Hallelujah in the City III

I have to say, and I'll probably elaborate a bit on this longer tomorrow, you see now right there, the people are looking and saying, tomorrow, I'm not even going to be here tomorrow, I'm going to be in class. See, already, another gaffe. See how tricky that is? You've got to try this sometime. Go home and try 30 minutes of talking about something that's not going to happen, you know, you get it. We live in, how many of you would agree, Oakland, cafe, Wexford, we live in very unusual times, rather stressful times, okay? I mean, and I want to talk about that more tomorrow, but I feel like this is what you really need to know. It's always been that way with the followers of Jesus. You know, if you look through your Bible, Bill, if you'll hand me the Bible, this is really a no-no. Now, Bill's going to emerge out of nowhere, that's all right, I already explained why it's, you know, there, they get it. That was Bill James, what an incredible top of the head you saw there as he walked up. Throughout the Scriptures, the church was always struggling against a culture that was against it and did not want it to succeed. And actually, the only time that the church ever found itself in trouble through church history is when it got comfortable, when things were going really well. One of the worst times for the church is when it became a state religion, but in Constantine's rule in the mid-4th century or so. I don't think we have to worry about that in these days, do you? These are difficult times, because in prosperous times what happens is we tend to forget God. And I'm not so sure that that's not been happening a lot here in the church in America over the last couple of decades. In Revelation chapter 316, and take your outline out of your notes if you haven't already, some of you are sitting with hands folded, that's never a good sign for me. Open your Bible or at least take your outline out so you can jot down a note or two, because some of this might just make sense to you as you go through your week. Jesus said, if you get lukewarm, I'm going to separate myself from you. So it's not a good thing for the church to sort of be indifferent about what's going on. But he didn't use the word separate, he said, I'm going to spit you out of my mouth, which is a very vivid word picture, isn't it, of how much he disdains the idea of being sort of hot and sort of cold and a little Christianity here, but not a little Christianity there. So it's always been important for the church, if you'll permit the term, to be all in. And once you take the leap and go for it, you don't have the option of just sort of, well, picking and choosing. And one of the things I love about our church and all of its expressions, I love the fact that our student ministry is all in. And they're hard after Jesus. I love the fact that our family ministries is so connected together and bringing parents and kids and learning how to grow together in the things of God, they're all in. I love the fact that our missionaries are sold out and all in. I love the fact that we have a couple thousand people meeting in small groups. They're all in. Carol came back from the most recent Beth Moore, which happens out here in the Wexner campus. Some of the other folks attend, but I said, how's it going? She said, you know, I left and they were still meeting and still talking and still sharing. They're just excited about the material. They're all in. And that's an important dimension that God expects of us. I love the fact that our worship team is all in. Did you sense that? Speaking of worship, and I know, again, Oakland had its own thing this past week, so many of those folks weren't here. How many of you were able to come to our worship night, Refiners Fire? Wasn't it a great event? I mean, it was an awesome thing. If you happened to be here, if you didn't experience it, we had over 30 baptisms. And it was sort of a, just like, I don't know how to describe it, except I was watching the evidence that God's with us and then worshiping Him for what He was doing and being filled with hope that He's going to keep doing it. I loved it. It was great. It's all in. I know this is sort of a long introduction, but the basic message is this. I know this might be simple, but it's not shallow. If you get what I'm about to share, it's going to help you, not just in reference to where North Way needs to go and what North Way's needs are, but your life. Because, loved one, I'm very, very sensitive, more than you can realize, to how much pressure many of you are under, to the strains and stresses that are in your relationships and your workplace and where you go to school. My day could be filled up with people who have problems and want to talk to me. And I mean, that's not because I'm anybody special. It's just I know how tough it is. But what I want to share with you is important because if you grasp hold of it, here's what God says. He says, and this is, again, just jot down the reference, Psalm 91 7. He says, if things get worse, as some predict it's going to, Psalm 91 7 says, a thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but this plague, it will