Reaching the Different

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Transcript:

Well, this morning we’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, 1 Corinthians chapter 9, and I want to spend the next several weeks talking about the church, and I don’t mean just Trinity, but about the concept of the church. It breaks my heart as I look around, not just here, but all over the place, and I see parking lots with more empty spaces than full, and I see more empty seats and pews than full, and we are not alone in that. We are so far from alone in that.

It’s not a Trinity problem. It’s a problem that is all too common in American Christianity, and a lot of times we will blame each other. The pastor will blame the church.

The church will blame the pastor. All of us will blame those people out there if they just do what they were supposed to and come in. When you realize that a lot of the people that we’re talking about outside these four walls that are not participating in a church, a lot of them are not born-again Christians and didn’t grow up that way, it makes sense that they wouldn’t come to church.

I mean, there’s a reason I don’t go to meetings of the Communist Party, right? Because I am not a communist in any way, shape, or form. Why would somebody just go to meetings of the Christians out of habit if they’re not one?

But we want to blame them. We want to blame the economy. We want to blame all sorts of things.

And really what we need is revival. More than anything, we need revival. It breaks my heart to see, not that I want to see all the pews full here and everywhere else just so we have more numbers and more money and all that. it. That’s not it.

But when we realize that the church is God’s chosen vehicle, it’s what God has chosen to use to bring the message of hope and salvation to the world. That it’s the body that God has chosen to use to change this world for the better, to transform lives, to transform communities with the gospel. When we realize the mandate that the church has been given to transform our world.

It’s heartbreaking to see that so many churches are empty and so many of us feel so hopeless about it that we think, well, this is all the church is. We’re just supposed to huddle together until Jesus comes back and wait, just wait while the world grows darker and not do anything about it. That is not what God ever intended the church to be.

And it’s no secret. It’s no secret with all the empty pews and all the things going on around us that the world looks at the church as largely irrelevant. And a lot of that, I lay the blame for a lot of that on me.

Not that I’ve caused it all throughout America, but as individuals, as part of the church, maybe we haven’t always done our job of making the church what it’s supposed to be. And so I want to talk over the next few weeks about what the church is supposed to be, what it’s supposed to do, and really begin by looking at some of the reasons people think the church doesn’t matter. Some of the objections.

I don’t like the church because it’s full of hypocrites. We’ll talk about that. There’s always room for one more.

I’ve said before to somebody, and that probably wasn’t the wise response, but made me feel better at the time. The church is too political. Well, it may be on some issues. The church just wants my money.

Okay, some of them do. Some of them do. Let’s just be honest. Some of them do just want your money.

There are all sorts of objections and reasons why people think the church doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. I don’t want the trouble.

And whether we made that mess or not, it does no good to sit around and point fingers. When there’s a mess, the first thing we do when somebody spilled milk all over the table, the first thing we do is not he did it, she did it. The first thing we do is set the glass up and get a mop, right?

And whether we made the mess or not, it’s time that we fix it. And we may not be able to change people’s view of the church throughout the country, but I hope that in 2018, with God’s help, that we can make an impact on the city of Seminole. I hope that if we will start doing the things God has called the church to do, and I mean individually, not just being the church on Sundays, but we go out of here in seven days a week, we are the church.

I think we could transform this place, or better said, God could transform this place by using us the way he’s called us to be used. And so I want to look at that over the next several weeks, and who knows, maybe the next several months. At this point, I’ve just got several weeks planned out.

But over the next several weeks, I want to look at this, but it all has to start with us viewing the world the way God does and realizing that that’s why he’s put the church here, that God could have snapped his fingers and said, okay, everybody’s saved now. Of course, then there’s that pesky free will that we have to deal with there. No, instead, God said, I’m going to leave the church here to do my bidding.

I’m going to leave the church here to enact my plans and to carry out my mission. And what God’s mission was, was to seek and to save that which is lost. Jesus said that. I’ve come to seek and to save that which is lost in Luke 19.

10. And many of the stories, many of the parables that Jesus told illustrate the way God views the world outside these four walls. When Jesus talked about the shepherd who walked away from the 99 sheep to find the one that was lost, he was talking about God’s willingness to put everything else aside to go after that one who had gone astray.

Jesus told the parable of lost coin about the woman who tore everything out of her house and swept it clean because she had lost this coin and she was willing to put everything else aside because this coin is so valuable. And it was an illustration of how God feels about the lost world. Folks, nothing changes, nothing changes until our hearts get in line with God’s and we begin to view that world outside.

Our co-workers, our neighbors, our friends, our family, not as, well, shame on them for not believing the way I do. Shame on them for not going to church. Oh, they’re, you know, they frustrate me, they irritate me, they challenge me, but start viewing them as people who are valuable to God and valuable to us.

