Northside Church - Sydney
I Heart This Place – Week 2: A Place of Equals
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, like I say, last week Sam introduced our preaching series for February entitled "I Heart This Place." And for those who are not familiar with Facebook lingo, this is "I Love This Place, The Beating Heart." And it's really a series, it's based on the book of James, and it's about the things that you can really love and appreciate about the church, the body of Christ. And tonight, the sub-theme is the thing that we're looking at tonight, it's a place of equals. It's a place of equals. There's meant to be no discrimination, no prejudice in the body of Christ. And this may have been a problem, in fact quite clearly it was a problem in the early church, because a man like James, and that's the book, as I mentioned, that we're looking at throughout this series, James addresses this problem fairly strongly. We're going to read tonight from the second chapter of his letter, verses one to seven. Look at this, "My friends, as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, you must never treat people in different ways according to their outward appearance. Suppose a rich man wearing a gold ring, fine clothes, comes to your meeting, and a poor man in ragged clothes also comes. If you show more respect to the well-dressed man and say to him, "Have this best seat here," but say to the poor man, you stand over here or sit here on the floor by my feet, then you are guilty of creating distinctions among yourselves and of making judgments based on evil motives. Listen, my dear friends, God chose the poor people of this world to be rich in faith and to possess the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him, that you dishonor the poor. Who are the ones who oppress you and drag you before the judges? The rich. They're the ones who speak evil of that good name which has been given to you." Guys, that's a pretty confronting reading, isn't it? It's fairly provocative. That requires a little bit of unpacking. I've got a question for you. When was the last time that you felt left out? When was the last time that you were made to feel inferior? When was the last time that you were on the outer, unaccepted, and you kind of felt it? It might have been done in subtle ways, may not have been all that overt, but you felt it. Sometimes as a preacher, you get the opportunity to show a clip from one of your favorite movies, and it's your prerogative to do it, and tonight, tonight from one of my favorite movies, Meet the Parents, a little clip which I think will, if you're thought of thinking when was the last time, this may sort of remind you of maybe a similar instance to yourself. Have a look at this. Oh, look, somebody had a little visit from the hair fairy. Hey, I'll do the interest, Greg, this is my sister, Debbie. Oh, to bright the beat, congratulations. And her fiancé, Dr. Bob. Oh, you call me Bob, M.D. Is there his parents Linda Banks? Hi, how are you? Excuse me, Chip. And the world famous plastic surgeon, Dr. Larry. Oh, now cut that out. You know, Greg's in medicine too, Larry. Oh, really? What feeling? Nursing. It's good. No, really. What feeling? Nursing. Hey, why don't I get your chair, Greg? Yes, you do. Thanks. So, you didn't want to go for the M.D.? No, I actually thought about becoming a doctor, but I decided it wasn't for me. Oh, thanks. Just as well. Gorgeous killer. Actually, Greg Aced is M. Kent's. You serious? No, I did okay. Oh, he did more than okay, trust me. Why did you take the test if you weren't planning on going to med school? Well, I wanted to keep my options open, but in the end, nursing was just a better fit for me. It gives you the freedom to work in several different areas of medicine, plus I can focus 100% on patient care as opposed to being a doctor where you had to be able to be your oxygen. Oh, wasn't your friend Andy supposed to be here by now? Oh, my God. I thought that told you. Uh, Dr. Andy threw out his back. Oh, God. He can't make do anything. He can't even talk. Oh, damn. Now I have to reconfigure the whole processional. Um, Bob, why doesn't Greg stand in for Andy to be the S.R.T. Oh. No, Pam. So that'll be fine. Bob, Greg will be your second usher. Good. Uh... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, sure. Good. All right. Well, let's all finish up and get ready to go because we have a preactivity briefing in about 32 minutes. Oh, that's too real. Hmm. They're really good in that case. I'd better get upstairs and pay a little visit to the shower fairy. Dana, thank you so much for registering. I did. I did. Yeah, it's kind of a nasty feeling, isn't it, when you're sort of in company where you're being made to feel very much on the outer. I can remember at time I was nine years of age when I first had that sort of experience. And at nine, you know, you're very vulnerable and you want inclusion, you want acceptance. And our family moved around quite a bit. We had been living on the Blue Mountains in Glenbrook and we moved to the city. And for a little while I had to stay with my grandma, our whole family did down in Pagewood. And I went to a school in the middle of the year, and I believe you joined a school midway through the year. It's a really bad time to join because everybody's got their friends. And so I can remember coming into this class and look, I don't know what it was. I never, ever, I can still recall the feelings. I never felt accepted in that class. I, kids were mean to me, kids were poking fun at me. And tonight I'm going to actually name and shame that school because of the emotional pain, because of some of the scarring, which even to this day affects me in terms of my appearance in front of large groups, and my ability to speak in public. So that school, guys, was D.C.ville Primary, about 25 minutes drive from here, just south of Kingsford. And look, I don't know what it was about me then, but I just never, ever got off the ground in the one term that I was there. And I'm just wondering what it is that might be coming to your mind in a similar way. Some discrimination