Our God, Our Conviction, and Our Mission
The three year anniversary sermon of The Resolved Church. This sermon looks at the vision and values of The Resolved Church as they coincide with an exegetical treatment of John 14:6. This sermon was originally preached March 23rd, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
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April 6th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets
“Our God, Our Conviction, and Our Mission”
John 14:6
Introduction
Well good morning everyone. It is good to be back. Not being here with you on Sunday and seeing you during the week, felt very weird. We are a family and when you don’t see your family you miss them. We missed you all so very much.
We were gone in Hawaii to do Billy & Mia’s wedding and we tacked some vacation on after that. It was quite an interesting trip because I spent the first five days sick in bed and ended up in the doctor’s office. I got better just in time for the wedding and we were supposed to leave the next day and the airline we were supposed to fly on Aloha Airlines went bankrupt and just shut down. By the time we found out about it there were no flights out on another airline until Thursday. So we ended up staying a few extra days, which was nice because I was better and this swell came in and I got to surf perfect waves on the north shore of Hawaii and go hiking and spend some great family time. So we ended up having some vacation after all, which was long overdue.
But it’s good to be back. Hawaii is beautiful but it’s no San Diego and there is no place like home and no place like a church family that you love and hold dear. You guys are our life.
I want to put out a special thanks to Josh for preaching for me while I was gone. If I’m right, that was Josh’s first time ever preaching publicly for a Sunday morning church service. Josh and his wife Meagan have been such a huge blessing to this church, they do so much, far more than you could ever see, and we love them so much. Josh is in seminary at Talbot right now and believes he is called to be an elder at a church some day, so it was good for him to have an opportunity to preach, because even if preaching is not your particular gifting, all elders must “be able to teach (1 Tim 3:2)” according to the Bible. Josh is graduating this year and they have some changes coming up so in about a month or so we are going to have a special lunch here after church to honor them and bless them.
Well today is a special day for The Resolved Church because three years ago today was our very first Sunday when we started the church. We’ve come a long way since then. We started in this little old apartment in Pacific Beach with about six people and just had a Bible study every Sunday night followed by a BBQ party. We didn’t sing back then, we just prayed and I taught, and then we took communion. It was very simple.
We’re not so simple now. Which is good and okay, it’s just more to worry about. We have this building and all this audio technical equipment and all this set-up and tear-down that we do. But that’s okay, it’s good. One of the great things about being involved in the set-up and tear-down crew is that you get to know people by working with them and by serving in that way, it help you gain a sense of “this being your church.” By putting out chairs and signs and curtain and books and coffee, it develops an attitude that this is “your church” and it is “your responsibility” to make it happen. I think everyone should serve in set-up and tear-down for a time. Josh has been working so hard to try and get several teams together where you serve for just a couple months and then rotate out. If you haven’t served in that way, I encourage you to talk to him.
Here we are three years later. The basic core of we do now on Sunday is still simple and isn’t much different, though we are much different. We are still a church devoted to worshipping God and studying his Word, the Bible, and we take communion each week. (We’re still studying Romans…we break the chapters and sections up into series and in-between series we preach on different things from the Bible, like on days like today. Next week we’ll be back in Romans and start our next series called “The God-ness of God.” It will last for several weeks and will deal with Romans chapter 9 and on.)
So the core of what we do on Sunday is still the same, but we are much different. There are a lot of different faces here, there’s a lot of diversity here racially, stylistically, economically. And more than that we have truly become a church. One of the hard lessons we learned in the last three years was that putting on a Sunday service does not make you a church. The word “church” literally means “body” in reference to Jesus body, which is a metaphor for the group of people who are devoted to following him together in the way that he instructed.
Jesus didn’t’ just instruct us to have “church services” but to really know each other and spend time with one another and to work at growing in his Word together and having our lives be changed and conformed by him. That’s what makes a church. What really makes us a church is each of you. You getting together during the week for these community groups and talking about your lives and your sin and the Bible and repenting and praying together and then coming together on Sunday to celebrate worshipping together and learning more together. What really makes a church is a group of people who are not just saying Jesus name or taking communion but who are actually living like him, where there is correlation and connection between who you are here and who you are out there and where Jesus is the one directing and determining your life. That’s what really makes us a church now. It’s not me. Me preaching sermons doesn’t make us a church. It’s you, following Jesus, and really opening up your life and connecting it with his people.
What I want to do today is look at a passage of Scripture that fits very well within the context of our values and so well address many of the ideas and issues that we deal with here living in the city of San Diego where God has called us to plant this church. So we are going to look at John 14:6 today and what it says and how it relates to our “core values” being a glory driven, gospel centered, city within a city.
