Tag: Service

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Your Important Place in a Big, Turbulent World (Haggai)

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When Haggai looked at the big world, the prophet saw a God who is shaking the heavens and the earth. Big events are happening. Things are changing rapidly. Nations are on the move. Empires are rising and falling. In the midst of this, there is tiny Judah with a handful of people. What significance do they have? What do they matter in this big, turbulent world?

One of the amazing things about human life is that though we are small, we can see really big. We can consider the events in the wider world. We can even look out into the universe and contemplate the hundreds of thousands of stars and galaxies.

We can’t help but ask from time to time, what does each one of us matter in the big scheme of things? As the heavens and earth shake and move, do our decisions on a daily basis matter at all?

The book of the prophet Haggai answers that question. It tells us that God is doing big things in this big world, and He invites and commands us to join Him. When we do so, God assures us that we matter to Him and that what we do makes a big difference, even when it seems like it does not. Haggai wanted to tell the people that they mattered. We will see their important place in God’s plan through Haggai’s challenge, the people’s obedience, and Haggai’s encouragement.

Haggai’s Challenge
In order to understand Haggai’s challenge to the people, we have to understand the context of this book. Remember that in the previous prophetic books that we have considered, the people of Israel were threatened first by Assyria and then by Babylon. In the end, Assyria took the people of the northern kingdom into captivity, and Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, took the people of the southern kingdom into captivity. He also broke down both the walls of Jerusalem and the temple of Jehovah. You can read about these sad events in the last 16 chapters of Jeremiah.

The kingdom of Babylon was eventually defeated by the kingdom of the Medes and Persians and their great leader Cyrus. Cyrus decided to let the people return to their lands. The Persians had a very different policy from that of previous empires. You can read about this in the book of Ezra. Under Ezra, many exiles returned to their homeland and began the worship of the Lord again in Jerusalem.

At that time, God raised up several leaders to lead the people back to the land and to restore its broken-down cities. Two of these are mentioned in this book in addition to Haggai. Their names are Joshua, the High Priest and Zerubbabel, a descendant of David. Joshua was the religious leader and Zerubbabel was the political leader.

Haggai prophesied about 18 years after the decree of Cyrus. Many Jews had returned, but the temple was not rebuilt. Why? “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house’” (Hag. 1:2). Why was it not yet time? One reason was that they working on their own houses. “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (Hag. 1:4). Their focus was on the lives of their families and their own houses to the neglect of the Lord’s house.

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God Wants to Use You (Acts 2:38–39)

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Have you felt overwhelmed at any point this year? To ask is to answer. 2020 has been a year like no other. It has been overwhelming!

Think about it, people have last their businesses. People have moved to online work and online school. Many are trying to work from home while their kids do school from home, staring at a screen for 7 hours a day. Many people are isolated, not just the vulnerable, but those who care for the vulnerable. There are mental health issues. There are financial issues for businesses, churches, and families. And, by the way, there’s also a presidential election this year.

So, in the midst of an overwhelming year, what does God want us to do? Let me tell you exactly what He wants us to do: reach out in love and service to those around us.

What??? You might respond! I’m already overwhelmed, and you want me to add to it reaching out to others! That’s crazy! How in the world am I supposed to do that?

There’s a simple answer: God’s power. The Holy Spirit. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you!

Think about this. Jesus left 120 disciples behind, and He told them to essentially let the entire planet know about Him. How were they were going to do this? “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you . . .” (Acts 1:8).

That’s what this whole series is about, but today, I want to ask, does God really want to use me? After all the ways I’ve failed and all the wrongs I’ve done, does God really want to use me? This passage gives us an emphatic answer.

The Prelude to the Passage
The book of Acts is the sequel to the book of Luke. The book of Luke tells us all the things that Jesus began to do and to say before He went up into heaven. The book of Acts tells us what Jesus did after He ascended into heaven.

Through all of Jesus’ suffering, trials, and resurrection, several of His disciples had stuck with Him. Jesus told them, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This meant that they would be Jesus’ representatives to tell the world about Him. However, they wouldn’t have to rely on their own resources. Jesus would send them the Holy Spirit. The 3rd person of the Trinity would come in power to enable them to serve the world. That was the promise.

This teaches us how much Jesus values His disciples. He leaves and wants them to be His representatives to the world. That’s how significant Jesus thought they were, and that’s how significant He thinks you are! He gives you all the resources you need and sends you out into the world to serve it with power.