That we would love them enough that we’d be willing to set aside everything to reach them with the message of Jesus Christ. And this morning we’re going to look at the way Paul talks about that, but we’ve also got to realize that that’s not an easy thing to do, because we live in a world that is constantly changing. The world, I’m sorry to say, is not the same one you grew up in. With the exception of the rest of my family, I’m probably the youngest person in the room, which feels weird to say that, and I’m up here teaching.

The world is not even the world I grew up in, and things change. Sometimes things change for the better. A lot of times they change for the worse.

Sometimes they just change, and it’s not better or worse. It’s just change. But Charla and I were talking this morning.

She was asking me a question about teaching children, And she said, and how you dumb it down. She said, I don’t want to say dumb it down. I said, the word you’re looking for is contextualization, which is a big word.

That’s a word they use in missions to talk about adapting, not adapting the message, but approaching the message in a way that’s adapted to the hearers, something that they can relate to and understand. Paul did that in Acts 17 when he spoke to the Jews in Berea and Thessalonica. He came talking about Jesus from the Old Testament and presenting Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

That was something that the Jews in Berea and Thessalonica would understand. But when he went to the philosophers in the marketplace in Athens, he talked about their shrine to the unknown God because the Greeks had thousands of gods and they were so worried they might forget one by accident that they made a shrine to the unknown one. And he said, wait a minute, you’ve got this shrine over here to the unknown God.

Let me tell you who the unknown God is. That’s contextualization. That’s realizing that he’s not in his Jewish culture anymore and realizing that he could talk to them about Isaiah and what Isaiah said.

He could talk to them about what David said all day, and it’s not going to matter. And he presents the same message. He presents the same gospel about the same Savior, but he’s willing to approach it in a way that they could understand.

And that’s something we’ve got to realize we have to do. Hear me on this, and please understand. We never, ever, ever change the gospel message.

not one bit not one bit if we take out the cross if we take out the blood if we take out sin if we take out God’s judgment if we take out the need of repentance if we take out the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ if we take out the idea that it’s by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone if we start adapting the gospel to make it more palatable and some churches have done that oh the blood’s too offensive oh the, you know, we don’t want to talk about repentance it makes people feel that If we take out any element of the gospel, we change it into something completely different, and that’s unacceptable. We never, ever compromise the gospel, but we may need to approach it in ways that people understand.

And that’s one of the things we talked about last year, or maybe longer ago than that, when we did some evangelism training on Wednesday nights, and we talked about the story. We started from the idea of God’s creation and what God intended for the world to be, the perfect paradise that he intended, because so many people don’t even realize that that all fits together. That God created us to live in perfect harmony and paradise with him.

We fell because of sin, and so we fell into the condemnation of God, and that’s why Jesus came, was to pay for our sins, so that we could be restored to fellowship with him, and so that one day we would live in that restored paradise with him in the new heaven and new earth. That’s just a very simple telling of that, but the idea of approaching people that don’t have a biblical church background like many of us did, we can tell them all day, Jesus died for you. That doesn’t mean anything.

If they don’t know that they’ve sinned and why he died, then it’s just some weird religious fact we’re throwing at them. So it’s all about realizing that the world around us has changed, and we can’t assume that people know the things that we think they know. We can’t assume that they believe the things we believe, and we’ve got to learn how to talk to people who are not like us.

We’re relatively good at reaching out to people who are just like us, right? Somebody agrees with me on stuff, I can talk to them all day. Somebody doesn’t know the things I know, doesn’t believe the things I believe, it’s a little harder.

It can be a lot harder. And sometimes we just won’t do it because it’s hard. When somebody is like us, it’s easier to invite them in.

It’s easier to care about them. It’s easier to tell them this life-changing story of Jesus Christ. But we are not surrounded only by people who look and act and think and talk like us. If we ever were, we’re not anymore.

And I’ll tell you, I’ve been in a number of churches. I’ve pastored a number of churches where people, you know, were worried, were upset about the numbers and people not being there. And, oh, we used to be so great back in 1950.

And now, you know, we just, we need to get more people. And they were serious about wanting to reach more people. But what I found, unfortunately, was in most cases they wanted to reach more people who were exactly like them.

And it’s not that they didn’t care about the other. It’s not that they didn’t care about people who didn’t look like them or think like them or talk like them or act like them. They just didn’t want to be the ones to reach them because they were afraid they’d change their church.

And we probably never say that, but we can fall into that mindset. I like things just how they are. They’re great now.

