Church For The Community (The Next Chapter Series)

There was once a stretch of coastline where ships ran aground all of the time. The water was rough out there. The rocks were sharp, and people died when those ships would run aground. So there were a few people who began to notice what was going on. People who really cared about what was going on, people who wanted to do something about what was going on, and they built a little life-saving station on the shore. When they first started, it was just a shack, a simple little shack in one boat. They really didn't have any money, they didn't have any training, but they were willing. They were willing to go out into the storm and rescue people before they drowned.

As they made themselves available for this task, they began to save some people, and then they saved more people, and they began to save a lot of people. And many of the people that they rescued and saved were so grateful that they wanted to join in and be a part of what they were doing, so they gave money, and the life-saving station started to grow.

Eventually, someone said, "You know what? This building, this little shack that we're in, is is pretty rough. The people that we rescue deserve better than this, and so they they put in nicer beds,

they put in better furniture, they even added onto it and made it a nice meeting room and a place for them to to gather together in relationship. And the station became a pretty pleasant place to be, a place that people liked to go and where they enjoyed hanging out together, people actually started coming just to do that because they enjoyed coming together and hanging out with one another.

So over time, this life-saving station kind of turned into a club, and fewer and fewer members wanted to go out on those rescue missions because, I mean that work was cold and and you got wet and and it was dangerous. You could die trying to rescue and save someone else. And so they hired a crew. They hired a crew to go out on the rescue mission so that they could stay inside where it was comfortable and be in relationship with each other.

But one night there was a big ship that went down. It was run aground, and the the crew brought in boatloads of people who were, of course, absolutely soaked, and they were bleeding, and they were dirty, and they were scared. Many of them didn't speak the same language. Many of them didn't look like the other people around, and they tracked mud all over the brand new carpet of this new meeting room, and so at the next meeting that they had, there was a debate where some members stood up and said, "This is quite honestly getting a little bit out of hand. This is a club now, and so let's build a separate shed out back for the rescue work, so that this building can stay nice and not get ruined. Other people stood up and said, "Well, wait a minute. We're a life-saving station. That's the whole reason that we exist.

But those guys were outvoted,

so the other people left and they started a new station just a little bit further down the coast. But within just a few years, the exact same thing happened to

it. And if you were there and were walking across that coastline today, you would see a string of beautiful clubhouses, one right after another,

and the shipwrecks still continue to happen, and there are people drowning out there on the sea

almost every single day.

This was a parable that was told by an Episcopalian minister named Theodore Weddell back in the 1950s,

and the thing about this story that just makes me pause is

this: guys, no one really did anything blatantly evil.

There, there was no one who voted to let people drown. Every decision along the way seemed reasonable. Just a little bit more comfort. Let's add a little bit more safety. Let's take away a little bit of the mess that's involved. And the reality is, is they did not abandon their mission in one night. They slowly drifted away from it, one good intention at a time.

Guys, that is the danger for the local church today. It is not rebellion, quite honestly. It's comfort. It is the fact that we in the church sometimes get a little bit more comfortable with the way things are going. We like the people that we've become friends with. We like the way that we do the.

Service that we come to,

we like our Bible studies, and that we are mostly surrounded by people who look like us and act like us and share the same convictions about things as us. And we like that we're actually feel safe in here, and that we're shielded from all the mess, all the mess that goes on out there in the world, and so over time,

what happens is that our mission begins to shift. It becomes all about keeping things comfortable, keeping things that the way they are, to make sure that we enjoy what's going on in the best possible way.

So here's what we need to just plainly say from all of this, guys. Jesus did not put us here in this community to be a clubhouse.

He did not put us here as His church to go, or He put us here. Excuse me, as His church to go out into the storm on rescue missions to seek and save the lost. How do I know that? Because that's what Jesus said that He came to do. In Luke 1910, He says, "For the Son of Man, which is a reference to Himself, for the Son of Man, he says, "came to seek and to save the lost. This is the entire reason that Jesus came.

It's what Jesus still does today, because Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and

forever. It's who He is, and He is now the head of the church,

and so He didn't just

stop working; he just does it through us

today, as we make ourselves available to him. He works in and through us as his body. The head still guides us and leads us to seek and save the lost, and he empowers us as his body to go on that rescue mission with him to save those who are lost. This is why, since it's who Jesus is, it's what he came to do, it's what he's still doing today, and because he's the head and we are his body, we said about six years ago in the series that was similar to this one when I first came that this must be one of the core values that we hold as a church, we must be a church that is for the community. We must be a church that's for the community, not a church that exists for ourselves. We are not a church that exists for our own comfort. Again, Jesus put us in this community as His church to be for the community and to go into the community to seek and to save the lost. And so that's why, as we continue to focus on the next chapter, this next chapter that Jesus is leading us into as one church to worship together in one service, we are focusing today on how he is bringing us together to share the same mission. We've been saying one church, one service. You see it on the sign. One mission. What is that mission? Seeking and saving the lost together.

