We Believe in Jesus

Because you asked, here is the Sunday Sermon:

The Creed of Nicaea, adopted by The Church at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and modified in 381 at the First Council of Constantinople is found translated into English in our United Methodist Hymnal as entry number 880. In this creed, The Church affirms the co-essential divinity of the Son. What do I mean by that?

The Church makes no apologies for our understanding of the nature and Person of Jesus Christ, the Lord, our God. We affirm both the full humanity and the full divinity of Jesus Christ. Jesus was human. Jesus is God.

From its earliest beginnings, the central greeting among saints was this: “Jesus is Lord!” The impact of that statement was one of encouragement during persecution. But it was more than that. If Jesus is who this creed says He is, it changes the paradigm of human interaction.

Confused about that? Let’s explore it a bit.

As human beings in a societal setting, we survive and thrive by learning the system, recognizing the core power in the system, and aligning with it. Need me to break that out a little? Let’s look at a few examples:

1. We succeed in the family by recognizing who has the real power and fulfilling that person’s expectations. (Dad gives out the allowance, yes, but Mom controls the dessert menu. You decide.)
2. We succeed in school by reading the teacher’s method of testing and learning all the right bits before the test.
3. We succeed at work by knowing our job descriptions better than those who hold us accountable do, and by doing the job better than they think we do.
4. We succeed in community by contributing more than we take and being openly, transparently grateful.

In each of these situations, we gain power by aligning with the prevailing power. Mom makes our favorite dessert, we get an “A” on the test, we get that raise or promotion, and we are valued in community. The sun is shining, and the birds are singing.

But roll that machine backward and we see a whole other outcome.

1. We fail in the stock market by riding the winning streak too long OR
2. We fail in the stock market by bailing just before the upswing.
3. We fail to enjoy our declining years because we put too much emphasis on the present and do not consider the future. OR
4. We have nothing to celebrate in our declining years because we were so over focused on the future that we failed to create a past worth remembering.

Get the idea? If we know what we believe, and live into it, it will change the way we relate to the world around us.

So, knowing that Jesus is “of one essence with the Father” – that Jesus is “Very God of very God” – will change the way we align with the shifting powers of this world. If Jesus is who the Church says He is – if Jesus is who the Bible says He is – we will NEVER align with any power that requires us to disengage from Him, His work or His Word.

Do we believe what we say we believe?

If we want to know whether we believe what we say we believe, we need to do a behavior check. How is that belief impacting our interaction in the world?

• If the world looks at the virgin birth and sinless life of Jesus and labels it hyperbole, and we say, “I suppose that is the most rational approach.” We don’t believe what we say we believe.
• If the world says that Jesus was a good man and a good teacher, but the reports of His life in the Bible are exaggerated and we say, “There may be some truth to that.” We don’t believe what we say we believe.

I could walk this all the way through the creed, but you get it, don’t you? We believe it, or we don’t. Our alignment shows which.

With whom are we aligned this morning?

If we are aligned with Jesus – the Jesus of this creed we affirm – we will not align with any human authority that denies his authority over us. We will not form ties that do not affirm Him and we will break ties that renounce Him.

If we do have the faith we claim, how will that faith in Him shine out to those around us? They will see us offering to Him a three-pronged gift. We will visibly, tangibly and vocally offer Jesus our

1. Obedience
2. Trust
3. Love

If we are offering less than that, we may be singing all the right hymns and reading all the right passages, but we do not believe what we say we believe. How is our faith this morning? Is it impacting our behavior in the world? I will answer that question with these words: “Take this whole world but give me Jesus. No turning back. No turning back!”

A Reading from 1 John 5:

Jesus Christ was revealed as God’s Son by his baptism in water and by shedding his blood on the cross—not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit, who is truth, confirms it with his testimony. So, we have these three witnesses—the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and all three agree. Since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God. And God has testified about his Son. All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those who don’t believe this are actually calling God a liar because they don’t believe what God has testified about his Son. And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

 

Motive for Ministry

Why do people enter the ministry?

Contrary to some claims, there are people who enter Christian ministry for the money. To some, the idea of preaching a couple of times a week in trade for housing and a pay-check, looks like an easy way to get a steady income. Those folk do not last in ministry, though, because they soon discover that the pay is less than it seems. (That financial report you get at the business meeting that lists “pastoral expense” is not just the pastor’s salary. Many pastors will get less than half of that figure.) They also learn that the work of the pastor is far heavier than they thought, and more time consuming than they could have imagined.

Con artists do find a place in ministry, but not usually as pastors. One can run a con only so long, so that shadowy evangelist who comes into town one night and starts preaching without consulting with any grounded ministry, might be looking to shear the sheep. Genuine evangelists generally come alongside pastors. Those who do otherwise bear watching.

