God in my neighborhhod: How can God use me?

Pastor Phillips' Sermon

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we've been exploring your desire for us to be Christians in this non-Christian world, to shine the light of the gospel in our own neighborhoods. Bless us today with your Holy Spirit. Enlighten us with your gifts, and open our eyes to the mission field around us. In Jesus' name, Amen.

The first question we dealt with in this sermon series was “Who is my neighbor?” and we talked about the biblical definition of that because, by our own sinfulness, we're likely to choose people who are just like us or people we get along well with or something like that. But we found out from the bible that our neighbor is everyone who God loves, and God loves everyone. So He calls us as His children as believers in God to love everyone that He loves.

The second question we talked about was the need of our neighbor, and we know our neighbors have many different types of needs. But the single greatest thing we all need is Jesus, the forgiveness of sins we have in Jesus, the eternal life we have in Jesus. And so we focused on that last.

Now today we answer the question “How can God use me?” Knowing who the neighbor is, knowing what they need, how can He use me? Let's first focus in on our neighbors. Let's think about those who live around us. What is it that makes a good neighbor? Think back over your experiences. Think about the people around you. When you hear those words “good neighbor,” who comes to mind? Well, I think of people right away that help us with things like, when we're out of town, they take care of our dog. Or when somebody needs help, they go over and do things. Or when you're out checking your mail, they're at the mailbox, too, and they strike up a conversation. They're people you warm up to. They're people you feel you can trust. These are our good neighbors.

And as we think about how we feel about them, that's the impression we want them to have, too. We want them to say, “Oh, I've asked so and so. They go to that Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, and they're just great neighbors. They're just good people. I can trust them. They help me when I need help, work together on things. Those are some good neighbors.”

The first way of looking at this question of how can God use me is, “Am I needed?” Are you really needed by your neighbor? Is there something they really need you to help with? And Jesus answers this question in our gospel reading. He's sending out the 72. Now you remember it started out Jesus was traveling around preaching and teaching and He did a miracle at the wedding of Cana , but what happened to grow that ministry? He called 12 disciples, right? So now instead of 1 there are 13. Well, here in our text, the number has now grown to 73. Jesus and the 72 that He is sending out 2 by 2 out into the world. He says He's sending them everywhere He is about to go. And as we think about a role in our neighborhood, that's pretty exciting. God is sending us everywhere He is about to go, everywhere He is about to do something wonderful, everywhere He is about to show His love to people. That's where He's sending us. So it began with 1, then 13, then 73. And you'd think, “Boy, 73. That's a pretty big group going around the area and spreading the good news.” But what does Jesus say? What does He say to them? He said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” Now living in an agricultural state, we know what it means when the harvest is plentiful. We've had two great years, this year and last year, huge harvests. Can you imagine if we planted all those crops and they grew up and they matured and they were all ready for harvest and there was nobody to do the work? That would be a shame. And I think those of us who come from farming backgrounds would just really have an issue with that. “How can you waste all of that time and effort and investment?”

Think of the souls Jesus is talking about here, the eternal harvest. It's called in one of hymns “the living harvest.” Think of that living harvest and how infinitely more valuable that harvest is than a field of corn or soybeans or whatever else we might grow. Now you see why Jesus speaks with such passion and concern. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” And so He speaks to the 72 standing before Him, and He says, “Pray, beg, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the harvest field.” Seventy-two is not enough. This whole room is not enough. God needs more people to go and share the good news of His love in Jesus. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Yes, you are needed. You are needed to shine the love of Jesus in your neighborhood. You are needed by your neighbor to lift him up and encourage him. You are needed in your prayers and in your acts of compassion.

The second question you might have in this area “How can God use me?” is “Am I qualified? Do I have what it takes to go and do what God's telling me to do?” Sometimes, it seems really intimidating when you hear words like “evangelism” or things like that and we don't want to do that because it makes us feel uncomfortable. So we ask this question: “Am I really the one God wants to send? Am I qualified to do what He's telling me to do?” It reminds me of many years ago when my dad had just retired from General Motors. He worked for General Motors for 32 years. He was Plant Superintendent. He used to supervise some 2,000 employees and now he's retired, trying to figure out what to do with himself. And it's getting to winter time, so he thinks he's going to go south. My mom and he packed up, and they headed south. And one of the members of our church was involved with Laborers for Christ. You might be familiar with that organization. Laborers for Christ is generally retired people that go and build churches. They might build a fellowship hall or they might build a new sanctuary or things like that. And because they are retired people and working out of the love in their heart rather than for a living, they can save the church money by their work. So this man in our congregation told my dad, “You should come. You should join us. You should be part of it. It's a lot of fun. It's great fellowship. We're able to serve the Lord and use our talents.” And I can remember how my dad described it. He said, “We went. There was a church they were building in Florida , and I didn't know if I could help.” My dad wasn't a contractor. He wasn't a builder, you know. We'd done a few home repair projects and built a cabin in northern Michigan and things like that, but he didn't know if he could help build churches. Well, it didn't take long and he was the foreman. You see, God had a call for him to go and serve his neighbor in that way. It didn't mean he had to know everything, but you can see the natural fit. A plant superintendent used to organizing and getting people involved in things, now he's organizing and getting people involved in building churches. What a great transition that was for my dad.

