The Power of Vision, Part VII

Now is the Time for Reaping. A sermon preached on October 3, 2004.

by The Rev. David Harper

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Now is the Time for Reaping

The Lessons: Exodus 19:1-8; Philippians 3:7-16; John 6:16-21/Mark 6:45-51

“Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of them into Capernaum, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them and the waters had grown rough. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. Immediately, he spoke to them and said ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.” (from Mark 6:45-51 and John 6:16-21)

Father, we worship you, we honor you, we appreciate you. And we thank you for giving us the word who was made flesh and has dwelt amongst us, full of grace and truth. Lord Jesus, word made flesh, come and dwell amongst us now through the preaching of the word. Come and make yourself known to us. Come and give us fresh revelation about who you are, and who we are in you. Lord, open the eyes of our hearts, that we can receive greater knowledge and revelation of what you want us to see. Come Lord and use the word to kindle your fire in our hearts, for we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Today, with a slight twinge of regret, I am finishing the series I’ve been preaching over the last six weeks about the power of vision. I say, “with regret” because I’ve really enjoyed looking at our church’s calling, mission and vision. I have wanted not so much to explain it as expound it; not so much to teach it as to preach it, because I am very, very excited about what God has given to us.

God has given to this church a very compelling calling and vision. You should probably know it now by heart, “To make visible the power of God’s love so all will come to know Christ.” That’s an amazing statement. It’s what he’s told us to do. It’s what he’s told us that we’re about.

The power of God’s love is already here. We don’t need to manufacture it. We don’t need to find a recipe from some earlier age. We don’t need to try to concoct something, we don’t need to try and develop programs so that we can manufacture this power of God’s love. We simply have to make it visible! Our only task is to reveal it. It’s not to remain hidden. It’s not to remain locked within our hearts. The power of God’s love is not to blaze out merely within the confines of this building. It’s to become so visible that all will come to know Christ!

When I began this sermon series I spoke about the Old Testament story of Gideon, told in the book of Judges. It illustrates what needs to happen to make visible something that God has given.

Gideon’s people were faced by the Midianites, a very formidable foe. The Israelites were vastly outgunned and outnumbered. They were intimidated and constantly harassed by this enemy. But God spoke to Gideon: “I’m calling you, mighty warrior, to be the one to lead my people into victory against the Midianites.” Gideon didn’t immediately recognize himself as the best candidate for that job, but God worked on him. Eventually he gathered all the fighting men of Israel, about thirty thousand, and began to think about how he might train them, equip them, and develop a strategy. God said, “You’ve got far too many soldiers!” and eventually reduced Gideon’s force to three hundred.

Then God revealed the strategy: “I want you to divide these three hundred into three companies, each of one hundred. Give everyone a torch. They are to light it, holding it in one hand with a large jar in the other hand. Tell them to hold the jar over the flame so that it doesn’t extinguish it [air needs to be able to get through], but to make the flame invisible. Then surround the valley where the Midianites are encamped. When you blow the trumpet, Gideon, they are to smash all those pottery jars by banging them together. The sound traveling in the still night air will strike terror into the enemy. As they look up to see where the sound is coming from, they’re going to see the lights of your torches— and that is going to rout them. You won’t even have to engage them—because when you make visible something that I have given to you, you will get breakthroughs, you will get victories.” They did that, and the rest is history.

So the question for us is this: “If God has already given us the power of his love, how can we make it visible? How can we break the jars that would otherwise make it invisible to the world, restricted to ourselves so that we resemble a religious club, or something like that—where the light is hidden and irrelevant to the people out there?”

God has given us five powerful means for making the power of his love visible. Each relates to one of the five purposes that God has for our lives and for the church. We studied these last fall, when we did the forty days of purpose. We’re going to be looking at them again in a week’s time, when we launch the 40 Days of Community. Last year’s campaign examined how God’s purposes relate to me. This year’s campaign will examine how they relate to us.

Here are the five powerful means God has given to us for making visible the power of his love.

The first is dynamic worship. One of the many things that I said when I preached about dynamic worship is that, when we worship the Lord, people are watching us. I told a story from the book of Acts, where Paul and Silas had been preaching but the crowd turned against them. They were viciously beaten with instruments designed to lacerate their backs, to rip off the flesh. As though that wasn’t sufficient—dealing with the agony and the trauma of that experience—they were thrown into the dank, dark cell of a Philippian jail. Today we would call it the maximum security part of that jail. Just to make sure that they were experiencing the maximum torture, their feet were placed in the stocks, so that they couldn’t get comfortable either.

In that terrible place, in that terrible time, amidst that unbelievable suffering, we learn that about midnight—since I guess they couldn’t sleep in those conditions— they decided to do something remarkable. “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them.” (Acts 16:25).

