We keep talking about the Church today. Father, thank you for this day. And thank you for the gift that this day is. Thank you for the wonderful gifts which you have given to your people. Not the least of which, and indeed the greatest of which is the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is the first fruits for us of the salvation which we will enjoy. Who dwells in the midst of his people, who brings to bear in our lives all of Christ's benefits, who in fact brings the very presence of Christ into our midst. Lord, we ask that you be with us as we meet together and we ask that you would be in our midst. And we ask that you would be pleased to enlarge our vision and increase our confidence and increase our joy in the gospel and in what it is that you are doing in the world. We delight in you, we love you and we are overwhelmed at the thought that you have loved us and continue to love us today. So be with us to these ends. And then as we gather for worship those of us who have yet to worship, would you come and be in our midst and give us great joy as well. We ask in your name. Amen. Alrighty. Where are we here? You all have a copy of the outline. There should be enough to go around. We're talking about the church. Of course, we have been for about 10 weeks now. We have two weeks left after this week and we're going to have to do some abbreviating and some adjusting of the original syllabus on the next couple of weeks. So we're going to talk about the ministry of the church and focus on a few aspects of the ministry of the church. These are things that we could take lots and lots of time to go over. But for the last two weeks instead of talking about what the church is, we're going to talk about what the church does and that will bring the class to a conclusion. Now just to do some review and to provide you with a little background of if you've been missing some things along the way, the first few weeks we really we focused on the origin of the church. I said the church exists because of the grace of God. Salvation is of the Lord and the people of God, the church is of people gathered to God by God and for God. We're gathered to his presence. We're gathered by his grace and we're gathered for him that we might belong to him. Peter says we've been brought out of darkness into his marvelous light that we might sing the praises of him who has delivered us and saved us. And so the church in everything that it does is characterized by a note of praise, a note of doxology. There is to be a joy and a great sense of delight in the midst of God's people. Now I'm naive about it. I know that the world is a fallen and broken place. I know it's fallen nest catches up with us in lots and lots of different ways. So I'm talking about the kind of joy that the marketers try and sell you when they sell you toothpaste and automobiles. I mean everything is supposed to produce a kind of an unending happiness. Our unending happiness, our uninterrupted unmixed joy and delight is a future thing, a future prospect. We will know that joy when we're in the presence of Christ and when we're no longer mixed up disrupted by the ravages and the residue of sin, that day is coming. But even in this fallen world there is to be a measure of delight and joy for us, a sense of confidence and assurance in the midst of all of the circumstances of our lives. There really is as we read the scriptures and think about our Christian lives and try and understand our Christian lives. There is to be this doxological quality to our lives even when we're in the midst of difficulties. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago in the sermon, the statement that Stonewall Jackson made. My religion teaches me that I am as safe in battle as I am in my bed. God has fixed the hour of my death. I therefore do not concern myself with it. That is a sense of assurance and confidence in the midst of a very uncertain circumstances that I find hard to find. I wish I had that sense of confidence. There is a joy that comes in that confidence and sense of assurance. Stonewall Jackson was a Christian and convinced that the gospel was true and convinced that the Lordship of God, the kingship of God was not just a theological abstraction but it was something that had gotten down into the fiber of his being or the core of his being. He belonged to God and if he belonged to God, all is right with the world. Nothing else ultimately matters. Now I know there are ups and downs but in the midst of those ups and downs there is to be that sense of confidence and gladness even. So the church is a people gathered to God by God and for God and then the church is a new, holy, heavenly, gathered community. It is all of those things that we've talked about. It is a caught we as a particular church are a colony of heaven in the midst of the earth and our character as a colony of heaven is to be observed with every reason to expect that it will be observed by the world around us. There is to be something different about the church. Its distinctiveness of course is rooted in the gospel but the gospel is not just an abstraction. It is something that is both the work itself out in our lives and as that happens then the world looks and acknowledges that we are in fact followers of Christ and we set a couple of weeks ago and repeated it last week that the chief characteristic arguably by which the church is to be known is the characteristic of love. This will all men know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another. So the church is a new, holy, heavenly and gathered community