But anytime you add somebody to the church or take somebody out of the church, the makeup of the church changes. Again, it’s not that these people that I’ve dealt with in the past, it’s not that they didn’t care about reaching the people. They did.

They cared about reaching the people. They just cared about their preferences more. And you and I every day have a serious question to ask ourselves and to answer for ourselves about which we care for or care about more.

Do we care more about the lost around us or do we care more about having things just so? I submit to you we care about both. And it’s normal to care about both, but we need to make sure they’re in the right order.

And I can think of, I found out some things this week. I did some studying on our community. And by the way, moving here, I had to adjust the way a little bit that I interacted with people.

People in Seminole are different from people in Moore. Now, it’s not as drastic a difference as if I’d gone from Moore to the West Coast, or if I’d gone from Moore to India, but there’s a difference. There was a difference.

There are cultural differences when I moved to Arkansas. There are cultural differences when I moved out here an hour away. Life is different in Seminole than it is in the city.

And in most ways, I’m thankful for that. I cannot deal with the traffic and the noise when we go back to visit our parents. I’m just ready to get back to Seminole.

Life here is different, but that means people see the world a little differently. And so I had to make some small adjustments. But from person to person, we are surrounded by more cultures than we ever have before.

Do you know that in our county today, minorities make up 35% of the population? If we’re just going to try to reach upper middle class, older white people, we’re missing out a big chunk of the population. 23% of the people in our county live below the poverty level.

There’s a lot of needs that we can reach, that we can meet. There’s a lot of people who are hurting that we can put our arms around them and love them the way Jesus did. This one surprised me.

47% of the adults in our county are either married or they’re not. There’s a statistic that doesn’t make sense. 47% of the people in our county are either divorced, separated, or never been married.

There are lots of people who, you know, the norm is, you know, you’re adult, you’re married, and you have 2. 4 children, and go to church, and you put your hand over your heart and pledge allegiance to the flag. That’s not necessarily everybody’s life.

There are lots of people who are living alone and maybe not by choice. Only 53% of the people in our county are either married or widowed. That’s a really high number for those divorced, separated, or seen.

There are 1,300 people in our area who speak a language other than English at home. And I was surprised to see there are as many people, maybe even a few more, that speak native languages than speak Spanish. We are surrounded by all sorts of cultures.

That’s why I’ve started trying to get involved in the fellowship of Native American Christians, because I realize that there are Native cultures all around us, and even though I’m Choctaw, I’m assimilated. I mean, you can’t even tell. And I don’t necessarily know how to speak to their worldview.

20% of the people in our county are on food stamps. 20% have no health insurance. 48% of adults, hear this, 48% of the adults are not in the labor force.

Now, a lot of those are retired, but there’s also people who are unemployed, people who’ve given up, people who’ve given up looking. 33% of households have children. A third of the households in our county have children.

There’s a lot of children to be reached. By the way, most people who come to Christ anymore come as children. If we don’t reach them by the time they’re 18, it can still be done, but we have a lot harder time reaching them with the gospel.

I’m not going to go through all of these statistics. There were several things that I found. but what this tells me is that there are a lot of different cultures around us.

There are a lot of people living lifestyles that are different from ours. There are a lot of needs and a lot of hurting people, and 40% of the people in our county have no connection to any church or religious organization of any kind, 40%. And when you factor in how many we have on the rolls versus how many actually come, I’m thinking something like 80% of the people in the county are not involved in an evangelical church anywhere.

And we think of Seminole and we think of the areas around us as being the Bible belt. Oh, there’s no mission work left to be done here. 80% of the people have no real connection to an evangelical church.

And evangelical just means we believe the Bible and we preach the gospel. It’s an umbrella term. It’s not just Southern Baptists.

So what I’m telling you is there are a lot of people around us who do not look like us, who do not think like us, talk like us, act like us, do not have the same needs. But there is no shortage of people around us who need the gospel of Jesus Christ, who need some hope, who need somebody to come alongside them and put their arm around them and love them the way that Jesus did and tell them about how much Jesus loved them that he died for them on the cross. There is no shortage of missions opportunities in our own backyard.

There, as Jesus said, the fields are white for the harvest. The harvest is ready. We’ve biggest thing that holds us back is if we say, I care about this, but I care about this more. Whether it’s our preferences, whether it’s our priorities, whether it’s keeping things just so, we need to come around to God’s way of thinking where we’re willing to put everything else aside and say the lost matter more.

Again, I can think of no better example of this than the Apostle Paul. 2,000 years ago, he was facing the same issues when he was preaching the gospel. He knew God had called him to reach groups of people who were different from him.

He preached in Greece. He preached in Turkey. He preached in Syria.

