Category: sermon-archive

We have been exploring some biblical texts that line up with our vision and mission statement as a church. Here at Takanini Community Church we describe ourselves as “an open family of believers seeking to follow Jesus Christ and live out His teaching while we watch for his return.”

Today’s text helps to clarify what we mean when we talk about living out Christ’s teachings. It is found in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 6 and verses 46-49.

⁴⁶ “So why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say? ⁴⁷ I will show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it. ⁴⁸ It is like a person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against the house, it stands firm because it is well built. ⁴⁹ But anyone who hears and doesn’t obey is like a person who builds a house without a foundation. When the floods sweep down against that house, it will collapse into a heap of ruins.”

In the last text we looked at in this series, we saw what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ. We saw four men on a beach being challenged to let Jesus change them into fishers of men. We saw a large crowd bringing all the broken people they could find to Jesus, so that he could heal them.

We can naturally pick up from those images, and see another aspect of the gospel message in today’s text. Reading the larger context, we see that Jesus had prayed all night on a mountain. When he came down to a level place, he then called the twelve whom he was training as missionaries. Joining them was a large crowd of other disciples, and an even larger crowd of people from all over the surrounding regions, and they had brought all the people with something wrong with them for Jesus to fix. So, there were four groups in all, interacting with Jesus: the twelve apostles, the larger group of disciples, the even larger crowds watching, and the people being helped. The message Jesus taught was directed to all four groups. It was a message about being authentic in one’s Christian walk.

Now, consider this: of all the people in all the groups I just mentioned, no one doubted that Jesus was real. They brought crippled people to him, and he healed them. They brought people attacked by demons and after Jesus did his thing, those people left with their lives back under control. Jesus was the evidence of his own genuineness. But, what about the Christians? What was to be the evidence of their authenticity?

Here is where you will find some differences in answers depending on who you ask. Some Christians come from a background that teaches them to expect God to always heal the sick and do other supernatural things as the sign that their faith is real. I do not doubt God’s power to heal at all. Neither do I doubt that the Holy Spirit gifts certain Christians with supernatural healing gifts, or manifests his power through some other kind of miracle. But I’m not one of those Christians who comes from a background where we always expect God to do that. When I look carefully at this text, I see Jesus authenticating who he is by his miracles. But he teaches the apostles and disciples to authenticate who they are some other way. We Christians authenticate ourselves by living out his teaching – by doing what he commanded us to do.

Jesus had noticed that there were many who had professed faith in him, and even owned him as their Lord, but their confession had not produced any obedience. There are some groups that emphasize God’s election so much that it sometimes seems like they are saying what you do does not matter. But what you do does matter. It matters to Jesus. Those he chooses choose to obey him. Simply claiming that Jesus is your Lord puts you in the latter two groups, not in the former two groups. Those in the latter two groups have had some awareness of who Jesus is and what he can do. They may even have had some experience of him. He may have even healed them or delivered them from demons. But simple awareness or even a simple experience is not enough. The question Jesus asked challenged them to seal their commitment by becoming part of group two: the larger group of disciples. He had given a number of commands in his gospel sermons. He expected those who were really sincere about calling him Lord to start obeying those commands.

The message for us today is that professing faith is still not enough. We can say we are Christians all we want. We can even attend Christian services, listen to Christian music, back Christian political candidates, and put a fish sticker on our car’s back bumper. Still not enough. So, what is enough? That’s what Jesus teaches here. A life of obedience demonstrates authentic Christianity.

Jesus describes that life of obedience by comparing our lives to a house built on the solid foundation of a rock. He talks about floodwaters rising and breaking against that house and – nothing happens. In the simile that Jesus is using here, you can tell an authentic Christian life because the trials and troubles which destroy the lives of others cause no destruction in the true Christian’s life. The evidence is … nothing. No cracks, no leaks, no landslides, no roof caving in, no disintegration. The evidence is a lack of negative evidence.

