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Real outreach

Acts 3: 1 – 16

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 31 Jul, 2005

TWO FACTS emerge from the Biblical picture of the church in outreach. One is that they did it with a boldness that would shame us; the other is that they did it in all circumstances.

Last week, I asked you all to pray for my cousin, Michael. The news that came out on Tuesday wasn’t good.

I must tell Michael about the impact he had on me as a young Christian.

Michael's father and mine were too much alike. There were often conflicts, and I only saw my cousins intermittently.

My early memories of Michael are of his kindness and gentleness. He is a little older than I am, and I have memories of him doubling me on the back of his bike along Sunnyholt Road in Blacktown when it was all bush.

Every now and then, as a young man, Michael came to visit us. He was a carpenter, and also did some building work for my father.,

It was in this time that we began to see another side of Michael. He had been a Methodist like the rest of his family; but he had begun attending a Foursquare Church in Ingleburn, out past Liverpool.

Michael used to arrive early at our place so that he could have an extra half hour for lunch. He used this half hour to go to Fairfield station and preach to passers–by. Sometimes he came back quite excited, because someone had listened to him all the way through.

Michael told me, ”It isn’t enough just to be born again through faith in Jesus, you need the Holy Spirit,” and he quoted several verses to support his views.

I didn’t agree with his Biblical interpretation, but I saw in him someone who put his faith into practice, and who testified clearly to the inner working of the Holy Spirit. He gave me confidence to seek more knowledge of the Spirit and to look for his power and presence.

We all need to become people of power. We all need to be witnesses to Jesus in a fresh way.

Being real Christians

A young woman contacted me because she wants to marry a man who is sympathetic to Christianity, but has no personal faith. She wanted to know how this fits with the verse in 2 Cor 5 about not being unequally yoked to an unbeliever.

Every case has its circumstances, and I can’t comment on that one. But I will say that many Church–goers don’t understand the idea of being unequally yoked, because they don’t properly understand what a Christian is.

Do we truly understand what a Christian is?

In Philippians 2:11, Paul says

[God] has given Him [Jesus] a name which is above every other name, that, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, and every tongue confess, ”Jesus is Lord!’ to the glory of God the Father.

The basic, the essential, understanding of Jesus is, “Jesus is Lord.” He is the Christ. He is the Messiah. Jesus is the anointed, appointed King who rules in all the authority of God the Father.

When you or I say, “Jesus is Lord,” what that means is, “Jesus is in control of my life. I am a soldier in his army, a slave in his household, a young brother of my kuya (A Philipino term meaning, Big brother.).”

And that means that, as Paul says,

You are not your own: you are bought with a price.

When Peter and John met that crippled man at the temple, don’t imagine that this is just a story about a sick person being made well.

This is a story about the living Jesus battling against the forces of sin, sickness and death.

It is a story about a confrontation between the Lord of the Universe and Satan’s ravages.

I am not calling that crippled man a dreadful sinner whose sickness was the result of his sin. I am not saying that he was so badly demonised that it had devastated his body.

I am saying that satan is behind the sickness and wounding and death in the world, and that this man was a victim. The apostles had to bring the risen Lord to this man, to set him free. The battle is the Lord’s!

Peter and John were enlisted, sworn soldiers of the King of kings. They were on a sortie, seeking the enemy. They found where he was active — in the life of a poor, crippled man. So they attacked straight away. They weren’t going to let the enemy get away. They saw Christ’s light shining on this man, so they knew that the Lord’s spotlight had identified a battle ground. And Jesus had the victory, the man was liberated, and he jumped with joy!

When you are at war, you don’t bring the half–hearted into the camp; you don’t bring someone who is on the enemy’s side with you when you are fighting the enemy.

The battle is hard enough without someone dragging you back all the time!

I’m not saying that there aren’t good people who are not Christians, and I’m not saying that there aren’t bad people who are. Nor am I saying that a Christian should separate from an unbelieving husband or wife, because the Bible is against that. But I am saying that we are in a battle, and that the rules of engagement mean that we can’t be looking out for non–combattants when the heat is on.

But, above all, I am saying that we need to be true Christians if we are to have effective outreach.

We need to be people who understand that Jesus died for us.

I was getting very knocked around in the battle. Sometimes people don’t understand, because the Kingdom’s battles are not against flesh and blood. In our society, you rarely see blood. But sometimes it would be easier to be in hand–to–hand combat with swords or clubs. You can see what is happening then.

But I had been in other kinds of battles, battles for the future of this church, battles over the direction we should take.

And I was a bit like an old teddy bear, coming apart at the seams. I was depressed, I took all week to write one sermon, I had no energy, I was beginning to wonder if the entire world had gone mad, or if it was only me.

I can tell you that, without Jesus, I wouldn’t have made it through. What a discovery: that God loves me, “Christ much”! What a sense of value it gave me to know that my value in God’s eyes is the value of Jesus, because Jesus was the price God gave for me!

We need Jesus. We need to know and understand that God gave his only son, so that you and I should not perish, but have eternal life. We won’t survive if we try to fight the enemy without that knowledge.

