Northside Church - Sydney
To The Ends of The Earth Part 2 – Week 2: Examining AM Message
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. I took this call about, I reckon, about 80 months ago. It was on a Sunday night. It was from a former colleague of mine in Adelaide, a lady called Ross and she said, "Hey Graham, I've met a guy today who said it's a miracle you're still in the church." And she told her the story and I kind of laughed because I hadn't thought about this incident for a while. And I guess it could have been one of those moments that could have driven certain people from the church, but my faith was strong enough to weather this particular incident. The guy who spoke to Ross was talking about a time when I was 19 years of age. I was worshipping at a church in Perth. I'm not going to mention the name of the church because this is the only sort of partially negative story I've ever shared about this church. And these messages of podcasts, I'm not going to mention the name, but I was involved in the church. And at 19 years of age, I had got to the point where I had been selected to serve communion. Exactly. It was a big deal, open to men only, sorry ladies, men only, about 19 years and above. And it was a big deal, eight men serve communion every Sunday morning, lined up across the front. And you actually went to classes to get the steps right, it was a big deal, right? You had to wear a suit, you had to wear a white shirt, you had to wear a tie. And if the pastor decided that it was coats on, it was coats on for everybody. You know how hot it gets in Perth like it gets really, really hot. And on a really hot day, we'd all be praying that Mr Wood would recognize how hot it was and he'd come in and say, you know, gentlemen, it's a little bit warm, but I think we'll go with coats on today. Is that okay? Oh gosh, coats on, right? So on this particular day, I was there very, very proud and very excited and we met in the little vestry and Minister came in praying, the elders and then an elder whose name I won't mention, lovely guy, we were great friends in the end, but I'll call him Mr Daniels. He came across to me and said, Graham, congratulations, it's great to have you on the special team of serving communion. I said, oh thank you, Mr Daniels, I'm pretty proud and he said, Graham, you're aware of our dress code. I said, oh yeah, of course, I was being very, I had the suit, had the, he said, you're aware of our need for a white shirt, said, well, yes, he said a little bit of a line in yours, a little pencil stripe in my white shirt. I can still see the shirt was a tab collar, it was white and look from two metres back, it was white. When you've got up close, there's a little pencil stripe in it, he'd seen it. So I guess that could have put a lot of people off, this guy was standing in the room and he'd overheard that conversation and he, I'd sort of forgotten that, he'd told this friend of mine. But what we had in those days in that church, which by the way, was a great church, I mean it was a, it was a large church. They sent out more missionaries and ministers than any church I've been associated with. They were a evangelical church, warm fellowship, great youth group, it was a great church, but they were just a little narrow in certain areas, let's just say that, right? But what we had here was performance based Christianity, that's what we had, performance based Christianity. Christianity based on the grace of God, but with a few additional requirements relating to dress, relating to grooming, no longer here, relating to choice of beverage, relating to choice of music and entertainment, I can remember the uproar, the consternation when some of the elders heard that some of us had been to see Billy Thorpe, you young ones ask your mum and dad, they'll tell you all about Billy Thorpe. And even more uproar and they found some of us had been to see the easy beats. Oh boy, no Christian was to see that sort of hit movement, let alone experience it. So we're in big trouble, see? So this was the kind of, the sort of setting when I was a 19-year-old, right, in this church. Well friends, what we have here in the 15th chapter of Acts is the beginnings of performance based Christianity, in that there were people who felt that the simple message of Jesus dying and being raised to life and accepting people who received His grace, that that wasn't enough. These people said that no, there's got to be more and they believe that more was required on the part of the person responding to Christ's invitation. They believe the person should also embrace the basic rituals and the rights of the Jewish faith with all its laws and its intricate requirements, including for the guys circumcision. What you can appreciate, this was not very popular. It was particularly among any male over more than a few days old. And so when a delegation came to the church in Antioch, hell-bent on introducing this kind of thinking into the life of the church, these people were met with fierce resistors. In fact, the good news says there was a fierce argument between Paul and Barnabas and the Judei-ices as they were known. Have a look at this in verse 2. Paul and Barnabas got into a fierce argument about this and it was decided with them, with the Judei-ices, and it was decided that Paul and Barnabas and some of the others in Antioch should go to Jerusalem and see the apostles and elders about this matter. Now friends, this was serious stuff. This is really wise. This was potentially a deal breaker as the early church was starting to spread. I think in fact it's fair to say the events recorded in Acts 15 represent a defining moment in the life of the early, of the 1st century church, because if the people requiring wanting these performance enhancing additions, if they had their way, it could have severely impeded the spread of Christianity, it could have actually reduced Christianity to a little more than a Jewish sect, a