Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Hi, everybody. Good morning.
[00:00:08] I'm Evan. I'm the other senior pastor. We are wrapping up a series today called Good and Beautiful. Good and Beautiful, talking about our faith and our vision of who God is through this lens of good and beautiful. And here's what I want to say about how we faith and how we express it, that we have to hold it up to the light. And if it looks like Jesus, it's the real deal.
[00:00:34] There is so many versions of religion, and even Christianity specifically, that don't pass the test.
[00:00:43] When they're held up to the light, they don't look anything like Jesus.
[00:00:46] The face of Christ is not present in the expression of our faith. And if it's real and it's all authentic, and if it's not counterfeit, what will happen is when our faith is examined closely, what will come out of it Looks like Jesus.
[00:01:02] Jesus sat around the table, the Last Supper. And the apostles asked him. They said, can you please show us the Father? Can you show us what God is like?
[00:01:11] And Jesus said, if you've been with me, you've seen the Father. He looks just like this.
[00:01:16] And so when we look at Jesus as revealed in the Gospels, he shows us what God is like.
[00:01:24] And again and again, the life of Jesus reveals a God who is filled with unconditional compassion and mercy and love. And it's not always easy. Jesus makes it very clear that the cost to follow him is very high. We have to take up our cross and follow him day after day. It challenges everything we just want selfishly for ourselves. It asks us to sacrifice. It asks us in pursuit of Jesus that we lay down all lesser things. And this is not an easy path, but it is a good and beautiful path.
[00:01:57] And what will happen is we are given permission by Jesus, we are given permission by Paul that when we see a version of Christianity that looks like hatefulness, resentment, divisiveness, ugliness, that we could reject that as a counterfeit.
[00:02:15] Because in Jesus we've seen something that is good and beautiful. In fact, the apostle John, one of Jesus closest disciples, would write in the letter, he says, God is love.
[00:02:27] After walking side by side with Jesus, seeing close up who Jesus was, John could only come to this conclusion, that the God that he worshiped was one not of anger and retribution, but one of love.
[00:02:43] And so today, what I want to do, I want to hold up our faith to the light and say, do we see Jesus in our vision of God.
[00:02:49] Do we see Jesus when we think about God? Or do we feel like God is angry or disappointed or vengeful towards us?
[00:02:56] Do we carry around religious shame, covering and hiding and trying to perform our way out of feelings of guilt because we are certain that God is out to get us?
[00:03:07] Instead, we hear Paul's voice in Romans that if God is for us, who can be against us?
[00:03:15] And there's this old prayer, maybe not that old, but Macrina Whitaker says this. Oh, God, this beautiful prayer. Oh, God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful.
[00:03:30] Help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful. Now you might think, well, that sounds like humanism. Just look inside yourself and you'll find all that you need and you're perfect just the way you are. This is not humanism. This is saying that God, in his great mercy, would stop at nothing to get to you and to express his unconditional love to you and to redeem your life.
[00:03:51] And because of that, we can see ourselves in the light of the work of Christ that creates a beauty and a fullness in us that we have not experienced outside of it.
[00:04:02] Ephesians, chapter 2. Paul writes along these lines. He says, for we are God's workmanship.
[00:04:08] The word there means masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.
[00:04:17] And I would say this as we begin today, that your view of who you are in God is probably less good and less beautiful than what is possible and how God sees you.
[00:04:29] That we always will have a smaller vision because we will always have less of the scope and the scale and the grandeur of what God can do with a surrendered life. And so this is the invitation that we're going to walk through today, is to say yes to the greatness and the grandness of what God is calling you into wherever you're at today. So, Lord, I pray as we look at scripture today and hopefully hear from you and your Holy Spirit, that there would be a yes in our hearts towards what you would call us into as a church, as individuals, in the world that you've put us in. And we pray this in Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
[00:05:07] Jesus was very clear that he had a mission from God. Like Blues Brothers style, right? You know, a mission from God. And in fact, there was a moment when Jesus is ministering in a town and he's teaching and he's healing and all the people around him are very impressed. And they have this sense of wishing that they could keep Jesus in that Town like their own personal Jesus.
[00:05:30] Like, he could be like the mayor of this little town. And all the people are thinking, this is a great idea. And his response to the people in that town was, listen, I can't stay here. I have to go to other towns also. This is why I came. Then he says it's to seek and save what is lost.
