The High-Pressure Sale

Let me say up front: Not all car salesmen are bad.  I’ve worked with a couple that I really liked.  But have you ever experienced high-pressure car salesmen?  You go to the car lot and they fall over themselves trying to be the first to get to you.  As soon as the salesman greets you, he tries his best to convince you to buy a car.  “What will it take to get you into a new a car today?”  Ugh.

For most folks, there are fewer things more unpleasant than buying a car.  We hate it because of the high pressure sale.  The salesmen try to sell us something before we have considered the full cost, value, and need.

Too often, the same thing occurs in Christian evangelism.  I’m sure you’ve seen it.  A Christian tells a non-Christian about the good news of Jesus.  Then, the high-pressure sale is on to get the non-Christian to convert: Jesus wants a relationship and He is just waiting for you right now.  Say this prayer.  Do it now! 

Is this salesmanship biblical?  I don’t think so.  Luke records Jesus telling the crowds that followed Him that they must count the costs before they can be His disciples.  And there are indeed costs to following Jesus.  Some family and friends will ridicule and turn on you for your faith, but you must love Christ more than these broken relationships.  You will have to lose your hold on your possessions.  You will have to endure persecution.  You will have to give up sinful desires. 

The benefits, of course, are far greater than the costs.  But the costs must be considered before deciding to follow Jesus.  In fact, Jesus said that there can be no looking back for His followers.  If we pressure someone into being a ‘convert,’ it will only lead to buyer’s remorse later.  If that is the case, it would have been better never to have pressured them in the first place.

So, do we share the good news of Jesus with non-Christians?  Absolutely!  But we can’t leave out the part that there is a cost to follow Him.  Instead of a high-pressure sale, just tell them the full Gospel.  Remember, it is not our job to ‘convert’ anyone.  Leave that to the Holy Spirit and allow God to call them if He will. 

Time for Communion?

Ahh, Communion.  It may be the one thing that Christians have disagreed over more so than anything else (except maybe the color of the carpet in the church building).  We can’t even agree on the name.  Communion?  Lord’s Supper?  Eucharist?  Breaking of the Bread?  Regardless of what we call it, we know it’s important.  But why is it so important and how should we celebrate it?

Jesus instituted Communion during His last Passover meal.  All four Gospels record the meal, but probably the oldest description of Communion is found in 1 Corinthians11:23-26.  There, Paul describes how Jesus, after the meal, shared the bread and the cup of wine with His disciples, explaining that the bread was His body and the cup was the new covenant of His blood.

So, why is Communion so important?  For several reasons, but I’ll hit on just a few. 

- First, after Paul described the Lord’s final supper, he said that whenever we eat the bread and drink the cup, we “proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”  In some ways, this ties Communion with baptism: a public proclamation by Christians that we follow a resurrected Jesus. 

- Second, Christians partake in Communion as part of God’s covenant of grace; not that Communion saves anyone, but the bread and wine represent Jesus’ sacrifice for our salvation and forgiveness of sins (Matt 26:28). 

- Third, Jesus said that when we partake in Communion, we do so in remembrance of Him.  We “remember” Him not just as a memorial of His death, but also His life, His resurrection, and His reign. 

Okay, hopefully we can agree that Communion is important for Christians to celebrate.  But how?  Again, here’s a short list.

- Keep it simple.  Jesus didn’t create some elaborate ceremony.  He simply shared the bread and the cup of wine with His disciples.  The more we try to create some high ritual, the less biblical it becomes.

- Celebrate often.  There are extremes in the wider Church: some celebrate only once per year (at Passover) while others celebrate several times a week (sometimes daily).  We can glean from Scripture (1 Cor 11:26; Acts 2:42,46; Acts 20:7) that the early Church celebrated often, probably weekly.  Jesus did not prescribe a certain recurrence, but it’s better to celebrate more often rather than less often.  And don’t worry that celebrating often will diminish its meaning; if that’s true, then we need to cut down on sermons, prayers, and singing.