A few days after Jesus said this, the Holy Spirit came upon them. The sign was a great wind, for Spirit in Greek and Hebrew means wind. The Spirit is also compared to a fire, and so flames of fire on their heads. The promised Spirit had come. God showed that this was His work by enabling them all to speak in different languages. Everyone heard them in their own language and understood them. However, we always want an easy explanation for things we don’t understand. Some mocked them and said that they were drunk.

At this point, Peter stood up to explain what was going on. He told them that they were not drunk. It was much too early for that. He told them that Jesus had risen from the dead and had sent His power upon them to enable them to do what they observed. This was clear evidence that God had made Jesus both “Lord and Christ.”

The People in this Passage
Now, to whom is Peter speaking? I want you to pay very careful attention to the people to whom Peter is speaking. He says in v. 36, “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” They were the people who put Jesus to death.

Killing Jesus is a pretty big crime. He says in Acts 3:15, “You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead.” You killed the author of life! How could you do that?

Now, think about your own life. What have you done? What sins have you committed?

Maybe you got made at the worst time and made a fool of yourself.

Maybe you abused someone physically or emotionally that has led to alienation.

Kids, have you ever done something really wrong that you knew was wrong and that you still think about? I know I did. I still look back on those things with regret.

Maybe you had an opportunity to do something really good but you did something stupid and blew it.

Maybe you had a sexual relationship that you knew was wrong or you cheated on your spouse.

Maybe you got drunk at your best friend’s wedding and ended up doing something that made you an embarrassment to yourself and your best friend.

Maybe it’s something else.

The point is that we’ve all done things that make us feel guilty. We’ve all done things that are painful to remember. But we haven’t actually killed Jesus. That’s pretty bad.

The Promise in this Passage
And what does God say to these killers of Jesus? “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Let’s unpack that.

What does God want them to do? He wants them to say they’re sorry. He wants them to acknowledge they did the wrong.

Second, he wants them to be baptized. This would mean to publicly acknowledge that they had done the wrong thing and to now accept that Jesus was right.

If they will do those two simple things, He will forgive them. What he says is that anyone who admits they are wrong and then acknowledged Jesus as Lord will be forgiven. That’s it. They don’t have to do a whole lot. Just acknowledge their wrong and commit to doing what’s right. That’s the grace of justification by faith alone. Forgiveness is a free gift.

Now, go back to all the things we talked about in the previous section. If God was willing to forgive those who would kill His own Son, won’t He forgive you? Of course, He will. It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser. If God is willing to forgiven those who killed His Son, won’t He forgive you? God is a God who forgives. Wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, however much shame you feel, God is there with forgiveness. He will cast your sins as far as the east is from the west. That’s His promise.

But there’s much more. He says, “and you shall receive the Holy Spirit.” In the context this means that God not only forgives you, He values you and wants to use you. He wants to be your partner, your friend, and your co-worker in His mission. He will give you power to serve.

Now, in creation, we are all part of God’s mission to bring the creation to a place that shows forth God’s glory. When we learn, when we parent, when we work, when we teach, when we organize, when we garden, when we create, we are God’s partners in His mission to make the world into a beautiful place that shows forth His glory.

But He also want to be our partner in His mission to restore people to Himself. He wants us to be His partner in His work of redemption, redemption and creation. He wants to bring people who have turned from Him and are under His wrath back into forgiveness and fellowship with Him. He wants us to share the good news about Jesus. It’s in Him we have those things. He wants to use us to make that happen. That’s what it means to experience the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is power to serve in God’s work of redemption.

That means that God wants to use you. Again, if God is willing to use those who killed His Son and partner with them in His mission to the world, then God will surely use you. If He partnered with those who were willing to kill the Author of life, then He will partner with you, no matter what you’ve done, where you’ve been, or what you’ve left undone. God wants to use you! That’s for certain.

This doesn’t mean you have to enter full-time Christian service or be a pastor. The book of Acts tells us that people partner in God’s mission to redeem the world in a variety of ways. They walk on their way and are open to talking to the people God leads them to like Philip. They do deeds of service that show the love of God like Dorcas. They cross boundaries to people who are different from them like the Christians in Antioch. They gather people together like Lydia. They invite people into their homes and talk about the Lord like Aquilla and Priscilla did with Apollos.

The bottom line is that they are open. They are open to the work of the Spirit. They are open to people and how God might use them. That’s what it means to receive and live in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion
Look, we are already doing this to a degree. I think of a couple in the church who asked me to pray for a woman to whom they were ministering. I think of another couple who has made their neighborhood their mission. All through Covid, they’ve been actively ministering to their neighbors. They have keys to their neighbor’s houses because they take care of them when their neighbors are gone. They do this because they see God’s mission to bring restoration to people, and they want to be a part of it.