[00:05:46] And what Jesus was shutting down in that little town of people that wanted to keep Jesus all of themselves, was this consumer idea of our faith that we come to extract from Jesus what we need. And it would be really great if we could just kind of shut the doors and we got a good thing going here, and we'll have a very pleasant experience experiencing the goodness and the mercy of God for ourselves.
[00:06:09] And Jesus pushes against that. We are not consumers of our faith in what God is doing in the world. We are actually active participants. I know Labor Day sales are going on right now. You guys shopping the Labor Day sales?
[00:06:23] Sure you are. Are you on your phone right now shopping the Labor Day sales? Be honest.
[00:06:28] One of these. Yeah, I got you.
[00:06:31] I was remembering.
[00:06:32] You remember when Black Friday was like a specific day day?
[00:06:37] Right now it's like a month or whatever. I remember they used to let you and the workers at these stores actually have Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family. That's gone, right?
[00:06:47] And so it used to be, though, you could finish dinner and even have dessert, and then you would head out to wait all night in line at Best Buy.
[00:06:57] And then the doors would open at what, 6am and all the door busters. And this is before they would give out vouchers and try to keep it safe back then. It was just mayhem, right? The doors would open, people would get stampeded. It was a big problem. But, man, some people got some really cheap TVs. You know, it's amazing because America, we love it. And this is like the pinnacle and maybe the vision of what a consumer mentality does, right? Where it says there is a limited amount of good stuff in there, and if I hurry and if I'm the first, I can get it before anyone else does. Do you know that this can permeate how we view our faith?
[00:07:38] That I just need to get from God what I need for me. And you know what? Everyone else can figure it out on their own. And Jesus calls us into a different way of living. He calls us into a different way of being the church. And in the earliest expression of the church, the disciples were gathered with about 100 other people in an upper room in Jerusalem, waiting for something that Jesus had promised.
[00:08:01] And on the day of Pentecost, the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is poured out on those new believers. And as the Holy Spirit is poured out, they spill into the streets.
[00:08:11] And as Peter and the other apostles begin to tell the story of Jesus and his death and his resurrection, it says thousands of people were added to their number and the marker of that early gathering of believers in Jesus. It was three things. Number one, they gathered regularly daily back then for worship and teaching. Under the apostles teaching, they were generous with everything they had, so no one had any need. And then third, they enjoyed favor with the community at large.
[00:08:40] Now, I know right now it can be a popular thought that if you're doing Christianity right, you're combative and at odds with the culture around you, right?
[00:08:50] And that's the hard truth about Christianity. Can I tell you, the earliest expression of the church is they experience favor with God and people on the outside.
[00:09:00] And it reminds me of Matthew, chapter 13, where Jesus tells this parable about the kingdom of God. And he said, the kingdom of God is like leaven that a woman works into a dough.
[00:09:13] And now here's the thing about leaven. If you're trying to get your bread to rise, right, it does no good to set the leaven aside from the dough and then have the leaven protest the lack of leaven in the dough, right? The leaven stares at that dough and says, you disgust me with your unleavenedness.
[00:09:36] No, of course not. What happens is that leaven is actually worked into the dough, and it has a transformative effect that it permeates the entire loaf. Jesus says, and so far better for the church, rather than seeing us at odds and combating the culture around us, to see that God has set us up as his church. If we are actually acting in the interests of the kingdom of God that is to come, we pray it do we live it right. Your kingdom come, your will be done. He says, great, you're the leaven. Now work yourself into the culture in a transformative way that affects everything around you.
[00:10:14] And so I'm not super interested in sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment towards a culture that needs redemption. I'm not.
[00:10:25] I want to see a community that everything we do, all the outflow of our faith and our belief in Jesus is not for our own sake, but it's for the sake of those yet to come. And that many would see, and as it says in Psalms 40, see in fear and come to know him, that because we are that leaven that is worked into the loaf. Everything is transformed. I think, and I believe that this is the mission that Jesus has us on.
[00:10:53] We ask the question, though, isn't there someone else that's more suited for the work?