little weird branch of the Jewish church. But as it turned out, under the guidance of God and under the guidance of the Spirit and as part of God's fulfillment of His plan, the church worked its way through this impasse. Now here's the thing. The steps involved, the steps involved in this process of working through I believe provide a pattern for missional effectiveness which every church would do well to embrace. You see the centerpiece of Acts chapter 15 is what we know as the Jerusalem Council, a major event, a major event brought on by the controversy up there in Antioch. And this gathering of apostles and elders and rank and file members, the issues were raised, they were thrashed out, and a positive outcome was achieved. Check it out in Acts 15, it's a great chapter to read, and it's possible I believe for any church to become what I call an Acts 15 church. It's possible for any church to become an Acts 15 church. You see, an Acts 15 church does a number of things. It demonstrates a number of important principles. An Acts 15 church, first of all, acknowledges the potential for deep differences of opinion among its members. I mean, let's face it, look, the Bible is a complex book, right? It's a complex book, and there are many viewpoints on the doctrines and the teachings contained therein. That's a reality. Look, as a pastor, I've got to say, I expect a certain amount of diversity within the life of the church. I really do, and I welcome it. I think it's a healthy thing. It's a positive thing. We're all products of different backgrounds and different experiences, and we bring these together in a unified way, in a church that's rich with heritage and background. I think it's a positive thing. I know of churches where members are compelled to believe pretty much the same thing, and it's usually what the preacher believes, and in those settings, anybody with a slightly different viewpoint can be made to feel decidedly unwelcome. Have you been to churches like that? In such setting, there's not a lot of room for original thinking. There's not a lot of room for healthy disagreement. In contrast, here in Jerusalem, at the Jerusalem Council, the tension in the air, initially at least, was fairly high, as opposing viewpoints about the nature of salvation were expressed. Now, if that's where it had been left, of course, that would have been pretty sad if it had just been above that tension and sharing different viewpoints, but that's not where it ended. This Acts 15 Church was too smart for that to happen. Their openness to God's leading and guidance was their inabundance, and it's a great source of inspiration to us today to see the way they did it. You see, an Acts 15 Church draws on the wisdom of its mature members. The apostle Peter gets to his feet pretty early in the debate, and he speaks with great conviction and great authority and reminds him of his experience with Cornelius, which would have been about 10 or 12 years before. You remember the story of Cornelius? Peter's in a dream, he's having a dream, first of all, he's very hungry, and then he has a dream, and in the dream, a sheet is lowered from heaven and has all these animals on it and reptiles and all the things that Jewish people wouldn't touch, and a voice comes to him and says, "Rise, Peter, kill, and eat," and Peter goes, "Oh, no way, Lord, but all that stuff." We would never touch that as a Jew, and the voice of heaven says, "Let what God declares as clean be clean." Don't let anybody say it's unclean, and the message was clear. My gospel, my good news is to go to everybody, it's to go to the people whom you have always traditionally seen as unworthy and unclean, it's to go to the whole lot. So here's Peter, or rather, here they are in Jerusalem, and they're arguing about the necessity to become Jews before you become Christian, and Peter says, "Hey, look, we're going over all ground. In my ministry, God's already shown me," but this is not how it is. We're just going over stuff we've already supposed to have resolved. Look at what he says in verses 8 to 11, I really like this, he says, "And God," this is Peter, "who knows the thoughts of everyone," has shown his approval of the Gentiles by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he had to us. He made no difference between us and them. He forgave their sins because they believed. So then, why do you now want to put God to the test by laying a load, get that, a load on the backs of the believers, which neither our ancestors nor we ourselves were able to carry? No, we believe, and are saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are. It's pretty powerful stuff, it's pretty strong. Thank you, Lord, for the mature members of churches, including Northside, for the men and women whose experience of God is rich and deep. The mature saints of the church, thank God for them. Notice I didn't say thank God for the old people, we love the old people, but that's not what we're talking about. We didn't say thank God for all those who've been around for ages. We love those too, but that's not what we're talking about here. It doesn't say thank God for those who have given a lot of money over the years. It says thank you, God, for the mature ones, and that can mean people of any age or gender. And friends, I've got to say, I never cease to marvel at the number of mature Christians God has led here to Northside. It's just amazing. We've come from different backgrounds, represent a wide age range, young, old, in between. People who've really lived the faith, and we as pastors, we draw deeply on your experience and we're inspired by you. Part of our role as pastors is to make sure we get mature Christians into frontline leadership positions where they can influence the heart, the soul and the direction of the church. It's our task to ensure mature Christians become elders. We fast-track people into those roles here, quicker than most churches I know, and most churches you've got