in the midst of the world. Now in addition to that the church in addition to being a gathered community is a gathering community. Those of you who are at worship already heard something about this. That is what the church is, is a gathering community. There is a very real sense, a very real sense. Not just in a rhetorical sort of way but in a very real sense we are not here for ourselves. We don't exist for ourselves. We exist for Christ and we exist for the world. We exist for Christ that his name might be praised and we exist for the world that out of the world there might be gathered to Christ those whom he has loved from before the foundation of the world. And so the church is to be a gathering community of people. Now I would like to look at Luke the fifth chapter and talk about this a little bit. I am going to mention, hopefully at the end of the class, this rather sober warning that Jesus leaves with his disciples and it's in Matthew 12, it's at the end of verse 30 where Jesus says, he who does not gather with me, scatters. He who does not gather with me, scatters. Now I'm going to be real honest with you. I don't want to be unfair and I don't want to mischaracterize things but I do think it's fair to say that we who are Presbyterian and reformed folks are not noted for being gatherers. We're not. We're not noted for being gatherers. You look through the statistical directory of the Presbyterian church in America and the interesting thing is that as churches get older, in other words if you start a church you get a church. I've done this twice. I've done it in two very different kinds of circumstances. I went to a small town in East Central Indiana there were 12 people who were interested in starting the church. At the end of the first month, this typically happens about six of them left. I'm a master at church growth. This is what this is going to be like. I remember driving to a worship service one Sunday morning, honestly wondering if anybody was going to be there. That is a scary deal. When you go into an environment like that and you plan a church where you start with 12 and there's a revival and two weeks later you have six. You realize you've got to do something. You've got to be out in the streets. You've got to be the places where the people are. And what tends to happen, and we saw this even happen in the six short years that we were in Indiana. What tends to happen is that there's a whole lot of evangelism that goes on in the early days. Why? Because you're desperate. I mean, six people aren't going to pay the bills. It's a real practical kind of a consideration. It's not my love for Jesus that drives me to do evangelism. It's a paycheck. We've got to have converts, you know. We've got to get people from someplace. I'm just telling you the truth about myself. It's not true for all church planners. And I have never been known. You know, Bill Breit walks on to elevators and people come to Christ. I mean, it's amazing. I walk on to elevators and like, nobody talks to me. You get on airplanes. If you ever notice that Bill Breit gets on an airplane and the person sitting next to him says, would you please tell me how I can become a Christian. I get on an airplane and they get their time magazines out or whatever they go to sleep, you know. I mean, my life has never been characterized by, you know, huge amounts of gathering. But what we saw up in Indiana was a lot of people come to Christ early in the life of the church. And what tends to happen is as churches get older, this is interesting, is they get older. The gathering dimension decreases. They become more calcified, which is a nice way of saying, curmudgeoning, crotchety, preoccupied with dining eyes and crossing teas, afraid that somebody might make a mistake, some kind of say something stupid. If you've ever been in a Bible study where there's a new Christian and the new Christian puts his hand up and says something stupid. And we all think, oh man, this person's dangerous. We've got to get this person off in a room someplace and put him through 10 months or 12 months of a kind of a boot camp, you know. Because they're going to say stupid things and they're going to embarrass us in all heavens. What would happen? You know, that's how we get. I'm being real honest and real frank. There are exceptions and that sort of thing, but what tends to happen for us, press attorney reform folks, and I see it in church planning and then it involves in this for 15 years now in our denomination. As churches get older, they are much less the gathering places that they were when they were first begun. And we get, you know, we get real preoccupied with theological precision. Now, listen, I've been in this church for six years and anybody who's been here for more than six months ought to know by now. There ought to not be any confusion in your minds about my commitment to and concern for theology. I mean, I read from John Calvin in the pulpit for heaven's sake. I'm going to read from Charles Hodg this morning in the pulpit. The early group didn't get it because I got so excited I forgot it. But I had my Charles Hodg up there. Well, okay. I had my Charles Hodg up there to read a wonderful passage from his three-volume systematic theology. I care about theology. I care about mining the riches of the word of God. But I also care that St. Paul's be a gathering place, not just for us, not a kind of a holy huddle, right? I mean, you know, you're giggling and laughing, but the giggling. That's where giggling comes from. Giggling and laughing. It's of giggling. But that's true, isn't it? Isn't it true? It tends to be true that we who are who are rightly concerned about theology, which I am, can lose sight of this other dimension of church life. And that is that this is to be a gathering point. You remember George Bush's speech, the thousand points of light thing, talked about volunteerism and that kind of thing. Every church is to be a point of light in the midst of darkness. And light is to attract people out of darkness. And as the gospel is preached, we should have that expectation. