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CHURCH IMPROVEMENT : BUILDING A CHURCH THAT HONORS GOD AND LOVES PEOPLE BY GOING TO THE NATIONSJohn 17:1-5, 15:5-15 & Acts 1:1-11INTRODUCTION As most of you know the Bible contains numerous glimpses into heaven and what goes on there both now and forever. In every image of heaven God is at the center. All creatures whether they are men or angels or trees or mountains or fish or the beasts of the field surround the throne of God and worship him. On every occasion we find men and angels falling on their faces, breaking out in songs of praise and adoration when they are in God’s presence, around God’s throne. In Isaiah 6 we have the account of the prophet Isaiah in the year that king Uzziah died being given a vision of God seated on his throne, high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple. Surrounding God on his throne he saw the seraphim, a class of angels who each have six wings. With two wings they cover their faces, with two wings they cover their feet and with two wings they fly, suspended over the throne of God. Throughout all of eternity they sing back and forth to each other: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty! The whole earth is full of his glory.” We are told that the power of their praise was so great that their voices caused the temple to shake and to be filled with smoke. In other words their praise is no half-hearted singing but robust, enthusiastic and full of passion. Like sports fans at a game or music lovers at a concert, they cheer for God. We see the same thing in the book of Revelation. Each time that John is ushered into heaven in his vision he sees men and/or angels bowing before the throne of God where the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world stands. In every case these men and angels are singing songs of worship. They sing things like this, from Rev. 5:13, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” Have you ever asked yourself why is it that every vision of heaven in the Bible is like this? Why is heaven always portrayed as the place where the Triune God sits upon his throne, surrounded by admiring men and angels, indeed, all of creation? The short answer is because this is the reason that everything exists. The goal of God from before the creation of the world in all that he has done, is doing and will ever do is to reveal and magnify his glory. He has always aimed to be the center of unbroken praise. The ultimate purpose of every single action of God is to display and magnify his own glory. Whether you are talking about creating the world, sustaining the world, making Abraham into a great nation, rescuing Israel from Egypt, destroying Egypt, bringing Israel into the promised land, removing Israel from the promised land or the sending of Jesus into the world to live and suffer and die and rise again or saving you—God does it all so that the whole earth will be full of his glory. Throughout the endless ages of eternity the center of heaven will be the fame and honor and glory of the eternal God who has made himself known through our Lord Jesus Christ. MAIN POINT Jesus Christ will be forever famous and admired by people from every race and culture and location on earth because… I. This is why he came (John 5:23, 10:16, 13:31-32, 17:1-5 & Revelation 5) The fourth book of the NT is the biography of Jesus which was written by his closest friend on earth, John the apostle. It has as its main theme the revelation of the glory of Jesus. John wrote it to reveal to us the greatness of Jesus. John 1:14 says that the Word who was with God and who was God “became flesh and made his dwelling among us and we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John ends his gospel by telling us readers that the reason he wrote this summary of Jesus’ life was so that we might see that he is the long promised Messiah, the Son of David, Savior of the world who is also the divine and eternal Son of God and that upon seeing him we might embrace and trust and lean upon him and thus we might partake of that life that belongs to him, that is eternal life with God. The clearest expression of the purpose of Jesus in coming and dying in John's gospel is given in the prayer that Jesus prayed just hours prior to his arrest as it is recorded in John 17. Listen again to what the Son of God said to his Father just hours before he is put on the cross: "Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (page 765). The first thing to note about this prayer is how impossible it would be for any of us, indeed, for any mere human being to pray it. Can you imagine asking God to so work that everyone sees what a great person you are? “God please exercise your omnipotent power on my behalf so that everyone can see how stupendous I am and so admire and applaud me and then I’ll make sure that as they see how great I am they will also see how great you are.” Jesus who is fully human must be different in some incredible way from every other human being in order for him to pray such a thing. We can see in this prayer the ways in which Jesus is radically different from us. First, God gave him authority over all human beings. Jesus is the man that God has placed over all other