Grace Encounters
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
Several years ago at one of the Lausanne Missions Conferences, something remarkable was decided. Until then the conference had determined two things must be done for effective evangelism to take place. One: the church must create an attractive presence. Two: the church must rightly proclaim the Gospel.
The conference noted, however, that some churches and missionaries had done this for years and absolutely nothing had happened in terms of evangelism and church growth. So they added a third ingredient to the formula: power encounters -- that is miracles, healings, surprising restorations of marriages, and the like.
One can see all of these things memorably bundled together in the text, the story of Jesus healing the only son of the widow of Nain. Let's look at each of these points in turn.
Preach The Word
The text says Jesus "went to a city called Nain." There he met a funeral procession being led by a widow who was taking her son's body to his grave. And Christ was not mute. He had some things to say about not weeping and the dead rising again.
In John's Gospel, chapter 1, we are told God is not silent, he has a word for all the earth, and "the word became flesh and dwelt among us." Mark's Gospel even tells us, "Jesus came preaching." The content of what Christ preached is found in the Old Testament, the "Bible" of Christ's own day. He learned it so well that at age twelve in the temple he impressed the scholars. And he spoke endlessly of the word being fulfilled, not broken, of living by every word.
What we have in the New Testament is an accurate accounting of the life of Jesus, his teachings, his death on the cross, and his resurrection, ascension, and the promise to return.
By preaching the word, we mean neither adding to nor subtracting from the message of Christ as contained in the Old and New Testaments.
Many rightly ask how it is we arrive at the conclusion that the Bible is authoritative. After all, how can an ancient book be relevant in speaking with power to us today? The answer comes in what Jesus taught about scripture.
You see, our Christology (view of Christ) can go no higher than our bibliology (view of scripture). If I say Jesus is God but scripture is unreliable even though Jesus said scripture is true, then I say God in Christ was wrong, and so lessen his deity. Either Christ is God and scripture is as he viewed it, truth, or Jesus is only a mere mortal and the Bible is just another book.
Pope John Paul said it well: "We do not make up the faith as we go along." Rather, it is a faith "once delivered" (Jude).
Sadly in our day, knowledge of the Bible is sorely lacking. And preaching is the most neglected art form of the past 100 years. Why, most preachers couldn't make a C- in a high school public speaking class!
Such an abysmal state must be remedied! Pastors must study the word. They must be mentored by the older, talented preachers. Church members must pray for them and give them time to study and bring forth the word in well-crafted sermons. Then, like the text says, we must take the word out into the streets, into every valley of human need, even sad funeral marches where widows walk with no hope but to bury their only son.
Too often we make the church a stained glass foxhole in which we hunker down for the duration. But in the text Jesus shows us how he and his disciples get out and go into the world talking the word, sharing the truth.
Sociologists point out the average person has about fifty significant social encounters per week. That is, we cross paths with around fifty persons weekly and are involved on some level of meaningful relationship. A bank teller who is sad because her sister is dying, a school teacher in the throes of divorce, a client in bankruptcy, a teenager desperately lost in the drug scene. O Lord, make us sensitive! Help us remember we have a sure word of hope!
Attractive Presence
The second ingredient the Lausanne Missions Conference encouraged is attractive presence. This means before we speak Good News, we must be Good News!
I preached the same week this winter during flu season in a dying church and at a flourishing campus ministry. After the church service, an elder got up and suggested we all leave without shaking hands so no one would infect another. It was the coldest crowd I've ever seen, each fearful he or she would get something bad from the other. And as I left, I thought it no wonder the pews were empty.
Then I went to the campus equally devastated by the flu epidemic. There the students announced their plan to take hot soup to the infirm, to pray for the sick, to volunteer to run errands for them, turn in homework, and such. Why, the entire campus was talking about Christians, an attractive presence, a cadre of helpful people amid such miserable flu. And, as I left, I thought it no wonder the chapel was full.
In the text, Jesus was not hiding from the world. He was out in it, striding into the village of Nain, running full head on into a widow, into a mass of weeping, into the knotty problem of an only son's death. He was there with the word. He was there as an attractive presence. Look carefully at the word that describes Jesus' presence in the text: "Compassion." Indeed! Such makes us attractive and welcome in any crowd.
Grace Encounters
Now we come to the third ingredient, often called the power encounter. I prefer to call them grace encounters. In the text, Jesus spoke the words, he was a compassionate attractive presence, but he also provided a dynamic encounter with the power of God as he raised the widow's son from the dead.
For years, a large segment of the church has labored to proclaim the Bible and maintain a church building brimming full of classes, daycare programs, friendly people, and such. But now a large number of young people are saying, "It's nice to be among such a loving people, and indeed, you labor well in proclaiming the word of Christ, but when do we stop talking and do the stuff? When do we pray and ask God for conversions? For healing? For changed lives? For dynamic power encounters with his grace?"