But do not forget the reality that we saw first. Simply professing Christ as your Lord is not the same thing as building your life of the rock. There is only one way to build a Christian life. It is not having good Christian parents. It is not having a good Christian education. It is not learning a solid Christian theology. All of these are good things, but neither is the thing that Jesus identified as building one’s house on a rock. Building my life on the rock is learning and obeying the teachings of Jesus.

The apostles who wrote the epistles of the New Testament picked up on this same building analogy to teach their churches how to live authentically as Christians.

• — “let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up” (Romans 14:19).
• — “We should help others do what is right and build them up in the Lord” (Romans 15:2).
• — “ (Equipping ministers’ ) responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12).
• — “So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
• — “But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith” (Jude 1:20).

What I find most significant about the way the New Testament epistles read Jesus’ teaching about building our lives is that they all describe the process that Christians do for each other. We’re not used to thinking of it quite like that. I think of building my own life on the rock, and I tend to think of obeying Christ’s teachings personally, remaining pure, not being hypocritical, staying personally devoted to the Bible, etc. But the apostles understood that Jesus actually gave very few commands that his followers can obey individually. In fact, it is in the laboratory of community living that we will find the most challenges to our desire to live out his teachings. So, that is one reason why Christ taught his disciples to form churches. It is in the context of church, family, society where we can build our lives into something stable that will outlast whatever destruction comes our way.

Of course, there is a cosmic, future, ultimate sense in which Jesus’ illustration applies as well. The ultimate challenge that we all face is our own mortality. The ultimate floods that sweep down on the house are age and disease, accident or violence. If the atheists are right, and there is no God, we all just die. But if Jesus was right, and God exists, there is a solution to the death problem. Jesus taught in many different ways that there is hope for a second life, an eternal life. How do we guarantee that we will make it into the right side of the judgment? Answer: the same thing we do to authenticate our Christian profession: living out his teachings.

 

 

 

We have committed ourselves as a church to learning Jesus’ teachings, and applying them to our lives as individuals and as a Christian community. We want to build each other up into a building that will survive the disasters of this life, and make it into the future life. You are invited to join us. We are an open family: there’s always room for more. But if you are serious about joining us, you have to know that we do not compromise the teachings of Jesus. Living out those teachings is the building process itself.

 

Jefferson Vann

Takanini Community Church

Auckland, New Zealand

“WE ARE… an open family of believers seeking to follow Jesus Christ and live out His teaching while we watch for His return.”

Those are the words of Takanini Community Church’s identity statement. In this sermon series, I am looking at some biblical passages which highlight the ideas expressed in that identity statement.

One of the most helpful ways to stay unified as a team is to make an identity statement which expresses what everyone on the team wants. Then all of the team’s potential decisions and actions can be judged by whether of not they agree with the statement. Any team needs to be evaluating itself based on the priorities that the whole team shares as a unit. But, if the team actually happens to be a Christian church, then there is another question which is just as important as the unity question: “Is it biblical?” Through this series, I want to show that our identity statement reflects what the Bible teaches that we as a Christian church should be doing. I want to demonstrate that the decisions we make or plan to make fit into God’s purpose for us.

Today’s text is Matthew 4:17-25 (my own translation):

¹⁷ From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom from the sky has approached.” ¹⁸ While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, since they were fishermen. ¹⁹ And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you into fishers of people.” ²⁰ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹ And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, repairing their nets, and he called them. ²² Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him too. ²³ And he went throughout the whole region of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of his kingdom and healing every disease and every illness the people had. ²⁴ Gossip about him spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. ²⁵ And large crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

Since, we – as a church – have identified ourselves as believers seeking to follow Jesus Christ, perhaps it is a good idea for us to consider what it means to follow him. We should ask ourselves what following Jesus entails. We should investigate what it meant for people in the New Testament era to make a conscious decision to follow Jesus. I think we will find that today’s text will be very helpful in answering that question.

First, notice in this passage that following Jesus means letting him change us.

We see that in the short, direct statement that Matthew makes which summarizes Jesus’ gospel message. He says that Jesus was preaching that people should repent (17).