When people come into church, they see us worshipping like that, and then begin to get to know us, they find that we are a little bit like them. Frankly, none of our lives is that straightforward and simple. Most of us have things going on that we would prefer to be different, if we could only change them. Some of us are suffering like Paul and Silas did: we have been whipped by life, and feel that our feet are fastened in the stocks. We feel stuck in our suffering, stuck in an unsatisfactory place. Everything within us wants to cry out “I’m a victim. Life isn’t fair.” That’s what the world expects to hear from us! But when these observers get to know us, and realize that despite what they see in our lives, we choose to worship, the power of God’s love becomes visible to them like nothing else you could ever imagine.

The second is authentic community. It’s our loving relationships that make Jesus visible. It’s you loving me, and me loving you, and we loving and caring for one another—despite our diversity, despite our differences. We’re not a homogeneous group of men and women. We’re very, very different. There’s no natural affinity that would cause us to assemble together and be able to call each other brothers and sisters, other than the fact that the Lord Jesus is the one in whom we find each another. It is as we find one another in him, and are able to love one another in him—despite the fact that we bump into each other and bruise each, disappoint each other—that Jesus is revealed.

We will surely become disillusioned with each other as we join in authentic community! But that disillusionment is not as strong as the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross stands in the midst of and defines our fellowship. It gives us the grace to be authentic in our relationships. It enables us to be people who don’t wear masks, or hide out, who are not one thing in the church and something quite different outside these walls. The cross changes us into people who have learned to become close enough to one another, and to reach a level of vulnerability, so that our love for one another can bring healing and restoration. John points us towards this in I John 1:7, “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.” It’s in that kind of fellowship, that kind of authentic community, that people see Jesus.

The third way is through life-changing teaching. In place of the children’s homily this morning, I interviewed 13-year-old Adam, who is going to be commissioned today as a prayer minister. I said to the children, and to all of you, that it is God’s word­his truth—that sets us free. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,” said Jesus (John 8:32). In this church, we believe that preaching and teaching the word is not just to give information, with the goal of helping us get to know the Bible better—though that is a wonderful goal! But an equally important goal for preaching and teaching is to minister the word of God so that it releases transforming power into our lives.

Our prayer ministry is part of the teaching ministry of the church. We teach that God is the One who’s Word has the power to transform everything. Our preaching and teaching testifies to the immediate availability of all the resources of God to meet all of the needs of our lives. Prayer ministry is a place in this church where we act on that truth—where make it visible. Life-changing teaching makes visible the power of God’s transforming love.

The fourth way is through servant ministry. The story that best illustrates what that’s about is Jesus’ gathering with his disciples for the Last Supper in that Upper Room in Jerusalem. To their astonishment, just as they were about to sit down to eat, Jesus took off his outer garment (in our culture that might have been equivalent to a jacket). The disciples wondered what was going on as Jesus then took a towel and basin, and all of a sudden adopted the posture of a slave. Some of them couldn’t handle that. They didn’t understand why their Lord and teacher should humble himself like that.

I said a couple of weeks back that, before he ever washed their feet, he had twice allowed women to wash his feet. On one of those times, his feet were anointed with expensive anointing oil. But before that, a different woman in a very different situation washed his feet. He was having dinner with a prominent family when this woman approached him. She was street-wise—you might say she had been around the block a few times—but Jesus evidently had totally turned her life around through his teaching and ministry. She came into the house because she wanted to say thank you. The only way she could express that was to kneel at his feet, and weep. Sometimes shedding tears is the only way we can show gratitude. Her tears flowed down over the feet of Jesus. The only towel that was available was the one she discovered when she removed the clasp from her long hair, and with it she dried his feet. Jesus allowed her to wash his feet.

After he had washed his disciples’ feet, he said “I have set you an example that you should do what I have done for you.” (John 13:14-15). The world’s way is that, when you reach a certain point in life, a certain position, a certain age, a certain maturity, a certain status, you don’t serve people anymore. In fact, you reach a point where people think that they should do that for you! You’re beyond having to humble yourself. In fact, people like to be in proximity to you because of the power and the influence that you represent.

But Jesus, the Messiah, takes a towel and a basin and humbles himself. He models something which totally turns the world’s values on their head. It makes visible the power of God’s love.

The fifth way in which we make the power of his love visible, the fifth way in which we break the jars and release that which God has given to us, is by creative mission.

In Luke 10:9, Jesus gave the 72, whom he sent out on mission, just three simple guidelines. The first, “Eat what is set before you,” is not always as easy as it sounds. Jesus had sent the teams into gentile territory. As Jews, they wouldn’t feel very comfortable going into gentile homes. (You’ll remember the story in Acts of the trouble Peter got into when he went up to Caesarea, and entered the gentile home of Cornelius. When Peter returned to Jerusalem, the church establishment demanded an explanation; they were offended by what he had done.) So it isn’t always easy to eat what’s set before us, especially when we are moving into places and relationships that are outside the conventional wisdom of where the church is meant to go.