men. Second, the authority that Jesus has over all humanity was given to him so that he could give eternal life to a particular segment of humanity—all those whom the Father gave to him. So, Jesus came to give eternal life to God’s people. Third, the eternal life that Jesus gives to God’s people is the knowledge of God the Father and himself, God the Son. What does this knowledge consist of? This isn’t just knowing facts but having an intimate and real and growing knowledge of the glory and greatness of the only God and his Son, Jesus Christ. Salvation is a growing insight into and appreciation for this great, Triune God who has chosen to reveal himself to you by the Son. This is the most loving thing that God could do for us. Christ came to give us God, the best thing in the universe. Fourth, Jesus can pray this prayer because of what he did to give eternal life to God's people. The work he completed on earth was living in complete obedience to his Father and then dying on the cross for his people. It is the cross as the culmination of his earthly work that gives the Son the right to ask the Father to give him the glory he had before the world began. He went to the cross so that his glory would be seen and marveled at and enjoyed. I don’t think you can say this any more plainly than Jesus does here in his prayer. The reason he came and lived an obedient life and died on that bloody cross was so that his glory and the glory of his Father would be manifest in the universe and result in a people who know it and admire him forever. He came to save us and salvation is him being at the center of our attention and of our affections. He completed his work so that we would glorify him by enjoying him forever. The ultimate purpose for which Jesus came to this earth was not to forgive our sins or to save us from hell or to give us peace or to remove our guilty conscience but to give to us a true vision of his glory so that we love to trust and worship and love him. He is the center of our life and will be forever the center of our attention and the source of all our happiness. Jesus Christ will be forever famous and admired by people from every race and culture and location on earth because…
II. This is why he sent the Holy Spirit (John 16:5-15, Revelation 22:17) I’d like you to turn to John 16 with me for a moment. I don’t have time to go through all the details of this text but I want you to see why the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit. If I were to ask you what is the chief benefit that you received as a result of Jesus Christ dying on the cross, what would you say? Most of us would say something like, “my sins are forgiven”, “I have eternal life”, “I won’t go to hell.” However if you’ll look at John 16:5-7 you will see something entirely different. Jesus says that the main benefit of his dying on the cross is that he will send the Holy Spirit to his disciples. Jesus thinks that the chief benefit of his death and thus his departure from the earth is that as a result the Holy Spirit will come. What will the Holy Spirit do when he comes? First, in vv. 8-11 we are told that he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and justice. Why is that a benefit to us? The world in John’s gospel does not refer to all the people who live on planet earth or to planet earth itself. Rather “world” in John’s gospel is almost always a reference to the world of human beings living in rebellion to God, under the power of Satan and the object of God’s just wrath. People who are in the world do not believe that God is angry with them for their sin, mostly because they don’t view their sin as a problem. People in the world think that Jesus is a nothing and a nobody, not the most glorious of all beings. People in the world would never say that losing every pleasure this world has to offer in order to gain Christ is a bargain beyond belief. Therefore, if the Holy Spirit does not convict you of your sin and Christ’s righteousness and the certainty and justice of God's judgment, then you will never believe in Jesus. You will remain in your sins and perish forever in God’s judgment at the end of all things. It is really good news that the Holy Spirit has come to convict us. When the Holy Spirit convicts a member of the world that person has a conviction that he or she is a sinner who has no ability to be righteous and thus stands under God's judgment. Without the Holy Spirit we would be like people who have some dread disease but who don’t know about it and so do nothing about it and so die from it. The second thing the Holy Spirit does is described in vv. 12-15. Without going into the details what these verses say is that the HS will reveal the glory of Jesus Christ to us, especially the glory he exhibits in his willing death for our sins. It is the Holy Spirit’s chief ambition to show how awesome Jesus Christ is. And, if you will notice in v. 15, the greatness of Jesus is the greatness of the Father. All the glory that Jesus possesses is the glory of the Father and so when Jesus is glorified to us by the Spirit we are seeing the “glory of God in the face of Christ,” to use Paul’s language. Anyone who has spent much time around me knows that I love to glorify a little piece