The pastor from GCC and myself co-taught yesterday’s teaching on reconciliation.

beauty in justice – part two (reconciliation)

Andrew Moroz –

I want to show you this morning what motivates/drives us to serve.

Our theme: Reconciliation (& Service) – Read: 5:17-19 / Summarize

-Reconcile (v): to restore to friendship or harmony.

2 Corinthians – 4^th letter to a messed up church

Christ has reconciled us and has given us the message and ministry of rec.

3 Facts that should motivate us to live a life of sacrificial service:

I. This life is temporary (what we do with it matters) (4:17-5:10).

Paul reminds the church that this life is temporary (4:17-18).

Our earthly body is temp and one day will be destroyed, but our heavenly body is eternal (5:1-8).

v.  9-10: While on earth our goal should be to please God b/c we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ and give account what we did on earth.

“Though you and I find ourselves surrounded by the lure of temporary pleasure, we must fasten our affections on the one who promises eternal treasure that will never spoil or fade. If your life or my life is going to count on earth, we must start by concentrating on the eternal. For then, and only then, will you and I be free to take radical risk, knowing that what awaits us is radical reward.” – David Platt, Radical

The fact that his life is temporary should cause us to live life in light of the ultimate rather than the immediate.

II. Christ loves us and died for us (14-15, 21).

This life is not about me – I’m not commending myself/I don’t want praise (12)

I don’t care if people think I’m crazy: I live for God and for others (13).

Read: 14-15, 21 – Share the Gospel?

What controls/compels you in this life?

The fact that Christ loves us and died for us should cause us to live a life of sacrificial service and love for God and others.

III. Christians have a message and mission (19b-20).

Ambassador – highest ranking official that represents a nation.

The fact that we have a message and mission should cause us to live a life of action and obedience.

“The gospel does not prompt you to mere reflection; the gospel requires a response.” – David Platt

Conclusion:

This life is temporary – live life in light of the ultimate rather than the immediate.

Christ loves us and died for us – live a life of sacrificial service and love for God and others.

These first two facts are especially important if you are not a Christian here this morning…Jesus lived, died, and rose again to restore the relationship between God and man?

Christians have a message and mission – live a life of action and obedience.

“Evangelism cannot be separated from social action because mission makes place through relationships.” Tim Chester & Steve Timmis Total Church

Philip Watkins –

This idea of justice is so central to God’s heart that if you remove it from the Bible you might as well not read it at all.

1 Timothy 6.17-19 (NLT)

17 Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. 19 By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.

I use to read this passage and think to myself that this wasn’t really for me.  It was for the wealthy.

Roughly 92% of the world doesn’t have a car.  That means that 8% of the entire world that owns a car.  We are rich.

Experts say that in order for the entire world to have the proper food, water, shelter, and health care it would cost $20 billion dollars.

Americans spend approximately $20 billion dollars on ice cream every year.

We are so rich.  All of us.  This passage isn’t just for the millionaires in the world…it is for you and I.

So what are some applications we can take from this passage?

1)Look for the oppression around you (both locally and globally)

2)Listen to the cries of the people around you (unplug your ears)

3)Pray (go on prayer walks)

4)Act (help bring justice)

beauty in justice – part one (renewal)

We hear this phrase quite often in our society now. This phrase divides people. This phrase has been used to force people into action. This phrase has been used to guilt people into writing a check. This phrase has been used by the government, businesses, non-profits, and the Church. This phrase has been defined in multiple ways to meet the context in which one wants to use it. This phrase is: social justice.

[lcf] believes in being a community that is active locally and globally. We want to be a community that hears the cries of people like God hears them. We want to be a community where our heart breaks like God’s heart breaks for people. We want to be a community that speaks love and truth to people. We believe that justice is so much deeper than just social. Justice needs to be addressed emotionally, physically, politically, socially, mentally, and spiritually. If justice only ever becomes social then all we are doing is inviting socialism into our community. We want to invite the Creator of the Universe into our community through multiple venues.

For many of us in this room we fall into one of three categories:
1) we hear this idea of justice and we get really excited about getting involved
2) we hear idea and we automatically begin to put up walls because people both in and outside the church have misused this concept and as a result you stay as far away as possible from this kind of stuff.
3) We hear this idea and we nod our head like we know what’s going on, but in reality no one has ever actually taken the time and explained this concept to us biblically and practically.

In response to all three of these groups of people I believe that we need to define it clearly and correctly as a community. This will allow us to make sure we are on the same page from day one. Justice is now understand, agreed upon, and acted on because we all come together with the same purpose and definition.

A great theologian and writer in England said it best in a book he wrote title, Simply Christian. The ironic part about this definition he gives is that he wasn’t actually trying to give this definition directly to justice. However, I believe that the way N.T. Wright words this cannot be more perfect for a common definition. He defines it this way: helping to put the world to rights.

This is a great definition of what we are called to do as Christ followers. If we are not actively moving to help to put the world to rights then we aren’t actively moving as a Christian anyways. If all we ever do is meet on Sundays, and meet throughout week, and work on our personal growth through spiritual rhythms then I can say rather definitively that God is not impressed.

