Northside Church - Sydney
One Thing
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. There are torches, and then there are torches. Flashlights, if you're American, iron and can. I know you hear this morning. I knew that when I was a kid because I'd always play around with these flimsy little things. I had no strength, no power in them, and then came along something straight out of the United States. It was heavy duty. It was serious. It was called a maglite. It was like no torch I'd ever seen before because at the end of this maglite was this funny adjustment. If you took the torch and you began to twist it, it would take all these rays of light that were heading in a million different directions all around the room and it would focus them into a single point. Now this once flimsy weak style torch would pierce into the night sky like nothing I'd ever seen before. There are torches and then there are torches. What is this passage teaching us? It was teaching us how to maglite your life. That the gospel gathers all of your life and it focuses it into an intensity. An intensity and a focus that means there's a greater power as we grow closer and move toward God. Paul's experience shows us that the gospel gathers your life and pushes it to a single point, one thing. What's that time of year again, isn't it? I could ask you how do your resolutions go for 2010? Mine waved a little bit, in fact I didn't go that well so I figured I'll come up with some new ones for 2011. I'll no longer waste my time reliving the past instead I'll spend it worrying about the future. I'll do less laundry and use more deodorant. I will give up chocolates totally 100 per cent seriously honestly. I'll try to figure out while I really need nine email addresses, I'll try and work out whether I should get a different password other than password. I don't know you can take some of them, take it or leave it but it's that time of year again. It's funny I was reading an article in the paper, one psychologist said that about 90 per cent of the resolutions that we'll make for this year we're not going to keep. Part of the reason is we're just doing it so it's a way in order for people to feel better. The question is not so much what we're going to resolve to do in 2011 but why? We're going to do it in 2011. Why if we dare to look much deeper, there's not so much about the type of resolution but the motivation behind it. What is that? Often for many of us it's this inner murmur of restlessness, this still small voice that we can never quite keep quiet that says to us you're never going to be good enough. Always constantly moving and driving and shifting and resolving in order to make things that would make us feel better in and of ourselves that we might feel right and not the ultimate level feel okay with God. It's a sort of motivation that drives us. This is I can change me, I can change me through status and achievement and success and ultimately we're saying to God hey I can be self-sufficient. I've got my life under control. How do your resolution stuck up against this self-sufficiency? The examples of the why is it for approval? Is it for this sense of okayness with God? Are you constantly worried about whether he's accepting you or not? Are you trying to control your life? I guess the question all I'm asking first up this morning, are you resolving what to do in 2011 or are you resolving why you're doing it in 2011? Is your Christianity just another resolution for this year and is that the way the Bible calls us to live? Is Christianity really another resolution we're in January? We get ourselves worked up and fervent and I'm going to read more, I'm going to pray more, I'm going to do more. Now we're called to live a life of faith and obedience where God changes us by the power of his Holy Spirit. He does the work in us and when we look at these passages Paul gives us a wonderful example, look at his intensity and his focus, how do we get it? First of all we see that he moved from perfection to participation. Now does the word like remain anything to you guys? It did to me this year when I took up road cycling again for the first time in a little while and talk about imperfections like there was one way to expose all of those, particularly when you're just starting off. So I was talking up with my friends and I'd been cycling before and I was kitted up in all the gear, I didn't bring it in today for your own benefit and I began to talk it up, I've been riding before stretching the legs, getting already, I get out there at Westhead with the rest of the boys, I get on almost a brand new road bike and get out there and the rest of the guys who've been riding for years and years, they take off and they begin to absolutely kill me and I am huffing and puffing up these hills to the point where I'm almost feeling sick and they have taken off into the distance and it's funny how the road can do that to you but it was a moment of honesty for me as I was reeling from the effects of the lactic acid and the breakfast that was starting to come up a little bit after exerting so much effort and I really had to say to myself I'm not as good as I thought I was. Well, we can almost feel the same like that in our faith, we get around other Christians and we think how can we compete with that? I mean they're so nice, they're so loving, they're just so Christian and I can't compete with that, we're up in our church lycra, we've got all the gear on, we've got the Bible but we are huffing up and puffing up the hills of faith, how can we do that and I'm sure people would have felt like that with Paul. Look at the rap, he gives himself in verse 4-7, he says, you think I've got a lot to boast about, check this out, I'm from the chosen people of Israel, I'm from the tribe of Benjamin, that's a good tribe if you didn't know that, from the Hebrews of Hebrews and when it comes to law, faultless. Hey, talk yourself up Paul, but I love his honesty here, no dear brothers and sisters, I'm not all that I should be and I'm bearing all my energies on this one thing for getting the past and looking to what lies ahead. You see, for Paul, perfection gave way to participation, now