Preaching and the Packers

 

Mel Lawrenz served as senior pastor of The Elmbrook Church in Brookfield for ten years, succeeding well-known pastor Stuart Briscoe. Lawrenz now serves as minister at large with The Elmbrook Church and leads The Brook Network which is an exchange of leadership ideas sponsored by that church.

This week, after the Packers won the NFC Championship (you did hear about that, didn’t you?), Lawrenz wrote a column on The Brook Network titled “Preaching and the Packers.” He told how he would sometimes break into a series of sermons to bring a special message because of something extraordinary happening in his community or the world. He did so in 1997 on the Sunday the Packers played in their first of two Super Bowls in the 1990’s and preached a sermon he titled “How To Have a Super Life.”

He based his sermon on a section of Hebrews 12:22-34 – “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

I thought this basic summary of that sermon is worth considering as we prepare for this year’s Super Bowl, because having a “super life” with Christ far surpasses even the Packers playing in – and hopefully winning – the Super Bowl.

1. Belong to “the city of the living God.” There are Packer fans everywhere, but that does not compare with enjoying life as part of the children of God around the world.

2. Join with the “thousands of angels in joyful assembly.” A stadium full of cheering fans is exciting, but that does not compare with thousands of angels cheering for joy as they witness God’s great act of salvation; they cheer just by seeing us respond to God in faith.

3. Experience “the church of the firstborn whose names written in heaven.” Championships go down in the record books, but when we belong to Christ our names are recorded in the Book of Life for eternity.

4. Join with “the spirits of righteous men made perfect.” We admire people who strive for excellence, like talented athletes or anybody in any calling; but in Christ we are joined with the spirits of believers of past generations, heros of faith whose only claim to fame is that they knew enough to throw themselves on the mercy of God and were thus “made perfect.”

5. Get to know “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” Star quarterbacks are wonderful to watch; but the certainty that we have to live a super life is that we have come to the head of all creation, Jesus. On the cross he looked like he was utterly defeated, but in that act of sacrifice he became the mediator of a new relationship between us and the living God.

Remember that in real life there are no scoreboards; you don’t know how many minutes remain in the game; and you don’t know when “the game” is up for you. In real life–in God’s world–sometimes what looks like defeat is victory and sometimes real losers look like they’ve won the game. The Super Bowl is great fun – especially when the Packers win it. But what is greater yet is to live a super life because of Christ. That’s something to cheer about.

Westwood Message–1/20/2011

The Million Pound Challenge

Hopefully you are aware, from last week’s Westwood Message, of the Million Pound Challenge, which is sponsored by The Princeton Club. It helps out the food pantries of Southern Wisconsin.

Last week, I included the following information about the Million Pound Challenger: Between now and May 31, for every pound of weight you lose, The Princeton Club and other corporate sponsors will purchase 10 pounds of food for the Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin – up to 1 million pounds of food. You can even select which local food pantry will receive your food – which means you can select Westwood’s Food Pantry.

There is also another way that you can support our Food Pantry through the Challenge: If you don’t need to lose weight, but would like to exercise, you can also participate. For every hour that you exercise, 10 pounds of food will be donated. You do not need to exercise at the Princeton Club, but can do so wherever you choose. You just need to report your exercise time on the web site. Everything is all done on the honor system. If you already exercise, this would be a great way to put your exercise to another use.

If interested in participating, you can sign up at www.princetonclub.net/mpc. You can also make financial contributions at the web site.

It Will Cost You to Meet Jesus

Jesus did not meet people just so he would know them and they would know him. Every time Jesus met a person, there was a purpose behind it. With that purpose, comes a cost. Jesus was not shy about discussing the cost of following him with those he encountered. The cost is the same for us as it was for the people Jesus met during this three-year ministry.

Jesus discusses the cost of meeting and following him in multiple places in the Gospels. One of those places is Matthew 8:18-22. The passage is the story of two would-be followers of Christ.

1. The first of the two immediately promises Jesus he will follow him anywhere, only to have Jesus explain to him the cost of following him. He was too quick to promise.

2. The second person told Jesus he needed to first go home to bury his father. Jesus told him he could not put off following him. He was too slow to perform.

The story of these two men appears in Matthew’s Gospel in a place you would not expect it. It comes in the middle of a section documenting the authority of Jesus over various kinds of sickness, nature, and demons. Matthew wants to show us that the same Jesus, who has authority over sickness, nature, and demons, also has authority over the lives of his disciples. Jesus determines what following him will involve, not us. Therefore, if you are going to follow Jesus, it must be on his terms rather than your own.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the failure to follow Jesus on his terms “cheap grace.” He said, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.”