not come near you. That's a great promise right about now, isn't it? He says, for in the day of trouble, Psalm 27 5, he will keep me safe in his dwelling. He will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. I love the fact God promises to protect and shield us in difficult times. And so if you want to overcome in these crazy times and you want to make a difference for Jesus, then the principles, and that's the first blank in your outline that you need to grab hold of, they apply whether it's personally or corporately. Here's what they are. The first one is this. You ready? You got to live by faith. Write the word down. You got to live by faith. You got to live by faith. Now everything around us, I don't know about you, but it's so prevalent right now, in the car, in the internet, on television, print media, every place you get. I have never, I just don't recall a time when there's been more fear out there. Where's it all going? And of course, depending on your bias and where you're leaning, some of you say, I'm not afraid of anything. And others of you may say, I don't know if I'll have enough money to retire or I don't know if I'll have enough money to live. Some people say, I don't know what's going to happen with the whole, the social construct of our nation seems to be changing, all these big changes. And it's causing some people a lot of fear. And something happens in the church when they get a hold of the reality that these two things are going to battle for your attention all the time. It's either going to be fear or faith. Now last week, Pastor Doug talked out of the book of Acts, and he mentioned a couple of times how the church was scattered, remember, out of Jerusalem, and he used that word scattered and referred to it. I'm not sure if he referenced exactly how that began, but on your outline, I'm going to read it with you. It says this, and Saul was there giving approval to his death, that's the death of Stephen in chapter 7. And on that day, a great persecution broke out against the church of Jerusalem. And all except the apostles were, what, scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. And godly men buried Stephen and mourned him deeply. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them into prison. See the scattering was the result of a persecution. The church had gotten comfortable to the point in Jerusalem where the only way that God could not allow it just to sort of ploat on itself was to bring persecution and to let some really difficult things happen. Loved ones, I pray that that doesn't happen. But you know what? I wonder. I wonder if God will allow it just so we won't get lukewarm, so that we won't give up what is our primary mission, to advance the kingdom of God, to keep moving forward. And here it is. It's a very interesting thing, isn't it? This person named Saul comes along and he's the one that's the cause of this scattering of the church. Now, we made an attempt to not get lukewarm by putting out ten things and saying, here's what we're going to do. And remember, I listed those ten things. I thought that was a pretty exciting list when I saw it myself and I remembered how it blessed my heart. Just for the sake of those, I know any given weekend 40% of the people aren't here. Real quickly, I don't know if we can just zip those up real quickly, and I said, forget about the numbers. Just celebrate the accomplishment of the multi-site spaces, the ministry spaces, the adult spaces that we've added, and so on. All these things here that we've talked about. And then the Oakland campus, which you've addressed. The City Schools Outreach, which is having an enormous impact. The Emerging Leaders Institute, which is now Trinity, Evangelical Divinity School, right here on our campus. And it's a bed hospital outreach, which we're going to show you some amazing video of next week and maybe even have a live feed from that hospital. All those things are happening right now. And you know what? You can turn that off. Now, you know what? Lots of times when someone comes and asks you to give to something, it's so that, well, maybe it'll happen. And I'm able to stand up here in front of you now and say to you all, friends, it's happened. It's happened. And all we need to do now is just close the gap and fulfill our responsibility and free up more resources so that more lives can be changed. We don't have to wonder whether or not it's going to happen. I know some people say, well, we know we shouldn't have borrowed the money. We should have waited until it all came in. How many people here own a house? I don't know if you put your hand up, but do you own a house? There might have been one of you that went out and bought it in cash. But most of us realize that something enormous like that takes a mortgage, and then over time you benefit, hopefully, by that. Now, in today's world, who knows? I mean, you could become a bad statistic. I hope not. But happily, the good news with us is this. We are well within reach of reaching our goals. And then I believe God is going to do some great, great things. He's going to cause things to take off in ways we can only imagine. Let me