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. But Jesus says in Matthew 1230, this is a solemn kind of a thing. This is so rewarding. Jesus says he was not for me is against me. He who does not gather with me, scatters. It's not most of us think that we're neither. Right? Most of us think that we're neither. Like, well, I'm, you know, I may not be much of a gatherer, but I'm certainly not a scatterer. Well, Jesus says there really is. There's not a middle ground. You know, he makes these bold statements. If we're not engaged in the business of gathering, then the effect is that we're scatterers.
So I'm real concerned that this aspect of the life mission, the character of the church, be talked about, be thought about, be conversed about among ourselves as much as any of the other things. St. Paul's, I want St. Paul's to be a gathering place, a place where nonbelievers are accessed by the, are giving access to the gospel by people who know the gospel. And that's us. That's all of us. Now, let's look at Luke 5. I want to read this because this, this passage really is sort of a paradigm, I think. It's, it's one of those snapshots that we ought to kind of keep up before us all the time as we think about who we are and where we ought to be in the living of our lives together as Christians, as individuals and together as a group. Luke chapter 5. So it was, one, verse one, verse one. So it was as the multitude pressed about him to hear the word of God that he stood by the lake of Ganesurate and sought two boats standing by the lake. But the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then he got into one of the boats, which was Simon's and asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. So you get the, you get the picture. There's, there's a crowd of folks as was typically the case for Jesus, especially early in his ministry, the multitudes of people along the shore. And so Jesus just pushes off from land a little ways and he's in a boat and now these folks are gathered on the shore and he's out in this boat not far from the edge, just speaking to them, you know, and teaching them. And after that, after he had taught them, he stopped speaking and he said to Simon. Now again, we need to read, I want a little princess here. We need to read the scriptures existentially. And we need to read them with a sense of immediacy and remembering that these are real people, real people living in a real place in real time. This is something that really happened. So here is Jesus, he's taught the multitudes, saying to Peter in front of these crowds, all these, they have this little conversation in front of this massive crowd, he says to Peter, launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. But Simon answered and said to him, master. Now remember who he's addressing? He's addressing the king of glory. The king of glory has told him to do something. Just like you and me, he objects. Can we talk about this? We've toiled all night and caught nothing. Nevertheless, at your word, I will let down the net. I mean, that's it, isn't it? That's it. That's how we are. Well, okay, if I got to talk to my neighbor about you, okay, I will. If I got to talk to somebody in my workplace about you, okay, I will. If I got to talk to my family member, if you say so, I will. When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their net was breaking. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them and they came and filled both the boats so they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down to Jesus' knees saying, depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken. And so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, do not be afraid, from now on, you will catch men. So when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed him. Now let's kind of get the pieces of the story in their proper places here. Who is Jesus? Well, let me say this, let me say this first. There are lots of things, I mean, if you were going to preach on this text, there are lots of things that you could preach about, lots of things that you could talk about. You could talk about the Lord Jesus Christ and His omniscience, His knowledge. He knew that the fish were there. I mean, He was not sitting in the bow of that boat, hoping that when the nets were let down, they'd managed to pull something in. He knew the fish were there. He is the creator of the ends of the earth. He made every one of the fishes. He superintends the whole of history and the whole of the creation as God. And he knows the fish are there. So you could talk about His omniscience. You could talk about Simon and His reluctance to obey. You could talk about the later conversation between Jesus and Peter and Peter saying, depart from me from a sinful man, the impact that this event had upon him as an individual. And His now-grown awareness that the glory of God was present, though veiled, in the Son of Man. You talk about that. All those things would be legitimate. But what's right at the center of this thing is a life-size, one-to-one correspondence