Zeal Over Apathy

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning

into our podcast.

Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life.

And now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

I have a haunting memory from youth camp and that could go anyway.

So we were sitting around in a small group and one of the guys, he starts to, he begins

to weep and lament.

And he's weeping and lamenting because he's realised that he's never told his friend about

Jesus.

He had opportunities and he never took it.

And tragically his friend had just had his life cut short.

And as far as this person knew, he didn't know Jesus.

And so life forever with Jesus was uncertain.

And whether or not he should have, this guy took full responsibility for that.

His sense of grief coupled with guilt was haunting to me.

I hadn't lost anyone at that point in my life, especially no one my age.

I had no sense of the mortality of life at all.

Everyone would always be there and there would always be time.

But in that one conversation, much of that perspective I had came crumbling down.

Would I be weeping out of guilt and grief over a friend that I could have saved?

And I was severely overestimating my capacity to save other people.

But what I was, it was earnest.

And this was all wrapped up in my wider awakening to God as a teenager.

I wanted to tell my friends about Jesus.

I want to make sure that I had given them the opportunity to hear about Jesus and believe

in Him because there are no guarantees in life.

I wanted to take the chances while they were there.

And I didn't want to end up guilt grieving over what I didn't have the courage to do.

As you may remember from the Mission in Motion series, I wasn't very good at telling my friends

about Jesus.

But I cared.

I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to know and follow Jesus.

And I cared enough to do something about it, to step out and even be seen as weird in order

that they might get that opportunity.

So you might think that in high school I went on an evangelism war path and I hit up everyone

on MSN because that's how old I am about the condition of their souls, but you would be

wrong.

In the two years of school that I was a public Christian, I took the opportunity to maybe

talk to a dozen people about Jesus.

I cared enough to do something, but the actual doing of the thing was much, much harder.

I cared, but so much got in the way of putting that care into action.

With the third week of our series, Jesus over Everything, we were looking at how Jesus calls

us to live a different kind of way.

And today we're looking at zeal over apathy.

Zeal is often translated like a passionate commitment or an enthusiastic pursuit of a

cause.

And this is not always seen as noble.

If you are zealous, sometimes as I wall there, you need to settle down a little bit.

Zeal has some connotations of extremism, of going too far.

So zeal over apathy and apathy is indifference.

It's being indifferent to something.

So zeal either apathy is either like you're all into a crazy degree or you don't give

a stuff.

You either care enough to put something right or you don't care at all.

This is kind of a false dichotomy, isn't it?

Most of us aren't crazy zealous and most of us aren't completely indifferent.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

We care enough to do something to be actual doing of the thing, putting the thing to right

is harder.

We care, but so much gets in the way of putting that care into action and actually doing something

about it.

We believe something is really important like inviting our friends to come and meet Jesus.

Inviting others for what we have found in Jesus.

We care about it, but things get in the way.

We're worried about how they'll think of us and so we don't.

When we do it, we're like, well, I should do this more often because that went a lot

better than I thought it was going to go.

But then do we do it again?

Sometimes.

We believe prayer is so important.

We believe that it bends reality to God's will.

We care about it so much that we run around 24 hour prayer day yesterday, which was amazing,

24 hours back to back to back.

We care about it.

We really need to do that kind of stuff.

But then the not pray days, we're busy with work.

We get easily distracted.

We go to pray, but then we end up putting on like 12 loads of washing.

We're doom scrolling socials.

Whenever we pray, we're like, whenever we get in the prayer room, it's like, I should do

this more often.

This is amazing.

But then do we?

We believe reading the Bible is so important that it renews our mind as a source of its

strength and encouragement that God actually speaks to us when we read it.

And we care about doing it.

But it's much easier to read the news, scroll the socials or this other book that I'm reading

is a bit more interesting.

But whenever we crack this thing open and we do something like Word Week, which starts

today, which you should sign up for, or you'll make Josh sad.

Whenever we do stuff like that, we're like, I should do this more.

But then do we?

We believe that helping the poor is so important that when we do that, when we show kindness

and we help the poor and the ostracize and the downtrodden, we're not just doing it for

them, we're doing it for Jesus as well.

We believe that we are blessed to be a blessing and we care about people.

But when do we see the poor?

Do we cross the other side of the road?

Do we prioritize our busy time schedule?

The next thing rather than being present to them in their need.

Whenever we take the time to serve them, to buy them a meal, we're like, I should do this

more.

But then do we?

I've been a pastor for nine years now in various places.

And as I've journeyed with other Christians and as I've journeyed with myself, I've come

to see that this dynamic right here, this is the biggest barrier to the life of faith,

impact and spiritual power we all desire.