- Really celebrate!  Communion is not a funeral.  We are not memorializing a dead person.  Our Savior lives, He reigns, and He will return to make all things new.  How can we be so somber when we remember our Lord?  Yes, be respectful.  Yes, humble yourself before the Lord.  But be thankful (the meaning of “eucharist”), be joyful, and celebrate!

- Partake in the community.  When we take Communion, we are gathered together around the table of our king.  The church is also the embodiment of Christ on earth.  There is community between individuals in the congregation and between the congregation and Christ.  Every member should lovingly participate together (see 1 Cor 11:12-22).  (And while I believe wine is appropriate for Communion, remember your brothers and sisters who struggle with addiction or overindulgence, and offer unfermented juice as well.)

- Have a love feast.  Also called an Agape Feast, this is a real meal along with Communion.  That is how Jesus celebrated Communion (remember, it occurred after the Passover meal), and is likely how it was celebrated in the early church.  Time constraints prohibit this in most Sunday morning worship services, but it would be great to celebrate Communion along with a fellowship meal once in awhile.  Try it, you might just enjoy it!

Christians: Please Don’t Just Invite Folks to Church

Christians are a “sent” people.  Jesus’ last commandment was to “Go and make disciples…” and He said that His followers would witness to others all over the earth.  The majority of the church’s mission takes place outside the four walls of some building.

But how exactly are we Jesus’ witnesses?  I have absolutely no doubt that the primary way that most Christians witness to others—if they witness at all—is by inviting unchurched people to church.  I’m sure you may have heard someone extend the Christian invitation: “You should come to church with us.”  Maybe you’ve even used that line yourself.  There are plenty of variations (“we’d be happy to have you visit,” “you should hear our preacher,” etc.), but they are all basically the same.

The idea behind the invitation is that if we could just get the person to visit our church, they will have a chance to hear the pastor’s sermon and be saved.  That’s a lot to lay on a pastor (but we’ll save that topic for a future post).  Even worse, it is non-biblical.  Jesus didn’t tell us to invite unbelievers to a worship service.  He told us to be His witness; to go and tell others about Him.

I really appreciate the intent of Christians who extend a church invitation to their friends.  However, I suggest that instead of inviting people to a church service, invite them to Jesus.  Don’t slough off your responsibility as a witness onto your pastor.  Display Christ to others through your words and actions, and when someone asks you, tell them why you have such a hope within you: because of what Jesus has done—and continues to do—for us all.  And if they are interested in learning more, then invite them to a Bible study, or lunch with a couple of other believers who can answer their questions, or yes, even a worship service.  Just be sure to introduce them to Jesus first.

A Mission of Compassion (Part 2)

My last post was based on the first half of a sermon I prepared a couple of years ago.  This post is the second half.  I ended the last post with the point that God is compassionate, and we are called to show that same kind of compassion.  We’ll pick up there….

Here’s the good news: God is already at work with the lost and hurting people around us.  Look at what Jesus says in verses 37 and 38 of Matthew 9:35-38: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  Jesus tells us that the harvest is ready. 

Many folks here in Green County live out in the country.  Some of us are farmers.  Almost all of us have gardens.  Let me ask you… when do you think most folks harvest their crops?  Right after they plant the seeds?  When the plant is still coming up out of the ground? 

No, you harvest your crop when the fruit is ready.  God is already ahead of us.  He is growing the plant.  He is preparing it.  People out there want to know the truth.  They want to know God.  They know that there’s something out there bigger than themselves.  They are suffering and they are ready for help.

Why is God calling us to be on mission to the lost and hurting out there?  Because they are ready.  They are ready to be reached.

What happens when you don’t pick the crops when they are ripe?  The harvest rots.  The fruits and vegetables wither up.  I planted a garden a couple of years ago, just like I do every year.  But that year we had a drought.  Most of my plants looked pretty pitiful.  But you know what happened?  It eventually rained at the end of summer.  By then, I had pretty much given up on my garden.  I didn’t even go down to check on it any more.  One day, I figured I’d go ahead and till the garden under and get it ready for winter.  Well, I walked back there and took a look and guess what?  There were tomatoes and peppers and beans all over the garden.  But most of it was spoiled, rotting on the vines, and covered in weeds.  I had not gone out and harvested it when it was ready.  That was a crying shame.