is based, as James says, on looks and appearance. I learned the inadequacy of that long ago when I was in college. I used to work at a furniture shop, a prestige furniture shop in Melbourne. I worked there Friday nights and all day Saturday. And it was a great, I mean, a lot of my colleagues were working in gardens and picking up rubbish and stuff. I was selling prestige furniture. It was a tremendous opportunity. And as the only part-timer in the whole store, I would get all the customers that none of the professional salesmen wanted. And I remember one particular Friday night, a guy drove into the car park, and we used to have full view of all the customers. This guy drove in in a Ute, he got out, he had a flannelette shirt, he had shorts, he had work boots. And I remember the chief salesman said, "Aghn you, this one is for you. He's going to be a real doozy." Because most of the people were coming from Melbourne and Turek and these kind of places, because the shop was located in Glonaro. So this guy was a little bit different to the kind of people who were normally coming through. I was a part-timer. I was full of enthusiasm. I had nothing to lose. I went up, greeted the guy, but pretty hard to engage him. He kind of wandered around the various displays, it was a massive showroom. And he didn't show a lot of interest, but I was trying to point out the features of this lounge suite and that dining. He wanted to see everything. At the end, he just said this. He said, "You know what? My daughter is getting married in about three months' time. I want to set her up." He said, "We need to walk around again because I've picked out the dining room suite, the lounge suite, the kitchen suite, and the bedroom suite that I want to buy for her." That was the biggest sale in the store of that week, and you just can't. So those guys kind of learn a little bit of a lesson, as I'm sure many of us have. Guys, prejudice, favoritism, discrimination. It happens in 101 different ways, but Jesus Christ sees things very differently. Jesus Christ has a very different perspective on things, and with its unequivocal emphasis on justice, on grace, on hope, forgiveness, and dignity. Christianity affirms the intrinsic or the essential nature or value and quality of all people. Irrespective of race, color, creed, and class, you know, behind most of the initiatives. Most of the initiatives throughout history to achieve justice, equality, and human rights for powerless people. There's been someone or some group of people with hearts breaking, with Christ-like compassion. I'm talking about the evolution of slavery. I'm talking about the civil rights movement in the United States and in other parts of the world. I'm talking about the origins of most of the large aid agencies. Most of them can be traced back to people who are gripped with a sense of Christ-like compassion and wanted to make a difference, and much of the inspiration for these initiatives has come from the teaching of the Bible. The example of Jesus Christ. Books like James, this is what we're looking at in this series, which acknowledges and recognises that the Christian church doesn't always get it right. They had problems back there. James addresses his letter primarily to new Christians, drawn from the ancient Jewish religion, where wealth and power and prestige were directly linked to piety and holiness. In other words, the wealthier and more influential you were, the more it was considered you were in touch with God, the more you were being blessed by God. That's how it was in those days. I mean, what was at the heart of most of the conflict that Jesus experienced with the religious leaders of the day? Many of whom were fabulously wealthy. What was at the heart of the conflict? The fact that he gave attention, he ministered, he took time to care for the people they had written off. The people that they regarded as absolutely worthless. The dregs of society, Jesus spent a lot of his time with those people, and that's when he incurred the wrath and the indignation of the religious leaders. It would seem that some of the early converts to Christianity in the 1st century, they were bringing some of these attitudes over with them in the Christianity. That's why James hits this theme so hard. Let me read again verses two to four, "Suppose a rich man wearing a gold ring and fine clothes comes to your meeting and a poor man in ragged clothes also comes if you show more respect to the world-dressed man and say to him, 'Have this best seat here,' but say to the poor man, 'Stand over there, or sit it on the floor by my seat, then you are guilty of creating distinctions among yourselves and are making judgments based on evil motives.'" Guys, I want to leave you with several things that you can really think about tonight based on this fairly confronting passage. Three things to provoke further thought, and certainly you're going to pick this up, those of you in the connection groups, that's the theme for this week. First one is this, there's a powerful truth here. There's a very powerful truth in this passage. Our God is not one who occasionally reaches down to the poor and the disenfranchised and the palace just to get his picture on the front page of a social magazine. Like, that's not the nature of our God. He's not pragmatic like that. He actually became a poor, disenfranchised, weak and powerless person. He came to us as a baby, born to very poor parents. Theologians call it the incarnation. God with us, and this truth is at the heart of the Christian message. God became like us. We can power us in the most extreme way. Paul picks up on this in Philippians, he says this in chapter 2. He, Jesus, always had the nature of God, but did not think that by force he should try to become equal with God, instead of his own free will, he gave up all he had, gave up all he had, and took the nature of the servant. He became like man and appeared in human likeness. He was humble. He walked the path of obedience all the way to death, his death on the cross, because the greatest tribute paid to the value of a human soul, of a human