Dr. Flannigan explained something very important recently about this concept of repentance, and how it is necessary for true biblical faith. In his message on Psalm 32, he talked about some people’s wrong understanding of what it means to have faith in Christ. Some people think of faith as merely assenting to the reality of Christ’s existence. But, if that is my idea of faith in Christ, I will find it very difficult to find a reason to repent of my sins. If all God wants from me is to believe that Jesus is real, why does Jesus insist that I also have to repent?

He explained that in the biblical mindset, repentance and faith are two parts of the same thing. To believe that Jesus is the Messiah (Christ) is to accept him as my ruler, my king. Dr. Flannigan said that the word Messiah is a political term. In fact, the word Saviour is also used in the bible with the same connotation. A Saviour is a king who rescues a people and delivers them from slavery to another king. So, the gospel message is not so much a religious doctrine as it is a political statement of God’s intent to rule through his Saviour (Jesus) Messiah (Christ). And that is why you cannot truly believe in Jesus without repentance.

For the same reason, it is also impossible to truly follow Jesus without letting him change you. That is also why Jesus’ message was a challenge to repent. Repentance is a change of mind that produces a change of conduct. In today’s text, we see Jesus approaching four fishermen – two sets of brothers – Peter and Andrew and James and John. All four of these brothers had heard Jesus’ message and had personally repented. They had both accepted what Jesus said was true, and also pledged their lives in loyalty to him. That explains why all four of them were able to respond so quickly to his personal call to be his disciples. He told them “Follow me, and I will make you into fishers of people.

They were learning something very important about repentance – something that you and I need to understand as well. Repentance is not a “one shot deal.” Those four brothers that day had already repented. If you and I were there that day, and we asked them whether they belonged to Jesus, they would have said yes. But Jesus did not approach these four and ask “are you mine?” No, he knew they were his. But he was not through with them. It was not enough for Jesus to merely have them on his team. He wanted to change them. So, he told them to follow him, and as they did so, he would make them into something different. They were currently believers who were fishers of fish. He was going to change them into believers who were fishers of people (19).

Now, if you and I are serious about our Christian walk we will have times like this as well. But, if we are not careful, we will miss out on the opportunity to grow that these times give us. Note, that these four men responded by accepting Jesus’ challenge, and allowing him to change them into something else. Either of them could have said, “No, Jesus, I’m comfortable with my spiritual gift of fisherman, so I am just going to stay on my boat and be a good Christian here.” Neither of them said that, and neither of us should. Following Jesus means being willing to keep repenting and allowing Jesus to change us into the kind of people that he wants. Christianity is not so much an club we are recruited into as a life career we are in training for.

That explains why these four fishers of fish could so easily and immediately transition to a new task: being fishers of people. It was not that they had gone to theological seminary and graduated with a Masters in applied evangelism. No, the jumped off their boats and followed Jesus into a life they were totally unprepared for. If you had asked Peter of Andrew of James or John whether they felt able to accomplish that task, each of them would have said “no way.” But their commitment to follow Christ was not being measured by their own sense of ability or qualification. They had determined to follow Christ and live out his teaching. That meant putting his will first.

So, if we were to be on that beach that day, and ask these four believers what it meant to respond in repentance to Jesus, here is what they would say: First, find out what Jesus wants. Next, do it. “What about the nets that need mending?” “Not our problem.” “What about the boat that needs workers?” “Not our problem.” “What about your father and former employer, Zebedee?” “Not our problem.” “From the moment we decided to follow Jesus, our number one priority has been doing what he wants. We have decided to put his will first.”

Matthew goes on to record the actions of another group of followers of Jesus besides these four beach boys. He said that large crowds of people were following Jesus (25). What were these followers doing? They were not being trained as apostolic evangelists. But they found a way to be fishers of people also. Notice that these believers scoured the countryside, looking for broken people for Jesus to fix.

You know why some churches die? Some churches die because their members keep looking for more healthy members to help them grow their church. Those who are healthy do not need a doctor. Growing churches are made up of crowds who follow Jesus into their neighbourhoods and look for more people who need Jesus as much as they do.