You know what’s a bigger shame?  The lost and hurting people out there who are ready for us to reach out to them.  But we don’t.  We aren’t going into the harvest fields.  We aren’t praying for the harvest.

Harvest work is hard work.  All of you that have worked on a farm know what I’m talking about.  You have to actually get up off your rear end and get out there.  God has already done the heavy lifting, but we need to pray and to work.

And you know what?  It's hard work, but it’s also joyful work.  Bringing in the harvest is a joy.  I tell you, there’s something really satisfying to have cans on your shelf and a deep-freeze full of fruits and vegetables that you harvested yourself.  Think how much more satisfying it is to harvest a soul!  To help somebody who’s hurting.  To tell somebody about the good news of Jesus Christ.  Those cans of beans on the shelf are good, but they pale in comparison to all that.

Let’s go back to my original question.  Based on today’s passage, why should we help the needy and lost?  Because we should be compassionate towards others and because God has already prepared the harvest for us.

Now, here’s what I want you to do.  I want you to commit to something.  Don’t get worried, this is very easy.  I want you to pray each day this week a special prayer.  The same thing Jesus told us to pray for.  It’s a very short prayer.  It goes something like this: “Lord, please send out workers into your harvest.”  That’s not a long prayer.  It’s not complicated.  It’s simple: “Lord, please send out workers into your harvest.”  Please remember to pray that prayer every day this week.  I’m betting that God will answer that prayer with workers who will harvest a good crop.

A Mission of Compassion (Part 1)

In the movie “Blues Brothers,” Jake and Elroy repeatedly said they were on a mission from God.  I don’t know about Jake and Elroy, but we Christians are on a mission from God.  No doubt about it.

I know what you’re thinking.  “Here goes Tim, telling us again about how we need to be on a mission of spreading the Gospel.”  Yes, I’ve said many times in many forums that we all need to be consistently focused on our mission.  But why? 

We’ll look to Matthew 9:35-38 to answer that.  Let’s set the scene.  Jesus has been going around Galilee—which was like his main base of operations—healing people and teaching people and calling the apostles to follow Him.  That’s kind of what we think about when we think of Jesus: going around the countryside, preaching and healing people. 

Well, He did that.  In fact, just a couple of chapters earlier in Matthew, Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, which was out in the countryside. 

But Jesus also went to the cities and villages.  Now, cities in Israel were not quite like what we think of as cities today.  Only about 5-7% of the population lived in cities.  But there was something special about the cities.  The wealthy people tended to live in the cities.  The rulers and the elite lived in the cities.

But guess what.  On the edge of the cities were the outcasts of society.  The beggars and the poor stayed right outside the city gates.

Jesus wanted to reach everybody.  He didn’t care what their social status was.  And the cities had the rich and the poor.  So, in verse 35 we read “And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.”

Jesus is going to where people are: the cities and villages.  And what’s first on Matthew’s list of places where Jesus went?  The synagogues.

The synagogues were kind of like the churches of that day.  That’s where Jews assembled to study the Scriptures and pray.  Most folks back then couldn’t read or write, and the synagogue is where they listened and learned.  So it made sense for Jesus to start where people were already somewhat open to reasoning from the Scriptures.  He taught people in the synagogues.

He also evangelized.  He spread the good news—God’s Kingdom had come.  And guess what—that kingdom was personified in Jesus Christ himself!

And what else was He doing?  “… healing every disease and every affliction.”  Jesus went to the people who were hurting and He healed them.  Matthew says “every affliction.”  It didn’t matter to Jesus what their hurt was… whatever it was, He helped.

Let’s pause and think about that.  Was Jesus facing something that we don’t face today?  I don’t think so.  We have lost and hurting people all around us.  We can step outside our church buildings and not go a quarter of a mile before we run into somebody who is hurting—either spiritually or physically or emotionally—in a serious way.

I won’t harp on that because I’ve said it a hundred times, and besides, you know it’s true.  Some of you may even be the ones that are hurting, and you don’t need to hear it from me.  But let’s just agree that there are hurting people out there that need our help and need our Lord.