kind of an illustration for Peter and the others who were there of the kind of work that they're going to be engaged in as followers of Christ. This is the kind of work that you're going to be engaged in. And this is the kind of work that they eventually were engaged in. As the apostles then were dispersed among the nations to preach the gospel and to be used of God for the in-gathering of the people of God. So this passage is here to describe for Peter and it's here to describe for us today something about the kind of work that were to be engaged in. And it's a gathering work. Now, let's get the pieces of this thing together. Who is the Lord of the harvest? Well, the Lord of the harvest is Christ. Jesus is no less nishant, no less powerful, no less in control today than He was on that day. The difference is we're not fishing for fish. The difference is we're fishing for men and women and children. See, that's an important thing. I keep coming back to this in this class in any number of different ways for us to remember that there is a union and organic union between Jesus and His church. Jesus guides and directs His church. Jesus gives orders to His church in the same way that He gave orders to Peter. He guides and directs us in the same way that He guided and directed Peter. There is a relationship between the living Christ who is ascended in at the right hand of the Father and His church. See, we can't help but be preoccupied with the material realm, with things like lecterns and chairs, some of which are padded, some of which aren't, all of which are probably uncomfortable. We can't help but being preoccupied with pictures and with flowers. Those are the things that we see, the things that we feel. We ingest food. We go for walks. We hold babies. We cry tears. We laugh at jokes. That's all material stuff. The immaterial stuff. The unseen realities are harder for us to keep in the frontal lobes of our minds. But the unseen realities really are arguably the greater realities. And the unseen reality is that Christ was raised. It was seen by them. It isn't seen by us. Christ was raised. And we're going to see in the sermon that Christ ascended. People beheld it. If you had been there with a camera, you could have taken a picture. If you get on the time machine, I'll say this again. You're going to hear it again. If you get on the time machine and you follow the succession of moments that has led to this moment, sooner or later you will bump into those events. If you could go back, you would bump into those events. This is not myth. This is not fairy tale stuff. Christ was alive on the third day after his death. And 40 days after that, he went up into heaven. And a cloud of glory is the glory cloud that came down to capture Christ and take him up into heaven. The same cloud that came down at Sinai. That glory cloud is the cloud that Christ went up in. It is the cloud he will return on with shouts of joy, with the trumpet call of God, with the voices of the ark, the angel and the ark angel. He will come back in like manner as he has gone. If you'd been there, you would have seen it. To us, it's unseen, but it is no less real. Christ has exalted it the right hand of the Father. And he is accomplishing his purpose in the world and he's doing it in and through in us and through us. He is doing as the Lord of the harvest the same thing today that he did here. He gave Peter instructions, he said, go cast the nets and you will gather in a great catch of fish. And it happened. And then he says to him, you know, forget about fish. I know you've done it all your life. Your vocation is going to change. You're going to catch men generically and women and children. The Lord of the harvest has said, that is what you will do. And the Lord of the harvest who is exalted and ruling and reigning is doing that right now. So what is the duty of the harvesters? What's the duty of the harvesters? Do what we're told. It's like with your kids it's what part of no don't you understand. With us, it's what part of go don't you understand. Is it the G? Is it the O? What is it? You know, it's go. It's go. Now, going doesn't mean going to Ireland, going to Japan, going to France. In fact, literally if you look at Matthew 28, the implication is that it is a going. You know, as you're going, teach them everything that I've commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit and behold, I'm with you to the end of the age. So we're just kind of going. We're always going. We talked about the Pilgrim motif last week. Where are we going? We're going to glory. We're going to the celestial city. And as we go, we're to be speaking and gathering. That's the duty of the harvesters. The Lord of the harvest is connected by his spirit to his church. He empowers his church by his spirit and his church is to go. We go. We just cast out the nets. Now, there's something I think to be said about the nature of this work. Two, and that is that it's hard. That is that it is hard. When Simon heard Jesus, he'd already been working all night. And he was tired. And all he had to show for his labor, again, was a bunch of dirty nets. They were broken. They needed to be fixed. Simon wanted to go home and go to bed. It had been fruitless. They had labored all night and they hadn't produced anything. Now, anybody who's been involved in any kind of ministry of any kind at all knows what it is like to invest yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, to part with your energies and to feel at the end of the day like you have nothing to show for it. And then Jesus says, get up and do it again. Even when you're tired. Even when it seems as though it's been a fruitless labor. In fact, isn't it the case that Jesus seems to press us to do things when we're least inclined to do them? When we're the most tired, when our hearts are sort of breaking, why do you think that is? Why do you think that Jesus and Peter go out into the lake at the end of a day of fishing when he had exhausted all of his physical resources? Peter's done this all his life, hadn't he? He's a fisherman. He knows this sea. He knows where the fish are. He's done it for days and weeks and months and years. He's exhausted his physical energies. He's exhausted all of his wisdom, his knowledge of the lake, his knowledge of fish, his knowledge of water temperatures and atmospheric conditions and all of that.
