Loving the Untouchables
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· 4 viewsEvangelism is a key purpose for Christians today. The question is whether or not we are preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or the Gospel of Jesus' stuff.
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Good morning.
Today, we continue our Outcasts: Friends of Jesus series with a message called, “Loving the Untouchables.”
Our first few weeks of this series has focused on those who we might miss, this message centers on the message that we have to carry.
And we will see this played out in those who Jesus reached in the narrative that we will read.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
An ambassador has a message that is given to them by their superior.
That ambassador’s job is to bring that message to whomever their master tells them to.
The ambassador does not have the freedom to change the message to make it less offensive, less controversial, more attractive, etc.
Furthermore, it is not the ambassador’s job to ensure the results of carrying out their duty of message delivery. The results are in the hands of God.
But, in our zeal, we have become addicted to attractional Christianity.
A Christianity that says God wants you to feel better and God wants to give you stuff.
A Christianity that has taken the worship service, which is supposed to be God’s people gathered to worship Him, and made it all about the worshipers and their “worship experience.”
And what has happened is that, instead of proclaiming the message of reconciling the lost to God through faith in Jesus Christ, we have tried to take God’s message of reconciliation and tried to make it connect with earthly success, rather than helping the lost on earth be connected to eternal salvation in and through Christ.
And why are we tempted to change or otherwise “filter” the Gospel?
Because our felt needs, that is, our hurts, our pains, our frustrations, and the things that give us immediate gratification, are seemingly more tangible than what Christ offers.
And while meeting our felt needs is a part of what can happen when we follow Christ, it doesn’t always.
Our best life here on earth is not what God promises, in fact, its just the opposite.
If Jesus Christ is to be believed, then He is promising that, if we place our faith in Him that our best life is yet to come, and that this life on earth, as good or bad as it might be, will be our worst life in comparison to the glory of heaven.
But then heaven seems boring.
I’ve literally sat in Bible studies where Christians are worried that heaven will be boring because all we’ll do is sit around worshiping Jesus. And what fun would that be?
And now we get to it. The real challenge.
As human beings, we do not know what it’s like to live a life without the influence of sin.
So, when we imagine a better life, we imagine such life in a context where the things that we’ve known in the sin context are merely improved.
Just Jesus seems boring.
We want His stuff. We want the people we know and love.
Yes, we love Jesus. But life without all the rest just isn’t life, is it?
It really is a weird paradox for Christians.
We want to be rid of sin because we know that sin has caused everything bad that has ever happened.
But at the same time, we can’t imagine our lives without sin.
And so, as churches, and Christian leaders, as Christians, it can be tempting to proclaim a Gospel message that presents a Jesus whose goal is to make your sinful life more bearable.
But that Jesus is a far cry from the Jesus we read about in the Bible, who wants to completely transform you from the inside out, preparing you for a life without sin altogether, and with Him forever.
Let’s pray as we come to God’s Word this morning.
11 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
To set up the scene, Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, and here’s another time where Jesus was going about His mission, when He is stopped along the way.
Now, the lepers here are a mix of both Jews and Samaritans, and they are on the very outskirts of town, between Samaria and Galilee.
The Bible uses the term leprosy, sometimes to mean the disease Leprosy, but in many cases simply to indicate contagious disease.
At the time, those who were diseased were quarantined at the outskirts of town in an effort to keep the disease from spreading.
So, this is the area where Jesus was. He was in the place where the diseased were put to live. Unincorporated middle east, so to speak.
And Jesus is passing through, He passes by a group of lepers who call out to Him for pity.
Jesus willingly heals them and tells them, according to custom, to go and see the priests for a clean bill of health.
At the time, the diseased had to be seen by a priest if they were to be declared well enough to go back into the presence of the general public.
Now, it is usually here where many times, we will focus on Jesus’ willingness to touch the diseased.
Let’s face it, there are some people we don’t want to reach out of various fears, insecurities, etc.
But, its also important to look at the responses of the lepers in this narrative because there is much to learn from them as well.
We read that of the 10 lepers, only one came back to worship Jesus. Only one professed saving faith in Christ that we know of.
All the others were glad they weren’t sick anymore and went back to their regular lives.
All except one.
And this is where and why we are tempted to filter the Gospel:
When 90% of the people we are trying to reach desert us, we naturally think that we must be doing something wrong, or that we need to emphasize a different part of the message in order to get them to stay.
So what do we do?
We spice it up.
Pic 1 - Lock In.
Pic 2 - Guns to Tools
Pic 3 - Easter/Believe
Pic 4 - Word Cloud Youth Group Descriptive
To be clear, I am not against Christians having fun together, and having parties and community life events.
God instituted several celebrations for the Jews that were just that; celebrations.
Not everything is evangelism and discipleship. There is celebration together, and there is room for that in our lives and in our churches.
But does it not give us at least some pause to look back at the way that we have been reaching out to our communities across America and find that Jesus’ Name and His Salvation is not just in the fine print, its not even there?
Here is Obstacle #4 to reaching the outcasts of society:
Its tempting to think that Jesus isn’t enough
And this works two ways:
For the Christian reaching out, we can think that we need to spice Jesus up, or edit out the “offensive parts” of Scripture, all in the name of hoping that we can reach people in Jesus Name. And so, to do that, we leave His Name out of it.