Jesus offended the good people of his day by eating with tax collectors and sinners. He went into those sorts of homes—and so eating is a very challenging thing. It means building relationships, not just with our friends, but with people who are not yet our friends but who we want to bring to Jesus. We eat simply to build the relationships. It’s not manipulative, and it’s not contrived so we can sell them the gospel, though that’s clearly our heart. Those relationships absolutely need to be genuine. As we form them, and people begin to open up to us, we point them to where they can receive healing—and then we find ways to share the gospel with them.

Eat, heal, tell are very simple guidelines. We tend to prefer placing them in reverse order. We think telling should come first. If people turn us off, we feel entitled to brush them off. We feel mission is all about telling, when Jesus says it’s all about eating. It’s about fellowship, friendships, and relationships. That is very different from what we would expect. Our name for it is creative mission.

How are we going to accomplish these things? How are we going to make the power of God’s love visible through these five means? How are we to engage in dynamic worship, authentic community, life-changing teaching, servant ministry, and creative mission?

Today’s gospel, which I read to you a moment ago, contains the answer to that question. Both Mark and John tell the same story. The details differ slightly, but broadly speaking they are strikingly similar. Jesus has fed the five thousand, and now he’s sending the disciples off. “I want you to go across the lake,” he instructs them. “I’m going to stay where I am.” You will notice that he instructed them to cross the lake. “...immediately Jesus made his disciples...” They didn’t necessarily want to cross the lake; perhaps they wanted to stay with him. Whatever the reason, he said, “I want you to go across to the other side.” So that’s what they were doing.

They were about three miles out, quite a long way, but the going was really tough. A strong wind was against them, enough to stir up the waves. This wasn’t a life-threatening situation; it is not one of the storm-on-the-lake stories, where they were taking in water and afraid of drowning. Here, the going was just tough. They were discouraged. They were weary from straining at those oars. They would make a little bit of progress, and then the wind would push them back. They felt as though they were not getting very far. The shore where they were heading looked about as far away as when they had begun. They had done well to make even three miles, but it was exhausting.

We know as a church, and many of you know in your own life, what straining at the oars feels like. You know what it’s like to think, “I’m doing what God has asked me to do, I’m in his will. He’s told me to cross this lake, and to get to the shore, and that’s what I’m trying to do. But Lord, I’m not making any progress. I’m straining. I’m doing what seems to be required, but it’s really tough. The conditions are horrible. Lord, I’m not about to quit: if you told me to get over there that’s what I’m going to do—but I wish you could make it a little bit easier, because I’m weary. I’m frustrated at not making more progress.”

Here’s the good news. Jesus saw the disciples straining at the oars (Mark 6:48). You know, when we’re going through these sorts of situations, they may not be life threatening—but they’re totally, completely and utterly discouraging and wearying. You don’t really have the option of giving up, because you’re in the middle of a lake! You can’t exactly quit in that situation! Perhaps they could have rowed back the other way, where the wind would have helped them, but Jesus’ order didn’t give them that option.

In times like these, Jesus sees us. Here he is, three miles away on a hillside, and praying—yet his eyes are on his disciples. Psalm 34:15 says, “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous.” His eyes have always been on this church, and they’re on you right now, no matter what you are going through. The Lord Jesus sees your struggle. He sees your weariness, he sees your discouragement, and he cares.

We aren’t always aware of that. We feel very much alone when we’re battling it out on the lake, trying to get the boat to where it’s supposed to be going. He sees. He never abandons us, and he comes. Mark says he came “about the fourth watch of the night”—between 3 am. and 6 p.m.—walking on the water.

What the story teaches us is that straining isn’t going to get us there! In fact, if we’re straining and struggling and getting nowhere, something needs to change. We need Jesus.

He came to them, walking across the lake. Now John adds a curious detail: “he was about to pass them by.” Why do you think that was? Wasn’t he walking across the lake to encourage them, maybe to get in the boat with them? I think the reason why he was about to pass them by is clear: he would not get into that boat without their invitation.

They were terrified, we are told, thinking they were seeing a ghost. Seeing their fear, Jesus spoke to them: “Take courage. It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

You need to notice what follows; it is the turning point of the story: “Then they were willing to take him into the boat.” They could have gone on straining. They could have gone on exerting fruitless effort. But they say “Lord, come into the boat with us.”

There’s something else to see here, suggested by the story’s silence. In John’s account (different from Mark’s at this point) there is no indication that the wind died down. Jesus didn’t rebuke the wind the way that he did in the storm stories. The wind was still blowing, the water just as rough—but John tells us that: “Immediately the boat reached the store where they were heading.”