Why do you think Jesus sends Peter out at the end of the day when he's exhausted in every way? Absolutely, so that they can't take credit. If he sends him out at the beginning of the day and they catch some fish, he'll probably say thank you Jesus and then go home and tell his wife about what a great catch he had today. What? Went home and told his wife about the great catch. You mean the one that got away? I think there's something to do that. I think that's another thing for us to learn about the nature of this work. It is hard and you know you read the biographies of ministers, I mean people like Charles Spurgeon and folk like that. Read their biographies, read their memoirs. You will find this theme over and over and over again at their point of greatest weakness, at their point of deepest desperation, at their point of sort of the greatest sense of hopeless and despair, frustration, discouragement. God seems to do remarkable things, either in them personally or in their ministries by gathering fruit. The nature of this work is that it is hard and that the Lord himself is ultimately responsible for the fruit that is born. The glory can be his alone because he alone is the one who accomplishes it. What is the expectation? So the Lord of the harvest is connected to his church. The duty of the harvesters is to go and to do the work, to cast out the nets. That's just another little comment about that. That's what Christ is saying. You've been casting your nets into the sea of fish, you're going to cast your nets into the sea of humanity. That's what your work is going to be, to cast the nets. And it will be hard and all of the glory will be mine. There will be great joy for you. I mean imagine the joy that there was for Peter. You see it. You see it in the text. The sense of thrill, the sense of amazement, the sense of joy that there was in this great catch of fish. The glory goes to Jesus. The joy will be his and ours together. But what of the expectation? I think Jesus is saying that we should have a great expectation. A great expectation is we cast our nets into the sea of humanity. We should have every expectation, every reason to think and anticipate that people will come to Christ by the work that we do. Look at Matthew 9. This is one of my favorite passages in all of the Bible because of the number of things that are here. Matthew 9.35. Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. So that's the first thing that has stuck with me about this passage. The tender compassion of Jesus toward the lost. As he traveled through these cities and towns, and that's what he's doing at this point. He's passing from cities to city, village to village, place to place. And wherever he goes, what he sees is those who are like a flock of sheep that has been ravaged by wolves. Their fleece has been torn, they've been harassed and cast down is what weary and scattered can be translated as. They're harassed and cast down. They're like a flock of sheep and this wolf has come in and has devoured and ripped and torn. And what Jesus sees is people who are just devastated by this. Now what he has in mind, tragically, is the scribes and the Pharisees, the priesthood in Israel, those who should be shepherds but who have become wolves, biting and devouring the flock of God. And it breaks his heart. So then he says to his disciples, the harvest is truly plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest field. And then comes one of those, it seems to me, very inappropriate breaks in the narrative. Chapter and verse divisions are there for convenience. They don't always reflect the kinds of connections that there ought to be. Because what comes right after this is Jesus calling his disciples to him and giving them power to go out amidst these sheep that are cast down and are devastated to have ministry among them. He calls the disciples and then in verse five he sends them out. But again, the two things that strike me are number one, the compassion of Jesus for the lost, the compassion of Jesus for those who are beaten up, devastated, broken down, ripped and torn by the ravages of the fall. And then Jesus saying about this, the harvest is plentiful. Look at the fields. They are white under the harvest. Now I wonder, I really wonder if we look around this Orlando metro area in which we find ourselves and think about this whole area as a field ready to be harvested. That this is a time of great in gathering, a time of great harvesting. The Jesus has commissioned disciples to go and be involved in that. In fact, calls upon the disciples to pray for even more harvesters. There aren't enough. There aren't enough. Pray that the Lord will send more into the harvest fields. Now, I wonder if we think about the world around us in that way. That the