We care.

We really care.

Christians really care.

We want to see God's kingdom come here on earth as it is in heaven.

And we want to see God's kingdom come here in handling as it is in heaven and in grange.

We believe God wants to do that too.

But our care doesn't always translate into action.

It's not that we're apathetic, indifferent to God or to following Him.

We don't take the path of apathy.

But and I speak for myself here, I wonder if people can see from my actions that I'm

not indifferent.

I wonder if people know that I care when I so often don't put that care into action.

Every time I see a poor person or a homeless person on my street, I say to myself, I should

do something to put that right.

But eight out of 10 times, I don't.

I say, I don't have time today.

I've got the kids with me.

How hopeful can I really be to this person?

I make all these excuses.

But I have taken the time to sit down and buy someone lunch, hear their story.

I say to myself, I should do this more.

So how do we become the kinds of people whose behavior matches their beliefs?

Eight, nine times out of 10 rather than two, three times out of 10.

The answer, I think, can be found in the biblical tradition of steel and how Jesus transforms

it.

So we're going to look at today.

Zeal isn't just like a generic, radical kind of passion and enthusiasm for something

as imposed to an indifference about something.

Zeal is a thing in the Bible.

It's a tradition.

It's a movement.

Zeal is a thing.

And in our teaching texts, Zeal, who is most commonly known by his Greek name Paul, it's

not a different name.

He doesn't get a different name.

It's the same name.

If you really want to know more about this, Ashley would love to talk to you about it.

Put up your hand, Ashley.

She'll fire you on this one.

Paul is storming his way down the road to Damascus.

Paul is, believe it or not, storming in the biblical tradition of zeal.

Paul saw something that shouldn't be any care enough to put it put it right.

A young disciple named Stephen, which we read earlier in Acts, has been stoned for declaring

that Jesus is the Son of God right in front of the high priest.

And Paul sees this, this young man being stoned.

And he says, yeah, they deserve to die.

Stone a lot of them.

What does Paul think the Christians deserve to die?

Well, because for a Jew, it's blasphemy to say that a man could be equal with God.

And that's what the Christians are teaching.

Jesus is the Son of God.

It's not just blasphemy.

It's idolatry.

It's worshiping another God, Jesus.

And that breaks God's law handed down to Moses.

You have to understand that this point in Christianity, it's purely a Jewish renewal

movement.

Almost all of the Christians are Jews.

And Paul is a Pharisee.

He comes from a tradition that believes that God's kingdom will only come when all of Israel

can obey God's law for one day.

And here is this Jesus movement, causing all these Jews in Paul's mind to abandon Moses

and the law of God and go on and follow Jesus.

And this is unacceptable.

The kingdom of God is at stake here.

And Paul cares enough to do something.

So he gets approval to go and round up any Christians in Damascus and throw them into

jail.

And he sets off.

He's storming with zeal.

And the walk to Damascus is not a short walk.

So it's quite an effort to storm with zeal for two weeks.

He's really, really angry.

I like short walk tends to calm the zeal in me, but not Paul.

Two weeks.

He writes this in Galatians 1, 13 to 14.

You know what I was like.

You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion.

Now violently I persecuted God's church.

I did my best to destroy it.

I was far ahead of my fellow Jews in my zeal for the traditions of my ancestors.

This is what zeal looks like for Paul, destroying the church of Jesus.

Zeal is a strong tradition in Judaism.

It begins with Phineas, who was a contemporary of Moses.

Psalm 116 gives us an overview.

Now ancestors join in the worship of Baal at Pior.

Now Baal is a word for Lord or good.

So it's the God of Pior.

They even ate sacrifices offered to the dead.

They angered the Lord with all these things.

So a plague broke out among them.

But Phineas had the courage to intervene and the plague was stopped.

And he has been regarded as a righteous man ever since that time.

Now this story comes up in Numbers 25 and it gives us a bit more context.

Most people bring a great plague upon them because of their worship of Baal Pior.

24,000 people had died from this plague.

And so to deal with it, God tells Moses that anyone who has yoked themselves to Baal,

that has committed themselves to Baal, that has worshiped Baal,

and attached themselves to Baal, had to be put to death and hung up outside the community,

to purify the community.

And this is a horrid thing.

And the people are weeping at the side of this.

And as they're mourning, a man takes a Midianite woman,

who is the one who's worshiping the God of Pior,

into his tent and begins to worship with her.

If you catch my drift.

Phineas, do you need me to spell it out, Tex?

Okay.

So Phineas, the priest, sees this and he's filled with zeal.

