Being the Church outside the Walls

1. Now Lord, we declare that as a prayer today, that You would show us how to declare Your love to those around us, because indeed Lord, there is no one like You. I Jesus’ Name Amen. It’s good to see everybody this morning. Don’t forget to pray for your friends and family that you don’t see here today, Maybe just give somebody a call and encourage them, remind them of the love of the Lord and the love of the family, Amen. Don’t make me pull you along with me today. I’m too tired for that. I’ve slept in 13 beds in the last 30 days, I’m tired.
2. Woke up from a dream this morning; I dream very vividly, usually it’s almost like movies. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I don’t like to wake up in the morning, because I’m enjoying my entertainment. And I’ve always prided myself, in the ability to wake up and then I can go back to sleep, back into the same dream. That seems to be changing a little these days. But I enjoy dreams, most of the times, I rarely have bad dreams.
3. The one I woke up from this morning was really, really nice but it was also sad and kind of disappointing. Because I was dreaming about a real situation, about life in this Church, about 15 plus years ago. And the dream started out, we used to have a Friday night youth meeting, with about 50-70 kids, every Friday from 7 o’clock till midnight. We’d play ping pong, we’d play foosball, we’d even play pool for a while until the police came and made us take the pool table out. Because, evidently in Greece you cannot have a pool table in places where gambling is not allowed. So, they took away one of our toys. But we found others. And we’d have a big time every Friday night. Had to chase down the kids that snuck out; you know all that good stuff.
4. And then at the same time I remember, weekends when we would have, Friday night church, Saturday church, and then 2 services on Sunday morning. I don’t really miss those days because it wore me out, but I miss the days that that was necessary. And somewhere in my mind and in my spirit, I was kind of like, high school athletes; I was living my glory days. And then in my dream, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know if it was supposed to have been some kind of accident or whatever, but all of a sudden everything just went black and I woke up. And my first thought was, ‘What was that about?’
5. Then my mind went to men’s breakfast, yesterday. At the end we were praying and the Lord put a prayer in my heart. After praying for other people, I prayed for myself, ‘Lord, give me opportunity to live my faith outside of the church. Give me opportunity to share my faith with people who are not sitting in this room.’ We’ve entered into the period of time of the ‘Everyone’ campaign. We’re going to be putting a bookmark in everybody’s hand again today. And we’re going to ask you to pray the prayer that is on this as often as possible. That says, ‘God of the Universe, the God of every single daughter and son, we come to You as Shepherd of the 99, who deeply loves the one.’ You know in that story we are the 99, and God has some ‘Ones’ out there to find. It says, ‘Reveal Yourself to every individual, meet them as You continue to meet us. May everyone on earth, have an authentic encounter with the risen Jesus. We need You Holy Spirit, to miraculously open the eyes of lost.’ Now, picture somebody in your mind, who you know is lost. Lord miraculously open their eyes. ‘Let Your power and presence come to everyone as it did at Pentecost. Send every one of us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’
6. We just sang a song ‘Holy, there is no one like You. There is none beside You.’ Open up my eyes. Show me who You are and fill me. In Your love, why? And lead me in Your love to those around me. Last line says, ‘Go into all the world, and preach the Good News to everyone.’
7. Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 5: 14-16. This is going to be my baseline Scripture. ““You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Tell your neighbor you’re the light of the world.
8. What I want to talk to us today is actually being the Church outside these walls. What we do in here is not Church. It’s a small part of it. People think of this as coming to Church. And in a sense, it is because when we’re gathered, we constitute the Body of Christ. We are His Church. So, there’s nothing wrong with saying that, but what we do here today is a very small part of our life in Christ. What we do in here is meant to fill us and encourage us, so that it can send us into the world where we are the Church. And I’ve spent a lot of time talking about this lately because of some of my work. But the reality today is that most Christians envision growing Church, they envision winning people, as getting people into the building, which is a good goal by the way, but it is not THE goal.