So when we think about ourselves and wonder if we are qualified to do the work God is calling us to do, that's really not the question. The question is, “Is God calling us?” Because if He is, then He has something specially designed for you and your talents, you and your life experience, you and the inclinations of your heart and your spiritual gifts.

Listen to what it says in the bible about these kinds of questions. The disciples are in Jerusalem . This is Acts 1:8. Jesus has been crucified and is raised from the dead. This is what He says to them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” He told them, “Wait in Jerusalem until you receive the gift my Father promised.” What gift was that? It was the Holy Spirit, right? We remember this story of Pentecost how they were all gathered for prayer and the Lord poured out the Holy Spirit on them and they spoke in other languages they'd never studied. And all the people gathered from all over the world heard the wonders of God's prayer in their own language. How did these disciples do that? They'd never studied those languages. In fact, they'd probably never been public speakers before. It was the Holy Spirit.

God equips His witnesses and, if He's calling you and sending you to be a minister in your own neighborhood, don't you think He's going to equip you? Do you think He loved the disciples more and prepared them more than He's going to prepare you? Absolutely not. When you came to faith, when you were baptized, you received the Holy Spirit. But now He continues to give us the Holy Spirit as we need to speak and share our faith and witness and do the things He's called us to do. So as He has called you, He will qualify you. He will make you competent. He will give you the gifts. He will give you the words. He will give you the strength.

Listen to what it says in Luke 11:9-13, “So I say to you, ‘Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks received. He who seeks finds and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of your fathers if your son asks for a fish will give him a snake instead or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?'”

So when you're wondering if you're qualified, wondering if you have what it takes to be an ambassador for Christ in your own neighborhood, all you have to do is ask God. “Your word says if I ask for the Holy Spirit, you will give it to me. Lord, my neighbor really needs something. I don't know what to do for them. Give me your Holy Spirit. Show me what they need. Show me how to speak for them. Give me an opportunity to share your love and encourage them.” So God gives us the Holy Spirit.

And a great example of how that works in the Epistle lesson that was read earlier from Acts 4:8-13, “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers and elders of the people, if we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this. You and all the people of Israel, it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, does this man stand before you healed. He is the stone the builders rejected, which has become the capstone. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” Unschooled, ordinary men. Do you know where they are when they're saying these words? They are in the Supreme Court of the nation of Israel, in the Sanhedrin. They are standing before a group of about 70 leaders of the nation of Israel, unschooled ordinary men. The word unschooled has the idea of uneducated, unable to write, untrained by a rabbi. And the other words translated as ordinary is the Greek word idioti. Hum. That's the root of the word that we use when we're angry at someone and call them an idiot. Idioti. It means ordinary, unskilled, common. These guys were not skilled. These were ordinary people. These people were not seminary graduates. They probably weren't even elders or anything like that. They were just ordinary people, fishermen and other normal jobs like your jobs and yet God filled them with the Holy Spirit so they could stand before the Supreme Court of their nation and condemn the court for its decisions regarding Jesus. “This man standing before you healed in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified but God raised from the dead.” Where did Peter get that courage? Where did such eloquent and powerful words come from? From the Holy Spirit. Do you think Peter wrote them all down first ahead of time and studied some Old Testament prophecies so his head was all full of facts and figures. No. The Holy Spirit gave him those words. The Holy Spirit gave him that boldness to stand there and condemn the Supreme Court, knowing that he himself could be condemned.

Boldness, courage, compassion, kindness. You think of all the gifts described in the New Testament, the gifts of the spirit or all the fruits of the spirit, peace, joy, gentleness, kindness, compassion, all this kind of stuff, wonderful things, fruits that God causes to grow in us by His Holy Spirit. When you focus on God and His gifts, your qualifications don't count anymore, do they? Because now it's not on you and your resume but on God and who He is because He's working through you in your community.