These crowds in today’s text were full of followers. They were not going to be involved in intensive training like the twelve. So, there was going to be a lot about Jesus that they would not know. But there is one thing they understood instinctively: Jesus is the answer. At some point in time, they had heard the gospel message that Jesus was preaching. They knew that God’s kingdom was going to come down from the sky. They knew that they wanted to be part of that future kingdom. So, they obeyed Jesus and repented of their sins.

That choice to repent and follow Jesus drove them to a thousand other choices. They did not decide to gather together and form good worship teams and bless themselves with a deeper religious experience. No, their faith in Christ did not lead them to be internally focused. It made them into people who were externally focused.

From that time on, when they saw someone who was sick, diseased, in pain, demonically oppressed, physically or mentally challenged, they no longer saw those people as cursed. They saw all of the broken people as potentially blessed by the same Christ who saved them.

We at Takanini Community Church are also committed to bringing the Takanini community to Christ. All of our community ministries are designed to meet people at their point of need, and introduce them to Jesus. When we see a young, single parent, struggling to raise children, we don’t look at that parent as someone else’s problem. We see that parent’s need as a possible way of introducing them to Jesus. We don’t see those children as problems either. They are a blessing, because they can be the focal point of a ministry that leads their whole family to Christ.

We have just barely begun the process of seeking ways to bring our community to Christ. But we have begun. The point of today’s text is that this process of seeking out the broken for Jesus to heal is not some sideline specialty for professional Christian workers. It is the work of the larger crowd of followers of Jesus.

Our commitment to follow Jesus is not like the decision to join a casual club. We are not just members who join by being baptised, pay our annual membership fee and then watch the professionals do the work. No, the Christian life requires letting Jesus change us so that we accomplish what he wants. And it also requires of us all that we make it our full-time work to find ways of bringing the broken in our community to Christ.

Those are things that true followers do.

 

Takanini Community Church’s identity statement is one of the best that I have ever read.

“We Are: An open family of believers seeking to follow Jesus Christ and live out His teaching while we watch for His return.”

When I was thinking about what the Lord wanted me to share as Penny and I resume our roles here, one of the thoughts I had was to examine some texts that might serve as the scriptural basis for that statement.

Last time, we looked at Ephesians 2, and looked at what it meant for the Ephesians believers and other Christians in Paul’s time to live as a family.

Today’s text serves as a good scriptural basis for the idea of the local church being made up of believers in Jesus Christ.

The New Testament words for believe, trust and faith are all in the same word family. Keep that in mind as you listen to today’s text:

 

 

The apostle Peter lived through one of the most difficult and challenging times for the early church – a time when both the Jewish establishment in Palestine and the Roman authorities throughout the Gentile world were turning against Christians, treating them with discrimination and violence, and persecuting them for their faith.

The reason I mention this is that nowadays when some people talk about faith they are referring to something entirely different than what Peter was talking about in this passage. I have heard people describe faith as if it is some magical power that Christians get that they can use to make themselves healthier, wealthier and more intelligent. Some people think of faith as a kind of spiritual strength that can help them get promoted at their workplace, make a million dollars, or raise super-spiritual children without any effort.

Peter lived in a world where true believers did not think like that. They were treated very badly by everyone else, and some were being slaughtered for their faith. They were being set on fire to light Caesar’s parties. They were being beheaded. They were being sent to the arena, to be murdered by gladiators, or eaten by lions. It seems to me that if faith was something that you could use to overcome worldly distractions and be victorious over all your enemies, Peter had the perfect context in which to talk about that kind of faith. He could have told the believers he was writing to that if they wanted to keep from being persecuted and murdered by Jewish fundamentalists and Roman Nazis all they needed was more of this magic faith. Instead, this is the kind of thing we read in this letter:

· “There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while” (1:6).

· “These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold– though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honour on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world” (1:7).

· “even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats” (3:14).

· “Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, than to suffer for doing wrong!” (3:17).

· “Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad– for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world” (4:12-13).

· “So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you” (4:19).