9. THE goal, is that people come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, that changes their life and gives them eternal life. Now, in discipleship, we encourage people to gather, because Jesus said that’s what we had to do, but we often use the image which is something like this: we’re trying to take the meat and shove it into the salt shaker instead of taking the salt and put it on top of the meat. The passage before this in the Scripture talks about the fact that we are salt. We’re salt and we’re light, so, we’re supposed to be sprinkled on the life of other people to bring flavor, and to preserve them, and we’re also supposed to show them light, so that they can see who God is. Let’s look at the last line of the Scripture we’ve just read, because we forget it. It does not stop at “Let the light shine before others”.
10. We often hear the saying, ‘Preach the Gospel and if you must, use words;’ and by that we mean, ‘Let your life display the Gospel of Jesus Christ.’ But that’s not where it stops, we should add, ‘Also use words.’ Because the end result is not for people to see your good deeds, and you know that somewhere in the back of your mind that you love Jesus. Jesus said. “Let your light shine before men, so that they may glorify your Father in heaven” ( 16). How do people know that the deeds are done for the Father in Heaven? Do they miraculously just absorb that information? No, they learn it because you say it. I’m not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus, because it is the power of God to salvation.
11. Now, when I began thinking about this, I went back to the Book of Acts, because in Acts, we have the image, the example of a powerful early Church. They grew fast in numbers and they grew fast in influence. And I began to question, ‘How did that happen?’ And, how does it happen today? And I began to notice something, going through the Scripture. Where did the Church begin? It began at Pentecost in Jerusalem. So, the early Church was essentially a gathering of pretty much Jews, who had become believers in the Messiah. And the Bible says in Acts 1 – 2, that they begin to gather in the temple, so, they’re still gathering in the place of worship of the Hebrew God, but they gathered to teach each other about the fact that the Messiah had come!
12. And the Bible says that they gathered every day, (Say every day), how would you like to go to Church every day; they gathered every day in the temple, listening to the teaching of the apostles, worshipping God, sharing in the Lord’s Supper, and then eating at the houses of one another. They were creating Community, but their worship was located in largely two places: primarily in the temple, and secondarily in their homes. And so, their faith was largely, behind walls. And so, Acts1 & 2 give us that picture, because the Church, grows up strong and gathers. It was important that they did that, because they had to learn about their faith, and they had to learn how to be a new kind of community. Because, they began realizing very quickly that they were different from what was going on around them, and when you’re different and I’m different, we want to get together and be different together. And then we want to add more to us, because, more is strength, more is encouragement, more is a good thing. Say, more is a good thing.
13. But look at what happens, I’m not going to read all these passages; we’ll use one or two others to show you, but I want to walk you through at least half of the Book of Acts. In Chapter 3, something takes place. The Bible says that Peter and John are going up to the temple, because it was prayer time. SO, Peter and John are on their way to Church because it is prayer time. I don’t want you to say it out aloud, but think it in your brain, ‘Go to church at prayer time’. and God’s people go ‘Shh”. So, Peter and John are on their way to the temple, where they are going to have Church, and it says that they meet a man at the gate called beautiful, who had been lame from birth, and his friends or his family would come and carry him and put him at the gate every day, so that he could beg. And now what happens when Peter and John come by, he cries out for some help, “Silver and Gold have I none, but what I have, I give to you. Get up and walk.”
14. Where did it happen? It did not happen in the temple, and it did not happen in their house. It happened at the most public place, at the gate. Chapter 4, the apostles are found preaching. But now it is not in the temple, and it is not in a house, it is in a courtroom. In front of a politician, in front of the religious leaders, so, the life of the Gospel is happening not in the temple, not in the home, but in the street. The end of that Chapter, the Church gets into financial trouble. So, businessman, by the name of Joseph, who becomes later as Barnabus, he was a good Cypriot businessman, because there used to be good Cypriots, and this wealthy Cypriot, sells his land, and saves the lives of the people in the Church. The Bible says, he brought it to the feet of the apostles, why? Because they represented the community that was being built. But it wasn’t a preacher who met the needs of the people, it was a landowner, who could have become a preacher later, or he could just have let Paul do all the talking.