He grabs a spear, he leaves the community and he goes and he drives it through the Israel

light man, through the man and through the woman's stomach.

He drives the spear down and they die, obviously.

And the plague is stopped.

And God says this to Moses, Phineas, son of Eliza and grandson of Aaron, the priest,

has turned my anger away from the Israelites by being as zealous among them as I was.

So I stopped destroying all Israel as I intended to do in my zealous anger.

Now tell him that I'm making my special covenant of peace with him.

In this covenant, I give him in a descendants of permanent right to the priesthood.

For in his zeal for me, his God, he purified the people of Israel, making them right with

me.

Phineas forges the path of zeal.

He cares enough to put this right and he makes it to him for the sins of the people.

God honors him for showing that he cares as much as God does about putting this situation

right.

This is the beginning of the tradition of zeal.

Elijah shows the same zeal when he has all the prophets of Baal brought to kitchen and

slaughtered after he beats them and his wet cow zeal.

If you remember the story of Elijah.

Simon the zealot, one of Jesus apostles is a part of a religious movement called the

zealots who in the tradition of Phineas seek to rid the land of the Roman occupiers and

idolaters by violence and force.

And Jesus, when he goes to the temple, calls and finds people selling animals and exchanging

money and using God's temple to turn a prophet, Jesus cares enough to do something.

He drives them out with a whip and turns over the tables and it says in the scripture, his

disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.

The Hebrew tradition of zeal is violence.

You put what needs to be put right by any means necessary.

You sacrifice the one who violates God's law for the good of God's people.

The zeal does not stay this way.

Paul is on his long walk to Damascus ready to do whatever it takes for the good of God's

people.

And as we heard, he was approaching Damascus and a light shines from heaven.

He falls to the ground and hears a voice saying, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Who are you Lord Saul?

And the voice replies, I am Jesus, the one you were persecuting.

Get up and go.

Paul has had an encounter with Jesus and the zeal he has for the traditions of his ancestors

is utterly transformed and it's transformed because Jesus himself had transformed zeal.

The Jews believed that a Messiah would come to free the people from foreign oppression,

that the Messiah would set them free by military force.

They thought that they were getting a warrior king Messiah who in the traditions of zeal

would purify and atone for the community through violence.

But Jesus was a very different Messiah.

He doesn't enter Jerusalem on a war horse like a conquering king's triumph and entry.

He enters on a donkey.

He doesn't instigate violence against his people's enemies.

He willingly receives violence to save his people's enemies.

He's crowned king of the Jews, not in a palace, but on a cross.

Not with a crown of jewels, but a crown of thorns.

Rather than being clothed in splendor, he has his clothes ripped from him and gambled away.

He doesn't put the foreign oppressors to death.

He allows himself to be put to death by the foreign oppressors.

Jesus goes to the cross and it is at the cross that we see the zeal of Jesus, a new kind of zeal.

Zeal transformed.

Jesus makes atonement not by violence against God's enemies, but it's sacrifice on behalf

of God's enemies.

Jesus cares enough to do something and put it right whatever it takes and it takes his

life.

It's not the political issues that Jesus puts right.

It's not the fact that Rome invaded their country.

It's the issues of the human heart that Jesus puts right.

And he wins a decisive victory, not over the Romans, but over the eternal enemies of the

soul, sin and death.

Then the root problem that will cause a man to choose lust in a time of lament.

The corruption at the heart of humanity that estranges us from God.

And this corruption hasn't just estranged us from God.

It's cut off all creation from its source of life.

And Jesus cares enough to put it right.

Phineas puts to death a couple worshiping a false God to save God's people.

And Jesus allows himself to be put to death to save all people.

Instead of hanging up the sinners in the sun before the Lord to purify the Israelite community,

Jesus allows himself to be hung up and impaled in the sun to purify the community from sin.

Instead of taking a spear in his hands to slay those who'd violated the covenant, Jesus

and his zeal takes a spear in his own side to make a new covenant between us and God

in his blood.

Jesus' zeal makes atonement, not in violence towards the sinner, but in suffering on behalf

of the sinner.

This is a zeal of Jesus, to die for the life of the world, to suffer on behalf of the

unworthy, not to justify by making a sacrifice, but to justify through becoming a sacrifice.

Can you see how Jesus has totally subverted zeal?

And is this zeal in the way of Jesus that transforms and redirects Paul's zeal?

Instead of making the heathen Jewish Jesus' movement suffer, Paul becomes someone who

suffers so that those who are outside the community could come to know Jesus.

We call Acts 9 Paul's conversion or Saul's conversion, but it's not a conversion.

Paul is still zealous for the God of his ancestors.