This is the mission that Jesus is on. This is the mission that we are on as His body,

but quite honestly, Jesus, even when He was here in His own earthly ministry, had to convince people that this is what was most valuable to Him. He had to open up the minds of even good religious people who thought they were doing what God wanted them to do to the reason that He was here. For example, in Luke chapter 15, verse one, Luke says, "Now this was when Jesus was on earth and doing His earthly ministry, and He's He's writing the gospel about Jesus's life, and He says, 'Now the tax collectors and the sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

In other words, this tells you their mindset already. These guys are upset that someone who claimed to be a good religious man from God would actually be having table fellowship with people who were not behaving and acting in ways that were good, in the ways that good religious people who love God would act and behave.

In other words, their mission was to keep people like this out. They, as religious leaders who do good, those who follow the rules and are on the inside already. Their job is to keep the messy, dirty, rotten sinners on the outside.

The mission was to keep life comfortable, to keep it clean on the inside, to shelter themselves from the.

Messy, dirty people who had lost their way in this world,

and so Jesus is near when they're saying these things, when they're muttering these things. He he hears them, and here is how he responds by telling two different parables. In verse three, it says, "Then Jesus told them this parable: Suppose one of you has 100 sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me! I have found my lost sheep. I tell you that in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent. Jesus goes on. It says, "Or or suppose a woman? Suppose a woman has 10 silver coins and loses just one of them. Doesn't she light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me! I have found my lost coin.

Again, in the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Two different parables.

One of them, as you heard, is about a shepherd who's leaving 99 other sheep to intently go look for just one, one that was lost, a woman who who has nine coins, I mean 10 coins, loses one of them, nine others, and turns her whole house upside down to go find the one coin that she lost. As Jesus is telling both of these parables, he makes sure that we understand that they are not really about sheep, that they're not really about coins that he's retelling these stories back to the comment that they had made about him welcoming sinners in and eating with them. The lost sheep and the lost coin represent lost sinners. So this is what he's saying in his parable, and one of the things that I hope that you were noticing along the way as Jesus was telling these parables is this:

lost people

are highly,

highly valuable to Jesus.

I mean, guys, the shepherd had 99 other sheep. The woman had nine other coins. They both could have just said, "Oh well, I lost one, but I've got plenty of others.

But that's not what they did. They both searched feverishly for them, and this shows us that lost sinners are highly, highly valued by Jesus.

The religious leaders, of course, didn't have that mindset. They didn't see it that way. They thought the opposite. They thought that God devalued lost sinners. They had lost their way, and because of that, he valued them-the Pharisees, the good, religious, moral people who were trying to stay away from them and keep them out and keep things clean.

Sometimes

it's easy for that mindset

to find its way into our churches, even today,

we begin to learn a lot

after salvation.

We begin to learn that Jesus completely forgives us.

We learn that His Spirit came to dwell in us. We learn that we're in union with Him, and that we become this whole new creation in Christ. Like I'm no longer who I once was, but then He begins to show us that there are certain behaviors, certain actions, certain ways that we've been speaking before we came to know Jesus that are no longer in alignment with the new creation that we've become, and so he puts us in this process of revealing to us what those sinful actions and behaviors and speeches were, or the the things that we're saying, and and then he begins to show us the behavior and the speech that lines up with who we now are in Christ, and as we make ourselves available to Him, He begins to produce new behaviors and new speech, and all of a sudden we're being conformed on the outside to who He's already made us on the inside, and that begins to be a habit. We begin to walk in those ways, begin to behave in those ways, and others who are around us are behaving in those ways in acting.

In those same ways, and so so when that happens, the enemy begins to take those good things that Jesus has been doing and twist them a little bit. He begins to whisper into our heads and into our ears, saying, "Saying now that you've gotten cleaned up, now that God's moved in your life to produce these new behaviors, and you're surrounded by other people who are acting the same way and and talking the same way. Here's what you really should do: the best thing that you can do is to create a bubble around you and a bubble around this place to keep all of those people who behave and speak differently than you do out there,

so that they don't, in fact,

impact you,

make you go back to speaking and behaving in those ways.

So, in our minds, what happens is the enemy leads us to actually devalue the very people

that are so highly valued by Jesus,

and we must stop and ask ourselves that question: Am I highly valuing lost sinners in this world the way that Jesus values them, or have I been deceived by the enemy to think that the best thing that I could do is to separate myself from them and to keep them from getting in here where things are so good.

But listen, in the parable that Jesus was telling, it it goes far beyond lost people just being highly valued by Jesus. What we also see is that lost people are actively searched for by Jesus. I mean, in the parable, the shepherd and the woman aren't just sad. They didn't just kind of get sad and go like, "Oh man, I just those things were so valuable to me. I wish, I wish that I wouldn't have lost them. They they didn't say, "Gosh, I sure hope that sheep finds his way back to me. I love that sheep, and I care about that sheep, and I just I hope he'll find his way back for me. Or, "Gosh, that coin was so valuable. I hope that it'll just turn up one day.

That's not how Jesus told the parable. He tells the parable in a way where the shepherd and the woman go actively search

what was so valuable to them.

We said earlier that Jesus in Luke chapter 1910 said that his whole mission was to come and to seek and to save the lost.