to be around for a couple of decades before you qualify. We have people here in the first three years of membership who become elders, a connection group leaders, in positions where they can exercise a mighty influence on the pace, on the culture, the DNA, the overall spiritual health of the church, maybe God's calling you to be one of our frontline leaders. Maybe you've been ducking for cover, maybe God is going to attach your life and prepare you for the approach that will come from one of us to invite you into a more prominent position based on your experience of Jesus over the years, your maturity in the faith. We need you. Well the church in Jerusalem, when they needed to solve a major problem, when they needed to discern the will and the purpose of God, they drew on the wisdom of one of their experienced mature members. As it turns out, Peter's speech made a significant difference to the debate. He represented a definite turning point. You see, an ex-church is able to reach consensus on issues that are vital to the growth of the church. An ex-15 church is able to reach consensus on issues that are vital to the growth of the church. And that's what happened in Jerusalem. That's exactly what happened. I love verse 22. Look at verse 22 of Acts chapter 15. In the apostles and all the elders, together with the whole church, decided to choose some men from the group and send them to Antioch. The apostles, the elders, together with the whole church, decided, okay, nobody crossed the floor. This wasn't dependent on the casting vote of the chairman. There were no winners and losers in that combative sense. This was where everybody was a winner because they reached consensus. The elders, the church leaders, the apostles, they all sort of, this is a good move to make under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And the decision was to send a letter to the Christians in Antioch to apologize for the aggressive behavior of those early Judei-Isers and assuring them that salvation is for everybody. It's all about God's grace. But someone says, "Well, wait a minute, Leslie's reading earlier on. There's a reference there to don't eat food off into idols, not to eat in the animal that's been strangled, et cetera. Isn't that a bit legalistic? Isn't that a bit of a throwback to the old ways? That sounds a bit allow, isn't it, you know, whatever?" These particular guidelines, there was an explanation here. They were laid out to strengthen the unity between the Christians coming from a Jewish background and those coming from a pagan background. Now, this was to strengthen the relationship. You see, if the Jewish Christians, if they had been thrust into eating environments where all of their past rules had been thrown out the window, they would have found that quite intimidating. These rules were not related to salvation. They were related to courtesy, respect, the preservation of unity. Like that incident I told a couple of weeks ago, where we were in Jesus' palace and a guy said to us in our tour, "Party," he said, "Look, I'm feeling uncomfortable here. This reminds me of my old life." And out of courtesy for that guy, we didn't say, "Well, sorry, buddy, we got here. We're going to suck it up." We said, "Look, okay, well, let's leave. Let's leave. We got a brother here who's feeling uncomfortable. We'll leave." I got a pastor friend in another state who likes a drink, but he told me once that he would not drink with anybody. As a pastor, he won't drink with anybody until he knows more about their journey because he doesn't want to, as a pastor, ever be a bad example to somebody who might have a problem in that area. It's the Romans 14, 13, principle, not causing a brother to stumble. It's in the area of sensitivity, it's in the area of heightened awareness of our responsibility as Christians. That's why these rules about eating and so on were put in there, but we could say more about that if we had time. Here's the last thing, everybody, an Acts 15 church is resolute. It's resolute about making it easy for people to experience the grace of God. It's really resolute. They're not going to make—this church is not going to make people jump through hoops and force them to comply with any man-made teaching, but simply urge them to surrender to the lordship of Christ. They're not going to impose any additional rules and regulations, colors of shirt and length of hair, that sort of thing. They're merely going to ask believers to open up to God and allow him to do the work of transformation, which is his specialty area. It's not up to us to do that. That's God's work. He's the one who specializes in the transformation of the human heart. We've got to allow him to do that work. Look what James' contribution to the debate was, James, another one of the mature members. Look what he says in verse 19. We are not going to unnecessarily burden non-Jewish people who turn to the master. That's from the message. Isn't that great? We are not going to unnecessarily burden Jewish people who turn to the master—or rather non-Jewish, I should say—non-Jewish people. So, guys, there are some characteristics of the Acts 15 church that we can embrace today, and in saying that, I'm talking to each and every one of us, because we are the church. There's not an elders thing, there's not a ministry team thing, this is everybody. We need to acknowledge the fact that there's diversity in the church of Jesus Christ. We need to draw on the wisdom of our older and more mature, not necessarily older, but our more mature brothers and sisters. We need to be able to reach consensus on things that are vital to our growth, not necessarily things that are precious to us, but things that we know are going to assist in the growth of the church. And we should certainly be making it easy for people to respond to God's grace. I think I've had many opportunities to do that over the years. I know I had one opportunity that I will always remember to make