of land in northern Wisconsin that has a cabin on it. These forty acres with its converted garage are dear to me and my siblings because it is the remnant of the land that our grandfather, John Swanson, homesteaded in 1908. It is the land upon which my father was born and where he grew up. It is also a beautiful land of forests and hills and a gorgeous stream runs through it. So I glorify the greatness of this property by talking about it and by seeking to persuade people to come with me to visit it and enjoy its beauty and the ambience of our cabin. Unfortunately I do not have omnipotent power like the Holy Spirit does to overcome all resistance to the allure of this cabin and so few share my delight. The Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity is delighted with the eternal Son of God and it is his chief delight to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ to all those who belong to the Father and who the Father gives to the Son. The way you know that the Holy Spirit has worked upon your heart is that you see Jesus Christ as the greatest and best of all beings and you would gladly lose everything in order to have him. Your heart delights in what the Holy Spirit delights in, the Son of God who became a man and gave himself for our sins. If you never have a taste for Jesus, then you are not a Christian because that means the Holy Spirit has not glorified him to you. You yet willingly remain dead to the glory of the most glorious person in the universe. Jesus Christ will be forever famous and admired by people from every race and culture and location on earth because…
III. This is why he establishes every local church (Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 3:10-11, etc.) I want you to turn to Acts 1 with me. In the first verse we find out that the author of this book has already written another book about Jesus. If you compare the opening paragraph of Luke's gospel you will see that the author of Acts is Luke who also wrote one of the four biographies of Jesus' life. Notice that he says his first book, which we call the gospel of Luke, was about what Jesus began to do and to teach up until the time of his ascension. The implication of that little word "began" is that this second volume, the "Acts of the Apostles" is now about what Jesus continues to do and to teach. The basic presupposition of this book of Acts is that all the human actions and words that you read in this book are actually the actions and words of Jesus himself expressed through the apostles and the churches that they establish. When Jesus told the 12 disciples in Matthew 16 that he would build his church he wasn't kidding. Right now through the actions and words of our church Jesus is building his kingdom on this earth. This is the fundamental assumption of the entire NT, not just this book of Acts. How does Jesus act and speak through human beings gathered together into local churches? Verses 4-5 give us the answer. Jesus spends forty days appearing to the disciples and talking with them about the kingdom of God. On one of those occasions he tells the 12 not to leave Jerusalem until they are baptized with the Holy Spirit. The way that Jesus acts and speaks through the human members of his church is by means of the Holy Spirit. I want you to think with me for a moment about the historical moment that is being described in Acts 1. These disciples to whom Jesus is speaking are the same ones who, just 18 hours before Jesus was killed, a month before this conversation recorded in Acts 1, were arguing about who was going to get the highest appointments in the kingdom of Jesus when he took over the world. These men knew that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of David and the Son of God. But due to the false teaching which they had received through the Jewish religious leaders and due to their own sinful hearts they were convinced that Jesus' main work was going to be making the Jewish people the rulers of the world. Just like every tribe or nation or people they assumed that God liked them best and that when God's Messiah showed up he would certainly lead them in conquering power over all the lesser and more evil nations of the world. These men knew that the current Jewish leadership was not fit to lead this new and powerful nation and therefore they assumed that they, being the friends of Jesus, were going to be in charge, under the authority of Jesus, of course. The night before Jesus was killed they were sure that Jesus was on the verge of taking over. So it was a great shock to them when Jesus was killed. But now, in the opening of the book of Acts, they are talking with the glorified and resurrected Christ. When Jesus begins talking about their receiving the promise of the father and being baptized with the Holy Spirit they think that they were just off by a few weeks in their calculations of when Jesus was going to take over. That is why, in v. 6 they ask Jesus, "Is it at this time that you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel.?" They still conceive of the kingdom of God as national Israel running the world with Jesus at the head and they as his chief advisors. Jesus' answer to them is that it is none of their business. God will