just go on in the text and show you what I mean. So Paul, or Saul, rather, has done this persecution. Now, from chapter 8, which we read there, to the next verse is 18 years. This is one thing about the Bible you've got to understand sometimes. It's just sort of, you know, they don't always, you know, sometimes a verse can end, and then the next verse, and you say, wow, that was quick, but really it's 18 years. Here's what happens. The church is gathered now as what's called the Jerusalem Council. And Saul has met Jesus on the road to Damascus, you know, the whole story. And he goes into basic, I mean, he goes away from people for 17 years. Read about it in Galatians chapter 1 and 2. And for 17 years, he learns from Jesus. Some believe he had epiphany, you know, revelations of Jesus. Others believe that people came and taught him things. Anyhow, Saul, the persecutor of the church, now becomes one of the great apostles of the church. One of the ones that is leading the church. And here's what it says. The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and now Saul, whose name is now Paul, telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. See, the deal was this. Who were the chosen people? The Jews, right. They were the ones in the Old Testament. They were the ones that God had called out. But for some reason that they couldn't explain, God was blessing these weirdos called the Gentiles, the non-Jews. That would be mostly you and me, those of us of non-Jewish heritage. Verse 13, when they finished, James, the apostle, spoke up and said, Brothers, listen to me. Simon has described to us how God had first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself that would be the Jews. The words of the prophets are in agreement and it goes on. He basically says, the whole thing's changed now. The Jews now are not just Jews by birth, but Jews by the hand of God redeeming them through Jesus Christ. Jews of a new birth. And saving faith now invades the Gentile world and the whole scene of redemptive history changes because God now says, I'm going to include everyone that wants to become part of my family. Now, the next thing I'm going to say is very simple, but I don't want to apologize for it because I know that a lot of you don't know the difference. When I use the word faith, there's more than one kind of faith. If you think you know the two kinds of faith, whisper them to your neighbor right now. All right. Oakland, go ahead. Cafe. It's awfully quiet in here, I can tell you that. Yeah, when I use the word faith, a lot of people say, well, I mean, you're talking about faith is when you trust Jesus to be your Savior and come to know God as your Father and become a member of the family of God, right? You would be right. But that's only one dimension of faith. Faith also has to do with the way we live our lives. Our entire lives are lived in the context of learning to trust God on a moment-by-moment basis, to listen to His voice so that we know what God is saying and our faith, our confidence, our trust in Him to lead and guide and direct us grows and we respond to Him and find ourselves being in relationship with Him and used by Him in an amazing way. That's faith to live by. 2 Thessalonians 2 says that we can just keep growing. We have to thank God for you because your faith is growing more and more. He writes, Paul does to the Thessalonians. Let me ask you a question. Is your faith growing more and more? Can you believe God for more now than you could two years ago? Well, I don't know, Jeff. I'm not sure what you're, I mean, I don't know. How do you grow in faith? By exercising it, by giving it a try, by trying to believe for a little bit more now than you did before. Faith comes by exercising it. It's like a muscle. If you don't believe for anything, you're going to be flabby and you're going to sit there thinking you know a lot and it's going to be all up here and you're not going to have any faith and you're not going to see God use you very much and it's a very sad state of affairs. Faith is meant to be exercised. And so what Paul, here's what they did. I mean, they said, okay, we're going to believe this stuff, then we got to act on it, we got to do something about it. Look at verse 13 with me, would you please? Here's what happens. When James speaks, faith is lifted, the church believes, and they said, okay, I guess it's time to put away the fear of the Gentiles and the fear of missing God and believe Him that they're to be included and move out together. And loved ones, let me just say to you today, it's time for you to make a decision whether you're going to live by fear or faith when it comes to what's going on in our country. If you listen to the media, if you listen to what you hear on the radio, on the news and watch the stock ticker and all the rest of the stuff, you're going to live in fear or you can choose to live in faith and believe that your God will be your provider. You can choose to live by what you hear and wonder if our country is going to survive and, you know, are things just going to deteriorate and are we going to have all this terrible stuff happen and all this sort of, you