it easy for people to experience God's grace. It was in my very first ministry, I was just in my 20s, I remember this and Bev members, this was a hot night in Adelaide, really hot night, and I was sitting around watching television in my stubby's bare feet and a tank top. I know it's a frightening thought, but in my 20s I had a body that could actually handle that kind of gear, stubby's a tank top bare feet and at 9 o'clock at night the doorbell rang. And we had a little baby on the thing of course, who's that, go to the door, and I'm confronted by two people, a woman who looked much older than she turned out to actually be. She'd had a very hard life that became apparent as we were able to talk. And a guy who was clearly about twice her age, and he may have been in the midst of major orthodontic work because when he smiled, there was not a tooth in his head, I'm not kidding you. Not one, just smiled and he was beaming, he didn't say much. And she said, "Are you going to magnate?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Do you do weddings?" I said, "Yes, she will not get married." So I said, "Well, okay, okay, let's talk, it's okay, come on in." So they came in and we had a little study off the side in that first man, so we went in there. And she started to tell her story, and it was a pretty colourful story, told with equally colourful language, really colourful language, you know. And I'm just sitting there, taking it all in, and she said, "My name's Betty," and she rattled off this detail, and she said, "This is Jim, and I know what you're thinking, he's a lot older than me, but let me tell you something, he's the only man who's ever shown me respect, treated me with dignity, and treated me like a lady, and we want to get married." So, you know, it was chatting away, very, and at one point it seemed right to say, "Look, can I just ask one question?" I said, "Why me?" You know? She said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Why me, why are you asking for a minister?" And for the first time in 15 minutes, she was speechless, and she was embarrassed, and she said, "I'll tell you, exactly," and she said, "Oh my God, are you a minister?" I said, "Yes." And she looked at this guy, and they both went very, oh my gosh, I'm really sorry. She said, "Like some friends of ours went to a service she did recently, and they said, 'Hey, Maggie, that's a great service, he lives in Drummond Avenue, you go to Enseem.' We thought you were a celebrant." I thought they might have noticed my College of the Bible, you know, sort of diplomas on the war, Melbourne College of Divinity. She hadn't, hadn't seen that. Tank top stubbies, maybe that's what celebrants were, I don't know. Is that right, Annie? I don't know. But she said, I said, "Well, you know, does that make a difference?" And I'll never forget what she responded. She said, "Oh, but wouldn't that make a difference to you? Wouldn't that make a difference to you?" I said, "Well, no, it won't." If you want to come and be married before God, and if you give me a chance to explain to you in the next week or two what that means, then I'm happy to marry you. Absolutely. Well, we had the wedding and the reception in a backyard in the Adelaide suburb of Cowan Dilla, and if I had half an hour, I could tell you about that particular wedding and reception. There were some of the really funky, colorful people of Adelaide at that play, that one I'd tell you. It was wild. It was a great afternoon, and we had some great theological discussions with some people. It was just an amazing afternoon. The bride cried right on cue, it was fantastic, you know. Now I'd love to tell you that, you know, Betty and Jim came to Brooklyn Park Church to Christ and gloriously receive Jesus. Look, they didn't do that, not in my time there. But I think what did happen, about three years after that wedding, and I'd almost forgotten all about Betty, and I got a phone call from her, and she was very teary, and she said, "Gram, something terrible has happened. Jim's died." She said, "We had three good years together, but he's passed away, and I want you to do the service, and I want to give him a really good farewell. Can we do that?" So again, another opportunity, you know, to talk to a lot of very different people, and they share something of the love and the grace of God. Friends, that's our role, not just as ministers, as individual people, with the kind of people you meet and the people you have interaction with, that's our role, to make it easy for people to tap in and to experience the love and the grace of God. We must never unnecessarily burden people, the people we meet who need to hear and respond and experience the mighty grace of God. Church is not a religious club or a religious museum. The church of Jesus Christ is more like an emergency ward, and there are a lot of people around who need the healing touch of the gospel of Jesus, and that's our role. Let's bear in prayer, shall we? Well, heavenly Father, we thank you for the Acts 15 church meeting there at the Council of Jerusalem. We're an inspiring group of people. Lord, they have set out for us some principles that we can embrace all these centuries later, and we know deep down that if we do that, it's going to make us so much more effective in our missional work for you. Thank you, Lord, that we as a church at Northside, we've embraced, or at least are embracing pretty much all of these principles. That's why we are where we are, and that's why you're blessing us. But Lord, we don't want to be complacent. We want to constantly look for ways of introducing people who need to experience the grace of God. We want to constantly be making it easy for them to experience that, not getting to jump through hoops and put up unnecessary barriers. We don't want to burden anybody who wants to receive you with anything other than the compassionate, all-consuming call of Jesus to follow. In His strong name we pray, amen.