Sermon (August 18) - License Plate Sightings: STAN4ME

     We have been spending the past several Sundays focusing on what Jesus wants to tell us from the Gospel of Luke.  And in today’s scripture reading from Luke chapter 12, Jesus says some unsettling things.  Shocking things.

     Jesus tells us that he has not come to bring peace on earth, but division.  In fact, Jesus even tells us that families will be divided over who he is.

     Jesus says how a father will be against his son and a son will be against his father.  A mother in law will be against her daughter in law and a daughter in law will be against her mother in law.

     Our ultimate goal as Christians is to stand for Jesus.  That’s what the sermon title is all about this morning.  Jesus is telling us, “stand for me.”  I’m a little reluctant to preach on this text because some people have used this text as a license to rub people the wrong way.

     Having convictions and standing for Jesus is not the same thing as being a pain in someone’s backside just to be a pain in someone’s backside.   Having convictions and standing for Jesus means that we will be 100% committed to Jesus Christ no matter what the cost – even if the people around us, people we love, people in our families might not understand.

     Several years ago, I met a Christian who lives in North Carolina with her husband.  She is a neighbor of the famous evangelist, Billy Graham.  She grew up in a Jewish family and she was curious about the New Testament so she began to read it and study it every day.

     She came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is truly the Messiah that the Old Testament, or for her, the Hebrew Scriptures, foretold.  And she said that she accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.

     And I asked her what her family thought of her decision to become a Christian.  And she said that they literally disowned her.  In fact, after she became a Christian, they performed a funeral for her symbolizing, that to them, she was no longer alive.

     And that’s when she decided to move from her home in Florida to live in North Carolina.

     And then she said something very interesting.  She said, that she knows of many Jewish friends who believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah but don’t want to publicly say so because they don’t want to be ostracized from their families.

     The price we sometimes pay when we stand for Jesus. She was simply standing for Jesus and she’s paying the price.

     This woman inspired me to think about my life and my commitment to Jesus Christ.  Compared to her, I had it easy.  I grew up in a small town in south central Pennsylvania where you were expected to attend church.

     My parents took me to church every Sunday.   Even to this day, when our family gets together, we always offer a prayer before we eat.  Even before lunch!  That’s when you’re really getting radical in your faith – when you pray before lunch and not just before dinner.  We were “lunch praying Christians” and proud of it!

     But Christianity is more than saying a prayer before lunch or before dinner.  Christianity is about standing up for Jesus.

     I played on an adult baseball team while I was in college.  And the guys on the team covered a wide age span – anywhere from college age like me at the time, to really old like 39 or 40.  There were some pretty tough guys on my team.

     And one of the players was in his mid 30s, he was one of those old guys on the team.  He was giving me a ride home from one of our games, and I don’t remember what led this guy to tell me this, but he ended up telling me that he was going through a pretty tough divorce with his wife.

     And I could tell that even though he had a tough exterior, he was really hurting inside.  And the whole time he was telling me about his marital problems, I wanted so much to tell him about Jesus Christ and how much Jesus loved him and cared about him.

     But I didn’t.  Why didn’t I tell this guy about Jesus Christ?  Because I was afraid that he would think that I was some religious fanatic or that I wasn’t as tough as him.

     I didn’t stand up for Jesus because I was too afraid.  And the whole time, I kept sensing that God wanted me to share the hope of the gospel with him, and the whole time, I kept thinking that he would think less of me if I did.

     He pulled into my driveway to drop me off and as I stepped out of his pick-up truck, I at least said to him, “Randy, I want you to know that I’m going to pray for you.” I mustered up enough courage to tell him that I would pray for him but I couldn’t find enough confidence to share the gospel with him.

     It’s not easy to stand up for Jesus, is it? Even if we go to church every week and do church things, it’s not easy to stand up for Jesus.

     Maybe that’s why our text from Luke gets our attention.  It’s a sobering reminder to us that Christianity isn’t for the faint of heart.  It’s for people who aren’t afraid to say, “Jesus Christ is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my all.”

     In Charles Swindoll’s book, “Living Above Mediocrity” Bruce Larson tells about his time growing up in Chicago.  He writes,

“When I was a small boy, I attended church every Sunday at a big Gothic Presbyterian bastion in Chicago. The preaching was powerful and the music was great. But for me, the most awesome moment in the morning service was the offertory, when twelve solemn, frock-coated ushers marched in lock-step down the main aisle to receive the brass plates for collecting the offering.

These men, so serious about their business of serving the Lord in this magnificent house of worship, were the business and professional leaders of Chicago. One of the twelve ushers was a man named Frank Loesch. He was not a very imposing looking man, but in Chicago he was a living legend, for he was the man who had stood up to Al Capone. In the prohibition years, Capone's rule was absolute.

 The local and state police and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation were afraid to oppose him. But singlehandedly, Frank Loesch, as a Christian layman and without any government support, organized the Chicago Crime Commission, a group of citizens who were determined to take Mr. Capone to court and put him away.

During the months that the Crime Commission met, Frank Loesch's life was in constant danger. There were threats on the lives of his family and friends. But he never wavered. Ultimately he won the case against Capone and was the instrument for removing this blight from the city of Chicago. Frank Loesch had risked his life to live out his faith.