know, downfall of things I care about? Or do you believe that maybe God will hear the prayers of the righteous and cause things to turn? You can live by faith. It's a choice you can make. You can have fear of social re-engineering or you can have faith that God's in control and can change things as soon as He determines that you're serious enough to pray for it. You can have fear that our freedoms will be snuffed out or you can have faith that God will make you free and no one can ever take that freedom from you. You've got to choose what you're going to do. Are you going to live by fear or by faith? And, friends, this is a day-to-day, moment-by-moment experience. And it's not an easy one sometimes. Have you tried to share your faith in Christ recently with anybody and found yourself afraid to do so? And right in that moment, fear and faith go into battle. The fear that maybe they'll think you're kind of wacky and your faith that, gosh, wouldn't it be great? I was talking to someone today, and they told me that their... I believe I got the details a little bit... I'm not exactly positive, but I believe it was their 99-year-old grandmother, maybe great-grandmother, who'd never really understood or cared that much about what it meant to really know God, got into a conversation at age 99. That's a pretty big thing itself, isn't it? And through a series of just good God-opening doors, prayed to receive Jesus at age 99. And I remember thinking, and as a person, I heard the story secondhand from how just in that person's heart, what an amazing experience that must have been. And I just want to say to someone, I know there's someone here who thinks... You know someone in your family, someone like maybe Saul who hates Christians. Don't give up on them. Or you know someone like this 99-year-old great-grandmother who thinks too old to ever change. No one's ever too old that God can't reach them. Please, don't give up. My hunch is right now more than ever, people are open. In fact, people I'm inviting to things right now are saying yes more often than they have in the last 10 years because I believe there's a certain hunger that's out there. You say, how do I grow in this faith? Yeah, I need more of it in my life. Jot down this verse. If nothing else, jot down this verse. Romans 10, 17, and let's put it up on the screen and leave it up for just a second. This is out of the New King James Version. I prefer this one. Look at this verse. So then faith... Read it with me. So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Leave it up for just a second. If you don't have a lot of faith, then you need to keep hearing the Word of God in your life. And that too is a choice. I'll tell you what, every morning I wake up and I've got a choice to make. Will it be Fox News or NBC? Or can I choose to listen to maybe something from God's Word as I travel in the car? Do I make time for God's Word to make its way into my heart? Because my faith will not grow just by my mind working on my problems for the day. You need to have the Word in your mind for your faith to grow. Why? Faith always needs an object, and the object is always the Word of God. So let's be clear that some of us need to grow specifically, by the way, toward whatever issues that you have struggles with. If you have a problem with your finances right now and you need faith for God to step in, then find the promises about finances and begin to get them into your heart and hand. And you'll suddenly realize, wait a minute, maybe God can handle this debt. Maybe He's got enough resources stored up in heaven just to cover that little bit of my car payment. I don't know, it could be a stretch. We need to hear God's Word to us. And I fear sometimes, loved one, in this age of just being deluged with all these different things, God's Word gets pushed out. And when that happens, we can't grow in faith. God wants us to grow. He wants us to hear. He wants us to know His Word when it comes to those moments so that we can know that we're going to prevail. Some of you say, well, I don't know that it's true. I mean, I've tried and it hasn't worked. Let me just suggest this. Sometimes it's because your faith's not quite there yet. Let me tell you, I can give you lots of illustrations where I've prayed for something and prayed for it and it didn't happen, didn't happen, and all of a sudden it happened. And I said, Lord, why did you not answer me back then? The Lord said, because you at that point did not have the faith that you needed to believe that it would happen. So your faith needs to grow. You say, well, I'm a person who believes in the facts. And I don't need this faith stuff. You know, I expect that when Moses is leading the people of Israel into the Red Sea and he saw Pharaoh and the army about just to demolish them. Some of you saw the movie Ten Commandments, okay? You remember that picture? You know, Moses could have said, well, the facts are we're just about to get crushed by Pharaoh and then, you know, all of his minions with him. And you see old Yul Brynner coming down there and they're about to go in. But faith rose up and separated the Red Sea and the children of Israel