wheels are the wheels, the fields are white under the harvest. So what is the expectation? Whether you look at this little exchange between Jesus and Peter and the nets being cast down into the deep place and fish being pulled in, hauled in into a boat so much so that it starts to sink and they've got to get another boat to care or a field that is just ready to be harvested. And all is needed is for somebody to go, however you think about it, it seems to me that we should have a great expectation that there be a harvest, a great harvest. I was listening to a tape that Ed Clownie did and he was talking about this very fact, the idea of gathering. In fact, I mean, most of this stuff, I told Barbara about the tape she asked me if it was good, and I said, well, you know, there isn't anything really new in it, but it sure does get me stirred up. It sure does remind me what it is that this work is all about. But rather humorously describes some of our thinking, thinking which is too often our thinking, where people basically say we aren't growing, but we don't expect to. Because we're here, we're holding the truth, we're holding the truth in such purity, such holiness that nobody but us would want to be here. You know, that's, again, I'm not disparaging theology, you know that about me, but it is important for us to be reminded that this is a harvesting time. This is a time of great in gathering for this particular church, for us, and we should have the expectation that people will come to Christ. Now, I want to acknowledge, don't ever want to lose sight of the sovereignty of God in these matters. There are pastors and there are churches which have to suffer through what appear to be long periods of drought, long periods of time where very few people seem to come to Christ. Eric Alexander served in a church like that, a parish like that in Scotland, for 16 years before going to St. George's in the Glasgow. For 16 years, after 16 years of faithfully preaching and teaching and shepherding the flock and pastoring people, he could only identify one person who he was convinced had come to Christ. There were a few other Christians in that parish, but only one person had come to Christ. What's interesting is that the person who succeeded him and who has been there now for 20 years has experienced a great harvest. Lots of people in the community coming to faith in Christ, okay? So, some will kill up the soil, some will sow the seed, and some will be privileged to part of the harvest, a part of the in gathering. And all of those things have to be left to the good pleasure of God who in his sovereignty works where and when and how he pleases by his spirit. I think also as you look at something like that, we need to be reminded that bringing people to faith in Christ is not always an easy thing. Sometimes it really does take a long, long time for the soil of a person's soul to be killed up and made ready and prepared for the seed of a gospel which will then take root, germinate and take root and bear fruit. But all of that is in the province of the good pleasure of God who works where and when and how he pleases, but the point still is that there should be this great sense of expectation, that the fish are going to be gathered, that the fields are going to be harvested, and there will be this glorious company, this innumerable host throughout the centuries that are gathered to the feet of Christ. Then the last thing to observe about this is a kind of a five point little sermon, I guess. The last thing to be observed is something about the character of the harvester. Again, just sort of think your way through the sequence of events here. At the end of this, after Jesus has accomplished this great miracle, Peter comes to Jesus, verse 8, falls on his knees and says to part from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. What is the character of the harvester? The harvester is one who knows who he is or she is, one who has been in the presence of Christ, one who having been in the presence of Christ knows two things. The crushing sense of being a sinner, the crushing sense of being a sinner, and the exhilarating sense of being forgiven. Because what does Jesus say after Peter falls on his face? He says, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, Peter. But go and fish for men. The word, the command, I heard this years ago, the command that is most often mentioned in the Bible, do not be afraid. Line them all up, stack them all up. Don't steal, don't lie, don't commit adultery, don't do all those horrible things. The command that is heard more frequently in the Bible than any other is the command not to be afraid. What is the character of the harvester? The harvester is one who comes into the presence of Jesus and knows the crushing sense, the crushing sense of his own sin and brokenness. But who knows as well the exhilarating sense of being forgiven. It's those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, who go forth to do mighty feats for God, to do mighty adventures for God. And that's where Peter ended up when faithfully preaching the gospel throughout the course of his life. So the church is to be like this. And again, there is this warning. Gosh, we need to look at ourselves and say, are we as a church to be sure we're gathered to God by God and for God? And these things are increasingly in evidence among us, but is this other thing in evidence too? Is Saint Paul's a gathering community? A gathered community engaged in gathering as well? Because that's what we're to be. Jesus says, he who doesn't gather with