Each Sunday at this point of the service, my father, a Chicago businessman himself, never failed to poke me and silently point to Frank Loesch with pride. Sometime I'd catch a tear in my father's eye. For my dad and for all of us this was and is what authentic living is all about.”

     In our Luke passage this morning, Jesus is telling us to stand up for him.

     What do we need in order to stand up for Jesus and be faithful to Him?

     The first thing that we need is the right expectations.   Jesus is telling us what to expect if we follow him.  There will be divisions.  Not everybody will see your total commitment to Jesus Christ as a good thing.  Some people will think that you are taking things too far in your faith.  Are you willing to live with that? 

     Jesus is telling us up front that following him will not be easy.  Jesus is giving us the right expectations. 

     The second thing that we need in order to stand up for Jesus is conviction of our beliefs.

     Jesus tells the crowd in our scripture reading that they should realize that he is the Savior of the world.  Based on his own teachings, his miracles, and his healings, they should understand that he is the Son of God who has come to bring salvation.

     Jesus calls the crowds “hypocrites” because they can tell by looking at a cloud that it will rain or by looking at a south wind that it will be hot, and yet when they look at Jesus, they don’t realize that God’s salvation had come. We need to make up our minds about who Jesus Christ is.  Our understanding of who Jesus is has a great impact upon whether or not we will stand up for Jesus.

     In order to stand up for Jesus, we need to have the right expectations, a conviction of our beliefs, and last but not least.  We need to help the church to be intentional about making disciples.  Disciple making churches are churches that help people stand up for Jesus.

     Many churches are not disciple making churches.  They are social clubs that use religious language.  We are called to be a disciple making church. A disciple making church is intentional about helping people move from being spectators to being faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

     Think of five concentric circles.  The outer circle is called, “The community.”  For our church, this would mean the greater Lancaster area.  And next to that concentric circle, the question becomes, how can we let the people of the greater Lancaster area know that God loves them and we love them?

     There are many ways that we reach out to our community.  Every Second Saturday of each month, we hold our Second Saturday Outreach where volunteers from our church are sent into our community to be a blessing to others. We go to nursing homes to play bingo with residents, we clean up parks, we provide firewood for people who are on a limited income, we help people with simple home repairs, we give out quarters to people at Laundromats, and we do many other things to let our community know that we are a church that cares. We are a church that also provides meals at Foundation Dinners, Lutheran Social Services, and right here in our own kitchen three days a week.

     The next circle or the fourth concentric circle is called “the Crowd.”  For our church, the crowd would be the people that we attract from the community who want to check out our church.  A church that is committed to disciple making will find ways to draw people from the larger community into the presence of the church.

    Disciple making churches are aware of their community, the outside concentric circle, they are aware of the need to attract a crowd, which is the next circle.  This afternoon, our church is hosting the West End Wing Ding at our Crossroads facility.  The reason we’re doing this is that we want to attract a crowd. It’s an opportunity for our congregation and our community to get to know each other at a fun event. We host other large events to attract a crowd like our Easter Eggstravaganza and our Halloween Festival.

     It just might be our words of welcome or our smile while serving food or our mixing and mingling in the crowd that might lead someone to say, “This is the kind of church that I want to attend.” Who knows how many people we decide to be part of our church because of this fun event.

     The next circle is the congregation.  The congregation would be those who regularly attend worship and the ministries of our church.  Certainly, worship is a big part of what it means to be a congregation.

     The next circle after the congregation is the committed.  The committed would be persons who in addition to coming to worship are regularly attending some kind of small group or bible study.

     And the last circle that’s in the middle is called the Core.  These are the core people who not only worship regularly and attend some type of spiritual support group, but they also are tithing their money to the church, they are serving in mission projects, and they are vigorously committed to being true disciples of Jesus Christ.

     And so, you have these five circles.  Notice that as each circle gets closer to the middle circle, to the core circle, they get smaller and smaller.  And that’s because, the smaller the circle; the greater the commitment.

     Churches that have strategies in place for people to move from being in the community to becoming part of the core life of the church are churches that help people stand up for Jesus.

     What do we need in order to stand up for Jesus?  We need the right expectations and Jesus gives us those expectations.  He tells us that following Him won’t be easy.  We need conviction of our beliefs.  We need to put Jesus Christ first in all that we do.  And thirdly, we need to be part of a church that is committed to making disciples of Jesus Christ.

     During 1857-1858 revival broke out in Philadelphia, PA. A young preacher, Dudley Tyng, one day preached to 5000 men using Exodus 10:11 as his text: “Go now ye that are men and serve the Lord.” About 1000 responded to his invitation that evening. On the following Wednesday he was out checking his corn-shelling machine when his arm accidentally got pulled into the machine and was severed off. The doctors did not believe he would live. While Tyng lay in great pain, he entreated his doctor to accept Christ. With a room filled with other preachers he asked them to “Sing, sing, Can you not sing.” His last admonition to his friends was to “Tell the people to stand up for Jesus.” George Duffield witnessed his friend’s death that day and heard his dying words. That week he wrote the words to the hymn, “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.”

     Let’s be intentional in becoming totally committed followers of Jesus Christ who move closer and closer toward that inner circle where we are truly standing up for Jesus at all costs.