needed some fuel for the night [Laughter] and it reminded me of the fact of that's how we think of the word church sometimes is we come here to kind of consume, to get what we really want and then to leave.  If we have that mentality, it works itself out this way.  Maybe you're coming in here today and you're hearing a sermon and you think, "How in the world does this apply to my life?" and you leave feeling frustrated, thinking, "I should have just stayed home and watched TV, that would have been more worth my time."  Or maybe you're in a Sunday School class and you're having a hard day and you feel like you have all these burdens and nobody is really talking to you or wants to listen to you, you're not feeling encouraged and you walk away just thinking, "Wow, this was not even good for me to go today; I didn't get anything out of church."   When we have a common consume mentality, when we view the church as a place we will often become passive, passive pew sitters.  We will want to merely receive.  We will ask the question, "What can I get out of it?" rather than "What can the church benefit from me being here." 

The church, the people of God.  See, we can view church as a place, but if we view it like the scripture views it, we will view it as a people; a community of people, a family of people on mission together.  And it's very, very different if we view it this way because we won't have this mindset of come and consume, we'll be here to gather for the purpose of going!  To gather for the purpose of going.  We need to gather together.  The scriptures tell us we must gather together for mutual encouragement, to serve one another in love, to receive the teaching of God's Word, to worship God together in corporate praise, but the scriptures always tell us that we are to move outward into the community, into the world.  This is who we are as the church.  Instead of being passive pew sitters, we are to be active participants as followers of Jesus Christ. 

So your view of the church affects your view of the mission of the church.  Today I want us to see, I want us to hear from the mouth of the man who knew more about the church than anyone else ever did.  In fact, he was more intimately acquainted with the church than anyone else has ever been because he himself died for the church.

I want you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew Chapter 5, Matthew Chapter 5, and I would like to read a familiar passage of scripture perhaps for many of you today.  Matthew Chapter 5, and I'll read Verses 1 to 16.  This has been called The Sermon on the Mount and I think it is probably one of the most familiar passages but probably one of the least understood.  Let me read verses 1-16:

Mat 5:1  Seeing the crowds, he [That is Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Mat 5:2  And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

Mat 5:3  "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Mat 5:4  "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Mat 5:5  "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Mat 5:6  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Mat 5:7  "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Mat 5:8  "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Mat 5:9  "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Mat 5:10  "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Mat 5:11  "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Mat 5:12  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Mat 5:13  "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

Mat 5:14  "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Mat 5:15  Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

Mat 5:16  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

I think sometimes in this passage we're prone to look at the individual trees and miss the forest.  We want to examine every beatitude and meditate on every single one and we miss perhaps the main thrust of Jesus' teaching in this passage.  I want to back up and just set kind of the context of this passage here in Matthew 5.  As you know, this is the first book in the New Testament, and up to this point, the prophets have been telling us that there will be a king, a Messiah that will be coming to save his people from their sins.  Look at Matthew Chapter 1 and how this book begins.  Flip over a couple of pages there.  You see what is called a genealogy.  It begins:

Mat 1:1  The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

The son of David is repeated a few times in this genealogy as well as when it speaks of the birth of Jesus Christ, Joseph is mentioned as the son of David. Why the talk of David?  Because back in 2 Samuel Chapter 7, God has given a covenant to David.  He is saying to David, "There will be one day someone coming from your line who will be the promised king and his throne will endure forever.  His kingdom will have no end.  And so you see here that Jesus is in the line of David and he is the promised king that has come.

Matthew Chapter 2, we see the visit of the Wisemen or the Magi from the East; Christmas is coming fairly soon and you are familiar with the story of the Magi from the East.  What were they coming for?  They were coming to worship the king!  Now Herod who was the king as well, he didn't want any part of this.  He was jealous of this. There was a new king who had arrived on the scene.  His name was Jesus Christ.  Later on in this book at the very end of Matthew, we'll see that Jesus, as he goes to the cross, people are mocking him and saying, "Hail, King of the Jews. If you're the King, why don’t you save yourself?"  You see, the Jewish people, and this is the audience that Matthew is writing to, they were seeking out a king, a military king, a political king who could destroy the Roman Empire by force, but Jesus came on the scene and he was going to establish his kingdom a different way.  In fact, his kingdom, his mission would not fail.  As it says in Matthew 24:14:

Mat 24:14  And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

He will build his kingdom.  And here in the immediate context I want you to look at Matthew 4:17, we see the very first words of Jesus as he begins his public ministry.  Verse 17 says:

Mat 4:17  From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Basically Jesus is saying, "I am here.  I am the King and I've come to establish my kingdom." Kingdom is a word that means "Christ's rule, his good rule and his reign." And there is a sense in which his kingdom has come because he has come, but there is a sense in which it is coming one day in its fullness.  It's an already and not yet kingdom and that's why Jesus later tells us we should pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done."  But what does that mean for his kingdom to come now?  You see, he's wanting to establish his church here, he's wanting to build his church.  Matthew 16:18, Jesus says:

Mat 16:18  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Jesus will accomplish what Jesus sets out to do.  How is he going to do this?  By building a community of people who first surrender to King Jesus and who shine for King Jesus.  He is building his church, a community of people who surrender to King Jesus and who shine for King Jesus; a people who are passionate for Christ and compassionate for others.  Now he will not establish his kingdom by force but through his humble followers, that's you and me, if we are followers of Jesus Christ.  But look at these, just taking them one at a time.

The church is a community who surrenders to Jesus Christ, who surrenders to King Jesus.  We see that in Verse 17, how Jesus is coming on the scene and he's saying, "Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand."  The word repentance means a changing of the mind.  It's a bowing of the knees to King Jesus.  It is saying that I am going to turn away from my sin and my own self-righteousness and I'm going to turn and follow Jesus.  In fact we see that right in the text a few verses down, he's calling his first disciples and he says, "Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men."  "Follow me" are two words that are loaded with lots of meaning and we're going to talk more about that when we get into the Beatitudes coming up.  But repentance is necessary for you to be a part of the church, to come to Jesus and say, "I have messed up.  I have not lived up to your standard of righteousness." 

And then the second thing is dependence, or faith.  In dependence, I'm using that word because it's a dependence on his righteousness.  Look at Verses 3-12.  These have been called the Beatitudes and you look at this list: Poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, you look at this list and you think there is no way I can live up to that, no way!  By the way, Jesus is talking here to his disciples, to his followers.  He's not saying, "If you do these things you'll be a disciple."  He's saying, "You are a disciple, you are a disciple and you are to do these things."  But the beatitudes are not a list of what we should be, they are a list of what we are in Christ. 

Lot's of us get the idea that we can be good enough for God, that we can have a righteousness on our own.  In fact, I was reading about a man named A.J. Jacobs.  He's an agnostic who took a year-long journey to try to obey every command in scriptures and he wrote a book about it.  He called it, "The Year of Living Biblically."  And he even like grew out all of his hair.  You see the before and after pictures; they're pretty funny, and he's wearing like this white garb, and all of this external type of righteousness and he comes to the end of that year saying, "You know, I think I've become a better person.  I sin less, but I still get greedy, I still covet.  This guy lives in New York and he so says it's hard not to sin here.  But this guy realized that even as an agnostic he could not achieve the righteousness of God set forth in the scriptures.  Instead of the book being called "The Year of Living Biblically," I think it should have been called "The Year of Living Stupidly."  There is no way someone can live every command of scripture perfectly.  We need a righteousness that is not ours, that's Christ's, that is outside of ourselves.  That's why Jesus did an amazing thing for us on the cross.  We miss this sometimes.  When he was on the cross he didn't just die so that your sins would be forgiven.  When he was on the cross, we gave to him our sin and the punishment we deserve.  God's anger was upon Jesus and the amazing thing is, we gave him that and he gave to us his perfect righteousness.  It was as though we gave to him our filthy rags and he gave to us his robe of righteousness.  That is a beautiful thing and that's the message of the gospel, that we here as followers of Christ have the righteousness of Jesus living within us.

