Building a Great Life VI

You know, as we were singing that, all those papers, we were reminded of where that comes from, in the cleft of the rock. I don't know if you're familiar with that. What story is that from? Where did someone meet the Lord's presence in the cleft of a rock? Yesterday? I think it's talking about Elijah, isn't it? Isn't that where he, he thought he would see the Lord in the powerful earthquake and all the storms, but no, he's in the cleft of the rock. The Lord passed by. It's in those secret moments. Well, we're going to do something unusual today. If you'll take your notes out and prepare to follow through. You're going to want to take notes today. This is going to be, I think, feedback from the first service was very positive about this. I took a cue. Maybe you've seen all these kinds of things. I brought up a couple of illustrations. The media, at this time of the year, helps us all kind of look back and learn from the history of the year just passed. Here's U.S. News talking about memorable pictures of 1997 and things to look forward to in 98. Here's the Post-Gazette's feature magazine this weekend, The Best of 97. They talk about movies and books and songs and CDs and all different kinds of things. Kind of looking at what happened in the year past and what can we expect in the year ahead. About ten days ago, I was praying about this particular message. In fact, I had done a lot of preparation about commitment. I'm going to move that message into next weekend because the Lord really clearly kind of spoke into my heart that it was time for us to review as a people, and we've never done this before, the last year. So what we're going to do is look at the... and this was quite an exercise... at the past 12 months and look at what I believe are the ten most significant corporate truths that God spoke to us. Now, a little bit of preface here for those of you who may be wondering, well, gee, well, I understand how this relates to me. Your personal highlights, in other words, what you got out of a particular message that may have affected you could be entirely different. And I would expect that to be so. You may... I've often said this, if you leave every sermon or teaching or whatever with one thing that you've heard that's affected you, you've made a good investment. Now, if you just leave and you're glad that you stayed awake, then you've got a lot of praying to do. You need to look at your life. But what we're going to show you may not have been the thing that you wrote down as being most impactful. I also recognize that some of the things that God speaks to you don't come from this platform. In fact, many of the things that you hear are, as Ted alluded to earlier, something that maybe you heard from God in your own quiet time. But with that in mind, I want to say that it was a great exercise for me to leaf through all the messages that I did, and Dave did the same, over the last year to pick out those things which were most impactful. I mean, in a sense, it was a little scary. I mean, I took whole series and just put them on the side. I said, well, nothing really impactful there. Not really. But it was kind of scary to have to reduce it down that much, but it was good. And one thing I want to begin by is just giving a little overview. Here's what I discovered as I reviewed the last year. We have covered three areas with a fairly equal amount of balance in terms of time invested. Three areas. Number one, the personal journey of faith. What does it mean for you to walk with Christ? And Dave's going to give a couple of good illustrations of that. Then we talked about what it means to be in community, in church life for quite a number of weeks, and we're going to talk about that today just a bit. And the third ingredient, which I think was extremely important this year, woven into a number of messages and even a couple of series, was the nature and character of God. And by God's grace, I want to look at each of those three areas and talk for just a few moments about the most specific things that I believe God would have us to walk away with. So here we go. Let's just dive right in. Bear with me just a bit because there's quite a bit of information, but these will be short. And if you're taking notes, you're going to want to be able to move quickly. And I think you'll walk out of here refreshed with some of the things that God has spoken to us. From the first series in the spring called Signs of the Spirit-Led Life, we established eight characteristics in our lives that are evidences that God's Spirit is leading you. Now, not all of these are the same in each of our lives, and they're not all happening at the same time, but there were eight things, and we went down the list. You don't have to write these down, but they were peace, purity, prayer, pain. What? Pain is a sign that I'm following God? Absolutely. I want to submit to you, if you have no pain in your life, you're probably not in the will of God. Perspective, purpose, perseverance, and power. One of the most impactful moments in that series came rather spontaneously because I hadn't really planned to say it in my notes, but it kind of came out. But I concluded the second message in that series saying that we need to turn our pain into praise and our worry into worship. Remember that? Take those things which create hurt in our lives and let them be a springboard