Matthew says in verse 36 that “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”  Why did Jesus help people?  We know that He was doing His Father’s will.  We know He wanted to save people from hell.  But here we see that Jesus had compassion on the crowds.

Jesus’ compassion is a recurring theme in the Gospels.  He felt compassion before He fed the 5,000 (in Matthew 14).  He felt compassion before He healed two blind men (in Matthew 20).  He felt compassion before He fed the 4,000 (in Matthew 15), and before He healed the leper (in Mark 1), and before He brought a widow’s son back to life (in Luke 7).

Compassion for others is what drove Jesus to help and heal.  He looks out on the crowd and feels compassion for the lost and the hurting.  He sees them as sheep without a shepherd. 

That’s an interesting line: “like sheep without a shepherd.”  There’s a couple of different ways that can be interpreted.  The first interpretation is one that most of us would think of: helpless sheep that would just wander around hungry and lost without their shepherd.  That is definitely one way of looking at lost and hurting people: they have spiritual and physical needs, and we need to help them the way Jesus modeled: teaching, sharing the Good News, and healing.

Think about those crowds that were coming to Jesus.  They had leaders back then.  Very religious leaders, too.  The Pharisees, priests, and scribes were there.  But instead of helping the people, they loaded them down with more religion.  The leaders only made things worse for their people.

That’s why the crowds were coming to Jesus.  Jesus could relate to them.  He cared for them.  He taught them the truth.  He helped them.

“Sheep without a shepherd.”  Yep, they were wandering, lost, with no real help from their leaders.  But there’s a deeper meaning here that we overlook sometimes. 

When Matthew says they are like “sheep without a shepherd”, he’s pointing back to 1 Kings 22:17.  That’s where the prophet Macaiah told the king of Israel that his people were like lost sheep.  In that context, there was about to be a war in Israel, and the sheep were going to suffer and be scattered.

So, bringing that symbol forward, we can see that the people aren’t only like sheep because they are hurting and without someone to help them.  They’re also the targets of war: Satan’s war on Creation.  He wants to keep them lost.  That’s why Jesus had compassion on them.  They were hurting.  They were lost.  And Satan was doing his best to keep them that way.

We need to have that same compassion, for the same reasons as Jesus.  Our neighbors are hurting, they’re lost, and Satan is doing his best to hang onto them.

To be continued…

Don’t Judge Me, Man!

Don’t judge others.  This command of Jesus is so famous that even many non-Christians know it.  Both Matthew and Luke record Jesus telling this to His followers. 

It’s funny to hear someone say “Don’t judge me” when they are caught in an embarrassing situation.  They knew they shouldn’t do it, but they did it anyway.  And they got caught.  Then they try to escape humiliation by using the “don’t judge me” card.  Classic!

How should we avoid judging others?  Here are some pointers:

-  We certainly shouldn’t judge others simply by what they may have done in the past.  They may not be the same type of person now as they were then.

-  Be sure to know the facts.  Gossip can destroy a person’s reputation, whether or not there’s any truth behind it.

-  Ever heard the saying “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”?  That implies a person is just like their parents (or other relatives).  How fair is it to judge someone based on their bloodline?

-  Judging by appearances is one big FAIL!  I’ll spare you all my stories of people who mistakenly judged others by their clothing, accent, or mannerisms, but trust me: looks can be deceiving!

The real question we need to ask is: what did Jesus mean when He told us not to judge others?  Like any biblical quote, we have to look at it in context.  In Matthew, Jesus was explaining that we shouldn’t be hypocritical in our judgments.  In Luke, Jesus described judgment as something to be performed with mercy, trust in God, and based on words and deeds.

So is Jesus telling us to be tolerant of anything people do?  No.  In fact, He said that when we judge, we are to judge rightly.  We don't ignore sin, in ourselves or others.

We don’t ignore sin, but before we can help someone else come to grips with a failure in their life, we first have to examine ourselves to see where we fall short. 

We don’t ignore sin, but we help others by showing mercy, gentleness, and respect.   

We don’t ignore sin, but we should be ready to forgive just as God forgives us.

We don’t ignore sin, but we must realize that the final judge is not us, but God (and He judges righteously).