In my most recent church, we invited people forward at the end of the service. We had trained elders waiting. There we ministered to the failing, the hopeless, the sick, the lost. And, indeed, God did many things wonderful in our sight! There were healings, marriages put back together, conversions, people called out to the mission field, bad habits broken, hoarded money released to missions, and so much more known but to God.
Sometimes we Christians are afraid to lay it all on the line, believing, "What if I ask and nothing happens?" Listen! I learned a long time ago that if God heals, I get no credit for it. All the glory is his! So, why should I take credit to myself if God chooses not to heal in the way I prayed? Clearly, the duty is mine. The results are God's. My job is to be faithful and leave the results to him.
Look at the text. When Jesus worked the miracle, the crowd was awestruck! The text says, "Fear seized them all; and they glorified God." "God has visited his people!" they shouted. "And this report ... spread through the whole of Judea...."
Signs and wonders are the church bells that call people to worship. They are the step beyond presence and talk that show God is real and here and able and willing to do "exceedingly far more abundantly than all we ask or think!"
Now I know some are having trouble here. Why, just this week a fellow pastor said to me, "You act like you believe in miraculous conversion." And all I could say was, "Is there any other kind? When you entered the ministry you entered the realm of the supernatural. You entered the domain of human sin, of amazing grace, of divine intervention, of conversion, change, growth, of uncontrollable and surprising grace encounters."
Robert came to church a desperate man. His third marriage was failing. He'd become sexually addicted. He was lonely. Words of the sermon captured him, gave him hope. He looked around and saw pews filled with worshipers, some bowing in earnestness, others with faces lifted in rapturous praise. He came forward at the invitation, asked for a chance to become a Christian, and immediately felt a weight lifted off his shoulders.
Over the next years his life became different. He began to be kind. He started a small group Bible study in his law office. Fourteen people now attend it.
And the word has gone out across the city that God exists and can change selfish and enslaved divorcees.
Not all miracles, you see, are dramatic. Some come by process, subtly. But they come just the same, grace encounters of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
There are over six billion people on the planet today. Yet our churches are so empty! As one pastor put it, "People stay away in droves!"
And the problem isn't getting people to come to church. The challenge is getting the church to go to the world ... with the Word ... as an attractive presence ... believing we can encounter God's grace with power! Yes! Then, indeed, shall the world sit up and take notice that there is a God in Israel!
The conference noted, however, that some churches and missionaries had done this for years and absolutely nothing had happened in terms of evangelism and church growth. So they added a third ingredient to the formula: power encounters -- that is miracles, healings, surprising restorations of marriages, and the like.
One can see all of these things memorably bundled together in the text, the story of Jesus healing the only son of the widow of Nain. Let's look at each of these points in turn.
Preach The Word
The text says Jesus "went to a city called Nain." There he met a funeral procession being led by a widow who was taking her son's body to his grave. And Christ was not mute. He had some things to say about not weeping and the dead rising again.
In John's Gospel, chapter 1, we are told God is not silent, he has a word for all the earth, and "the word became flesh and dwelt among us." Mark's Gospel even tells us, "Jesus came preaching." The content of what Christ preached is found in the Old Testament, the "Bible" of Christ's own day. He learned it so well that at age twelve in the temple he impressed the scholars. And he spoke endlessly of the word being fulfilled, not broken, of living by every word.
What we have in the New Testament is an accurate accounting of the life of Jesus, his teachings, his death on the cross, and his resurrection, ascension, and the promise to return.
By preaching the word, we mean neither adding to nor subtracting from the message of Christ as contained in the Old and New Testaments.
Many rightly ask how it is we arrive at the conclusion that the Bible is authoritative. After all, how can an ancient book be relevant in speaking with power to us today? The answer comes in what Jesus taught about scripture.
You see, our Christology (view of Christ) can go no higher than our bibliology (view of scripture). If I say Jesus is God but scripture is unreliable even though Jesus said scripture is true, then I say God in Christ was wrong, and so lessen his deity. Either Christ is God and scripture is as he viewed it, truth, or Jesus is only a mere mortal and the Bible is just another book.
Pope John Paul said it well: "We do not make up the faith as we go along." Rather, it is a faith "once delivered" (Jude).
Sadly in our day, knowledge of the Bible is sorely lacking. And preaching is the most neglected art form of the past 100 years. Why, most preachers couldn't make a C- in a high school public speaking class!
Such an abysmal state must be remedied! Pastors must study the word. They must be mentored by the older, talented preachers. Church members must pray for them and give them time to study and bring forth the word in well-crafted sermons. Then, like the text says, we must take the word out into the streets, into every valley of human need, even sad funeral marches where widows walk with no hope but to bury their only son.
