By Simon ManchesterSunday 29 Sep 2024Christian Growth with Simon ManchesterFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
Well, let’s think together, everybody. Are you looking alert and fresh. Welcome. Yes. Good, Good. There’s an old and simple story of a young man who learns the truth of Christianity, and he learns the power of Christianity. But he doesn’t want to be a Christian, and he doesn’t want to be a Christian because he doesn’t want to have to go and tell other people – he doesn’t want to have to be a witness.
He doesn’t want to be a Bible basher, and everybody he talks to says, look, you can’t get the truth of Christ yourself and then keep it to yourself. And so he refuses to become a Christian.
And then one day he talks to a wise old man who tells him that he can come to Christ with no pressure to say anything and very excitedly, he goes back to his room and he kneels down and he prays to the Lord Jesus, and he asks him to be his Saviour and Lord, and he suddenly experiences the great sense of forgiveness and welcome.
And he races downstairs, and he says to his family, I’ve just become a Christian and I don’t have to tell anybody. And there is a great truth in that little incident, because actually, the telling of good news has got more to do with the joy inside you than it has to do with the guilt outside you.
The mission of Christianity
Now, today we’re thinking about the mission that we share as believers. And we’re thinking about the mission of God’s people, taking God’s message to God’s world. And of all the places in the Bible where we might hear this commission, we’re actually hearing it in the Book of Proverbs, the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. And if you’ve not been Here for the last two Sundays, the Book of Proverbs is about 901 liners, probably put together by King Solomon, who was the son of King David, and it covers a whole range of subjects, and it’s kind of a random collection.
It’s like thousands of cars coming at you on the freeway or thousands of shells on a big beach, and what we’ve been trying to do over the last two weeks and today is to collect under a theme.
And so two weeks ago we collected the proverbs that tell us about God. And then last week we collected the proverbs that tell us about temptation, and this week we’re collecting the proverbs that speak of mission. Now, before we speak of mission and before we speak about telling other people about Christ, let’s deal with the elephant in the room, which is that the message of Christ has probably never been less popular.
And therefore you’re as aware as I am that going across the road to somebody to tell them is something that probably they don’t want and you don’t want to do. And part of the reason for this unpopularity is the fault of Christians who have come across as being negative, hypocritical, intolerant and irrelevant.
We mustn’t forget that the world is also strangely hostile to Jesus who doesn’t deserve hostility. The world is deeply prejudiced against Christianity, So I watched a documentary just recently on a Christian leader high profile in Sydney, and it was really a beat up. It was just a negative attack with very little content. The secular world, therefore, may decide that Christianity is all to blame for its hopelessness, and we’re getting what we get.
But we need also to remember, the New Testament has a much more devastating assessment. It says that light that is Jesus has come into the world. But people prefer darkness, and I think that’s pretty right. The church is feeble and the world is fairly fiery. Now no matter how dark things get in the world, the light of Christ, the message of Christ continues to spread very wonderfully. And as I’ve mentioned a number of times before, there is great growth of the church in all different parts of the world, though we may not be seeing it so much in the West. So, for example, in East Asia, the church has multiplied 10 times in the last 50 years in Africa. Over the last century, the church has gone from about 10% to nearly 50% of the whole of the African continent.
Is the church booming in China? It is. Is it booming in South America? It is. So the message of Christ continues to spread. We’re going to look for a few minutes at what Proverbs says about the world in which we live the messenger. What sort of people are messengers? And the outcome What’s the good? What’s the effect? What’s the result? So, first of all, what Proverbs says about the world, I want to remind you that the proverbs that we’re going to look at quite quickly are just bumper stickers. They’re not academic papers that say everything there is to be said. So the first one is Proverbs 14:12 about the world, which says there’s a way that seems right to people, but in the end, it leads to death.
In other words, the proverb says, the people of the world can be very confident sometimes about the road they’re on, and they may be saying to themselves, I’m absolutely right, and I’m absolutely sure that actually, the road they’re on leads to death. Think, for example, of the man or the woman who says very confidently to you one day- well, all religions are the same, and at that point you would want to say to them, wouldn’t you need to do some homework on that. It’s not right.
