We will not be getting together at Mountain View Academy to worship God this Sunday. Instead, we’ll be getting together in our LTGs (small groups) to hang out, watch the Super Bowl, and eat food together. Invite friends and have a good time. If you’re not part of an LTG, use this as an opportunity to check one out. Check out the LTG page for details and more information about each of the LTGs that are currently running.
Our passage for this morning is a really familiar one: Luke 2:1-7, the birth of Jesus Christ. There are a few things about it that I think are easy to skip over because we’re so familiar with it.
The first is that this Jesus is Joseph and Mary’s first born child. For those of you who have kids, think about the time when you were having your first born. Recall the feelings. All that anticipation. All that excitement. And yet, at the same time, all that fear. All that anxiety. Joseph and Mary were likely an emotional mess.
The second is that the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, that trip that they took late in Mary’s third trimester was an 85 mile trip through some steep inclines. And if you’ve ever ridden an animal, you know that that’s still a physical exhausting mode of transportation. Think of the time when you were late in your third trimester. How far were you able to walk? Jospeh and Mary were physically exhausted. They were running on fumes.
And lastly, Bethlehem was Joseph’s “own city”, verse 3. Though it’s unclear whether Joseph’s parents were still alive, it’s almost certain that Joseph still had close relatives in Bethlehem. And considering Middle Eastern hospitality, it would’ve been inconceivable for Joseph and his new family to stay the night in some random barn as it’s portrayed in many of our Christmas pageants and plays.
Joseph and Mary likely stayed in one of his relatives’ home as did many of his other relatives, hence, why there wasn’t enough room for their entire family to sleep. With everybody coming back to their hometown to be registered for the census, there was likely a family reunion in the house where Joseph and Mary stayed. There’s music, dancing, massive amounts of food, laughter, and hugging. Jesus is getting passed around the room from family member to family member. And at the end of the day, after the party’s subsided well into the night, Joseph and Mary lay him down in a manger, a step below the living area but under the same roof.
There is very little that’s silent about this night. Very little is calm. And there’s little sleeping in heavenly peace.
If anything it’s a chaotic night. They’re emotionally and physically exhausted before they even get to Bethlehem. And when they do get there, they’re greeted by Joseph’s extended family who are excited to see the new addition to their family.
But Jesus is there with them. And for that reason, one of the lines from Silent Night rings true. It was a “holy night”. Being holy isn’t about being composed and calm, about having it all together with your sins properly managed. Being holy is about being with Jesus, abiding in Him.
I know that many of you are in a place right now where you feel like life is too chaotic to be connected to Jesus. Well, our relationship with Jesus is a two-way street. Jesus reaches out to us as well. Jesus loves you.
But will you notice? Will you notice Jesus loving you in the midst of the chaos of your life?
To notice, consider group life, being part of an LTG. When we live life alone, in seclusion it’s all too easy not to notice Jesus. Our spiritual vision gets near-sighted as we just live through the routines of our lives. But as we share about our lives, chaos and all, others in our LTGs can speak into them revealing Jesus at work in it. And as we pray together through the chaos of our lives, we can tangibly feel Jesus ministering to us through His body, the Church.
Discussion Questions:
31 Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath he taught the people. 32 They were amazed at his teaching, because his words had authority.
33 In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an impure spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, 34 “Go away! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
35 “Be quiet!” Jesus said sternly. “Come out of him!” Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him.
This past Sunday we talked openly about a word that God has revealed to many at BayLight, in the Bay Area and around the world. If I can summarize:
- What? A coming disaster or series of disasters (tsunami and/or earthquake?) hitting the Bay Area on the level of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina.
- When? We don’t know but some have heard as soon as this Fall.
- Where? California, but the San Francisco Bay Area especially.
- Who? The Lord has revealed this to the prophetically gifted individuals in our church community, to many churches and leaders throughout the Bay area across denominations and also to people all over the world in the house church planting movement around the world and those involved with the International House of Prayer Movement based out of Kansas City [There were IHOP intercessors in 214 countries praying on 08/08/08 for us along with over 600 of us in the city that day]. At the front edge of it all is Sean Malone of Crisis Response International who heard from God about 9/11 six months beforehand and was there on the ground when it happened, who heard from God about Hurricane Katrina and was there on the ground five days before it hit. Now Malone and company have heard of a third disaster that would hit the Bay Area on the same magnitude as the previous two. Malone and friends gathered together here in May of 2008 to plan and pray.
- Why? Because the Lord wants to wake up the church (in a way that didn’t happen after the previous two disasters) to be ready to bring in the great harvest of people who will come to Him when it happens. As we see consistently in the O.T., God is bringing a “severe mercy” upon the land and asking His people to seek Him for the sins of their land that we did nothing about.
Because we are a community that is open to the Spirit and wants to follow Jesus wherever He is going, we have brought this topic out in the open. It will shape a lot of what we do and train for this year — providing us the kind of urgency that all Jesus-followers need to possess in the “last days” as we seek to obey the three overarching commandments Jesus gave us: to love God, to love our neighbors and to make disciples of all nations.
Many of you in your Life Transformation Groups have already begun to process this word together; wonderful. You will need the encouragement and support of your community as equally as they will need yours. And the greater church body will need some of the gifting and passion that you will collectively bring to this discussion.
Many are asking the “What now?” questions. There are a myriad of ways we can and will go on this. But for now, we wanted to encourage everyone to pray. The call of the hour is intercession — pray for yourselves: that God would help you get ready to be His Kingdom witnesses. And pray for our cities: that God would delay until His people on the ground are ready. This is a time to pray like we’ve never before prayed.