Too often we make the church a stained glass foxhole in which we hunker down for the duration. But in the text Jesus shows us how he and his disciples get out and go into the world talking the word, sharing the truth.
Sociologists point out the average person has about fifty significant social encounters per week. That is, we cross paths with around fifty persons weekly and are involved on some level of meaningful relationship. A bank teller who is sad because her sister is dying, a school teacher in the throes of divorce, a client in bankruptcy, a teenager desperately lost in the drug scene. O Lord, make us sensitive! Help us remember we have a sure word of hope!
Attractive Presence
The second ingredient the Lausanne Missions Conference encouraged is attractive presence. This means before we speak Good News, we must be Good News!
I preached the same week this winter during flu season in a dying church and at a flourishing campus ministry. After the church service, an elder got up and suggested we all leave without shaking hands so no one would infect another. It was the coldest crowd I've ever seen, each fearful he or she would get something bad from the other. And as I left, I thought it no wonder the pews were empty.
Then I went to the campus equally devastated by the flu epidemic. There the students announced their plan to take hot soup to the infirm, to pray for the sick, to volunteer to run errands for them, turn in homework, and such. Why, the entire campus was talking about Christians, an attractive presence, a cadre of helpful people amid such miserable flu. And, as I left, I thought it no wonder the chapel was full.
In the text, Jesus was not hiding from the world. He was out in it, striding into the village of Nain, running full head on into a widow, into a mass of weeping, into the knotty problem of an only son's death. He was there with the word. He was there as an attractive presence. Look carefully at the word that describes Jesus' presence in the text: "Compassion." Indeed! Such makes us attractive and welcome in any crowd.
Grace Encounters
Now we come to the third ingredient, often called the power encounter. I prefer to call them grace encounters. In the text, Jesus spoke the words, he was a compassionate attractive presence, but he also provided a dynamic encounter with the power of God as he raised the widow's son from the dead.
For years, a large segment of the church has labored to proclaim the Bible and maintain a church building brimming full of classes, daycare programs, friendly people, and such. But now a large number of young people are saying, "It's nice to be among such a loving people, and indeed, you labor well in proclaiming the word of Christ, but when do we stop talking and do the stuff? When do we pray and ask God for conversions? For healing? For changed lives? For dynamic power encounters with his grace?"
In my most recent church, we invited people forward at the end of the service. We had trained elders waiting. There we ministered to the failing, the hopeless, the sick, the lost. And, indeed, God did many things wonderful in our sight! There were healings, marriages put back together, conversions, people called out to the mission field, bad habits broken, hoarded money released to missions, and so much more known but to God.
Sometimes we Christians are afraid to lay it all on the line, believing, "What if I ask and nothing happens?" Listen! I learned a long time ago that if God heals, I get no credit for it. All the glory is his! So, why should I take credit to myself if God chooses not to heal in the way I prayed? Clearly, the duty is mine. The results are God's. My job is to be faithful and leave the results to him.
Look at the text. When Jesus worked the miracle, the crowd was awestruck! The text says, "Fear seized them all; and they glorified God." "God has visited his people!" they shouted. "And this report ... spread through the whole of Judea...."
Signs and wonders are the church bells that call people to worship. They are the step beyond presence and talk that show God is real and here and able and willing to do "exceedingly far more abundantly than all we ask or think!"
Now I know some are having trouble here. Why, just this week a fellow pastor said to me, "You act like you believe in miraculous conversion." And all I could say was, "Is there any other kind? When you entered the ministry you entered the realm of the supernatural. You entered the domain of human sin, of amazing grace, of divine intervention, of conversion, change, growth, of uncontrollable and surprising grace encounters."
Robert came to church a desperate man. His third marriage was failing. He'd become sexually addicted. He was lonely. Words of the sermon captured him, gave him hope. He looked around and saw pews filled with worshipers, some bowing in earnestness, others with faces lifted in rapturous praise. He came forward at the invitation, asked for a chance to become a Christian, and immediately felt a weight lifted off his shoulders.
Over the next years his life became different. He began to be kind. He started a small group Bible study in his law office. Fourteen people now attend it.
And the word has gone out across the city that God exists and can change selfish and enslaved divorcees.
Not all miracles, you see, are dramatic. Some come by process, subtly. But they come just the same, grace encounters of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
There are over six billion people on the planet today. Yet our churches are so empty! As one pastor put it, "People stay away in droves!"
And the problem isn't getting people to come to church. The challenge is getting the church to go to the world ... with the Word ... as an attractive presence ... believing we can encounter God's grace with power! Yes! Then, indeed, shall the world sit up and take notice that there is a God in Israel!