Or think of the person who says something like this. When you’re dead, you’re dead. Well, what’s the evidence and what’s the evidence against that? So even a sincere person says the proverbs can be very, very confident that they are on a good road, but actually the road is going nowhere.
Then Proverbs 14:16 says the wise fear the Lord, but the fool feels secure. That’s so often the case, isn’t it? The person who says I’ve got nothing to do with God, nothing to do with Christ. And I am very, very happily secure. That’s very often the case, isn’t it?
I was leaving a funeral on Thursday, and I walked out with a man who turned out to be 87. And, uh, I said to him, do you have a local church yourself? He said, Oh, no, no, no, no, he said. I gave all that up when I was 25 and I said, so you’ve really walked away from the facts and he was a little bit annoyed by that. And I said to him, you know, here you are, you’re quite elderly and you’re going to meet the King of Kings quite soon.
And he said, Not for another 13 years, meaning, I’ve arranged my life so that I’ll be 100.
So there, you know, there he is. He’s feeling fine, and he says, you know, I plan to live another 13 years and I’ll be perfectly fine. Exactly as the proverb says, he feels secure, feels secure with no reason at all.
And then Proverbs 19, Verse 22 says – actually, what a person desires is unfailing love. Deep down in the heart, a person wants to be loved, and I think this is absolutely right again because despite the bluster of the world, what people want and are deeply moved by is the sense that they are loved. I mean, show me a man who’s a tough, granity sort of man and then surrounded by his family and loved ones who tell him how much they love him. And I would be surprised if he’s not deeply, deeply moved by that.
Because in the end, that’s what the proverb says. What people want is unfailing love. The problem is that our families cannot provide us with unfailing love. It’s only Christ who can do that.
And so the desire for unfailing love is in our hearts, and the offer is there from God. But the average person says, Well, I want it, but I don’t want it from you, and so they never get it. And the reason for all of this Proverbs Chapter one, Verse 24 says people refuse to listen to God.
And of course, people refuse to listen to God. Did you not at one stage refuse to listen to God? I did, cos I didn’t want to listen to somebody who I thought would take away my freedom, even though I wasn’t that free. And even though I couldn’t solve the problems which he can solve, no God is not listened to. That’s the sad reality. And Proverbs, Chapter two, Verse 13, sadly says, we prefer dark ways, and we do. We prefer dark ways.
But we do need his mercy. Proverbs, Chapter 20 Verse nine says Who is sinless? Who is going to stand before a perfect God with a perfect record? Nobody.
And so we need an answer to our sins, and the answer comes in the person of Christ. One very interesting proverb is Chapter 30 Verse four, which says, and I think this is a feisty, aggressive kind of proverb. It says this. Who’s gone up to heaven and come down? Who’s mastered the wind and the waves. Who controls the world? Tell me. Tell me his name.
And I wanna say, Well, it sounds like Jesus to me, somebody who has come down, masters the wind and the waves, controls the ends of the Earth. I think his name is Jesus.
So the final proverb in my little sketch of the world is Chapter 22 Verse three, which says the wise see danger and take refuge. It’s the mark of a sensible person, isn’t it? That they hear the news of their health and they take the refuge. They hear the danger of the world, and they take refuge.
They discover that walking the back streets of the city is not a good idea. So they take sensible steps. And the wonderful thing about God is that he is at work bringing people to their senses so that they see the danger and they take the refuge. They grasp their need and they see the Saviour.
That’s the wonderful thing that God is doing. People recognizing that they hang by a very thin thread in this life and Christ is offering them a cable. That’s the way God wonderfully works. So a little bit of proverbs on the world. Now, a little bit of proverbs on the messenger being the spokesman or the spokeswoman for Christ. And this is where you may feel this morning. This is never going to happen.
You may be saying to yourself, I’m never going to tell anyone about Christianity. It’s just not going to happen. I’m reminded of the story of the three men who are about to be shot, and one of them is an Englishman. One’s a Canadian, one’s an American.