Over the summer I began to really read a lot, and research a lot about what God has to say about this concept. I began to see rather quickly that this concept of justice is not a New Testament idea, it isn’t an early church idea, it is a God idea. From the very beginning in Genesis God began to call out people when they were not helping those around them. Woven all throughout Scripture, both in the Hebrew Scripture and in the New Testament God has been on a mission. That mission has been and is still today centered on helping those around us.

There is a man named Jim Wallis who started a non-profit called Sojourners. This non-profit is 100% centered on justice according to how God sees it. Jim does a lot of speaking at conferences, churches, and seminars, and whenever he goes he takes with him an old King James Bible. This Bible rather beat up, not only because it is old, but also because Jim and his buddy cut up practically the whole thing. Jim had this idea in order to prove a point that he would cut out of his Bible every passage that had anything to do with justice and helping others. The final result was that Jim was left with very little Bible, and a lot of torn up pages and empty space. He took this with him to prove a point. His point was simply, if you are not willing to do your part as a Christ follower to help out around the world locally and globally then why even bother picking up a Bible and claiming to be a Christian.

This idea of justice is so central to God’s heart that if you remove it from the Bible you might as well not read it at all.

So, now that we have established some common ground on how we define justice and on how important this is in God’s eyes we can actually begin to dive in and look at exactly what God says in His Word.

Turn with me if you have your bibles to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is a large book right after Psalms.

We are going to be looking at two different passages from Isaiah this morning. The first passage is in Chapter 1, verses 16 through 17. Before we read this though I want us to look at the context of this chapter first.

The opening words and verses from the chapter make it rather obvious to see what God is trying to say here. Basically God is telling the Israelites through His prophet Isaiah that He is sick and tired of all their traditions and rituals. He is tired of their meaningless actions. Because their heart is not it, it means nothing to Him. This same concept can be said of us going to church today, or doing any other “Christian” ritual out of obligation or tradition. God doesn’t want these actions just for the sake of doing them. He wants your heart. Here is what he says in response to how they can get their lives and their nation back to order.

Isaiah 1.16-17

16 Wash yourselves and be clean!
Get your sins out of my sight.
Give up your evil ways.
17 Learn to do good.
Seek justice.
Help the oppressed.
Defend the cause of orphans.
Fight for the rights of widows.

I love this. It is simple, to the point, and you understand exactly what God is trying to do here. He is telling them to treat others around them with love and compassion. He wants them to understand that he wants their hearts not in rituals, but in actions that change and transform lives such as justice.

These final four phrases in this passage are profound. If you take these and highlight them, circle them, print them off and stick it somewhere in your room so that you can be reminded of what the heart of God is actually after.

God is interested in bringing His Kingdom to earth. I wish I could talk more about this now, but we are definitely going to dive into it this semester. God wants us to live our lives in such a way that His heavenly kingdom begins to break forth like the dawn here on earth. The only way that happens is when you and I stand up and began to do what Isaiah is saying here in Chapter 1.

Jesus came to earth not only to die, but also to resurrect. If Jesus didn’t resurrect then he would just be another dead guy in the ground. I love this quote by N.T. Wright:

“The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”
— N.T. Wright

(video clip from I am Legend – light up the darkness)

Isaiah 58.6-10 (NLT)

6 “No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
7 Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.

Light up the darkness.

[lcf] brought in JR Woodward (a good friend, and a board member of Ecclesia) back in April to do a formal assessment on our community. We learned a lot about our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to our community. In this assessment one of the most powerful things mentioned was during the interview process. JR met with almost twenty students/staff in this intense four day assessment and during this process he asked students to articulate what the mission of [lcf] is as well as what we believe “church” is. We define our mission by our three “e’s” as we call them: engage the culture, embrace everyone, and endure the cross. Almost all of the students he met with got this one right, however the next question produced quite a different result.

At [lcf] we say that we “express church in four different ways”. Each expression has a purpose behind it as well as obvious differences in both size and function. Our four expressions are: Sunday gathering (everyone coming together), [home groups] (20-50 students that form a mid-size communities that meet weekly to for food, fellowship, and discussion. These students also serve once a month together in our local community), [journey groups] (4-8 students that form gender specific groups that meet directly after [home groups] for prayer and accountability), and personal rhythms (scripture, prayer, and rest are the valued rhythms needed to maintain a healthy spiritual life). The average student that was asked about these expressions responded by knowing only half of the expressions. Ironically, we were planning on doing the final teaching series on our four expressions which began the week after JR left.