for praise of God. Take the things that cause us to worry, and rather than complain and murmur and mumble about them, let worship begin to flow from our lips. Our first response, dear ones, when things begin to go south, should be worship, not murmuring, complaining, and worry. And I don't know about you, but I lose sight of that so easily, don't you? I mean, God's sovereign. He's in control, and yet when something happens that throws me, it's not the first thing that I normally do is to worship the Lord. Great illustration of that happened on Tuesday night, December 23rd. I mean, you responded to that sort of extra opportunity for Christmas Eve service by coming out in huge numbers. Never in our ministry's history have we had to turn cars away from the church. That's what happened that night. But if you'd been here the night before and seen how the angels were dangling by a thread, you know, I mean, if you'd seen baby Jesus kicking and screaming, I mean, it just wasn't all fitted together. And when I walked out here and saw this place packed to the walls and in the gym and out, I said, God, you know, I need to worship big time. And the Lord was faithful, and it was a wonderful evening, and it was a great illustration of how worry doesn't help you, but worship does. Second thing that I learned this year that I think was specifically given by God to us was in this series, Bulls, Bears, and the Bible, which we had finished just about six or eight weeks ago. Now, this is going to fall into the category, I'm sure, for a lot of you, and you're like, well, gee, I don't even remember saying that. This may not have been that important to you, but I think it was a word from the Lord for our congregation. So often when we preach about stewardship or handling finances, we look at it at a personal level, you know, sort of like, well, yeah, I've got to get my personal house in order, or, yeah, it's right that I understand God's ways. But friends, the point of that particular message, and this was the second message in that series, was that God spoke to us about the need to learn to excel, this is the old verse, in the grace of giving, because there's a clear relationship in Scripture between giving and spiritual breakthrough. And this was the thing that God made so alive to me, and this was the thing that I had struggled in and had not seen as clearly before in my experience. God was saying to us, there's a relationship there. Malachi 3.10, where the Lord talked about the fact that we were to bring our tithes into the storehouse, and that by not doing so, we were robbing the Lord. And He says, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. And you may recall that I talked about the floodgates being the sluice gates that hold back the blessing of God. And I used the nozzle, remember that, as an illustration. Basically, there's this hose that's connected to the reservoir of God, but you hold in your hand the key to opening that blessing. And you can hold the nozzle, I mean, if you just hold God's provision, but if you open it by the exertion of your giving, God will bless. Not just financially, but spiritually. And then I talked about Luke 16.11, where Jesus linked true wealth, the wealth of heaven, with handling material wealth. And I talked about 2 Corinthians 9, where Paul says, God will bless you in every way. He'll cause the harvest of your righteousness to rise up if you learn to sow in the physical realm. And I trust that that point got home to you, because I believe God will make a huge difference in our corporate life. And I'm thankful for the many people. I have a stack of cards down here. A huge number. Try to adjust it. Pick them up for me, please. This is just... Those of you who said, you know what, I've not been tithing, pray for me, because I want to get on God's 10-10-80 plan. And I want to do finances God's way. And I want you to know, I've been praying for you, as you start the new year, follow through in your commitment, and you'll see the blessing of God. Those are my first two. Pastor Dave's going to come. And he had 15 of his highlights. But we made him narrow it down. I didn't see any problem with that. No, no problem at all. Just... There's a fad that's sweeping through the Christian scene right now, and maybe you've seen it. It's based on a book called In His Steps. And you don't go very far without seeing wristbands or T-shirts or bumper stickers that have on it four-letter initials for a question. And you know in the book, in His Steps, these people at a church decide that before they encounter any person or engage in any circumstance that they find themselves in, they're going to ask themselves a question. You know the question, right? Have you had salsa yet today? No, that's not it. No, it's what would Jesus do? Now that's a noble question. As long as it's placed in a larger context. And that larger context is another question that I would encourage you. And we talked about in a series this summer called Practice What You Preach. And the question is this. Not only what would Jesus do, but how would Jesus live? How would Jesus live his life? And this summer, or this last summer, we talked about living what we say we believe. Living what we say we believe. Practicing by the way we live our lives every day what we assent to intellectually and call belief. And we said that the more distance there is between my beliefs