go kind of like motoring on through. And as soon as they get through, Moses turns around and lifts his staff. And what happened? The sea closed up. Let's put that verse up. Here's what happened, in case you forget the story. Do we have that verse? Exodus 14. Yeah, the waters flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen and the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. And not one of them survived. Leave that out for just a second. Which one of your enemies of faith do you need to have completely wiped out? Oh, friend, if I could lay my hands on you and give you the faith, I'd do it. But I can't. It comes by hearing. It comes by you saying, Lord, I want that more than I want anything. And I need it in my life. I need it for my family. I need it for my finances. I need it in my job. I need it for my dreams to come true. I need it for healing. Whatever it is, I need that. And one last thing. And I'll just close with this because it's a long point, but I'll make it relatively short. The other side of faith is this. It's like two sides of one coin, if you will. My wife takes all my change. Does your spouse do that? I was going to pull out a coin and show you. And I'm down here wiggling, and I've got no coins. I believe that woman owns an island somewhere that 38 years of putting coins away. It might be a small island, but I mean, she's probably got it. I have no coins. But I was going to say, faith is one side of the coin. I will not share that in tomorrow's message. Faith is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is obedience. See, sometimes you can say you believe, but it's not until you act on your belief that the powers of God are released toward you. See, Moses had to walk into that sea, and then it parted. It's depicted so incredibly well in that film that way. Peter had to step out of the boat, right? I mean, Lord, if that's you, bid me come to you on the waters. If Peter had stayed in the boat, he would have had faith, but it would not have really been real faith because he just believed it up here. But he started walking on water when he got out of the boat. And I just want to say, a lot of you, this is... hear my heart in this, this is where you've got to get this because your tendency is... you hear it, you hear it, you hear it, I believe it, I believe it, I believe it, but you don't do it. You don't step in and get involved. You don't come along and serve. You don't give of your insight or your time. You don't write the check. And James wrote and said, and let's put this up on the screen, please, that faith without works is dead. It's dead. If it doesn't have actions with it, it's not going to work. And so the challenge that some of us face right now as we come to hallow you in the city is to say, God, I don't know how this is all going to work, but I need to step out and to the best of my ability fulfill what you've called me to do and put my faith into action. And what you'll find is it's just sort of like this trigger valve that releases the gates of heaven and God begins to move in ways that you can't imagine. And in my life, my experience, if I'd stopped before I acted, I think I'd just be a nice guy with a lot of dreams and very little to show for it. When Paul got the word that the Gentiles were in, the second missionary journey started and he went out and went from city to city just like we're going to do. Friends, let me just tell you, I want to stop here and say something about our mission. Do you know that people are coming from different parts of the city right now and saying, would you please think about coming here and starting one of your video campuses? Because we have hundreds of people that we've been talking to that are interested in what's going on there and it's so dry spiritually as a bone that if just a little spark would go, a fire would start and I'm thinking, oh God, I want that so badly. And you've given us everything we need to do it. And so as we step into this together, friends, that's what's going to happen. And I believe the timetable of God is going to be speeding up because of the urgency of the day. All we need to do. I love this. I'll just bring this to a close with this. Sometimes it's got to be counterintuitive. I love this story of David and Goliath. And you know, here's this young shepherd boy. It says he killed the lion and the bear and he's facing Goliath. And you can look it up in 1 Samuel 17. I read the story probably once a week. I got a lot of lions and bears around me and a couple of Goliaths. My favorite verse in the whole story is 1 Samuel 17, 48, if you'll put that up, please. Because when David got the cue, it's time. Here's what it says. As the Philistine giant, that's Goliath, moved closer to attack him, David ran back from him. Is that what it says? Hello? No. What does it say? David ran toward the battle. You see, that's faith into action. Only an idiot would run toward a nine-foot giant with a slingshot. David ran toward him and said, nailed one right in the forehead and down he went. And I just want to say as we close, let's put our faith, built on God's word and nurtured by being in the word, into action.