2 Corinthians 5:21 says:

2Co 5:21  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We have the righteousness of God in us through faith in Jesus Christ.  That's an amazing thing.  We don't have a righteousness of our own.  Paul talks about not having a righteousness of my own, but that which is through faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, when you look at this list, going back to the list of Beatitudes, and you're looking those things through, there's a sense in which if we really lived these out, we would stand in stark contrast to this world.  We would be radically different from this world.  In fact, I want to sum up the Beatitudes, just giving you four words here that I think sum up this list and I borrowed a few of these from a man named Tim Keller.  So, first of all, when you look at this list, you see "Blessed are the poor in spirit."  We could say that being in the church we are to have humility.  Humility is a necessity.  We must be humble before God.  We must be willing to admit our sin.  So

1.                 HUMILITY.

2.                 GRIEF.

If we follow Jesus we will have grief; grief over our own sin, grief over the sins of others, grief over the things that make God grieve. 

3.                 SACRIFICE.

Blessed are those who are merciful to others; blessed are the peacemakers.  Are you living a life of sacrifice? As a follower of Christ, you should.

4.                 PERSECUTION.

Persecution? In fact it says later in this passage if we live these things out, we'll be blessed if people revile us, persecute us, utter all kinds of evil against us falsely on my account. As we follow Jesus more closely, we may be persecuted, mocked at, ridiculed for what we believe.

Now, I want to show you how humility, grief, sacrifice and persecution stand in stark contrast to the world, because instead of humility, the world wants power.  Instead of grief, we want comfort.  Instead of sacrifice, we want success.  Instead of persecution, we want recognition.  Will we really be blessed, happy if we live like Jesus?

You know, there's a man, many of you know, his name is Joel Osteen; probably the most popular preacher in all of America right now.  And his equation for life is basically this:  Healthy + wealthy = Happy.

Last night I was thinking about him and my heart went out to this guy.  He may be truly a believer in Jesus Christ, but he's preaching a false gospel.  Because the equation for life is not healthy + wealthy = happy.  It is "Follow me," Jesus says, "and you'll be eternally happy."  And you guys, here's the deal.  Jesus' call to follow him is not a call to power, it is not a call to comfort, it is not a call to success, it's not a call to recognition.  Because if it was, we would leave Jesus totally out, wouldn't we?  You think about Jesus and how he was born into a poor family.  You think about Jesus and how he lived a life of grief, grieving over the sins of others, grieving as Lazarus died, grieving even in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He had a life of sacrifice.  He did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.  And, you guys, he should have been seen as the victorious King, but instead he was victimized.  He was abandoned by his own friends, betrayed, he was mocked at, he was spit upon, he was scourged, and he was nailed to a cross.  This is our king!  This is your king! This is who you follow, and if you are a follower of Christ, you must take up your cross and follow after him.  Your lives should be different than the world and to the degree that we follow our king, this world will find us either repulsive or attractive.  To one we are the aroma of life, to the other we are the aroma of death!

We live in a dark age, a dark world, a changing culture today.  We live in a postmodern world.  Maybe you've heard of that term postmodernism; a philosophical term, but basically it says this, and young people, you guys are growing up in this more and more.

Postmodernism:
There is no such thing as absolute truth.  You cannot obtain to objective truth. You can't have reality because you stand outside of it.  You're    trapped behind your own experiences.  There is no way that you could come to one universal truth, and so your truth is your truth, my truth is    my truth because we can't know truth, we can't know reality for what it really is.

You try to prove this Bible to someone and they'll just look at you and say "That's good for you, that's great! But it's not my truth. There's no one truth." Postmodernism. 

Pluralism is another part of our culture today, which basically says that all religions teach the same thing.  And so you can have a little Buddhism over here; you can have a little New Age over here, you can have a little Christianity and it's okay because the contradictions are okay, because after all, all ways, all of these are means to the same God.  There are many paths up the mountain.  And perhaps even more shocking is this: We're living now in an age where people don't see Christianity in a positive light.  They think of us as the religion of finger-pointers.  There's a book that has been recently written by a man named David Keneman, called "Unchristian."  He surveyed a group of 16-year-olds through 29-year-olds, young people, to find out what do they really think of Christians? How do they view us? And what he found out was shocking.  These young people said: Christians are judgmental, they are hypocritical, they are anti-gay, out of touch with reality, always having ulterior motives.  They reject Jesus because they feel rejected by Christians.

You know, G.K. Chesterton once said, "The most powerful argument against Christianity is Christians." And, instead of us blaming them for what they believe, our hearts should be breaking for them.  You see, Jesus wants us to come and surrender, to bow the knee to his authority, and then we ought to shine his beauty to this dark world.  He does not want us to escape from the world, he wants us to engage the world.  He wants us to engage the world.  Out of our passion for Christ we ought to have compassion for others.