“Core values…J” I still can’t help but laugh at that because when we first started the church three years ago, we were so rebellious about everything we did. We thought everybody was doing it wrong and we were going to do it right! We found out that is impossible because church is about a bunch of sinners getting together and growing together so you’re never going to get it “right” but we can get the rightness of Jesus and his forgiveness, and if we have that we’ll be alright.
But it’s funny because we didn’t want “core values” because that sounded too business like. We didn’t want didn’t want a projector because that was too flashy and professional. We didn’t want to meet on Sunday morning because that is what everyone else did. And we didn’t even want to be called a church because we were afraid that people might get the wrong idea! So we made sure of that and everyone thought we were some weird cult who only believed in tattoos, piercings, tobacco and alcohol…but we studied the Bible. Check mark yes, definition of a cult, not church…puking for Jesus is not a church.
Well, now we’ve grown up a little. At least most of us have…some of you are still working on it. But that’s okay. I hope we always have some room for some craziness. So if you’re a crazy, don’t worry, you’re welcome here, were into the business of the gospel and it’s what has changed us and is changing us with each passing day. But as for us as a church…we admit now that we’re a “church,” we now meet on Sunday mornings, and we understand that projectors and core values are helpful tools in the culture where we live.
So let’s read John 14:6, I pray over it, and then we’ll spend a few minutes talking about it. Read text and pray.
Our Text
Well first, let’s take a couple seconds and orient ourselves to the book of John. Normally we don’t really like to jump right in to the middle of paragraph and the middle of a story here at The Resolved Church but we’re doing it today and because we’re doing it I got to give you a little context for it.
First the book of John itself is a different kind of book. It’s a gospel. it’s official full title is “The Gospel According to John.” The word means good news and is used in the Bible as a reference to the good news of who Jesus is and what he has done for us humans. So the gospel of John is the story of who Jesus is and what he did. But the gospel of John is not like the other gospels.
There are three other gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew Mark and Luke are all kind of similar. It’s kind of like newspapers. You’ve got the Union Tribune, the USA Today, the San Diego Reader and then there’s the City Beat. John’s kind of like the city beat. It’s a kind of different in it’s graphical layout and arrangement and the way it says things.
The gospel of John doesn’t follow the order of the other gospels and it tells the same stories but in a completely different voice. His book is outlined by 7, “I AM” sayings of Jesus. Seven different times Jesus says, “I AM.” Which is a big deal and John takes note of it. It’s a big deal because in the Old Testament, this is the name God, God himself gave for himself. When Moses first encountered God, God spoke to him audibly and he asked him, “Who are you?” And God replied, “I AM.”
Jesus shows up on the scene and announces himself as the great “I AM” and tells everyone to believe in him. This is the thesis of John’s book, to convince everyone that Jesus is God and that he is the savior. He tells us plainly straight out in chapter 22:31, he says, “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
So our text for today is the sixth “I AM” saying of Jesus. Jesus says it in response to a question from one of his disciples named Thomas. A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Jesus resurrection from the dead on Easter. Before Jesus died and rose again he told the disciples beforehand he was going to do that. The disciples didn’t get it and Thomas asks him where he is going and if he is gone how they will know “the way?” And Jesus responds with this statement, “I AM the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
So Jesus takes a simple question from a confused disciple and responds to it with this massively deep and powerful theological truth, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” Let’s look at each part that is in these words.
Our God
The title of my message today is “Our God, Our Conviction and Our Mission.” It is intended to be a bridge between the values of our vision as a church and the words of this text. So being glory driven has to do with our God and Jesus being the way, being gospel centered has to do with our conviction and Jesus being the truth, and being a city within a city has to do with our mission and Jesus being the life. Let’s look at each one of these briefly.
First, Jesus being the way and how he reflects the glory of our great God. When we were in Hawaii we had the chance to go snorkeling one day. It was quite amazing. We swam with turtles in the bluest water I’ve ever seen and we got to see nearly every kind of coral there is and tons and tons of fish. Bright yellow fish with a long black and white snout. Black and white stripped fish with a big long tail coming off the top of it’s head. Orange and yellow clown fish. Rectangular triggerfish. Black fish outlined in orange with a yellow tail. Puffer fish all spiky with big bug eyes. Long skinny trumpet fish and a black and yellow spotted eel. All kinds of crazy beautiful colors on each one of these fish, all perfectly symmetrical and designed.