end this world and create a new heavens and a new earth on his timetable and he has not told anyone what that timetable is. People who spend lots of time thinking about and talking about when the second coming of Christ will happen are disobeying Jesus. It is not for us to know. It is none of our business. Verse 8 begins with a "but". In other words, God, rather than giving the disciples the kind of power they were lusting after and rather than telling them what God's timetable is, promises to give the disciples the Holy Spirit who will enable them to be his witnesses. This verse is often used by teachers and pastors to command people to go share their faith or to go be missionaries. However, I want you to notice that this verse is a promise, not a command. Jesus tells the church as represented by the apostles that when he gives the Holy Spirit to his people, which happens at the beginning of chapter 2, they will have power to bear witness to Christ throughout the entire world. If you remember what we saw back in John 16 about the work of the Holy Spirit, this simply makes sense. The work of the Holy Spirit is to persuade us that Jesus Christ is the best and most glorious of all beings in his person and in his life and death and in his teaching, in everything about him. So when a person joins in the Holy Spirit's delight in Jesus, then what will that person do? That person will talk about Jesus and show by his or her life that Jesus is the most satisfying person in the universe. Thus, the church becomes a community of people who admire Jesus and who cannot help but seek to get others to admire Jesus as well. What happened the week after the Packers won their playoff game against the San Diego Chargers? Everywhere you went, people were talking about the Packers and about how great Brett Favre was and how amazing it was that this youngest of all NFL teams was one game away from the Super Bowl. Those of you who do not care about football or who care about a different football team were forced to listen to fanatical Packer fans bear witness to the glory of their team more times than you care to mention, right? When you believe that someone or something is glorious you cannot help but bear witness to its glory. Your delight increases as you seek to persuade others of the fame of that person or object you delight in. What v. 8 is saying is that the Holy Spirit will so infect us with joy in the greatness of Christ as our savior that we will enthusiastically bear witness to him throughout the earth. It is one of the most amazing facts of history that this verse has come true in a most remarkable way. The U.S. Center for World Missions is an organization dedicated to helping the global church understand and strategically plan for finishing what this verse says will happen. Dr. Ralph Winter the founder of the USCWM made this observation in an article he wrote in 2000: " It took 18 centuries for dedicated believers to grow from 0 percent of the world's population to 2.5 percent in 1900, only 70 years to grow from 2.5 to 5 percent in 1970, and just the last 30 years to grow from 5 to 11.2 percent of the world population. Now, for the first time in history, there is one believer for every nine people worldwide who aren't believers." Jesus promised that we would bear witness to him in all the nations of the world and this has happened to a remarkable extent. However, while Jesus, by his Spirit, has empowered his people to bear witness to him in much of the earth, there are yet many places and peoples of the earth who do not yet have a witnessing community of Jesus worshippers among them. There yet remains over 10,000 "people groups" representing over 2 billion people who do not yet have a single bible believing, gospel preaching local church in them. Therefore, the work of bearing witness to Jesus to the ends of the earth is yet an unfinished task that every local church needs to be working to finish. The reason we want to do this is because the Holy Spirit who dwells within us is empowering us to do this very thing. Whenever the Holy Spirit is given to a people then that people engages in the task of bearing witness to Christ to the ends of the earth. It is not possible to be a Christian or a Christian church and not care about the fame of Jesus being spread throughout the entire world. I want to take a brief tour of the book of Acts to see how the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus' people to bear witness to him throughout the Roman Empire in the opening decades following Jesus' ascension. Ten days after Jesus spoke v. 8 the Holy Spirit was, for the first time, poured out upon the church. At the time the church consisted of about 150 people. When the Spirit came upon them Peter went into the streets of Jerusalem and preached the first Christian sermon. He bore witness to Christ. At the end of his "testimony" concerning Jesus, the Holy Spirit convicted 3000 people of sin and righteousness and judgment and glorified Christ to them so that they believed and were baptized. Thus the church grew from 150 to 3150 in one day by the church bearing witness to Jesus. Over the following weeks as this church met in the court of the Gentiles to receive teaching from the apostles