is it a false humility that he's got here? I don't think so, Paul goes to great lengths in the preceding verses of this chapter to explain that he has no confidence in the flesh, it means he's got no confidence in his achievements, he's got no confidence in his success, he's got no confidence in his status as a chosen person from Israel and in verse 8 he says, I counted all his loss, I throw it all away, how can he do that? Because there's a freedom that Christianity brings, there's a freedom from the driver of 90% of our resolutions, there's a freedom Christianity brings, it's a freedom from the need to prove ourselves, and the inner murmur, you're not good enough. And the irony is that perfection is always the barrier to a right relationship with God. We think straight away, perfection of course, it's for the people that are living the rough and tumble life and you might be one of those people today that feel, I'm just not good enough to start this whole relationship with Jesus, I've got to get my life in order, but the irony also is that perfection is a barrier for those that also are too good enough to follow Jesus. I don't need Jesus in my life because, well, I'm already living a pretty good life as it is, I've got a perfect life, I'm doing the right sort of stuff, I'm reading and praying. You see, it's about participation in the divine life, Jesus always begins where you're at. Jesus, if he was in lycra, is a sort of guy that would sort of take off up the hill and then when he sees you falling behind turns the bike around and comes down and rides alongside you. It says, come on, you can make it. Come on, just keep pedaling. Jesus is the sort of cyclist that rides alongside you and you can tell that he's got all the power in the world in those legs to propel him up the hill and still he chooses to ride slowly alongside you, the great counsellor, the one that walks alongside us. It's not about having to get it right, it's about moving from perfection to participation in the peloton of the faith. So the first question is I just want to ask you, how honest are you being with yourself this morning as we move into 2011? Paul was honest with where is that within his faith, no dear brothers and sisters. I'm not all that I should be, but he was taking his resolving to revolving. So on that list of resolutions I've got to ask the Jesus thing, is Jesus on your resolution, is Jesus on that list of family and friends and I better get the faith worked out, is Jesus just another New Year's resolution for you? Because in the city where we've got so many different things to do, we've got classes and we've got lessons and we've got cooking courses. We've got so many different things we could do. What have they all got in common? It all starts with you. You take them up, you go and start the cooking lessons, you go and start the classes, you go and start the courses and often I say, well I'll take Jesus up. I'll take reading the Bible up more. I'll take praying more. I'll take doing church more. I'll take it all up. But Christianity says the opposite. It says you can't become a Christian when taking it up. You can't make yourself one. That's why Jesus says to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. You must be born again. You can't take up being born again up yourself. It's a bit of a tricky process. You must be born again. Verse 12 Paul says, "Not that I've already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." You see, you don't take Christianity up. It takes you up. That's what the passage is saying to us this morning. Paul's pressing on was a response to Christ pressing on him. My pressing on is a response to Jesus pressing in on me. The way that God has taken me out, the way that I've been caught up in the faith. So we've asked the question, is a Christian life really just another resolution? The other question is how do we make it a revolution? I'm talking not about the sort of thing that happens out of South America or those places in government where it's a bit tough around the world. What I'm saying is that you need a center of gravity. One thing that revolves is the earth around the sun. What I realize is that the earth is hurtling around the sun at thousands of kilometers an hour, and yet it still stays within the same orbit. How does the earth not just spew off into the darkness in some weird pathway that goes from left to right? It's because there's a gravity. There's a gravity at the center in which it is constantly pulling it into the right direction. You need a center of gravity that's going to allow you to have an incredible velocity in life, but not spin off into the middle of nowhere. Put it another way. It's like when you've had the larger, older cousin when you get a trampoline for Christmas. The cousin jumps up and down on the trampoline and you're just the little kid and they're sitting on the trampoline and you can't help but roll into the center because they're a little bit heavier and the whole thing is pulled down that way. When you put Jesus Christ into the very center of your life, it's like sticking him right in the middle of the trampoline. When you get on that trampoline, remember perfection, participation, you get on the trampoline and you can't help but roll in towards the center. That's what the gospel is in our lives. The gravity of the gospel is simple that there is one thing, Jesus at the very center of it all that keeps every aspect of our life on track. The gospel completely reorients everything. All of our life is being gathered up and being pushed towards one thing. The one thing, what is the one thing, Paul says, the only one thing I'm after, what's the prize that he was talking about in this passage? It was to know Christ. Verse 10 says, "I consider everything a loss with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him." He talks about how he wants to share in his suffering, being made in his likeness, being every part of Jesus' life, being made like him, being with him. You see, knowing Christ was the ultimate goal for Paul. Now it's not just headspace. Biblical knowledge is always a combination of understanding plus experience. In John chapter 17, verse 