I want you to look at Verses 13 to 16 as we move from this inward surrender to this outward shining.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Verse 13, the salt of the earth, but this is another metaphor Jesus uses.  Basically we could say this; this culture is decaying, it's in darkness and we, as the church, as the people of God, are to be the preservative in this culture and a light to the culture, but I want to focus in on verses 14-16.  Notice he begins by saying:

Mat 5:14  "You are the light of the world.

Let's stop  right there with that word, you, because it's very important.  Some of you are seeking out identities.  Most of you who are young people want to have an identity.  If you are a follower of Christ, this is your identify.  You are the light of the world.  Jesus declares that to you, you are the light of the world.

Secondly, if we would see this in the Greek, in the original language, this is an emphatic pronoun, Jesus is saying, "You and you alone are the light of the world."  You and you alone are the light of the world.  There is no one else, you, the church, you are this light for this world.  You and you alone reveal Jesus to this world.  And then this word, you, also is in the pleural, it's not in the singular. He's not saying, You are the light of the world, you are the light of the world, you are the light of the world.  He's saying "You, the body of Christ, the Church of God, you together corporately are the light of the world.  You are to corporately display Christ to this world."

In Isaiah 49:6 we see a prophecy of Jesus coming as a light to the nations.  In John 8:12 Jesus says, "I am the light of the world." And now, amazingly, he turns to us and says "You are the light of the world."  You are the light of the world.  John 14:12, it's amazing how Jesus is going away to be with the Father, and says, "If you believe in me, you will do even greater things than I."  How can that be, Jesus? Because we are the body of Christ and we have His Spirit living within us and we are able to do even greater things.  We are to spread out into this world and make a name for King Jesus.

You know, our culture really wants community, they are seeking after it.  TV shows, you can see the desire for community, Survivor, and some of these kinds of shows that are on today.  Starbuck's claims to be the third place in a person's life: Home, work, Starbuck's.  A place to connect with people.  You see this in the web, right? There is a community of people that you can be a part of in Myspace and Facebook and all these kinds of things.  Some of that is okay, and that's good.  Some of it is dangerous.  But our culture wants community, they're seeking after it, and we as the Body of Christ have something to offer them.  You know, it's not that we ought to be ultra relevant, we should have some knowledge of our culture, but it's not so much that we're trying to be relevant , but different.  If we are truly different, if we're living out these Beatitudes and taking on the character of Christ in us, we will shine differently to this world, it will be attractive.  See, our purpose as the light is, this is easy, is to shine, not to hide.  I love how Jesus is so simple because I'm a pretty simple-minded person, and you know, Jesus says, "It would be foolish for you to take a lamp and go and stick it under a basket." That's foolish.  That's not why a lamp is here.  It's here to shine and give light to everyone in the house.  And it's the same for you.  I am not just talking to you who think of yourselves as leaders here, or teachers.  All of you as followers of Christ are the light of the world and we are to shine as one community for Christ.  Shine.  What does that word mean?  In the context it is paralleled with good deeds.  Oftentimes we think the only way to share the gospel is by verbally saying something.  It is clear from this text that these good works, good works are actually acts of kindness, of love.  That's important.  Our good deeds should support the Good News of the gospel.  They make the audible gospel visible to our culture. 

I did a short survey on my blog.  I have a little blog that I keep, and there are a few of you that wrote in and shared comments.  I asked the question, "What persuaded you to come, to trust in Jesus?" And you know, as I looked at the 20 different responses, it was clear to me that there was a commonality; that everyone of you had someone in your life at one point or another who lived out the gospel before you.  You saw it lived out in love and you were ready to embrace it when they shared the good news of Christ's death and resurrection on your behalf. 

So, what I'm saying here to you all today is this:  We need to also broaden our view of mission as the church.  We need to think of this as a mindset, not like an encounter.  I've got to share my faith today, Boom!  No, it's all of life.  Are you thinking about the person who has never known about Jesus, or perhaps the person in your workplace who is struggling?  Are you thinking about those types of people?  Are you aware that you are the light wherever you go? It's not like you shut off the light, shut it back on, shut it back off?  You are always the light wherever you are.  And the result of this is that it glorifies God.  Look at Verse 16:

Mat 5:16  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

I picture it like this. It's like the beams of light that come forth from us point people back to the Son, the Son of God, so that he receives the glory and that's why we ought to live humbly.  We are never wanting to be known as "the nice people," okay?  It's not bad to be nice, but if that's all we're known as, people will praise us and not Jesus.  You've got to give a reason for the hope that's in you!  Pray for opportunities and live out what you believe. 