Then there was the day of Billy and Mia’s wedding. It was set on the water against the backdrop of this sweeping hillside covered in all kinds of bright flowers and behind it was a cliff that was at least 1000 feet high that just cut straight down. If any of you have ever watched the TV show lost, that’s where it was. White plumerias, bright red flowers, orange flowers, purple flowers…all different kinds. It was the most beautiful thing. Billy called it a “grand outdoor cathedral” and I couldn’t agree with him more.
Seeing all those things, all the colors, all the intricate shapes and designs of fish, flowers, landscape and water…I could not help but think of the glory of our God who designed it all and caused it all to be by his great power. It all reflects God!
We don’t look at anything else that has beauty and design in it and think it does not have a designer who is extremely gifted. If you look at a painting you know was a painter. If you look at building you know there was an architect. If you look at a car engine you know there was a mechanic. If you read a book you know there was a writer. If you look at this world you know there is a God and that he is glorious.
That’s what that little phrase “glory driven” is all about. Glory means weight, it’s qavod in Hebrew. Everything reflects the weight, the massiveness of how great our God is. He is glorious. We are a church driven by a passion to love and serve and spread the great fame of our God.
And who is our God? He is the I AM. He is the only one and his name is Jesus, in Jesus is the reflection of the glory of God. Colossians 1:16 says all things were created “through (Jesus) and for (Jesus).” I am fascinated by the resistance of so many to not want to put a name on the God of the universe. I had a conversation with someone this last week and they said they believe there is “something behind it all” that there is “some higher power” but they just don’t want to put a name on it and call it God.
What is that about? I can’t help but think it is our depraved way of not wanting to give God his credit or glory…because if we put a name on it then we are acknowledging his existence and that we owe our existence to him. If we acknowledge him then we can no longer life the way that we want to and must stand accountable to him. So let’s just say we know there is something out there and then maybe we can get away with doing what we want and doing things our way.
Jesus confront that idea head on here. He says I AM the way. Jesus is the way. Because of Jesus statement here, the early Christians in Acts often began referring to themselves as followers of “the Way (Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 24:14,22).” The way….everyone in life is looking for the way. It’s an acknowledgment that in many ways life is like a journey or trip and you are trying to figure out where you are going and how you are getting there.
Jesus spoke about this “way” on one other occasion. He said this, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Mt 7:13-14).” How do you find it? Same question as Thomas’s which prompts Jesus answer, I AM the way.
So many of you keeping trying to do things your own way, rather than God’s. That’s idolatry. You think you know better? You don’t. You’re not going to create your own way. There is nothing new under the sun. God is either going to be your God and you are going to follow him or he’s not and you will keep trying to take over and grab the steering wheel of your life. My call to you today is to give up. Stop doing that. Backseat drivers are annoying. Everything is about God’s glory and Jesus is the way, so live your life for him.
Our Conviction
Next let’s look at the second part of this, our conviction, where Jesus says he is the truth. Many philosopher’s, poet’s, men of power, and many other people have claimed to want truth.
Henry David Thoreau said, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
John Lennon wrote a song called “Gimme Some Truth.” In it he says, “I’m sick and tired of hearing things from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites. All I want is the truth now. Just gimme some truth now. I’ve had enough of reading things by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians. All I want is the truth now. Just gimme some truth now.”
When Jesus was before Pilate, the governor he had him crucified, he said to him, “I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice (Jn 18:37).” In response to Jesus Pilate said, “What is truth (Jn 18:38)?”
That question seems to encapsulate the majority opinion of the culture we live in here in southern California in the city of San Diego…”what is truth, who knows, just live your life.” It’s the sort of pop-postmodern assimilation of the day. Whatever is true really doesn’t matter, nobody could ever know for sure, so just live in the moment (existentialism), and live for your self (humanism).
This is where Jesus statement and where Christianity itself becomes so difficult for so many. To say you are the only true one and no one knows God except through you. I mean Jesus is being pretty arrogant here don’t you think?
For so many, Christianity just sounds too exclusivistic, too narrow-minded, too elitist, too snobbish, too self-assured, too self-righteous, too bigoted. You know the world is a big place, there just different things for different people. Live and let live, don’t try and impose your values on others. All religious roads lead to God, it’s whatever works for you.
We have conflicting ideas, so what are we supposed to do with this word “truth” and Jesus’ claim here that he is the only way? I mean the word “truth” means “truth” absolute objective truth and the Bible knows nothing of this other idea, of plural truths that just depends on the person. So what are we to do?