However, we’ve got to be reminded of this. We’ve got to remember what God is doing and wants to do in our lives. We’ve got to fan the flames of the Spirit in our life. That’s what this series is for. It’s a reminder for me, and it’s a reminder for you. We’ve got to remember: God wants to use us. God wants to partner with us. God wants to empower us to serve the world.

Don’t let the past keep you from it. God offers you forgiveness of sins. He offers a fresh start to you today. But he wants to give you not only a fresh start with Him. He wants to give you a fresh reason to exist. He wants to use you in the life of the people around you. This is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is always and ever available. There is always a fresh start with God. We simply need to accept and receive it and be open to the people around us and how God wants to use us. He will supply the power to serve. Amen.

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Power to Live a Life of Joyful Service (1 Thess. 1:4–10)

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“Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow. None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the Master: His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.” Tom Bombadil is a mystery in the book The Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson left him out of his film entirely.

But Tom Bombadil is a character that has always fascinated me. On the surface, he seems so simple, but he is complex. He is merry, full of joy. He delights in his wife and hills and home and food. He seems like he would be easily overcome, but the Ring cannot tempt him. In the midst of his joy, he is happy to serve.

He is a sort of picture of an unfallen human being, a human being not tainted by sin. I think such a person would be very different than we imagine. That person would be open to the world yet clearly defined. He would be a slave to none but a servant to all. He would be content and joyful yet always willing to serve. He would be transparent and simple yet complex and deep. I think Tolkien gave us a glimpse of this in his character of Tom Bombadil.

Sometimes, we think that joy and service do not go together. The Bible and this passage teach us something very different. Those who want to save their lives will lose them, and those who are willing to give them up will find them. Joy and service go together.

Some of us serve because we fear saying no. Some of us try to preserve ourselves but end up being self-centered. How do we get to a place of joyful service? That’s what the Thessalonians had found. They found joyful service to God and to their fellow human beings that made the world stand up and notice. How did it happen? In this sermon, I want to talk about the source, the means, and the effect of joyful service.

The Source of Joyful Service
How did the Thessalonians become joyful servants of the God of Israel and the Lord Jesus Christ? How did these servants of Aphrodite, Zeus, and Apollo who intertwined the worship of these gods into the fabric of their lives become servants of the God of Israel? The answer is clear in our text. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The first thing we notice is that the Apostle Paul gave thanks to God for their response to the Gospel. This means that their response was due to the grace of God. The reason why they accepted the message about Jesus was due to God Himself.

Paul says, “For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction” (1 Thess. 1:4–5). In other words, it was God’s choice and the power of the Holy Spirit that enabled them to respond. Paul and Silas could preach the Gospel, but it was God who gave the response.

This is what we see elsewhere in the Bible. It is God who makes our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh to respond to His Word (Ez. 36:26–27). The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14). No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).

This means that even though the Thessalonians had faith, hope, and love, the one who got the ultimate credit for it was God Himself. Even their good use of God’s gifts was a gift from God.

Human beings have turned away from the joyful service of God that they were created for. Instead, they exalted themselves in their pride. This is what we all do unless God intervenes. This is why we all need God’s grace.

Why do we struggle so much in this life? In part, because we start on a wrong principle: making ourselves the center of the universe. It’s only God that turns this around, and so it is only the Holy Spirit that begets joy. “You welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:6).

This was evidence of God’s special love and the choice that He made of the Thessalonians. Their response was not due to their merit or their works but to God’s electing, eternal, gracious love. This is something that all who believe can say: “I believe because of the unmerited love and choice of God Himself.” That’s a rock on which we can rest our hearts and lives.

The Means to Joyful Service
Even though it was God’s Spirit that empowered them for joyful service, this did not mean that God did not use things and people to bring the Thessalonians to that condition. He used a message to bring them back to Himself, and He used the messengers who brought that message.

First, there was the message. They received what he will later call the “Word of God” because it came, as it were, from God’s mouth. In the next chapter, he will say, “when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13).

Here he calls it the gospel. The gospel in the ancient world was “news.” A messenger would proclaim a “gospel” when a king won a victory or a new king was crowned. Here, the “gospel” is that Jesus is crowned King and has won the victory over Satan, sin, and death.

Why did God use the Word or the Gospel to transform the Thessalonian Christians? It makes complete sense. What keeps us from joy? It’s the messages we believe such as, “You are unworthy”; “you can’t do anything right”; “things won’t ever work out”; and “I won’t ever get to enjoy good things” that keep us from joyful service. What leads us back to joyful service is God’s good message: “you are accepted”; “you are valued”; “you can do good things”; and “you will be blessed.” These messages believed and imbibed can lead us back to joyful service.