[lcf] is only two years old as a church community, and we are still learning to talk in many ways. There are a lot of words out there being used by authors, bloggers, and leaders of churches, such as missional, emerging, and relevant, as well as words that are old in many ways but are carrying a new meaning such as liturgy, community, and rhythm. My wife thought it would be funny one day to compile all these together so she began to write an [lcf] dictionary for all the words/phrases we use. All joking aside, we must learn to use the same language in order to be one. Every nationality, every culture, and even every family has its own language that has formed over time. In order to truly be intertwined with the culture around you, you must learn the language. Learning a language may be the first step in this process, but it is, in fact, a two-step process. The true test arises when we move from learning a language to adapting our lives around the language. I can speak about community and doing life with those around me. I can even be quite persuasive as to why we should have rhythms in our lives. However, it takes on an entirely new perspective once I began to actually live it out. When people begin to see the result of such a life ooze out of me it carries a whole different meaning to those around me.

Several of our students and student leaders joke about how we use phrases or words, and even though they tease myself and Jonah about our language, they understand. They not only understand…but they use it as well. If you ask a student in our community what a rhythm is most will give an answer that has nothing to do with music or sounds. Words are powerful and need to be used in uniformity. A community cannot move forward and truly be healthy unless they understand and live out the language around them.

After two years of working with students and heading into year three of our church plant I have to say that language is a vital component to the health and unity of our community. The language is never meant to be divisive and push people away, but rather communicate clearly in ways that we all understand.

The language should become contagious.

The language should become transforming.

The language should become unifying.

The language should be inspiring.

The language should be yours.

- Philip Watkins

The problem with most American church-goers is that from the numbers I stated above, they would automatically think that it was a healthy high school group. What is it with the Church in the Western world that we are so obsessed with numbers and then turning around and assuming the quality of the group? When did quality become a result out of quantity?

The current statistics out there by the Barna Research Team is that 86% of high school students involved in a church will have walked away from their faith completely before graduating college. Now the youth group I grew up in produced some pretty awesome students. One is getting ready to go out on the mission field to Somalia where you can count the amount of missionaries on one hand. Another student just graduated from Virginia Tech after being highly in the campus church there, and is now headed to an engineering job in Virginia Beach. He led small groups, led a worship band, and even considered full time ministry before feeling called by God to serve in the workplace. On and on I could go, but I honestly don’t think I could go to 14. Fourteen percent represents the ones who are still faithful after college. Now I believe I had one of the best youth pastors in the world, Dave Simiele, who is now serving at Christ Fellowship in West Palm, Florida. But even with Dave, or the countless other great youth pastors out there why only 14 out of a 100?

[lcf] recently flew out a member of the board for Ecclesia (see our partnership page under about) at the end of April to do an assessment of our church community here at LC. One of the things we learned in this process is how [lcf] is reaching these de-churched students. Even though we knew that these students were our target audience I didn’t realize how much. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term “de-churched” let me define it this way: anyone who has had some level of christian or church exposure in their childhood and adolescence experience but now wants nothing to do with either.

My experience with almost all of the students that are at Lynchburg College is as I described above. How do we reach these students? What pushed them away from the church to begin with?

I am very proud of our community for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important reasons is because they live what they say. One of our mission statements is to “embrace everyone” and our community lives this out better than any I have ever had the chance to see. With all kinds of agendas, t-shirts, and beliefs being thrown in your face from the moment you walk onto a college campus until you leave, it is hard to embrace and accept everyone you come across. We believe that you don’t have to believe everything someone says or stands for or even be accepting of their way of life in order to embrace them and accept them as image-bearers of Christ. This profound approach to people is what allows us to have an impact on the students at Lynchburg College. It is nothing new. Jesus lived this way. How often does the church walk out judgement prior to offering a hand? Is there a reason why Jesus saved some of his harshest words for the Pharisees and the disciples?

My prayer is that our community will continue to love everyone it comes across. My prayer is that the Church will love people and embrace them as image-bearers of God.

Join with me today in prayer for both the Church and those who have walked away because of the Church.

God, Savior, Master, and Daddy,
We pray today for the Church around the world.
We ask that you teach us all how to imitate Your Son in all that we say and do.
May we be a Church that embraces everyone we come in contact with.
May we be a body of believers that are seeking to bring Your kingdom to earth.
Cause us to see people the way that you see them, and for our hearts to beat the way Yours does.
Cause us to be a missional community of people wherever we are that are more interested in people than our buildings.

God today we pray for those who have chosen to walk away.
May You place us in their paths to share with them your true gospel.
May we live in such a way that our actions and language reflect Your Son.
We ask today for those friends and family members in our lives that have walked away from the church.
We ask for forgiveness for those times we have not lived or responded according to Your Scriptures.
We ask for forgiveness for the times we have hurt those that has walked away.
Cause us to be the Church you want us to be.
Amen.

- Philip Watkins

After a great deal of work by my friend John Chandler (@johnchandler), [lcf] finally has a website.  This website will be a great asset to our community in many ways, both in Lynchburg as well as around the world.

We decided that our community needed a website for several reasons.  Whether it is for graphics and videos created by students, looking for the latest updates to our calendar for upcoming events, or for our ministry partners to have better access to giving, this site is going to be a huge resource.

Look around and let us know what you think.  Over the next several weeks we will be working hard to update and fill in all the holes.