He's just been looking through a fogged up window and now he can see clearly, he can

see that the God of his ancestors, the Lord on the throne, looks like Jesus.

It is Jesus.

And this sense of Jesus redirecting Paul's zeal can be seen in what the Lord says to

the man and an eye, task with healing Paul's eyes and restoring his vision.

Go!

For Paul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to the kings

as well as to the people of Israel.

And I'll show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake.

And he does.

He spends his life for the sake of Christ and the Gentiles.

That's what Paul does every day he has after this moment on the road to Damascus.

This is what he says in 1 Corinthians 15, but whatever I am now, it's all because God

poured out his special favor on me and not without results.

For I've worked harder than any of the other apostles.

Yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace.

Jesus filled with zeal, laying down his life on that cross is the beginning of God's global

project to put the world right.

To deal with the sin and corruption that lives at the heart of the human person.

To renew the world and to once again bring together heaven and earth in a recreated world.

This is what God is doing through Jesus.

And that's what God's doing through his church, through our church partnering together to

accomplish God's will.

And this is what God does through Paul.

He pours out his life.

He spends it, he gives it away, pulled us to partner with Jesus to see that the Gentiles,

the non-Jewish people can encounter Jesus.

And at the end of his life he writes this in 2 Timothy 4, as for me, my life has already

been poured out as an offering to God.

The time of my death is near, I fought the good fight, I finished the race and I remain

faithful.

Paul gives his life away to partner with God in putting the world right.

This is zeal in the way of Jesus, becoming a living sacrifice for the life of the world.

And Paul, the great writer that he is, captures this beautifully in Romans 12.

So dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God for all, because

of all he has done for you.

Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable.

This is truly the way to worship him.

How do you become a living sacrifice?

A sacrifice by its nature is dead, slaughtered, surrendered, given up.

So here's a rub.

We believe that things are important.

We believe telling people about Jesus is important.

We care about people's eternal destinies.

We believe that prayer works and that we hear God's voice as we read the Scriptures and

we have a mandate to care for the poor.

We care and sometimes we even care enough to do something about it.

But we can't fully align our behavior with our belief until we take up the zeal of Jesus

and become a living sacrifice.

We count or we won't until we die.

Die to ourselves, die to our way, die to our preferences, die to our comforts, die to our

distractions to truly live.

Jesus says we have to die.

There's a reason why when we're baptized as new believers we go down under the water to

show that we have died.

The old is gone.

We have died with Christ.

We are dead to death and we are dead to sin and we are pulled out of the water to show

that we've been raised to life with Christ.

We are a new person, a new creation.

To follow Jesus, to really follow him is to follow him to the cross.

To follow him not just in words but in belief and in action.

To live we have to die.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who resisted Hitler and died for it, once said.

The cross is laid on every Christian.

The first Christ suffering which every man or woman must experience is the call to abandon

the attachments of this world.

It is that dying of the old person which is the result of his encounter with Christ.

As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death.

We give over our lives to death.

Thus it begins.

The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life but it meets us

at the beginning of our communion with Christ.

When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.

There may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to

follow him or it may be a death like Luther's who had to leave the monastery and go out

into the world.

But it's the same death every time.

Death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man or the old woman as it's called.

The old life in us has to die.

Christ called us to die.

It's in our death that we are free to partner with God.

How can God use a life persistent in living for self and living for itself?

Choosing its way, its preferences, its desires, its limits.

What used to God is a life that demands to follow its own way.

Where it's going to live, what it's going to drive, the career it's going to take,

what it's going to do with its money, its body.

That kind of living sacrifice keeps taking itself off the altar at every whim.

Not today Jesus.

I'll get back on tomorrow.

But God can use a life that is laid down that chooses to stay on the altar, that chooses

to align its will with his will.

John says this in John.

I tell you the truth unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies it remains

alone, but its death will produce many new kernels.

A new plentiful harvest of new lives.

Those who love their life in this world will lose it.

Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity.

Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me because my servants must be where I am and

the Father will honor anyone who serves me.

I don't know about you, but I want to become the kind of person that God can use in powerful

ways.

I want to become the kind of person God can trust with his people and his kingdom.

I want to partner with God in putting the world right.

I want to be fruitful.

I want to experience all that God has for me.

And I guess that for most of you you probably would too.

All of you maybe.

But for God to do that in my life I have to care enough to get myself out of the way,

to leave my own way behind and let it die.

And choosing to die to yourself is the path of zeal.

Caring enough to do something requires us to put our own cares aside.

But we won't or we can't if we do it out of obligation and not out of love.