15. Chapter 5 of the Book of Acts, the apostles keep going to the synagogues and temples, but if you read through the chapter, none of the miracles, and there’s lots of miracles, but none of them take place in the temple. Acts 5:12 says, “The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade.” So, where were all the believers meeting? In the temple, Solomon’s Colonnade was inside the temple. You know to get into that you had to be a certain kind of person. So, that meant that believers were meeting where other people couldn’t go. But even the people who could go, look at what Acts 5: 13 says, “No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.” If I were to write that in Brian’s version, here’s what it would say, ‘No one new was going to church.’ It was just the same old, same old.
16. We travel throughout our Churches today, and it’s a lot of the same old, same old. No one else dared join them. Because they didn’t really understand what was going on behind those walls. You know, one of my great confusions, it’s not really confusing, I know the reason, but, over the years we’ve tried everything to get people into this building. We had school for a while, and that worked a little bit. We’ve tried free language lessons, from certified teachers, we’ve tried free computer labs, we’ve tried free food. I know, one Christmas, we tried one day of day-care, so that parents could bring their children and go shopping. We bought insurance so that we could have children. We did everything so that the parents in our neighborhoods could bring their kids, and go be free. Do you know how many children were brought to the church that day? Somebody guess a number – Zero! Not even our own people.
17. We’ve tried everything to get people in the walls. We’ve taken our worship teams to sing in the bars, we’ve offered every service you can think of, and in 31 years you could not fill a hand of 5 fingers with people who have walked in through the doors. “No one else dared join them!” Do you know that people outside this building are really curious about what goes on in here. We know, because we see them walking by. They don’t understand it and it’s a difficult thing to communicate. “No one else dared join them at Solomon’s Colonnade!”
18. But look at Acts 5:14, “Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.” Where did that happen? Well, we already found out it didn’t happen in the temple, and we don’t have any indication that anything was happening in the homes, except food among the believers. Look at the next verse, Acts 5:15-16, “As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.” And none of this happened inside the temple or the synagogues. It happened in the streets.
19. Now why do I bring this up? Because I want you all to go out into the streets to preach and heal people? Well, you can, we don’t mind; we’ll train you; we’ll teach you. But that’s not the point. The point is, that if we’re waiting as a people, for the harvest to come in here, it’s not going to happen. If you’re waiting for the person sitting next to you to invite their neighbors… Let’s march through a little bit more through the Book of Acts, Chapters 6-7, they have to divide the work in the church between the apostles and the deacons. The apostles had to concentrate on teaching and preaching and praying, but somebody had to keep doing the work outside the walls. And so, they choose Godly men to do this job. One of them, a man called Steven, also becomes a preacher, but he’s not preaching in the temple with the apostles, he’s out and about and people get so upset with him, that they arrest him, and a man by the name of Saul, watches on as the people stone him to death. So, before you go preach in the streets, get ready for stones. They may not come physically, but they’ll come.
20. But listen to the words of Steven as he dies, Steven is looking up into the sky, the heavens open, and his words are, God does not live in houses made by human hands. There’s the temple, there are our hiding places and here’s God, pointing heavenward. The story continues, Chapter 8 of the Book of Acts; The apostle Philip has a ministry, but none of it takes place in Christian gatherings. He confronts Simon, the sorcerer in the market place, and he meets the Ethiopian eunuch out in the desert. Philip and Steven weren’t looking for the chance to get into the pulpit at the temple. It’s easy for believers to preach to believers, most of the time. I said ‘most’. It’s easy for Christians to talk to Christians about Jesus. It’s easy for us to preach the Gospel to one another, woo who. But it’s not the market place, and they’re afraid to enter.