So when you think about Jesus saying that, and you think about what He's showing here in regard to the sheep and the coin, what He's saying is that Himself, guys, Jesus is the shepherd. He is the shepherd who leaves the 99 to go actively in search of the one, why? Because that one is so valuable to him that he will not stand there and just hope that he finds his way back to him one day.

He's going to take off running,

giving everything that he's got to chase after to who was so valuable to him. So, since we know this to be true about Jesus as the head of the church, someone who highly values lost sinners, someone who values them so much that he will actually go on rescue missions for them, then as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus as the head of our church, he will do the same. He will lead us to highly value those who are lost, to use us. He will send us out on those rescue missions in search of the one. It's one of the reasons that when Jesus met with his disciples after his death, before his ascension back to heaven, that he met with them and told them this: Go and make disciples of all nations. What was he saying there? Go seek and save the lost everywhere.

Go on rescue missions for the lost sinners in this world, everywhere. The

lost sinners of all nations,

and then of course, as we studied in Acts when we did our verse by verse message series through Acts, after Jesus said this, he he gave them this mission, but then he said, "But don't go yet.

Just just wait, go to Jerusalem and wait till the Holy Spirit is sent, and then the Holy Spirit comes, and then now they have the opportunity to be in union with Jesus as the head. They are the church, and now He's able to lead them and to guide them and empower them to go and do just that. And that's what we studied for.

Entire year

was the disciples seeking and saving the lost, rescuing lost sinners. Actually, it was Jesus doing it on mission in and through them as His church,

which is the same thing that He does through us today,

and so that's why

we say that one of our core values must be

that we are a church for the community. We are not a church who exists for ourselves. We are not here for our comfort. We are not here to create a bubble around us to keep all those messy, dirty, lost sinners out of here.

We recognize that we were those who were lost at one time, those whom Jesus came on a rescue mission for, and that He rescued us from the situation that we are in or were in to send us out on mission to rescue others with Him, and so when we think about going into this next chapter,

this next Sunday when that new chapter begins, when we come together as one church, when we come together

as one to worship together next week, we cannot keep our focus just on what Jesus is going to be doing when He brings us together for worship. We we do put our focus there. We we do put our focus on what Jesus is doing because He is doing something. He brings us together as his church for a reason: to worship him, to learn together, to encourage each other, to support each other, to grow in his grace together, to be moving into small groups where we are discipled together, and he continues to grow us in his grace. So we do put our focus on what he's doing while we're here, but we must recognize that after Jesus gathers us together as his church, he is going to send us out as his church to go rescue

lost sinners in the Tyler community, and so we look for him to do just that. We make ourselves available to Him to use us to love people and to serve people and to share to share our lives with those lost sinners in this world to share the gospel with them to invite them to invite them into the community

that we experience

here, and that we love so much.

I think when we

are reminded that this is who Jesus is, the mission that He is on as our head, what He is going to be up to in and through us as a people, and we think about the most practical ways that could apply to us today.

Let me share you with you one of the most easy things that I think Jesus would say to every one of us, and this is where it starts, not where it ends, just where it starts. Go ahead and grab your bulletins that you grabbed when you came in, pull out the little card that was in there. For some of you, you may have dropped it not knowing it was in there, but one of these cards was inside every single bulletin. And on one side of the card, it says "You're invited, and on the other side of the card it just says "Colonial Hills Baptist Church Worship 9:30, Sunny School 10:45, ColonialHills.com. It's got a little QR code that they could they could scan with their phones that takes them to a page on our website where they can learn more about who we are as a church and find out all the details that they want to know. So so maybe the way that this applies to every single one of us in this room would begin to be praying over this card

and who this card represents.

Who who is this card that you're holding in your hand right now? Is it a is it a neighbor?

Is it someone that you work with? Is it someone that you go to school with? Someone that's in the band with you? Someone that's on one of the sports teams that you play on? Someone that's in your own family,

and then as Jesus brings that person to mind, you look for the opportunity to go hand it to them and to invite them to come to church next Sunday to be a part of what God is doing here at Colonial Hills.

Maybe it's more than one person. Maybe God's already beginning to show you it's more than one person, and we only gave you one. But guess what? There are more, and so on your way out, every single exit has more of these invite cards that you can find, and and you can take as many as you want that you think that you will actually hand out to people to join us next.

Week and so maybe again you already know who those people are and who the Lord is leading you to invite, or maybe you don't. Maybe there's absolutely no one coming to mind right now.

Well, I think our prayer in that case would be, okay, Jesus, I'm available.

I am your church.

You're sending me out as your church,

and you do that to

get into relationships with lost people.

So I'm going to intentionally be looking for lost people this week,

and as I look for those, I'm going to be looking for the people that you're leading me to go love and to serve in practical ways, and to take steps into actually building a relationship with them that may lead to a simple invitation or sharing your life together with them in some way, serving them, meeting their practical needs, so that

you can have the opportunity to even share your faith with them at some point in time.

And so I hope that you'll grab that one card at least, or multiple cards, and that we will all make ourselves available to Jesus as His instrument, and that we will go and be a church that is for a church

who is for the community. Let's pray.