being is the fact that God almighty chose deliberately, intentionally, to become one of us in the person of Jesus. That's the greatest tribute to the value of humanity. Here's the second thing I want to leave you with. There's a proven reality in this passage, a proven reality. God does some of his very best work among people who through physical and spiritual poverty recognize and acknowledge their need of him. He does some of his best work when people acknowledge and recognize their need of him born out of, in some cases, physical, but in other cases, a combination of physical and spiritual poverty. You see, in that situation, there's an openness. There's a level of vulnerability. There's an attitude of submission on the part of someone who's not dependent on arrogant self-sufficiency. That's what James is getting at. Of Jesus, it was said the common people, meaning the poor, ordinary, downtrodden people. The common people heard him gladly. They could resonate with what he was saying and the way he was putting the great truths of his gospel. You see, he offered hope. He offered new beginnings. He offered grace. He offered life. It was Jesus who said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and he was referring to those prepared to acknowledge their need, either arising out of physical poverty or arising out of spiritual poverty. Those who recognize their need of forgiveness, their need of help, their need of a savior. Here's the third thing, a pernicious misunderstanding. Ooh, that's a big word past the gram. Well, it is a big word for a Sunday night. Pernicious means very harmful, potentially destructive. What is this potentially harmful misunderstanding? Is this the Jesus and the church have a hang-up about wealth and money? That's a very potentially harmful misunderstanding, and one which has encroached in many branches of the church over the years, and one which has put forward today in an effort to make those who are people of means make them feel very uncomfortable and very squirmy. Somebody says, "Well, after all, doesn't the Bible say that money is the root of all evil?" Well, no, it doesn't actually say that. It says, "The love of money is the root, the source of all evil." It's the love of money. If you depend on it, if you're obsessed by it, if you do anything to get it, if you make it your God, if you become arrogantly self-sufficient because of the size of your bank account, it will be a source of evil for you because you will be unable to reach out out of a sense of need and grasp God's gift of grace. That's when it is an evil force because you cannot be, as Jesus describes, one who is poor in spirit. Jesus associated with rich people. He was buried in a rich man's tomb. He didn't make apology for it. He told stories of banquets, of lavish weddings, of large land holdings. He didn't say, "Oh, there was a man with a, who owned a large farm." Oh, only joking. I'm sorry. I don't want to offend anybody. Jesus understood. There were people who, by virtue of their giftedness and by virtue of their abilities, just seem to make a lot of money, or make money. He understood that. Here at Northside, we wouldn't have enjoyed anywhere near the effectiveness in ministry we have, if it wasn't for some of our people, with the means to give, who were willing to give, who were prepared to let God touch their wallet, touch their bank account, like we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for some of those people. And many ministries are here serving and witnessing today because there are people who support them with incredible, incredible generosity. And sometimes it's a sort of an inconsistency when people who want to really get stuck into the rich are the first to come to them when they need something. There's a really inconsistency there, which I've never fully understood. So when James talks about rich people, it's not with the idea of exclusion. It's with the idea of no favoritism. That's it. As Paul puts it in Galatians, "There is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free, between men and women, all are one." This was pre the emancipation of slavery back in the first century. The Paul makes the point, all are one, it was the beginnings of a movement that would eventually have an incredible effect on slavery in America and in other parts of Europe. All are one in union with Christ Jesus. Guys, the church is meant to be free of prejudice. It is meant to be free of discrimination. It is meant to be free of favoritism and preferential treatment. Has it achieved that? No, no. Some of the most insidious forms of discrimination can actually be attributed to very misguided theology. That's been one of the sad aspects of history. Has the church achieved this yet? No. Will it achieve it this side of heaven? No. But our individual churches like Northside and so many others, are we trying to express a level of unity and togetherness and oneness in pursuit of kingdom objectives? You bet we are. We certainly are. There's a huge diversity in this church, socially, economically. In terms of the size of bank balance, you've got to be, I guess, in a position of a past that I just understand that and know that. It's amazing. The diversity in this church is breathtaking, ethnic backgrounds, intellectual capacity. It's one aspect of the church that I personally treasure most of all. It's one of the aspects of this ministry that just excites me the most. Are we free of the potential for exclusivity? Never. We've got to be vigilant. But are we working in harmony across the generations, across the social standings and we're working together in pursuit of kingdom goals? We certainly are. The question tonight is are you part of Christ's army? That's the question I want to ask you. Are you part of Christ's army? Have you joined the ranks of those seeking to fight injustice, inequality, prejudice, partiality? Have you joined the ranks and you're part of this worldwide movement whose founder spoke ever so strongly against this sort of thing, who modelled a way of life that included everybody? Have you joined his army? Are you working