and my practice, the greater internal struggle I'm going to find myself in. James calls us double-minded people when our practice and our beliefs get too far away from each other. And we talked about the fact that as my practice and my belief comes together, something powerful happens. My heart is engaged in the process, and life really opens up to me the way Jesus meant life to be lived. But it means living a certain kind of life. None of us believe that we will have the physique of Michael Jordan and his skill on the basketball court by simply eating Wheaties and drinking Coke. Right? Which works for me. But other than that, none of us would believe that. But there's something about advertisement that taps into us, that says, well, you know, maybe if I just, you know, do something like this. It's the same thing in the spiritual life. The spiritual life is grace given to us by God, but He asks us to cooperate. It's the same thing that Pastor Jay just said. To press the nozzle, to cooperate with His life, and in the cooperation, in me actually living what I say I believe, I meet God in that moment. And incredible things happen in my life because of that. So we looked at bringing the gap to close in our lives and actually living what we say we believe. In fact, a lot of what we talked about this year is looking at how did Jesus live His life, and not simply trying to mimic His life, but allowing our openness to live the way He did, to allow His life to be lived through us and to form us, actually puts us in a place where we see life in a different way. And that's the second thing that we talked about back in the series that Pastor Jay already mentioned, Signs of Spirit-Led Living. And in that particular series, which dealt a lot with community, or excuse me, it wasn't Signs of Spirit-Led Living, you got me. It was Coming Home to Community, I'm sorry. Coming Home to Community, where we talked about how Jesus saw other people, and the way He lived His life before the Father, the way He opened His heart to the Father, directly affected how He was able to share His life with other people. And we call these times where Jesus touched other people more than moments. Remember that? Looking for more than moments in life. What is a more than moment? A more than moment is when I recognize that God is behind even the most ordinary of all circumstances. Somebody say Amen. No matter what I do in my life, whether it's eating or drinking, or I'm at work or driving, there is a subtle presence behind all those things. But only, as Jesus said, for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. But as I learn to live the way Jesus lived, I begin to see these more than moments. And God not only reveals Himself to me in the midst of those things, but then gives me the grace to reveal Him to other people. And this can happen in the subtlest of ways. Remember just standing in line at the grocery store. Or just looking at someone and attending to them. Or sharing a simple deed of kindness. Can open up a deeper moment where God's presence is abiding. And we've been given the privilege as a community, not just as individuals, but as a community, to say, look, there's more than what's at the surface. God is below, and God is giving us life. And we invite you to taste that same life that God has given us. More than moments. It's easy to tap into those when things are going good. It's a great more than moment, you know, when someone gives you a thousand dollars. But it's another thing to have a more than moment when things aren't going so well. When we experience, as Pastor Jay already mentioned, pain in our lives. And that takes us back to the third piece of the 15 that I'll share today. And that is back to signs of spirit-led living. And we talked about how more than moments in crisis times really take the eyes of God's perspective for me to see what He's trying to do. Because from my vantage point, it doesn't make sense. Remember the puzzle? We talked about the puzzle and how the puzzle represents what a lot of us carry around most of our life. We take this box with us, and we've got a picture of what we think our life ought to look like. And somewhere along the road, should I do it? You know, it happens to all of us, doesn't it? We lose it. We lose what we thought our life was meant to be. And usually, it doesn't just happen once in life. That's exciting. Usually, it happens more than once, where we experience God sort of dumping our life out, not in a condemning way, but in a way that gets our attention. And then all the pieces of our life are on the floor. And just as we're about ready to start putting it back together, what does God say? Don't do that. Just leave it there. And we begin to struggle with God. But, you know, Lord, I've got the picture right here. Why don't I just go ahead and start putting it back together? Because, Dave, that's not the right picture. I have something different for you. I have something that you can't see. And remember, the pieces of the puzzle look complete to you, but some of it has to be changed. This piece here, this anger piece, has to be changed, has to be transformed. And that'll only happen if you will let me do my work. And, you know, God comes to us and He says, I do some of my best work in chaos. I do some of my best work in chaos. Just look around at creation. The Bible says in Genesis chapter 1 that the earth was