And you need to remember that the Canadians can often be very, very politically correct, and they’re all offered last words before they’re shot. And the Englishman says, I would like to speak for my final words about loyalty and service to the crown. And the Canadian says, I would like to speak about constitutional process, special status, distinct society and unity within diversity.
And the American says, please shoot me before the Canadian starts talking. And, um, you may feel every now and again that, uh, you know, somebody would rather shoot me than hear me. Well, the Proverbs, which we had for the Children this morning 25:25 says good news is like cool water to the man who’s hot and tired.
And it is worth checking, isn’t it? To see whether the message of Christ is good news? Because in the middle of the word evangelism is the word angel. Evangelism is literally good messenger, and the message of Christ is really very good news. I was at a dinner some time ago and I was sitting at a table. Everybody was a non-Christian and suddenly out of the silence. One of them said, What’s been so great about being a minister?
And I normally get my best answers to these questions about a month later. But I said, I think really the best thing is being able to tell people about somebody Jesus Christ who can cover the failures of the past, who can bring you in the present into the family of God safely and can guarantee your future.
Telling people that message watching lives change. Watching families change must be the greatest privilege in the world, and it is good news. Of course, it calls a person to take Jesus seriously as the King of Kings. But the news is very great and Proverbs chapter 11, Verse 30 says the Wise therefore save lives.
This is the sort of thing that a lifeguard does at the beach saves lives or a doctor or a policeman or a fireman. But when you’re a Christian and you somehow point somebody to rethinking Christ, you’ve made a contribution to the saving of their life because you’re telling the person who knows, perhaps, that they’re needy, that there is a person who is perfect, who has answers beyond your wildest dreams.
And if you were to able to speak about Christ in a private conversation, you might be able to say to the person his life was loving. His life was consistent. His death was very wonderful because he took the bullet for us. His resurrection was historical, breathtaking, wonderful. And this is the sort of person in Jesus Christ who says, I’ll be your shepherd. Noone will pluck you out of my hand. I’ll give you eternal life. Sounds like good news to me.
Proverbs 24 Verse 11, says. Therefore, rescue those who are going to death. Proverbs 28 Verse 23. Better to rebuke a person than flatter them. Tell them they’re on the wrong road. Be brave. Proverbs 12:17. An honest witness will tell the truth.
We should be very grateful, incidentally, that God tells us in the Old Testament that if you’re going to make a decision or come to a conviction that you should have two witnesses before you make the decision and then in the New Testament, God has wonderfully given us four witnesses to Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John eyewitnesses. So we got to be very grateful that God has doubled the number of witnesses so that a person might make a sensible, responsible decision for Jesus.
Now, if you’re going to be helpful as a signpost as a witness, if you want to be the sort of person who does help a person think again about Christ, I would suggest you get clear in your head. What is Christianity? I mean, one of the simplest things to say to a person is you need to turn and trust turn from the wrong path, trust in Christ.
And then you need to ask God, I’m going to live my day today. I’ve not any idea how the day will go who will come across my path. But you know how to organise things and help feeble people. Help me be useful today, and it may be that you’ll offer a prayer for somebody as you walk away from them. It may be that you’ll say where you’ve been on Sunday morning, it may be that you’ll say something about how the Bible has been an encouragement to you. There’s a whole series of ways in which you might be a useful signpost.
And, uh, perhaps, uh, the other thing to do is to carry something with you in your purse or wallet that you can give in case something comes up. So there’s a little bit of what Proverbs says about the world and a little bit about what Proverbs says about the messenger. And then, thirdly, this morning. What does proverbs say about the outcome? The effect or the future?
Because the Bible tells us that it is possible that God who’s made the world has planned a great future. If you know the name Tolkien from Lord of the Rings, you’ll know that Tolkien once wrote a paper. You may know that he wrote a paper explaining that the fairy tale is the human longing for a happy ending.