[00:10:58] Isn't there somebody else that, you know, more faithful or a better Christian or more eloquent or more extroverted? Right. That could go out and represent this transformative expression of the gospel of Jesus in the world? Isn't there somebody else? You know, there's a story early on in the Old Testament about Moses, and I would say he is the perfect example for any of us who have ever felt inadequate or unworthy to the task of what God calls us to Moses. If you know the story, you probably do. He's a Hebrew baby boy that's born in a time when Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is trying to control the population of his enslaved Hebrews. And so he orders that all the baby boys be killed. And so Moses mother, in a desperate attempt to save him from being killed, she puts him in a basket, floats him down the Nile river, and he ends up being found by the daughter of Pharaoh and raised in Pharaoh's house as a son of Egypt.
[00:11:58] As an adult. He is, of course, you know, Hebrew by birth, but he's Egyptian by his upbringing. And he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. It enrages him. And so he strikes the taskmaster and. And kills him. He tries to hide the crime, he tries to hide the murder, but he's found out, he's caught. And so in fear, he runs away and he flees. And he spends decades in the wilderness as a shepherd, an anonymous shepherd in the wilderness. And it's in these wandering years that bring him to a moment, very famously, where he sees a bush that is burning in the desert.
[00:12:37] And this burning bush moment really is one of the kind of pivotal moments where for the very first time, the name of God is revealed to Moses. And the bush is burning, and it's not consumed, the Bible says. And then he hears a voice. Because he turns aside to look at what is going on, he hears a voice, the voice of God, saying, moses, I'm not done with you. I'm gonna send you back to your people and to Pharaoh to deliver children of Israel out of slavery and bondage.
[00:13:10] And Moses says, thank you, Lord.
[00:13:13] I receive your call and I'll do it. No, he doesn't say that. He says, who am I? Can you send somebody else, please?
[00:13:20] He feels completely inadequate. He says, well, I'm not eloquent. I don't speak. Well, you know, actually, my brother, he speaks better than I.
[00:13:29] I've got a plan. God. Okay, I will not do that. And my brother will do it. Aaron will do it. He can do it. He's so good. God, you're gonna love him. And God says, no.
[00:13:38] I am finding you here in a season of wandering in the wilderness to call you back into the story of redemption that I am writing. And I'm not gonna let you opt out.
[00:13:50] And for all of us who have experienced seasons of doubt and wandering in our faith, maybe you grew up in church and it's been a long season of being away from it and figuring out, what do you even believe? And maybe you're just kind of dipping your toes in the water and you're not sure. Maybe this is a day where you will hear the voice of God in a season of doubt and wilderness and wandering, calling you back in to a story that he is writing.
[00:14:18] Maybe God has been nearby this whole time. Maybe God was in those wilderness years with Moses. Maybe God was watching and close by, preparing the story of deliverance that Moses was going to participate in the whole time, even when Moses couldn't feel it.
[00:14:36] And so for us, we stay open to God's voice in the wilderness of doubt.
[00:14:41] Elizabeth Barrett Browning says, earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush of fire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes. Maybe God is at work around you today, even in a season of doubt and wandering in your wilderness.
[00:14:57] Next. We are not passive spectators to God's work world.
[00:15:02] I believe that our faith matters.
[00:15:05] I believe that our participation in this community matters.
[00:15:09] I took my son, he wanted to go to see the Timbers play in Portland. And so last week or the weekend before, just last minute, we grabbed some tickets and we headed up to watch the Timbers play. They're a soccer team for those of you that are not as big of a sports guy as I am.
[00:15:28] So we go up to the Timbers game and last minute tickets. And so we ended up sitting directly in front of Cincinnati's fans, which they're like up in the corner. There's not very many of them. It's just this little group, this little section of fans. And in the face of thousands of Timbers fans filling the stadium, and as we got to our seats, the Cincinnati fans, they bring drums. Is this normal? Does everybody bring drums with them?
[00:15:56] Anyway, they have these big drums and they start playing these drums and I'm like, wow, they're really passionate about the start of this match. This is crazy. Can't wait for those drums to die down once they actually start playing, the drums never stopped.
[00:16:10] Almost three hours, and they're yelling Cincinnati chants, which seems like another language to me. I'm such a Pacific Northwest guy. What is the Cincinnati?
[00:16:23] And they would not shut up for three hours.
[00:16:27] And by the end, I wasn't even annoyed. I was impressed by their endurance and their lung capacity, and the arms of those drummers had to be just fatiguing out, but there they were.