I’ll give you a few options.
1. Outlaw it. This is the hope of people like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and other atheists. The problem is we’ve tried that. Every time a country has tried to legally control religion it has resulted in violence and oppression…Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China. And on top of it every time someone tries to stomp out Christianity it flourishes in the face of martyrdom.
2. Condemn it. Since we can’t make it go away with government, then we’ll just condemn it through education and argument and create cultural environments where it is unacceptable. We teach all religions are basically the same, no one person can have a capital on truth, religion is just social conditioning, and it is arrogant to try and convert others.
This one has a lot of problems…because all religions really don’t believe the same thing if you actually study them. Each one has a particular way of defining who God is or isn’t and what life’s purpose is. To say no one person can have a capital on truth is a statement itself by a person claiming to have a capital on that truth, it doesn’t work on itself! To say “truth” is just social conditioning doesn’t say anything. Everything is socially conditioned. I socially learned math in school but that has nothing to do with whether it is true or not, of whether 2+2 is 4 or not. And lastly, if it’s arrogant to try and convert others then it’s wrong to tell me that in the first place because you’re trying to convert me not to convert people!
You see so many of these ideas just fall apart. They are like cardboard cutouts of movie stars you see when you go to rent a movie at blockbuster. They’re not real, if you push them, they fall over easily. Some of you were part of Ron and Kathy’s small group who went through a book called “Jesus Among Other Gods” written by a man named Ravi Zacharias who was born an Indian Hindu. In it he says this, “What the person means by saying, ‘You must be open to everything’ is really, ‘You must be open to everything that I am open to and anything that I disagree with, you must disagree with too.’ …It has a veneer of openness, but is highly critical of anything that hints at a challenge to it.”
You see everyone is exclusivistic and it’s about time we grew up and started getting some convictions behind our beliefs. So much of what we tend to do is just believe whatever is easy without taking the time to really think through what we believe and why and how it effects our life.
3. Keep it private. Richard Rorty the famous pragmatist says whatever works is true and so we should just keep our beliefs private and then we can live together and work together.
You know the two rules to get along with people, you don’t talk about politics and you don’t talk about religion. The problem with this one is that what works is not always what is true. What about a successful lie that helps get you ahead? What about a marriage between two people who just keeps their beliefs to themselves so that they won’t get a divorce? Can those two people ever really know or love each other?
4. Jesus can save the world (not the cheerleader). Jesus isn’t a liar who needs to be outlawed. Jesus isn’t an arrogant lunatic that needs to be silenced. Jesus really is the Lord and can really save us.
Jesus is the one who calls his followers to live in and be involved in a culture where there are non-believers around us and to be respectful and loving toward them. Many of those people will readily recognize much of Christian behavior and values to be good, regardless of what religion or culture it is because all people were made in the image of God. In fact, Christians will often find that non-believers around them often live superior moral lives…because Christians are saved not because of their moral perfection but because of Jesus’ perfection and Jesus saves the worst people.
It is Jesus who changes people to be like him and as a result they end up being more open and more loving toward others then anyone would ever think possible. It’s possible because in Jesus we have a man who died for his enemies who rejected him and prayed that they might be forgiven. That is why Jesus can save the world and bring true peace because he died for us to redeem our wicked hearts so that we would no longer be violent and oppressive but gentle and full of his love.
You can’t get that kind of thing apart from him. He is unique in that. It’s why we say we are gospel-centered, because it is in Jesus alone that we find real love and are changed by him. That is the gospel, the good news of who Jesus is and what he has done for us in his death and resurrection, it changes everything.
You see you could try and say that religion or Jesus is just a matter of spirituality not a matter of truth. But if Jesus really died on a cross and rose from the dead that pierces through everything. I’ve never heard anyone say that history is just a matter of spirituality. You can’t say, it’s not a matter of truth of whether or not Bill Clinton was the President of the U.S. from 1993 to 2001. That’s not just a matter of spirituality.
If Jesus really lived and died and rose it changes everything for us because then history and science intersect with faith and spirituality and that is why we sing, that is why we preach, that is why we gather, that is why we study…because everything is about the gospel, it is the center of all that we do and it is the hope for the world.
It’s not about us thinking we’re better than anyone, if anything we might be worse because we know better. It’s about being changed and being saved by Jesus. It would be heartless and uncompassionate for Christians either to remain silent or to acknowledge different paths to salvation if Jesus really is the only way and the only truth and the only life. We say so because we love so.