Hmm.
For the lost, or even for the immature Christian who is in pain or hardship, we tend to want relief from our symptoms much more than a relationship with the Savior.
Oh, we’ll hang out with Jesus as long as we’re in pain, but when we feel better, we’ll get back to our regular lives. Just like the 9 lepers, right?
In his book, God is the Gospel, pastor John Piper writes,
“The critical question for our generation - and for every generation - is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?”
You know, this wasn’t the first time that Jesus had people desert Him after He had healed them.
58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
Jesus had just fed the 5000, and they followed Him wanting more bread.
Jesus offered Himself, and the thousands rejected Him and went away.
But the 12 stayed, even though Judas was a poser, so, the 11 were actual believers.
And then here in Luke, the 1 leper came back and worshiped Jesus loudly according to .
67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
And then of course, there is the leper that came back to worship Jesus.
Interestingly significant that the leper that returned was a Samaritan, and was likely hated by the Jewish people of the day, yet he returned to a Jewish Rabbit that he recognized was God in the flesh.
And what did Jesus to him?
19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
The leper saw that it was Jesus that he needed. And even if his leprosy were to return, he would know that Jesus was the real cure for the sin that ailed him.
How about for you?
Do you find yourself watering down the Gospel with other “stuff” in order to make it more appealing to someone you know who is lost?
Is Jesus not enough for you to proclaim Him and Him alone?
In your own life, are you chasing a result from God instead of Him?
Are you constantly discouraged and dissatisfied because God isn’t “answering your prayer?”
Or do you really want a certain outcome and you’re upset because God hasn’t given that to you?
Is what you really want God’s stuff and not God?
Is Jesus a means to an end?
16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
19 Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. 20 And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.
You know what the hardest thing about loving the untouchables is?
I used to think that loving the untouchables was hard because there was something about them that was unsavory to me.
But now I realize this:
I see those who are socially untouchable, and I do have compassion for them. I want to fix their problems. I want their lives to be better than they are right now.
But, for a long time, I didn’t think that Jesus was enough for them.
Why?
Because in my own life, I had learned to be satisfied by things and people other than Jesus.
And since I was not satisfied in Christ, since He wasn’t enough for me, I didn’t think He would really satisfy others. I didn’t think He was enough for them.
Sure, those other things that satisfied me, I made sure to call them Christian, or to buy Christian versions of them.
But the truth is that nothing is Christian unless it has been born again of the Holy Spirit.
Its funny, you would think that we have spent the better part of 50 years evangelizing to inanimate object because it seems like, more and more, there are more Christian products than there are Christian people.
Jesus didn’t die to save a genre of music, nor did He die to start a really effective marketing and branding campaign. He didn’t die to establish a political platform.
Jesus died to pay the debt for sin that you and I owed to God because He was the only person, God in the flesh, was the only one who could shed His own blood and have God accept it as repayment for our rebellion against Him.
Jesus died and rose again for us, not His stuff.
16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
Bring band up here
Call ushers to distribute communion
We are going to take communion in just a minute as we close today.
And as the elements are distributed, I want us to see what we can learn from these examples, and how we can apply this truth to our lives.
What We Can Learn from the 1 Leper:
He wanted a relationship with Jesus more than his own relief
He went back to be with Jesus. The others didn’t.
He realized the belonging to Jesus was more valuable than belonging to society
Being a leper was an indicator of class as much as it was a disease. Being with Jesus was also dangerous, yet the one leper desired the person of Jesus above all.
Do you want to know Jesus more than you want to feel relief?
Do you want to belong to Jesus, or do you long for significance from something else?
Practical Apps:
Be honest about what “enough” is to you right now
Repent and return to Jesus if He is not enough for you
Build your relationship with God upon the foundation of who He is, not what you want Him to do for you
If Jesus is truly enough for you, both for now, and forever, and if the basis of your relationship with Jesus is who He is, not what you want from Him, then not only will you live out the true Gospel, but you will proclaim it too.
You won’t forget that Jesus’ Name is the most important element in anything we do, and anything we share with the lost in our city.
Yes, we should feed the hungry, and clothe the poor, and we will, but we need to present them the Gospel.
That might mean that 90% of the people we encounter end up deserting us.
But there will the one who is forever changed.
My prayer is that you are forever changed by the person of Jesus, not by the stuff of Jesus. And that you will desire the same for others.
Communion
At the end of His life and ministry on earth, Jesus gathered the disciples together on the eve of His arrest, trial, and crucifixion.
1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
In other words, Jesus demonstrated the full extent of His love, which was ultimately seen in His brutal death on the cross, and His resurrection from the grave.
Think about that. The fullest demonstration of Jesus’ love did not change the circumstances of His disciples, it didn’t overthrow the oppressive Roman government in Jerusalem, and it didn’t pre-emptively keep the trials that you and I face from affecting us.
No, the fullest extent of Christ’s love for us was his death and resurrection.
The fullest extent of Christ’s love was Him giving Himself fully to us, for us.
Shouldn’t we give Him to the lost in our city.
Jesus took the cup...
Jesus took the bread...
Let’s stand and sing praise in response to God’s amazing love for us.