without form. It was in chaos. It was formless. And God did something to that that brought form. And it's the same things in our life. When we yield to the perspective of God, when we yield to His Spirit, then that perspective gives us the grace to wait, to wait in the chaos for Him to reveal a different plan, a larger purpose for our life that we can't see. Those are the three things that I really felt like God spoke to us as a community that I was able to share with you this year. And, Pastor Jay, I wanted to say one other thing. Why don't you come up here? I said this in the first service, and I wanted to tell you again from my heart how much I appreciate you allowing me to teach. It really is... Let me just say, I've been on staff at several churches. I don't know if that's because they don't want to keep me or what it is, but most of the senior pastors that I have observed have their fingers imprinted on their pulpit. And for you to share this is an honor to let me grow, and I really appreciate it. You know you do. You're a blessing to us. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. We are all growing in the manifestation of the body of Christ. And some of us have visible gifts, but you know, I want to say, just sort of as an parenthesis of the message here, that many of you round out things that those of us up here are not very good at or couldn't do. And we're what make this body well-formed and full and complete. And thank you all for sharing in that ministry. If I took you back into the children's ministry right now, you'd see people using their gifts, or with the students, or folks that are quietly behind the scenes praying right now. That's what makes a church great, is because people own it and love it. And so it's a joy to share in our giftedness. Okay, let's go on. The next point that I wanted to share was, again, I would expect probably not on one of your lists, but it had to do with the series that I shared during vacation month, the month of August. You know, kind of me to bring out the best message in August. But we talked about what it meant to be on the way. The church, by the way, Christians were called the people of the way in the book of Acts. And I shared eight characteristics of what I felt God would say this is what it meant to be on the way with Him. Eight essential characteristics to raise up a strong and healthy harvest. Remember I came out with two ears of corn? And I talked about I couldn't find any corn in the department store. I found a lot of corn. Or in the grocery store right now. But one ear of corn was kind of gnarled and shriveled on the end, and the other was very juicy and looked delicious. And I said, well, what is the difference? Well, it was just one thing. It was a particular climate in which one of those ears of corn grew, had a lot of moisture, and the other one was just dry. And that was the simple difference. And I listed eight things, eight essentials, for our church to flourish as I believe God would have. And just jot them down. I think we have the overhead. Very quickly. To be naturally supernatural. In other words, not to be weird about it, but to believe that God, when you ask Him to, gets involved in supernatural ways. Now, how many of you, when you're in a serious situation, want God to be supernaturally involved? And yet, there's still this sort of like, well, I'm not sure if it's right. Well, if it's in the Bible, and Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then we should expect Him to do the same things today. Second, outwardly focused. And I hunger that we remain outwardly focused as a people. Not looking just at ourselves, but on the needs of those around us. Third, relevant. In other words, the things that we address are things that we're living, as Dave mentioned. Transparent. Paul said, I don't, in 2 Corinthians 4, we presented ourselves as we truly were, not wearing masks and not deceiving you. We want to be authentic in our spirit and transparent. The next was humble. And that is to say, when God does great things, He receives the glory, not us. It wasn't us that had such a tremendous impact on Christmas Eve. It was the Spirit of the Lord. Next was welcoming. And I want to underscore that this morning. When you leave today, will you reach down a couple of seats and say a greeting and a word of just introduction to another person? How important it is. Your touch with someone else. The next was authentic. That had to do with the need for us not to put on spiritual airs and use language and things that people don't understand, but to be genuine with them and sincere. And finally, the fact that you are the key, as I just mentioned. Every one of us brings some gift, some contribution to the body of Christ. And friends, I feel so strongly about this. We need to see that God is looking to us to bring to pass His purposes. And if we don't do it, there's going to be fallout. And I have to say, this is something that burdens me. I struggle with this. I was reading a book by Randy Alcorn, a pastor out in Oregon. And this was in relationship to our giving, but I also think it applies in this whole realm of looking out. Here's what he wrote. We have an overhead. He says, we are motivated first by the glory of God. In other words, whether we give or serve or reach out, it's for the glory of God. But we are also legitimately moved by the eternal needs of people. Many of us decry the fact that religious liberals don't believe in hell. But there is one shame even greater, that we who do believe in hell would make so little effort to keep people from going there. And I want you to think about that. If you believe in hell, then what have you done in 1997 to help people not to go there? And may God help us in 1998 to be committed to doing what we can. The next series was Bullish on Love. And I talked there, this was in September, about the need for us to keep love as the supreme value in our church life. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, he says, Listen, you can give everything you have away. You can preach with eloquence. You can give up your body to be burned. But if you have love, it profits you what? Nothing. You gain nothing. Love has to be there. Without it, we're missing the point of our faith. But with love, we can overcome every obstacle, every snare, every strategy the enemy would pull out to resist us. And in that series, we talked about our relationships in the church, about the need to be connected to a vital small group. I want to just stop right now and ask you, How many of you have responded to that message three and a half months ago, and you said, you know what? I need to be in a place where I can practice what I believe, to grow in my faith, to be involved. How many of you have said, yeah, I'm in a small group? If you've not done that, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for the perfect small group? The one that just meets your needs, and then you'll say, well, I'll give you a try now with my presence. Friend, please, get moving. Get into a group. Make a commitment. Take a step. Letter C, on this point for me, was the other part of this, which is extending love by building bridges of redemption. And I use the analogy. Remember I said there was 1,927 bridges in Allegheny County? More than any other county in America. More bridges per capital than any city in America. And I use that analogy, and I think we have an overhead, about the separation between man and God, and earth and heaven. And there's this huge gulf that separates us. And I talked about that. And then I said that there's got to be a way to bridge that gulf. There it is. Well, that bridge was the cross of Christ. And I've used this, and I've talked about writing this on napkins and showing people how to make it across that gulf that divides us. And I said, but you're the one that will be the bridge that will bring them to that cross. And friends, there's such clear evidence that that's what works. If nothing else, Christmas Eve for me was a confirmation of the power of invitation. Because with very little fanfare, other than just giving you something to invite people, 5,000 people came because you invited them. You cared enough to say, hey, come and see. And I want us to just lay that groundwork in our thinking into 1998. If we'll share our love, God will build bridges of redemption into people's hearts. Next, we talked about upsizing God. That was in the late spring, early summer. And we looked at those characteristics of God that bring Him out of the little boxes we put Him in. And I appreciated Dr. R.C. Sproul's comment. I started with this quote. I said, the greatest need in unchurched people's lives today, according to Dr. R.C. Sproul, is the discovery of the true identity of God. He also said that the greatest need in the lives of church people, that's people like you and me, is to discover the true identity of God. Because what is true about us is also true about the people who don't go to church, is that we all think we know all about God, but we really don't. We've got so much growing to do. That's why we need teaching. That's why we need to be in the Word. That's why we need opportunities to grow by exposing ourselves to things that may be a little bit uncomfortable and stretching to us. This series was very important because it reminded me that God is so much bigger than we could ever imagine. You know, as I studied things and we presented the topic of God's mercy, the topic of His generosity, the topic of His sovereignty, of His omniscience, those different things. And as we looked at those, many of you said, you know, I never understood just how God is so vast in His being. But it's not about knowledge, friends. It's about change. Because if the change doesn't happen, knowledge just puffs up. The Bible says we're supposed to grow up in the things of God. When Isaiah saw the Lord by revelation, the Bible says that he fell on his face and said, woe is me, I'm done. And I pray that in 1998 we'll have more revelation of God. The next was the Easter message. And I talked about grace in that message. And I said this, number nine, what makes grace so amazing is the reality of the magnitude of our sin and the power of the cross to free us. And friends, it was sort of a strange thing on Easter Sunday to talk so much about the cross. And yet, you see, the problem with most Americanized Christianity is that they divorce Christianity from the cross and they jump right over Good Friday and go right to the resurrection. They forget that what paid the price for their resurrection life was the cross of Jesus Christ. And we dwelt on that for quite some time. And I have to say, it was a blessing for me to consider the cross at such length as we did on several messages last year. D.A. Carson, a