05-08-11 Unless They Are Sent...

In my now very distant youth

I went to a college

that had a daily chapel service.

They called it “chapel”,

but it was really more like a public forum

in which speakers were brought in

to speak on all sorts of topics.

I remember very few of those I heard,

but one of the few I recall

has stayed with me

not because I liked what he said,

but rather because the speaker

so utterly failed to accomplish

what he set out to accomplish.

The school I attended

was associated with the Free Methodist Church,

and just across the street from the campus

was one of the largest Free Methodist churches in the state.

That particular morning

the Senior Pastor from that church

was invited to speak to several thousand college students

about considering selecting “The Ministry” as a possible career choice.

As I recall,

he talked a great deal about all of the advantages

that came with a career invested in helping people.

When he finished his talk

I remember having not the slightest interest whatsoever

in ever doing whatever it was that man did for a career.

In fact,

I can remember thinking about him

sitting in his office there across the street,

and feeling as though it would be difficult to imagine a career

that gave you less contact with real life.

But I think the reason that morning

made such a deep impression on me most of all

was because it must have been the first time

that I’d ever consciously thought of preaching

as a “career option” a person would choose

in the same way he would choose

being a plumber,

or a welder,

or a teacher,

or a mechanic,

or a doctor.

And there was something about that idea

that offended me deeply.

I hated the thought

that the only thing necessary

to qualify a person to stand before a congregation

and do what preachers did

was to take the right classes,

and get the right degrees,

and get the stamp of approval from the right organizations.

It seemed all wrong, somehow.

If that was true,

then it meant that the church

really was mostly just a business,

an industry,

like any other industry,

with career opportunities open

to all who could provide the correct credentials.

Our study of the 10^th chapter of the book of Romans

brings us, this morning,

to a passage that has helped me to understand

why I was so offended

with what I heard in that chapel service so many years ago.

It is a passage that I believe

has two distinctly different applications,

one for the Body of Christ as a whole,

and the second for those within the Body of Christ

who have been given certain specific gifts by the Holy Spirit

and the callings that go with them.

That will make more sense to you

by the time I finish this morning.

For the past several weeks

we have been studying Romans chapter 10,

a section of Paul’s letter to the Romans

in which he talks with us

about the free will given to each of us by our Creator,

the free will that allows each of us

to choose our own God,

and with that choice

to decide for ourselves

how we relate to the one true God,

the Creator of all that is.

Last week,

as we looked at Paul’s description of God in Romans 10:12,

and heard him describe God as, “...abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...”,

we saw that God was,

in a very real sense,

making His sales pitch of Himself to us.

It is as if He is saying,

“Yes, My creation, you can choose to give your life to anything

or anyone you want,

but if you choose Me,

if you choose to return to Me as your God,

the center of your life,

you will never, ever regret that choice.”

Now, we stopped with that thought last week,

and spent most of our time looking at some of the reasons why

it is sometimes so hard for us to do

what logically it would seem is the most natural thing in the world to do,

to accept God’s offer of Himself to us.

But where we stopped

is not actually where Paul stops

in this whole discussion of our free will

and God’s offer of Himself to us.

He goes on in the next two verses

to present one more crucial ingredient

in this call to the human race

to choose submission to God.

In Romans 10:14-15 Paul asks 4 questions,

questions that each contain within them

the answers to the questions being asked.

We’ve seen Paul do this before in the book of Romans,

most recently in the final verses of Romans chapter 8

where he began with the question,

“If God is for us, who is against us?”

Paul uses this technique

at special points in his writing

when he knows it is especially crucial

for those of us who are reading his words

to interact with them on a personal basis.

The questions he asks

force us to tell ourselves the truth,

and it is far more effective

than simply having him tell us.

OK, here are the questions he asks:

1. How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed?

And the obvious answer - they won’t.

Given the bias and fear of God

we all bring into this world

because of our rebellion against Him,

belief in God is not a natural response.

2. And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard?

And the answer, of course, is that we can’t.

