What Jesus Says to a Complacent Church

Picture someone who encourages you in your journey of faith? In what ways do they offer encouragement to you? Are you able to hear or receive encouragement in some ways better than others?

Now picture someone who challenges you in your journey of faith? How do they deliver challenge to you? Are you able to hear or receive their exhortation in some ways better than others?

Paul was both an encourager and an exhorter – someone whose words can lift us to our feet while offering us a gentle but firm nudge to get moving at the same time. This might be a rarer skill in others than we wish it would be – to hold encouragement and exhortation together in ways that we welcome and thank God for.

We’ll be looking at Paul’s words in Ephesians 4 about how we as the Church ought behave towards and amongst one another, so that we might ‘lead a life worthy of the calling to which (we) have been called’.

We are so good at living life for ourselves. It’s human nature to look out for ourselves and our own and to strive for a life of comfort. But Christ calls us to die to ourselves and live a life led by faith in Him (Galatians 2:20).

Living the Christian life is not about living life for yourself and satisfying your own needs, it’s all about loving God and loving people. So how do we achieve that? By learning to get over ourselves so that we can share God's love and the good news of the gospel.  

Sometimes we want God to give us a very clear message about what we should do. Should we expect clear answers? Gideon demanded a sign from God. He got an answer. Did he already know the answer any way? What did Jesus say to people who wanted a sign?

Isaiah 55:1-13

The whole idea of abundance is that there is more than enough - more than enough for us, more than enough to share. Living with an attitude of scarcity, or keeping ’secret’ that which Jesus so generously offers, is not the attitude of a faithful follow of Christ.

So, we drift along through life, really not thinking all that much about it. 

One foot in front of the other, the next day, the next … and the next. Pretty soon a year’s gone by and pretty soon … a decade’s gone by. Plod, plod, plod. 

So in the middle of your plod, plod, plod, can I ask you … how serious are you about your faith? How serious are you about impacting this world with the love of Christ? How serious are you about making sure that your life weighs in, for Jesus? 

The reason I ask, is that it’s a question that Jesus is asking. My fear is that a lot of people who call themselves Christians will get a rude shock on the day that they stand before the Lord. 

Jesus: Not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who … 

Who what? 

Well that’s what we’re going to be chatting about in this message. 

The question that each one of us needs to answer is this: are you serious?

It’s one of the most freedom giving truths we find in Scripture … mercy forgives. 

There are, two sides to this truth. Jesus talked about it in Matthew 6:12 - “Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.” One side of this freedom is when we personally experience God’s forgiveness. The other, when we forgive others. 

God’s wants to forgive us and God’s forgiveness is free, immediate and complete. 

We, of course, don’t always find forgiving easy. While our forgiveness of others doesn’t mean we “forget” what’s done or said that hurt us, nor that we always trust others again, it is to be unconditional. Paul, writing to the Ephesians says - “Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32). Often the only path to giving that kind of forgiveness is releasing it to God.

It’s one of the “be ... attitudes” – “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Mercy it seems isn’t a one-way street. It’s not just that God is merciful to us. We’re to be merciful to others. 

One definition of mercy is – “love in action”. 

It’s illustrated in Jesus’ healing the leper who came to Him and said – “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Mark tells us that Jesus was “filled with compassion … reached out His hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ He said, ‘be clean’” (Mark 1:40-45). 

Here, mercy is more than talk, emotions, feelings, pity … mercy is compassionate. 

We’re called into mercy by entering into people’s pain and helping to lift them out of it. 

May you be blessed as you live a merciful life.

Led To The Lost song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBPn1GzXR4s

Paul, writing to Titus, reminds us that … “Jesus saved us, not because of the good things we did, but because of His mercy. He washed away our sins and gave us a new life through the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). And one of the ways Jesus describes his task is … “I have come to seek, and to save those who are lost” (Luke 19:10). We could describe God’s mercy, which we experience in Jesus, as a mercy which takes the initiative, which takes the first step, and which “saves”.

Luke 15 tells the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. Each of them tells us how incredibly valuable we are to God and of God’s deep desire to rescue us from ourselves, to recover our potential and to reconnect with us.

We celebrate “communion”, our reconnected relationship with God, by remembering Jesus life, death and resurrection for us – a sure sign of God’s mercy.

Paul writing to the church in Rome says - "Give yourselves completely to God - every part of you - because you've been brought, from death to life, and now you want to be used by God for good, and for his righteous purposes." (Romans 6:13)  
 
How incredible is that!  God uses flawed people just like us.
 
God’s mercy is at work in us.  Despite our feeling unqualified (by our perceptions of our gift, talents and abilities) or disqualified (by our past mistakes and sins) God wants to use us for purposes greater than ourselves.  We can simply be real and let God use our struggles to help others.