me, scatters. It's a one or the other sort of thing. Now, complacency and fear. Keep talking to me. He said about the airplane. And I haven't done it lightly, and I'm being convicted while you were talking. But I used to pray when I arrived here on the airplane, especially because I spent a lot of time alone and I didn't have anybody to talk to. That God could be next to somebody that needed to get the gospel. And then after what he did, he put me next to this. He was shaking first of all by now that he was trying to commit suicide. Oh, man. It's more than I bargained for. No, I know. That's what happens when you pray like that. See, you know, it's amazing. This is an occupational hazard for me. I don't have to pray that prayer because I get onto a plane and somebody starts talking to me sooner or later they're going to ask you to do it. Then I'm stuck. It's either lie. Well, I work with people. I work with people. They'll leave you alone. Maybe not. I get this tax problem. You think you can help me? Yeah. So complacency, fear. Those are big deals for us. They really are fear of rejection. Fear that will be mocked. That kind of stuff. I mean, I'm nobody's hero. I'm a good one to be talking about this because I'm nobody's hero when it comes to these things. I mean, we are not together hero and hero when it comes to talking to people about Christ. But I'll tell you, we both have been thrust into situations where it's just, you know, it's like, okay, Lord, you've painted us into a corner here. We can't not talk about these things with people. And the remarkable thing is that God is good. God does wonderful things to encourage you as you talk with people about the Lord. You just kind of get out there and cast your part of the net into the sea and just see what happens. So that's my encouragement to you out of all of this. That we, you know, that we get out there and I'll tell you, there isn't anything, at least in my experience, there hasn't, there are a few things, maybe a couple of others. There are few things that will do more to stimulate your own growth spiritually than talking with a non-Christian about the gospel. And you know what it's like after you've done that. You know, it's like you're a prize fighter and you want to go 14 more rounds. Like, give me another one, Lord. And it cools quickly, you know, and we kind of got to be stirred up again. But really and truly, to be fishermen, to be out there casting the nets, comes with this expectation of a great harvest sooner or later. And it does wonderful things, wonderful things for your own growth spiritually. So this is just, this is an important part of what it means for us to be a community. And again, this is not new. This is something that is true throughout the scriptures. When Abram was called in the covenant relationship with God, God blessed him, his presence, his glory was upon him, and the effect of that as Abram wandered around and went from place to place. The effect of that was that Moabites and Edamites and other kinds of people groups, hit tights would come to him because he prospered. And when he prospered, he had the opportunity to tell them about the glory of God and the covenant and God's grace. As Israel, after being constituted as a nation, wandered through the wilderness that glory of God was upon her. And because the glory of God was upon her, she had an opportunity to tell the nations, the nations looked and could see that God was present in the midst of his people. Same is true for us. As we make our way on this wilderness journey through this wilderness to the celestial city, the glory of God is here, the presence of Christ is here, and it calls the attention of the world to us that we might tell them the good news of the gospel. And we should do that again with an expectation that people will be gathered as they have been for centuries. Okay, we got a couple of minutes. Any other comments or thoughts? Yeah, Mark?
And so my question is probably more question of vision. How do you envision the church being effective in the areas that we have discussed without compromising the things that we've been discussing this past, where there's still a worshiping community versus a representative community in any sort of terminology? How did it is? How do they church corporately becoming more evangelistic consciousness? Well, two things. More could be said, I suppose. But I may use this in terms of people can see it. Two things. I don't believe that it's my job to do your job for you. So I really do believe that you need to be talking with people about Christ. I need to be talking with people about Christ. You need to be talking with people about Christ. I mean, as I look at the book of Acts, I don't see a sort of a centralized programmatic approach to evangelism. I see people living their Christian lives in their neighborhoods and out of the overflow of their own experience of the gospel, the gospel gets communicated in those places, in neighborhoods and in workplaces, and that sort of thing.