So, the message has to be the right message, but the right message won’t be received rightly unless the Holy Spirit works in our hearts. We need the Word and the Spirit. That’s why Paul thanks God that it did not come to them only with words but also with the Spirit and power!

Because it is the Word that transforms, people sometimes think, we just need to get the word out there, and that’s all that matters. This idea fails to notice that God not only uses the message, he uses messengers to transform people.

How the messenger lives and how the messenger conveys the message is very important. “You know how we lived among you for your sake” (1 Thess. 1:6). The Thessalonians’ conversion to joyful service was the work of people that they could imitate. They conformed themselves to the commandments of the message but also to the comportment of the messengers. “You became imitators of us” (1 Thess. 1:6). Paul says.

How we live and what we say matters in the work of transforming people. God uses the Word, and He uses His people who live out that Word to bring people to believe the Word. So, we need to ask, what am I teaching with my actions? What do I say about God by how I live? Do I communicate joyful service? Or, am I communicating angry grievances? The former brings about the righteousness of God; the latter does not.

The Effect of Joyful Service
When the Holy Spirit worked, it had effects. The Thessalonians changed. They who were followers of idols and the gods Aphrodite, Zeus, and Apollo gave them up to joyfully serve God and wait for Jesus to return from heaven. This meant more than a private decision. The worship of the gods was intertwined with their political, economic, and family life. It was a radical change.

This radical message was rooted in joy. They welcomed the message, but this was not a mere intellectual acceptance. It moved their hearts. “You welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:7). They welcomed this message with joy. It caused their hearts to rise up as they heard the good news about Jesus Christ.

Christianity has a negative message. It says that all are sinners and that God’s wrath is coming against all sin, the pride of the theologian as well as the perfidy of the thief. Christianity also has a Gospel, a positive message tat answers the negative one. We are delivered from the wrath to come by faith in Jesus Christ. Recently, I read again the Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 60. It asks: “How are you righteous before God?” It answers:

Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments, of never having kept any of them, and of still being inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without any merit of my own, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, and as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is accept this gift with a believing heart.

This is the beautiful message that can fill our hearts with joy in every situation.

Notice also this important point: they welcomed the message with joy in suffering. To enable us to live joyfully, we must have a foundation for joy that can last through suffering. The Gospel enables us to reinterpret our experiences of suffering in a way that preserves our joy. Even unbelievers can reinterpret suffering in this way to a limited degree, but we can do it in an ultimate way because Christ has experienced our sufferings and triumphed over them. Christ’s resurrection powerfully demonstrates that suffering is temporary but God’s love and power are forever for all His loved ones. The suffering is a refiner’s fire that brings out the pure gold of our faith more clearly.

So, they had joy. What did they do with it? They served. This joyful service means, first of all, that they served God Himself. In one sense, we all serve something. However, the true service that we are made for is service of the living God. We are not made to serve Aphrodite or romantic love, Athena or intellectual endeavors, Apollo or our talents, Zeus or our power, Bacchus or our pleasures. We are only properly aligned as human beings when we serve the living God.

Second, joyful service means serving God’s interests in the world. Joyful service means serving God in the everyday events of life. It means always and everywhere seeking to advance His kingdom and His interests in the world.

Third, joyful service means serving God’s people, His created people and His redeemed people. The Thessalonians served the people around them, and so their faith become known throughout the world. Our faith commitment is known by the love we have. It is always, “work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love” (1 Thess. 1:3).

God is recreating people to be the joyful servants He intended them to be.

Conclusion
All over the world, there are people like the Thessalonians, people who have left their previous way of life to serve God and wait for Jesus Christ. There are people like Michael. He was a Chinese student studying in Spearfish, SD, and I met him through a program connecting foreign students with local families. He had not grown up as a Christian but went to a church in South Korea. Through the work of his Pastor there, he came to welcome the message of Jesus Christ with the joy given through the Holy Spirit.

There are people like Charles Strohmer. He tried the American Dream and the New Age movement before the Holy Spirit took hold of him and brought him to Christ. You can read more about his transformation in the exciting book he wrote Odd Man Out.

There are people like me and many of you reading or hearing this. We do not know the time when we came to welcome the message with joy and enter into the joyful service of God, but for us and for Michael and Charles and all those like them, we sing with the church throughout the ages:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee.

Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me!

________

Photo by Fernando Hernandez on Unsplash