The contrast is “costly grace.” He said, “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price, to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. ...Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.”

When Jesus meets us, he makes radical demands on our lives, places us under his unique authority, and establishes for us the priorities of true discipleship. As we continue to examine the lives of people who met Jesus and meet him again for ourselves, I hope we will also rediscover the cost of following Jesus.

Westwood Message–1/13/2011

January Is Sanctity of Human Life Month

All of January is Sanctity of Human Life Month, and Sanctity of Human Life Sunday is normally celebrated on the Sunday in January that falls closest to the day on which the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions were handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973. We will acknowledge the importance of life on January 23 by providing you with information about CareNet Pregnancy Center through a brochure in our bulletin and a video in our worship service.

One of the people involved with CareNet wrote the following thought. It is titled “The Next Step.”

We have all heard the story of the man who turned a deaf ear to the radio warnings to leave his home due bad weather, refused help from a boat and helicopter and then asked God why he didn’t save him when he got to heaven. And God replies, “I sent you a warning to get out and a helicopter and a boat; what more did you want?”

How often do we want to know the plan, see the expected results, be sure of the investment, but then like the man in the story, lack the faith to actually take the next step.

The next step is something Jesus recommended a very long time ago. “Come and you will see.” “Follow me.” These were the words Jesus spoke to the disciples as He called them. He didn’t sit them down and reveal what the next three years would hold. He knew they would be overwhelmed, possibly enough to turn around. He chose to keep it simple. “Follow me” was all He said. Take the next step…

By taking the next step the disciples experienced the wonder and amazement of seeing God at work before them. For me, joining the Care Net team was a similar experience. By taking the next step I have seen lives saved, hearts changed and been in awe of the work God does every day at Care Net,--all in three short months. I can’t begin to imagine what miracles I’ll be privileged to witness in the years to come just because I took the next step and responded to a church bulletin announcement. I wasn’t sure I didn’t know what the results would be. But I sent in the application anyway.

Don’t miss out on the glory God has to show you. Trust the signs He sends you and take the next step.

The Million Pound Challenge

Again this year, The Princeton Club is sponsoring the Million Pound Challenge to help out the food pantries of Southern Wisconsin. Between now and May 31, for every pound of weight you lose, The Princeton Club and other corporate sponsors will purchase 10 pounds of food for the Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin – up to 1 million pounds of food. You can even select which local food pantry will receive your food – which means you can select Westwood’s Food Pantry.

If interested in participating, you can sign up at www.princetonclub.net/mpc. You can also make financial contributions at the web site.

Believing the Right Things

As we examine some of the people who encountered Jesus in the Gospels over the next couple of months, there will, of course, be people who met Jesus that we will not meet. One of them is a man in John 5 who had been an invalid for thirty-eigh years. He met Jesus in Jerusalem at the Pool of Bethesda.

There was a legend about this pool that appears in some later manuscripts of John’s Gospel. The verses are likely not a part of John’s original Gospel, but they accurately describe the probable belief of the people of Jesus’ day about the pool. That belief was that an angel of the Lord would periodically come down and stir kup the waters. The first one into the pool after such a disturbance would be healed of whatever disease he or she had.

Actually the pool rippled periodically because of a subterranean spring, but the man who Jesus met in John 5 believed the legend. He told Jesus he had not been healed because there was no one to help him into the water when it was stirred. Thus someone always got in the water ahead of him.

All that changed on the day he met Jesus. Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walked.” The man was instantly cured. HJe picked up his mat and walked.

There are many teachings and legends that people believe in today. You can find a book or article on a wide variety of belief systems. We are told in any variety of ways to belief in ourselves, to belief in one another, to come together for the common good, and on and on it goes. While we are encouraged in these false belief systems, we are old that God can nothing for people, that he is only a crutch, that he should be left out of our daily experience.

The invalid in John 5 would find out that only Jesus could heal him; the legend he had accepted for so long was false. We need to learn his lesson. Only Jesus can can heal us. We gain eternal life only through him, not through any good that we do. We need to believe in the right things – that is we need to believe in the one and only Son of God – and encourage others to believe in him too.

WHAT KIND OF DISCIPLES ARE IN YOUR CHURCH?

I recently read Real-Time Connections by Bob Roberts, Jr., founding pastor of NorthWood Church in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area who is deeply involved in church planting and development around the world. In a chapter he titles “Living as a Disciple,” Roberts asks the question, “What is a disciple?’ and goes on to discuss several characteristics of a disciple that he draws out of his reading of Luke and Acts. His thinking about the subject is a worthwhile read.