for inclusion and togetherness in all the areas of your world? You can join or you can recommit, you can join for the first time or you can recommit tonight. The invitation we extend here every Sunday night is to become a Christian. It's as simple as that. Are you a Christian? Would you like to become a Christian? Very shortly when we start to sing and we'll have some ministry come up the back, it's your opportunity to come forward and say, "You know what, I don't understand at all, but I've seen in that baptism tonight something has spoken to me and the songs tonight and prayers and even something what you said in those last few moments kind of grabbed my attention. I'd like to start the journey. I don't exactly what it's going to leave, but if you tell me that God will meet me more than half way, I'm ready to take the first step." That's basically what we're asking for tonight. I've got a moment from my life which some of you have heard before, but many of you haven't. And to me, I was thinking about it during the weekend. It's the moment which I guess more than any other moment of my life encapsulates a lot of what James is trying to say. The fact is like some of you, I've been to some of the greatest churches in the world. I've had the privilege of preaching and a couple of them in America that are just awe-inspiring in terms of their influence on the world. But probably the greatest church I've ever been to was a church in the slums of Mumbai in 1997, and we gathered in a little room that wouldn't have even been as big as our board room. About 60 people gathered in there on the floor and we sang, we prayed, we praised. And these people exhibited a level of joy and faith that I have really seen. It was so touching, it was the kind of stuff that moved into tears. And we left that little church and within 24 hours, the pastor got in touch with us. He said, "Guys, can I just ask you to go into the slums just one more time? There's a lady who desperately wants to meet you." It was myself, the head of our overseas mission board, or a mission's work in church of Christ as it was then, and a journalist who we took to produce a video of the whole experience. He said, "Look, I know you've got a busy schedule because you've got a great story to tell." We went back to this little tiny house deep in the slums of Mumbai and just was just so tiny. This lady, a single mother, had raised two boys in a room that, like I'm ashamed to say, would be barely two thirds of the size of my office. And she was a gracious lady, she was so excited. The story was, she said, "I came to Jesus in this church 19 years ago. You are the first Australians I've met, and I want to just say thank you to you and thank you to all of Australia for establishing the Christian center of Bombay as it was then, where she had come to Christ, and then they'd planted a church in the slums." Now, she didn't say it like that, right? She's talking through an interpreter, but she's got a big smile on her face, and we're sitting on the floor, and we're begin to enjoy her hospitality. And she then said to the interpreter that she'd like to give us a little gift, a little hospitality gift. And she had these beautiful stainless steel beakers lined up on this little bench. And she had a beautiful picture of water. And she said she wanted to give us some water. It was a hot day, I wanted to refresh her, it was refreshes. And we had survived two weeks in India, because we never touched the local water. And then, of course, I've since seen some dog millionaire where they kind of re-glue the tops, and hello, well, I didn't even know about that, thank goodness. But we'd only ever had the bottled water, see? So I looked across at Jeff, my colleague, and he just went, "Don't touch it, mate." I mean, like you said, just said, "No way." We looked outside of her, there was a pool out there where the mosquitoes were jumping in such a way as it just looked like rain was falling. Like, this is the worst housing area I've ever been in, and the slums of Mumbai, if you've seen some dog, it is one of the worst in the world. And so, I don't know what he said to her, but it was obvious that it was disappointing for her that we wouldn't take part in hospitality. And we felt shocking. Here's a lady saying, "You know, you Australians, out of your wealth, you established the church. I now know Jesus. I just want to give you this." So it was a very awkward moment. And then, a few moments later, as we were preparing to leave, one of the two boys from this family came back into this little tiny home with three icy cold bottles of Pepsi, which they took the tops off, one for Jeff, one for me, one for this girl. We felt shocking, because this guy had gone out to one of the little traders, and he bought these. We estimated later, she was an ironer, lots of ironing ladies in India. That's why they all closed, they're so nicely pressed. We estimated later that that probably cost her around about possibly up to two and a half days of her salary in rupees. Now guys, I've never been to the home of a total stranger in any church of the world where within moments of meeting me, somebody's given me the equivalent of half their wages. I've just never happened before. So that moment, I'll let you fill in all the pieces and join the dots, but that speaks to me something about how it's meant to be in the Kingdom of God. Out of the wealth of Australia, we established that church. That lady came to Christ and through her spiritual openness, she taught me and the other two a lesson in humility and generosity and commitment and faith that I will never forget. And James says, "That's what God's done to the poor. He's given them a kind of a beauty, a special openness to Him that enables them to minister to us. We don't go and minister to the poor. They minister to us. We're changed in the context we have with them, and that's not meant to make us feel bad, but it is meant to make us learn and grow through their example. Are you on the team of Jesus tonight? You can make a difference in the world. That's what we're aiming to do. Let's bow and pray it."