Most folk who enter Christian ministry employ one of two methods. They share the Gospel of Christ to reach the lost and heal the people, or they move an agenda to revolutionize the church. Put more simply, some want to help The Church change the world and others want to help the world change The Church.

Neither of these methods is bad in itself. Both can be divinely inspired. Billy Graham shares the Gospel to see The Church change the world. Martin Luther moved an agenda to reform The Church, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation that followed were cleansing. But Henry VIII was also moving an agenda in his ministry role in the Church of England, and that agenda had more to do with personal debauchery than with moral purity. Still, when you say The Lord’s Prayer, chances are that you are combining the words of Jesus and the words of Henry VIII.

Spreading the Gospel or moving an agenda – both methods can serve the cause of Christ, and either can damage it in the wrong hands, guided by a wrong head or heart. We have to dig deeper to find the trigger point if we are to know whether our calling is both sincere and infused by the Holy Spirit. We have to find the motive behind the method.

The singular appropriate motive for Christian ministry is Christ-like compassion. Anger with wrong practices in The Church may be a part of reformational ministry, but if that anger is not based in compassion for the people The Church is called to serve,  it will do more harm than good. Change for the sake of change, or change that abandons Scriptural truth in favor of temporal mores, is less reformation and more defileing. 

Faithful ministers of the Gospel, who follow Jesus’ example of moving with compassion to preach and teach timeless truth, lead the people in their care to individual and collective faithfulness. They are fulfilling a genuine call to ministry. They are healing the people along the way.

Those who move folk away from the purity of the Gospel, so that The Church can more freely fellowship with the world, are tarnishing the message with their words and ways. They may be sincere, and fully convinced that they are moving in The Church’s best interests. Remember that Eve saw the promise of knowledge in the forbidden fruit and reached for it. Adam saw his love for Eve as his primary calling, and plunged into it. It is entirely possible to fall from grace in a quest for knowledge or to serve deep human connections.  It has happened and it is still happening. (And Satan smiles.)

Compassion takes the wider view. We cannot save anyone by joining them in their sin. Christ walked among, loved, and saved sinners. He did not partake in, condone or overlook sin. He, seeing and knowing the human heart, forgave sin in response to repentance. Valid Christian ministry will do the same.

Let compassion lead. Share the Gospel humbly and faithfully. Refuse to twist Scriptural precepts to fit the times or circumstances. Never be self-serving in Scriptural application. Always serve the Lord, worshiping in spirit and truth. This is the disciple’s true calling. Ministers of the Gospel, lay and clergy alike, are compassion-led people who know the difference between offering salvation by grace through faith and conveying a comforting message to a person dying in sin.

Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”Matthew 9:35-38 (NASB)

Behavior Gap

Many denominations within The Church are racked with confusion and division right now.  We think we know why, but most of us act on the assumption that the surface explanation is valid. It is not. The division in the post-modern congregation is not racism, gender misunderstandings or views on sexual preferences. Our primary problem is the gap between what we think we believe and what we (functionally) show that we believe.

The fissure is developing along the line of scriptural authority, but it is not a clean line. Why not? One does well to believe that the Holy Bible is inspired and authoritative, but that makes virtually no difference in the individual adherent’s life if the one who believes scripture has full authority has no personal grasp of the content of scripture. In that case, the Bible is reduced to a magical book in the hands of the wizard the adherent follows. Those adherents are not disciples of Jesus, filtering the content of each passage through the Lord’s teaching, but are dancing along behind the wizard, swallowing whatever is poured out to them and going where they are led.

What do we say that we believe? If we look to Scripture to self-define, we believe the words of Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NASB)

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

But sometimes what we say is fully eclipsed by what we do. If we believe that the Holy Bible is authoritative, we will read and study it. If we do not read and study scripture, I would argue that we do not really believe what we say we believe. If we believed that our souls depended on obedience to our calling into grace (discipleship) we would be actively learning the will of God and actively applying what we learn to our behavior.

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By keeping it according to Your word.

Psalm 119:9 (NASB)

If that is not what we are doing, it does not matter what we are saying. We will dance along behind whatever wizard leads us. Willing ignorance disembowels our belief-set. 

Jesus led a handful of disciples who would become shepherds of the sheep. The crowd followed, but not as disciples. Sheep are far more easily swayed than are disciples. We who are called to grace through faith in Jesus must choose whether to be sheep or disciples. If we are sheep, we hope we have the right wizard to interpret our magical book. If we are disciples, we will crack the Book and do the work of following faithfully. Then we will lead with compassion those sheep who follow us, turning as many as we can into disciples along the way.

Psalm 1 addresses the issue for us:

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so,
But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish.

Crack the book. Do the work. Live what you believe.