Soon after reading Roberts book, I read Essential Church by Thom S. Rainer and Sam S. Rainer III. This father and son team are both engaged in ministry and church development and consulting. Their book is an examination of how the church can reclaim a generation of young adult dropouts. One important piece of their study is a reflection on Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger’s earlier work on “The Simple Church.” Their simple church philosophy explores how to design the church “around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.” They are concerned about a straightforward process for making disciples. This book too is a worthwhile read for church leaders, and I will likely be back to it in a future column.

As I read these two books, however, I also was engaged in a study of John 1, at the end of which Jesus calls his first disciples. Jesus would later call his disciples to be fishers of men, but on the first occasion of at least five of his disciples meeting him, we get an indication of what Jesus does for us when he calls us to be his disciples. Understanding what Jesus does for us helps us know what kind of disciples we should be making in the church. Is your congregation comprised of the kind of disciples that Jesus wants us to make? What kind of disciples are in your church? Here are three ideas of what Jesus does for us when he calls us:

(1) Jesus Takes Us. In John 1:35-36, John the Baptist is with two of his disciples when he saw Jesus passing by and said to the two disciples, “Look the Lamb of God.” The two disciples followed Jesus. When he turned around, Jesus asked them, “What do you want?” They were just interested in going with him, so they said, “Rabbi, where are you staying.” Jesus replied, “Come and you will see.” In other words, he took them with him. They stayed with him and learned from him. Jesus will take us with him, so we can learn from him. Does your church have disciples who are spending time with Jesus? Are you encouraging people in your church to spend time with Jesus? My life and ministry has been marked along the way by people who took me with them; three men in particular come to mind. They had more knowledge and experience than I did, and by being with them, I learned ministry. Think of what people in our churches will learn from Jesus if we encourage and teach them to let Jesus take them with him.

(2) Jesus Names Us. Andrew is the first one of Jesus’ new disciples who is mentioned by name in John 1. He went and told his brother Simon that they had found the Messiah. When Simon meets Jesus, he is given a new name – Cephas or Peter, the name we primarily know him by today. When we follow Christ, he gives every one of us a new name – his name. We are known as Christians, followers of Jesus. So let me ask you: Do the people in your church wear the name of Jesus proudly? Do you teach them to do so as disciples of Christ? Do they bring others to Jesus, as Andrew did, telling them they have found the one can give them eternal life?

(3) Jesus Calls Us. In John 1:43-51, we read about Jesus’ call for Philip and Nathanael to follow him. Nathanael’s calling is particularly interesting because when Nathanael questions how Jesus knows him, Jesus indicates that he saw him sitting under a fig tree. Jesus is telling Nathanael that he knows everything about him. Jesus knows everything about us, and yet he calls us to follow him. Jesus calls everyone in your congregation to give their all to him. How well are you teaching people in your church what Jesus expects of them?

So what kind of disciples are in your church? Is your church challenging people to really be disciples of Jesus?

You Can Meet Jesus

Their stories are as interesting as they are diverse. Some of them are well-known stories, and the characters are very familiar. Others are vaguely familiar, but we do not remember the details of their lives nearly as well. All of them are the true stories of people who had encounters with Jesus in the Gospels.

The people who met Jesus during the course of his three-year ministry were themselves as diverse as can be. Some were religious leaders — some of whom were righteous leaders trying their best to serve God, while others were religious in name only. Jesus, rightly so, was often very critical of this latter group. Most of the people who met Jesus were ordinary people who desperately needed God in their lives. Some of these were searching for God; others were not. Some of those who met Jesus wanted nothing to do with him; others became his most committed followers.

I hope you will take the time to meet some of these people in the next three months through the series of sermons I will begin preaching on January 2. After all, those people of first century Israel were very much like we are. We need to meet Jesus in the way they did and learn to walk with him, and their experiences can show us how to do so.

Here are the people we will meet:

· Four of the first six disciples of Jesus: Andrew, Simon (who would be renamed Peter), Philip, and Nathanael.

· Nicodemus, who met Jesus at night early in his ministry, and helps us see how Jesus can change us.

· A woman we just know as the Woman at the Well, but whose story helps us know how Jesus can refresh our lives.

· Matthew, the tax collector, who became one of the apostles and who shows us how Jesus can call us even though we are sinners.

· Another man whose name we do not know; we just know him as the Man Born Blind. He helps us learn how Jesus can open our eyes.

· We will learn about forgiveness from a sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume.

· The story of Mary and Martha will show us how the Lord can capture our hearts when distractions get in the way.

· In the home of a prominent Pharisee, Jesus met a diseased man and teaches us how to accept everyone.

There are others that we will meet. They teach us some of the great lessons of life because they had encounters with Jesus. They will help us deepen our walk with Jesus. Come and meet them; you will be glad you did.