[00:16:40] And the thing is, they were so outnumbered, and yet you could tell just from their yelling that they believed that they mattered in that place. Right. By the way, Cincinnati won, which I'm not happy about, but it kind of works for the metaphor, so I'll go with it. Okay, so Cincinnati won.
[00:16:58] And here's the thing. Sometimes these messages about being called into mission as a church sound like you need to gear up and you need to get on the field. You need to stop being a spectator. Listen, Jesus has done the work. You are not the Messiah. We don't leave this place today to go save the world because we're so awesome or we're the smartest or the best. We rely on the work of Jesus on the cross and the Holy Spirit. That is the hope of the world. Amen. It's not us. It's him.
[00:17:26] But, man, when we show up and we are praying for the kingdom to come, we would make a mistake in thinking that our presence doesn't matter, that our prayers don't have any effect, that our engagement and our participation in the mission of Christ doesn't matter at all. No, we show up, and sometimes it feels like our faith is outnumbered, and we don't know this is a foreign place. As the Bible would say, we are not citizens of this place. We are citizens of heaven. But here we are in this outpost of the kingdom, watching and praying. God, let your kingdom come. And it's his work. But I'll tell you what, we are showing up and saying, we have a part in this, and so we'll beat that drum and we'll raise our voices. And by the way, don't be the Christian that actually carries a drum and yells at people on the streets.
[00:18:14] Met those guys. Not what we want to be.
[00:18:18] And by the way, if you're that person, do not.
[00:18:21] Do not claim Westside, okay? Just pick any other church. Any other church.
[00:18:30] But, man, we participate in the coming of the kingdom. And Jesus made this. His kind of core message was, the kingdom of God is coming. The kingdom of God is coming. And even those People around him were like, what does that even mean? Like, the coming of the Kingdom of God. What, like an invading army's gonna come and take over? Like, are they gonna defeat Rome? And Jesus said, no, it's not a kingdom like that. It's not a kingdom that you can see, you know, coming across the sea to take over the Kingdom of God right now is among you.
[00:18:58] And what he was saying is, you wanna know what this concept of the Kingdom of God is? Look at what's happening right here on this table.
[00:19:06] Look over here. We've got a tax collector, and we've got a prostitute, and we've got a Pharisee, and we've got fishermen.
[00:19:15] This is the kingdom of Heaven. Watch this. And he heals. And he opens blind eyes.
[00:19:21] Take a look at this. And he provides food for the hungry. Jesus said, this is what the kingdom is. It's when everything that is good and beautiful from the heart of God invades Earth. That's the kingdom of Heaven.
[00:19:36] So where is it now? Jesus isn't here present sitting around tables? No. He extended that mission to you. Around the table of the Last Supper, he says, as the Father has sent me, now I send you.
[00:19:48] So you want to know what the kingdom of Heaven looks like? It looks like a group of people sitting in this room on Shevlin Park Road today that you. We usually. This is the kingdom of Heaven.
[00:20:02] And if that seems a little bit like he could pick a better group of people, we have to understand just how deep and powerful his redemptive work is, that he can use messy people like us to be the picture of what he wants to do everywhere for all time.
[00:20:21] As Dallas Willard says, this is the pilot project. For what he will do in all the cosmos is he brings reconciliation and forgiveness. He makes wrongs right. He brings healing and mercy. He creates belonging where there's only isolation and ostracization.
[00:20:38] He is doing in this place what he wants to do everywhere. I believe it.
[00:20:44] And so we see this beauty expressing itself, this coming of the kingdom of God that comes not through someone else, somewhere else, but through us right now, that we are the people that he is calling to join him in his mission to seek and save what is lost.
[00:21:01] And when we feel inadequate for the task, when we feel like we've screwed up and our mistakes are too heavy, we are reminded that this is not a story of perfect people doing perfect things. It is a story of a gracious God using imperfect people to show how powerful and good he is.
[00:21:18] In 2 Corinthians, chapter 4 Paul writes, we now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. And this makes it clear that our great power is from God and not from ourselves.
[00:21:34] Every time that you feel like you are inadequate because of the brokenness or the rough edges of your life and your history, know that that is the exact way that people can see the light of Christ that shines from within, that it is in your brokenness that you reveal the power of God.
[00:21:51] And whenever I think about this concept, I'm reminded of our only national park in Oregon, Crater Lake. Have you been to Crater Lake?