Unless we hear the truth

about this remarkable God of ours,

we will not, cannot move toward belief.

3. And how shall they hear without a preacher?

They can’t.

Unless there is someone,

some other human being

to share with us the truth about our God,

and about His offer of Himself to us through Christ,

we will not know the truth.

4. And how shall they preach unless they are sent?

And the answer, of course, is that they will not.

Not, at least, as God intended.

If we turn the truth into an industry,

and decide it might make a good employment opportunity,

then we might preach without having been sent,

because we do it for flesh-based motivations.

But that is not in any way

what God intended.

Our involvement with Him,

and His life in us,

and through us

is not a business,

it is not an industry.

It is certainly not one of several possible employment opportunities.

It is simply why we exist,

and everything else in our lives

flows from that central purpose,

and finds its proper place

as it aligns itself with Him.

And how shall they preach unless they are sent?

They won’t.

Sent by whom?

Jesus Himself answered that.

LUK 10:2 And He was saying to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

Sent by God Himself.

And then Paul concludes these 4 questions

with a powerful statement of affirmation

for the ones God sends.

Just as it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things!"

Now, to understand what’s going on here

I need to give you a little more information

about that word “preacher”.

I know that,

from a cultural point of view

we think of a preacher as being

the fellow who stands up front in a church service

and talks.

But the word actually means simply “one who proclaims”,

and in this context

it is talking about one who proclaims to another person

the goodness of our God

and, in their own unique way,

the fact that He is “...abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...”.

You see, in it’s broadest context,

this passage is talking about the unique role assigned to every true Christian.

The way a person discovers

that God is truly good

is by getting near another person

who has already experienced His goodness.

The only way our world

can ever discover the grace of our God

is when they discover that grace in us.

And I’m not talking here

about some sort of organized witnessing campaign throughout the community.

I’m talking about those remarkable

and powerful ways

in which God allows those around us

to see Himself in us.

Choosing honesty

when a little fudging of the truth

would be so much more lucrative.

Choosing to forgive

when the natural thing would be to fight back.

Choosing to value the relationship with the other person

more than we value our rights,

or our possessions,

or our ideas.

Every time we find ourselves behaving differently than we once did,

because of the life of Christ within us

we preach... we proclaim the goodness of our God.

It is a calling given to every believer,

and it has nothing whatsoever to do

with organized Christian meetings.

Some of you,

and in fact, perhaps many of you who are here this morning

are here because of something you saw

in the life of a Christian that God placed near you.

There was something in their life

that fascinated you,

something that made you think

it wasn’t religion,

it wasn’t about trying harder to be good,

it was about something else altogether,

something you very much wanted to understand.

That’s the process.

That’s our God

spreading us out into His world

and allowing this world to see Him through us.

And in the broadest sense of this passage

that’s what Paul is talking about here.

But there is something else going on in this passage as well,

something that will not concern most of you,

but something that will very likely alter the course of the lives of just a few of you forever.

In order for this to make sense to you

it might help if I give a little background

on what I consider to be a fascinating part of God’s design for the Body of Christ.

When I began this morning

I started by sharing an event from my past

in which I was confronted with religion as a business in our nation,

a business in which positions could be filled by anyone who offered

the correct academic credentials.

At least twice in my life

I have had churches reject me as a possible Bible teacher and pastor

because I could not provide them with the academic credentials

they felt their church needed

in order for them to compete successfully in the religious marketplace.

Now, I need to be very careful

with what I say here.

I in no way mean to question the value

of quality academic training

for those who assume teaching roles in the family of God.

But what I want us to see

is that God’s design for the effective functioning of His church

is not built upon his people jumping through a series of academic hoops

that then qualify them to assume certain roles.

It is based upon a fascinating

and unique design

in which His Holy Spirit

equips individuals with certain gifts

that then qualify them for the roles He has for them within the body of Christ.

This remarkable design is revealed to us several places in the New Testament.

One of them is found in Ephesians 4:11-12.