We need to be a city set on a hill.  You know Jesus, I think, is referring to how it's almost like we're a heavenly city living in the midst of an earthly city.  We represent Christ's good rule and reign in the way that we live.  We shine forth and say, "This is what it looks like to be a part of a community who loves each other, and who has received forgiveness for sin, and who has a purpose in life."  We need everybody to shine then, we need everyone. 

But I want to ask you this, what does this look like practically?  I mean, tell me, Doug, what does this actually look like in real life?  I want to show you what it looks like by showing you a short video, testimony of one of your members, one of our members, take a look and listen. 

VIDEO TESTIMONY:

"I was 22 years old when I found myself pregnant with my first child, Eric, who is now almost 10.  I was living at home with my mother at the time because I was in college, a full-time college student and a full-time mother.  I found myself not happy.  She was an alcoholic and it made it very difficult to live with her.  She tried to make parenting choices for me that I didn't agree with, so it was very difficult to live at home. 

When Eric was 4 years old, I found myself dating a man who I knew from my childhood and Virgil was, I thought, a good guy.  I knew he had a criminal background.  I knew that he had been addicted to painkillers before, and I thought, well, you know, we'll try this and see how this goes.  He actually started getting back into his drug habit after we moved in together, I found out too late, and I had no where else to go, so I was stuck in the situation that I was in.  But I thought, "Hey, we'd be the happy little family," so this would be okay, I can deal with this.  I found myself pregnant with my daughter, Emma, who is now almost 4, and I, you know, thought, I wasn't sure what I was going to do.  We eventually got evicted from the apartment that we were living in.  We were living in a crummy little motel in California and things were pretty bad.  I didn't know where to turn.  My best friend came back from Kentucky and I talked to her about what was going on and my life started turning around through the love of my friend and my family, who are Christians, they invited me to stay here in Kentucky with them and bring my daughter with me and my unborn child, and it was just an amazing thing to see how God worked in their lives.  I started attending church at DeHaven and I started seeing how Christians live their lives and how even when they had trouble in their lives, they always had, they always seemed to know exactly where to go and what to do, and it was just amazing to see the power of God working in their lives and I said, "I want that.  I want to know what being a Christian is, and I want to know how that works."  I wanted that for myself, I wanted that for my children. 

Now that I am a Christian and I have the love of God in my life, I want to see, I want to help other people who were like us, or are like I was.  It's just an amazing thing to be a Christian and to have the love of God and to know no matter what happens in my life, I always have that, and I just thank God for everything that he has done in my life, and I think the Christian family that I lived with and this church because it is an amazing thing to have in my life and for anybody to have in their lives, so if there is anybody out there that you know of that needs to know the Lord, help them, get them to come to church with you, do anything that you can to help them to show the love of God."

This is real!  This is real life!  There is a story behind every face and some of us here, me included, have forgotten what it feels like to be in the darkness, to be without hope, to be searching.  We've gotten so busy, we're so wrapped up in our own life and our own family, we're maybe content with the me, myself and I Christianity, but we're hiding our lights under a basket.  I want to encourage you with a question.  Will you be the church? You have to Christina, that's living proof!  Excel still more!  Will you be the church?  I'm not talking about just you feeling the fear right now as an individual to go into this world.  I'm talking about the weight of us together corporately.  Will we be the church?  Will we be a city on a hill?  Practically, will you invite that neighbor over for dinner?  How long has it been, couples, since you've invited an unbelieving family over to your house for dinner?  Will you intentionally hang out in the same places? Go to those same places, like Starbuck's, maybe McDonald's in the morning?  Will you intentionally take one step week into the life of someone in your sphere of influence?  Remember this is not an individual burden, it's a community mission. This is us.  Will we be the church?  Will we be the church?  I'll end with this.  If someone were to take a virtual tour of our church, not the place, but the people, what would they see us doing this week?