At least that’s what we call them now. God had called him to reach all these different groups of people, and he had to decide just like we do what’s more important, the lost or something else. And so we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 9, and where we’re going to start in verse 14 just before it, he’s dealing with the fact that he is a minister of the gospel.

He says, I as a preacher of the gospel have the right to financial support. He had the right to be cared for by the church there so that he could go and do his ministry. And he said, there’s nothing wrong with me obtaining financial support.

But he says to the church at Corinth, I didn’t do that from you. A lot of times Paul would be supported by one church when he’d go minister to another because churches like the one at Corinth were full of people who wanted to attack Paul and wanted to undermine his teaching because they didn’t like him or they didn’t like it or they were jealous of him. And so there were people in the church at Corinth who wanted to attack Paul and undermine his authority in any way they could so that they could reduce the credibility of his message.

And so Paul said, if I took a dime from the church at Corinth, those people would seize on that. They would say, I was just in it for the money. And they would say that, and it would give them more ammunition to undermine the gospel.

And so he tells the church at Corinth, even though I had the right to. He said, I didn’t take a dime from you. He said, I worked as a tent maker, and on top of that, he was supported by other churches who did believe in what he was preaching.

And so he’s already, when we start, when we start in verse 14, he has already gone through how it wasn’t important to him that he take what was rightfully his if it hindered the gospel. There was nothing in Paul’s life that was so important to him that he was willing to cause a stumbling block to the gospel, not his income, not his culture, not his preferences, not his routine, and not even his dignity. He said none of it is as important as people hearing the gospel.

And so we look at verse 14, and he says, Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live with the gospel. He’s saying there’s nothing wrong with me being paid for ministry, but I have used none of these things, neither have I written these things, that it should be done unto me, for it were better for me to die than that any man should make my glorying void. And when he says glorying here, he’s talking about his ability to boast in the sense of looking at those people who wanted to attack him and say, I am not in it for the money.

I didn’t take a single dime from the church at Corinth. He didn’t want to lose that ability. He said nothing was worth that because that was one of the things that they were using to attack Paul.

And he said, so it’s not worth it. And so he says, I’ve not written any of these things. I have not told you any of these things in order to get money.

He said, because it wasn’t worth it. And he said, as a matter of fact, it would be better for me to die than cause a stumbling block. Paul was so committed to the gospel, he said, I would rather die than do anything that would lead people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. He says in verse 16, for though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.

So he’s just talked about boasting in the sense of being able to look at those attackers say, no, you’re wrong. I haven’t taken anything for what I’ve done. But then he turns around and says, but really, when he stands before God, I have nothing to boast about.

It’s not like I’m doing God some great service in preaching the gospel. He says, I’m doing what I have to do. Paul realized it was what God expected.

It’s not some special extra credit assignment. This is what God expects from the believer is to share the gospel. He said, I have nothing to glory of for necessity is laid upon me.

He said, this has been put on me as something that I am supposed to do. And by the way, don’t look at it then as an obligation, as a burden. Paul was also joyful about getting to be used in God’s work.

But he’s saying, this is something that I cannot stop doing. He said, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. And we don’t use that word woe much anymore, except for the phrase woe is me.

But he’s talking about the emptiness and the meaninglessness of his life if he didn’t preach the gospel. He says, I don’t know what else to do. He would wake up in the morning thinking about preaching the gospel, and he would go through his day preaching the gospel, and then he would go to bed at night thinking about preaching the gospel.

Some of you may be sitting there this morning saying, I’m glad I’m not a preacher. You’re not off the hook. That word preach doesn’t mean you have to stand on a soapbox with a bullhorn and shout at people as they’re going down the highway in traffic.

Doesn’t mean you have to stand in a pulpit and preach to a group of people sitting in pews. Preaching the gospel takes place even in a one-on-one conversation. I know that word preach has a pejorative connotation.

We think of it as a bad thing. Oh, don’t preach at me. Preaching just means proclaiming the good news of God, and you can do that in a conversation.

But he says, there’s nothing I can do but preach the gospel. That’s the meaning that my life That’s what God’s called me to do. And shame on me if I don’t do it.

For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward. But if against my will a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me, what is my reward then? What is my reward then?

Verily, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel. So again, he’s going back to talking about the rewards and the spiritual rewards and the financial rewards. And he says, I could take the money.

There’s nothing wrong with being paid for this. He said, but in this case, I’m glad that I was able to do it without charge so that I can tell the people at Corinth it’s not for the money. And I think he was right in that.

If they were attacking him and saying, you’re just in it for the money, well, then stop taking the money and show them that it’s not about the money. None of the preachers I know are in it for the money and wouldn’t be because none of the ones that I know make a whole lot. And I’m not complaining about what I’m paying.