My point in bringing this up is that there are all kind of “believers” in this world, and all kinds of “faith.” So, when we say – as a church – that we are a family of believers in Christ, I want to make it absolutely clear what we are not saying. We are not saying that we have found the super-drug that is going to make us impervious to the problems and trials that normal people face in this life. If you’ve found that kind of faith, I’m glad for you, but I haven’t, and neither did Peter. He lived in a real world, where God’s love for him did not mean that he was going to live above its problems. In fact, Peter – and all the other apostles except for John – were executed for their faith. But their faith was real, and I believe it was that real faith that Peter was talking about. It is quite possible that some of the people in this generation who call themselves Christians have never been introduced to that real faith. Today’s text gives the basic defining elements of it. Let’s review them, shall we?

 

 

As odd as it may seem, true biblical faith does not begin with the act of believing. It begins with the object of that belief. You can have the strongest faith in the world, but if you put that faith in a rock or a piece of wood, your faith is useless. That’s why Peter begins his faith talk not by asking his readers to look deep inside, but asking them to look up. Faith works only if there is a powerful object of that faith.

The church’s faith-object is its founder: almighty God, who set the processes of our eternal redemption and restoration in place. He did this by choosing his own Son, and sending him to die in our place, as the ransom to buy us back from the consequences of our sin. Biblical faith begins with God.

 

 

 

 

 

The second basic element of biblical faith is also not something that we do, but something that was done for us. Christ’s death on the cross was absolutely essential. We could have had all the faith anyone has ever seen, and it would have been useless to save us. Sin had separated us from God’s favour and condemned us to experience his enmity and wrath. So, God in his love paid the sacrificial price for us. Jesus himself is described here as “the sinless, spotless lamb of God.” Suddenly, all those sacrifices under the old covenant make sense. They make sense not because God could ever really be appeased by an animal sacrifice. They make sense because they were pointing forward to the day when God himself would provide the sacrifice to bring atonement.

So, Peter tells his readers that those former sacrifices were prophecies, and that we have now been shown their fulfilment. Biblical faith can save because God has paid the ransom, “the precious blood of Christ.”

The focus of the Christian faith is Jesus Christ, and he is enough. You haven’t even begun to express that faith if you are still expecting God to do something else for you before you will really commit to him. Satan knows how to push your buttons, and he will keep pushing you as long as he thinks it is working. If you get into despair every time the road gets bumpy, he will keep you travelling on a bumpy road the rest of your life. His goal is to get you to give up.

But what happens when you are travelling that bumpy road, and you look to Jesus? He travelled it first, didn’t he? He came to this planet for the very purpose of suffering, being defeated and killed – for you.

He is the focus of your faith, not your faith. So, it really does not matter how much faith you have. All you need is a little tiny bit of faith – a mustard seed’s worth, because it’s not the quantity of your faith that matters. It’s the sufficiency of the focus of your faith: Jesus Christ. Your weak, small, tiny, diminutive, teensy-weensy faith is enough to save you for eternity if it is focused on the amazing, miraculous grace of God and the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

Peter also tells us something about the future expectation of biblical faith. I think this is important for today because even Christians are often caught up in the wrong kind of hope. Listen to what Peter says about the Christian hope:

· “But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it” (3:14-15).

If you ask many average Christians today what their hope is, they will probably say something like “going to heaven when I die.” That would be the natural response that many would have to the question. The problem is, that response has absolutely nothing to do with what Peter had been talking about. Here is what Peter mentioned about the believer’s expectation in today’s text:

· “you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead” (1:21).

The hope that Peter steered his readers to was not a hope of something happening at death. It was a hope of a resurrection. Just as God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, so he will raise us when Jesus returns. Peter told his readers that they can stand firm in their faith because the same God who raised Christ and glorified him also intends to do the same for us. So, even if we do suffer during this life, our destiny is sure. The fact that Jesus suffered and then was raised and glorified is all the proof we need. And, the little faith that we have is all the faith that we need, because it is faith in the God who raises the dead.

 

 

 

 

 

You are invited to join this family of believers seeking to follow Jesus Christ and live out his teaching while we watch for his return. Put your faith in God, focus your faith on Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and trust God to resurrect you and glorify you at his return!