I close with the apostle Paul’s words to the Thessalonian church:
5: 16Be joyful always; 17pray continually; 18give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
19Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; 20do not treat prophecies with contempt. 21Test everything. Hold on to the good. 22Avoid every kind of evil.
23May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
The Lord has been teaching me so much about being and making disciples. I’m amazed how simple, yet difficult it is. It’s so simple that all across the world the front line leaders of gospel movements are people who didn’t go to seminary. In fact, many of these people aren’t college educated professionals but rather people who maybe have a high school level education. Most are rural; many are illiterate and in oral cultures. But they are changing the face of the world like we have never before seen in the history of the church and its mission. We have seen exponentially more missionary advances in the last 10 years than we have seen in centuries of work. Millions have come to faith in countries like India and China. The amount of Christians in Bangladesh alone has doubled in the last 10 years. Not to mention that millions of Muslims are coming en masse to Christ. And, again, at the heart of it all is not a group of people with Masters degrees and PhD’s, but ordinary people.
This phenomenon challenges my long-held assumptions that being a mature Christian is all about my training: what I know and what I am able to do. Instead, I’ve come to see that more important than WHAT I KNOW is WHAT I DO WITH WHAT I KNOW. The key to mature discipleship is not passing on content but passing on a process or a pattern. THIS is what made the apostle Paul able to function so efficiently in his apostolic gifting; this is how he could spend a few weeks to a few months at most in a town and then leave confident that, though they were complete pagans before, they could thrive and reach their entire surrounding area for Christ.
We will talk more about and model this process over the coming weeks, but this past Sunday at the park, we tried to introduce two elements of that process.
1.) committing to not just hearing the Word but also doing something about [obeying] it.
2.) committing to share these fresh spiritual insights immediately with anyone who will listen to us.
Simple, yet difficult.
Imagine with me how different our lives would be if every single one of us took to heart what we heard from the Lord, and asked God to help us obey it. And imagine with me how we would change and our relationships would change if we were able to authentically include others in our journey by sharing with them everything we’re learning and stewing over.
I’d love to hear how things have changed or might/would change for you if you began to take these two practices to heart.
This Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008, we’ll be meeting at Washington Park, picnic area #1 (840 W. Washington Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94086) for Church in the Park. We’ll be enjoying the weather, the Lord, and Mexican food for lunch. If you haven’t received an Evite, email Hanah at msjoo2@yahoo.com so we can be sure to order lunch for you. See you there!
This morning, we walked through 2 Peter 3:1-13, and Peter presented a compelling challenge to his readers. First off, he noted that they were in the last days, and that there would be scoffers, skeptics, doubters that this is the case. These scoffers in the last days live as if everything’s just going to continue on as it always has, and nothing’s going to change. But the Scriptures tell us otherwise.
Right now, we’re in a brief moment in history in which God is waiting patiently, as Peter goes on, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (v. 8-9) We don’t know precisely when that last day is going to fall, but we do know that it’s not yet right now.
Since we’re in that window, what does that mean for us today? That we drop everything that we’re doing right now and hole up somewhere and wait for that last day? Or we ignore it altogether and go on living as if the end isn’t imminent? Peter’s answer is – neither. How we understand the prophets of the past and the revelation of the future should change how we live in the present:
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming (v. 11-12).
As the church (both in the local sense and in the global sense), we’re to be representatives of Christ, missionaries for God in whatever context we’re in. And our guiding principle doesn’t depend so much what time era we’re in, but what kingdom we’re a part of. Our hope is in Christ our king, our citizenship is in the kingdom of God, and our message is the gospel of the kingdom. And that radically transforms how we live today.
So what kind of people ought we to be?
I think we ought to be like the young nine-year-old Lin Hao from China, who escaped from the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake, and dug out his two classmates.
We ought to be agents of God’s grace in our communities.
We ought to be living testimonies of the transforming power of Jesus.
We ought to be people that don’t just take care of our own, but take care of as many as we can.
We ought to be people who study and live and breathe the Word of God, in a real way.
We ought to be people who really recognize and acknowledge the power of God.
We ought to be people who actually live as if there is something better yet to come.
What do you think? How would you fill in the blank:
“We ought to be _____________ ?”
One of the things that the Lord has done in our community over the last couple years is help us be more self-critical in answering the question: what is CHURCH? For centuries, church has been a place and an event — some place you go to receive religious goods and services (like Target or Wal-Mart) or some thing you just do every Sunday. Our language even shows the subtlety, like when I tell my kids we’re “going to church.” I am, without trying to, reinforcing the very lesson I do not wish to teach my kids!
The New Testament does not speak of church in this way; nor does it carry the same assumptions we currently hold about what church is and what church does. It consistently speaks of church organically as a living body and speaks of church relationally (consider the dozens and dozens of commands in the New Testament that carry the relational emphases of “each other” or “one another” – e.g., bear one another’s burdens, confess sin to one another, etc.). Church was the living, breathing, growing body of Christ where Jesus was TRULY the head leader. Church, thus, wasn’t something they DID; it was something they WERE as they naturally lived out that relationship with Jesus in a world that sorely needed the redemptive transformation of Jesus. So at the heart of CHURCH, in the vision of the New Testament writers, is not proper religious activity or expanding physical locality but a dynamic relationship to Jesus as the unquestioned leader and, secondarily, a dynamic relationship to the world Jesus created (including both people and the earth) that he invites the church to join him in restoring.
We’d love to hear what the Lord has been teaching any of you — whether BayLighters or friends of BayLight — in this whole area of letting Jesus lead. Tell us how it looks or should look for Jesus to be the leader of your personal life or the leader of the church as a whole. Feel free to post your insights below, so we can keep the conversation and journey going.
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