Despite the fact nothing outwardly had changed, they got to their objective without straining. Maybe they were still rowing, but it was easy now. They were making rapid progress—in fact more than rapid! Immediately they got to where they were going. That’s a stunning miracle.

How might we apply this to our church?

As I’ve said, we’ve been straining at the oars. We’ve been trying for years and years to get evangelism going in this church, and somehow it hasn’t worked. We’ve tried Alphas for numbers of years, but we’ve found that people haven’t come in great numbers; we haven’t had too many people who’ve come to meet the Lord Jesus there. We’ve done these things because we believed they would get us to where Jesus has told us to go. Yet every time we have run them, the wind has blown, the sea has become rough, and our efforts haven’t produced what we thought they should. We haven’t made much headway. I could give lots of other examples of things we’ve tried to do in obedience, and where we just haven’t seen the results. As a consequence, we have ended up pretty tired.

But Jesus is with us now. That’s not to say he wasn’t with us in the past! But I sense a greater desire in our church to be willing to invite Jesus into our boat. We’ve been doing the latest Alpha for about three weeks now. We began with about forty people. It’s now up to about fifty-one. There is a far greater percentage of seekers in this Alpha than we’ve had before. The earlier one, where Les and others came to know the Lord Jesus, was where we began to see a breakthrough. We’re beginning to reach our objective, but without the straining. We’re still in the boat, were still committed to getting to where we need to go, were still holding onto those oars. What seems to be different is that the strain of self-effort, the strain of putting all of our soul power into it, has turned into a greater reliance on Jesus.

At The Father’s Blessing, just two nights ago, we had a good-sized group of people here in this room. We had a phenomenal evening. The Lord really broke through. There were people all over the place, dancing with the joy of the Lord. When we came to the time of prayer ministry, my wife Margie and I ministered to people for about forty minutes before we prayed for somebody that we knew and recognized. For forty minutes we were praying for people who are not members here—because the power of the Lord is moving. People want to be touched by God. They recognize that the power of God’s love is being made visible in this church. People are hungry, and people are thirsty, and they want to come and be part of that.

The next forward step that we are going to take, as we embrace this calling to make visible the power of God’s love so that all will come to know Christ, is to enter into the Forty Days of Community. I really, really want you, please, to join a small group. Maybe consider leading a group, it’s still not too late; but whether you’re leading or joining, please be in a group, or you will not “get” the 40 Days of Community. The reason why we’re doing this is because this campaign is going to bring us together as a church. It’s going to strengthen authentic community. It’s going to be a place where we can deliberately and consciously invite Jesus into this boat, very intentionally, very deliberately, very prayerfully, very humbly, so that we can move on with greater confidence that he, the Lord of Hosts, is with us.

I want to end this morning by looking at one more scripture. You think of the image of the disciples there on the lake, straining at the oars, and getting nowhere. You’ll see the word straining appearing again here in the words Paul wrote to the church in Philippi. I would like you to see the difference, though, between Paul’s kind of straining, and the kind of straining the disciples were experiencing in that boat.

This is what Paul wrote (Phil. 3:13): “Forgetting what’s behind and straining forward to what’s ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Paul knew what it was to strain at the oars in his life in self-effort. But now Christ has come into his boat, and the straining is totally different. There’s a straining of eagerness now, there’s a straining of his eyes looking forward to see where God is taking him. There’s a joy, there’s a freedom, there’s a rest in the straining forward.

Church, that’s where God is taking us now. He’s moving us from the John 6 and Mark 6 place of straining at the oars, to the place where now we are straining forward with a hope and a confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who will fulfill our calling. He is the one who will make the power of his love visible, as we are obedient to those five means.

So I’m going to ask you to stand now, if you will. If you are a visitor here this morning, just pray for us, because I’m going to lead our church in a time of commitment.

I chose the Old Testament lesson this morning from Exodus 19 where Moses laid out what God had commanded him. The people’s response was, “All that the Lord has said we will do.”

I need your commitment. I need your passion. I need your faith. I need your hands, and your feet and your hearts. So all of you who are members of this church, I’m going to invite you to respond. It’s not going to be difficult, I don’t think, for you to do this, but I’m going to take the main points of our calling, and pose them to you as questions. I would like you to respond, “With God’s grace I will.”

Will you do all in your power to make visible the power of God’s love so that all will come to know Christ?

With God’s grace I will.

Will you participate in worship with all of your heart and all of your strength?

With God’s grace I will.

Will you engage in the life of this community so that we become an authentic community, grounded in Christ?

With God’s grace I will.

Will you submit yourself to the life-changing teaching available in this church so that God can continue his work of transformation in your life?

With God’s grace I will.

Will you humble yourself and become a servant minister in this church?

With God’s grace I will.

Will you do all that God reveals to you, all within your power, to engage in creative mission by eating, and healing, and telling the gospel?

With God’s grace I will.