Sunday Messages

Shift: Jesus-followers must make room for expanded hearts to be more like Jesus and embody a genuine love for those who are far from God.

The little things do matter…

Shifts not only have a big impact in the crust of the earth, but also in every area of our lives.By making these small adjustments in the right places, we can set off a chain reaction – much like the earth’s seismic forces that result in an earthquake – but in this case small changes can make a BIG difference in the most important areas of our lives. 16:Shifts can take place almost anywhere: in the workplace, the school, the family, the church, the community, and in our spiritual and personal lives. In our last message, God disclosed to us the importance of Shift #13: The Shift from Flattery to Truth-Telling.

SHIFT #14: From Us to Them

We celebrate today Mother’s Day. As we think about the shift from Us to Them, Mother’s are the embodiment of “Them.” Mothers most often think of others, not themselves.

Mother, on a winter's day, milked the cows and fed them hay, hitched the mule, drove kids to school...did a washing, mopped the floors, washed the windows and did some chores...Cooked a dish of home-dried fruit, pressed her husband's Sunday suit...swept the parlor, made the bed, baked a dozen loaves of bread...split some firewood and lugged it in, enough to fill the kitchen bin...Cleaned the lamps and put in oil, stewed some apples before they spoiled...churned the butter, baked a cake, then exclaimed, "For goodness sake!" when the calves ran from the pen, and chased them all back in again...Gathered eggs and locked the stable, back to the house and set the table...cooked a supper that was delicious, then washed and dried all dirty dishes...fed the cat and sprinkled clothes, mended a basketful of hose...then opened the organ and began to play: "When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day.”

A teacher asked a boy this question: "Suppose your mother baked a pie and there were seven of you--your parents and five children. What part of the pie would you get?" "A sixth," replied the boy. "I'm afraid you don't know your fractions," said the teacher. "Remember, there are seven of you." "Yes, teacher," said the boy, "but you don't know my mother. Mother would say she didn't want any pie."

Motherhood and compassion are intertwined. In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament the word for “compassion” comes from the root word, “womb.”The picture is of a birthing. Something new is being born. If we apply this in a human experience, it means that our compassionate acts always give the other person another chance. We offer a fresh start. Such compassion will dramatically change the way we relate to each other.

This shift from Us to Them must not only take place in the family, but also in the church community. Often a community of Jesus-followers assumes that making serious efforts to reach out to those who have not yet come to know the love of Jesus suppose their own church community will be forgotten and their needs won’t be met. This imagining reveals fundamental misunderstandings about God, the church, and the call to share God’s love with the world.

There are those in the church today that have legitimate concerns regarding the meeting of their needs in the local body of believers. However, when believers who are already receiving quality worship, study, fellowship, and service opportunities in the church say, “What about us? In your reaching out to new people please don’t forget us!” We must ask in return, “What do you need that you don’t already have?” We are not talking about physical needs like clothes, a car, or a place to live. We are talking about the spiritual blessings and eternal inheritance we have in Jesus.

The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1:3…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

God has been so good to us when we remember the marvelous grace God has lavished on us and the sacrifice he made to show us his love. Once we have reflected on all we have as God’s children, we can look at one another as Jesus-followers and ask ourselves, “What do we need that we don’t already have in Christ?” The answer must be, “Nothing!”

In Jesus’ day, there were many cultural barriers between various groups of people. Jews had no dealings with the Gentiles. Most men would not speak with women in public. No one wanted to be seen with the tax collectors. No one in their right mind would dare touch a person with leprosy. So we might say that there was a huge “us versus them” mentality.

Since Jesus was an aspiring Jewish rabbi, most people knew that for him, some people were off limits if he wanted to maintain a good reputation in the religious community. But in full view of the public, Jesus systematically knocked down the cultural barriers. He questioned the norms and customs of the day.

Love That Risks

Jesus took a huge risk when he had a theological conversation with a Samaritan woman who had a questionable moral history. However, we don’t want to focus upon the encounter with this woman as much as we need to center upon Jesus’ discussion with his disciples after they rejoin him from buying food in town. This dialogue with the disciples helps us as Jesus-followers understand the “us versus them” way of thinking. It helps us to have expanded hearts for lost people. It enables us to take an honest look at how we function and discover if there are patterns that are counterproductive to reaching out to those who are not yet part of God’s family.

Let’s pick up the narrative with Jesus and his disciples in John 4:31-38…

When the disciples are concerned with their own physical needs, Jesus confronts them with the shift from Us to Them in two compelling and challenging ways:

1. Satisfying needs by doing the will of God

³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." ³² But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." ³³ Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" ³⁴ "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Jesus’ ultimate source of nourishment is that divine, eternal relationship he shares with his Father who has sent him. It is in obeying God and doing his will that he finds fulfillment, his most satisfying food. And Jesus will see that work through to the end. It is Jesus’ great desire that we should be as he was: to do the will of God is the only way to peace; to do the will of God is the only way to fulfillment; and to do the will of God is the only way to power.