[00:22:02] You're like, we live in Bend. Anywhere further than 10 minutes is too far.
[00:22:08] It's worth the drive. Two and a half hours and you can get to Crater Lake. And Alyssa and I went to Crater Lake just a little while ago, and I hadn't been since I was a kid. And it's one thing to see the pictures or just remember what it's like, but to stand on the rim of Crater Lake and to take in the scope and the scale of what is there is stunning. It's worth the drive.
[00:22:32] And I think about this, that no one travels from afar to go to Crater Lake and stand on the rim and say, oh, you. It's such a shame what happened to the mountain here.
[00:22:43] This was beautiful before the volcano, I bet. No, of course not.
[00:22:48] It's not in spite of the volcano and what happened thousands of years ago, that is beautiful. It's actually because of what has happened there that at once, or at one point looked like violence and brokenness, that actually there's something that now has been filled with hundreds of years of rain that has settled into the deepest lake in North America. And people come by the thousands from all over the world to stare in awe at the beauty of what is there.
[00:23:16] And I'll tell you this, that sometimes we think that God needs us at our peak.
[00:23:22] We think if we're going to be used by God, it's going to be when we are doing the best we've ever done, spiritually and religiously and morally. And if we can just stay at our peak, that is the kind of person that God will use for what he wants to do in the world. And I will tell you what that the most beautiful thing is when that peak becomes a pit. And that pit is filled by the grace and the mercy of a redemptive God.
[00:23:47] That grace, at its core, when it comes from God, is like the rain that falls and fills the lowest places of our hearts and our history.
[00:23:55] And when we allow God to do this, we become a symbol and the proof that God is in the business of redemption, that God is in the business of. Of making things that look like brokenness look like beauty. Amen.
[00:24:10] And so you are right now, in all the messiness of our lives, you are right now the perfect person for God to use.
[00:24:20] Second Corinthians 5 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone. The new is here. This is for you today. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
[00:24:36] That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us this message of reconciliation. And we are therefore Christ's ambassadors.
[00:24:48] The old is gone, the new has come.
[00:24:51] And what God wants to do in his world, he wants to do through you.
[00:24:56] And so today I want to invite you to say yes to the work of God through you.
[00:25:04] Not in spite of your history, not if he would just overlook my whole life, then maybe he thinks I'm worthy. No, he looks at all of your history and all that you are, and he says, my grace can work with that.
[00:25:17] My redemption can reach into your life.
[00:25:21] And just like Moses call you into the story that I'm writing, the band's gonna come back and we're gonna worship together as we go to the tables.
[00:25:32] I have this vision for us, and I read this quote by Eugene Peterson. I thought it was so apt.
[00:25:39] He said that the Holy Spirit forms church to be a colony of heaven in the country of death.
[00:25:46] I want us to be an outpost of hope.
[00:25:48] I want us to be the picture of the kingdom. I want us to be those who operate in mercy and compassion, who would practice generosity and hospitality, who forgive and reconcile, and who engage the culture around us like leaven in a loaf of bread.
[00:26:05] That many would come to know the goodness and the beautiful nature of who Jesus is. Amen.
[00:26:11] Amen. Would you bow your heads with me?
[00:26:14] I want to pray for us today.
[00:26:18] Lord Jesus, I pray that you would stir in our hearts, especially for those that maybe have felt inadequate for the task to be used by you. Seems like a stretch that today we would experience your redemptive work that like those fragile clay jars that Paul wrote about, that our brokenness would reveal the light of Christ, the light of the world.
[00:26:44] Lord Jesus, I pray that we would, not only today, but every time we gather, we would gather to receive from your Holy Spirit and then be sent out into our normal, everyday lives. Our jobs, our families, our work to express and extend the life of Jesus.
[00:27:08] Lo, we love you and we love the world that you so dearly love.
[00:27:16] I pray, I just pray for those that are dealing with shame today. Or feel, feel the weight of that. Lord Jesus, would you come like rain and wash away shame and replace it with your mercy.
[00:27:36] That they would feel like the scripture said today, that they would feel new by the power of your Holy Spirit right now. If that's. If that's you, just receive that for you today.
[00:27:52] Breaking off shame, forgiveness of Christ, the invitation to live a new life. In Jesus name.
[00:28:00] In Jesus name, Amen.