and then met in small groups in homes to eat and pray and worship the Lord together we are told that the Lord added daily to their number those who were being saved until we are told in 4:4 that the church had grown to over 5000 men, not including women and children. It was during this time, as the church was bearing witness to Christ in Jerusalem and increasing in numbers that God sent some of the leaders of the Jerusalem church into Samaria . Philip, one of the deacons in the Jerusalem church went to Samaria and bore witness to Jesus and many Samaritans believed the gospel. Then the Lord sent Peter to bear witness to Christ to a group of Gentiles in the home of Cornelius in the Judean town of Caesarea and upon hearing of the glory of Jesus as the Savior of sinners all who were gathered were convicted by the Holy Spirit and were persuaded that Jesus was the most glorious of all beings. Shortly after this a group of unnamed Christians who had gone out from the Jerusalem church went to Antioch, a city located in what is today, northern Lebanon on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They planted a church there in Antioch made up of mostly non-Jewish people. The church in Jerusalem heard about it and sent one of their leaders, a guy named Barnabas to help establish this new church in the truth of the gospel. When he saw what was happening there he went and got Saul who had been converted several years earlier and who joined him in teaching about Jesus to this new church. I want you to turn with me to Acts 13:1-4. It was in this new church at Antioch that the Holy Spirit gave directions for how he wanted them, as a local church, to be involved in the next stage of bearing witness to Jesus to the ends of the earth. He told this church to set apart Barnabas and Saul and to send them out to do the work of bearing witness to Jesus. God sent two of their key leaders to bear witness in another land and culture. So they went out into what is now southern Turkey . They preached the gospel in a series of towns, establishing churches of worshipping and witnessing Christians in each one of them. Then they returned to Antioch , their home church. After some interval of time, Paul took Silas and went back to visit those churches he had established in the region of Galatia and from there they went further west, finally into Greece . Turn to Acts 16:1 to see what happened when he came to the church Paul and Barnabas had established at Derbe and Lystra. The church there recommended Timothy to Paul as a co-worker in the proclamation of the gospel to new peoples. He was a young man who came from a home where his father was not a believer but his mother was. He was seen as an up and coming leader in this church and they thought he would be a good fit to go with Paul to preach the gospel. Every local church was not only engaged in bearing witness to Christ in their own local community but also engaged in bearing witness across geographical and cultural boundaries. Every local church wanted to be a part of bearing witness to Christ to the ends of the earth. One of the chief ways that each church contributed to that great work was by sending some of those who were the leaders of their local churches to go to these new places to bear witness to Christ and so establish more local churches. I have no doubt that God the Holy Spirit intends for us to send out full time, cross cultural missionaries from among us. Those we send out will first be engaged in the work of bearing witness to Christ in our own church and community. They will be leaders in preaching the gospel here before God calls them to go there. The only way you can know that God may want you to go there is if you first are going here. As we develop leaders among us we are also to be praying that some of these leaders will leave us and go to bear witness to Christ among other peoples of the world. I became a Christian in my junior year of college. Shortly after becoming a Christian I had the good fortune to be taught by an older Christian who answered my questions in order to establish me in the faith. As I grew I began to share my faith. I started a Bible Study in my dorm and began to meet with a small group of other Christian men to teach them what I had been taught and encourage them to share their faith and to lead Bible Studies. I became involved in leading people spiritually. It was while engaged in this work that it became clear to me that this was the work that God wanted me to do. I couldn't imagine doing anything else besides bearing witness to Christ and teaching his gospel full time. I am confident that God intends for others from among us to have a similar experience. As you grow in Christ and grow in your ability to teach his gospel here you will discover that this is what you must do full time some other place in this world. As a church we want to be praying for this to happen and preparing to equip and support those whom God calls to go from among us so that the fame of Jesus will be spread across this globe. Jesus Christ will be forever famous and admired by people from every race and culture and location on earth because…
© Copyright 2008 John Swanson.
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