People think, well, I hope that you're inviting your friends to come to St. Paul's. A lot of people would look at St. Paul's and say, it's too unfamiliar to them. They can't get over this stuff that you do that's pretty different from what they may be used to. Maybe, maybe not. There are a whole lot of people. There is a ton, a large slice of the society, who still live with what Francis Schaeffer would have called a Christian memory, a Christian memory, memories from their childhood, from their early days as adults or whatever. College students, high school students, whatever. When they went to church and when they went to church, the expectation, the thing that was kind of pressed into their minds was something fairly liturgical, something fairly traditional, fairly formal. And they want that. How else do you explain the fact that so many people are going to Eastern Orthodoxy into the Roman Catholic church? And there are significant numbers of people who are moving in those directions. It's because they see in that. They see in historic forms something familiar and something that communicates something to them about the nature of God. I think that if you bring people to St. Paul's, they will find it strange. They will find it odd. And that gives you a chance to talk with them about the gospel. I mean, I've said it much recently. I think you can take our bulletin and use it as a gospel tract. You can walk people through it. You say, this is why we do this and this is why we do this and this is why we do this. There's a call to worship. What does it call to worship? It is God calling his people into his own presence. That he might be with them to be in their midst. That they might acknowledge him and praise him and delight him and that there might be this love affair that goes on between God and his people. If you put worship in those terms to people, they'll say, I mean, not everybody, but I have to think that some people are going to say, you're kidding. I don't think about God as having a love affair with me. I want that. I love for an experience of the transcendent. That's why people are going to the new age thing because they want an experience of the transcendent. When you put this thing in those intimate, personal kinds of terms with people, and I think you're going to find people saying, I'd like to have that. How do I get it? Bingo. That's one thing. I'm not going to do your job for you. You need to do your job. You need to cast your nuts out with the expectation that Christ is going to do stuff. The other thing is that as we've tried to structure community life at St. Paul's and we've created what we're calling shepherd groups. We really want these shepherd groups more and more to be involved in ministry among themselves but to people outside. That's the next step that I'd like to see this thing go to. What I would love to see is for these shepherd groups two or three times a year have outreach gatherings. The fellowship group would take upon itself the responsibility of inviting folks to a little cook out, come and be with some of my friends from the church. We're just going to cook out and somebody's going to tell you what it means to him to be a Christian. Now, how hard is that really? How tough is it a couple of times a year for 30 or 40 people to grill out hamburgers on a Sunday afternoon Sunday evening and invite a bunch of their neighbors to come over from hamburgers for hamburgers and for 15 minutes somebody from that shepherd group is going to say, this is how I became a Christian. If you want to know more about this, come and see me. It's not call my pastor. It's come and see me. How tough is that? Right. Right. Now, I haven't told the shepherd groups that that is what you're going to do. That's what I'd love to see happen. I'd love to see these people ministering to each other, caring for each other, and then as an expression of their commitment to each other saying, hey, let's try and get some other people here who are not Christians, our neighbors, our friends, that kind of thing, to do that. So, and then I'm saying three things. It's individual. I'd like to see it done in these fellowship groups. I would also love to see some sort of large scale outreach kinds of things where we're on a Saturday night or a Sunday night or a Friday night or something. We've read a hall someplace and we've started about seven o'clock, you know, from seven to seven thirty, a little chamber orchestra that's playing some nice music and you get cheese and crackers and a beverage, you know, that kind of thing. People can come and just sort of get warm, you know, and then you go into the auditorium and there's a dramatic sketch and there's a testimony and then somebody preaches that I would preach the gospel from a passage like John for the woman at the well. You know, talk about relationships, talk about how Jesus pinpointed this woman's problem, you know, who knows. I'd love to see those three things going on. The individual thing, the community thing, and then just an outreach kind of thing. Does that answer your question? And then there's always the fourth thing, the obvious thing, which is what goes on in worship, the gospels in worship in a variety of ways. So, I don't know that we have, that's not a bad idea and it's a good idea. I don't know that we have had a class that does that for folks. But that's a good thought. I need to go. You're welcome to stick around and talk to each other, but I need to go do the next act. That's pray. Lord, I pray that you would make this place a fruitful in gathering kind of a place. I'm so grateful for the wonderful things that you have done and are doing and it is a thrilling thing for us this morning to be able to see forty people come into the membership of this church. And we praise and thank you that each of them is a story, but we do pray for more. We pray, O Lord, that you would be pleased to work among us and move among us and gather for the generations to come, a great, great host of people who would together sing your praises for eternity. Lord, cause this place to be that kind of place. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.