The small picture- our part in God's mission.

The small picture

God’s big mission is the evangelisation of the whole world. This is his project, his work! But the question remains, where do we fit in? From the big picture to the small picture. To help us, we’ll look at Luke 12:8-9

8"And I tell you,

everyone who
acknowledges me
before men,
the Son of Man also
will acknowledge
before the angels of God,

9but the one who
denies me
before men
will be denied
before the angels of God.

This passage comes from a section in Luke’s gospel where many thousands of people were gathering around Jesus. He says there were so many thousands that they were actually trampling each other. Now, this is an unlikely setting for our evangelism. It is very unlikely that you will have football stadiums (or stadia) eating out of the palm of your hand as you explain the gospel. But even on the occasion Luke records, the crowds weren’t gathering round Jesus to listen to the gospel- they were gathering because had heard Jesus could perform incredible miracles, because thay had heard of his power and they wanted to be associated with him. And so, as these crowds gather, for the wrong reasons, it is to his disciples that Jesus turns to speak, to teach his disciples what his work, his project, is really about. In the face of huge steaming herds of people crowding round Jesus with wrong agendas, Jesus takes his disciples to one side and makes sure they know the heart of his agenda- the right agenda. So this is the context of verses 8-9: Jesus preparing his disciples for his work in his world in the face of crowds who want very different things from Jesus. The Lord makes sure they know what he really wants from them as they come face to face with the world. And his words describe the very heart of evangelism

8"And I tell you,

everyone who
acknowledges me
before men,
the Son of Man also
will acknowledge
before the angels of God,

9but the one who
denies me
before men
will be denied
before the angels of God.


To acknowledge Jesus before men. Put another way, Having a stated allegiance to Jesus in public.
Jesus wants us to understand that this is how we fit in to his work. This is the heart of our role in Jesus’ work- being Jesus’ people we are to openly tell others that we are his.

Our role is not going around knocking on people’s doors and inviting people to church. It is not standing on the street corner with a flipchart drawing two ways to live and calling people to repentance. These may be expressions of what Jesus asks of us, but they are not the heart of what he requires. At heart, Jesus simply wants us to be open in public about our relationship with him. In our time with other people, we are not to ignore Jesus, we are not to push him to one side, rather we are to tell people that, yes, we are his.

If you’re still confused, the negative statement will help us understand the positive, i.e To acknowledge Jesus before men, is the opposite of denying him before men. If you find yourself lying to people about your allegiance to Jesus, consistently hiding your faith in him, unwilling to stake your public persona on him, then you are denying him in public, not acknowledging him before men. He wants us to be associated with him in public.

Now the outworking of this is going to be very different for different Christians. For the younger Christian I guess it will mean a more passive public association with Jesus. When people ask you about being a Christian, Jesus calls you to tell the truth and to openly associate yourselves with him. For the oldest, boldest Christian amongst us it will mean actively seeking opportunities to talk about Jesus, all that he is, has done and will do, actively seeking to tell others of his lordship over you. But wherever we are in our Christian lives, the same essence should characterise all our public behaviour- being Jesus’ people we are to openly tell those around us that we are his.

Do you remember the small picture- i.e. our role in Jesus’ mission to evangelise the world? Here was the summary of what Jesus teaches his disciples:
Being Jesus’ people we are to openly tell those around us that we are his.

Now, let’s plug this idea back into the context of the events in Luke’s gospel:
Jesus was so powerful and sought after that he was drawing crowds of 1000s. So many thousands that they were trampling each other in an attempt to get near this man. Now, if you were a disciple witnessing the fame and influence of this great man, would you need to be warned against denying Jesus in public? Would you need any encouragement to tell people publicly that he is your lord and even more- that he loves you. Would you need encouragement to do this? No. You’d be telling everybody,” I’m with him. I am with Jesus.”

If I personally knew, Jason Robinson, would I tell people? Believe me, you would all be bored of hearing about it I’d have told you so often. Did I uh mention that me and Jasy are mates? I did, did I? Right. And if several months into our friendship he encouraged me, saying, “Rob, if you’re prepared to tell your mates down the pub that you know me, then I’ll introduce you to the England Rugby team,” then I’d laugh in his face. I’d have told all my mates weeks ago. That kind of encouragement would be totally unnecessary, so why does Jesus feel the need to encourage his disciples here? Why would you not admit to knowing someone as influential and powerful as Jesus?

Well, I think the answer comes as we remember where Jesus is heading. In chapter 9 of Luke we read Jesus foretelling his death and in verse 51 Luke wrote, When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, so everything from chapter 9 takes place against the backdrop of Jesus’ forthcoming false trial, beating and crucifixion. The crowds might be trampling each other to get to him for the time being, but soon they were to turn against him. It may seem foolish to encourage someone to be publicly associated with a man of influence and power, but soon power would become weakness and influence would become shame. And it shouldn’t surprise us that the crowds turned against him- remember that they never shared his agenda in the first place. They weren’t crowding round him to hear his gospel.

For a brief moment, just a few years in the last few thousand, Jesus had power and influence in public. He gripped the public with his power and influence, but for the rest of those two thousand years he has been largely laughed at, ignored, a joke, a non-entity. And he knew this would happen. And he knew that to be publicly associated with him in the vast majority of this Earth’s times and places would sink peoples’ reputations. If I told my family that I had met Jason Robinson do you think there’d be an awkward silence and some dubious looks like there are when I talk about Jesus? Of course there wouldn’t. Outside the church, before men, being associated with Jesus will currently do nothing good for your reputation at all.