EPH 4:11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,

EPH 4:12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;

And when Paul deals with this whole business of spiritual gifts in greater detail in 1 Corinthians 12

he makes it clear that the distribution of these gifts

is a sovereign work of God.

1CO 12:11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.

If the Spirit of God has given a person a teaching (or in our culture, we might call it a “preaching”) gift

then certain types of formal education

might be of great value

in equipping the person to use the gift more effectively.

But if the Holy Spirit has not gifted the person for that role,

then no amount of academic training

can ever qualify a person for that role in the family of God.

When that fellow stood up in front of all of us college students so long ago

and suggested we consider the possibility

of selecting “The Ministry” as a career choice,

he was denying the basic design established by God for leadership in His church.

And as long as I’ve gotten into this,

and before I bring us back to Romans 10,

let me just complete the picture.

In God’s design

those who equip the body of Christ

through the use of public teaching and preaching

are required to bring two sets of qualifications.

First of all,

the Holy Spirit must have given them the gift of teaching.

Second,

they must meet certain personal character qualifications

outlined by Paul in his letters to Timothy and Titus

in order to qualify them to exercise their gifts in the local church.

Simply put,

if they do not practice what they preach

they forfeit their right to exercise their gift within the Church.

Now, with that as background,

I want to return to our passage in Romans chapter 10

and apply Paul’s words

to those of you who have been given,

or will be given teaching or evangelistic gifts by the Holy Spirit.

These two verses we are studying today

have a tremendous personal significance for me.

There was a time in my life

when I entered into a raging personal battle with these two verses.

If you were with us last week

you heard me share with you

that my entrance into the family of God

came about through God forcing me to wrestle with the question,

“Would I be a preacher?”

My life with the King began

when I finally answered that question with a “Yes”.

Then, to complicate things even more,

about 5 years after I came to the Lord

I realized that He had given me a teaching gift.

But, almost from the beginning of my Christian life

I have been so personally offended

by the Christian religious industry in our society

that I simply could not see myself surviving in that arena.

So, in an attempt to get out from under my calling to “be a preacher”,

I did a study on the word translated as “preacher” in Romans 10:14

and discovered that it literally means “proclaimer”.

At the time

this discovery came to me like a divine pardon.

I figured I could be a proclaimer of the truth no matter what I was doing.

The problem, of course,

was that when God asked me to wrestle with that question, “Would I be a preacher?”,

He knew exactly what I thought that meant,

and even though my definition was flawed,

His intentions were not.

He really did want me to be a preacher

in the way our culture defines that term.

And in His great love

look what He’s done!

He designed for me

a place where I could fulfill that role

with a group of Christians

who don’t demand that our church conform to the cultural definition of success.

He created for me

a place where I really fit.

Now, I know that is probably

a good deal more about me than you cared to know,

but I have shared it with you

because of what I want to say right now.

There is very likely someone here this morning,

and maybe several someones,

who, in your own unique way,

will find God doing in you

what He did in me.

He will step into your life,

and by His own sovereign will,

He will call you to a special role within the family of God.

We have all sorts of cultural Christian terms for such roles -

pastor,

minister,

preacher,

missionary,

full-time Christian worker.

I strongly dislike all of them

because they reek of the Christian industry within our culture,

and as such

they bring with them far more destructive baggage than they are worth.

But maybe I could say it best this way.

There will be one or two or three of you here this morning

who will discover your God

calling you to unique roles within His family.

If you are like me,

your first responses to such thoughts

will be that you are completely unqualified for what He wants you to do,

and your second response will be

that you really don’t want to do it

even if you were qualified.

But let me just say

that, if you find things like that

going on inside you,

recognize them for what they really are -

your God honoring you

with great honor,

and a very high calling indeed.

Don’t worry about what our culture may think of you,

or even how you will fit into that culture.

And don’t be afraid

of what you think might be going on inside you.

If it is of Him,

you will not be able to escape it.

You will find no peace with yourself

until you trust His love,

and in that trust

you will find a wealth with your God

and riches in this life

you never dreamed existed.

ROM 10:14 How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

ROM 10:15 And how shall they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things!"