We love a happy ending, and Tolkien went on to say that the longing is a fiction in the fairy tale. But in the Gospel, it’s a fact. The longing in the human heart finds its factual fulfilment in the gospel where Christ lives, dies and rises. And so the longing of the believer is a factual thing built on the history of the resurrection and the promises of Jesus.
And although Proverbs was written long before the Easter event in the New Testament, it tells us some helpful things about the future. So Chapter 12, Verse 28 says there is a way of life and there is a path of immortality. So the Old Testament writers were aware of the possibility of immortality through the grave. It wouldn’t be until Jesus came and lit up through the resurrection what that would look like. Proverbs, Chapter four, verse 18 and 19, says, There is one path that people are on that gets darker, and there is one path that people are on that gets brighter.
We, of course, wouldn’t dare to speak like this, but that’s because we’re short sighted and we can’t see where people are going. But God, who is long sighted, stands above the world and says, You know, there’s a road that many are on that goes to destruction And there’s a road that few are on and it goes to eternal life.
The other good outcome, of course, of taking Jesus seriously in Proverbs 1012 is that love covers over wrongs. This is one of the wonderful things about Christianity. Isn’t it being forgiven now? Obviously, we can bury the hatchet with somebody who offends us, but God takes the hatchet.
He takes it in him, in his Son at the cross so that we might be forgiven. Proverbs 10, Verse 30 says the righteous. And that doesn’t mean good people. That means those who’ve turned to God are never uprooted. The believer is secure, cannot be uprooted. Proverbs 15, Verse 24 says the believer walks on an upward path. What a privilege, an upward path. Or Proverbs 23 verse 18. There is a sure and future hope for you. Your hope will not be cut off. That’s the promise of God.
And so the New Testament fulfils all this because it speaks of the impossibility of a believer being separated from Christ. Once you come to Christ, he puts his grip on your hand. He’s like the parent taking the child across the road. You may loosen your grip, but he will not. And he’ll make sure you’re not separated because he’s caused a bond to take place, which he will not allow to be broken.
And nobody can overpower the son of God and therefore Proverbs eight. Verse 35 says If you find the Lord, you find the life. So you see, scattered through proverbs are some verses that tell us about the world in which we live, very needy and very helpless. The messenger a vital role to play, just be yourself and then the outcome or the difference between eternal life and eternal death.
Well, I don’t know if anybody here this morning is hearing and listening to this. I don’t know whether anybody’s going to do anything about it, but I just want to say for myself I counted a huge privilege to be a feeble, rusty signpost to Christ, and I have so many blunders in my attempts. But then occasionally God uses the blunderer and helps a person to take cries seriously.
I want to close by telling you that when I was a boy of about 10 or 11, I was walking through the city after school and I went past a man whose back was to one of the buildings, like David Jones or something. And he was a kind of scary looking man. Uh, he was obviously blind, and therefore he had sort of strange manners, and, uh, he was shaking a tin for his coins. And I put a coin in the tin and he grabbed my wrist, which I also found a bit scary. And he then pushed into my hand a little card about the size of a postage stamp.
And it was a verse from the proverbs. And it’s from chapter nine, verse 10. It says fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Made no impact on me at the time, but I think I thought at 10 or 11, this is probably true. And then, of course, well, down the track that probably little seed began to bear some fruit as I began to think more carefully about the Lord And so there was this man, you see, very limited in what he could do.
But he took his opportunity to push the seed of God’s word into the hand of a person who decided to respond to his tin. And I suppose one day, God willing, I’ll meet that old man and be able to thank him for his faithfulness. So we never know how the Lord may use us. Just remember, the world is needy. The messenger is vital. The outcome is very, very important.
Let’s bow heads and pray
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a missionary God and you have sent your missionary Son and that he has called and gathered so many so many of us here this morning – called and gathered. And we pray since the world is needy and frail, foolish and helpless. And since you’ve put your people in the world to be your servants and your signposts that you would help us to be a good witness, good sign posts with the gifts you’ve given, the opportunities we have. That the outcome would be that people are helped to life and that you are greatly thanked and praised. We ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.