And Jesus knew this would be the case. He knew everything in advance. So to encourage us in publicly telling people that we know him, Jesus teaches us to look beyond the present where he is a nonentity, to the future, where once again he will have power and influence. Jesus teaches us to think of him, not as the world sees him now as, at best, some namby pamby spiritual guru, but as he is and will be seen to be in the future, as the Lord of the angels of God. A long time ago Jesus’ influence was acknowledged in the public sphere for a few years, then for the last two thousand until now it has been ignored, but when he will return to judge, then his power and influence will be seen by everybody not for a limited time, but for all eternity. And this final and eternal era in Jesus’ power and influence could begin at any moment!

So Jesus says keep your eyes fixed on the future, on heaven, where all the angels of God will tremble at my word. Now angels are fearsome creatures, creatures so glorious that when the Apostle John met with the angel who showed him the contents of Revelation, John fell at the angel’s feet to worship him. And heaven will be full of the angels of God, hosts upon hosts of these glorious fearsome creatures and they will tremble before Jesus. That his how powerful and influential he will be- so powerful that the most powerful creatures in the universe, the armies of heaven, will fall at his feet. And if we acknowledge Jesus before men, then on the day he returns and the angels of God are before me he will openly tell the angels, “Rob Mullock, he is mine. He is with me.”


Now, if we believed this, if we kept our eyes fixed firmly on the day Jesus returns, wouldn’t we tell everybody? Regardless of the consequences in the temporary present, we would tell everybody that we know Jesus, in expectation of the eternal and glorious future..


Everybody wants to be associated with someone great and there is nobody greater than Jesus, nobody. It just remains to be seen, that’s all. But it will be seen. Don’t doubt it. Jesus has promised us that the day is near. So as you wait for that day, be open about your relationship with Jesus. You are just men and women, but he is God. You are unlovely, but he has loved you and died for you and one day he will call you by your name before the angels of God.

Social Prayers

I want to talk to you about purpose…

• Put up your hand if you went to class today.

Now I am going to ask you about your purpose in doing so.

• Put your hand down if your purpose in going to class today was mainly pure intellectual curiosity
  
• Put your hand down if you didn’t much feel like working today but nevertheless went to class with the purpose of eventually gaining academic qualifications which will allow you to be successful and have highly respected job in later life
  
• Put you hand down if you didn’t much feel like working today but went to class today with the purpose of avoiding pain given that you knew that if you didn’t go to class certain people would make your life more painful….

Fine well you may have had many other perfectly acceptable purposes in mind. Some of you I guess have an exact idea of what your purpose in life is. Perhaps your purpose is to make yourself rich, or to make your self happy or to make yourself morally upright. Perhaps you aren’t sure about your purpose. Whatever the case you have definitely done something today or at least this week without properly thinking about what your purpose in doing so was. The problem is this:- life is very busy. And the business of life combined with the complications of changing your mind about something mean that it is far more comfortable not to think about our purpose in doing things. Particularly because if we think about it we might actually make some dangerous conclusions like, this isn’t worth doing a at all.

Take this lego man for example Who here admits to having possessed, at some point in their lives, some lego? I admit not only to possessing lego but to being something of a lego geek. Anyway, today I have brought with me Dominic Duplo man. Dominic in many ways is an astounding likeness of the human form with fully moving arms legs and rotating head. In addition to the typical human functions he is able to rotate his head not 90% not 180% but a full 360% degrees and crucially it is possible to temporarily amputate his whole lower half without the slightest prejudice to his lego well being. For reasons best know to his Danish creators, In contrast to the typical humanoid he has, in the midst of all his lifelikeness, along with all his millions of contemporaries across the world a puzzlingly monochrome complexion. In many ways he is like a human and that’s what makes him so great. I can make scenes with him. Barry the lego man sitting down. Barry the lego man in dismay, barry the lego man with his trousers on back to front. Barry the lego man can perform a huge range of functions which is really great but that is not his actual point of existence, his purpose. No his purpose is indicated on any duplo box. for children aged 3 and older, not to be consumed (or something like that).
Barry the lego man’s purpose is to interact with his owner, a human. He exists for the benefit of his owner.

"What does Barry have to do with me?" you might say.

Well we can all get a little bit confused about our purpose too.

• Let’s take sport. What is the point of sport? It’s fun, when it gets tough its character building, it develops great relationships. But sometimes we can think that the whole point of sport is winning, so then if we don’t win we get so upset that the fun, the character building, the relationships go out of the window.

• Study: what is the purpose of study? To broaden your mind to enable you think constructively to inform us in our decisions to learn about. But sometimes we can think the whole point of studying is avoiding punishment, which, let’s face it is a deeply depressing outlook and will hardly encourage us.
  

But how about we think even deeper. Dominic’s purpose is not to rotate his head through 360 degrees. He is able to do that, in fact he is remarkably good at it, but his purpose is to interact with me. Why do you get out of bed in the morning, why do you do anything instead of nothing? I wonder do you have an answer. What is your purpose in life?

To finish I want to tell you a story about one man and his purpose. How many of you have seen Chariots of Fire? So you will remember Eric Lidell. Eric Lidell was a Scottish runner. He was a remarkably talented man. After playing for the Scottish rugby team for a couple of years he went to the Olympics in 1924 where he intended to run in the 100metres. Eric loved running, but not simply for its own sake. He was a Christian and for him running had meaning and purpose because he saw it not as a means of winning himself glory but of recognising the glory of his Creator. It was he who spoke the famous lines “God made me fast, and when I run I feel his good pleasure” Eric won the gold in the 400 and bronze in the 200 metres that year, but for him there was a deeper purpose to all his endeavours, and interaction with his creator. Just like Dominic infact. He was convinced that he was designed to be in a relationship with his master and creator.
I don’t necessarily expect you to agree with Eric Lidell, but I hope you have a chance to ask yourself, "what is my purpose?"