Our Mission
That brings us to our last point for this morning, our mission, where Jesus says he is the life. In Jesus statement there is both a quality and quantity of life in view. All throughout Jesus’ ministry when he talks about life, it is never just purely biological. Biology comes from the word “life” that is here, that what it is in Greek, bios. But when Jesus talks about life, it is both physical and spiritual. Often times he adds the adjective “eternal” and talks about eternal life.
So first, in Jesus saying he is the life, it is a quantity thing. I’ve said it before but one of the main challenges for people from their teenage years on up through to about 30 or so today, at least here in San Diego, is temporality. It is not having a vision for the long term. All we see is the now and do not consider the outcome of our lives and ultimately eternity.
For Jesus life begins when you consider the eternal perspective first and then start working backward to the now. If you do that you will end up living a quality of life that is radically different because it gets connected with something that counts and the result is mission. You end up living your life as a mission to do something for the glory of Jesus, you end up living in such a way to make your life count for eternity rather than for it being a waste.
So that’s why I say that this last equation of Jesus, of him being our life has to do with our mission of being a city within a city. It is our goal as a church to gather together and form a people who live in a certain way here in San Diego. We want our lives to be so radically changed by Jesus that it is almost as if we are a part of a whole different city, called the church.
For most the physical city they are in determines how they live in many ways. What job you have, what language you speak, and who you spend your time with. We are on a mission to create a spiritual city, where who Jesus is and our pursuit of him together is what determines how we live.
With our job. You work at the job you do because it is the one that Jesus has gifted and talented and interested you in and so you work for him, to bring him glory by how you work in your attitude and how you put him on display to those who work with.
With our language. We talk about Jesus. He is the most important thing of our lives and so we find ourselves talking about him any opportunity we get.
With our friends. We spend time with people who love Jesus and with people who don’t. Jesus did that and so that’s what we do. That’s what our city is like. We are a church and we love each other and we gather together and then we scatter build bridges and doors into our gospel city and we do that over and over again.
There are several other things. These are just a few examples. The point is that Jesus is the life. If you think that you are going to find a happy and satisfied life apart from him and apart from, apart from listening to and obeying him, you are wrong. It will be miserable and only contain temporary and damaging joys.
Being a city within a city is about planting a church in San Diego. I hope you catch a vision of that. I know a few of you do and I pray more do. I pray you get a heart to do everything you can to establish this church in San Diego in order that for God’s glory people might be reached with the gospel.
Conclusion
Well let’s end today. We are The Resolved Church, a glory-driven, gospel-centered, city within the city following Jesus as the way the truth and the life. It has been a wonderful three years people of The Resolved Church. It has not been easy, but Jesus has been faithful. He said he would build his church and hell couldn’t overtake it. We’ve had some hell and we’re still here and going strong. I pray Jesus continues this work and grants us three more years, who knows where we’ll be by then.
Perhaps in three years as we continue on our mission to bring God glory by reaching more and more people…perhaps we’ll have begun to really impact the city in a large way as a force for gospel change. Here’s the things I see that need to happen for that to take place.
We need more leaders and God’s wisdom for me to know how to raise them up and how to oversee our leaders.
We need more people contributing and serving the church and the city with the things they are gifted in.
We need passionate spirituality, where our faith is not just a sideline but a frontline and where the core members of our church are living holy and consistent lives, not regularly and knowingly doing things they know Jesus and this church disapproves of.
We need to develop some more structures and systems for doing things so that we can handle growth as a church. It is my personal prayer that in this next year we will be able to bring on at least one other staff member and that I would be able to be your full-time pastor.
We need God to continue to bless our music ministry. We have a couple new additions and it so exciting. We need to sing new songs and have other instruments and other people playing. We always want to be progressing and having an inspiring worship service and the music is a big part of it.
We need to continue building our mid-week community groups. For those of you who are part of them you need to stay committed to them and then for other who have not joined one yet, you need that. As we grow we’ll need more and more groups, so we pray for God’s blessing in that as well.
We need to be involved in activism, doing things in our city that are pictures of the gospel’s changing work in our heart. That means we need to meet the people’s needs of this city and to be actively doing things to help them.
And lastly, we need loving relationships. Jesus said you would be able to tell who his followers are by their love for one another. The thing I have seen as probably the biggest way we have grown in the last six months in our community. I love you guys, I hope you know that. But I have begun to witness your love for each other and it is beautiful. I pray that continues and that your love will be a love that easily welcomes and invites other people into it.
Well, those are the things I see as your pastor. May God help us as we endeavor to follow his calling to plant this church in San Diego in this way. Let’s pray.