Finally, “What can I do? What can I actually do to help my neighbor? How can God use me to serve my neighbor?” Well, first I think it's just a matter of continuing what you're already doing as God's people, as Christians, as good, caring, loving, compassionate people. Continue to pray for your neighbors. Continue to be kind, to help them in their time of need. Two doors down, I had a neighbor there in Honduras on a mission trip. Well, they'd been gone for over a week and the snow was piled up in their driveway. Yesterday, the neighbor closest to me on my right, as I'm looking out, his little son about 4 years old and he were out there and shoveled that driveway. Nothing fancy but what a wonderful thing to do. Wouldn't you call them good neighbors? Yeah, that's the kind of person you think of. That's the kind of person God wants us to be. Not some extraordinary miracle worker or something like that. He just wants us to be the good people that He's called us to be and created us to be, to let His love flow out of us in acts of kindness, to be a Christian influence.

There is a little boy two doors down on the other side who really doesn't have a dad. Now his mom's living with some guy who's there until she throws him out. Then he comes back awhile later. And the little boy gets no love from this guy. In fact, he gets the opposite. So he comes over to our house a lot and plays basketball with our girls and we talk a lot. I have a great opportunity there to mentor this young man, and I keep thinking, “Okay, God, how do you want me to do this? What do you want me to do in his life to help him and to guide him?” One of the things I did is I told him, “You tell me when your basketball games are and I'll come.” Because nobody goes. His mom doesn't go. Nobody goes to his games. So that's an opportunity. We have these things all around us. They're in our neighborhoods. They're the people who live next door to us or across the street. All we have to do is let God open our eyes to see what they need, to see opportunities to express His love.

Continue to send out those wonderful cards. Continue to give treats. You're probably like my wife who makes these cookie plates and gives them to all the neighbors around. What a wonderful way of expressing love and compassion. You can even invite them to the Cantata on Saturday or to our children's programs on Sunday or to our Christmas Eve service. We have four of them this year. We have great opportunities for you to be like an ambassador for Jesus. Just do ordinary things. Invite people into a relationship of love with Christ. Continue to be a bright light of the gospel in your neighborhood.

1 Peter 2:12 really hits this well. It says, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.” Now I wouldn't recommend going around your neighborhood and calling people pagans, but that's the word the scripture uses. A person who doesn't believe in Christ is a pagan. That's the definition. The point is live such good lives that they're noticed. Be the kind of person God has called you to be. Let your light shine. And though they might agree with your behavior or might even make fun of it from time to time, after awhile, your example and your influence opens the door of the gospel and they come to faith so they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us. No pagan, no unbeliever will glorify God. That is the work of God's people. So what happens is you've lived such a good life that your neighbors have been brought to faith and now they have rejoiced with you on the day when the Lord comes. They celebrate with you on the day when He returns to take us home.

In Viet Nam, our church, the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, is doing all kinds of wonderful work to help the people. They do assistance for families with Aids. They have nutritional centers for little children and preschools. And they have prenatal care for mothers. They can come and receive medical help and nutritional supplements to help their baby develop. We also teach English in the universities and we give small loans that are paid back to local farmers. All of this work is called pre-evangelism. Now when I went to Viet Nam, I'd never heard of that word but now I have. Pre-evangelism is the good things you do, the loving things you do, the compassionate things you do that open the hearts of the people to hear the message of love that Jesus was born and He lived this wonderful, perfect life, that He offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins on the cross and when He died on the cross, He paid for all of our sins. And because we believe in Him and confess our sins, our sins are forgiven and we have eternal life in a place called heaven.

The pre-evangelism is what we're talking about in our neighborhoods so there will be an opportunity for them to hear that God loves them. We have a family that we worked with in New Jersey with the Angel Tree Program, like the Adopt-A-Family thing with the giving tree and every year we go and visit. In fact, we went more than Christmas. We went Easter and the birthdays and Thanksgiving. We kind of expanded it a little bit. But one of the things we heard back from those people was, “You know, we've met many Christians before. We've met many people who have gone to church. But these are the real Christians because you know they care and they show it in what they do.”

That's what God has called us to be, to do this pre-evangelism in the natural, loving way that we are designed to do as God's people. And then to communicate His love in a message that is wonderful and compassionate. The bible calls us Christ's ambassadors. What a wonderful title. You are Christ's ambassadors. I am an ambassador for Christ. And so God is making His appeal through us. Think of it. You are their connection to Jesus. Amen? Amen.

Copyright 2005 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church