theologian and professor at Trinity Seminary said this, the Apostle Paul cannot talk long about Christian joy, Christian ethics or fellowship or the doctrine of God or anything else without finally tying it to the cross. Paul is gospel-centered, Paul is Christ-centered. And then Oswald Chambers said this, the cross did not happen to Jesus, he came on purpose for it. Listen, the whole meaning of the incarnation, what's the incarnation? What's the incarnation? The birth of Christ, Christmas. The whole meaning of the incarnation is the cross. Beware of separating God made manifest in the flesh from the Son becoming sin. The incarnation was the purpose, was for the purpose rather of redemption. The incarnation was for the purpose of redemption. That's why God came. We looked at length at that and we talked about it and it affected us. The cross is the place where eternity and history meet. And we said, in the words of Martin Luther, all of us bear responsibility for the cross. We bury his nails in our pocket. How many of you still have the nail from Easter in your pocket? See that? And I often just hold this, you know, I put my hand on it and remind myself, you know what? I participated in that. Remember the hymn that we looked at? It wasn't someone else that sent Jesus there. It was me and it was you. And owning that, taking responsibility for that, so affects us because it keeps perspective. It makes grace amazing in our lives. And then finally, the final message that I wanted to share was the series on the scarlet thread. And I can honestly say, and we've not had any response close to paralleling that which we did to this series on the blood of Christ. And I believe it's because it touched that latent hunger in us all to have more than just, you know, information, but as we've been saying, transformation. See, the blood is not talked about much because it's sort of one of those subjects that, you know, it's sort of, it's stereotyped with maybe extremism. But you know what, friends? This book, the central theme of this book is the blood of Christ because the blood of Christ has to do with the redemption that was purchased for us. And we looked at length about that over five weeks. And we talked about the unashamed way in which the Bible talks about the blood. And I shared my own dissatisfaction with my own journey and my own understanding of that. And I shared about Andrew Murray and Charles Spurgeon and many of the great fathers of the faith and, you know, how Oswald Chambers captured it all in his little phrase when he said, the blood of Christ is the whole personal life of the Son of God poured out. Dave said, do you want to have life? Do you want to live more than moments? Then you need to lay hold of the blood. And Jeff Conway stood here and sang with us, just one drop of blood is sufficient to set us free. And we learned that hymn together, Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die. Would He devote His sovereign head for such a worm as I? And we allowed that truth to consume us in its power. I love talking about that because, you see, there's mystery there. That we'll never fully understand. Hebrews 10.19 says that it's by the blood of Jesus that we have confidence to enter into the most holy place. That's why it's so powerful. And that's where we want to live, as the chorus that we sang earlier today clearly said. Well, there you are. Those are the ten points. And it's certainly a recap. It's not a comprehensive listing. But it's a pretty fair summary of a call to godliness and fellowship and mission that I think drives us as a church. Now, there's got to be at least a few people thinking, you know what, honey, this is really good. Let's come the last Sunday of every year and we can get the best message. And we don't have to worry about coming the rest of the time. We know exactly where we're going. Well, as I said, it's likely that many of these weren't on your list. And I had mentioned to David, wouldn't it be great if we had enough time just to turn the mic over to you and say, you know, what did you think touched your life the most? People will often write and say, it sounded like this morning you were just talking to me. God knows what you need to hear. I know for me personally, probably the most impactful message for me was the one that I shared with Jonathan on Father's Day. Just because of the experience of being able to see God working in our family. But I want you to do something in response to this today. Would you take your notes again, please? And if you didn't, fill them out, it's okay. Take them anyhow. And I want you to take your pen and I want you to circle which of those ten truths, or two of them maybe, that as you go into the new year, maybe you've forgotten. I know I did. You go back and say, you know what? The Lord did mention this to me. I mean, really, when Dave gave that sermon, you know, on my life being a puzzle messed up, I need God's perspective. I need to go back to that. Or maybe it was the message for you on tithing. And you said, well, I said I was going to do that. Or maybe it's on the character. But circle the one or two that most impacted you. Would you do that? All right, would you do that? And now just quietly, and I know this is a stretch for some of you because you don't like to say anything to anyone in church, but do it anyhow. Lean over to somebody that you came with or your next s