See Jesus didn't go to the cross because he had to.

He gave up his life.

He spent it because he wanted to.

He did it for love.

He said there's no greater love than to lay down one's life for his friends.

He said it and then he did it.

He laid down his life for his friends, the one he loves.

And that includes us.

A life that cares enough to do something is a life of love.

When you become a parent you care enough to do all manner of unpleasant things to keep

that kid alive.

You have to.

And in a sense and in reality you have to lay down your life.

Your preferences, your plans, your way in order for your kids to flourish.

There is a cost to being a parent.

And you willingly pay that cost as the parent because if you don't, if you neglect your

kid they will pay a cost far greater than your sleepless nights and soiled clothing.

And so you do it.

You do it for love.

And you do it before the kid has done anything worth and value.

There's no promise of bargaining some kind of return payment.

I'll do these 20 years, you make sure you put me in a good home.

You do it because you love them.

You do it for love.

You care enough to spend your life, yourself, to give your life away.

You care enough to die out of love.

Jesus cared enough.

Loved us enough to reconcile us to God, whatever it costs.

Before we had done anything to make us worthy or valuable to save with no possibility of

ever repaying what was done.

Jesus did it anyway.

He did it for love.

Jesus demonstrated his love for us on the cross in his zeal and his death.

We were cut off from God, lost, wandering, broken, ravaged by sin and death and he cared

enough to do something.

He cared enough to bring us home to God.

When we understand in our heart that Jesus did that for each and every one of us, personally,

before we ever did a thing, good or bad, we begin to be transformed as Paul was.

We have been loved with this kind of love.

God was not indifferent to us and so we can give up our away, die to ourselves and live

with zeal.

Love propels us to care enough to do something.

A life of love is a life that resists indifference, resists apathy.

You might serve the poor.

You might pray regularly.

You might be crushing Word Week on day one.

You might share Jesus with your friends relentlessly.

Maybe you're indifferent to something else.

Maybe apathy has its hold on you elsewhere.

Maybe you're indifferent to what you do with your body.

Maybe you're indifferent to what God calls you to do with your money.

Maybe you're indifferent to your family.

Maybe you're indifferent to your marriage if you have one.

Apathy is like a cancer that spreads itself through the whole body.

You begin being indifferent about something small.

You say, well, it doesn't really matter if I do or don't do this.

And then the indifference grows and starts to spread and takes hold of other bigger areas

of your life.

And suddenly your life just looks like everyone else's.

Suddenly living your own way for yourself.

Suddenly you may lose your job, your flunky degree, your marriage breaks down.

Suddenly you are a lukewarm Christian.

But a life of love cares enough to do something.

Love is not indifferent.

Love resists indifference.

Do you want to be, do marvelous things for God?

Do you want to be used by God?

Do you want to experience the fullness of his presence?

See his face?

Walk the path of zeal over the path of apathy.

Choose to care enough to spend your life for love because Jesus in love cared enough to

spend his life for you.

Some weeks at Henley we have everyone's favorite sermon segment, which is Henley Homework.

One way to put the word into action this week.

Here's the homework.

Do one thing to resist indifference this week.

There are lots of things you could do.

If you resist indifference in the small things, you'll be able to resist indifference in the

big things.

Care enough to pick up that trash.

Put a load of washing on before you leave the house.

Make sure you subvert that apathy in your marriage.

Consider your grammar.

Finish Word Week.

Don't just start it.

Finish it.

Start tithing or start giving 1% more.

Carry on snacks so you can give them to anyone who asks you for food.

Start taking care of what you put into your body.

Don't walk past stuff.

Don't let hurtful comments go unchallenged.

Tell you plus one about Jesus.

Pray for five minutes each day.

There's so many different things you could do.

Pick one.

Do one thing to resist indifference this week.

Pick the scariest one thing.

That's probably the thing you need to do the most.

Jesus cared enough about us to resist indifference to us.

And my prayer is that we would go and do the same.

We did our 24 hour pray day yesterday.

One of the big things that I really felt strongly from God was that our ambition as

a church, we want to see God move in power.

We want to see this community of Henley be where God's kingdom is.

And that the people who live here, ingrained in Henley, would come to know Jesus.

We want to see people healed.

We want to see God's miracles.

That's our holy ambition as a church.

But what I really felt strongly in the prayer room is that the way to get there is through

consecration, through setting ourselves apart.

Through purifying ourselves and dealing with our sin.

Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message.

If you felt challenged or need prayer, would love to hear from you on Instagram at EncounterHenley.

Or if you're interested in how you can support this ministry, please go to our website EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

Thanks again for listening.

God bless you.

God bless you.