Thus, to have ministered to this Samaritan woman’s need was as food to his soul; it was doing God’s will and accomplishing his work. For most of us our hunger for two or three nourishing meals a day takes precedence over everything else. Jesus spoke of satisfying another hunger: ministering to God’s needy and lost people. To Jesus it was exciting and immediate. It is also true that any one of Jesus-followers who have been caught up in God’s mighty work, however small it may have seemed, discovers food in an entirely different dimension than any physical lunch.

2. Securing the harvest by developing the kingdom of God

³⁵ Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now those who reap draw their wages, even now they harvest the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

It is Jesus’ unrestricted obedience to his Father’s will which has brought Jesus to a great harvest. The response of this one Samaritan woman which has made her an uninhibited witness among her own people, despised and rejected as they are, now brings them running to hear and believe.

In God’s period of grace, which Jesus is ushering in, all the neat calculations about harvesting four months after sowing, as the ancient proverb put it, are upset and transcended. We are now dealing with God’s timetable. This is the Greek word kairos for “the proper time”—that the time of great opportunity is at hand; it is ripe for the harvesting. In this time, no one can carefully project who will receive the greatest wages, sower or reaper. Their work is intertwined, interdependent, and the wages are the same for both, the joy of eternal life. This is the time of grace.

We often want to wait in our churches—“four month until harvest”—when God says—“open your eyes and look at the fields”—the harvest is ripe now! We can only reap a harvest now because others have faithfully sown the seed of God’s Word. Is not the costly ministry of those who have ministered before us a part of this? So like the disciples, we are entering today into the faithful labors of others. Only then can sowing take place. But we must not wait; the harvest is ready right now, for “the proper time.”

In these verses, Jesus is challenging us in the church as Jesus-followers to shift from Us to Them by reminding us of an occupation—to do the work of the Father, and reminding us of an opportunity—to reap a harvest for God. These are the times in history when people are strangely sensitive to God. What a tragedy it is if Christ’s church as such a time fails to reap Christ’s harvest!

It would have been safest for Jesus to minister only to those who were on the cultural and spiritual inside track. In the same way, it is easier and safer for us to extend our love and compassion to those who are already part of God’s family. We can lock the doors of our churches, and forget the broken world Jesus died to save. But where is the excitement in that mindset? Where is the adventure? How does this put us in a place where we have to cry out for the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit? Jesus took huge risks when he moved his attention from the “us” of his day to “them.” He also calls each of his followers to enter into this same risky journey!

Moving from Us to Them is one of the great disciplines that allow God to speak to our heart through his Word. Our series on 16:Shifts highlights the verse from John 3:16…

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

…God loves…God gave…We believe…We live.

Prayer: Father, I believe you love this world. You gave your one and only Son so I can live forever with you. Apart from you, I die. With you, I live. I choose life. I admit I need a Savior. I believe Jesus is my Savior. I choose to walk with Jesus and become a worldchanger.

From Clean to Messy.Since this is Mother’s Day, let’s return to honoring our ladies. Mothers learn to live with a balance of order and chaos in their lives. They move from clean to messy in so many ways. What mothers do in this life puts them in the tension between chaos and order, between clean and messy. This same tension exists in the church when we desire to make the shift from Us to Them.

So let’s encourage our ladies with God’s Word and an affirming word:

In the words of the King Lemuel in Proverbs 31:30…

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;

but a woman who reveres the LORD is to be praised.

In the words of Nehemiah 8:10…

…the joy of the Lord is your strength.

An affirming word (bookmark)…

A mother strengthens us with her prayers,

Encourages us with her hope,

And blesses us with her unending love.

• Prayers

Lorne Sanny of The Navigators once wrote of his mother: "My mother gave birth to me in a frontier house on a Midwestern prairie. On the kitchen counter she placed a list of the ingredients necessary for my formula. At the top of the list was 'prayer,' and that remained at the top of her list for me throughout her life...I have her to thank for firmly establishing my spiritual roots."

A mother strengthens us with her prayers.

§ Hope

Ann Lamott is a mother who wears everything on her sleeve, including her toils with young children, her poor motherhood skills, and her struggles with faith and her church. She writes, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

A mother encourages us with her hope.

§ Love

Washington Irving writes, “The love of a mother is never exhausted. It never changes--it never tires--it endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother's love still lives on.”

A mother blesses us with her unending love.

May we end this message as we began. Mothers most often think of others, not themselves. There is no more influential or powerful role on earth than a mother’s. Stay at it, dear ladies. Never doubt the value of the shift from “us to them.” Without your prayers, hope, and love, the family and church simply could not survive! Amen.