I’m just saying we’re not fabulously wealthy men. There are some out there that are accused of being in it for the money with the jets and the mansions. And maybe they are, maybe they aren’t.

I don’t know their hearts. But I have a feeling if I was being attacked and said, you’re just preaching for the money, the first thing I would do is say, stop the paycheck. Because it wasn’t worth it.

And I’ve said many times, I would do this for free. I’m so grateful that I don’t have to. but I would do it for free and I have done it for free.

Nothing is worth being a hindrance to the gospel. And when he knew that some of the people at Corinth were going to say, yeah, you can’t believe what Paul says. He’ll say anything for money.

His first thing that he said was then don’t give me any money. I’ll go out and make tents during the day and preach to people while I’m doing it and preach to people at night. He says, I’m thankful that I was able to make the gospel of Christ without charge that I abuse not my power in the gospel.

For though I be free from all men, verse 19, For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all that I might gain the more. Here’s an important distinction. He was willing to look at himself as a servant.

He said, I’m free. And Paul was free. Paul was a Roman citizen, by the way.

We find that out in the book of Acts, that he’s a Roman citizen, and somebody sentenced him to be flogged. And you couldn’t do that to a Roman citizen. And when they found out he was a Roman citizen, they thought they were going to get in trouble.

Because as a Roman citizen, you had certain rights. He was nobody’s slave. Paul was a free man, which was not always the case for everybody in the ancient world.

He was a free man. He was a man of dignity. He was a man of some standing in the community.

And yet he said, I’ve become your servants for the gospel. He looked at the people at Corinth and said, I’m your servant. I’ve made myself servant unto all.

Why? That I might gain the more. I don’t believe he’s talking about more reward there.

He’s talking about more people. that I might gain more souls for Jesus Christ. I became a servant of all. And that’s something we forget sometimes.

Pastors are really bad at it. When you’re the guy up front, it’s easy to see yourself as in charge and everybody works for you. And that’s not the way we’re supposed to see ourselves.

As church people, it’s easy to fall into the trap of, well, I went to church today. I was a good person and you weren’t. I see this all the time when we go eat lunch on Sundays.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going and eating lunch on Sundays necessarily, but there is something wrong with going out to eat after church, dressed up like you’ve been to church, and act like you’ve been hanging out with Satan, or act like you are Satan. There’s an incident a few weeks ago at McAllister’s where some lady was just ugly to us about having Charlie sit in a chair. Yeah, some of y’all saw my rant about that on Facebook, and they were hateful to the waitstaff, and everybody else there around, I thought, you just came from church.

Either that or you’re just really dressed up for brunch on Sunday. But it made the rest of us look bad. And I’ve probably done that at some point.

I’ve probably acted arrogant at some point in public. We’ve got to realize, we’ve got to not see ourselves as masters of the world to be served by everybody, but we need to see ourselves as servants. If it’s the gospel that’s really the most important thing.

He says, and unto the Jews, verse 20, and unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. Paul was a Jew. He was a very devout Jew before he came to Christ. But when he was around the Jews, you know what he did?

He spoke their language. He followed their customs. He kept the Jewish law. He made them comfortable to be around him so that he would have an open door to share the gospel.

To them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. As Christians, we are free from following the Old Testament civil and ceremonial laws as a matter of salvation. And yet Paul said, even though I’m free, he writes all about it in Galatians, even though I’m free, I’m willing to put myself back under the law and follow the law when I’m around those who keep the law so that I might reach them.

To them that are without the law, verse 21, as without law, being not without law to God, but under the law of Christ, that I might gain them that are without law. He says, but when I went among the Gentiles, when I went among the Greeks and the other pagans. He said, I didn’t live like I was under the Old Testament law.

Now, a quick caution. I’m not telling you, if you want to reach the people at the bars, go knock back a few with them. I’m not telling you, if you want to reach the adulterers, go start having affairs.

We’re not talking about joining in with what’s going on in the world. We’re talking about living within the culture. You know, if we were going to start a ministry to the homeless in downtown Oklahoma City, I’m probably not going to go dressed like this.

I’m not accommodating myself to their culture. I heard a story growing up about missionaries in Thailand came to visit our church that said they’d labored for a year with nobody in this little village being interested in what they had to say about the gospel. He said, until we started adopting the way the traditional Thai dress.

He said, and then my wife would go out like the other women in town, in the village, wrapped in a sarong, and go out and bathe in the river in this sarong. And when we started living like the Thai people, they started responding to us. And that doesn’t mean they went and bowed down t