3, Jesus gives us the only definition of eternal life that we have in the entire Bible. He says it is to know the one true God, to know the one true God and Jesus Christ, whom he sent. That's his definition of eternal life. And so it's always a means to be in an interactive relationship with him. So Paul says, "I consider everything a loss compared with knowing Christ and being found in him." And so what Paul is saying is that being in the presence of Jesus is absolutely everything. That's all that matters. Why? Oh, I worked it out this year, Christmas. My sister dialed in via Skype into our Christmas lunch. And she's living in Vancouver in Canada. And so we set her up there on the table with the computer screen and plugged her into the stereo system so we had her in 5.1 surround sound just to make it feel like it was a bit closer. But it didn't feel closer. You see, we could talk, we could interact. She could be involved in the presence and all the opening. But you see, there's nothing like being in the presence of someone to know someone is about having a desire to be in their actual presence. To be able to interact, to see and feel the nuances of that relationship with them. Part of the problem is that many people live a Skype style Christianity. They interact with Jesus online and the relationship is always a little bit too much at a distance. They're never really right there in the center of his presence seeking to be intimately involved with him at the Christmas table like that. Why? In Matthew 7 verse 21, he gives that warning. He says, "Not all those that say to me, Lord, Lord, we'll enter the kingdom of heaven." Eventually he says, "Get away from me, you evil doers, for I never knew you." We can be so involved in ministry and all the things we do in church, but be living a Skype style Christianity. To know someone is about having a desire to be in their absolute presence. And that's why for real Christians, heaven's going to be a wonderful place, not just because it's going to be beautiful and wonderful and incredible and more amazing than we've ever imagined, but because Jesus is there. It's about being in his presence. So knowing God is not just about one of life's resolutions. It's life, John chapter 17 verse 3, it's life in and of itself. Knowing God and Jesus Christ, whom him sent. So are you living a Skype? Are you living a long distance relationship with Jesus Christ this morning as we head into 2011? If so, why are you mad at God? Are you feeling like you're imperfect? Are you feeling you're already not good enough? Look, the way you know that you are moving to know God more, the way you know if you're moving from perfection to participation, that your resolutions are becoming revolutions around the ultimate son. Yes, I win. The way that you know that you know God is he'd be beginning to have a consuming passion to want to know him more. How does that work? Hebrews 12 says, "For the joy set before him he endured the cross and scorned at shame sitting at the right hand of the Father." You see, it goes on to say, consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You see, we read these passages and we think, "Hey, 2011 is about following Paul's example." It's not just about following Paul's example, it's about following Jesus' example. What did he do? The ultimate light. The light of the world was gathered into an intensity and a focus that gave him a power that allowed him to endure the ultimate pain and the ultimate suffering. How? Why? Because he had one thing. One thing was you. For the joy set before him he endured the pain and scorned on the cross. After all the ministry, after all the miracles, Jesus' resolution was to make you his one thing. And as we come to understand that, that's when we make Jesus our one thing, to know Christ. So let me ask you, do you think your life's going in a hundred different directions this year? My tip for 2011 is to maglite your life. I was not saying that making resolutions a bad thing in and of themselves, but do you understand not so much what you're going to do this year, but why? Are you going to maglite your life this year? Christianity, the gospel, it gathers all aspects of our life and pushes it, thrusts it towards one thing, to know Jesus Christ. Are you resolving or revolving around Jesus in 2011? Let's pray. Father God, thank you for new starts, for fresh starts, for a new year. Lord, I pray for those this morning that still need to leave aspects of 2010 behind, that they might bring our all their energies, Father God, to forget the past and to move on to what lies ahead in Christ Jesus for them this year. Lord, I pray for those that are feeling like they're all over the place, Father that need that gospel focus and intensity through faith in Jesus Christ. Lord, I pray that if you're stirring in their hearts this morning, that they might come and receive your Son Jesus Christ during our ministry time as we gather together. Father God, for each and every one of us as a church, Lord, I thank you for just the foundation that you've laid in this place. Lord, will you continue to open up kingdom opportunities, places where we can participate, Father God, and the incredible and the wonderful and the joyful kingdom that is yours, Father God. And so, I ask this year that you might humble each and every one of us, that we might be honest with where we're at, Lord God. And we might move into this year with a spirit of humility, but also one that rejoices in the fact that we are your sons and daughters, that we are kids of the King, that we are princes and princes of the kingdom. So, Father God, may we take that into this new year. May it be one of excitement, one of anticipation, and in the midst of the inevitable challenges that we will face, both as individuals and a church, may we walk with the boldness and the confidence to know that your Son Jesus Christ walks, cycles alongside us as we move into 2011. Thank you that you sent your Son, that you guide us by the power of your Holy Spirit, and that ultimately you're a loving and a caring God that ultimately just wants to know us as we seek to know you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]