21. You know what, here’s what breaks down fear. If we get out among our friends and family, and they see us lay hands and pray; somebody gets healed, that’ll get their attention; it’ll break down fear. If somebody comes to you all depressed and all concerned, you pray for them and that spirit lifts, they’ll pay attention, and breaks away fear. But if we’re keeping our faith in the temple and in our homes, we’re missing the point of the Book of Acts.
22. Acts Chapter 13, the story shifts from Peter to Paul, and we find Paul once again in Cyprus, and he’s preaching in a synagogue, Now notice this, and I won’t go through it, because it’s the same thing over and over again. Paul goes first to the synagogue, ‘The Church’, and he preaches there, and they have some decent meetings in some synagogues, and in other synagogues, they try to kill him. But he goes to the synagogue. But not once do you find the miraculous of his ministry in the synagogue. Every single time in the Bible, the miracles take place out in the streets.
23. We come all the way through to Athens and Corinth, it’s the same thing. I’ll end with this example, Acts 18:28. Here’s why the Bible says that Paul had such success there. Listen, “For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.” These are harder sermons to end. It’s easy to end sermons where we have Jesus about to bless us. Come Holy Spirit and minister, whatever it is I need. And that’s good stuff, that’s why we’re here. We don’t want anybody to leave here today with the burden still in them. Jesus wants to minister to us; He really, really wants to minister to us. But do you know what He also wants? He wants us to minister to the world.
24. Jesus loves the 99. Look at your neighbor and say, ‘Hi, 99’. Jesus loves the 99. But He will leave us to go find the ‘One’. Everyone; you do not know a person on this earth, that God does not want in His family. Not one. Think of the person you love the most, Jesus loves them. Now think of the one you love the least, don’t be holy on me, I know people I don’t like, so do you. The most miserable person you know, I don’t mean you George. The most miserable person you know, is one of the everyone. Now that’s, that side of the equation. Now guess who is the one to reach them? The special evangelist that comes to the stadium. The pastor who preaches on Sunday morning, or the worship leader who gets so excited and anointed that God moves. Look inward and say ‘Everyone’. You’re the one. You’re the messenger. That’s why I prayed this again yesterday. I am the messenger. And if I’m not, I’m somehow betraying the very life Jesus gave to me.
25. I don’t know what it takes to move you to action. I don’t know what it takes to move your heart. And I certainly don’t know what it takes for us to believe. Salvations are very few and far between in our land. Pastor Gail and I preached in a church that probably has half the believers in this country, or at least the ones we know about. It’s a hard land, not because it’s hard to preach the Gospel. I think, number one, it’s a hard land because it’s not the land of the Lord’s visitation yet, not from the day of Paul. You realize that right? This land has never seen a major spiritual awakening. It’s not a hard land because of that. I’ll speak to Brian, because I do not want anybody mad, but here is what the Lord has said to Brian, ‘It’s hard because you don’t believe.’ Because I don’t believe that a friend I spoke to fifty times, I don’t believe he’s ever going to believe. Oh God help me, my husband, my wife, my child. Hundreds of times. I don’t believe. God help us. I don’t believe my neighbor would listen. Or the one I sit next to on the bus, who opens the door of conversation. Or the lady who cuts my hair every time I go into the shop. I don’t believe. But I have desperately started praying, ‘God help my unbelief. Save me of this. Save me of it.’
26. When pastor Gail said she was going to go and preach out on the street on December 16, I’ll tell you the exact words that came into my head, ‘Have fun. You have fun. I’ll be on my couch watching a ball game.’ Seriously. Do you know why I thought that? I don’t like outside evangelism. I’ve never liked it in my life, and on December 16, I’m probably not going to like it then. But I’m going to go do it, because I’m praying, ‘God help my unbelief.’ Because somewhere on that street, there could be ‘One’. And I want to be there to find him.