We need to be true Christians.

Being real ministers

I also want us to see that effective outreach requires us to be true ministers.

I don’t mean you should all take to wearing back–to–front collars or that you should all take to preaching.

A minister is a servant. A minister is someone who does good to others for the sake of Christ.

One pastor built his church on funerals. It was a little, struggling church, a bit like ours. And this pastor was very good at doing funerals. So people would ask for him if they didn’t have their own pastors. This pastor would do the funeral, and then follow up the family, and many of them became regulars at the church.

It doesn’t always work. Of the many people whom I have followed up after a funeral, I think only two have ever come here as a consequence. But they all ask me to do other family funerals. It’s not the same, though!

However, ministry can have interesting consequences.

We never again hear of the man who was healed at the temple, but Peter and John were able to preach to hundreds as a consequence. I would be surprised if none of them became Christians through seeing the power of Jesus and hearing the word preached.

When I first came here, it was only a couple of weeks after the wife of one of the local pastors in another denomination had died. Of course, he was broken–hearted. I called him once or twice, and asked him how he was going whenever I met him. I didn’t think any more of it.

When he was leaving the district a few years later, he made a little farewell speech. In it he mentioned that only two of the local ministers had supported him when his wife died: John Conner from Petersham Baptist Church, and me.

One result was that the Baptists around Marrickville got a much higher profile, because we got a reputation as people who cared!

What you do in ministry occasionally bounces back; more often, it comes back indirectly.

Each of us has different strengths and weaknesses in ministry. Some people are pastors, able to give direction and to pull others along. Some are counsellors, who ask the right questions and stay with a troubled person until he or she finds her own answers. Some are prophets, who can see where things are heading if the people don’t change, and some are apostles who have a good overview of how everything in the church goes together. Others have healing ministries or prayer ministries or the ability to step in and do the backup work.

I am not talking about how upfront you are. I am talking about how you serve other people at their point of need — your neighbours, your workmates, your family and friends.

For an example, think about someone who wants to know about marrying a non–Christian.

A pastor–type person might tell her what the Bible says about being unequally yoked, while a counsellor would ask, “What do you really want to do? What might be the outcome if you do it?”

And a prophet might say, “You will have a life of misery and regret if you don’t repent of the plans you hold.”

Peter and John saw a man in need. They didn’t preach a sermon or lead a service, They brought the healing power of Jesus to him as he lay on the steps. Outreach begins in real ministry.

Being real witnesses

Finally, outreach will grow out of being true witnesses.

When the apostles spoke to the crippled man, Peter said,

“I have no silver or gold coins, but I will give you what I have. In the name of Jesus, the Messiah who came from Nazareth, get up and walk!”

They did not claim to have any power of their own. They spoke in the name of Jesus. They had met him; they knew what he could do; the testified to that in their words and their actions.

Straight afterwards, a crowd gathered, and, once again, they testified to Jesus.

“Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? ¹³ The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. ¹⁴ You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. ¹⁵ You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. ¹⁶ By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see...”

Once again, their testimony is about Jesus. There is no better topic. There is no one else who has the words of life.

I was thinking about death earlier in the week — as one does. Not mine in particular. If something life–threatening strikes me, I will probably tell you before the sermon.

I was thinking, “What does a person have, at that point when he or she is about to leave this life?”

I thought about family. People facing final days often think about family. My father asked me to make sure that my mother mixed socially and didn’t just hide away in a corner. I think he had forgotten how much my mother mixes! But it was a family thought.

One thing that had me thinking was that Naomi began her studies for a Doctorate in Philosphy this week, and I was thinking how proud both her grandfathers would have been.

But so many people leave this life without any strong family ties.

I conducted a funeral once for an alcoholic woman. She had a brother, but no one knew if he was still alive. She hadn’t seen him for years. No one was sure if her ex–husband had any relatives. He had died before her. She had nothing to look to in family terms.

Other people might have their work achievements, or some benefit they had created for society, or their studies and their contribution to knowledge to think about. But most don’t.

We all know you can’t take wealth or property with you.

When everything is stripped away, what is left?

What about religion? Most people have a religion, but they leave this life with nothing more than ideas about God, or some claim not to have lived too bad a life.

But neither of these is anything to rely on when there is nothing left.

You’d better be talking about Jesus, because he’s the only one who has been right there, and then come back! No one else lasts; no one else endures.

These Christians — Peter, Paul, James, Philip and all the rest — they knew Jesus, they talked about him all the time, and people responded.

Conclusion

If we want some real outreach to occur, we’d better be real people.

We’d better make sure we are real Christians, not just baptised heathens.

We’d better work out where out real priorities lie, and whom we are truly giving allegiance to.

Then we’d better be real ministers, doing what we can with what we‘ve been given by the Holy Spirit, in whatever place we can do it.

Finally, we’d better be real witnesses, not just talking about religion, but talking about Jesus, and all the good things he’s done for us.

The more we get those basics right, the more we will be able to reach out effectively, because those are basic aspects of outreach.

Let’s do it!

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)